Winter Woodland

As promised here are some pictures from our little break away. The snow caused a few things to be tricky, mostly not all the foot and cycle paths could be gritted and the ice that came on Wednesday meant we couldn't use the bikes at all, plus the adventure playgrounds that GS loves so much were out of bounds and taped off for health and safety, understandable but still disapointing, but regardless of all that it was lovely, just the break we needed and we always relax away from it all in the woodland surrounded by nature and good food :)

Now i am ready for organising our next break away :)

I have been trying to find things to occupy GS (AKA The Mancub) lately, i think the bad weather plus his high energy levels mean he is utterly bored with the same old same old and being stuck mostly indoors and needs to run off his energy, I've tried having friends round, crafts, baking etc but he is so highly strung that he only has a 5 minute attention span with anything right now, is easily irritable and is basically hard work. It means I am spending most of my days trying not to shout at him (hard) and explain that he needs to play nicely/sit nicely/eat nicely/not throw things/not fly off the sofa in an impression of Buzz Lightyear/not attempt to saw my head off with his toolset/not keep getting DVDs out to watch/ not make a mini mountain of books and stand on them at the summit... aaah the joys of toddlerdom! I am beginning to find myself a) hankering after warmer weather so we can get out more b) yearning a more local cheap/free soft play centre and c) putting him infront of his much asked for DVDs and trying not to feel like a bad mother for letting him watch films rather than trying to keep him entertained doing other more educational things... bah! Anyway, Granny Nanny, Mr G.T. & I have come together and are going to try and put more wet weather action in to play, we have started to go swimming every Sunday morning, not a cheap pasttime but its worth it, and also we've researched a few more local "Messy Play" and toddler sessions at centres we can go to across the week. Failing that I am hoping that the rain clears soon and we can grab in a few more walks, kickabouts and gardening in to the equation, before we start being able to recite Toy Story verbatim, oops too late!

However, on a glorious break for escape yesterday we visited the local garden centre which i adore, even in Winter it has delights that I crave, bad news is it makes me spend money, good news is we now have a lovely new feeding station for our beloved garden birds, a lemon tree that was half price (Granny Nanny's new pride and joy for the conservatory) and 5 Raspberry plants to get caned up in a few more weeks, hurrah! We have big plans for the garden this year, last year we got some stuff done but what with my ill health it took a back burner understandably, now we are putting money away every month in the savings account so we can start getting the fence and decking painted, decking done for the front garden, gravel down on the lining and final touches made to the front such as a water feature etc hopefully. I hope to produce some before, during and after pictures in the following months!