Sunny Saturday for Buns

Pretty Far West had a fabulously sophisticated fairy cake post yesterday, so we'll refer to ours as buns- good, honest, wholly unsophisticated buns!

Famished Four return from park and what do they need?

Sustenance and recreation long enough to hail the return of the parent of two.

Yum yum, miam miam; well done, Cooking Amy!

Mental maths

So I'm standing in an orderly line waiting to be called. I am occupying myself in constructive fashion, neither fidgeting nor prodding the people on either side of me. I am not whispering comments designed to amuse or denigrate. I am practising being clear-minded!

I am endeavouring to calculate the sum of the individual items that I have ordered. I am waiting for two things at £1.80 each. This comes from the top of the board on the left. From the bottom of this list I take £2.85. Moving across to the wider board in the middle I am concerned with one £2.00 and one £1.50.

I attempt six times to total all five things. I am ashamed to say that I came up with six different answers each time! One of them was, at least, correct. Needless to say Prince Charming got it right first time and with alacrity. (No writing down of the sum was permitted!)

Answers on a postcard, or in a comment, please!

Hubris

What a word. I like it a lot. It lies between hilarity and hysteria in the dictionary, and I think I'd like some!

Yes, that's definitely what I'm looking for in here.

(Click on the link through this top box to see how the gratitude thing should really be done.)

131. "This butcher's bread makes me much happy."
132. Fresh crusty brown seeded bread from the baker's and the friend to eat it with.
133. Enough of Cooking Catherine's Boxing Day Chutney left to slather on the cheese.
134. New mornings, new weeks; the camera is still rolling.
135. Prince Charming has washed not only the mirey casserole dish, but also the dining room floor.
136. Book Club on Friday night.
137. Another day at home before school on Wednesday.
138. Swimming lessons with teachers more patient than mothers on the sidelines.
139. Burgeoning, awakening notions somewhere in my dusty head that the reason why it all feels so detached and suburban is because I have let it all become detached and suburban- but this need not be always so!
140. The dream of clarity. Clear mind. Clear mindedness. Be clear minded and self-controlled so that... 1 Peter 4:6-8

This winter's mad excursion

Last Christmas holidays after all the excitement of indoor festivities we got up early and mounted the carriage pre-packed with provisions and appropriate clothing. Less than two hours later we were in Phoenix Park and heading for the Zoo. "And you didn't stay over?" everyone asked. "No, we just drove home." After coffee in Starbuck's on Grafton Street, and pizza beside Trinity College.


Yesterday, the roads being clear of snow and the skies calmed of storms, we decided to go to Kilkenny to meet a baby. Wise men, after all, recently travelled further for much the same purpose and in considerably less comfort. Three hours exactly from Belfast to Kilkenny it took, so the roars of the Celtic Tiger are still audible of you listen well. They were certainly heard on RTE radio in the interview with Bill Cullen. He might actually have been the Celtic Tiger...

The stern grey castle is no longer softened by all this ivy, and the Nore was high and brown and fast. But there is no other town in Ireland that makes me smile quite so much! Even though the book shop had flooded.

And the baby is lovely!

Baby, it's cold outside!

Oh goodness, the snow has been washed away and replaced by a dictator of a slicing wind! We walked miles in the scrunching snow last week, but I am unashamedly ferrying in the car so far this week. Wet and wild- though too suburban to be wild enough for PC!

Am therefore trying to deny all hibernation tendencies by encouraging some creative colour! This is Jo conjuring up Minibeasts to go with his reader... Good old Santa for thinking of such a busy pack for a small boy's stocking!

I haven't been thankful in a while but I am nonetheless grateful, bringing me to 130 out 1000:

for the FABULOUS three weeks of snow that we had, for my three intrepid men who also loved the FABULOUS three weeks of snow, for the creator God who gives the snow and the rain and the everything, for Jo's insistence that we all say our thanks to that God last Sunday lunch, for the super friends with whom we have shared the last few weeks, for the wine and food and farewell to David Tennant that we all shared because we live in a free and fecund society, for Lorraine who will gleefully host a Book Club this month, for car insurance to hopefully take care of the nasty bits, for my "interesting" school wherein to teach, and for PC who keeps his hand on the rudder- or should I say keeps pulling the sledge!

Prints

Oh how I wish I could take blog-worthy photographs! Maybe that should be my New Year project!

It's actually bright and crisp and even out there; I'm just in from our fabulous scrunch down the hill to school. And how lovely to get back into the Avenue and be able to see their little boot tracks going one way, with mine returning homewards.

I'm supposed to be at the Bean right now for its first convocation of the New Year, but the moment needs to be savoured!

Happy New Year!