Sailing, Babies and Birthdays.

The week before last we went on a sailing holiday to Sicily with the Hills. We had such a lovely week - not much sailing but a bit of sightseeing and lots of wonderful company and yummy food.

We went to a wine tasting... the wine is all grown at the base of Mt Etna...

 The wine was lovely - Han and I could only have a little taste - and the food was great!

 Orla had a lovely time playing off the boat.

 We stayed in a town called Riposto for a few days - this is the view from the boat...

 The town was small but had a great fish market where we bought dinner for a couple of nights.

 We went for a day trip on a train part of the way up Mt Etna - it was a bit chilly but a good outing.

When we eventually got out of Riposto we were in a town called Sarcusa. It had a great old town which we really enjoyed exploring.

The next day we finally got to do a bit of sailing - it was a beautiful day with just enough wind to get the sails up and even warm enough for a swim...

 We ended up in another small port called Mazameme.

 On our last day we took the boat out for  a few hours - it was a bit cooler but still lots of fun... While we were away we were filming a short piece for a sailing company in London.

It was such a fun and happy trip - albeit with a bit of drama. Thanks Hannah, Jon and Orla for coming with us and for helping us have such a lovely time!

It's my birthday tomorrow so we thought we would have a combined birthday and bay shower celebration. We had about 20 people to our house - which was a bit of a squeeze but we managed.

There were four pregnant woman here - here are me, Han and Mo...

 Han and Orla organised a game where everyone had to guess the size of my tummy with ribbon... a few people were way off but most were pretty close. Toby and Sarah Whetter were the closest!

 We were extremely spoilt and got some very lovely pressies.

 And Don had even organised some very very yummy cupcakes with candles for me to blow out. Thanks!

 

This week we had two big bags of firewood delivered for the winter.

 

Baxter took charge of the situation and log by log neatly stacked them in the garden shed.

 

What a pooch!

 

This weekend we had Malc and Amanda over for a visit.

 

It was great to see Malc and Amanda and when we dropped them back in Oxford we were lucky enough to be shown around the Oxford Botanic Gardens where Malc works.

 

 

In other news, Smudge is growing quickly and we have been able to see Smudge kicking mummy's tummy for the first time this week.

Not much to report.

Not much has been happening in our neck of the woods... Life seems to continue as normal. My tummy seem to grow by the day. This is me on the 22nd of September.

And this is my tummy today...

 Don got home today after a week of sailing off the South Coast. He was sitting the practical part of his Day Skipper course which he passed. This means he can skipper the boat when we are on our sailing holiday at the end of the month in Sicily.

We had a beautiful day today and when Don got home we went for a walk in the park. The park is slowly changing colour - although it doesn't show so much in these pictures.

Here are a few more pics from Baxter and my walks this week.

We have decided to pull out the veggie garden and add some topsoil to the soil and let it sit for the winter. We didn't have great success this year with it but we did get all these carrots.

Don has done a great job dog proofing the garden so we don't have to constantly watch Baxter and can leave him in the garden off the chain.

While we got a good harvest of tomatoes this year the weather turned pretty cold and the last of the fruit on the plants didn't ripen so I picked them all and made some Green Tomato Chutney... Hopefully it tastes good! And being a regular little house wife, I made a couple of banana cakes. One for home and one for the chaps at work... Yummo!

So I was 20 weeks pregnant on Friday and we are half way there. We have our 22 week scan on the 18th so will let you know how we get on. 

xoxo