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!

Scones, walks and some DIY

The sun has been shining this week, so we have been out and about a bit more. Isla and I have been getting back into our usual activities and have also had lots of our friends over to play.

Isla loves her big nursery rhyme book that her New Zealand Great Aunt and Uncle brought her before Christmas. She loves listening to nursery rhymes on the computer and finding them in the book. She especially likes 'Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle' and 'The Wheels on the Bus' and gets very excited when she hears a rhyme from the book on the computer. Isla has started singing rhymes a lot too, especially 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and 'Wheels on the Bus' again and any new songs we've learnt at Tumble Tots. She does very cute hand movements to the songs too! Here she is looking at her nursery rhyme book:

Isla gives Pob the cat lots of attention, with cuddles (or 'cuggles' in Isla-speak) and for toy-balancing games:

This week we have been for lots of walks around the village.  We often walk to the shop using Isla's back-pack reins. 'A that' is her favourite saying at the moment and she likes asking what everything is that she sees when we are walking. 

We baked some scones this week, and then ate them with raspberry jam and cream!

Isla opened up Jura Lodge for the New Year! It was great to be in the garden again on a sunny day. She found her duck watering can once more too.

This weekend, Andrew and Isla did some D.I.Y. They built some shelves for our living room. The shelves also doubled as a climbing frame while being built.

Trains and robots

Isla and Andrew built a huge railtrack track around the living room floor today!

Isla has been playing a lot with her new friend, Gadget the robot, who was a Christmas present from her Uncle Peter.

Ducks like tortilla wraps

Today we went to feed the ducks. There were lots of people walking their dogs. We only had a couple of pieces of bread left so we decided to give the birds some tortilla wraps too. They liked them a lot. Isla also enjoyed having some of the duck food!

A New Year

We had a few days at the end of Andrew's time off when it didn't rain and so we could get out and about. We found a field of young lambs, and also some puddles for Isla to splash in.

We managed to complete a jigsaw puzzle Christmas present from Isla's Grandma and Grandpa that was made up of a photo of Isla feeding giraffes at Colchester zoo. 

Yesterday, Isla and I had fun at toddler group meeting up with everyone again. In the afternoon we went in to town to meet up with some more friends, so it was a busy day of socialising! Today we had a day at home. We went for a long, long walk around the village and fields and saw lots of animals. Isla stopped and watched every car go by. She particularly enjoyed watching a lady parking her Land Rover and also spotting a black cat. When we came back from our walk, we ate some of the remaining shortbread from New Year. Isla's hair had gone incredibly curly in the rainy weather and she was sporting some lovely ringlets. The rest of the day was spent making tractors, huge flower towers and cakes with Duplo and also making flapjacks. As well as stirring the mixture and helping distribute golden syrup and porridge oats, Isla tested all of the flapjack ingredients to check they were ok. She especially liked the soft brown sugar and the currants but the oats were mainly left alone.

Isla with her My Little Pony, Applejack!

Stirring the flapjack mixture.