Fun & Games

In this photo Fraz is giving the kids his famous 'double-tickle' and they love it - despite the look of severe pain they have on their faces. Bella has become rather attached to her 'Dadda' lately and when he's at work she will sometimes wander over to me and ask for him, so we phone him up and she laughs to hear his voice down the line.

I have been going to the gym regularly since joining a couple of weeks ago and am feeling good about it. I have lost a stone in weight and some of my clothes are actually getting baggy! This is lovely, although now I have to buy some more summer gear, especially as I have done a 'Trinny & Susannah' and cleared out my wardrobe and drawers of all clothes that don't suit my colouring or shape - there's not much left actually. I have been ruthless.

A couple of days ago Lockie and I made marzipan shapes, out of a kids' craft book we got from the library. The damn mixture was soooo sticky though that I had to add way more icing sugar than I was supposed to and consequently the final products were pretty dry and cracked a bit... not that Lockie minds. We even coloured the mix with red and blue [creating pink and green as the mixture was yellow], and made mice, complete with peanut ears, currant eyes and liquorice tails! They looked pretty good I reckon.

We also used the same book to make bird pudding - we had some half-open pinecones and stuffed the mixture into them and hung them in the trees. We used birdseed, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cooked rice, sultanas, peas and corn kernels and mixed them together with melted dripping [stinky]. It was a nice gooey thing to do but took a while to get the dripping smell out of the house.

We are coping with the holidays I feel. The other night we walked to the park after dinner and enjoyed a good play, before coming home and crashing into bed.

I will need to start thinking about Lockie's birthday party looming at the beginning of Feb. He wants a cake with 'codename: Kids Next Door' on it, "or something like that". He'll be lucky.