Winter at the London Temple

When we went to the temple in the first half of January it was really freezing. A statue of the angel Moroni had been added to the top of the spire over Christmas, but we had been too ill to venture out before. We were hoping all the scaffolding would be gone before we went, but it still isn't (I went with the Young Women last night and it's all still there). So here is a first sneaky view of "Roni" as Peter calls him through the scaffolding.




Hannah was too cold to go for a walk to start with - she wanted to be in the warm for a while. The rest of us went to see the water though. It was frozen quite strangely, with sort of floating blocks of ice on top of the normal level of ice. We liked this leaf that was frozen within the water.





The resident duck (there seems to just be one at the moment) was in the not so frozen stream instead and of course came over to say hello on realising there was somebody around. There was a lovely BIG Robin right there too that kept coming up close, and another much smaller one that was flying around the same area.









We were all pretty freezing so went inside quite quickly and the children first explored the waiting room while we had a snack (no eating/drinking in the visitor's centre). There are two glass tables there which some of the girls thought was perfect for a glass case for Snow White to sleep in! Rachel was a little too realistic! Sarah couldn't quite keep a smile off her face. Peter just thought it was fun to lie down with everyone else, and Rebekah decided being Sleeping Beauty on top of the table was a much better idea! Hannah was being a little too grown up for such play, but I thought she looked gorgeous in such colourful clothes and colours all around her so took a picture of her too. Needless to say we were the only ones in the room at the time!!








Once Daddy went into the temple and we got into the visitor's centre (which they all like spending time in), everyone split to do their own exploring. Peter likes to watch the videos of the apostles and prophets best, so we watched a few of those, with him choosing which he wanted to see from the pictures on the wall. He was repeating a lot of the names after told him who they were, and for President Uchtdorf he said "Elder Dorfdorf" which I thought was fun.

Last week when I was looking at a church magazine as Peter came up to me I showed him various pictures inside, and then he asked me "Where's Duff Duff?" I didn't know what he was saying, but after he'd repeated himself the second time he said "Where's Elder Duff Duff?" and I remembered. We did find a picture of him. When I call him by his real name (President Uchtdorf) Peter now corrects me - he knows what it is really!

Our first snow fall!

We actually got snow here in Brighton a few days ago. Not nice and thick like so many people have had it, but it settled this time - all the half an inch of it! It was enough for our children to be so excited in the morning that they rushed through getting ready in the morning probably for the first time since we got here! No complaints over getting dressed that day. I had to go out that morning, but enjoyed watching them for a little while from my warm bedroom while I got ready to go. They had such fun, and tried everything to get every bit of snow possible from any surface they could find. As a result, three days later, when everybody else's snow has long since melted away, we still have a load of it in our back garden - in the shape of a goblin would you believe!

They started off with the intention of building a snow foal lying down, but came to the conclusion in the end that it was too hard, so went for a snow goblin instead! The library here seems to have all of the Rainbow Fairies books, so they are making their way through them in order (Jack Frost and his goblins take part in every book). They are easy reads, so it won't take very long to have read the whole lot, but we have fairy thoughts on the go much of the time right now because of it! They found the website for it and have been creating their own fairies and printing them off to cut out and play with. Rachel chose to paint some of them this afternoon when she and Hannah decided to do some watercolour painting. Watercolour and fairies seem to go pretty well together and she was extremely happy with the result.

Enjoy the goblin!

A nice slow Christmas for us

Well, I wasn't really getting better last time I wrote apparently. I was back in bed the next day, and much of the time throughout Christmas and New Year. So our Christmas has been a very slow one with lots of staying indoors, or even in bed, and not much happening. It's not quite what we'd planned, but it's what we needed.

I woke up on Christmas morning though feeling good, having had a beautiful night's sleep, the best in at least a few months. I was able to get up and be a part of opening stockings, acting out the nativity, and sharing gifts. So we have a few photos too. My body had had enough by mid afternoon so I slept for a while back in bed while Michael did a great job of making our Christmas dinner, and the children played with their presents. I got up to eat with a lot of help, and was glad I could be around again having felt so rough. We also enjoyed having a way too late webcam conversation with Michael's sister and friend in America before everyone went off to bed for the night.

Peter was so funny all day with the presents. He had insisted for weeks before that he didn't want any presents. Just nuts. :o) When he saw the stockings though nothing could make him wait to open his, and then his eye was on opening the presents - whether from him or not. We had to tape a few back up again for the real recipient to open them. Then for days afterwards he kept complaining that he couldn't find any more presents to open! He did find one for Michael's birthday, which now needs re-wrapping, and was so pleased about it he came up to tell me (in bed) that he'd opened another present (all smiles). :o) Luckily for him I'd been too ill to wrap all of their presents so they had them from two other relatives a few days later. Short lived excitement for Peter, but then he was rather absorbed in his new farm sticker book after that, and has chosen it as a bed time story several times since.




Hannah was thrilled with anything to do with horses, which she actually received quite a bit of this Christmas.


Silly Mum wearing Rebekah's Mrs. Christmas hat in a very strange way, and my lovely wooden heart necklace that I was delighted to find in my own stocking.


Rebekah was SO excited to share with her siblings the presents she had chosen for them this Christmas. Giving was most definately part of the fun for all of the girls this year as they each chose to buy their own gifts for the first time.


Michael showing Peter how to unscrew his new car from its packaging. Peter loves tools at least as much as cars, so loved having a go himself.


