Autumn in the Woods

An Autumn walk in the woods at Biddulph Grange Country Park with my favourite people. I love being in the woods at this time of year. Watching my small people running through piles of leaves and looking for Minpins in the trees. Soaking up the Autumn colour and making the most of the milder weather before winter descends upon us. I love these days.

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl

The girls looking for Minpins in the woods.

Mornings with my Boodle

I love my mornings with Alex, or Boodle as he is affectionately known: The Boodle, Boodle Boy, Baby Boodle, Mr Boodle...he answers to them all! He is an outdoor boy, so we normally try to fit in some outdoor time, be it a walk in the fields behind the house, a trip to the park, playing in the garden or a longer walk with him in the pushchair. He just loves being outside. Today, however, was very wet so we were indoors all morning. After trying his hand at painting, we played with the wooden blocks for a while before he started fetching me books. Alex loves to be read to and I keep a selection of suitable books in a basket so he can choose them himself. He normally fetches me a book and then trots off to the basket for another book as soon as the first one is finished, unless it is a favourite in which case I have to read it again. He sometimes gets a bit overexcited if we have two of his favourite books out at the same time and wants me to read back and forth between them simultaneously, which I try to discourage! I am so thrilled that he loves books and he seems to have a very good attention span, so we usually get in a good reading session in the mornings.

This morning I got out our Fisher Price Little People collection and he had a fantastic time playing with the garage. Alex is car-obsessed and loves nothing more than being surrounded by lots of wheeled toys. Whenever I get his highchair out for lunch he normally chooses a selection of cars which he then puts on his table to entertain him during his meal.

At the moment he has his nap at about half eleven and then I give him his lunch between 2 and 2.30pm. This means he is able to go until six for his tea, which means the whole family can eat together. It is working very well at the moment as it gives us a lovely morning together and then I get a couple of hours to get things done before it is time to fetch the others from school.

I love having a little one at home still. Granted, I don't get everything done. The house frequently looks like a bomb has hit it and I am never on top of the ironing, but Alex won't always be small and I don't want to waste his babyhood cleaning windows! During term time, the mornings are our special time and I plan to make the most of them while they last. Sadly, with three children already at school, I know they don't last long.

Fetching a book from the basket

I think I'll read this one myself

The Fisher Price garage was a 'Big Brother' present for Tom when Lily was born (he was similarly car-obsessed at the same age). Tom has become a big brother twice more since then!

You may notice he is wearing his shoes indoors. This is because he is also shoe obsessed. If you don't want him to wear shoes, you have to hide them!

I love this little guy so much!

Alexander's First Painting Session

It was raining this morning, so since we were looking for indoor entertainment I thought I'd try Alex with poster paints for the first time. Naturally the first thing he did was to taste them. Apparently poster paints are disgusting! I had to give him a small piece of chocolate to take the taste away. He makes quite a fuss if he eats something unpleasant, repeating 'Yuch! Yuch!" and trying to scrape the offending taste off his tongue with his fingers. I showed him what he was supposed to do with the paintbrush and he had a good go at spreading and dotting the paint around, in between pointing at the fridge for more chocolate!

The painting session came to an abrupt end when he suddenly decided to have another taste of the paint, this time a very large dollop of blue! He was not at all impressed with the flavour, so we called it a day, with him looking rather like he'd eaten a Smurf! We'll try again another day, but perhaps I need to hunt out some edible paint recipes at this stage!

Paintbrush in one hand, chocolate in the other!

Getting into it, with a paintbrush in each hand

"Surely it can't taste as bad as it did just now?"

An Eventful Day in the Lakes

We decided to take a trip up to the Lake District on Saturday. This time we wanted to take the Podlings to see Aira Force waterfall in Ullswater. Mark and I went there on our very first trip to the Lake District on the Queen's Golden Jubilee weekend back in 2002 and we thought it would be nice to go back there with the small folk.

