The Photo Gallery: Emotion

I love this photo. In many ways it's fairly ordinary. But it gets me every time.

I took it when my husband was last with us in May. Just before he went back to Afghanistan.

It triggers such a mixture of emotions:

a perfect family day by the sea;

how much I miss him;

how much the kids miss him;

how much easier it is to share.

And it reminds me how much I wish he'd been here last week when the youngest had her scary bike tumble; and how a wave of crushing panic made me realise I'm closer to unravelling than I'd like to think.

I know all these feelings are probably heightened at the moment, because in a few days he'll be back with us for a bit. So, as always happens about now, my defences slip, I'm more emotional and time seems to be slowing down...

Just a few more days and I can stop feeling like I'm holding my breath.

The Gallery theme this week is Emotion.

Day 272 - Mossie Menace

Busy, buzzy, pesky mossie

Zzzz-zing round my bed.

Busy, buzzy, non-stop mossie

dive-bombing my head.

Busy, buzzy, wretched mossie;

don't like it at all.

Busy, buzzy, no more mossie

flattened on the wall.

The Photo Gallery: Sport

My 10 year old is never going to let me forget we were away for the Olympics. He is mad about sport, ANY sport - and I know he'd have been glued to the wall-to-wall coverage at home. Instead he's had to make do with a few snatched highlights on iPlayer. I do have occasional pangs of guilt; and then remind myself it wouldn't have been TV heaven for the other two.

Football is his first love. And from what I can gather, the more time spent diving, sliding or basically throwing yourself to the ground during a game, the better.

This is apparently called an overhead bicycle kick.

It just looks painful to me, but I'm reliably informed it's how Wayne Rooney scored the winning goal in the 2011 Manchester derby. 

This is the other thing: my eldest has an encyclopedic knowledge of football and soaks up any sports facts or news like a sponge. It's given me a glimpse of what he's capable of learning...when he puts his mind to it.

The Gallery theme this week is Sport.

Silent Sunday - 5/8/12

Day 249 - Slacking, packing and pre-holiday snacking

I hate it when my mind starts whirring the minute I wake up; it makes me feel anxious by breakfast. I'm already wound tight, like an elastic band ready to ping. Not the best way to feel before a long drive. I have a lot to do before we go away on sunday, and didn't use my time wisely last week. Knitting a butterfly is never going to be a good excuse...
So I ended up leaving most of it to the last minute; to the last day of school. What spurred me on was knowing the one thing worse than packing, is packing with kids. It's like tackling an obstacle course while little, random water cannon try to knock you off. They are next to useless at helping - constantly asking for things, or unpacking the packing which drives me nuts. Better to do it during school time.

So how much stuff do you take for 5 weeks? It's hard to know.  I decided to go for an optimistic, less bulky pack. No need to do endless loads of washing, as none of the things I'm taking have been out of the cupboard yet this summer. Lord help us if it's cold, we'll be wrapping ourselves in beach towels. I did get a little distracted when I was going through my 7 year old's room, and found a plastic bag full of his year 2 school work. Just fascinating, like a little window to a side you don't see. I really love this painting - definitely a keeper.

But even with a few distractions I managed to get most of this..

...into this,

..and there should be room for my mum's bag and the cat box. Every time we do long trips by car, I vow we're not going to end up with bags tucked round our feet. It's looking promising this time, and if I want it to stay that way I'm going to have to rein in on the food shop. I always go a bit overboard on travel food.

Now the cat: this journey is going to be her worst nightmare. She's going to hate it and probably yowl and make it pretty miserable for all of us. But I can't ask someone to look after her for 5 weeks, and putting her in the cattery would not only be eye-wateringly expensive but also incredibly dull for a prowler like Humbug. So she's jabbed and chipped and has her passport. We even got her a lead, though can't see that working. It's going to be interesting. I'm comforting myself with the thought that she'll love the place when she's there.

And I just want to be there. The whirring mind in the morning isn't just about things I need to do, it's the worry about being responsible for getting everyone there. The day we travel to France will be one of those days I just want to be over. It's not going to be a bundle of laughs: hours in a tightly packed car. All I can say is thank heavens for portable DVD players. I did have such a great time choosing a few new DVDs for the journey, and guess what? I'm inflicting my childhood on the kids..again..

One organised thing I have done is run down the food in the fridge freezer so I can defrost it and turn it off while we're away. Last night we had fish fingers, stew, peas, baked beans and smoked salmon.Yum...

So it's a kind of farewell for now. I'm going to do my best to keep blogging - I'll just have to see how easy it is to find a WIFI connection that doesn't involve spending days at McDonald's.  I probably won't be able to read and comment as much as I'd like, but it'll be back to business in september. Sounds like a long time but I know it will fly. In the meantime happy, happy holidays :)

Day 247 - The Art of avoiding the obvious #TheVeryHungryCaterpillar

I've had the time and space to get on top of things this week before we go away on sunday.
So I knitted a butterfly.
Yes, I know. Not that sensible with five weeks worth of packing to sort out, holiday shopping to do and admin to finish up, but definitely a lot more fun. I am seriously good at putting things off.

I think the idea for this random knit started when we joined the Big Butterfly Count - it's not been going that well due to the lack of butterfly weather. Then I read a lovely post on Jennifer's Little World about celebrating Eric Carle's work with lots of creative ideas and stuff to make based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I dug out the book and had a look at his beautiful butterfly.

It really is such a gorgeous butterfly. And that's when I thought I'd have a go at knitting it. Made perfect sense at the time. So the packing went on hold...
I have a rainbow of colours thanks to my wool-buying addiction, so knew I could make the butterfly nice and bright.

 In the picture each wing is made up of four individual strips. I knitted each one so they tapered in the middle....

...and then folded them over and sewed them up. It was more fiddly and time consuming than I thought, but by this stage I was on a mission and curious to see how it would turn out.

I mirrored the four I'd done, roughly based on Eric Carle's butterfly and then sewed each wing together. The body was just a small rectangle, mostly brown with red at the top for the head. I stuffed it with dried lentils, to give it some weight - and added a small bell, from my Lindt bunny bell collection for a bit of interest. Then sewed the sparkly pipe-cleaner antenna into the head and a few crocheted rossettes for the circles on the wings, though it probably would have been just as easy to embroider them on.
I'm sure I'll pay for using up my valuable child-free packing time, but I am very happy with my butterfly!