Chez Spud

Early Morning Poppies

There are very, very few benefits to having to get up early every single day of your life once you have children. Admittedly I don’t have to get up ‘that’ early since I make MrSpud get up with them if they wake before the internationally approved Get Up Time of 7am. I totally resigned from getting up with children once I stopped breast feeding them on the basis that I’d done back to back pregnancy, breast feeding, breast feeding AND pregnancy, breast feeding for about 3.5 years. I’ve done my time.

Anyway, I found this wonderful poppy field up the road from our house last week and it’s been niggling at me ever since. It’s screaming to be photographed…snap me..snap me….SNAP ME!!!

But the weather and the light have been rubbish, and I was getting wibbly that the moment of the poppy field glory would pass before I could get up there.

So Bertie got up at 6am today and got in to bed with us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see sunshine peeping around the blind, so I dragged myself out of bed and up to the poppy field. Huzzah! The poppies were still there, but very battered by heavy rain.

I didn’t really get the shots I wanted, but then it’s pretty much always like that. But this is quite nice. Shot with a Nikon D70, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 AT-X for the people who care. At f22, 15mm.

Today we made a 4 hour round trip for a 2 hour children’s party. THAT’S how much we love to party Chez Spud! There were bubbles, cakes, balloons, cake, party games, cake, candles, cake, biscuits, cake, sausages and cake. It was preschooler heaven.

The boys sugar rushed all the way home and both had to take their balloons to bed with them. Caused all kinds of chaos as Bertie had to actually have his balloon IN bed with him, under the duvet to stop it floating up the the ceiling. And Diggy had to lie in bed with his, holding it. Except of course he let go every 5 seconds and then howled because it drifted up to the ceiling beyond his reach. Arggggh!! I tried attaching it to a startled looking stuffed rabbit, but he just threw the rabbit out of his cot and wailed about that too.

Anyone for a cream tea?

This post is really a note to myself when planning Bertie’s 4th birthday party in a few months.

1. Make own cake. Last minute, panicky dash to M&S is no longer acceptable as everyone else is now lovingly making cakes for their offspring.

2. Make cake early given huge likelihood of baking disaster necessitating last minute, panicky dash to M&S.

3. Copy Take inspiration from clever party tea logistics idea: only savoury treats on the table first, sweet stuff comes out once the rabble have eaten something vaguely nutritious. This is to wow and impress other parents with my thoughtful attention to detail, but is mainly to back end the sugar rush so that the rabble leave totally pumped up…you know, right around bedtime. Mwah ha ha.

4. Start making some local friends so that we actually have some people to wow and impress.

5. Borrow Venetia’s hully hooping gadget to make own hula hoops like she did so cleverly. Possibly, she was pulling my leg. I bet Nigella hullies her own hoops.