Teething troubles

We left Fergus with Grannie today...guess she's found a cure for his teething troubles.
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Growing up

Someone loves his pasta and Ella's kitchen sachets.
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Babysitting in the 21st century

Daddy was hanging out laundry--ailsa go the ipad and lawnchair
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Applique Inspiration

This is the quilt with applique that inspired the other two. I longarm quilted it myself two weeks ago, but just got around to binding it.

Another week, another quilt

The girls' nursery teacher is leaving the school this week, and the poor girl always looks frozen...so I made her a quilt with the same fabric as last week's for Willow. This one is just a bit bigger, with more applique (very fun!) And a green fleece backing.

Fun in the burn

Birthdays

Mom had a lovely birthday, thanks to everyone. The day started uneventfully as I rushed through the kitchen in the dark, at 6am to walk the dogs, only to return at 640 to Alisdair looking at me funny. He'd put my present on the table (with this 'card') and was waiting for my response...I'd completely walked by it. It is a serger (overlocker)! So I can move up in the world and onto clothes making and such with new fabrics. Yipee!
I eventually found my 'real' card, which he'd entrusted to Isla to give me (helpfully, in her play shopping trolley). We had a nice dinner at night. Anne came over. The big excitement was when I opened a bottle of Cherry Tango (soda) and it EXPLODED...squirting out 2 feet and covering me in red liquid. Fergus thought it was HILARIOUS and just started laughing and laughing. (He was next to me). He also has discovered he likes to play 'peek-a-boo' with the ikea washclothes we use to clean him up after meals. He's a very funny little boy and his big gappy teeth, make it even funnier. (He's now got 4 on top and 3 on bottom). He's very good at doing the 'slug' crawl to get around. He hates his carseat though and is into arching his back to try and make it impossible to buckle him in. And he's decided he likes pacifiers to chew on. (After being indifferent for 8 months about them. I suspect it's his little teeth just being sore).

Our own 'wee Scottish Martha Stewart'

We decided to do some crafts yesterday and Isla took on the project of making a dog cushion for Broadie (a labrador who comes to work with the Perth store manager for daddy). She loved drawing chalk lines on her 'leftside out' (if it's right-sides together, she struggles that the opposite is 'wrong' and not 'left') with mom's big quilting rulers, then she cut it out with proper sewing scissors, trimmed scrap wading to fit, pinned it (a bit scarily but the best you'd expect from a 4 year old) and sat on my lap to sew it together.
She was excited to make the letter 'B' to go on it and thrilled at her ingenuity to make the letter out of fabric that has Bicycles on (also a B!)
Too bad her 4 year old attention span wained before it was done, but she is becoming a clever little crafter. (She wanted to sew her 'scarf'--a pink scrap she keeps sewing tiny colour squares on to, instead).

Adventuring we will go

In the crisp autumn air, we ventured out for our dog walk yesterday, and met up with some friends. It's nice that right now the girls are adventurous, and old enough, to do a bit of exploring on their own up the rabbit hills. It was cute seeing them help the younger kids.

Rain

We've had so much rain, a wee fish was spotted way up on the main street in town

Autumn is here!

Favorite Toy

Who needs toys when you have springy doorstops? All three kids love this!

Early Rising

I got up at 5:30am, took Cassie and Charlie and headed up to our new house site on Sunday morning to check out the light from sunrise. Ali'd been up on Saturday and pegged out the house footprint. 7:45 the sun broke the opposite hill. It's gorgeous up there. Too bad the rest of the valley where we live was fog bound until 2pm! Am hoping for some good weather, being tucked back a whole glen east :)

Parties

Isla had a wonderful time at Willow's party! She won pass-the-parcel...a mini 'Hello Kitty' tea set, loved the games with the parachute, face painting, the pinata, eating HulaHoops off a string and the mini sausages and cupcakes.

Ailsa's

I finished Ailsa, because I said I would.

Isla's beach print quilt

Finished another one last night. I'm under strict orders from Ailsa that her's gets finished today...

Late night sewing

Isla has another birthday party tomorrow. I made this for her little friend Willow's 4th birthday. It has a minky-type backing. (I took the girls to the Scottish Quilt Championships in Edinburgh today and we have all kinds of bits of fabric now :)
A very nice stallholder took the girl's pounds for their super-shiney pink metallic fat quarters, then ever so sly-ly gave the money back to me. He was incredibly nice, kitting the girls out with free cotton bags and everything. They loved all the colors. They got to pet a seeing eye dog (it was the user's idea--I told them to leave it alone), Isla was fascinated with the 'Rapunzel quilt' and after having watched Charlotte's Web too many times, she really enjoyed searching for the winning quilts with their gold rossetts.
Ailsa spent most of her time tackling Isla, stomping her feet to make her (Isla's old) cowboy boots flash and telling me she needed to go to the potty (she's not toilet trained yet) and I brought the stroller as she usually fights to sit in it--not today!
. Once she got some fabric, she promptly sat right down in the middle of the hall and stuffed them all into her bee backpack....very proud of all 'her' purchases...She's a character for sure.

