100 of 10 - Day 26 - Leeds Urban Bikepark again...

We had another trip to the Leeds Urban Bike Track today - it's such a fun place, and the cafe isn't shabby either! ;)  

100 of 10 - Day 25 - Anemone

Another shot from yesterday's impromptu photoshoot. Anemones are probably one of my favourite flowers. I have a weakness for that daisy-shape anyway, the simplicity of it appeals to me, but Anemones in particular have such a delicate beauty, and they come so late in the year, when a lot of the other perennials are already starting to die back. 

I never actually planted these Anemones. When we moved into our house, the garden was a huge wilderness of  brambles and nettles, with just one narrow path through it, from the back door to the orchard at the end, flanked by brambles that came to over head-height. It took a long time to make  sense of the garden and to reclaim it from all the weeds, but when we did, there they were - a few big, well-established clumps of Anemones and a few rose bushes, all of which somehow survived underneath all those brambles. They've come  back every year since, and have even spread. 

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Friday Photo Journal

100 of 10 - Day 24 - Hello Ladybird!

Boy #1 and I had a mini photo expedition in the garden yesterday to try out different manual settings on the camera and I found this little guy, having a rest. This is such a late-summer image for me, the dying perennials, but there is warmth and sunshine, and the garden is still very much alive and buzzing with life. 

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Little Things Thursday

100 of 10 - Day 23 - Skye

The weather is dreary and the light is bad, so I'll have to leave you with a slightly older shot of pretty little Skye, surveying the land from the balcony of her rat castle. :)  

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The Weekend in Black and White

100 of 10 - Day 22 - Hobbit Hole

I took this shot during a recent bikeride in the moors. It's a rabbit hole, but it reminded me so much of a Hobbit hole, with it's perfect circular opening and the grass and heather above it. :) 

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Friday Photo Journal

100 of 10 - Day 22 - Yorkshire Moors

Had a little break from the 100 of 10 series (as well as all other blogging), so to start it up again, this was taken during a bikeride across the Yorkshire Moors. Beautiful wild moors, we love you so. :)  

100 of 10 - Day 21 - Familiar Views

A familiar sight from my childhood -  the view out of the window from my dad's house of the Greek chapel at the top of the hill. It's quite a romantic story that is behind it - apparently it was built as a monument to a Russian princess who died very young, in childbirth, while living in Wiesbaden (which was a a popular 19th century destination for Russian nobility because of its medicinal hot springs. The old casino in Wiesbaden was one of the places Dostoevski frequented and Wiesbaden later served as one of the inspirations for his famous novel 'The Gambler'.

100 of 10 - Day 20 - Above the Clouds

I'm in Germany right now, to visit my family there. Arrived last night, so had no chance to upload anything, so here you go - my view from above the clouds. I've not been on a plane for a long time, since the boys we usually tend to drive everywhere, so it all felt very strange. It also feels very strange to  be here, in the house I grew up in, by myself, without any kids. It's a bit too quiet, and I'm not used to all this down-time. I (almost) felt bored for a while there, earlier, so I went to chat to my dad. Because of all the chatting we forgot to start cooking early enough for all the people we had coming tonight, so there was a lot of rushing around and frantically chopping vegetables so it all felt a lot more normal then. ;) 

Clearly I've forgotten how to relax and do nothing!

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Friday Photo Journal

100 of 10 - Day 19 - Biking #2

The boys, with the help of some D and one of his biking mates, extended the mini-bike track in the  back garden. Hey, who needs lawn anyway? 

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Wordless or not so Wordless Wednesday

Picture Perfect Party Linky

100 of 10 - Day 18 - Hiding

The good, the random, the fun - all in one snapshot. ;)

This is how I found boy#2 this morning. He was apparently watching some YouTube video in there...

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The Good, The Random, The Fun

100 of 10 - Day 17 - Spark

A brief quiet moment today for D and me, at Spark in York, while grandma was looking after the boys. 

