Sunshine, Sweat and Washing Lines……..

We have been sweating our what-names off of late – the British Summer seems to have arrived with a vengeance and is making up for all the times when it failed to make an appearance………Most people are thrilled to have all this hot weather – sadly, I am not one of them!!! It is a well known fact that the heat and I do not agree with each other so I have been doing my best to hide from it at all costs – which is a shame as it means I am not really getting to enjoy my lovely new washing line!!!!! Putting the washing out generally involves dashing into the garden, a la Linford Christie, pegging it out in record time and then retreating with almost as much speed as I went out there to admire it from the safety (and coolness) of the house! It is a sad fact that my most exciting thing of late is the arrival of my washing line but there you go…….

The Girls, on the other hand, are loving being out in the Garden and it is a struggle to persuade Isabel that she has to put her clothes on before she can go out there – we are also having to explain to her that she ought not to dash out there without her knickers on…….somedays the neighbours get rather more than they bargained for!!!! It is lovely to watch (again from the safe cool zone that is the house) the pair of them run round with the dog – and just at the minute, the dog succumbs to the heat far sooner than they do!!!!

Molly is busy getting bigger by the minute – her language is amazing now and we were impressed to learn yesterday that she knows (and can say) her own name………….we were momentarily disturbed that when we asked her what her name was she grinned and said “Dog!” but we sorted that out pretty quickly!!!! She can also count to 10 with a bit of coaxing – she generally misses out 2 but who needs the number 2 anyway???? I fear that we will have a job to get in her into the pushchair in the not too distant future – she is very quick to say “walk” when you unclip her car seat but has an objection to holding your hand…..she wants to run free and torment the innocent trolley pushers in B&Q and Sainsburys!!!

Isabel is on holiday from pre-school now but will be doing 5 sessions a week when she goes back in September – and she’s not the only one who is looking forward to this!!!!! It’s hard to believe that it’s only 12 months until she heads to school – where has the time gone????? For now, we are getting ready to send her on a little holiday to Aunty Catherine’s house mid week – when it was 1st mentioned she informed me that “she didn’t really want to go” but soon came round to the idea when it was suggested that she might need a suitcase of very own to take with her!!!!!

We have had Granny Pies staying with us as well which he Girls have loved – someone who is always happy to read stories and play buses/aeroplanes with the garden chairs is always welcome in our house!!! Amusingly, Isabel marched through one afternoon and declared “Err, Pies, I’ve had a wee and I think I’ll do a poo next time!” – neither Mummy or Pies quite new what the correct reaction to that was!!!!

Not a lot is on the horizon just at the minute – there are no Wedding Dresses in the pipeline just at the minute and Daddy is busy at work as usual…….busy gearing up for what is rapidly becoming his “World Tour of Work” and that will see him away for 80% of September in Kiev, Istanbul, Brussels and Mello (which is in France in case you wondered, which I know I did……..)!!!!!

New gallery

Kate has added a new gallery of photos. They are just a selection of the girls and the latest addition to the family … Tana, a cocker spaniel. As always, click the photo below to go straight to the gallery.

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Flying, Walking, Talking and anything else you can think of!

Hmmm, that whole feeling bad about it being 2 months since we last posted an update thing clearly didn’t give me any kind of boot up the rear to make a more concerted effort – we are now another 5 months or so down the line & people must think we have spontaneously combusted!!?

We are still here mind, all present and correct – so I will attempt to fill you in on what has been happening over the last few months but you’ll have to forgive me if I leave things out/repeat myself!!!!

Most of February was relatively uneventful and was mainly about getting ready to go to NZ – we managed to fit in a trip to Grandpa Peepoo’s house and then Grandma & Hompy came to stay and to inspect the new abode which we had pretty much managed to unpack by that point!!! Isabel carried on going to pre-school which gave Mummy and Molly some quality time together and also gave Mummy a chance to squeeze in some much needed sewing time (for a Wedding Dress and Isabel’s Bridesmaid’s dress).

At the end of the month we packed our bags and headed for Heathrow with Mummy wondering how on earth we were going to manage 30 hours on a plane with 2 under 3’s!!!???? We needn’t have worried though – all credit to them, the Girls were brilliant and behaved impeccably. We had the odd moment where their tolerance levels bottomed out (but didn’t everyones???) and it didn’t help that Air New Zealand managed not to order dinners for them!!!! So we made it, just about in one piece (though they did also try to lose our pushchair in LA and then make us miss our connection to Wellington by bringing our bags out last!) and arrived rather blearily at Jode & Bretts house for the 1st part of our stay! We had a wonderful time doing not very much at all other than chilling out and catching up with friends, drinking copious amounts of wine (nice one Brett!) and setting the world to rights! The end of our trip saw us move accommodation and also brought about the reason for the trip in the 1st place – Uncle Paul and Aunty Rachel’s wedding!!!!! Isabel looked fab though did as suspected and freaked out at all the people in church so walked down the aisle in floods of tears with her hand clamped firmly over her mouth! A marvellous time was had with lots of memories to bring home with us!

The NZ trip wiped out a large chunk of March as well and what was left of it was pretty mundane day to day stuff mixed with a generous helping of jet-lag…lovely!!!!

