Sunday 12 August 2012

Raspberry bowers and meteor showers

It's been a pretty summery week here, lots of which has been spent in and around the burgeoning raspberry bower, picking fruit, hiding, and stopping the (pigeons learn quicker) puppy from chewing the spiky stems. We're really trying to make the most of them this year as we have every intention of moving house next year so they're going to have to go to new home to make room for something a little less rowdy and a little more easy on the eye!



Also in the garden, their Socker Boppers punchbag was a fun addition this week, and has doubled up as a 'horse' too.



In their Grandpa's garden they had the idea of searching for leaf hats, and found these water lilies...



...and this enormous Gunnera bog plant leaf!




We still have the cardboard boxes out (in fact even more than last week as we had a parcel with about twelve new ones in it!), and although the building projects haven't been quite as ambitious as last week they've had loads of fun making shops, cars, and their favourite, the jack-in-the-box...

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Tuesday saw the Olympic Men's Football semi-finals which Squidge had been due to go to with Gruff, but on the day he decided he really didn't want to go, and Sprout, who hadn't wanted to go, decided that he really did, so that worked out well! This is one excited Sprout arriving at Old Trafford...


...waiting in his seat for the game to start...


...the packed stadium despite reports of Olympic football games having poor turnouts...



...and Sprout being generally patriotic despite the game being South Korea v Brazil :D
He reported later that his favourite part of the day was doing Mexican waves with the crowd.


While Sprout was at the Olympics, Squidge had a football-and-pizza-night-in with me and Moppet, and watched the game in the hope that he could catch a glimpse of Sprout and their Daddy in the crowd.




Squidge's favourite things to do this week have been watching Mr Bean, Young Justice, and original Spiderman, playing this velcro darts game...


...making a potato clock (which we're timing to see how long the potato batteries last before trying out different foods)...


...and finding different ways to make Moppet smile. She's suddenly got much more interested in the world around her this week, which is exciting!


Sprout, meanwhile, has discovered a new game, Omegalodon, and has been enjoying trying out the different roles, from police to raging monster! He's hoping it takes off well as he'd love to be playing it multiplayer more often.

We took Fly to her first puppy party, where she spent the first half hour hiding under a chair from the other puppies, and the next half hour whizzing round so quickly I couldn't get a decent photo. The other puppies were all either too intimidating for her or engrossed in their own chair-hiding antics, so hopefully next week she might get a better match and have a good play. We've made a start training her this weekend too, which I'm hoping is going to help Squidge feel more in control and less worried around her.



Gruff and Sprout had a touch of man flu towards the end of the week, so they stayed snuggled in the house with a big box of tissues and some vitamin C while I took Squidge and Moppet out for some 'Squidge Time'. We went to a free showing of the Olympic women's cross country mountain biking at Vue... 


...and then had a wander round town to pick up some little presents for Sprout, Gruff and Fly, and stopped to have a drink in a cafe and do a spot of pigeon-watching.



Once home, we did Squidge's hair blue again, which he's very pleased with, and doesn't want it to wash out so we might have to look at other solutions.



While we were out Squidge had the idea of having a party, so we picked up a couple of things and did a mini end-of-the-Olympics party, complete with masquerade masks, pass the parcel, and of course...


...homemade chocolate cake! (which was gorgeous, using this recipe here with chocolate buttercream mmmmmmmmm)




Last night we headed out to Park Hall in the hopes of seeing some of the Perseid meteor shower...



... but sadly it was just a little bit too cloudy so we headed home after a while and found some videos like this one today instead, and Squidge made his own Geomag shooting star. Better luck next year!









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