Mellow Sweetness

I have really been enjoying mellow days with my boys over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Some days have been filled with such gentle sweetness that I have felt a surge of joy at my luck to have these two men in my life.
After our Solstice celebration it was heads down and into Christmas.
We went to a lovely party hosted by a friend on Christmas Eve and I was able to catch up with my friend Tanya and her hubby Rob. He was sporting the biggest smile ever having finally landed a job after eighteen very long and tricky months and many, many interviews. I just didn't want to talk to anyone else having seen them go through such a hard time and just loved feeling the energy pulsing out of them that evening. They are good people and like many in this economic climate have been through a lot.
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Christmas Day saw us eating croissants as we opened our gifts and then heading off to celebrate Christmas with Sue (Andrew's ex-wife), Sarah and Tom (his children from this first marriage, they are 29 and 25 respectively).
Sue made a fantastic lunch of turkey, roast potatoes, sausages, veggies, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and gravy.
Frank was in his element!
At around 4pm we all tucked into the mince pies I made along with a cup of tea.

I used a pastry recipe from Sarah Raven's Complete Christmas book (which I love!! Highly recommended) and filled the pies with sugar free mincemeat made by my friend Fiona.
The little bird lids on the lids were a last minute decision as a full lid can be heavy and I love a bit of whimsy at any time.

Boxing Day saw us three in the woods getting some much needed fresh air and gathering some sticks for the fire.
And for New Year we drove down to Reading to stay with Severine and had such a lovely time, full of mellow sweetness again.
Severine knows us well and was happy to have a quiet, reflective evening with good food and some games and chat about our plans for the coming year.
We played a music quiz, drank champagne, ate smoked salmon and made a list of what we want to achieve in 2012.
Actually, Andrew let Sev and I drink the champagne as he toasted the new year with (hold onto your knickers) CHOCOLATE MILK!!!!

I have no idea what Sev actually thought but I could hazard a guess!

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And my plans for 2012?
They include posting here more often.
So on that note, I will be back soon with more on my plans for 2012.
Blessings to you all for a healthy, happy and joyful 2012 full of mellow sweetness.

Winter Solstice

We celebrated the Winter Solstice yesterday evening with lots of candles, good food and gifts.
Frank was allowed to stay up late to play his new game and then we all went to bed at the same time, chatting quietly until we fell asleep, Frank first followed by myself and then Andrew.
These dark winter days are special to me as I love this season of introspection after such busy times outside all summer and autumn.

More knitting, reading and planning! Hooray!
In the next few days we will visit people and have people to us, exchange gifts and watch Frank's pantomime that he has been planning for a few days now.

Then it's head down and into the full-on festivities with family and friends.
I enjoy the Winter Solstice more than Christmas for its quiet sense of wonder at nature and peaceful family celebration.
I will be enjoying some screen free days this Yuletide and will be back in the middle of next week.
Peace and blessings to you all, and may the D-fairy behave itself this festive season!

In these days of long shadows

We are busy busy, busy preparing for a season of gift giving: making cards, writing gift tags, making Christmas treasure hunts, knitting, reading recipes and making choices, baking and general elving.
A few days ago Frank and I went to Frinton for fresh air and a race on the beach (he always wins, but only because I cry less at losing!) followed by fish & chips and a great score of a Scooby Doo puzzle in a charity shop.
It was blissful.
Blue, blue sky and just me and my boy on that beach.

It makes me happy, this stretch of coast. Always.

And then we stay home a lot too; making things, crafting, elving and baking.

I took this picture as a way of telling the tale of how I reached without looking for my coffee and nearly took a swig of a bowl of beads today!
They actually had to touch my lips before I realised it wasn't my drink.
Must use my eyes next time.

And more elving, preceded by a fun afternoon decorating the ginger biscuits we made in the morning.
Oh yes, we had fun with that one!

Hope you are enjoying your winter too!

And take note: these biscuits are NOT BURNT.
Neither are they strangely blue!

Look Out, Look Out, There's a Dragon about

One of the reasons for my absence from this space over the past couple of weeks is that I have been beavering away on a dragon costume for Frank for the Colchester Carnival that took place this weekend.
I try hard not to use the computer during the day when I am with Frank so I tend to write in the evening.
Well, over the past two weeks all my evenings have been spent getting ready for Frank's birthday last weekend and for the dragon this weekend.
I am ready for a rest and for a couple of weeks of no deadlines like these!

But it was so very worth it.
Frank had a ball roaring at his friends, most of whom were dressed as knights, and chasing them at speed around the Abbey Fields before the procession set off and he joined his Daddy on the trailer bike.
Andrew had kitted the bike out with a little castle for the dragon to live in complete with windows for him to peep through.
It rained cats and dogs all day.
Downpour after downpour and yet it stopped just for about an hour and a half, and that just happened to be the hour and a half that we were walking through town in the procession. Serendipity indeed.

We have been really struggling to bring his blood sugars down over the past month. We are rarely seeing anything under ten and I am not a happy bunny with this trend.
But, last week we had pump clinic in Cambridge and his HbA1c came back as 7.6.
Holding steady.
Not as high as we thought it might be. We were relieved.
Numbers were crunched at the clinic and we adjusted some ratios and now we try to bring those numbers down.
It is relentless (but I don't have to tell most of you that) and I don't like winning often enough, but hey ho, it is what it is.
I hope to be here more often very soon.
I miss ruminating on life to my small (but, surely adoring) public ... ahem.

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Loving all your posts, will find time to comment as soon as I can.
Love to all.

