Baking Christmas goodies

Isla and I have been baking some gingerbread biscuits and mince pies this weekend. We used a Mary Berry gingerbread recipe pimped with some treacle as we had no brown sugar. They were yummy. Isla is brilliant at rolling out dough with her little pink rolling pin and then cutting out shapes. All that play dough mucking about must have been handy!

Evie has been enjoying lots of cuddles from everyone. She has made friends with her toy octopus and been practising grabbing the fur of Isla's toy cat.... watch out Pob! She was cooed over in our local shop by all the shop staff yesterday, who appreciated her smiling at them. Isla had her first tube of smarties and was intrigued that the orange ones actually taste of orange. She has been helping with present wrapping up and today we got out a special Christmas magazine for her to look at and put stickers on. She really liked a page about the Octonauts cartoon (you'd have to see the cartoon to find out about Captain Barnacles and the GUPs!!). She liked pretending our hands were sea anemones. Evie was asleep on my lap while we were playing, and everytime Isla giggled, Evie did a cute little laugh in her sleep! I wonder if she used to do this when I was pregnant with her. 

We ventured out between hailstorms for a walk in the sunshine to see the ponies eating sweet-smelling hay. Isla was desperate to ride on Andrew's shoulders and eventually got her wish so was very happy! I remember doing that too when I was little.

Our trip to the New Forest

At the weekend, we went to the New Forest. We stopped at Marwell Zoo on the way.

The zoo was brilliant as the animals had huge enclosures to live in, and it felt a bit like a safari park to walk around.

We saw a cheetah having a poo:

giraffes:

leopards:

meerkats:

a tiger:

a walk-through enclosure with some Southern African birds we recognised from our time out there:

a wallaby walk-through enclosure:

tortoises to ride:

a tropical walk-through enclosure with poison-arrow frogs:

spotting a real live crocodile (Isla asked if it was a real one!):

The next morning we went to collect eggs from the chickens on the farm where we were staying:

We got back to our 'barn' and examined the eggs:

and then made a delicious omelette with the fresh eggs:

We went to look at the sea at Milford on Sea:

and had a wander about to look for some wildlife in the forest:

 but ended up seeing more from the car:

We found somewhere to eat which amazingly did ribs, which made us all very happy

We went to lymington to look at the boats on the river, and to play at the park!

The view from this bench has to be one of the best for a feed (even beats the bench looking over the meerkat den):

We warmed up back at the barn by the log burner, where Andrew enjoyed burning things:

We went for a wander around the farm to pick some lettuce to have with our dinner. Andrew found some doggy friends who showed us where to go:

We got a bit concerned when the dogs followed us to the chickens and geese as they started chasing the birds a bit. We enticed the dogs back out of the chicken field and shut the gate, only to have the dogs jump right back over again to show us the chickens. Taunting the chickens and geese must be the main hobby of the dogs when they are not working on the farm.

Isla was an expert the next day when we went to collect more eggs for our breakfast:

We had one last walk in the forest:

Back at home, we have been playing with happyland and snugglers again!