Easter 2012

We went to Salcombe to The Seaside House for the Easter holidays and it were gert lush!

Oh flipping hell. I have written and rewritten this paragraph but I am finding it hard to get my words out.  I thinks it a combination of having written this post in my head a dozen times, the desire to be humorous and having left it quite a long time between posts. So I'll just natter away and see what twoddle falls out of my head and into the computer.

I love Salcombe. It's a funny little town but there is something for everyone there. Water, sailing, beaches, shops, walks...  and arguably the best sweet shop in the South West. Now I'll say this but please don't judge me, the only thing I'm not keen on is the abundance of the "Rah Rah" set during peak season. Now don't get me wrong it's not so much about them, it's more about me. I find them a little intimidating on mass. It is like another world!

 

We spent the first week of the holiday with Granny and Poppa AND with The Chipper Nelly Gang! Yes you read right. They were there at the same time, it was just a stroll through the boat park and up the estuary to see them. It was quite surreal and magical. I loved our time together en famille. My boys adored Fee and Cleggy's boys. They called them 'The Mates' and wanted to be with them as much as possible. Now I could gush shamelessly but I wont because I don't want to appear odd but I will say The Mates have made me feel excited about my boys inevitable growing up. I feared that as they became proper boys rather than little children I would feel a bit disjointed from them. I worried that I wouldn't quite get them. I was always a girls girl and so have no experience with boys. Now, having spent some time with these three wonderful kids, I feel optimistic about the future in a way I hadn't quite before. I loved chatting to these big lads. I loved their magic tricks, loved their crazy dancing, loved how much they ate! They were great fun and wonderful company. That really is no surprise since Fee and Cleggy are just superb creatures themselves. (By the way Fee, today one of my mates who reads your blog said she thinks Clegg is very handsome. Then Big, out of the blue, said in the car on the way to beavers. "Cleggy is Clever Cleggy. Bery Clever Cleggy" Does that make up for the Wubbish Dad thing?)

Here are a few pics. I was Wubbish at taking photo's when we were there. I took my nice camera but it stayed in the bag and I used my mobile, not very often either. Do go over to Fee's to see her post about their holiday as she has some wonderful pictures of South Devon to peruse.

The boys and I made up a silly High Five hand shake with in about half an hour of meeting.
I always got it wrong!

I love this photo. Happy smiley faces.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

This is not a typical shot of these two. Geordie Boy is usually blurry because he is so busy and this must be the only time he wasn't grinning from ear to ear and back again. Alfie, despite being a preteen was utterly charming, not to mention cool, and spent very little time on the DS.

Kenzie's awesome card tricks.

One of my favourite memories from the holiday was Geordie Boy hurtling down the hill in our cheap stroller with Cleggy racing after him. He may or may not have been shouting "Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw" but Fee was definately incapacitated with mirth! Poor Cleggy, every time he said "No" in his Newcastle-ish accent Mr C and I would bellow "Naaaaaaaaaaaaaw" in the style of the teacher from Postman Pat. We thought it was hilarious. I'm sure it wasn't. Sorry chap. 

On Easter Friday my belle souer arrived for the weekend which eased the leaving of The Mates for my boys. We had the usual lovely time all together but the highlight was definately all becoming entranced with the app Draw Free. My Mother in Law was just hilarious, her embellished drawing of pee will go down in family folklore. Along with Uncle Dorv turning fire breather. (Scroll to the end of that very long post)

The second week all the in laws went home and Mr C went back to work. But I wasn't alone as Kmmms and her girls came to stay for a couple of nights.

Kmmms and the sunshine baby

It was so lovely to spend some time together. We chatted, we laughed, drank a little wine in the afternoon in a beer garden, went crabbing, ate ice cream, laughed at Cassette Boy's The Apprentice mash up and did some yarny stuff too. Please do a crochet up date post, Kmmms, so we can see your super Granny Squares.

Kmmms went home on the Wednesday a few hours after Clairey arrived. It was lovely to have that all too brief over lap. It was a bit bonkers in the small cottage with three over excited women, six kids 6 years old and under and one pre toddler, as you can imagine, but memories are made of this.

We took the ferry over to the beach on one of the days. It was a right old palaver. One of my kids kicked off and I was heard shrieking in a PMT style "You better have fun on the beach as you have no idea what an effort it is to get there with this buggy!" Poor kid. 

When we alighted from the boat the rain started falling but it soon cleared and the sky was, again, amazing, the clouds just mesmerizing.

All the children had a fantastic time. Especially Mini Cuckoo who as you can see crawled with speed across the beach and later planted himself in a rock pool before scaling the mountain of rocks to be with his brothers. It was unbelievable, one minute he was at the bottom, the next he was up the top and then he was back down again. We have bred another mountain goat!

Above is a picture of Clairey's blanket. The colours are delish. If you want to see what Kmmms was crocheting then pop over to her blog. Hopefully soon she'll have a moments peace to blog about her lovely granny blanket in the making. I realise I have just repeated myself.

Here's what I was knitting, Alice Caterpillar wrist warmers, the pattern will be in Suzie Johnson's new book which I helped her with by 'modelling' her clever knits. I say modelling but that is a generous description of my efforts. Fortunately Becca Roundhill is a superb photographer and made Suzie's stuff look as amazing on film as they are in real life. These wrist warmers are available to download from Ravelry now too.

And finally I'll leave you with this picture of a boat that tickled me!

xxx