Pants and snowman building

Today Isla and I went on a shopping trip to buy lots of pants and socks. After the excitement of choosing pants, we both needed a nice sit down and some snacks. Isla helped eat the icing from my carrot cake, and tucked into the middle bits of some sausage rolls:

This afternoon, we made a banana loaf using a recipe from my Jo Wheatley cookery book. It smelt yummy and we're looking forward to eating some later on. Isla did some whisking and sieving with Raa raa observing:

While the cake was in the oven, we went into the garden and made an Isla-sized snowman:

As you can see from the photographs, it was starting to get dark when we were playing with the snow and a little while later it began snowing very heavily again so it looks like we'll have a lot more snow on the ground tomorrow. Monty was getting very excited again, a sure sign that there is more snow to come!

A faster sledging video

Here is another video of Andrew and Isla sledging, they were going soooo fast that it was tricky to keep them in the shot:

Lots of sledging

On Sunday there was still a lot of snow on the ground so Isla went sledging around the village!

Andrew and Isla went zooming down the snowy hills, both enjoyed it a lot!

Sledging video

Here is a video of Isla sledging:

Riding in the boat and building an igloo

This morning we went out with the buggy to feed our friend's cats, involving an exciting journey through the snow.

After lunch, we found the sledge and got Isla back into her snowsuit. While she was putting on her wellies, she could see the sledge in the garden and said she wanted to go in the 'boat' and so Andrew pulled her around on the sledge. She loved it! Perhaps this will be one of her first memories....my first memory is of being pulled along in a sledge on the way to take my brother to school when it snowed one year.

Andrew decided to build an igloo. Isla helped with some scooping:

An interlude to play 'peepo' in Jura Lodge:

The igloo is finished:

A bit small for Andrew:

Checking out the structural soundness of the new build:

Andrew demonstrating the structural soundness to Isla:

Still not sure about this igloo thing:

Finally in the igloo for a few moments:

More fun in the snow

Yesterday evening Andrew got home a little early from work because of the snow so had some fun in the garden with Isla.

Feeding the birds and lots of snow

Earlier this week, Isla tried using a special telescope to look at stars and find Button Moon. She also wanted to do some painting and helped me to bake a lemon drizzle cake.

It was very frosty one day, and we enjoyed a walk, although Isla got her first grazed knee:

Isla has spent a lot of time playing with her train set this week. I think she even dreams about her trains because she woke up this morning saying 'green train, blue train'. She can put different drivers in the trains, with Raa Raa the tiger as the favourite driver. She has just learnt how to attach the different carriages onto the back of the engines.

Since it's been so cold this week, we felt sorry for the birds in the garden and so secretly put some bread out while the cats were asleep upstairs. We managed to attract a lot of blackbirds and robins to the garden, which were lovely to watch from inside. We even had a blue tit eat some peanuts from our new bird feeder, although that has so far been a one-off.

This morning, we woke up to this:

So, we decided to do this:

Here is a snow angel Isla made by lying down and waving her arms about:

And here is my snow angel (they look a bit like snow lobsters though):

We came inside just before the snow started falling again quite thickly. We had started to build a snow girl  and a snow cat and put some more bread out for the birds. This morning, while it was still dark outside, Monty rushed out and raced about the garden. He loves the snow! He even jumped in and out of the shutters of Jura Lodge a few times!