The way S. sees the world :)

I ran some errands before it was time to pick up S. from daycare. Since I did not want to carry all the groceries back and forth I just swung by our house, left the shopping bags in the hallway and went to get her.

When we got home see looked at the bags from which two pineapples were sticking out (just the leaves were visible), looks at me and asks:

"Mom, did you buy babydragons?"

Our whereabouts

Just realized that I have not shown a single picture of Ashbourne, our current home.

Here is one with S. and her friends in front of our favorite sweets store:

Our street:

Town center leading up to the market place:

The tunnel leading onto Tissington trail, an old railway track, which is now used as bike trail:

Thanks dear! ;)

S. wanted to look at a book yesterday and picked one that gives suggestions for childrens games. As it is quite a boring read we usually look at the pictures and I make up stories. Yesterday, however, she wanted to know what the game was about. It was "describe someone and let the other person guess who it is". To give her an example I described daddy and she had to guess. She: "I!" *muuuuub* wrong, you have blond hair. Guess again. "you" *muuuuub* wrong again. I told her it was daddy and we continued. Next description was her sister but S. guessed wrong again. She totally did not seem to get the concept of the game. I therefore asked her how she would describe me, if someone would ask her what her mommy looks like. She thought about it for a second, made a face as if she was about to cry and replied: "I would say that I don´t have a mommy."

Jamie Olivers 30-min meals

I stumbled upon Jamies new cookbook "30 min meals" at Sainsburys and thought it would be a brilliant buy because I a) love cooking books b) like Jamies tv show c)love bargains (the book was on offer) d)got excited about the possibility to cook nice meals without spending the whole day in the kitchen. The fact that I usually have at least one kid clenched to my leg while cooking and the another one shouting after "maaaaaammmmmma" every 5 min made my decision even easier. Cooking healthy meals quickly was just too tempting to resist.

Oh boy, how mistaken I was!!! So far I have cooked 5 of his dishes (which are usually 2 courses) and I never made it under 45 min (despite skipping the desserts most of the time). The whole idea of making those meals in 30 min seems like multi-tasking gone mad and the fact that I am rather competitive doesn´t make it any better! I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get all the things (he uses like 397343 ingredients for each recipe)in the right bowls, at the right time and in the right size and order. On top of this I needed to constantly stop my 1 year old from eating misdirected pieces after my cutting-slicing-and-grating mania off the floor. So after another, near heart-attack experience I decided tonight to give Jamie his 30 min of fame when presenting his recipes on TV but to stick to the rule: DONT`T TRY THIS AT HOME (at least not in 30 min)!!!

This is, however, not to say don´t buy his book. Most of the recipes are quite nice. The only problem that I have is its promise to help you make healthy dishes quickly, which it totally does not. In fact, the more quickly you try to do it, the more likely it is that you die of a heart attack before you even get to taste it.

Since I intend to wander on earth for a bit longer I decided to ban the book from the kitchen on weekdays but I will definitely try some more when there´s time for it.

This said I should mention that we had a delicious dinner tonight. M. gave it 8.5 points/10. One of the best scores in our shared history. We had monkfish, which I bought at the local market here in Ashbourne, accompanied by a tagine with mussels and couscous. Totally loved it. Even S., who has become a rather picky eater lately asked for more twice.

Ring a ring a roses

I forget something interesting. When I read up on Eyam I stumbled upon a page, explaining how the nursery rhyme "ring a ring a roses" came about. According to the source it describes the symptoms of plague. One sign of the infection was a dark red rash like a ‘ring of roses'. A ‘pocketful of posies' was a bunch of herbs people carried to ward off the disease. ‘Atishoo, atishoo' was the sound of sneezing as the plague took hold. Finally came death - ‘we all fall down'.

I don´t know if this is is the true origin of the nursery but it is certainly very intriguing. It also makes the german version of the nursery extremely boring. Even though it starts off with a ring of roses as well it continious with "boys wear pants and girls wear skirts" and finishes off with "everyone falling in the mud". Not much room for interpretation really...

My internet connection...

is killing me. I am really sorry for not keeping up the writing but it takes ages for me to log into blogger right now. Just to start a new posting takes about 4 min... I am not sure what makes the connection so slow. I have been looking for strange activities, ran netstates, checked my firewall and yet I could not find any reason. Yesterday I was ready to throw the computer against the wall but today my rage is gone and the focus has shifted to a more productive state of mind. Lets use it wisely and finish this posting. :)

I wrote in my last post that we were in Shrewsbury and Eyam, which are both really nice towns. If you are interested in some pics, here are some for Shrewsbury
and some for Eyam


I have written about Eyam (the plague village) earlier but this time we got to spent a bit more time since none of the kids got sick. :)

What I really like about it is that all the little stone built cottages and shops have plaques attached to them which give a brief overview of who lived in the house during the plague and how the plague impacted that particular family. That way you get a nice lesson on Eyams fascinating history which unfolds while you are walking through the village.

We started our tour by looking at Eyam hall, a 17th century manor house. However, as both hall and the nearby museum were closed, we continued our walk to have a look at the village stocks where offending miners who committed relatively minor
offences were punished. S. was totally fascinated.

In close proximity and likely the heart of Eyam is the church. The Saxon cross in the graveyard dates back to the 7th century and is apparently intimately linked to the village itself. I loved this grave in particular:

After a few minutes walk we finally reached the clean, picturesque center of the village. It is rather small and you come across a few shops, cafes and the Minors Arms a pub that dates back to 1630 and is now the only pub left. The latter looked really nice and I wouldn´t have minded to sit down and have a nice and cold ale. :)
Having the kids and the car with us, however, we decided to go for the quaint little tea shop called the Peak Pentry instead. A success. We ate lunch there and loved it! They were super kids friendly and the food was great! We tried one of their huge Sandwiches, a lovely cottage pie and a delicous stilton broccoli soup. Very English and yet very good. ;)

All right, need to pick up Sara now. Will write some more later.

Stockholm, Shrewsbury and Eyam again

Much has happened during the last 2 weeks and I wasn´t really good about updating this blog. Sorry for that!
As I mentioned earlier, I. and me went to Sweden for a couple days and it was awesome. Not only that it felt quite luxurious to go around with just one child but the trip also made me realize how much I miss Stockholm. It´s been so nice to meet all my friends and to walk through town.

The flight went really smoothly as well. I was allowed to take the pushchair to the gate, which was great because it was more convenient for me and it also speed up our check in since we got to use the "fast lane" for "luggage and body check".

However, the latter was a bit of a 2-sided coin. Though quicker, I arrived at the control station and was totally unprepared, meaning I still had my jacket and belt on, I. had her Overall on and I hadn´t unstrapped the sleeping bag that I. has in her pushchair. As it was my turn right away, I took out I. from the pushchair and started to undress the two of us. I then put I. on the ground and started to unstrap the sleeping bag from the pushchair. I. was standing behind it. The guy at the control praised her for being so good and standing so still. I didn´t pay much attention because the cue behind me got longer and longer and I got a bit stressed. Just wanted to get through with everything. Once I was finished the guy said again how amazing it was that I. stood so still. I finally looked at her and got to see this tiny person standing in a position like she wanted to ski-jump, with a red head and eyes that looked like they were about to pop out.
Haha. No wonder she didn´t move! ;) People in the other cues were pointing at her and laughing and so did I. It looked really funny and I think it was only the controller, who didn´t understand that big business was going on in front of him.
Ok, need to get S. now but there is more to come later.