Roof's Greenerlets

Pirates for Breakfast

2012-01-22T00:07:00.001-08:00

(Apologies for the blatant product placement, the ubiquitous meal time accompaniment of tomato ketchup. Noah has started a campaign "Ketchup counts as one of my five-a-day, and if I eat five helpings of it all of them count".... I suspect he would have many supporters if only he could find an effective way to target the Primary School audience.)

Almost Tibet

2012-01-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

I shall start this post with a sort of moan / confession.... It has been hard to come back to KTM after even just the eleven days we spent in Thailand. It was such a treat to be in a warm, clean, functioning country with easy, comfortable, accessible public transport, unlimited water (including hot!) and electricity, places to buy things we needed / wanted, parks and play areas for the children, etc, etc.....
Kathmandu is reasonably warm during the day at the moment - you can even work up a sweat if you play tennis or carry a small person in the sunshine, but it gets very cold at night. Not below freezing, but not far above it - and there is no central heating. It's also very dusty because we are in the dry season, and the smog is worse because of the low temperatures - some days it just seems to sit over the city all day. Add in a petrol shortage (ie 'NONE' most of the time) and at least 11 hours a day without electricity, and you'll hopefully see why Thailand was such a welcome break.
So, I'm out of love of any kind for Nepal. Also the car is not right despite numerous garage visits, and is taking on 'Money Pit' characteristics that I just hate. I have violent feelings towards the garage staff!

So, Harv said, lets get out of Kathmandu for a couple of days - where shall we go? And I remembered previously abandoned plans to drive up towards the Tibetan border. We packed all our warm, waterproof (just in case!) clothing, yaks' wool blankets, a big box of homemade cookies, a nasty pack of factory made ones (also just in case), and set off to Borderlands, an aptly titled 'eco-resort' 16km south of the Tibetan border. It was a lovely green space for the children to play - lots of grass to run around on, and boulders to climb along the edge of the Bhote Khosi river.
(If you decide to visit, don't forget to get in touch, and visit us on your way through KTM......)

We are happy campers in the UK but it just doesn't happen here. Frustrating, but not insurmountably so...... So we go to places like this instead.
And have adventures.... The first day involved a driver (our car is in the garage remember) who finally turned up over an hour late, then (after assuring us that he had plenty of petrol) 15 minutes into the journey turned off the road to join a queue at a petrol station that was clearly going to be there for a while. Remonstrations. The petrol at said petrol station ran out. Driver had met someone whilst queuing. We drove off the main road (after pulling a u-turn in the middle of the highway) to buy black market petrol. We finally resume journey only two hours later than we'd planned. To be fair, because the roads were so free of traffic because of the petrol shortage, we had a very easy journey and arrived well in time for lunch because of the strangely empty roads.
The next day we went for a wee trek of our own - and being us, decided NOT to go for the 15 dollar guide, but to go by ourselves. We found the suspension bridge, and (after a quick discussion with a local teenager) the way down to it.
Can you see Eve and Noah's shadows?

We climbed the hill the other side, wriggled our way through the village, admiring the new houses being built as we went.....

And found our way up around, and out into the terraces....

Then got kind of lost. The little path we were following petered out and we weren't sure whether to keep contouring round or try to find our way down to the clear path we could see a hundred or so metres lower down. We asked a lady we came across who was collecting a huge bale of straw for animals in the village. She smiled, slung the strap holding the bale across her forehead, and gestured us to follow her. Then she set off at Gandalf's pace with her huge bundle and her bare feet, zig-zagging down a tiny path we'd never have spotted. Eve kept up with her - go Eve! We were a bit slower with the boys, but she waited for us and showed us all the way down to the bigger path, then carried on to the village at about twice our pace. It was definitely not the trek the guy at the resort had been talking about - but we liked our extra bit of adventure.

The next day we drove up the road towards Tibet. We saw lots of trucks parked up on the roadside, maybe because of the petrol shortage? And lots of landslides which are more of a threat during monsoon, but were still scary to behold. And a bridge that is kind of under construction, so you just drive through the river right now, maybe indefinitely. We passed a huge dam, and also saw some mysteriously shiny, brand new trucks which didn't even have license plates.

Two kilometres from the border is Tatopani ('hot water'), a sort of spa. We took a very steamy family bath, and explained to the littles about the earth's core, water pressure and minerals....and realised our own ignorance....

It was at an amazing location, right on the river. Unfortunately the toilets feed straight into said river.

This is typical here, and the sort of thing you have to let your mind slide over.

And here's a random collection of other photos from our camping adventure:

So, going back to the start of the post, I am not in love with Nepal, and I don't think that will ever happen, but my children are happy and this goes a very long way.

Thailand Christmas

2011-12-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

The novelty of Christmassy shopping malls in Bangkok wasn't lost on any of us.

This is the Police HQ. It made both Harv and I think of the Ministries in 1984...

BKK traffic is sooooo much prettier than KTM traffic - check out the lipstick coloured taxis....

We loved the boat ride up the river so much last year we did it again this year.

Here's a Christmas tree made from the sand bags left around the city after the floods in November.

And so to the beach....

Picking over the shell treasure...

Post swimming snacking...

A night time beach walk home from the restaurant.

Here's Eve's entry for the Christmas card competition - love the creative spelling - she won the second prize!

Christmas Eve dinner.

Then look who turned up......

He brought a present for every child. Eve got shorts and a t-shirt, and Noah got a dinosaur egg.....

On Christmas day the beach was, um, not available.....

So we hung out by the pool and played with the pressies.
For dinner we all had our favourites - Noah and Thom shared cheesey pizza, Eve had tempura prawns, and Harv and I shared this:

On Boxing Day Noah and I went for a bike ride to check out what the storm had done further down the coastal road - and a couple of miles from the resort we found this!

Then back to BKK for a wee bit more shopping......this time looking for new trainers for Daddy....

.....and a play date with our old neighbour, Martina, who introduced us to the turtles in her park......

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!

Trekking Day Two

2011-11-26T07:49:00.000-08:00

We set off through more jungle, crossing lots of streams, stopped for an early lunch where the littles were delighted to meet the sleepy cat and kittens, and Eve organised us all to take turns photographing each other. We don't have many family photos at all, so she definitely has a point....

Mushrooms drying in the sun on the terrace of the lunchtime teahouse.

Arriving at the blue roofed village of Ghorepani. This is the lower part of the village.

Little Thom insisted on holding my finger for the first two days whilst he was riding on Den's back - this was progression from the first day when he had refused to go with Den at all, so I carried him until mid afternoon. Of course by day three Den was the best thing EVER and very funny and clever and much more interesting than me.....

This is our tea-house for night number two:

And this is the view from its front door:

Noah took this photo of the dining room and sitting room area.....

Looking down onto more bright blue roofs.

And the rather surprising site of a volley ball / basketball / footie pitch. I am still in awe that this is in a village where there are no roads, and everything is carried in by either mules or porters!

Trekking.....Day 3 & 4

2011-11-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

We got up before dawn, dressed quickly and set off up Poon Hill to watch the sun rise...

As the sun clipped the top of Daulaghiri, we basked, awestruck on the deserted summit of Poon Hill....

Ahem, only kidding about the deserted bit.... It had a rather festivally feel to it - there was even an (illegally pitched) tent on the top.
And we met several people we knew from school, and Raj Kamal who'd cooked for us when we stayed at Furse Khola Farmhouse in February.

The smalls were shivery, even after scoffing huge cinnamon rolls, so we soon set off back down to the teahouse for Masala tea and pancakes.

Then set off on the 'real'trek of the day.

This meadowy bit reminded me of Twilight, where Bella and Edward lie.

Loved this band of cloud.

And this section of the trek felt rather Fellowship of the Ring ish. It was very busy - we plodded up hill with hundreds of other trekkers.

Biscuit stop.

Dad's fleece is always warmer than your own, isn't it....

After lunch the trail became a lot less crowded.

Crazy jungle angles.

Den, Suresh and Karma went on ahead with the boys in the later part of the afternoon, and Harv and I walked with Eve, playing 'Top Five Fish Dishes' (Harv and I), Top Five Animals (Eve), and Top Five Biscuits (all of us).

And then a small group of langurs appeared, leaping softly through the branches, seemingly oblivious to us.

Seventies in the jungle.... I'm sure the more ambitious gardeners on Charterfields used to cultivate this sort of plant when I was a child.

We finally reached our final teahouse, in Ghandruk about 5pm, 12 hours after we had set off for Poon Hill that morning. This is the view from our bedroom doorway.

The following morning we set off much later, maybe 9.30, and pootled down the hill back towards Nayapul.

Thom cooked lunch on the way:

And we watched the rice harvest.

And it got warmer and warmer again, as we came back down from the mountains. These water buffalos were cooling themselves down in a man made swamp.

My last photo before my camera battery finally gave up.

