these days

 it's been raining a lot lately and while we use the time in between rain to go outside, we are spenging a lot of time inside at the moment...

-driving around with the Bobby Car

-drawing

 -playing and building with the wood blocks

-or the bigger blocks

-reading

 - or playing with the wood puzzles

First Frost

It was half past ten last night when I let the dogs out in the garden to do their business before we all tucked in for the night. I noticed the grass had turned crispy slightly and the air was crystal clear. I figured it was going to be cold night, and with the way the grass crunched underneath my feet, I figured we most likely would get frost too.

Waking up this morning confirmed my thoughts from last night. The first slight frost was upon us. The boys and me wrapped up and went for a walk in the late hours of the morning. It was kind of foggy but you could see that the sun was waiting behind all the fog. The air was clear and not many people about. Me met Zoe and her mom on our walk, they went to see the horses too. Now it is time to finish the alst work in the garden before everything is tucked in and away for winter.

Hello November

 I have been quiet on the blog lately. But I had so little time to go online in the last few month. The boys have finished changing their daytime routine and right now it suits us. They are down to one nap per day, which they take roughly at 11:30am (depending on when they get up (they might go down at 11am instead). They go to sleep very quickly (like 5-10 minutes) and after that I have an hour and a half min to get some work around the house done. At the moment we are still spending lot's of time outside. It's still ok weather wise and not too wet.  

There is still lot's too do in the garden. I set a temporary play are up in the garden, so I can get some work done but then we had too much rain, to get much done. 2/3 of the garden are done and the blackberries are trimmed back already. Some trees need some cutting still but the major concern is to get the last 1/3 of the garden ready for winter. Anything else is a bonus in my eyes.

My dog has been poorly once again. She had a cyst or tumor on the base of her ear and had an operation last week to remove it. It looks ok so far but we are still waiting for the results. The boys and me took some fall pictures on the one day that it was possible (between rain the previous days and all leaves gone the next day). The dog in the picture is my friends dog. We also celebrated Omi's birthday and spend time inside playing with blogs and reading books. Both boys love their picture books and it's usually the first thing they will get.

going for a walk

September has arrived in full swing and the temperatures have dropped. At the beginning of last week, we still reached 35 degrees Celsius easily and by the end of the week we needed jackets and even hats in the morning. That doesn't stop us from going outside though. The boys love going outside and by now they both want to run on their own feet. As we are out in the country that is something they can do to their hearts contend.  Sometimes we go to they playground but most of the time we are out in the fields. Niki fell the other day and bit his lip, so he is a bit more cautious but Jake will just run faster and faster and laugh and giggle while he does. 

I need to desperately go in the garden. The carrots need harvesting and after the recent rain, the weeds are exploding. I need to weed the garden and prepare the soil but I honestly don't know when to do this. The two of them are too much for my mum to look after outside and I don't want them to sit inside while I am outside. Our garden is not very save to be honest as you can fall out of the garden on the concrete, so someone needs to be next to the boys. I have to come up with something soon I guess.

tomato harvest

Tomato harvest is pretty much underway here. Despite the fact that I have 10 plants less then last year, I have enough tomatoes to harvest some each day. So far I have made soup (and froze some), bruschetta, salad and canned tomato sauce the other night. The sauce should last a few month throughout the winter and the soup, well we will see how long that will last. I still have many tomatoes so will do another round of soup and maybe try my hand on pizza sauce too this year.

Welcome September

Summer is at it's end and September is here. It's still nice and warm here but you can feel the shift in season already in the air. We are still spending the majority of our time outside. Niklas is doing pretty well now with walking on his own in the house, so I want him to practice as much as possible outside barefoot before the shoe season starts. 

We spend the majority of the afternoons on a meadow not far from our home. There we can watch horses and the ducks in the pond and the boys have the freedom to run and crawl around as much as they want. Sometimes we meet some of our friends there but today we were on our own. 

What are you doing this September?

the pond

Jessie has partly damaged her knee, so she tries to avoid going for walks. She is on pain medication but also needs to loose a few kilos, to avoid further damage. As summer has returned, I have taken her with me to the little pond a few minutes walk from our home. There she can swim, which she loves, and it's nice for the boys too. The added benefit is, that it's good for her knee & cools her down. When we were at the pond last night, we saw some some geese and goslings. Jessie totally ignored them and was content to swim and fetch her ball. In return the geese ignored us too.