Lazy Saturday

No orchestra for Jonah on Saturday, so we all had a nice lazy day:

Although Cara does look a little worried about it. Don't worry , Cara.

Foraging again

We went on the hunt for sea spinach and rock samphire and found loads of each at Petit Port.

Meriel pickled the samphire and made the spinach into filo parcels with feta cheese - yum.

Here's the parcels:

And here's the samphire prior to pickling:

Now we've just got to wait 4 months before eating it. How long!?

Finally Meriel and Jonah went on the hunt for Alexanders, which were peeled and steamed. Nice:

Meriel's Birthday

Meriel's 39.

So we made her some cakes:

Perhaps we got a little carried away, but hey.

She got some PMC (precious metal clay) stuff for making jewelry along with some really nice books.

Oh, and we went to Petit Port for lunch - beautiful weather. We just had a packed lunch and watched the tide coming in. Here's the spot:

Happy Birthday, Meriel

Ben's Christening

We went to Ben's Christening last Sunday and, without being able to find anything in a shop which would convey a deep enough feeling of love and money, we all went home and made the nearest thing to it ...

... fairy cakes!

We each made one and put them in this really snazzy box we found in town.

Now, surely that was better than shop-bought tat, wasn't it?

And it was fun.

London after the holiday

We stayed with Meriel folks for a few days after we returned from the ski trip. No guessing which restaurant we went to when we hit Soho:

Skiing! Eeeeek!

So we went on this skiing holiday and knock me down if it wasn't completely perfect.

We went to La Plagne in the Alps and got good snow every day. Neither Meriel or myself are wildly experienced, but it was far and away the best conditions we'd ever seen.

The kids had a lovely time, going to ski school in the morning and bum-boarding and eating cake in the afternoon - what's not to like?

I was waiting to stitch together some images from the holiday which is why this post is so late, but I just haven't got round to it, so here's some of the other images from the trip:

Here's Chalet Ingrid, where George, our fantastic chalet host, lookaed after us with sublime food and daily cakes (yum):

I'll post some videos and some other images when I get round to uploading them.

Snow!

Lots of snow!

Like we've never seen here before.

My arms ached the next day from throwing around 200 snowballs (at Meriel).

Jonah & Cara had the day off school and the next day too - but by then most of the good stuff had gone. Good practice for the upcomming ski holiday (two days to go - eek!)

Walking in the woods ...

... we found this cool playground. With trees.

And a swing (which you can see if you look really, really hard):

It's clearly somewhere we'll be going back to.

Christmas catchup

A broken computer over the Christmas period meant no blog postings, so here's a quick round up of the events in image form (not that there were many):

The children made cards with Meriel, although they'd already done some through the school (facilitated by Lenny amongst other PTA people). Meriel got them to do a picture of a basic Christmas tree each, then she scanned them both in and printed out a pile of them to be given decorations by the kids. Lenny was in London attending James' birthday party. Here's a shot of a snowman's backside from Carnaby Street:

And the street where he worked for years when he was living there (just a visit for old time's sake):

After a very relaxed Christmas at home entertaining Grandma (Catherine), we all spent the rest of the holidays just messing about and having fun. CAra made patterns on the windows (not all of the time):

And Jonah used his new explosive chemistry set to make a volcano and its environs:

and here's the result:

Almost hit the ceiling.

There was the usual "lots of walking" on cold beaches:

And there was tree planting at Ed and Vanessa's place where there was a film crew from the mainland who were doing some sort of "Grand Designs" for gardening. Lovely day and lots of nice grub sitting on their veranda looking over Saint's Bay (they have a phenomenal view).

Finally (because my memory is only as good as our images on Flickr) there were the crocodiles:

But we all escaped unharmed.

The end.

PMC

Meriel went to a class to be taught about PMC or precious metal clay. You form this putty into any shape you want and then fire it in a kiln or even use a blow torch. You can mold it, cut it, do allsorts and at the end of the firing you get pretty much pure silver (or gold if you want to pay loads for it). It looks like awesome stuff.

Then of course, we had to photograph it.

Hugh & Gill Lenfestey

Hugh and Gill are standing as Douzaineers for St Pierre du Bois and asked me to take some portraits of them. So I went down to their house with all the gear (not that there's that much). We took quite a few so that they'd have a selection and these were the ones they chose:

I like them. Although I like this one of Hugh more, mainly because he's not standing as a Douzaineer in this one:

There's three seats available and four candidates, so it'll be interesting to see the results, especially seeing as both Mr and Mrs Lenfestey are effectively competitors.

Another party ...

... another butterfly

Fireworks 2008

We went to La Hougette with the Lenfesteys (no, the other Lenfesteys). Preceeded by hot dogs and succeeded by chocolate fountain. Lovely evening.
Of course, the trick about taking pictures of a firework display is not to miss the whole thing by looking through the camera, which is why I only have this one:

And of course these were a little easier, as the subjects remained static for a period equivalent to the stuffing of a face.

Recycling

We all went on a tour of some of Guernsey's recycling facilities week before last. Really interesting stuff. Cara went to Grandma's house, but Jonah came along. I think the best part for him might have been the car crushing. Come to think of it, I think we all liked that bit.

And here's some of the materials that we saw being processed:

The metal recycling facility was certainly the most photogenic.

Flying

Jake came round yesterday after school and we set about making paper planes

There is no better flyer than the Rapier, I guarantee it.

Rosehip syrup

Along with the sloes on the cliff, we've found loads of rosehips, so Meriel's been making rosehip syrup, which is gorgeous, not to mention good looking:

Waffles ahoy!