Exchange of contracts!

Exchange of contracts!, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Yay - it actually happened! This morning we exchanged contracts. Our lovely flat is no longer ours and the new house has our name on it.

We are relieved beyond words. As you can see, I stuck closely to Jules's new diet for the first course but out of shot there was a thick wedge of Brie de Meaux and a sticky toffee pudding in the kitchen. So delish!

The hard part's over - now we just have to physically move.

Willy has spent most of the day asking what is coming i.e. 'Is Mr Dinosaur coming?' 'And the cars?' 'And the toy chest?' 'And the toilet?'. I try to reassure him as best I can, but anyone can see that for him it is a huge deal.

Sofia is a bit distressed that she still doesn't get her own room (we're using bedroom 3 as a study) but thrilled about having a cat (after our NZ holiday).

Moving day is next Friday 29 June. Hooray!

Flat out Saturday

Just had a little nap while Jules did bedtime stories and woke up dazed and confused at 9.15pm, saying 'Is it morning?' Must have been a tiring day.

Started with a long run at 7.30am, then breakfast in front of the rug-berry, then off to Primrose Hill to take Sofia and Willy to best-friend Leah's Stagecoach (performing arts school) birthday party. Willy fell asleep in car so missed most of it but we had a nice walk down to Camden with the pushchair while Sofia was rehearsing the show for the parents (to be performed after the cake).

Found a completely amazing Whole Foods store where we got coffee for Leah's mum and dad and me - could have happily spent up large on the fabulous collection of champagne truffles and the like. (In what way are champagne truffles whole food? Lentils and other pulses I get, but surely some processing is involved in a champagne truffle, even if the chocolate is organic!)

Then back for the birthday cake and the show. Willy joined in the show despite having missed all the rehearsal and just sat in the middle of the floor smiling while everyone danced around - very funny. They sang 'When you wish upon a star' and Sofia couldn't stop jumping, she was so excited. Apparently she likes drama - drama day is Wednesday at school and she always looks forward to it, unlike PE day (Tuesday) which she seems to dread.

Wildlife spotting - juvenile fox in our garden this afternoon right down by the clothes line and also I saw a rat under one of the bridges over the canal this morning.

Morning visitor to our garden

Visitor to our garden, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Jules was out picking up Sofia from her sleepover, but William and I had a good long look at the fox through our french doors in the kitchen. We looked at him and he looked at us for several minutes, until Funnyfoot, our next door neighbours' cat, ran him out of town.

William and the Queen

Willy and the queen, originally uploaded by Racmol.

School tea party with Jubilee cupcakes

School tea party with Jubilee cupcakes, originally uploaded by Racmol.

View down the river over Embankment Gardens

View down the river over Embankment Gardens, originally uploaded by Racmol.

The Royal Barge

The Royal Barge, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Watching the Diamond Jubilee boat pageant

Sofia, Willy and Olivia watch the boats, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Today we all trooped into central London to watch the Diamond Jubilee boat pageant on the river from the comfort of Jules's office.

Willy fell asleep at Piccadilly Circus and woke up again as Jules put him down on a couch, having carried him all the way to the office from Charing Cross. It was quite busy but not impossibly so - I guess the rain must have kept the numbers down.

Jules's office has great long windows so even the little kids had a great view. We were allowed out on the roof terrace but I found I just got too nervous about the kids trying to climb up on chairs. And the windows near Jules's desk were actually closer to the river.

Also, when we were out on the roof terrace Fia kept saying loudly 'Why can't we stand on the tables? That man's on a table. What's he doing up on that table?' (That man was a founding partner of the firm.)

We got quite wet coming home. Now Fia has gone off on her first ever sleepover at her best friend Leah's house. Jules dropped her off and apparently she didn't even say goodbye but just squealed with delight and ran up the stairs so I think she'll be fine.

More photos of the boats to come.

Swan family on Regents Canal

Swan family, originally uploaded by Racmol.


You can just about make out the cygnet. In my defence, I only had my iphone with me on my run and they were on the far side of the canal. 

London wildlife on Regents Canal

Geese family, Regents Canal, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Lovely run this morning. Left before my 6.30am alarm and already could tell today was going to be a scorcher. Along Regents Canal I met this family of geese and also a family of swans which I will post next.

Today we walked from home to Willesden Junction with the kids on their bikes. We did stop for lunch at Gracelands and an ice cream at Roundwood Park but I still thought they did very well - must be about 4km all up.

Weekly round-up

So it looks as if we're really going to move to a new house - a proper family home with our own front door and nobody living above or below us. Hopefully we'll come to an amicable agreement with the vendors in the next day or two and then we can set a moving date. The date we're discussing is 30 June - better start sorting out our stuff.

In other news, we have a Star of the Week certificate this week (Sofia) for 'trying very hard in every area'. The scary headteacher reads this out in whole school assembly and you get to go up to the podium and collect it. We've had a few weeks of 'I never win ANYTHING!' and 'I never get a sticker' so it was great to finally get something tangible to hold onto. I might mention that she did NOT get an Attendance Award after her wicked parents took her to Florida for the last day before half-term in February!