Trekking Rocks, Day One

2011-10-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Nayapul - Ulleri

This is how supplies get to the tea houses and lodges on the trek routes:

They are amazing - and very fast. Just make sure you stand on the uphill side of the path as you let them pass you...!

Our first tea house lunch. We quickly established the habit of pancakes for the smalls and egg veg noodle soup for Harv and I.

We reached Ulleri late afternoon, and had a little time to look around and meet the local animals. The littles were delighted to meet these very friendly goats and kids. Thom was keen to count them, 'Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen,' (same as when he counts anything at the moment....)

Taxi!

2011-10-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

So, we caught a taxi for the 1 1/2 hour drive from Pokhara to Nayapul.

I can't tell you how many photos I have of this mountain. It's known as Fishtail in English. You can see why I got a bit obsessed with it? Here are snaps from the taxi:

And here is happy Thom. We hired three porters to help carry kidlets and our stuff. Thom started inauspiciously by refusing to let the porters carry him and only riding on my back, then graduated to agreeing to go on Den's back but only if holding my hand at the same time. Then finally moved on to thinking that Den was the best thing ever as he did such a great monkey impression...

And here is a clean river. This is a Big Deal when you live in Kathmandu and drive over the Bagmati a lot. The Bagmati is the most sacred river in Nepal, yet it is a fetid, stinking, black torrent or sludge (depending on the season), littered with plastic bags, general detritus and much, much worse. So this beautiful, rushing clarity made us feel a bit tearful.

In Thom's words: 'S'amazin! Wanna go there!'

Ready, Steady, Go!

2011-10-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

Before we came to live in the Du, we had a savings account which was always referred to as the Himalaya fun. We planned to bring the children for a Himalayan trek as soon as they were old enough and we had enough money.....our ideas about when this might be were pretty nebulous.... When we got here, a lot of that fund was spent on the naughty red car below. Car tax runs at 200% here: this basic (utterly) 1997 jeep cost more than twice what we got when we sold our fully MOT'd, air-conditioned, well-suspensioned, extremely comfortable, kids' car seat containing Vectra.
But we have nevertheless just got back from our first Proper Trek as a family - Nayapul - Ulleri - Ghorpani - Poon Hill - Ghandruk - Nayapul.

We spent a couple of days in Pokhara first.

And went paddling on and swimming in Phewa lake.

And sat around in restaurant gardens for a while, watching the crows watching us.

Ready to go!

Critters

2011-10-06T11:36:00.001-07:00

I really missed Autumn last year. It might be my favourite season - I like the cold, and when I was younger and didn't do commuting I used to love the dark nights. They always seemed so much more exciting. (I was a bit Fifteen and rather hung up on Lost Boys too...) Oh, and the smell of bonfires - I still miss a lovely woodfire smoke - I love the way it clings to your hair and clothes. I LOVE the way the fallen leaves are just THERE for you to collect, paint, glue glitter on to, make collages out of, spray with white paint to make frost,or just blu-tac to the kitchen cupboards. And I love the chill in the air and wrapping up in warm clothes. So, the ongoing heat last year felt very odd, and I was desperate for chillier weather - not the minus 13 for weeks at a time the UK endured last Winter - just the long-sleeves-long-jeans weather that makes your cheeks rosey.
This year it doesn't hurt quite so much. Maybe I have acclimatised a bit - I am sitting typing this in long yoga trousers and a hoodie - and I had a good dose of chilly in the UK for almost all of June. I also know how cold it's going to get here at night, during the Winter months.
We spent most of the day by the pool again - it was HOT while the sun shone, and I have to say I enjoyed it. There were clouds by about three, but the mugginess of monsoon seems to be gone. (Cue the start of ridiculous load-shedding / power cuts / whatever you know them as.) But really, Nepal just doesn't 'do' Autumn. And I miss it. I miss my lovely Autumn season table - it just doesn't seem right setting up a UK inspired autumn season table here. But I might dig out the toadstools and make a new one - there is fungus here......
Anyway, we're going to be positive and look for interesting things.... And here they are:

Not related as far as I know.

The caterpillar was huge - adult finger sized! I tried to look it up online but didn't find anything - goodness knows what it'll turn into. I suspect we'll never know as Rudra-dai, our guard, made me chuck it over the fence so that it didn't eat half of the garden.
The moth was less spectacular, but Eve was entranced - it was bigger than it looks in the picture, and she was taken by its bat-like wings.

So, we don't get the crispy autumn mornings, the beautiful turning leaves, the scent of woodsmoke, but we do get Interesting Critters. I guess that'll do us for now.....

Bannister Percussion

2011-09-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes (well, ok, quite often) when I read forums, books and blog posts along the lines of "Children Don't Need Toys", I get a little irked..... Not majorly, because as long as there is something to play with the Greener smalls will entertain themselves. But sometimes, there are situations only Lego can fix..... and then there are squawks over who had it first and the smugness of my imagined online advisor - "a handful of acorns amuse mine for hours on end" - grates.... All in my head of course...

Anyway - just demonstrating that this post is rooted in happy incredulity, not smugness.

4 chairs, 4 kids, a variety of sticks that started life as wooden meccano called Baufix, and some bannisters. They played so happily for so long, taking turns at introducing each other's solos, and then joining together for a grande finale. And I made dinner, tidied bedrooms and pootled about online. A lovely rainy afternoon....

The band:

The soloist:

The audience:

(Oh, and Noah does have some clothes - a whole wardrobe full. He just chooses not to wear them most of the time.)

Swimming

2011-09-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

Here's our swimming pool.
(Well, it's not ours, but it's the one we always go to, if you see what I mean......)

It is not very big, and was very quiet this afternoon because it is getting towards the end of the season, getting a bit chilly for most - but the littles are still pretty hardy from their early days in North Shropshire, so they are still up for a swim.

It looks really quiet and tranquil, doesn't it, but it gets very busy on hot days. Imagine 12 sunscreened toddlers and their various grown ups swimming, jumping, splashing, squabbling over inflatable toys, gossiping about favoured cafes and planned strikes by the Maoists.

Today, the boys fell asleep in the car on the way down and were clearly still knackered from the 5 hours of trekking (in the rain) yesterday, so we let them snooze in the shade for an hour or so...... Unsurprisingly, Noah woke up as soon as the pot of Masala tea arrived. (And biscuits.)

Big sister was, meanwhile, swimming entire lengths under water, then gecko-ing on the sun-warmed slabs of marble around the pool's edge.

Life here is hard at the moment - I am talking myself down from panicking and running for the airport sometimes (often) - so, focussing on the positive is helping - a therapy.

Dhulikhel

2011-09-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Around the Ring Road

2011-09-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

So, we're back in the 'Du, and have been for a month or so, but just BUSY starting / resuming school, and having our family from Canada staying.

Oh, and I have also been working for the last 4 weeks.

Since I have clearly demonstrated myself to be totally crap at the 'catch up' thing, I am just going to move on and stick to my New School Year resolution of showing more of KTM in the blog. Lists and background is on my to do....

Here are some pics of Kathmandu Ring Road....

And here are two of the Greenerlets a la 1975, sans car seats, au naturel, snoozing on the back seat of the Maruti Gypsy.......

And a windswept Eve, who'll still hang her head out of the window like a dog given half a chance.....

Chieveley Motorway Services - The Toilet

2011-08-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

We did quite a few trips between Portsmouth and Shropshire while we were in the UK - Chieveley's where we stop on the way back down. I guess the kids felt quite at home when we stopped there for the third time. Thom's idea - "Take photo, Mummy." So I did.

More Photo Catch-up-ness

2011-08-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

Greeners vs Bristowes......
Cousin Jack made Noah-Boots a Kung Fu Panda mask:

While Callad taught Thom all about sparring......

Sharing love with the Potters.......

My best friend from school is a whiz with girls' hair. I am so glad that Eve has at least one example of female grooming to look up to as I favour the hairstyle-by-neglect method.

A Walk in the Woods

2011-08-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

This was a few weeks ago now - I'm playing catch up. Harv's knee, freshly out of surgery was just about up to a wee walk throughthe woods in Weston Rhyn, where we were staying in our old house for a few days, (where the kids loved catching up with the neighbours and kept demanding visits to Cheryl's). It was one of my favourite days in our UK trip, including the stinging nettles (which I haven't seen in Kathmandu), and some errant raspberries that somehow, happily made their way into the woods, and were thriving. The fact that we scoffed loads will just mean the canes produce more, right.....?

Eve wanted here photo taken witrh the thistle because 'it's a very British flower, isn't it'...

Oswestry Revisited - Photo Catch-up

2011-08-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

What a fantastic park this is! This time Eve came along too. They solved the maze - twice, then went to find out what was making all the noise in the rosebay willowherb. Crickets.

Here they are at Jo's house, where we stayed for two fabulous, fun, and overall precious nights. This was a game of 'families' in the sitting room one morning. Apparently everyone is asleep.......

