Mission accomplished

Pinata action shot, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, we survived birthday season, although some might argue only just!

It would have helped if the oven hadn't died on Friday. And if Jules hadn't had the flu this weekend. And if this morning's sun hadn't been replaced with pouring rain by 2pm.

Special thanks to:

Antonio and Angharad (downstairs neighbours) for the use of their oven to bake the dinosaur cake. They even left out nibbles and a glass of wine for me!

Auntie Chrissie for conceptual and design work on the castle cake.

Sainsbury's for the slabs of angel cake that got stuck together to make the princess castle.

Alison for icing and decorating the damn thing, at the venue, at the last minute.

Sarah for general cheerful kitchen help, laying out trays of food, pouring drinks, chopping vegetables and even finding time to joke about whether we wanted them as batons and julienned!

Jules for wrapping half the party favour books and standing in one spot holding the pinata for ages and ages, despite having the flu. Also general childminding and finding suitable outlets for Willy's urge to bash.

(A side point - say what you will about Party Pieces, the internet business owned by Kate Middleton's parents, but they do make a nigh-on indestructible pinata for £12, which provided a good half hour of entertainment. In the end I gather it was wrestled to the floor and disembowelled to release the chocolate coins.

Photos are all up on flickr. I would say I was very proud of the castle cake but in the end my involvement was minimal. I iced and decorated the turrets and Alison did everything else.

Thank God for good friends! On that note, I'll go to bed.

On the eve of my daughter's fourth birthday

Sofia's pre-birthday birthday cake, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Dear Sofia,

You are everything I ever wanted in a daughter and more besides. Your beauty and your imagination astound me every day and I feel very fortunate to have you in my life.

I also often feel at a loss as to how to deal with the latest performance over the unavailability of the pink baking skirt, and the refusal to wear anything else.

I have to say, I didn't expect quite such a PINK daughter. I remember shopping for baby clothes with your Auntie Sara. I chose a very cute stripey brown and orange velour suit with a giraffe on the front and Auntie Sara had her doubts as to whether that would really be suitable if you turned out to be a girl.

And then when you were a baby, I discovered Polarn o Pyret, and you spent your babyhood dressed in red and purple with denim dungarees.

Now you're turning four and everything must be pink. I am constructing a pink princess castle cake for the party and I have finally, after weeks of whining about cold legs on the way to nursery, persuaded you into some pink jeans. (They are size 5 slimfit and the legs are not too long - where did that come from?)

People often comment that you are a happy child and I have to agree - you generally have a very sunny outlook on life, which brightens my day every day.

On that topic, not every day has been bright over the last four years. I have suffered postnatal depression twice (once after each child, the second time much worse than the first) and relied heavily on support from family and friends. And even when I was almost completely silent, you still appreciated me jamming blocks together for you wordlessly and heavily editing your bedtime stories.

You won't eat scrambled eggs or baked beans, though, which may well be a consequence of all those days I couldn't summon the energy to cook anything or find the concentration to decide what we needed and shop for it.

You went through a worrying phase of sitting on or biting your little brother, but now you actively look after him and come to his aid if it looks like anyone is being mean to him at nursery.

Every night, Willy says 'I want Fia's bed' and gets in with you. There isn't really room for two toddlers in a toddler bed, so I have to transfer him into his own bed to howls of protest. It's nice that you have that bond, I think.

Tomorrow is your actual birthday, and we hope it is everything you're wishing for. We will take you to see your second actual castle (Windsor) and your Dad, by the sound of his recent phonecall on his way home from work, has over-ordered hugely on breakfast patisseries and other tasty morsels.

Happy birthday sweet pea. Have a lovely sleep.
Love, Mum.

PS The idea for this post comes from dooce.com, who blogged a letter to her daughter every month for the first few years of her life. And the picture opposite is the obligatory pre-birthday birthday cake at nursery this afternoon.

Hope springs eternal

Hope springs eternal, originally uploaded by Racmol.

I rather like the light in this photo, taken one sunny day last week. It looks like we're going to have a good showing of bulbs this year.

Jules is a bit gutted as he took Sofia out in the garden a while back and they each planted a tub of bulbs. He planted his carefully at the right depth and discarded any showing signs of mould.

Sofia went to town with her tub, stuffing in every bulb she could find randomly, including rotten ones, and scarcely covering them at all. A few weeks later, her tub is showing about 5 green shoots and there is zero growth in Jules's tub. Maybe when you're planting as late as the end of January, you should disregard the instructions and plant very shallowly.

Yesterday we went for our first explore of a London suburb we don't know. You'll be hearing a lot more on this subject as we try to find a house we like in an area we like, at a price we can afford.

My money is on Surrey, which looks (at least on the internet) lovely, but Jules fancies a move north, so we thought we'd take the train from Queen's Park to Watford Junction. Willy likes trains, so at least the day wouldn't be totally wasted, was our thinking.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with the train so we had to get out at Harrow and Wealdstone, and then service was suspended north of that point.

It started to rain. Jules's phone had no coverage and couldn't produce a map for us. We walked up the high street on the Wealdstone side of the station (chicken n chips, kebab shops, Iceland) and when we got to the top Jules said 'In a word, no'.

Next week we'll go by car. The problem with taking the train is that, for example, you know there's supposed to be a nice bit of Harrow but it's not so easy to find on foot. Also the troops get rebellious after a bit.

Next week we'll go south west. I like the look of Sutton, Cheam and Surbiton. I'm trying to prepare myself mentally for the fact that any house we find in Surbiton will not be like Tom and Barbara's from The Good LIfe - but even so, it still looks nice.

What happened to the idea of moving back to Wellington or Auckland? In a word, money. While it would be lovely to see more of our families, we're not sure how much more we would actually see them and we ARE sure that these are very expensive cities where we wouldn't have a lot of disposable income.

Still very keen to mind Sara and Luke's farm for them for a few months/a year if they want to go away again though :) New Zealand is beautiful if you take the property ownership side out of the equation.

Heath family recipe attempt no. 1 - Nanny's sponge

Well, it's Saturday and we found a very old can of pitted black cherries in the back of one of our kitchen cupboards, so it seemed like a good excuse to make a cake.

The Heath Dyers of Hawea Flat kindly made Jules a Heath family recipe book for his birthday so he thought he'd try his mum's sponge cake.

Actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember Jules ever making a cake before - at least not since the days of the coconut and chocolate microwave cake he used to make when we were going out. (Pause for nostalgic moment.)

I have to say, it was particularly de-lish. A little on the crunchy side texture-wise perhaps, probably because he rashly substituted Green & Black's hot chocolate granules for the custard powder. NB: They do NOT dissolve in the oven.

Here's a close up of the cake, filled with blackberry jam, whipped cream flavoured with chocolate milk and the aforementioned cherries.

Intrepid cyclist on the Central Otago Rail Trail

Intrepid cyclist, originally uploaded by Racmol.

I was a bit scared of the Central Otago Rail Trail, to be honest. I'm the sort of cyclist who has been known to fall off her bike on a completely flat stretch of road, or even getting out of the driveway at home.

My main worry was that I would brake the wrong way, skid and end up in a pile of gravel with scraped knees and elbows. But it was actually fine - a gentle gradient all the way, as you would expect given that it was once a train line.

Having said that, biking across the viaducts with the wind buffeting you was a bit freaky. And the pitch black inside the tunnels also. But having had a taste, I'm definitely keen to do the whole thing.

A selection of photos from our NZ holiday is now up on flickr. Just click on the lovely image of me in neon (above) to get through to all our photos.