A microcsm

Last night, feeling full of energy and being out in Perth, after we went out to dinner (and successfully retrieved Ailsa's balloon from the toilet at the restaurant), we went to Asda (European Wal-mart). I was excited to see Froot Loops! (If you can get them here, they are about £9/ $15 a box). I got them home, and tried some for breakfast.
Like a lot of stuff here, the box looks the same, but there are only three colors (I imagine EU regulations won't allow some of the artificial dyes!), and they are about 1/3 the sweetness of US ones.
I think it's a bit of a lesson---much of what people claim is the same ('you all speak English...it's the same language') just really isn't...it may look the same, but it's not. Now people here will claim they've had Froot Loops ('I"ve been to the US--I spent 2 weeks at Disneyland and a week in Las Vegas'), and make their judgements off things all by their warped experiences.
Oh well, at least me and my kids know what REAL Froot Loops are :)

A resaturant

We had a meeting after school, no groceries and daddy is travelling so we've gone out to a restaurant. A major adventure.

Autumn mornings

Frost, geese...yup, it's fall!

Modeling their Autumn wear

The places we find Fergus

Someone is very mobile! We find him everywhere.

Motion

Young Mr Troup can officially tummy crawl now. Nothing is safe!

The play dough observer

And biscuit eater.

Homemade pink play dough

Ah, what would we do without the church cookbook from 1978?!

Fergus

Fergus, even thru our adventure yesterday just happily tags along. (He was in the backpack and we did discover him eating foliage a few times he'd swipped off trees mom stood to close to, or had taken him under). He is a very patient boy.

Deeper water

Isla prefers the deeper water.

The magic of water

There's something all kids seem to love about sitting in 2 inches of water running smoothly over rocks.

More Rollie Pollie fun

Ailsa really got into it this time and was flying down the hill, bouncing over the divets, laughing all the way.

More farm fun

We went back down to Grannie's to play with some friends. The ground in some spots was over their head, the water had ripped it that deeply!

He loves his swing!

(And his shadow). No wonder kids never go outside anymore if their mom's never hang washing out.

Dopey

My four teeth

Meet our son, Chip (of Chip and Dale). We're hoping his teeth grow together or being a ginger might be the least of his problems!

Phew!

With a name like Fergus, we're awfully relieved he loves shortbread!
(Daddy's been Sunday baking)

This week's project

I have learned to applique. It's not half as scary as I'd thought and actually pretty fun. I have to quilt this still, but finished the top piecing bit. I have so much extra fabric from the 'kit' EVERYONE may be getting one of these for Christmas (the print is called 'Lucy's Crab Shack').

4 teeth now!

Rollie-pollies

All the way down the (very steep) hill.

Making progress

Ailsa's getting pretty accomplished at using the toilet at the right time! Fingers crossed we may soon be down to just Ferg in nappies.

Action shot

Off for more exploring

Ducks

Happy Kids

Dizzy girls

Almost back to the broken road after our long morning o' fun. (We figured out, if we can get to grannie's before 10, Fergus will sleep in the crib in the spare room and she keeps an eye on him, while the girls and I go play 'Adventurer'.). The suits and boots will need a few days to dry before we can go do this again! It's a fabulous way to spend the morning. Searching for wiggly worms, playing in puddles, exploring little used areas of the farm, eating random fruit we find along the way and spotting or just looking for wildlife....and collecting all the sticks/stone and feathers we can carry!! Bliss :)

'Put your hands in the air!'

Choices

We had a little pow-wow and decided it would be best to walk home thru the sheep field (we didn't think Mrs McNicol would mind). Isla volunteered to scale back up the steep bit on Grannie's side to retrieve our stuff.

Contentment

After all the crying and whining, once she got to play in the water, all was well with the world. Note the gate to the left...that's Mrs McNichol's field.

She's happiest when her feet are in water!

Lead Explorer

Our brave 4 year old wanted to be head scout, climb down the steep embankment and check it out for us. She's great about this type of fun. There was a lot of debris from the storm.

The other burn!

When we finally got to the burn Isla was SO excited...and very convinced we were the first people to ever explore that spot. Even Ailsa stopped whining at that point to gleefully yell 'PUDDLE' and try to get down into the water.

More farm adventures

We continued on the path, to then realise we'd never get to the other burn unless we did a little 'off-roading'. Isla was great, doing things like using her bucket to act like a shield against thistles and nettles. I had to carry Ailsa and be creative about knocking down dead trees and going over fences. (Might I add nettle stings on your face REALLY hurt!). This was Isla's comedy pose of throwing this big log.

Plums

Ailsa wasn't impressed by brambles or plums...'Yucky'.