And here's Noah in the waiting area at Main Outpatients at BCH. Not too concerned about his cleft review, as you can see....

And finally, some treasure caught in Canoe Lake.... I think there are a couple of weeny crabs hiding under all those fishies....

2011-07-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

We said goodbye to my brother and his lovely family, after a truly wonderful day on the beach....swimming in crashing waves, BBQ lunch (LOTS of ketchup), ice creams, trampolining, footy and a play at the park.....and a few minutes later I found this forlorn little Thom, still sitting by the gate.
Me: Hey Thom, are you alright?
Thom (whispers): No
Me: Oh, what's wrong?
No answer, but a big sigh
Me: Are you feeling a bit sad?
Thom (whispers): Yes
Me: D'you know why?
Thom (whispers): Jack gone.

We're all feeling a bit like this..... I'll post some lovely happy photos soon, but just need to let this stand for a bit.

Hugs to the Brists.

Weekend Footy

2011-07-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

A very special day.
We stayed at my big-little brother's for a couple of nights, and got to go and see Jack, his son, play footy one morning. It's so precious being able to do these normal things with family. And look at that sky!

This is Callad ('Uncle Ad' by Thom) and Eve practising footy skills.

And here's Thom, who spent the whole time on my lap with his 'poorly knee'. He fell over on the way and grazed his knee - one of those awful, oozy ones that Germolene won't stick to. He remembers, even now - when he saw the photo, straight away he said 'poorly knee' and showed me his scar. Poor chap.

Harry Potter's Friend

2011-07-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Eve being the ripe old age of six, we are fully into Harry Potter territory. Mummy and Daddy even got a night out at the cinema last night to watch the last film of the series. It is, as the mum of three small children, rather lovely to have wands to offer as an imaginative alternative to swords, whenever the inevitable sticks are picked up and wielded..... 'Swoosh!' they go, making no bodily contact. Phew......
But to get to the point - one girl, two boys = perfect Harry Pottering play. It's just that Thom, the little one, is Harry Potter, (obviously Eve is Hermione), and Noah is Ron. "I'm Harry Potter's friend," he tells me, with a pride that grazes my heart. There are not many older brothers who would say that, are there...?

Oswestry

2011-07-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

There's a new park in Oswestry - I took the boys there a few weeks ago whilst Eve was playing with her best mate from her old school. I love that it is named after Wilfred Owen, Oswestry's most famous, I think. I have taught quite a lot of his poetry, letters and biography over the years, and so feel like I know him a lot better than I did as a grumpy fifteen year old, bored by yet more war poetry in a stuffy, crowded classroom. The park is such a lovely, joyful place. It feels painfully ironic taking my little boys to a place where they have such fun, which is named after a man who was little more than a boy, who died with so many thousands of other boys, in what had become such a terrible place, a hell. When I was still working I listened to Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks in the car on the way to work, and remember arriving at school a sobbing mess one morning, thinking that mothers of boys shouldn't have to teach about the first world war - just too bloody emotive!
So, having spotted the sign on the way into the park, I started thinking, as I watched them climbing so bravely (Recklessly? no. Carefully? no. Bravely will have to do,) how it must feel to see your child go to war. But like a sore tooth that you can't bear to prod with your tongue, my mind shied away.
Then I thought about the soldiers that really ARE still children.
There are still conscripted child soldiers all over the world. They were used in Nepal until recently - it is still being investigated. So, I sat and watched my boys, feeling so, so grateful, so ridiculously lucky to be an English mum. I know our society is not an easy one to grow up in, that there are dangers still, for all kids from all backgrounds but this is one thing I don't face as a possible threat (all though, damn, I am still touching wood). I suppose this is one of the many things I have learnt from ten months in a developing country - the art of being grateful for the luck I used to take for granted.

Greeners on Tour - Himley

2011-07-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

I used to go to Himley as a kid, - I think me and most of my friends learnt to ride a bicycle on the long stretch of tarmac you see below. So it was particularly sweet and poignant that Evie pushed herself off, started pedalling and wehey!! (Courtesy of the boys' balance bike in KTM, I think....)

Then we walked up past the ponds and through the woods. I used to walk this way as a teenager, on my own, sometimes, just to get away from the Suburbia. I had to lift Thom up to show him the beauty of the cornfield and the oak tree. His first memories might be of Kathmandu, but I want there to be an 'undercoat' of the English countryside that I love so much.

Here are the three rascals with Grandma and Grandad Foxy, and Foxy the dog. (They used to be known as Grandma and Grandad Toby, but Toby the Jack Russell died a couple of years ago - Foxy is his successor- my kids are very factual, and not very sentimental.)

Greeners on Tour - Still Southsea

2011-07-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

Sleeping rascals at Grandma Rosemary's house.

Windy seafront!

Rainy day - one of many - off to the Natural History Museum, and Butterly House with Clare and her two little kidlets.

A much-promised visit to the soft play and a surprise-sunshiney walk home.

(Eve is often teased that she is like Edie in Despicable Me - here she is looking VERY Edie....)

Greeners on Tour - Southsea

2011-07-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Just photos and a few words....... Yes it might be a typically chilly British summer, but they are hardy little rascals.....

Crab-fishing, play-grounding, splash-pooling, eating out with Grandma and Grandad - fantastic.

Better than a Sandpit....?

2011-05-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

Philosophically, I fully endorse sandpits. I'm just not good with the practicalities of having sand traipsed through the house, tipped over heads, and caught in trouser turn ups. Here's an alternative I gave Thom to play with this morning - a mixture of dried dhal on a bamboo tray. The tray is a traditional one, usually used for drying grains, chillis etc. This activity only cost about 2 pounds - and even better than that, he enjoyed playing with it for about an hour, while Eve and Noah were out getting haircuts with Harv. Yeah, there was a fair bit of dhal on the floor but I reckon it only took about 5 minutes to sweep up, thereby making a profit of about 55 minutes! You know, that equation you do in your head with children's play and activities: (How long the activity engages the child) - (How long it takes you to set up and then clear up after said activity) = profit or loss of time for Mum. There are variations on the equation - for example if children can play completely independently it = more time than if needs to be supervised by someone. And if it cost a few pence rather than twenty quid that can be factored in too. Thus, a game devised by two children playing co-operatively (rather than arguing!!) involving a cardboard box and some pine cones is worth a fortune, and finger painting that smalls are bored by in less than ten minutes makes a disappointing loss. That's not to say we don't fingerpaint, obviously, just that I am occasionally frustrated when they're not very engaged by it. And that's not even thinking about the actities that they find for themselves....... emptying a drawer of clothes might take them twenty minutes, and only take you 5 minutes to put right, so you let them get on with it, whereas using a jar of honey to mop the kitchen floor...... well, the eqation's just not going to come out in your favour, eh......

I'm not the only one who thinks like this am I......?

Anyway, Yay! for the happy boy who was so engaged, he was doing his audible 'I am concentrating' breathing... and the dhal is now safely stashed for another day....

PS If you like this idea, I also sometimes hide little coins in it for him to find.

Seasonal Stairs

2011-05-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

Have a look around a bit more of our house....

We have a big open marble staircase. Rather Footballers' Wives, and at odds with the fact that we often don't have electricity to light the bloody thing! It's acoustically challenging too - imagine three small people in the hallway on the ground floor 'discussing' whose turn it is to read the pirate book...... To say it hurts my ears and my soul might sound a bit of an overstatement, but gah!!

Anyhow, there is an alcove on the first floor that was empty for ages as I didn't know what to do with it. Then it finally dawned on me that it would be a good home for the season table and so it has become a sort of season corner....

This is probably the oddest bit of the house. Where else to dry the laundry during monsoon? There isn't a designated laundry, so here's were it all drips / steams - just slightly incongruous at the top of a FW staircase, but hey...... This is all our swimming clobber - absolutely loving swimming at the moment: the rascals adore it and it is keeping me sane in the heat.

And here's the view from the top. Still gives me goose bumps looking over it. I have checked that Thom's head DOES NOT fit between the bannisters several times, but still.....

So there you have it - the staircase...!

Monkey Platter!

2011-05-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

I find myself providing about four of these a day for the hungry smalls....... And yes they do get meals as well. In fact the boys each have about three breakfasts!

Here's Bipin

2011-05-16T03:45:00.001-07:00

Isn't he beautiful? He's our guard/gardener/odd job man's son, and is about 14 months old. He had that kind of crazy professor hair that some babies grow, until about a week ago when it was all shaved off. I think it's a cultural thing - Nepali baby boys have no hair cuts until they are two, and then it's shaved - but the age doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule, so I'm not sure really......
Anyway, had to share the cutenes......

