family

here are esther and kezia playing golf. they were both really good and kezia was especially funny with her little golf club.

here is kezia showing how you can sit in your high chair if you are clever.

yesterday it rained. but this was fine as we were prepared

kezia dissapeared for a few minutes today. turned out she had found some mud to play with at the end of our friend’s garden. here she is covered from head to toe in mud, not looking too pleased with herself. she’s definately had a bad hair day.

here is esther and jacob. jacob is deconstructing a small house whilst bouncing on a trampoline. it’s like a TV version of changing rooms and it’s a knockout all in one go.

then they decided to fish whilst bouncing. jacob caught esther’s shoe

esther announced she had hidden some beetroot in the house. alice and jacob love beetroot.

kezzy loves hats. even if they are a bit too small. she insisted on wearing her hat today despite it being really warm

i’ve just heard that esther had an exciting morning at preschool today. she wanted to do some art and ‘needed some hair for her picture’ so she hacked a bit of her own off.
very enterprising. and at least she didn’t chop anyone else’s hair off (as far as i know).
i don’t know if we should tell her off or not. depends if the picture is any good.
pictorial evidence later i hope …

here is jane’s granny:

we went to visit her this morning (she’s esther and kezia’s great granny). she’s 92 i think, but mentally totally alert. fantastic !

esther has been having a few horse lessons recently. a friend of ours asked how she got on. i replied with the obvious answer.

esther and kezia enjoying an icecream at Pooch and Party’s (Jane’s parents). They have luxury icecream. We only have necessity icecream in our house so it was a real treat.
Just to be authentic we had to queue up and we were handed our icecreams through the kitchen window. there were no flakes and i kicked up a stink.

we have borrowed a load of wooden train set from esther’s preschool for the summer. i spent a happy hour on saturday night constructing a most excellent track. i was delighted to see that jane hadn’t packed it away over night. so was kezia !

we went for a walk in windsor park today. very good it was too.
here is king george VI on a bike horse:

here is esther with windsor castle in the background:

i have a theory about conservation of fun and inflatable things.
premis: every act of fun has an equal and opposite amount of misery.
think about balloons: kids love them, then they pop or get stuck in a tree (the balloons not the kids – have you ever seen a kid pop ? kids drink pop of course)

also applies to bouncy castles. there are always crying kids around bouncy castles, either from bashing in to people or from being told its time to come off.

have you seen the muffin man that lives on dury lane ? here is a shop which sells muffins and is based in dury lane.

it’s very hot again today. Heathrow which is just a few miles away broke the 100F mark – a UK first.
we had a BBQ with Phil, Sally, Alan and Ann. I managed to get the cooking right this time
kezia stayed cool in her hat, sunglasses and obligatory water bottle

later she realised it was better if she sat in the pool and people poored water on her from a watering can:

esther and kezia played with their Brio Canal set this afternoon. Lots of water everywhere and much pumping of the lock pumps. there is lots of energy in kids and we should work out a way to harness it. i’m sure we could power our house from them both.

esther was in a foul mood as she had slightly grazed her foot in a non-dramtic skooter incident.
i proposed she put her feet in a bucket of water. this proved to be no end of fun and she soon cheered up.
therefore, my advice to you is this:
if you are feeling blue, put your feet in a bucket of water.

esther made her own dunce cap