Thankful for ..............

HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

We awoke to beautiful sunshine which was nice after a whole day of rain yesterday.  After a slow breakfast, Huffle made a picnic for us (and I started to make cookies to take but we ran out of eggs) and we headed off to the forest.  Today we went to one we discovered when we first arrived.  It looks totally different when not covered in snow.  We have walked here many times and brought most of our visitors here.  We reminisced and remembered HB jumping in the snow and us trying to take photos of us all looking like we were flying.  Moo slipped over here and took Smallest down with her.  Aunty A climbed high above the trees with us here.  The boys particularly like this one because they have secret paths they can follow alongside the normal track.  In the snow they slide down the slopes on their bottoms.  Today, of course, there were many leaves, lots of cyclists who liked to shout out how many of them there were and a few walkers.

 on the way

We started on the main trail (and secret paths) to the Troll bridge where we played Pooh Sticks and ate a wine gum and then veered into the forest to follow a very windy (not blowy windy, that was later) path through a lot of very tall straight trees and lots of lovely coloured leaves.  We picked up leaves and sticks and climbed very high right above the trees where we could see the many changing colours of the Maples.  It was very beautiful.

 the view was 'awesome'

Our lunch was deep in the forest sat on a log.  We had egg sandwiches and we wondered if any of the cyclists would sniff and hurry away, but mainly they just went past saying "Hello, we are three!'  or "there is another one behind us".  One cyclist did tell us our sandwiches looked good and another one asked us not to applaud but because we noticed he was British, we did.

Lots of walking brought us out of the forest and into a large group of Chinese who we called "Daycare" and told the boys not to dilly dally else they would be caught up in their group and we would have to pay for them being in their care for the rest of the day.  We made Smallest walk faster by telling him the girls would want to kiss him.  He moved pretty swiftly.  At one point we sat on a bench high up taking in the view and letting the Chinese Daycare pass us with lots of 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs' but then unlucky for us (they were very noisy and called us the crazy people ahead or behind) we caught up with them so we took another path.

We had a lovely walk and the boys enjoyed it too.  We decided on a whim to take a different way home and came across the place where we sledge in the Winter.  We wanted eggs, so stopped.  They were selling apples in 1/2 pecks (what is a peck?) so we bought some with our eggs and picked up a warm butter tart each and sat and ate it.  Imagine our surprise when we spotted a Silver haired Elvis singing his heart out.  Huffle's response to seeing this all-white-clad-elderly-Elvis was "SH!T".  The crowd (ten people) seemed to love him.  We sat through two songs and left with our purchases.  The boys wanted to scrump apples off the tree but we didn't let them (this time) and came home.

Viva Las Vegas

Once home, the boys played football while I finished making the cookies and baked them and then we sat on the porch with a cup of tea (the boys had hot chocolate) and a warm oatmeal cookie.  ummmm.

I read in the sunshine while the boys and Huffle played football and then I joined them.  Small tried out his new boots and we practised passing to each other.  Huffle and I cleared some leaves and then came in and made dinner.  Pasta and Turkey Meatballs.

amazingly there are still some flowers trying to bloom for a second time.  loving the sunshine.

Well it is Thanksgiving!

The boys got the Halloween costumes out and worked out what they were going to wear for Trick or Treating (Well it is only 16 days away!!).