At the playground on Friday with some of the other little ones his age

Last week we had a few days of pouring rain, so one day I took Connor to an indoor playground (basically a couple of netted off basketball courts with lots of ride on toys and a couple of bouncy castles). He absolutely loves pushing anything he can get his hands on, so with the selection of wheeled vehicles all around he was in heaven!

A close encounter with a sheep in the park today. We have such a fantastic park a couple of minutes walk up the road, it's actually a working farm as well as being full of gorgeous old trees and landscaped areas. Because they are so used to people, all the animals (sheep, chickens, cows etc) are very friendly and will come right up to you (especially if you show signs of having food of any description!).

Finally I've been able to download some photos. It was very hot last week, so Connor had a great time with Granddad at the beach and also in his new paddling pool (a Christmas present from Granddad).

Yes we are still here, but I've been having problems downloading photos the past three days which is driving me a bit mad! At the moment we're totally focused on having our garden landscaped, as it's pretty much been in desperate need of it since we bought the house. We've had a landscaper/designer who's done a plan for us, but we just about keeled over when he came up with the overall budget for it (we were not even in the same universe, never mind on the same page!!!). So for the past week we've been going through trying to figure out what we can do without (most of it) and which parts to go ahead with. We've also been getting quotes from independent contractors for various parts of the plan, which has been keeping me busy and looks like it's going to save us a lot. We're hoping to get things started in the next month or two, but knowing how long these things tend to take and with tradespeople involved, I'm not holding my breath...

We had rather a frightening experience yesterday - our first trip to accident and emergency with Connor. He managed to fall into the corner of a coffee table and had quite a small but very deep gash in his head (I couldn't even look at it, it was absolutely hideous). He cried for about five minutes, then was as good as gold as we rushed him down the road (thankfully there's an A&E clinic about two minutes drive away). Luckily he got away without having stitches, just some special tape to hold it together. He was so interested in what was going on that he didn't get upset at all. He sat smiling and pointing at everything while the doctor bandaged him up and was very brave (far braver than his mother, I was a wreck!!!).