Play Table

2011-05-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

I don’t think I am updating this blog as often as I used to when I was working. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it is because I don’t want to moan online about the things that annoy me about living here, and equally feel a bit nervous that I’ll sound hideously smug if I waffle on about the great things. There are also things that make me nervous, and I don’t want to talk about them either. This blog used to be my way of recording my children’s childhood, and a few of my more creative achievements; perhaps now that I don’t work outside the home, I am more deeply embedded in their day to day childhood, and simply don’t think to record it so often…? I also don’t take my camera out so much, which often provided me with the inspiration to blog. I don’t feel bad about this though - we had friends visiting recently, who talked about meeting a very skilled photographer who gave them lots of tips for their photography, and whose parting wisdom was, “But remember to look with your eyes.” I’ve been doing a lot of looking with my eyes.
Anyway, back to the title of the post, and one of my reasons for blogging: this is the play table in the middle of our hallway, and this is what I mean to do more often that I actually DO do. The idea is that it has a selection of activities, hopefully some choices for everyone, so that they can pick / invent / adapt and play / learn independently, especially at the times of day that I am busy / not at my best, ie first thing (and I mean FIRST thing – 5am) in the morning, making lunch, just getting in from the school run. It’s not something that I find easy, putting things on a table in the hope that there will be something for Eve, who is now embracing literacy, Noah, who likes Maths but only when free to choose, and Thom who wants to get involved in what his older siblings are doing, which often leads to frustration on both sides. So, let’s see what they make of this: Eve’s school reading book; a poster already partly coloured by Noah and written on by Eve; a handful of beloved decorated bottle tops from Canada; a couple of activity books (Ben 10 and Lion King – yeah, we have lovely eco, ethical ones too – I’m into a real honesty run at the moment, though, and feeling very anti-‘oh, my children just play with pine cones and pebbles, they’re so free!!’ so, um, honesty, think that’s enough explanation…); chunky books for Thom, including noisy one as he adores things happening when he presses buttons; a felt flower that fell off my hair band; some lovely quality pencil crayons – really nice, bright colours; a regular pencil; a play-cube thingy; some pretty stickers; a book of plain paper that Eve usually uses for writing.
Maybe we need a bigger table……..

Can you imagine the fuss if I got them each their own table?? No one would ever have the right things on their table…..

So – I’ll let you know how we get on…………………..

I wrote this post offline yesterday, while Blogger was down, so can update right now tha;, Eve was happily entertaining herself this morning with things from the table; Noah was mildly interested, but spurned the pencil crayons and ran off to get the felt tips. Thom was nowhere in sight until I walked into the dining room, where I found him sitting in the middle of the table, elbow deep in the water-filled bowl I float flowers in, making some kind of soup.....

They are currently dressed as a cowboy, a pirate and one is entirely naked, and playing a Mr Tickle game in a den they've made in the sitting room.

Swimming later, time to get organised.....

Have a great weekend everyone.

Telkot to Changu Narayan

2011-04-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

We had one of my favourite days since we arrived here on Friday last week, walking from a tiny village, over a broad sandy ridge, through beautiful, clean air and small farming communities to a very old temple. And back. Good walking, rascals!

"Why are the chickens in jail, Mummy?"

This little kid was a couple of weeks old, and not especially keen on being petted, poor thing. Harv reckons that goats are lower than vegetables in Nepali society - they are sacrificed very often, and the vegetables do, to be fair, seem to be very lovingly displayed on the market stalls, compared to the down-hearted goats that are so often tethered to the butcher's stall next to their chopped-up mate.
So we gave this one an extra bit of love, even if he didn't want it.

Then had lunch with the scroungiest of dogs.

This is the queue for when the water is turned on. Makes me appreciate that even though the water situation in our house has been less than perfect at times, we are very priviledged.

Up the hill to the temple complex....

Try not to be over-awed by its peace and sanctity. Ahem.

Or ring that massive bell too many times.

At this point I will explain that we have had some rather unseasonal weather this year - rain in February (the dry season), and some crazy storms and chilliness during April. It's like Zeus has woken up after a couple of thousand years' worth of nap and started to throw some moves.... So we got very hot, then rained on, then steamed gently, then hailed on, then steamed once more. Hence the weird raincoats and shadows mixture.....

A last bit of moaning about who's going to sit where in the jeep on the way home, (um - we don't do car seats here. cringe.) then we're off. Back to the city. Sigh.

Playing

2011-03-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am finding that I am explaining at least once a week why Noah is not in school or nursery. This is mainly to other expat mums, but also occasionally a Nepali chap in the shop or lady on the street will ask how old he is and whether he goes to school. He's only 3 but is quite a bit bigger than your average Nepali 3 year old, so I guess he's quite eye-catching. Nepali children go to school very young (I'm sure some of them can barely dress themselves, and they are wobbling around in collars and ties), and the expat children we know are almost all going to nursery, at least part time, by the time they are 2 1/2 or three at the latest.
I always planned to have Noah and Thom home with me for the first six months we spent out here, and by the time it came to Christmas, I decided we'd carry on and have the whole year together, and Noah could start Foundation Class in August. Obviously I question myself as to whether I am doing the right thing; as a parent (and especially a mum, I think) I am hardwired to do so. I'm not going to justify myself here - I don't feel any need to - he's three for goodness sake! Noah and Thom have a great time at home, and out and about with me, and I am confident that he's ready to go off to school in August, and will have a great bunch of skills to take with him. He doesn't write his name on his own, but he knows what letters are for, and his fine motor skills are great. He really enjoys lots of Mathematical thinking without realising that that's what he's doing. And, more importantly, the extended role play and imaginative games he plays with his little brother, his big sister when she's here, and these last couple of weeks Mometa, our guard's daughter who's off school this month, are much more valuable experiences for him than being able to copy letters neatly, having no idea what they mean, eh..... (Sounds a bit judgemental, and not aimed at UK nurseries or TBS where he'll go in August, but I know to be the case in lots of nurseries here.)

This was a birthday party, organised in honour of Polar Bear.

Six! SIX!!

2011-03-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

Wow - Evie-chops is six!
Better get organised....
We waved her off to school which Harvey and a couple of bags of sweeties to share with her classmates, then made some Springy decorations and a little flower garden - inside the straws are treat messages or forfeit messages - everyone got to pick their own straw-flower and read their message, and then either choose their treat or do their forfeit.

We also had a table of tattoos.... Which was rather over indulged by some who went home with arms coveredin them. Oops.

And of course a birthday tea / picnic, including a fab chocolate and courgette (yes, courgette) cake.

And more fabulous face painting from the amazing Natasha.

Happy sixth birthday to my arty, sporty, gregarious, strong-willed, independent, big-little girl!

Baking

2011-03-03T07:29:00.000-08:00

This is a sight that makes me happy....

We have 10 hours of electricity in 24 at the moment, so getting organised and lucky enough to have ingredients in the house, electricity to power the oven (to my knowledge, there are no gas ovens in Kathmandu), and a sensible stretch of time in which to do it all - well.... Let's just say Noah and I were pretty chuffed with ourselves. Mincemeat flapjack, peanut butter cookies (some with chocolate, some without), and the very popular cheesey biscuits. And check out my tiddly surface top oven...

And while we were baking, Thom was gardening.

Noah took my camera for a walk around the garden a bit later, and took these:

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm his mum, but I was rather impressed..!

And here's just a bit of self-indulgence - come on, it's not very often I have such smart and ungrubby rascals to show off! Thank you Grandma Rosemary, for the new, smart outfits!

Pokhara

2011-02-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Whoop!! I have a new camera! It's not a process without glitches, and I am not in love, but it is a step. We are friends. I may feel more trustful of it once I have knit it a cosy. Oh dear.
I have taken it for walks, and tried to ignore the fear that someone is going to take it away from me. I really didn't realise the emotional investment I made in my old camera until now, but, um, it's there. I think it maybe has something to do with the way the camera is so closely interwoven with my children, and their life experiences.
So, moving onwards, here are some pictures of out hols with Grandma and Granda, in Pokhara.... We stayed at a farmhouse, next to an organic farm.
I love the way the littles go from this....

To this.....

With me barely even noticing, and then I suddenly realise I have armfuls of clothing and wonder how they 'tricked' me.

We also managed a couple of teeny babu-treks - Lonely Planet classics - up to the Peace Pagoda, and Sarangkot. There are some sneaky, hidey Himalaya out there somewhere...

Mama Made Monday

2011-01-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

So proud of this! I made a loaf from scratch and by hand for the first time ever! Yes, I know some people do this every day, but I don't..... We had a bread machine in the UK, and since we have been in Nepal, we have been buying loaves from various bakeries on the school run, the most exciting being the Secret Bakery which I will tell you about another time...
Anyhow, the bread - it was much easier than I thought. The recipe was very simple, and the kneading, which is what had put me off so far, was actually enjoyable, theraputic, mesmerising....
The most difficult bit is finding somewhere warm for the dough to prove - and co-ordinating it all within a period of electricity provision, (our oven is electric).
Tasted fanstic and only lasted a couple of hours!

Past Dhulikhel but not as far as Tibet....

