Saturday

It has been a lovely day today - bright, sunny but with a fresh cool wind blowing small high up clouds across the sky. I've been sitting in the conservatory doing some marking, Abigail has been studying her Chemistry and Psychology here as well. We can see flowers coming out in the garden.

We have had a variety of weather the past few days. Yesterday it was very foggy in the morning and it came back again in the evening. It was the type of foggy night you see in the movies. Abigail stayed back at school to help out with a disco and didn't finish until 10pm so we had to drive to school to get her.

The morning before there was a layer of ice on the car windscreen.

Ashling had a maths exam yesterday - one of her GCSE modules. There were a few questions she wasn't sure of which upset her a bit, so she came home and baked some biscuits as comfort food! She made some oatmeal and raison biscuits that are really nice - usually she will just make something with choclate in but I don't like chocolate chip biscuits very much.

Lucy bought a strawberry plant a few weeks ago. It only had a few small shoots when she got it.

Ashling's D of E Activities

Ashling is doing the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award and started some of her activities this week. The first one was a cooking activity last Wednesday - she is meant to be learning new skills with all her activities but she knows how to cook quite well already. She made a Bakewell tart which didn't come out quite right but still tasted fine - very sweet and sticky as it has jam inthe middle.

One of the other activities she has to do is orienteering, which is basically hiking and camping through a forest or countryside using a map and not getting lost. On Saturday Ashling was taken for her first 'practice' walk in a place called Gore Heath which is part of Wareham Forest, about 20 or 30 minutes drive away.

She had to go to school first for 9am and had a 2 hour inducation session before going off to the forest. They were all back by 4:30pm. The weather stayed fine, a bit warm for this time of year and she had a good time - her first time walking in the forest here.

Netball

Last Tuesday Ashling was playing in an under-15 netball competition at her school. There were 6 or 7 other schools from around the area that came to take part. One of the other teams was from Abigail's school and Abigail was with them as an umpire. I don't think Ashling knew that Abigail would be going along as well. Abigail is involved in so many sports we can't keep track. She started playing netball in her school last year and she still plays basketball with a team from town - last week she was in Southampton playing - left home about 6pm and didn't get back until after 10pm.

Ashling's team beat Abigail's school team and in the end Ashling's team won 5 out of 6 games against the other schools so they came first or second in the competition. Ashling says that now they are through to a county competition.

During one of the games, some girl threw the ball in Ashling's face and later on Ashling scratched her accidently - such a rough game!!!

Chap Goh Mei & Valentine's Day

Chap Goh Mei was about 2 weeks ago but we didn't do anything special. Instead Lucy wanted to wait until this past week to go out to a Chinese restaurant for dim sum. The girls have just had one week school holiday for their half term break so we decided to take an afternoon off work to all go to a Chinese restaurant in Bournemouth for dim sum and noodles.

Lucy and I took a half day off work on Tuesday, which just happened to be Valentine's day - just a coincidence. We went home to get the girls and drove into Bournemouth town centre, about 20 minutes away. The day wasn't too bad - a bit windy but it wasn't very cold and it didn't rain.

We had been to the restaurant once before and had some good noodles and dim sum. Ashling was the one who had found it - she had seen it when she was on a bus going into town one day with her friends.

It is not a very big place and when we got there, all the tables were full, so we had to wait about 10 minutes before we could sit down. We had a few different types of noodles, siew mai, char siew pau (too bad there was no red bean pau) and a few other things. All very good. These are the things we all miss from Brunei and Malaysia!

Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures of the food when it arrived at the table as we were all busy eating so that is why the plates and dishes are nearly empty.

Cold Weekend

The last few nights have been below freezing and there has been snow in other parts of England, but not in Poole. But on Saturday morning the sea near us was partially frozen - there is an article on the BBC News website about it.

Abigail was meant to be meeting her friends in town to do some busking but she stayed in bed instead. I think they decided to cancel because of the cold.

Saturday afternoon, Ashling went into town with her friends. They went for a walk in Poole Park and found everything frozen. Here Ashling is with one of her friends with a large piece of ice from the fountain in the park.

Ashling Badminton

This evening, after everyone was home from school and work, Ashling told us that she had been given a certificate for getting to the county finals for a schools badminton competition.

We didn't even know she was playing badminton today - her school team went off the other side of Bournemouth to play about 5 or 6 other schools from around the county. Apparently, they had played some earlier rounds last year and this was the final.

Flowers in January

So far the weather has been bright and mild, although it has turned cold for the past 2 days and is meant to stay cold and wet for the next few days. But lots of plants and flowers have started to grow earlier than normal.

This is Lucy's hyacinth from last year. She kept the bulb and planted it the end of last year. Last weekend it had a green leaf about 2 inches loong coming up. Over the past week it has grown 5 inches and the flowers have come out giving a nice smell to the room.

This amarylis was has also grown a lot and flowered over the past few weeks. And there are also lots of small Spring flowers coming up in the garden already about a month earlier than normal.