We have a crawler!

Esther has figured out how to go forwards! She is now less frustrated but if things were hectic before they've just stepped up a notch.

Play room

There is plenty more "new house stuff" to catch up on, but we had the official opening for our play room last month. Already it is seeing a lot of use, and everyone is enjoying the extra space.

Garden

The end of the year seems like a good time to catch up with all that we did in our new garden... yes, we've been in the new house nearly a year! The girls grew a good share of flowers and vegetables again. There were strawberries too but I don't seem to have any pictures of them.

At the start of the year we didn't even have a shed! Here's the Quadro schoolhouse marking out the site.

Safe bets of peas, tatties, carrots and onions, plus some flowers for this year.

Potatoes ready to go...

hurray!

It wasn't all crop growing. As well as some nice barbecues this year we also built a new play structure. (that's the best name I have for it)

Exciting - this year we actually grew a pepper!

A bumper turnout of nasturtiums and sunflowers

A less bumper haul of potatoes

Though a decent load of peas and onions.

Tallest sunflowers ever!

A decent set of chilli peppers - now in the form of chilli jam.

We also had the smallest sunflower ever. Here is the comparison with the big one.

and the flower itself.

There's a butterfly here.

A sad ending to the pepper tale. We took it in to ripen, but a caterpillar had munched on one side (just a little bite) and only a few days later it went all mushy.

On the plus side, this years' tomatoes worked well. Even the red ones!

Christmas!

Christmas is coming and we have 3 very excited children, plus 1 that has caught the excitement off the others! So it's time to get the tree...

Obviously the trip has a few elements of fun besides...

and decoration!

Nicely done.

We've also gone all-out this year and got lights for the front of the house too. Just what I'd like to think are tasteful blue and white ones (no strobing!).

I also had quite a bit of pocket money built up so have invested in some colourful lights in the house. These are "smart" ones so they do all sorts of cool things like switching off by themselves when you go out, and changing colour to more of a sunrise in the morning, Very good for the dark winter! The one on the TV is meant to reduce eye strain too.

Speaking of chilly weather, in the name of space saving we got a new extra tall fridge, but this has left us with something of a surplus of cooling devices. Anybody want one?