Do you see Rachel's face? That is her undeniably excited reaction to finally having some "little lego" after years and years of wanting some. She's only been waiting since she was four or five, and was most definately over the moon! :o)






Everyone was delighted with canteloupe melon and yummy cherries for desert. Can you tell?







Peter enjoying some Daddy time with his new sticker book.


Peter doing one of his favourite things (jigsaw puzzles) in one of his favourite places (ON the dining table).

The normal winter thing!

We have been really ill for the last week. Michael was in bed for nearly a week, followed by exams the next week - he feels like he did okay despite only being well and alert from the Sunday, so not much revision happened there. As well as he could expect to anyway! Then Peter got a cough, which is about when my parents paid us a little visit. We met at the temple in the pouring rain - Michael and I really couldn't have gone to the temple without Peter without absolutely major disappointment on Peter's part though! We enjoyed the visitor's centre for a little while, and then had lunch in a little out of the way room, and then Mum and Dad took the children to their Primary party while Michael and I spent some time TOGETHER in the temple for the first time in a very, very long time. They were there for the children's sacrament primary presentation the following day too. Rebekah gave the first talk with a little help from Mummy and seemed to totally enjoy it, and even totally enjoy being up there the whole time. No shyness at all. They all gave a talk and joined in with the singing and seemed to really enjoy themselves. :o)






Well just after that Rebekah became very poorly with flu. We've all had a share of it now - some worse than others. You can't not share things in families can you, or at least you don't seem to get much of a choice with the nasty things like that! After being in bed for three days, and not even seeing downstairs for more than two of those, I was well enough to get up this morning and take Rachel, Hannah and Sarah to church. They all really wanted to go, and Rachel and Hannah were keen to sing the song on their own in sacrament meeting that we were supposed to be singing as a family. They did a verse of another one on their own too and sang with the choir for the rest of it. They seemed to enjoy it. The quartet I should have sung in sounded great as a trio luckily! I had so been looking forward to this Sunday, and especially all of the singing we would be involved in. Talking has been more than enough until today though. I stuck around during sacrament meeting in the relief society room which is right at the back of our chapel (so I wouldn't be near anyone), but it exhausted me so much that I needed to go back to bed to rest a while before going back to pick the girls up at the end of church.

Peter, Michael and Rebekah watched church videos for most of the day, with Michael and Rebekah falling asleep in turn (Peter and Rebekah had seemed to get a bit better later i the week but then came right back down again yesterday). We watched a few videos in the afternoon together, and decided in the end to watch a Christmas Mormon tabernacle choir show for our family home evening, so everyone could join in. A bit too much video watching for one day! (Peter fell asleep during that in the end though. He hadn't fallen asleep until midnight the night before after crying for hours that his ear was hurting, but not letting us give him any medicine. When we finally got some into him, he was straight asleep and slept straight through.) We finished off by watching a video on You Tube of the angel Moroni being put on the London temple during the last week. We're hoping the scaffolding will be off so that we can see it properly when we are finally well enough to go back there and see the Christmas lights, etc. This week, or next week I suppose it might be now. Then we sang a carol by the light of the Christmas tree and the candles I had finally restocked from last year, and listened to a lovely christmas story from the Friend magazine the year Michael was baptised. Hopefully everyone will be asleep soon (illnesses depending)! That finish to the day should have been happening for a while now, but illnesses have somewhat got in the way of everything. It's nice to have started it though. It'll feel a bit Christmassy from now on hopefully.

Michael, Rebekah and Peter stayed in their pyjamas and rested all day today. Actually Peter has been in his since Friday night - all weekend. :o) Rachel looked at Michael this afternoon and laughed though because she said he looked like a fisherman! I could totally see it when I looked at him. As well as the pyjamas he has been wearing his winter hat and a scarf round his neck for most of the last two days. I'm sure the stubble helped a bit too though. :o)




So anyway, while the camera was out, I had to take a few other pictures too. I had been putting a few more decorations up in the living room (something that has happened in tiny bursts in between feeling really ill!) while the children watched a video this afternoon and Michael slept - he said he was fine not going to bed, so ended up looking very strange lying on a settee instead. I think it was to block off all sound and light!



I couldn't work out where to put the last bit of tinsel I had in my hand, so ended it up with it tied in a bow on me. I do look rather silly, but Sarah did want to take a photo and I've let Michael look silly on here so...




Then here's bump at 17 weeks (pictorially is probably the best way to show bump we figured, and we've never taken many pictures of me pregnant before, or of me at all really, so I get to be in the family a bit more for a while too!) ...



... and the children in their Christmas clothes, and of course the obligatory pyjamas. :o)







Maybe some of the things we had planned for Christmas will still happen. I hope so. We do hope everyone else is well this winter, especially this Christmas, and in case you don't look at this again before then, or I don't put anything else on here before then, we hope everyone has a really especially celebratory wonderfully HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!

Balloon Modelling

Here are a giraffe, a humming bird and a dog that I made. I like making them a lot.
it is fun to make them.

The first video

I have only been trying to upload these two videos for more than a week and every time, no matter what I did, it failed. I thought I'd just try it again tonight, and it's deciding to work - one per post, but it works. Yippee!

This was Michael telling the children about the baby. It had been a calm(ish) devotional until just before this. Hannah was certain the reason we read the scriptures we did that morning was because of her cousin who would be born the following day. So in response it got a little more playful and manic. :o) You can't miss Sarah's response, and the others showed theirs gradually, but all very excited after a few minutes had gone by and the news had sunk in!

The second video

My little bit of time with Peter afterwards. He showed that he clearly understood!