Baby, It's Cold Outside

I really can't stay - Baby it's cold outside
I've got to go away - Baby it's cold outside
This evening has been - Been hoping that you'd drop in
So very nice - I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice
My mother will start to worry - Beautiful, what's your hurry
My father will be pacing the floor - Listen to the fireplace roar
So really I'd better scurry - Beautiful, please don't hurry
Well maybe just a half a drink more - Put some music on while I pour

Lazy weekends, a thing of the past?

I don't know what it is about my weekends of late, but they seem to fly by so quickly.  Jam packed with all sorts of things, leaving little time for those lazy Saturdays or lazy Sundays.

This weekend was spent with my friends girls, meeting up with my cousin from the UK, who is over here visiting a gentleman fellow.  Catching up with my husband who I hadn't seen for a week.  Working on the house, shopping for the house, visiting with a friend, and goodness knows what else.

Now its a little after 5pm, and I am finally sitting down, with a cup of tea and pondering what the week is going to bring.  I should really check my work email, but I feel so content and happy that I don't want to spoil it.  It will all still be there tomorrow after all.

So, these days, although my weekends are full and busy, I can't help but notice, by the time Sunday evening comes around, I feel relaxed and content.   I don't feel the need to have a lazy day.

Now, I am making Shepard's pie, and will soon be sitting down to dinner.  Next on the list, its time for me to start reading up on my garden.  So many things out there, that I have no idea how to take care of, and I need to start soon, otherwise everything will be dead.

Happiness

Bamboo

We have some gorgeous bamboo in our new back garden.  It's one of the things that I've had to do some reading up on though, as I've heard that it can get out of hand pretty easy.  It already seems to have grown in the two weeks we've been living there.  Although, from what I read, they grow anywhere from 1ft to 5ft a year, depending on the type of bamboo.

Looks like one of my activities this weekend might be to get outside and give our bamboo a hair cut.  While reading I also found out that is possible to grow from cuttings, which I think I might try out. There's another area we've been talking about extending the bamboo too.  It might be a fun way to get it done.  Time consuming of course.

It is wonderful to sit outside and listen to the breeze rustling through the bamboo.  It's impossible to be anything other than relaxed sitting outside with that in the background.

Gardening - for worms?

Two more days left with the girls.  They really have been so great.  I've had a good time, although it is quite tiring.  I just wish that there was a way to bottle up our energy when we are children so we can save it and use it later when we get older.

This weekend will be quite eventful.  My cousin is in town (at least I think she is).  She planned to arrive today, and is staying with someone she met when she was out here at my wedding.  I haven't heard from her yet, but we have plans to meet up on Saturday.

She's such an interesting character.  She's a hoot.  Never a serious moment when she's in town.

Other than that, there's more house things to do.  I need to get out into the garden and figure out what's in the veggie patch.  A Vietnamese family had our house before us, and they planted the veggie patch.  From what's above the ground I don't recognise anything.  So I am going to have to dig and find out what's underneath.  Hopefully I haven't left it too late, and there will still be something edible under there.

I will start posting photos of my gardening fiascoes.  I haven't dug in a garden since I was a child.  No doubt I'll end up all dirty and muddy.  I used to dig a lot as a kid.  My cousin and I (the same one mentioned above), used to dig and collect worms, then make worm gardens.  However, when we got back to our grandparents house the following week, there'd be no more worms in the worm garden, and back to digging again we would go.  I think we did this for weeks on end.  Not really sure why, but it was fun and made sense at the time.

Shame my grandparents didn't have a compost heap, we could have made that into the worm garden. Then there would have been happy worms, and some really good compost.

Sweet Potato Pie

As mentioned in my previous posts, I am looking after my friends kids this week, and staying at their house.
The kids grandpa also lives here, and he enjoys cooking.  Which works out great for me.  Tonight he made a pot roast, and sweet potato pie.

I was honestly not sure what I'd think of sweet potato pie, its not something you get growing up in the North East of England.  As soon as he started to bake it, the smell was amazing.  I had forgotten how long it takes to make a pie.  The better the pie smells the longer it seems to take :).  (Of course that is all just perception),   it felt like hours before the pie was cooked, then cooled enough to eat.

We ate it with whipped cream and boy was it good.

Here is the recipe that he used

Scrummy!

You know, what I have just realised, after re-reading this post, is that when I started this blog, I would never, in a month of Sundays have thought there would ever be a post about sweet potato pie on my blog.  Not least, because I didn't even know there was such a thing as sweet potato pie.

Count Down

I am looking after  my friends 2 girls this week.  1 is 10, the other is 6.  For the most part they are pretty easy to look after, but every once in a while, one of them like to see how far they can push their boundries.
I don't have kids of my own, but I do remember trying that act myself.

I also remember the countdown.  So figured I'd give it a go last night.  "You've got till I count to 10".  I didn't even get as far as 1.  I have no idea what I would have done, if I'd gotten all the way to 10... but seems it worked out OK.  I've never really understood why the countdown works so well.  But it certainly does.  Even the mention of it, seems to drive panic deep into the child.

Other than some minor things the week so far is going well.  I honestly have no idea at all how working parents manage to do this.  I have to take the kids to school, around 8:30 am, then pick one up at 3, the other up at 4.  Luckily the school is right around the corner.  But still, if I wasn't working from their house this week, and was actually trying to make it into the office, I'd be having huge problems.  I'd only be in the office for about 4 hours, or I wouldn't be able to get them to and from school.

I suppose theirs after school care, but from what I hear, its really expensive.

Guess I should consider myself lucky to be a DINK household.