Old friends, baths and finished knitting!

Firstly I'd like to say hello to a couple of new followers, particularly Lisa whose blog I use to read all the time and when we lost our main computer I lost a load of addresses and couldn't remember most of them. So now she's found me I can go and visit her again which I will do later.
In looking to find who my newest follower was though I've managed to follow myself! I didn't even know you could do that!
Today we only took five dogs for their walk, Medi is nearly twelve and has had a couple of long walks over the past couple of days and although I'm sure she would be game I do like to rest her between really long walks. Max has a problem with his shoulder which I will write about when I do a write up on him, but this makes him limp if he's walked too much so I wanted to rest him too.
Clark and Eden went to the library this morning to do some work on their computers. Clark is looking to get his photographers badge in Scouts and had to go and print out some photos as our photocopier is playing up at the moment.
So Callum and I bathed some dogs
Nieve

Max

 Hexa

 Tula, who was by far the dirtiest

 After they were bathed we had the mammoth task of cleaning the bathroom as there was water everywhere and the actual bath was black.
I managed to finish this off this afternoon, So it's ready to send.
I'm glad it's finished. I'm really pleased with it, but with a pattern in it and using 4ply wool with really small needles it seems to have taken an age to knit!

I've already started on some bedsocks that I promised to a friend a while ago, they should only take two or three evenings and then I'm doing some dishcloths that I promised somebody else.
I've had to tape Crufts tonight as the children want to watch Ant and Dec and The Cube. I was really pleased last night when a Staffordshire Bull Terrier came third overall in the Terrier group. A lovely Irish Wolfhound won the Hound Group. I'm really looking forward to the final on Sunday night.
I've never been to Crufts, it's on my wish list. I think I would be the first one in the queue when it opened and the last one to leave, probably with a couple of dogs in my rucksack, up my jumper and anywhere else I could think of too!
Anyway off to do another row on those socks!

Muddy Dogs!

We are very lucky in that to the side of us is a row of houses, then a road and then another row of houses and then we have three huge fields and two adjoining copses.  Even luckier for us is that we can cut through some garages and it's literally 150 yards from our house. Animals residing over there are foxes, deer, which we have seen on numerous occasions, rabbits and so many species of birds. We go to the fields a fair bit but most of the dog owners on our estate walk their dogs over there and it can get quite busy!
We thought we'd pop over there today, now I thought the Heath was muddy yesterday, it was nothing compared to today!
I thought I would treat you to a couple of pictures of muddy dogs!

 Medina, but Tula was the clear winner!

She was filthy!
A picture of one of the less muddy fields. What is it with boys? They always manage to find a stick from somewhere to carry around with them!

Luckily after the walk we went round to my mums for a cuppa so the dogs were in their cages in the minibus and had time to dry off a bit before we took them home and let them in the house.
Tonight has been the usual round of Beavers, Scouts and Youth
 Club.
At Youth Club tonight they are playing something called Wide Games, which is sort of like British Bulldog, I think Eden is going to come back covered in mud!
It's the second day of Crufts tonight, so I'm off to do the last front of the green cardi I'm knitting and drool over all the gorgeous, well groomed, well behaved mutts!

Better weather for dog walking

When the weather's really horrible and wet we tend to walk the dogs on their leads on a road walk. When we walk them off lead we tend to go to heathland or forest and recently everywhere has been so, I can't even say muddy, just that there are  little lakes everywhere, sometimes it's hard to go round them or through them.
But as we've not had more than a couple of showers over the last few days we decided to head off to our local heathland.
We saw one other person and their dog and a couple of lads on bikes. We are always being asked if we are professional dogwalkers because of the amount of dogs we have, today was no exception! People can't believe we have seven dogs! I suppose it is quite unusual, it just seems normal to us!
 The reason I love going here is that you can go so many different ways and you never seem to take the same trail twice. We started off on a trial we know, we headed through a gate which was just before the trail we took last time as there were some grazing cows we wanted to avoid and we ended up on another trail that we've never been before. I love discovering all the different ways we can go.

Just trees and gorse for miles

The boys always go off track and manage to find a stick that they always want to bring home!