Sunday 'Year of Projects' post is coming tomorrow...

100 of 10 - Day 16 - Leeds Urban Bike Park

Another day biking, another injury...

We went to the Leeds Urban Bike Park today. It's a brilliant place, full of mountain bike and BMX trails for different skill levels, with a little bike repair shop and a pretty nice cafe so you can treat yourself to bacon buns and nice cakes when you've exhausted yourself on the trails. 

We obviously had yet another injury - boy #1 had a pretty big crash on one of the downhill tracks, scraped his arm and bruised his side, but it was still a fun day out, and it's so good to see him able to actually do these things. Even seeing him be active enough to have accidents like this feels oddly right and normal after 2 years of enforced inactivity. I'm so hoping it will continue.

100 of 10 - Day 15 - Mess

Will you look at this messy still-life with cat? We are having a very lazy home-day, much needed after the past few days, which had quite a bit of activity, and were very sociable. The boys have mainly been lying on the sofa, playing on various devices, though this sloth-like existence was briefly interrupted earlier by a bit of playing in the pottery shed and some messy throwing on the pottery wheel. 

I suppose I should really not show all the mess we are living in today, it really doesn't make for a very pretty photograph, but it does reflect the theme of 'life' so perfectly at this particular moment in time. In addition, it does feature Molly, and we are so very happy that she is accepting that we are back. Every time we go on holiday Molly disappears and last time we were away she didn't come home for a full week after - we were walking up and down the roads in our village, hoping to hear her cry out because we were worried that she might be locked in someone's garage. After a week of fretting she just walked in, slightly grumpy and bossy as ever. 

With that past experience we were so glad to see her walk in a mere two days after our return from holiday. The first night she only stayed for a couple of hours before disappearing again, but the following evening she came back again, and since then she's been spending more time in the house. In her own very assertive and stubborn way she has been making her displeasure at our desertion felt by crying at us a lot and lying in the most impossible places - a few minutes after this picture was taken she stretched and in doing so pushed half the clutter on the table down onto the floor. Still, at least she's safe and home! :)

PS: Sorry for missing another day yesterday - it's hard work, this holiday thing!

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Little Things Thursday

100 of 10 - Day 13 - Quiet Moment

Still catching up on stuff after our holiday so another little pic from the journey back. The window on the ferry is always a popular spot to sit quietly for a minute. 

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The Good, the Random, the Fun

100 of 10 - Day 12 - Sand Sculptures

We were travelling yesterday and arrived home today to a defrosted fridge and freezer, courtesy of a power cut so I'm a little behind with these posts. This is from yesterday, our very last day on the beautiful Noordwijk beach. The boys spent the morning making elaborate sand sculptures out of dripped sand. They looked strange and kind of magical - like fairy tale structures. 

100 of 10 - Day 11 - Lost Property Tree

D and I headed out tonight for a meal out on our very last day here in beautiful Noordwijk. We went a little further towards the other end of the beach to try out one of the beach pavillions there, and came across this - it's a 'Lost Property Tree'. As far as I can tell any lost property found on the beach is hung on the branches. How cute is that?! 

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Friday Photo Journal

100 of 10 - Day 9 - Copic Marker Heaven

The one and only reason for our boys to visit Amsterdam - Copic Markers from Van Beek Art Supplies. 

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Not so Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday Around the World

Wordless Wednesday

100 of 10 - Day 8 - Bird Boxes

We encountered this little collection of bird boxes on our way home from the Noordwijk Bootcamp today and they caught my eye because they had clearly been painted by children. They looked very sweet, up in that tree. 

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Wordless Wednesday on a Tuesday

Image-in-ing

100 of 10 - Day 7 - Structure & Symmetry

We encountered this bizarre and imposing structure yesterday when we drove to the mountain bike track. Up on the hill, behind the track, was a large climbing wall. A bit to the left was... this. It's the strangest thing, and I'll post more pictures of it when I construct my next holiday update, but as this is a one picture kind of post I leave you with the strange symmetry of this structure. 

