Happy Easter !

Happy Easter to you all ! We woke up to find the garden covered in an inch of snow, so after unwrapping Easter presents, Karl and Ella went into the garden to build a snow Easter Chick.

Unfortunately the sun has been out all morning, so the snow melted pretty quickly.

Ella collected a dish full of snow to put in the freezer and by the time the snowman and chick had been dressed, the snow had gone.

Nan has been with us this week, so Ella has spent the week playing, making cards and generally fiddling about.

We had a trip out with the Home Education group on Thursday. We went pond dipping at Coombe Abbey Country Park.

We caught a tiny pike, various water beetles, some worms and an empty Coke bottle. One of the other groups found some frog spawn and we were surprised to see that it was much less developed that the frog spawn we monitored at Nanna and Bampa's pond a few weeks ago.

This afternoon Ella is going on an egg hunt with the other children from the village. I'll post some pictures later....

Frog Spawn, Front Teeth and Fingers...

Ella, Tom and I have just returned from a visit to Nanna and Bampa. It's our first visit since Tom was born, so we had lots of people to see.

We also spent lots of time at the nature area outside N&B's house. We found frog spawn in the dipping pond, so we kept some in a jam jar for a couple of days to monitor their progress. They were just about to reach the tadpole stage when we came home.

Ella got to spend time with Melissa - they played hide-and-seek, went for walks and generally mucked about together.

We took the train back to Paddington on Sunday and met Karl and my friend Treez. Treez, Tom and I went for lunch, while Karl and Ella went to the rather fantastic children's park in Kensington. Ella spent all afternoon looking for the Pilot's ship. When Karl pointed out the enormous wooden ship in the middle of the park, she said "No, that's the pirate's ship". I don't think he had the heart to explain...

Karl had stayed at home to do some painting and finished Ella's room by the time we came home on Sunday. After careful consideration, she declared her new room to be "excellent".

Tom is in fine form. He now has two front teeth and a few more on the way. He will be six months old on Thursday and the plan is to celebrate with a banana, followed by a visit to Imogen and Cameron's house.

The reference to fingers in the title relates to the Viennesse Fingers that Nanna knitted for Ella's pretend fruit and veg shop. After a number of bizarre comments, it seems that Ella thinks "Vienny" is a person, and we've been selling her fingers in our shop (Vienny's fingers)... Probably accounts for the spate of night terrors she had after Christmas..