The walk to the falls winds through a beautiful wood and leads to a stone bridge that takes you directly over the waterfall. The Podlings were decidedly underwhelmed by the 65ft waterfall, but certainly enjoyed their walk. Right up until Alex kicked his shoe down a steep bank! Luckily it landed on a ledge reasonably near the top or we would never have seen it again. As it was, I had to lie down and stretch myself bodily across the path and even then I was only just able to reach it by hooking it on the very tip of Mark's walking stick. Lily was in floods of tears because she thought I was going to fall to my death! I pointed out that I was never in any danger and I would never put my life at risk for a shoe, but it took her a little while to calm down!

The Podlings were keen to fit in a visit to the woodland playground at Wray castle whilst we were up there, but by the time we arrived it was almost dark. Mark turned on the car headlights so the Podlings could enjoy a quick play in the park. This turned out not to be a particularly bright idea! Time flies when you are having fun, as they say, and what we planned to be a ten minute go on the tyre swing stretched on and on. We finally dragged the children away as we planned to have a barbecue by Coniston Water before starting the two hour drive home. We got everyone strapped in to the car, but when Mark tried to turn on the engine...answer came there none! Yes, we'd flattened the car battery lighting up a children's playground in the middle of the night. We were now stuck in the car park of Wray Castle with not a soul around and no way of getting home. Luckily Mark was able to get a phone signal and got hold of the breakdown company we have a policy with. Obviously it was going to take them a while to get to us, seeing as how we were in the middle of nowhere, so it seemed appropriate to break out the barbecue while we waited for them to arrive. We had an absolute blast in that dark car park! Mark cooked up the hotdogs and burgers by torchlight and the Podlings played in the car and the car park and we certainly made the best of the situation. I think the breakdown man was a little bemused to find our family of six barbecuing in a car park in the back of beyond in the middle of the night!

We finally got home at about half past midnight, rather worn out from our eventful day, with another stock of stories to add to the family 'Do you remembers?'. We have such great times! Life is certainly never dull in our family!

There were lots of tree trunks with coins hammered into them throughout the wood. Lily and Emma called them wishing trees. It is an old custom to hammer coins into old tree trunks for good fortune, much as you might throw a coin into a well to make a wish.

The stone bridge took you right over the top of the falls

Aira Force

Burgers and breakdowns!

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Back to the Future

So, here's the thing...we go on a lot of adventures and I take a lot of photographs. I also have four children, one of whom is very young, which doesn't leave me with an awful lot of spare time. The upshot of which means I am incredibly far behind on my blogging. Podheim is my way of recording the memories I make with my family, so I can't bear to leave anything out. I find I am getting further and further behind in an attempt to get up to date with my photos. In trying not to leave out any of the the lovely 'big' things we do, I find I am left leaving out the little, everyday things. The crafts, the baking, the conversations, the little things that make life with little people so wonderful. I don't want to forget these things either. There are many memories on this blog that I would have forgotten had I not recorded them here. So here's what I am going to do...

I am giving myself permission not to update the blog chronologically. I am going to start blogging again from 'now' and I am going to go back and update the backlog as and when I have the time and in no particular order. I want to get the blog back to what it is supposed to be, a record of our life made at the time we are living it. I apologise if this makes things a little confusing around here for a while. I will endeavour to keep the Podheim Facebook page up to date when I do a back-dated post, so if you follow me there you can keep up to date with my progress. You can also follow me on Instagram (under the name Podheim), where I do tend to post random snapshots of our day. I'm looking forward to blogging in the present day again!

Nanny and Alex

We looked after my Mum for a few days whilst my Dad was on a metal-detecting rally in Somerset. We all loved having her with us and the Podlings loved 'Nanny-sitting'. Lily told me jokingly that if we were Nanny-sitting then Nanny had to do whatever we told her! My Mum is disabled and obviously can't get down on the floor and play with Alex, but Alex found his own way of playing with his Nanny and they developed a special bond during her visit. He insisted on taking everything over to Nanny to show it to her and he loved sitting with her and looking at picture books. I love this photo of the two of them.

Sibling Love

Two straws, one drink!

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