nature and nurture

My post today is a catch up of the past week, we have done a fair bit lately, surprisingly! The weather has improved loads and I have the first sun burn of the year from cycling in a vest top!
The picture to make us all smile has to be this one of our lovely lady, posing for the camera! I have put this on my redbubble where you can buy it as a greetings card or canvas!

We went to visit another home school family this week who lives in a wonderfully picturesque village in the countryside, we had a wander over the local pastures and came across this stern looking cow! very different shape to the ones we normally see, they made a right racket mooing loudly until I stopped with the camera at the ready and just froze, obviously the farmer must of been practising with them for a centre page spread in farmers weekly or something.

This one didn't seem as angry, or maybe its because behind me were tons of sheep bleating because we was in their field!, after a long walk in the searing heat and across a knee deep in grass field, over a bridge and a stile we arrived at the local ice cream parlour for a much needed delicious ice cream, home made on the premises, I had apple crumble ice cream which may sound strange but it was delicious.

We had a wonderful day with our friends in lovely surroundings and the sun shone all day so by bed time we was happy and worn out! Our youngest actually slept through the night, the sooner we move to the country the better, I keep dreaming and searching on the net for a lovely cottage with a plot of land for the chickens and I would love a couple of pigs and somewhere to expand my veg growing as our back garden is slowly becoming so full there is little space left to put anything else.

We have regular visitors to the garden now the weathers cheered up, we have two frogs in the pond who bask all day, the tadpoles are growing but no legs yet, water snails by the dozen,

and this fellow who has built the nest in the bird box DH and boys made, the little blue tit chicks squawk so loudly, I would love to peek in and see what they are like, or get one of those micro cameras to have a live feed going on. This blue tit works its butt off back and forwards all day with food.
A different day we went to St Annes, I went to college there 17 years ago and fell in love with the place, it was quite a windy day so we didn't do the sand dune trek but we did find lots to look at.

This is part of the man made river and gardens which has ducks and swans on it, plenty of dragonflies in the summer and loads of different plants all living happily by the sea.

This is my favourite part, the waterfall, its a lovely thing to see. You can walk underneath it and listen to the noise it makes, the kids love it, they love climbing on the rocks too. We then went for a game of bowling and I was rubbish, I don't know what happened to my technique, maybe its too much fake bowling on the Wii that's ruined me!

We went for a coffee at the beach cafe and as we sat enjoying the view all the starlings came to have a sneaky snack!, this one is a baby, all fluffy and squawky! what surprised me was other people shooed them away, one guy even tried to hit one, there kids were delighted at the birds being so close but not the parents, sometimes I feel in a minority until I read all the lovely blogs I do and feel like there are like minded parents out there, maybe none live in close proximity to me!