It was still pretty muddy in places

In other news, Eden thoroughly enjoy the Bastlille concert she went to. She was shattered last night!
Malc has just taken Callum to the dentist, I think braces are going to be needed. There has been talk of them before but the dentist won't recommend them until the age of twelve or thirteen, as he's that age now I think the time has come. I don't think Callum's very happy about it but there we go!
Then Malcs picking Eden up as she has Chamber Choir after school.
Hopefully we'll get a quiet night, there are no activities going on, nobody scheduled to call, so we'll shut up shop and relax!
The weather is meant to be warm and dry over the weekend so I really hope to get on some more nice dog walks. Lead walks are OK but they just don't tire the dogs out the same. At the moment they are all asleep, It's so peaceful, just their snoring to be heard!
Hope you're all enjoying dry weather too.

Pancakes!

Earlier than anticipated!

My boys have a sweet tooth!

We can't move now!

Entertainment Badges

I haven't done any knitting for two days, we've just been so busy.
Last night Clark and Soloman put on a show with their Cub pack to earn their Entertainment badge. We were treated to songs and sketches, a cup of tea and biscuits.
Here they are with their newly acquired badges

It was really good fun and although I was never a girl guide I knew most if the songs, I don't know how!
Clark is having a run on crocheting hats at the moment and due to a lack of female models in this house had to pose himself for me to take a picture.
Hat number one

Hat number two

He loves doing these and can do them without looking at the pattern now.
We had some lovely sunshine yesterday afternoon and to prove it I took a picture of the puppies laid in a patch of sunlight on the kitchen floor

They quite often do this.
Eden's at a Bastille concert tonight, she's gone to her friends straight from school, they're going to the concert and then she's going back to her friends to stay tonight and going to school tomorrow from there.
The road which has now been shut off for several weeks will hopefully be opening tomorrow morning which is really good news.
I'm hoping to get some more knitting done tonight, I've done the back and I'm halfway up the first sleeve but it's taking me much longer than usual because of concentrating on the pattern. I can't tell you how many times I'm interrupted!

A close up of the pattern

It does come up lovely.
Now I'm off to make up some pancake mixture to feed my hungry boys. If you're lucky and I can get a picture before they're eaten they might be on tomorrows post!

Coffee Church

We don't go to church every week and it took us ages to find a church service to suits us. Lots were, wearing Sunday best, children should be seen and not heard, unfriendly, luckily our own local church started Coffee Church. It's very informal, you sit around at tables with tea/coffee, you don't have to stand to sing. It's very interactive, there's usually a quiz which is usually full of laughter as we get the answers wrong! But the best bit is that children can sit on a long line of tables crayoning, doing puzzles and using play-doh.
They can move around the church, they can come and see their family and show what they've made. After years of stressing over children making too much noise, being bored and hearing tuts resonating around the church I can now enjoy a friendly welcoming service.
We are the only family with children that consistently go and so we now are extremely interactive with the service.
All five children do the bible reading in the guise of a dramatic reading, luckily no acting is involved!
Eden has played her guitar and sung for over a year now but Clark has now been asked to play a beat box .
You sit on it to play it, this isn't Clark's legs by the way!

So he's been practicing all week and played today.
I took some pictures of Eden, Chris, our church youth worker and Clark. I think there's one of Soloman giving Chris a hug too. The children love him to bits!

I didn't get much knitting done last night, I've added a few more blogs to my reading list and I went through the lot reading back on a few of them until Casualty came on! Hopefully I'll catch up a bit tonight!
It's been raining all afternoon which is really boring. It's quite cold too, still no snow though? Anyone else got any?

Organized craft

Craft goes on a lot in this house, any day with a "y" in it is craft day but today we went to an organized craft event which is always good as it means my dining table isn't covered in glue and paint!
Today our local library held an event with childrens author, Susan Steggall, here's her website. If you go to the childrens work it'll show you what she does during her workshops. Hopefully the boys work will be on there in a couple of days.
She's an author and illustrator, she doesn't draw her pictures in a conventional way, she builds up a picture layer by layer using paper and other objects. Her children's book are about trains, tractors and buildings so the boys were in their elements.
She starts by doing the sky and layering up the bottom of the picture

Some examples of her work

Soloman and Cody with theirs nearly finished

 Clark working on his

Then they are framed

The finished articles

It's really nice to look at different ways of doing Art, the boys thoroughly enjoyed it. We went with our neighbour and her young daughter and met my sister and my nephew there so it made for a nice social occasion too.
When we got home Eden and Clark went to our church youth workers house to rehearse for tomorrows Coffee Church. ( More on that tomorrow!)
Rabbits were cleaned, bikes were got out of the shed for the first time in months to be rode out the front of the house.
All in all it's been a lovely day!