Sunny Optimism

The weather this summer has been terrible, but today the rain stopped, the clouds parted and the sun came out in all of its glory. We decided to make the most of it and took a trip to Edisford Bridge. We had a lovely time by the river. After, we stopped in Clitheroe town centre for a milkshake and some new ballet shoes. While we were getting little feet measured, Daddy sneaked off to the music shop and bought a little 1/8th scale violin for Kitty. She is VERY excited about it as she has been telling us for about 3 months now that she wants to play a violin. I'm not quite sure how this will turn out as neither me or Daddy has any idea how to play the thing.

I purchased a new cardigan pattern. I'm a little worried that it's beyond my knitting skills. I guess this has just been an optimistic day.

New goat shed

I spotted some old Christmas market chalets at work and thought that one would make a great goat shed. I managed to persuade the Markets Manager to sell me one pretty cheap and we hired a van and picked it up. After loading and unloading about 100 pieces of very heavy shed jigsaw we quickly realised that we had no idea what we were doing and decided to call in some help.

Mum and Dad came up for the weekend and under Dad's instruction we soon got it looking good.

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As usual, Kit got stuck in.

...and Mum spent most of her time kissing the goats.

Should we move?

We have been thinking about moving recently. We have to get Kitty a place at primary school this winter and we have some concerns about the quality of some of our local schools. We have looked at a few houses in better school catchment areas, but we would have to compromise quite a bit on the house to get something affordable. When you wake up to a view like this, it is incredibly hard to imagine giving it up for a house on an estate somewhere.

Little Zebra and the Science Museum

Kitty joined the annual BIG Toddle today to raise money for Barnardos. This year's theme was animals and she wanted to be a Zebra.

We had a lovely day recently at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. It's a great place, free to get in and more than enough to fill a whole day. Kitty's favourite bit was the bubble experiment.

Despite the rain, we went on their little steam train.

Birthday bike and Billy Bragg

Kitty turned three in August. She had two parties, one at Grandma Pih's house and one at Great Mama Kitty's. She really wanted a bike, so on the recommendation of a few friends, we got her a balance bike. She loves it.

Within a few days, she was zooming around the park.

August also brought Billy Bragg to town. As I was working at the festival, we were able to watch his set from the comfort of my office in the Town Hall when the crowd got a little drunk and smokey.

Kit really enjoyed it - especially when the crowd (including us) were all singing along to A New England.

Cold camping

Not been blogging as work is just a nightmare right now. Thankfully I wasn't one of the many people who were made redundant after the first round of cuts to Local Government finances, but my 'new' job now equates to what was previously three peoples work. I'm not enjoying it at all. To make matters worse, the EDL came to town and as part of the emergency planning team I was pretty much working around the clock. It was quite scary and cost the town hundreds of thousands of pounds but thankfully it passed with no major incident or damage.

Kit brightens up my day. She has learned to ride a trike.

We visited a local farm park with nursery. The weather was miserable,

but we had a nice day.

Keeping look-out for wild boar in the woods.

We all needed a break, so when the sun came out we decided to go to the Lakes for the weekend. It may have been sunny, but it was certainly still way to cold for camping. We almost froze to death.

Too tired.

Too cold.

Just right.

Old things

The winter has been harsh and our goat shed has not fared well. The roof has stared to leak and the sides are coming apart. To make sure it stays put until we can get a replacement, we needed to brave the cold and do some emergency repairs.

Our friends Fran and J bought an old H Van. There is a lot of work to do on it, but still we are VERY jealous. One day maybe.