Weekly round-up

Once again, a very quiet week... the weather just hasn't been too good which hasn't helped, and I'm running very low on energy... in need of some R&R I think!

Saw this steam engine pass by the house last saturday (when this picture is from... by the time I realised what I was seeing and ran for the camera it was half way down the road!) and it popped past again today!

We seemed to be in 'pancake' mood this week (Spike watched some episodes of Peppa Pig and they made pancakes in one, so it all started from there!)... so here's Spike rustling some up ready for cooking.

Washing hands after cooking is definitely the best bit!

We made cakes this week too... here's Bubbles mixing fast and furious.

Mum suggested we went to the Beach on Friday as the weather was actually nice... so we decided to head off to Birmingham to do just that... ! YES, we went to the beach IN Birmingham!! The kids were very very excited, as we got to go on the train... in fact, they were in such a hurry to get going that Bubbles actually offered to help brush Spike's teeth - I was so blessed! It was great to see them helping each other out, instead of squabbling and fighting which seems to be happening rather a lot lately!

Bubble's took one of her Sylvanian families... the Pettyfur guinea pigs, complete with bucket for making sand castles.

Spike took some of his cars.

Here's Bubbles on the train.

And the photos of our time on the beach......................... grr... the camera decided to corrupt all the photos pertaining to our trip out on Friday (except for the 4 above). How ANNOYING!! So, I'll have to see if Dad took any photos... but he probably didn't have any of the outstanding sand castle that Spike and I made... we made Edinburgh Castle! And Bubbles laboured and made about 26 tiny sand castles with the Sylvanian family bucket, and protected them from tiny feet and flying hula-hoops and little boys with digger toys, and butterflies, wasps and bird poo (yip, some landed on her knee! made the day more authentic!)... and we took a lovely photo of the Pettyfurs with the finished result... and nothing to show for it ! That's life I guess!

So, how did we manage to go to the beach in Birmingham?! Well, right in the centre, they cordoned off a small area, and filled it with sand and deck chairs! It was lovely! Since we are probably about a 2hr journey from the beach now (struggling with that concept, having lived so close to the beach before) this was a lovely treat! We also had our first trip through Birmingham, somewhere we haven't been before (ok, it wasn't hugely exciting, but it might be a useful place for the variety of shops)... and saw the 'bubble wrap' building (as Spike called it!) more commonly known as Selfridges... I'd never heard it was such an iconic building in Birmingham... I'm a bit out of touch! The weather stayed lovely, despite some very black clouds rolling over... and it was a great highlight of the week... somewhat dampened by the loss of the photo memories, but we'll get over it!