Early April had Mummy delivering the Wedding Dress she was making just before we went to NZ and saw Daddy gallivanting off to Paris on a work trip! Mummy then began work on another dress (keeping her well and truly out of mischief!) and we all began gearing up for Isabels 3rd and Hompys 75th Birthdays at the very beginning of May! We had a small gathering of under 3’s at our house to celebrate the Birthday before we headed off for a long weekend in Devon, her actual Birthday and a lovely family celebration – we attempted to introduce a new tradition that involved showing us your Birthday knickers in order to take a picture of them but strangely Isabel was a lot keener on this idea than Hompy was!!!???
The following weekend, Mummy and Daddy managed to escape for the weekend CHILD FREE (thanks to Aunty Crassin!) which was brilliant and the 1st time we had done since either of the Girls were born! We had a lovely time in Bath and managed to catch up with Mr AND Mrs Dibens which is a very rare thing thanks mainly to Julie’s training schedule so it was all the more special!

We have also been keeping a close eye on Miss Isabel who has become rather deaf over the last few months – we have now had an appointment with the nice Dr at ENT and the conclusion has been that she has a very bad blockage of wax in her ears but beyond that her hearing seems to be Ok thankfully. Continuing with drops coupled with an appointment in early August is the current treatment which may become a procedure under anaesthetic to remove the wax but we shall wait and see on that one!

Molly has also been busy of late, walking and talking – the walking was taking a lot longer than the talking but we are pleased to report that she has been a fully fledged walker for about the last month…the turning point for her seemed to be the arrival of the newest member of the Winchurst household, an 8 week old Blue Roan Cocker Spaniel called Tana (as in Umaga, former All Blacks captain and NOT Mrs Ramsey!!!) – watching him run riot around the garden seemed to fill her with envy and so she just decided to get on with it, much to everyone’s delight!!! The talking thing has been happening since the beginning of the year but now she is basically completely comprehensible which makes our life a lot easier – she’ll ask for the things she wants such as “more milk please!” although we particularly liked “Hooray! Sausage!”!!!

The next few weeks are taken up with visitors and then a trip to Devon for Sarah and Simons Wedding and a chance to introduce Tana to the rest of the Winchursts which we are looking forward to. It’ll also be the 1st time he is allowed out for a walk so we’ll keep you posted on how that goes – though don’t expect an update before October or you’ll be very disappointed!

Trip to New Zealand

Although we ended taking our video camera all the way to New Zealand, didn’t touch it for a couple of weeks, then brought it all the way back again, we made better use of our stills camera with Kate taking photos at regular opportunities. Now that we’re back home, Kate has spent some time uploading a whole load of photos (130 to be precise!), although I think it took more time thinking of 130 different captions than it did to actually upload them!

Therefore please click on the photo if you would like to see them.

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How embarrassing……..

I was totally ashamed to realise that it had been more than 2 months since the last post – what lazy lumps we are clearly turning into!!?

OK, here is where I will attempt to fill you in on what has been happening Chez Winchurst since we last managed an update…….

Life was relatively quiet for early December (unless you were Daddy who was running himself ragged at work with too much to do and not enough time to do it!!) but then we hit the week before Xmas – we were all due to move (somewhat foolishly) on the 20th December……..Grandma and Hompy arrived in Eastleigh on the Tuesday (18th) to be on hand to be chief Tiddler minders and the Packing people arrived on time on the Wednesday. They were all finished by lunchtime and things seemed to be running very smoothly……and then the phone rang! It came to light that our house wouldn’t be ready for us to move into on the Thursday and the Builders wondered if we could call the removals people and ask them to move us in on the Friday instead???!!!! As you might imagine, I was slightly horrified – I very politely told the lady at the other end of the phone that this wouldn’t be possible as a. my Baby had chicken pox b. my entire house was packed into boxes and c. the removals people were, as far as I knew, fully booked for Friday!!!!! A few frantic phonecalls and an extremely obliging removals firm later, it was arranged that our things would be collected on the Thursday as planned, stored overnight and delivered on the friday whilst Isabel would go back with Grandma and stay overnight and Mummy, Daddy and Molly would stay in a hotel (courtesy of Wimpey homes!) before heading to the new house to supervise the delivery of our belongings!
Because the removals people were somewhat stretched on the Friday, our things didn’t actaully arrive at the new house until almost 2.30pm so by the time the chaps had left we spent 20 minutes packing a suitcase and we locked up and headed off for our Xmas trip!!!!

We had a lovely Xmas and New Year split between Devon and Upton and somehow managed to forget about the small country’s worth of boxes that was waiting for us at home!!!

The day after we arrived home, Daddy went off to work – and Isabel came down with the Chicken Pox!!!! So the New Year saw us doing our best to unpack everything and stop Isabel from scratching too much!!!
Since then, life has been samey – lots of unpacking and attempting to find a light at the end of the tunnel of boxes!!! Isabel has started at her new pre-school and absolutely loves it and Mummy is enjoying having a little bit of down time with just Molly a couple of times a week!

We are preparing to head to New Zealand at the (very) end of next month so that we can be at Paul and Rachel’s wedding and, most importantly, so that Isabel can perform her bridesmaidly duties – Mummy is beginning to have the nightmares that involve Isabel running round the church screaming with her skirt up by her ears, or whipping her nappy off mid service or even just refusing to take part at all……..rest assured we will let you know if any of those turn out to be premonitions instead of nightmares!!!!