2011-01-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

....is where we went spent a happy, sunny weekend. These photos pre-date Christmas and camera thievery, but not by much, and I thought they'd be good to share. We went camping with some friends. And a few gravel trucks.... the river is the source of much building material used in Kathmandu. But they didn't really intrude on our little campsite. In fact they were pretty entrtaining to watch at times - the JCB digger is giving itself a shower..... Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of the two trucks racing across the river, but it was pretty bonkers.
I think I still have sand in my trainers....

Making things

2011-01-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

Haven't been in the mood for blogging recently. My camera was stolen which, aside from peeing me off rather, has meant no photos to post. We've been using Harv's phone and occasionally Eve's camera, but it's just not the same. I have a replacement camera on the way but it'll be a month until it gets here, along with Harv's mum and dad who are coming to visit in February.
Anyway, I just wanted to wave hello, and here are some older photos to show you of things we been making.

We made some painted paper elephants to decorate the walls on the boys' bedroom as it was looking disappointingly bland. They have since been joined by several dinosaurs and an invasion of pirates, so it's much busier in there now.

And these are the decorations I made for the GP winter season swap - a poinsettia (LOADS of them growing here at the moment) and a holly leaf and a snowdrop.

And here's a view of our dining room from way back in the Autumn. Lisa sent us some Autumn leaves all the way from Weston Rhyn, so we stuck them on the walls, with our painted pumpkins.

And I'll leave you with a promise of something more uptodate very soon. Maybe even a few of Harv's phone photos from Thailand.........

Happy New Year!

Want to join us?

2010-11-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

Ok - so is anyone up for a challenge? Want to do without electricity for the times we're also without it? (You are allowed to cheat - we do....)
The new load-shedding schedule was published at the start of this week. Load-shedding is scheduled electricity cutting, so that it's conserved for industry rather than used up domestically.
Here it is. We're in Group 4:-

So, on the plus side, we know (well pretty much) when we'll be without power. And we're not entirely withour power as we have an invertor - something that uses a car battery to store up electricity when it's available, so that we can have a few lights and one working plug socket during load-shedding (which, obviously, for anyone who knows Harvey!, runs the TV, DVD player, and charges laptops).
But, cheating aside, during load-shedding, we have very little light in the house; just a few energy-saving bulbs, and no bathroom with light, so the littles often have a candle-lit bath, which is really rather lovely.
It also means no oven, no washing machine, no fridge (there's not much point running a freezer here), and if we're unlucky / disorganised, it might mean no water until the power's back on, as Nepali houses all have a storage tank on the roof for water, which needs to be filled using an electric pump. We still have hot water as we have solar panels on the roof, so we can have a shower or bath - but to be honest, I've hardly ever run enough through the kitchen taps for it to become barely luke warm - we wash up with cold water, or boil the kettle.
Some of the lovely people I know online have recently been using only candles or other forms of low key lighting after dark - a really lovely approach to winter - I just wonder how my own little family's going to cope as the winter progresses and the load-shedding hours expand. Apparently it'll be up to 18 hours or so a day without electricity by March - eeeep!! Any of you electricity-frugal mamas have any tips for us? My main issues are 1) No - the kids are not going to watch DVDs the whole time we have load-shedding - what else can we do with very limited light because 2) Thom + candles = dangerous mayhem. And finally, 3) When there is a LOT of load-shedding our invertor might not keep up - so we might not have any light or a working plug socket.
We enjoyed listening to Roald Dahl's Witches this evening, then they had a candle lit bath, and a story before bed.

And onto sunnier thoughts........

I love these swing pictures of my happy, sunny boys.

Evidence that Evie-Chops is getting good and autonomous with her spelling. I only spotted this long after she'd made it :-

Don't even let me start talking about the rubbish / waste / pollution issues here. But - here's not-even-the-tiniest-tip-of-of-the-rubbish-iceberg made into art:

And - look! Noah-Boots running home from school with Eve, NOT sitting in the pushchair - whoop!! (He still moaned a bit about getting sand in his crocs but we can live with that....)

On the Beach, Nepali Style

2010-11-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

So, Nepal is a landlocked country. So, we went to the beach anyway - about two hours drive away, up over the rim of the Kathmandu valley, and down the other side, sharing switchbacks with heavily laden tourist buses, with crowds surfing the top of them, the ubiquitous and prolific motorbikes, and various pretty large trucks. The roads were fairly quiet though, because of the Tihar holiday.
We drove our new jeep across a river (well, Harv did, I grimaced and the Littles bounced on their seats, squeaking with excitement). It wasn't quite as impressive as the shot below (neither the jeep, nor the water level), but it was quite an achievement, I thought. Then we got ferried across the next (deeper, faster) river by some friends with a bigger jeep.
We picnicked on sandy sanwishes and homemade cheesey crackers and carrot cake, swam, sunbathed, collected a few beautiful stones - a super-duper day out. And Noah was a very happy boy as he got to spend almost the entire day naked - that's very high on his list of priorities at the moment..... So that's why he's absent from these photos.......

Hattiban Photofest

2010-11-09T22:41:00.000-08:00

Does anyone elase find it hard sometimes, that what would be a ten minute walk for an adult takes the entire afternnon and a picnic to do with Littles?

But this afternoon, Harv and I didn't find it hard at all. We pottered, picnicked, daydreamed in the sunbeams, stopped to look at bugs and birds, and over-filled the rucksack with pine cones to play with in the garden.

Our new (to us) red jeep is just visible through the trees in one shot. She needs a name apparently, to make sure we look after her - any ideas??

Tihar Celebrations

2010-11-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Tihar is the second biggest festival in Nepal - and definitely the prettiest since we have been here. Beautiful pictures are made at the entrances to homes and shops with salt and tikka powder, marigold garlands are hung around doors and windows, and flags, strings of lights and garlands are liberally strewn.
There is an intricate system of puja (worship) over several days, including the goddess Laxmi, cows, crows, and - my personal favourite because it's quite aesthetically weird - dogs. All the street dogs were dressed in garlands, given tikkas and something nice to eat. I took a photo of one just chillin at lunch time.
Cosilla decorated the house and porch for us and we lit the candles at six o' clock on Friday. I would love to report that the beautiful flower picture lasted until the end of Tihar at dawn on Monday, but, um, Thom got involved...what 20 month old rascal wouldn't, eh......

Hallowe'en Nepali Style

2010-10-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling a bit to get my head around the season-changes here - there doesn't seem to be an Autumn (or at least not as I recognise it) which is a shame because I do so love it. It's colder at night now, and first thing in the morning, but there are still flowers everywhere. So Eve went off into the garden to collect some to float for the dining table. They're gorgeous, eh, but not very Hallowe'eny......
We have been crafting a wee bit too - more traditional Hallowe'en things - we painted pumpkins, outside though because it was such a lovely day; then had a bath to wash the paint off (I think my photo preserves Thom's privacy, but might have to remove it if it doesn't); then made little lanterns with tissue paper, PVA and little 15 rupee glasses from Saleways because we haven't been here long enough to've collected enough jam jars yet.

And here are a few party pictures - we went to the Hallowe'en party at the Phora Durber. Thom was so excited he was determined to run to catch our lift - then fell over just as I took the photo, poor little chops. There was potion making, face painting, gorgeous food, a scary walk which is clearly still haunting poor Noah Boots, and then trick or treating - which went down so well with the littles, is almost expunged the terror of the scary walk.....

Nagarkot

2010-10-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

We spent a few days on holiday at Nagarkot, famous for its fabulous views of the Himalaya. We got a few glimpses, but not whilst I had a camera with me.
It didn't bother Harv and I a bit - we have slogged up enough of Snowdonia's peaks, shrouded in mist, cloud and the kind of rain that soaks you within minutes, with no rewarding view, sometimes not even a pause for breath, to fully appreciate that sometimes the mountains like to keep their clothes on.
We had plenty of fun, our first tea-house lunch (the Nepali version of chip butties and curry sauce: chips, chapatis and dhal) and a go each on the airy Dashain swing.

Swayambhunath Temple (aka The Monkey Temple)

2010-10-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

More touristing.

Me: Noah, what did you enjoy today?
Noah: Seeing the MONKEYYYYYSSSSS!!
Thom: Ah! Ah! Ah!

