Spring weather, lovely coastal walk, etc

I think this is nearly a record (certainly for this year), to be posting my 3rd blog post in the month! I wonder if I'll get another post in before the month is out! lol

Clement's idea of a snack: a nibble of a miniature Thomas train! With his brother sitting ON the table next to him! (Yes, Benjamin seems to end up climbing on top of everything - and Clement is learning the art very quickly!)

Playing his brother's guitar

Last week we had the most amazing weather - have to say I was delighted after *months* of freezing winter. It was just sooo nice to be outside in the sunshine - AND finally be able to hang clothes (and nappies!) outside and they actually get dry - or at least nearly dry.

My darling big boy enjoying the nicer weather - not even needing a coat! Though I have to say the cold/rain has returned the last couple of days - with snow in the forecast for next week! Just hope it doesn't actually happen!

On Thursday morning last week we drove a few miles down the road and went for a walk along the coast, around Ballone Castle and Rockfield Village. It was an absolutely lovely day - bright sunshine and dry.

Looking down towards Rockfield Village. You'd never know the place was there, as it was a windy single track road through farms before here, and then a steep road down to these houses, below the cliffs.

Ballone Castle, most of it is 16th century and was in ruins until fairly recent times, when it was bought by a private family and restored. I found an interesting article/interview with the owner and tells what they did: http://www.consortestate.com/article-details.aspx?artID=1073

Up close of the castle as we walked round the grounds of it

The back side of the castle as we walked down to the coast below it.

Me and my wonderful children! :-)

Wearing Clement in the Papoozle (and me looking wind-swept, as always!)

Benjamin running ahead, along the path through the gorse

Two Pied Wagtails along the rocks. I was pleased with the quality of this photo. I tried to get a photo of another bird but it was too blurry.

A lovely photo of Abigail (which is actually a bit rare, as she gets rather camera shy and ends up making funny faces most of the time!) It's just a pity I didn't know the camera was on a "night setting", meaning the lights went funny and it's a bit blurred. But I still like it!

Speaking of Abigail, I'm still finding it hard to believe that this autumn I'll have to be "officially" homeschooling her! As in, she'll be the age for compulsory education. But she thinks she should be doing "school work" all the time, every day - already! Since she's so keen, I've been doing lessons with her most days. Mainly working through a large kindergarten "yearbook"/workbook, which covers everything from practice writing, to maths and other thinking skills. It seem she has a real love for numbers and loves doing basic sums - even writing them out by herself, nearly correctly too! She's also making good progress with reading and can read a lot of words (from working through a series of reading books with her daddy). I think my instinct would be to "let children be children" for as long as is possible. As in, she will (God willing) have enough years of studying ahead of her in her life, so there's no need to start it any sooner than you have to. But as much as she loves doing it, I though I should just go with it. After all, it can only be good practice for me getting into routine of full time homeschooling! :-)

However, Benjamin has made things slightly more complicated, as he's determined that he should be doing schoolwork too! So we've ended up buying a set of workbooks for 3-5 year old, and whilst a lot of it is above him, he's doing quite well with some of the easier pages. Most of the time he's keen to follow the instructions I give him, but he's a very determined little boy and he likes to make up his own rules! Yesterday it was some snakes he was meant to be colouring red, blue, and green. And he's learned to recognise the words red, blue, green, and yellow and knows what colour they are saying. But he insisted the snakes should have green on the tip of their tail - despite seeing the word "red" - and nothing I said could talk him out of it! Or another time it was meant to be tracing over lines and he said he wanted to circle them all - and it was impossible to get him to do anything else! So perhaps him wanting to be doing lessons is actually to give me some extra lessons in patience! lol I'm just thankful that Abigail is very good at following instructions in her books and does what she's meant to. :-)

Abigail and Clement colouring a picture together! :-)

Don't think I've been up to anything much else over the past week or so. Just been researching stuff about nutrition etc and trying to improve our diet! :-) I find the subject very fascinating - though there's often too much information available, and then I wonder who is safe to believe, etc. Of course, there are a lot of people out there, and I *know* I can't trust what they say, because of clearly incorrect information that they give out. So that's a bit easy, but a lot of it is more tricky!

A lot of what I've been reading about has focused on oils - the importance of good oils, and how bad about 90% of the cooking oils are (as in, the need for cold pressed olive oil, because sunflower & vegetable oils are all processed with toxic chemicals). Anyway, I've started cooking with an extra virgin olive oil from Lidl. Whilst it doesn't say it's "cold pressed", it does say solely by mechanical means (so hopefully that means toxin-free!), and trying to give the children plenty of butter on their bread, etc (as it's animal fats like butter that are good for you).

While I was in the middle of thinking/reading about fats and oils last week, I received a phone call from my long-time friend Jeanette who wanted to tell me about Paradox Oil, which she thought might help Benjamin's eczema! I thought it was rather providential for someone to just ring and tell me about an oil, when I'd been thinking about oils in relation to health for a couple of days. :-) This Paradox Oil is a mix of Omega 3, 6 and 9 - which we all hear about being so essential for all aspects of our health! So, I ordered a bottle of it the same night and it arrived on Monday morning (very fast service from the company in Belfast!) and I've been giving Benjamin a daily dose of it since. It can only be good for him, even if it doesn't produce a miracle cure for eczema! So I'm thankful for friends who are thoughtful enough to let me know about things like this, as it looks like a good source for these oils.

But now I think I should stop rambling and get this posted! Lately I feel as if I'm just too tired to go to bed! It's as if I get to the point where I'm so tired that I can't be motivated to finish up the chores around the house so I can get to bed! Thankfully I got everything done in fairly good time tonight - but I'm sitting here blogging instead of sleeping. So think I better move. Goodnight.