November, Mostly in Pictures

I've been lax about posting pictures... mostly because we've been so busy.  E went through a round of chicken pox and was off school for nearly a week.  That was two weeks ago, and now C has it.  She developed her first spots yesterday and so far it seems like a worse case than E's.

So... what did we do in November?

Well, there was Bonfire Night, where we braved the crowds at an official firework event and stood in squelchy mud while more and more people jostled in (at 20 quid a family they were making money hand over fist).  Still, the kids loved it....

There was a big bonfire (pictured) and fireworks set to music, which they also enjoyed.

Larking about in the nearby green after school.

This weekend we went up to Suffolk to visit friends in the countryside.  Bracing late November walks on the beach....

...led to tea, hot chocolate and checkers (the Brits call it draughts, but I'm sticking to my Yankee ways) in the beachside cafe.

In case you're wondering, E lost the game.  But our friend was very patient teaching him the basics of the game.  We had to use chess pieces in place of actual checkers, but that worked fine.

When we got back to the house, C sat on the tractor as the older kids chopped wood in preparation for hauling it to the woodshed.

Of course, then it was back inside to sit by a roaring fire (cats included), movie and popcorn, building a gigantic wooden train track with bridges, loops and two railway stations in the playroom, and listening to the wind and rain that rolled around mid-afternoon.  On Sunday the three older children did 2 hours of rugby while C and I stayed behind to pack and putter around.  E did pretty well with the ball so we might be looking at getting him into rugby next term.

The next few hours will be spent creaming up the not-quite-two year old who is very poxy indeed, and prepping for school tomorrow.  I've been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and have 34k words or thereabouts... not quite sure I'll make the 50k mark by next week given how many curve balls November has thrown, but it's the fastest I've ever written, and it's not trash, so there's a small victory.

And that's all for now!