Mooching and Shopping in Old Kathmandu

2010-10-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

You know how when you live in a place, you tend not to do the touristy things? When I lived in Stratford on Avon I NEVER did a walking tour or visited Ann Hathaway's cottage, even though I walked past it on my way to work every morning. And we'd lived in Llangollen for several years before I went on the steam railway there, and then only because my best mate was visiting with her littles.
But here, yes, we are doing the tourist things - and loving them.
In the UK we could visit friends and family, escape to any number of amazingly beautiful, wild, green spaces ( we lived on the Welsh-North Shropshire border - just beautiful!), spend happy afternoons pottering about parks and play areas, swim easily and using child friendly change rooms, and if all else failed there were hours of delight to be found at the local soft play area (plus squishy sofas and decent teas and coffees for the grown ups - none of your chairs-bolted-to-the-floor-squalor!)
But here none of those things are available, and even though we have a happy home with plenty of fun inside it, sometimes we feel the pinch of it and need to get out.
So we reach for the Lonely Planet and find a walking tour, and hey presto, we are challenged, overwhelmed, and ultimately refreshed. Grubby but delighted. Tired but elated. We got out, we negotiated a taxi, we found our way through the unfamiliar labyrinth of streets and alleyways - yay for us!
(Um, and I spent the birthday money my mum gave me on some GORGEOUS shawls and a pashmina - photos another time.......sshhh )

Gardening

2010-10-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Gardens are food for the soul, eh.
And gosh do we need it here sometimes..... The roads are potholed, rubbish-strewn and dusty, and it's not easy to find green spaces for the children to run and me to daydream.
So, here is The Garden of Dreams, an oasis on the corner of Thamel, the main tourist hub of Kathmandu. Not very wild, as you can see, but a beautiful and refreshing place to spend a morning (and admittedly expensive but deservedly yummy lunch) with the littles and one of Eve's school friends.

Kites are the thing here at the moment - I think it's something to do with Dashain, the main Nepali festival which is being celebrated at the moment, but it could just be good kite-flying season. As you can see, Noah and Thom haven't quite got the hang of it yet....

And here are some happy rascals in our garden. Eve plays with Momentha (sp?), our guard's daughter a LOT - Momentha's English is coming on really well; Eve's Npali not quite so much.....
They were all delighted by the teeny baba snail they found:

Spiders, Monkeys, Soldiers and Faeries

2010-10-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

Two months into our Kathmandu-ing and we finally got it together and went for a little trek with our little people. Harv and Eve started school a week after we arrived, and finished term one at the end of last week, so we haven't had much time to explore - it's been heads-down-and-run-for-it.
This was 5km of track up through forest to a temple on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. As well as the slightly ewwwwy spiders, we came a cross a wee faerie door, a troop of monkeys in the treetops above our heads, and a small group of armed soldiers (the king / ex-king lives in the forest somewhere - it's a national reserve) who were fascinated by the littles, Thom in particular. They were very friendly and, in spite of the guns, much less scary than the spiders.
Thom has a handful of words in his repertoire of communication now, but his monkey call is his most accomplished. The children were all enchanted by being able to watch monkeys in the wild.
A great day.

More Painting

2010-10-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

We went to a party at Paula's house on Friday and the very clever and talented Natasha was there with her face paints - so we had to have a go! She was all the more clever as she managed to paint all of these after sunset, during load-shedding (scheduled power cut) by the light of an eco-torch. Isn't she amazing?!
Her work has been in Hello! and OK magazines, and more recently in Friday! the Kathmandu entertainment paper, which this week had Eve on the front cover with her International Day costume on and not-matching-but-delightful face paint. Wow.

The party at Paula's was lovely. We were up on the roof terrace for most of the evening and I got my first glimpse of Himalaya through the distant clouds.

I also managed to leave Thom's sandals there (well, it was dark.....) There's never really been any doubt that I have made the full and complete transition to 'mother' - but here's proof if needed - I used to get drunk and lose my own shoes at parties, now I have a couple of shandies and lose my kids' - oh dear....... He'll have rather sweaty feet for a couple of weeks until we go back to school after the Dashain holiday, but won't, I think, hold it against me....

Here's our friend, Ash, first:

If you look really closely to the left of the tiger's chin you can see Noah's tummy scar from his op as a teeny:

Harv Marathon

2010-10-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry - dreadful pun.

Harv ran the Kathmandu Half Marathon last week. It started very early - he left the house about 05.30 and was running by around 06.45. The kids and I walked up to Jawalakhel Chowk, jammy breakfast toast in the littles' hands, to watch him run past. Just as we arrived, I saw the familiar silhouette running down Kumari Parti towards us - we were really lucky to make it in time to see him. The littles were delighted to see Daddy running past waving and blowing kisses.

It's a bit different to marathons in the UK. They don't close the roads here, but there are extra traffic police who just sort of slow the traffic down a little to let the runners through. And there were nowhere near the amount of runners doing it, and not much in the way of spectating either. He said it was a kind of lonely race. The air quality was very poor on the ring road. He ran it in around 1 hour 50 (not exactly sure as there were no official times that we know of...!) which is about 10 minutes slower than he ran in Cardiff last year. Considering the extra 1400m of altitude and the air pollution, this is pretty admirable. He raised enough money for another cleft repair operation for our family charity, Operation Smile. He also beat several Ghurkas. Jolly good show, old chap!!

More house

2010-10-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Here's our sitting room. It's a bit, um, orange.....
I have always been pretty safe / lazy before - most of our house in the UK was cream.
I thought we'd have a green sitting room here, but obviously it hasn't turned out that way..... But I like it. Apparently the winter nights here are very cold, so my thinking is that this room and a hot toddy will help to keep the cold out. It feels rather studenty to be using throws over scruffy but functional furniture, which I also quite like
Since I took this photo I have caved to peer pressure from Harv and swapped the mat (which I really liked) for a Tibetan rug (which I grudgingly adore).
Apart from the curtains it's all Fair Trade, so that's another good thing.....
Also, Noah's favourite colour is orange (although it has to orange with dinosaurs to get a guaranteed vote).

(And yes, that's Jungle Book on TV, with a stripy tiger to match the rest of the room.....)

Autumn Season Swap

2010-10-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show my season swap, sent to Joxy in the UK - I am so chuffed it finally arrived - about two weeks late, I think..... I really thought it'd gone to the post box in the sky.
Three little Autumn ladies, with a pumpkin, a squash, and a flower as a way of including the very different Nepali seasons. We are just coming out of monsoon here and the flowers are blooming. These blue ones on the vine are the ones I was trying to copy - they are perfect pentagons.

International Day

2010-10-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

It was International Day at Eve's School today, so the children went into school in national dress.
Now, technically she's a little Welsh girl as she was born in Wrexham, but for the sake of this day, the fact that her family are all English, and that I couldn't foresee myself being able to make a stovepipe hat and shawl etc, she was definitely English today.
It's not easy deciding what is national dress for an English girl......... I googled a bit, then decided on the outfit below, which, thanks to some serious corner-cutting I managed to rustle up by hand as I don't have a sewing machine. We thought she looked a bit like Miss Muffet so she screamed at the spider sitting beside her for the first photo.
But then decided that long sleeves were just too hot, so went for a slightly Victorian look this morning.
(Don't you just love the way she poses and gazes beneath the tree...)
There was a big parade at school this morning and a fair with lots of amazing food to try this afternoon, as The British School has something like 37 nationalities represented in its cohort. (The Korean food got my vote.)
And then she got a real treat - having her face painted by Natasha - Eve heaven!

On the Roof

2010-09-28T08:52:00.001-07:00

The boys were up by 5am again - I think I just need to start seeing this as normal and going to bed before ten, but I am really rubbish at going to bed early. Anyway - the monsoons are finally clearing, and the mosquitoes are dying away, so we spend more time outside. I took the boys out onto the roof this morning as I pegged out laundry, and gave them a big bowl of water and some bits to wash, and there you go - happy rascals for a couple of hours......
There is a lovely shady corner of the roof terrace which just happens to be the bit where the tap is - it couldn't be better designed.
When we came downstairs around ten, they were so hungry they thought it was lunchtime.

And a couple of shots, east and west, from the very top of the house:

Our House

2010-09-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

We've been here just under 8 weeks, and in this house for about six of them. It's home now - still a bit bare in places and some quite nasty mismatching going on in others, but we're definitely 'home'. So here, have a little mooch around the more finished bits..... First up, Eve's bedroom:

If you look closely, you can see all the cards and letters from her friends in the UK, in pride of place on the top of her bookshelf.

Next up, the play room:

And I knew we were really at home when we put all of our treasures on the season table. The seasons are obviously very different here - the summer monsoons are just giving way to the bright, Autumn sun and a really good growing season - all the flowers are starting o bloom, and the gardener is cutting back the bamboo hedges around our house and planting smaller, flowering plants the way we tend to do the same in the Spring. So, um - a mixture of Summer blooms and Autumn veggies (yes pumpkins and squashes etc here) for the season table:

And finally, the story corner, in the sitting room. This could also be (more accurately) described as the Armory. Yes, occasionally (if we're lucky, once a day) they sit in it, blissed out, reading each other stories. Yes, they honestly do.... I love it when it all goes quiet, and I run in from the kitchen / loo / upstairs, anticipating some form of silent, but extreme, devastation, at which they so excel.....and find that Noah is reading 'Maisey Goes Camping' to Thom, or all three are sitting there, silent and separate, each absorbed in a book.....