Five

Oh, what a weekend!
My baby turned five on Saturday.
We had a special birthday breakfast of his choosing (pains au chocolat and strawberries on the side) followed by a cycle into town for our Circle-D Colchester diabetes family support group monthly meeting (wow, that's a mouthful).
We then had lunch in a cafe in town and came home to play his new and much requested board game : Monopoly.
He did really well following the rules and we played for ages, only stopping for Frisbee in the garden and then a couple of episodes of original (1969!!) Scooby-Doo; his latest DVD love.
A lovely, family day for my lovely boy.

Summer Solstice

Happy Solstice to you all.

The longest day has been a stay-at-home one for us and Frank and I spent some time making a special meal and setting a special table.
I made beef cooked in beer with spicy dumplings, followed by berries and cream.
It was yummy (aside from the fact that Frank wouldn't eat it as the potatoes were the wrong size!!).
Frank decorated the solstice table.
He started small with small tea glasses of flowers from the garden.
And then the muse struck and he went to town with napkins, sea creatures and dinosaurs, carefully placing the meat eaters away from his place so he could eat his meat and they wouldn't steal it!
I couldn't not post pictures of his table.
It was adorable.

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Same place as last year, same scarf (must get a new one!) same face.

Just a few more lines but I don't mind that.

Getting older rocks!

Sev arrives home this evening for just 24 hours.

We will be quietly celebrating with honey cake.

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I wish you all a very happy weekend and hope that you and yours are safe.

My thoughts and love are sent out to all in Japan and all who have family and friends there.

My Funky Tent

Thanks for all your kind comments on my last post.

I was glad to be welcomed back by such an esteemed group of people!

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A couple of days ago there was a knock at the door and we took delivery of this beauty.

My birthday present from Mr Muffinmoon: a beautiful, funky bell tent.

I have always loved the style of these tents and my sister and her partner have one, which we stayed in once when on their farm.

I have no pictures of the inside yet as I want to take lots when we are actually using it and it's full of sheepskins and blankets and cushions, but inside is one open space with the tent pole in the middle.

I love the natural material.

Even the mallet is wooden and these cool tent pegs are so natural and rough that they look like Hagrid whittled them in a free period from teaching at Hogwarts!
I love them.
Is it insane to love a tent peg?
Hmmm... maybe ...

And this past weekend we erected the tent, Mr Muffinmoon being unable to not make comments about large erections, and watered it well. This, you understand, is not to make it grow into a bigger tent or bear tenty fruit but to enable the fibres to swell with the water and then as they dry the whole thing becomes water proof.
For you knitters out there it is blocking for tents.
This is England.
On our first camping trip with it I will find out whether that has worked or not!
It will rain at some point, indeed possibly at all points.
For the moment it sits in the garden, weathering, much like I lie next to my boy every night, weathering these first few weeks of life with Lucky Pump.
Tomorrow I have to change the pump site all alone as Mr Muffinmoon will be out late earning a crust (his job is safe for a few more months, by the way!).
And tomorrow I'll give you the soup recipe.
Blogging every day.
What the ...
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I seem to be an all or nothin' kind of gal at the moment.
Ah, well, so ist das Leben.

Shrove Tuesday

So, ahem, more than a week has slipped by with me not finding time to post.

I will attempt to address the balance by posting more regularly for the next few days.

We are doing fine.

Lucky Pump is ticking over and we even managed to do a site change with no tears on Frank's part.

I cried though.

I spend the day of set change building up to it and get in a bit of a state at the moment, but I recall doing that with the injections and it got easier.

It's Shrove Tuesday today, aka Pancake Day, and Frank is (I'm almost scared to jinx it all by writing it) showing more interest in a variety of foods so we went for pancakes for dessert this evening.

Andrew is great at tossing the pancakes in the pan and he and Frank did that together.

Then they were enjoyed with a little muscovado sugar and lemon juice.

Frank ate two and declared them "really yummy".

I was proud of him as his usual response to an offer of an undesirable food is to make barfing noises and fall to the floor clutching his throat.

I then reply with withering sarcasm, "A simple "No thanks Mummy" would suffice Frank".

And on we roll.

Back soon with tales of my new tent (a birthday gift) and a recipe for the soup we've been going mad for for the past month.

Happy Tuesday, friends.

Not sure what the question is ...

... but I know the answer and mostly the answer is to get out in nature.

Frank has had Type 1 Diabetes now for exactly half his life.

He was diagnosed at 27 months of age and we have now enjoyed the company of the badly behaved house guest T1D for 27 months.

The weather here has been cold and grey but yesterday saw us heading out for a little family trip to Friday Woods near our home and stomping about in the mud.

We ran around, got very muddy, jumped in the many puddles and then wandered back to our camper van for homemade hot chocolate (milk and chopped up 70% chocolate plus a little raw cocoa for sprinkling - I figure if the boy won't eat spinach he can have raw cocoa for iron instead!!) and ginger biscuits. It was very healing and calming.

I have been feeling a bit blah for a couple of weeks and am only now beginning to come out of it.

Stomping around in mud helped a great deal and I would highly recommend it!
Another great puddle awaiting its fate from the Boy Wonder.

The hills are alive with the sound of stomping.

Friday Woods.

My boys.

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On another topic, thank you to everyone that commented on my post about our wet nights.

I had really thought we were alone on that one as I know no one else going through it.

Should have asked you guys months ago, hey?

Big British hugs to all (that's with a cup of tea in one hand and wearing a bowler hat. We all wear bowler hats ...).

Merry Crimble - sniff!

Here's to a merry, happy and peaceful festive season to all of you, wherever you are.

We have nine people to feed tomorrow and two arriving this evening and it's going to be so much fun.

I only hope they don't mind me looking like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the hacking cough and fetching red nose that Santa sent for me this morning.

I need a word with that guy ...

Love to all!