More Painting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.