But, much, much more often the cushions are being used as weapons of some kind...

Or to make a den at the bottom of the stairs...

And even to make a den on the shelf under the coffee table. Experimentally....

Anyway, here's the showroom shot. The mayhem ones will follow, I'm sure.

Have a fab weekend, everyone, xx.

More pics from the school run

2010-09-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

I love the school run - here are a few more things which have caught our attention.....

These bikes with trailers are used loads - sometimes for deliveries, like this one, but also quite often for recycling cardboard or suchlike, which doesn't seem to happen in any official way here. Quite often you'll see a huge mound of rubbish at the roadside and people picking through it, separating out things which can be recycled. The next picture's not a very good one - I was trying to get some lovely washing blowing on the line on a rooftop.... Then a table tennis match; one of the many free range chickens; and a couple working on their house - we see quite a lot of women here on building sites - they'll be carrying really heavy loads in the same way as this lady - pretty tough ladies....

Mama Made Monday

2010-09-13T10:08:00.001-07:00

Look away now, Jen, if your package hasn't arrived yet.........

I love making things for new babies - there's something really special and emotive in knitting for someone who hasn't yet arrived. This hat is on its way to Joe, my third little nephew, who arrived safely just over two weeks ago. I am currently working on another little something to go with it too.
And the card matches the ones I made for Jack and Tommy when they were born.
I'm definitely more of a knitter than a sewer (although I'm not even really qualified to call myself a 'knitter' - I just like it!) but I do like occasional cross stitch. I customised a hand made paper card I got here, to act as the mount, and didn't do a particularly good job of it, but I think you can feel the love - which is the whole point after all.....

Bhaktapur

2010-09-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

A beautiful medieval town. We did the Lonely Planet walking tour and enjoyed the quiet, and better air quality. Bhaktapur is 'pedestrianised' - in as far as the roads are basically too narrow for traffic, except motorbikes which seem to pretty much count as pedestrians here anyhow.
It's quite a funny feeling - we attracted so much attention, being white / blonde and having a doubledecker pushchair. We get stared at way more than we stare. Which is why I felt a bit more confident about asking people if I could take photos of them - I was especially fascinated by all the knitting ladies - there were SO many sitting and chatting while they knit beautiful hats, socks, fingerless gloves etc on their double pointed needles. I kind of kicking myself now that I didn't ask anyone where they got their yarn from - although it was pretty apparent that hardly anyone spoke any English there and Harv and I have about 5 Nepali phrases we can use, none of which include knitting.

Looking Up

2010-09-10T06:57:00.000-07:00

I hope I can be excused by the puddles, mud and potholes - I spend most of my walking here focused firmly groundward.

But today - perhaps it was the novelty of blue skies - or the daydreaming afforded by boys snoozing in the pushchair - I lifted my gazes.

So, here to share are some of the sights: a typical Kathmandu building, but isolated, standing alone and overshadowed by the huge Chinese development behind it; a cucumber plant thriving on the side of another building; and another new development, with bamboo scaffolding. Can you see the builders near the top of it? It really made me catch my breath when I saw the, vertiginous on their behalf.

Golden Temple, Lalitpur, Kathmandu

2010-09-04T19:19:00.001-07:00

We all enjoyed the time we spent here.

The tortoises are guardians of the temple - I really wasn't sure about whether they should be touched - but the lady that the children met obviously thought it was ok.....

Oh, and the boy in the photo with Thom wasn't about to get Karate Kid on him - he was just kind of fidgeting about on the steps. Check out Thom's 'please leave me alone and don't make eye contact with me because I don't know you' squirm. He gets a lot of attention here (as do Eve and Noah) because of his colouring, so he does this squirm a fair bit. He's starting to get a bit more blase about it but I do still feel quite protective of him. He's my monkey boy!

The Tom and Jerry mural wasn't in the temple.........

Food Shopping

2010-09-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

I was pretty daunted by food shopping here at first. We started out in a hotel for the first ten days, where we ate almost all of our meals, so when we were finally let loose into our own house, I didn't know where to start - the shops and food all seemed so different at first.
I'm still not cooking much - our Didi is a fabulous cook and Harv and I both love Nepali food so I'm only cooking for the children and at weekends (I need to do a whole other post on how FANTASTIC it is to have help in the home).

Anyhow, I'm learning......

So - we walk Eve to school, then stop at little shops on the way home. You can get longlife milk here, but the fresh stuff comes in plastic bags, as in the photo and is much cheaper - less than 20p a pint. It's homogenised but advises you on the packet to boil before use. So I carefully boil it, then let it cool before storing it in a plastic jug in the fridge.
And the veggies are all very seasonal - I got tomatoes and I think, some wild sorrel, the other day. We soak all the veg and fruit (and even eggs when we buy them) in weakish iodine solution to kill any bugs, then rinse in filtered water, before putting them into the fridge (where we keep everything fresh during the warm monsoon months). This might seem a bit OTT but the veggies etc are often watered with 'grey' water - and the mains water is certainly not guaranteed 'clean', so this is just what you do.....

Very mundane daily details, but I thought I'd share - so different from the UK supermarket experience....

Our new school run

2010-09-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

We're there...

2010-08-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

......in Kathmandu, that is...... which is actually 'here' to us now... It's a jolly, bonkers, paradoxical kind of place - I have loads to tell you - traffic, houses, friends we've made, home-searching and creating tasks, what the littles have been up to........ but we're still in a hotel at the moment and being charged a fair bit for online-time - and I'm also enjoying offline time.....
So - I will get my butt in gear and do a post on 'word' first then upload it, and show you some pics in a few days, but I just wanted to give everyone a wave to say hi from Nepal and its 5 3/4 hours ahead bonkersness..... xx

Weekend paint and pyjama chillin

2010-07-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Probably going to be offline for a bit now..... We leave our house on Tuesday for Southsea, then fly on Saturday. Eeep! Wish us luck!

Packing (and not packing)

2010-07-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

So, we are flying out to Nepal on the 31st, and leaving our house on the 27th or 28th to spend a couple of days on holiday at Grandma Rosemary's, by the seaside. This is in lieu of the Summer Holidays. Harv is starting work on the 1st of August. Although the first week is an induction week, including house-hunting, good places to shop, and lunches out, and the littles and I will join in wherever possible, I still think it's going to be a 'steep learning curve' to use the customary metaphor.

I'm just about to get started in earnest with the packing.....you can probably imagine how hard it is for me to find time to do it.
Example: Brought a box into the dining room to start emptying bookshelves. Eve was at school and the boys were asleep. Opened flaps of box. Thom woke up. Brought Thom downstairs. Thom put all of his balloons into box. Then himself. Then tipped it over. Then climbed onto it, squashed it and turned it into a slide. Then Noah came down. Then Eve came home. Box no longer a box, but shreds of cardboard.
Fortunately it was a 2nd hand one intended to store stuff into the loft, rather than airfreight precious belongings, but you get the idea......
So - I shall push off and get on with it now they're all in bed. Wish me luck - I am truly crap at packing!

Treasure

2010-06-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

These are the things I am really treasuring at the moment.

Our recently updated season table, which now has a big fat sunflower to make it properly summery. Eve bounced out of school waving it proudly, even more proudly bursting with the news that she has her first wobbly tooth. Oh gosh, that hit me! Surely it only came through five minutes ago, as I cradled her, carried her and soothed her in my arms? It is the very same tooth she first cut. And now she's talking about the tooth fairy....

We sat down to make some Fathers' Day cards for Harv and the Grandads. After a while I wandered off into the kitchen to get on with some chores while they were busy, and was followed a few minutes later by Noah, smiling shyly and offering me this. 'Who's this one for, Noah?' I asked. 'It's for you, mummy,' he said. He melts my heart, that boy.

More camping. We packed up and scooted off for a single night away with some friends on a fab eco-campsite on a hill not too far away. I love how the children see the open spaces and RUN straight into them.

Thom watching the Tigers, trying to sneak up on him.

And the view from my back door this evening.

Wow!

2010-06-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Corr! I never thought I'd get one of these - THANK YOU!! to Claire over at The Green Queen.

So, now I get to pass this on..... These blogs are the ones that I love, that touch me and inspire me, and that really hit me with how HUGE life is.
(And that often having me sighing 'Wow, I wish I could make such beautiful things.....')
I really, REALLY don't get very much time to read blogs, but I am a faithful follower of these:

Enjoying The Small Things

Lazy Seamstress

When I Get The Time

A Smile a Day

Border Stories

Different Choices

My Handmade Haven

Free Range Family

Making Stuff

Buffering

2010-06-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

The high pitched whinings of post-dinner, crotchety littles was grating tonight - they were arguing over the various contents of the doctor's case, Noah insisting that everyone needed injections (we've finished ours for a bit - phew)..... Gah! So 'Hey,'I said, 'Let's have a dance - what music would you like?'
'Mamma Mia!' they yelled.
Trusty Youtube was running slowly tonight though, so their current favourite kept stopping.
But..... no whining about it - 'Hey, we can play musical statues!' shouted Eve, and they did, loving every minute, including the buffering. See - they teach me things all the time - to enjoy the buffering, the little breaks in life where it feels like nothing is happening.....but you're still, if you let yourself, enjoying it.

