Dining al Fresco -or- Eatin' Yer Tea Outside

We've been having some wonderful weather here in the Middle Lands. The girls love the garden and I'm so grateful for it after too many years in flats it's so good to have a private bit of outdoor space, the hedges are wild and high and the fences are 7 footers so it really does feel quite secluded.
I love watching Lily and Edie play on the trampoline, it's totally fenced in so it's like a giant playpen so I zip 'em in there and get on with important stuff like shaking blossom down from the tree, picking the paint off the shed door and sorting the pegs on the washing line into matching colours.

We haven't got an outdoor table yet, we only have 4 plastic garden chairs because we stole them from Toms' mum, but Edie has her high chair and Lily is happy to eat off of her lap so eating outdors is the new big excitement. It has the added bonus of all the food that gets dropped/thrown on the floor doesn't matter and there's no mess to clean up. In fact, I don't even need to sweep the patio because next doors cat, the big fluffy beast Felix, comes and noms up the dropped bits of pasta and kiwi slices.


Lily came home from golf in her PE kit, which looks like a Victorian bathing suit to me. She loves her pasta & pizza, must be her Italian quarter




Messy girl!


Keek likes to sit near us, always. He's hoping for dropped bits of meat but as they're vegetarians he's shit out of luck! He should learn to be less fussy, like Felix.

Edie is now one. Lily's first year didn't go anywhere near as fast as this, maybe it's just what happens with subsequent children.

Edie now has a whopping six teeth, two at the bottom and four at the top. She still doesn't have much hair but what is coming through seems to be blonde. Tom and I are decidedly dark but one of us must have a bit of Viking, must be Tom. She started walking properly, not just the odd step here and there, just after her birthday and now she loves to move in her new light-up £obscene-amount Clarks trainers. Her feet are huge, 4G which is the average shoe size of most three-year-olds.

Lily is still being The Best Big Sister Ever. I love to watch them playing and interacting, their favourite place to be is the bath closely followed by the garden. Lily's patience amazes me and she genuinely adores Edie, never jealous and always caring. I think the 5 year age gap is a lot to do with it, she's had all her baby-ing and is happy to be the more mature one!