A first winter day

Today has felt like the first proper winter day.  Heavy frost on the car, beautiful crisp sunny morning.  We took ourselves southwards for a little walk around Blackmoorfoot reservoir with Stewart.

It's a great little place for a little person to go walking.  The first leg involved lots of little 'houses' amongst the rhododendron bushes and the acquisition of a few walking sticks.  The second leg, across the dam, involved a lot of icy puddles so that we could play at pushing stones across, bashing the ice with our walking sticks to let the air bubbles out, and picking up pieces of ice and dropping them to let them smash.  This leg also involved a couple of horses.  The third leg included a banana "to help me keep walking".  The final leg involved a lot of I Spy.  And we ended at a pub for a lovely Sunday lunch, where Marisca had a posh fish finger sandwich followed by ice cream.  We're so pleased that she had a lovely time and are planning more visits.

Tom, as ever, sat in the backpack quietly streaming from his nose, and had his fill of everyone else's lunch.

Family Christmas

All Christmasses are family Christmasses really, but this one seemed especially so.  We had a relatively quiet Christmas Day with just the four of us and Grandma and Grandpa, with some nice services where Marisca 'helped' out her grandparents who were preaching.  Both children enjoyed unwrapping, enjoyed the lunch (thanks Dad!) and enjoyed spending time with their grandparents.

Marisca showing off her stocking, in her Christmas pajamas (2nd Christmas so far for them, fingers crossed they'll stretch to next year).

Tom 'enjoying' his party hat. I only got a photo because, frankly, he's not great at taking off hats yet.

And Risky & Tom in their Christmas outfits - a dress and a shirt made by Elspeth, both looked fantastic.

Boxing Day saw the other side of the family, visiting Catriona, Ian & Alice in Moulton, along with Gran & Grandad.  We had a nice potter into the village to watch the traditional mummery.  Alice and Marisca had lots of fun together.

And of course Gran and Grandad enjoyed having all three grandchildren in the same room - if never quite in the same viewfinder!

And then finally on the next day we popped into Ollerton to see some more of my family on the way home.  That gave us the chance to get this photo of four generations of Mosedale men, and gave Tom the chance to get to grips with the kitten Zebedee...

Thank you to all of the hosts!

A happy new year

I've had such a lovely new year.  We had the Spencers visiting and getting up to all sorts of mischief, but my very favourite events were with my own little ones.

We had tea out at Murgatroyd's on New Year's Eve and it was just great having Tom tucking in on one side and Marisca trying to make a dent in an enormous pile of fish bites and chips on the other.  And then today we walked at Bolton Abbey, enjoying the 12 days of Christmas. It ended up being really wet and every got a bit cold, but on the way both children had plenty of giggles and Marisca was particularly great at playing in the '12 drummers drumming' spot.

What a lovely little family and what fun 2014 will be.