Happy Campers

2010-06-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

How much do kids love camping??
It starts as soon as we tell them that we are going - where will we camp? they ask. And who'll be there? The tent becomes a sort of play barn. They make their own beds (well, sort of). I had to BEG Noah to let me take the Bedroom photo - 'I want to mess it up, Mummy!' he insisted, trying to push past me and laughing.
And then there are rope swings, streams, camp fires, other people's tents, woods, swamps and waterfalls to throw ourselves into the love of.
After a looooong bath, their feet are still filthy.
Yep, we love camping.

Hunter-gatherer

2010-05-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing, and fab.....? One minute you have a poorly baba who is floppy and listless, needs to be carried everywhere, and has a temperature of 39.1. Then he finally falls asleep on the sofa at 4.30, wakes up an hour later, and is BETTER!
And come bedtime is absolutely full of beans, not even close to tired....
So these photos were taken at about 8.30 as he munched his way around the veggie patch. There's not much in it this year as we are leaving for Nepal at the end of July, but he had a chomp of the purple sprouting broccoli and the chives....and finally went to bed about 10.30.

And check this out - at the grand old age of 15 months, I think he is finally growing some hair!

2010-05-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is my first little flower child, made from a pattern sent to me by very, very kind Shell. Eve was delighted to come down and find her one morning - and I was very pleased that I managed to make her before all the blossom has gone from our apple tree. I reckon she can stay for at least another couple of weeks as the trees around here are still covered in beautiful frilliness and bloom.

Songs for my babies

2010-05-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy songs. These are the ones that remind me of growing my little ones.

Here's Eve's.
We went to see 'Closer' either just before or whilst I was pregnant. Romantic tragedies have unsurpringly seemed a lot less poignant ever since I became a mother - this is the last time I remember feeling empathy..... Might it come back at some point in the future? Anyhow - this song was on the radio a LOT when I was expecting the little chops.

This is Noah's.

And here's Thom's.
We went to see Radiohead at the Oval when I was 6 weeks pregnant with him. And listened to In Rainbows kind of exhaustively for an embarrassingly long time afterwards.....

Happy Days

2010-05-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

Kathmandu preparations are ongoing but a bit tedious - vaccinations which are hideously expensive, hard to get hold of, but very necessary, have been preying on my mind quite a bit over the last week or so - so it's nice to look back over the past week and see that we've managed to do lots of lovely things as well as get sore arms / bottoms!

We went over to Ellesmere sculpture trail last week which was a lovely adventure - with just the right amount of hills and things to explore for littler legs.

And we found our first (real) bluebells of the year.

On Wednesday morning Noah Boots and I spent a happy couple of hours at the table while Eve was at school and Thom was asleep. Noah did a fair bit of cutting and sticking, trying out the lefty scissors for the first time - and I sorted out my sewing / crafty drawer. And found the lovely Peter Rabbit sampler I started 7 years ago - the shame........! What are my chances - I hope I'll finish it while we're in Nepal as I think I should have more time... Hmmm...... Maybe it's a kick up the butt that I actually need......

Loved this - evidence that Harv had a little helper for the pizza making on Friday night.

We had a great weekend at Carl and Helen's - on the Sunday we walked 'somewhere' beautiful in the Peak District. I am ashamed to say I don't know where.....
We all loved it though - chilly, ridiculously so at first - but it was just what we needed.

Eve and Noah had lots of fun running around and jumping over mossy humps with their cousin James, and Thom watched. I think he was maybe a bit jealous of all the running around - but he does love being snuggled up on my back.

We played hide and seek and even found a ruined castle.

Happy Birthday Noah

2010-05-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Noah, I have grown so much through being your mama.

Noah was born on a beautiful, sunny day three years ago, and we were all absolutely "chuffed to pieces" in Harv's words, to welcome him to our family. He has come a long, long way since that day. He was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, which we were expecting from his antenatal scan, and a tummy problem which needed surgery, which rather blind-sided us. I wrote about that here.
So, he taught me a lot about strength, resiliance, and looking for the goodness and happiness in every moment. (Okay I don't always remember to, but I learned to.)
Check out his jouney from then to today. It's been hard occasionally, the first year in particular, but we have had SO much fun too.

Happy birthday my sweet boy.

Instead of taking a shower

2010-05-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

I am pretty stubborn about lots of things and one of these is that I get to have a shower every morning. But - today I decided we had more important things to do. I had driven past a family of geese and goslings at a nearby lake on the way to work during the week, and decided then that I really wanted the littles to see them as they all love animals so much. So I left Harv in bed and piled them into the car nice and early and we went off to see them.

And met some rather more scary geese while we were there. Noah was VERY eager to shoo them away; Eve was much shyer, hiding behind my legs. And Thom just laughed at them because he was safe up on my back.....

We were the only family around - there were a few dog walkers but it was blissfully peaceful, and the only sunny hour or so in an otherwise grey and rainy day.

Definitely better than a shower.

Brothers

2010-04-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

This isn't quite the moment but it's pretty close...... I looked out of the kitchen window early on Sunday morning and saw Noah and Thom on the trampoline, laughing together, and felt suddenly very external to their relationship. Iknow it's been happening subtley since Thom was born - the little smiles, the head-strokings, the looking around the room for each other, the hidey-boo, the belly-laughs, and more recently, the wrestling and games of 'fighting ball' (a football game devised by Eve and Noah which mainly seems to involve falling over on the grass and rolling around squealing).
And I have watched the relationship between Eve and Noah grow strong and sure (albeit littered with dispute) over the past three years.
But it caught me unawares to suddenly feel so utterly surplus to reqirements. No one was asking for a cuddle, or a biscuit; no one was needing toilet help or a nose wipe. So I just watched my boys, completely happy in each other's company, and fleetingly daydreamed about the men they will grow into and the relationship they will have as brothers.

So, the photo's not so great - and has missed the moment - but it's recorded mine as their mum, and the slightly painful pride and heart-swelling I felt.

Camera Cosies

2010-04-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a crafty post for ages, but not because I haven't been doing anything - I have really been enjoying my knitting. I am currently working on some trousers for Thom - my first project on circular needles - I promise to post a picture when they're done, however dodgy they turn out.....hmmmmm......

Here are 3 camera cosies I made recently. The pink one is for Eve who got my old camera for Christmas. It includes my first ever button hole, which I made rather a hash of - I guess I'll get better with practice....??
The orangey one's for my camera and the creamy one is a gift. They are both based on a pattern for a techno-cosy in the Stitch and Bitch book, but I didn't want a velcro fastening, so instead have used a thread of the yarn with a bead on the end to wind around a decorative button. It's only slightly fiddly and very effective as a closure. I am kind of chuffed to say that I got an 'order' for another one from a mate last night, too. I really like knitting them - so simple and quick - just right for a starter-outer.

Silver Lining by Carol Ann Duffy

2010-04-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Five miles up the hush and shush of ash,

Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate -

I could write my childhood there.

Selfish to sit in this garden, listening to the past

(A gentleman bee wooing its flower, a lawnmower)

When the grounded planes mean ruined plans,

Holidays on hold, sore absences at weddings, funerals ... wingless commerce.

But Britain's birds sing in this spring

From Inverness to Liverpool, from Crieff to Cardiff,

Oxford, Londontown, Land's End to John O' Groats.

The music's silent summons,

That Shakespeare heard and Edward Thomas and, briefly, us.

I heard this on Radio 4 a couple of days ago and really enjoyed it. (A degree of novelty is involved - not to be teaching a poem.) I wanted to share it because I think it captures the past week or so so well. All over now....

Just because he is SO yummy

2010-04-21T00:03:00.000-07:00

Don't you just LOVE a slippery chub of a toddler to cuddle......

So I am back at work

2010-04-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

and it's ok. I was dreading it a little bit as we'd all definitely got into holiday mode over Easter, with Thom waking up at 8.30 or later, and those kind of one activity / outing a day is quite enough sort of days. I do love my job but it does turn life rather treadmilly.... So it is lovely to have these sorts of days to fleetingly remember until our next bunch of them.

This was our Saturday - Eve, Noah and my mum made miniature gardens - just like I used to make in the seventies, then we played on last year's waterslide, which had managed to survive the winter somehow, then walked through the woods to the park.

This was Sunday. A bit of morning artwork - Noah's painted dinosaurs, and a meal of sausages, peas and scrambled egg from Eve. She even cut out tiny black dots for black pepper. They both came up with their own ideas and just told me what they needed - I had no imaginative input whatsoever! Then playing in the garden on a greyer-than-expected afternoon.