Willy has graduated to using the big toilet instead of the potty chair and I couldn't be more thrilled. They've both just got into my bed and want to see plane photos of the plane we're going to New Zealand on so I'd better stop blogging. Our latest in-car CD is 'Kiwi JIngle Bells' - clearly we can't wait for our big holiday at Christmas...

Lovely family day out in Brighton

DSC02062, originally uploaded by Racmol.

On Bank holiday Monday we went to Brighton on the train, just for the hell of it. £10 return each for Jules and me and the kids were free.

Sofia found a £2 coin on the beach and was beyond excited. 'I'm rich, Mummy!' etc. Spent it immediately on a merry-go-round ride.

Poured with rain while we had lunch and then the sun came out afterwards and we wandered along the beach and looked at the little galleries under the bridge. Bought a little wooden pig for our new garden...more on that in the next post.

We love Minipicassos

We love Minipicassos on a Wednesday - Sofia gets to do proper grown-up painting with acrylics and canvas and I get to relax with a coffee and a book. And then we pick up Willy from Hopscotch. Win-win-win, as they say :)

Willy's latest hobby

DSC02045, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Long may it continue! It takes about an hour to do the breakfast dishes and the floor gets very wet, but he's getting pretty good at it :)

Big and Small

Big and Small, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia's 5th birthday party

The Dinosaur Assembly

Princess Cake - never again

Princess Cake - never again, originally uploaded by Racmol.

If you suspect (as most women do) that Barbie's legs are just a tad longer than is strictly necessary or realistic, try making a princess cake for a Barbie doll.

So, we have a glass bowl which is a good shape for a skirt but alas nowhere near tall enough unless you hack Barbie's legs off at the knees. Which I did consider as a viable option at one point.

So then I made a two-layer cake to go underneath the bowl-shaped cake. Which was all well and good except that by the time I'd hacked them all into shape and stuck them together with jam and cream my enthusiasm was flagging.

Somehow I thought it would be quicker just to dump all the icing sugar and butter in a bowl together and beat them for the buttercream icing, rather than creaming the butter and gradually adding icing sugar.

You may remember last year Ali came to the rescue with the castle cake? This year she arrived to find me enveloped in a cloud of icing sugar with the egg beaters making an odd groaning noise in a weird gloopy icing. (I panicked and added too much milk.) She calmly prescribed more icing sugar and the day was saved. Even if the decorating was a bit slap dash by then and (the shame of it all) you can still see the layers of cake through the skirt.

We quickly decamped upstairs to sing happy birthday to the birthday girl and cut some very long thin wedges of cake. Five minutes later I looked over and noticed that the entire top layer had fallen off and was lying upside down on the table. Definitely not one for the party - I wonder if I can talk her into a simple butterfly? Once I've bought the new electric beaters, that is...

More on Florida later.

Florida rundown - Part One

This is the scene we left behind us as we jetted out on Friday. Thursday night was a bit of an anxious one as the snow was already settling on the ground before we went to bed but luckily it didn't get much heavier and the roads were clear in the morning.

The kids slept through Friday night pretty well, although once they were up at 5, they were up. Luckily breakfast started at 7 am and the shuttle to the Disney parks arrived at 8.30. It's a bit more of a mission to get around than at Disneyland Paris - we had to take two monorails from where we got dropped off to get to the Magic Kingdom, or a bus when we went to Hollywood Studios and the Animal Kingdom. Everything is much more spread out, and Downtown Disney, which was near our hotel, is not in fact right outside the parks, which are not right next to each other anyway. Still there was plenty of variety transport-wise for the transport buffs in the family - monorail, ferry, bus, taxi, rental car...



The first two days we went to the Magic Kingdom - here are the odd couple in front of the fairytale castle on Sunday morning. That day there were severe weather warnings and discussions of frost destroying crops at breakfast time. It was about 10 degrees going across on the ferry (monorail having technical difficulties) and we were wearing every layer we could think of but it soon warmed up and apart from that it was in the 20s every day.


Willy got to meet the 'real' Buzz Lightyear the first day and we all enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear ride multiple times. You sit in little spaceships that you can swivel in all directions and shoot at things with your laser as you go past.

By Sunday Jules and I were about Buzz-ed out so we rode Space Mountain with the fastpass parent swap option. Sofia qualified to ride it too, just, heightwise, but we decided she would hate it as it was dark and you got flung about in your seat a far bit. We much preferred Expedition Everest and Aerosmith's Rock n Rollercoaster at Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios respectively. Sofia did ride the Tower of Terror with Jules at Hollywood Studios so she has something to show off about for Show and Tell on Monday.

I'll stop here as it's time for bed really but here is a charming shot at Kennedy Space Center to finish.







  

Willy turns 3