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Through My Lens

Holiday update... Oh, and 100 of 10 of course (Day 6 - Gull)

We are really getting into the holiday groove here. 

It always takes us a few days, and then of course it's been so hot for the past few days, and that resulted in a whole lot of lethargy and inactivity. For the past two days we were pretty much holed up at home during the day and only ventured out in the morning and the evening hours. 37 degrees is just a little too much to do much, and even going to the beach at mid-day seemed out of the question when temperatures were this high. 

As a result I've felt a bit cooped up, and I also had the usual pangs of guilt over the boys' screen time, but it was so hot that I couldn't really ask them to go do anything else when all I was able to do was sit somewhere with a cold drink and read a few blog posts here and there. Boy #1, still struggling with ME, suffered particularly. He normally really enjoys drawing and it's his main low-energy activity besides his tablet, but with the heat he's just felt too tired and drained to do much other than watch YouTube videos. Not fantastic, and my parenting-guilt was at an all-time high, but sometimes you just have to live, you know? 

Despite the heat we've had a good time so far. I've got a lot further with my sun hat - just need to add a couple more rows and then need to get some hat wire to finish it.

 There have also been numerous beach trips with the boys in the mornings and evenings, either all together, or at times just in small groups with those interested and willing to get out, lots of ice cream at the lovely Italian ice cream cafe down at the beach promenade, even little trips to the supermarket have been made more enjoyable than the usual grocery shopping by the adventure of finding new and intriguing food stuffs. 

A few days ago I brought home a promising-looking tub labelled (to me at least) totally incomprehensibly with: "De Zeeuwsche Boerin" - De Beroemde Zeeuwse Keukenstroop. It's a pretty-looking tub, quite old-fashioned. It was in the same shelf with all the chocolate sprinkles and the jam and honey, so I knew it probably wasn't cod-liver oil or liver pate, or worse, some kind of household cleaner, but other than that I had no idea! We had an old family friend who lives in the Netherlands visiting that day, so I presented the tub to him and asked him if he could identify its contents. He explained that it's a syrup made from apples, which is traditionally produced in the Zeeland region further to the south. I've been eating the stuff on my bread rolls every morning since, it's lovely!! 

Grandma watched the kids for us one afternoon and despite the heat D and I cycled to the next village, Noordwijkerhoud, to visit the bike shop there because we had seen that they had old ex-rental bikes for sale. It's a cute little place and we stopped for some iced tea at the market square.

The bike shop visit was successful too - I'm now the proud owner of my own Holland bike - meet Paula, my new ride! 

I've also done a bit of exploring. You might have seen my previous 100 of 10 photography post, but I think I've found Noordwijk's haunted mansion, or rather, haunted hotel. It's all boarded up and it looks very mysterious - it sits in a row of immaculate and quite posh properties right by the beach and it's clearly been empty for a long time. I wonder what happened and why nobody has bought it? It was a good photo opportunity anyway.

  

Last night the heatwave finally broke with a storm and in the early hours of the morning we had thunder and lightning and a lot of rain. By noon today the skies cleared again, but it's remained in the low twenties and it's been as windy as you'd expect it to be at the North Sea coast. We took the opportunity to head out on our bikes for a bit, as a family. This coast line is so beautiful - endless wide beaches, dunes, and I'm so in love with all the bicycle paths everywhere. I really love that we can head out with the kids and don't have to be terrified to go on a road with them, and the pace of life that comes with cycling everywhere is so much nicer than all that racing around in the car that we normally have. 

After a picnic lunch at a beach on the way D headed back with boy #1 and boy #2, who were both tired, and I continued on for a while with boy #3, who is always ready to do a bit more or go a bit further. 

Seriously, that boy has so much energy - even during the really hot last few days, when we were all just lying around, he was playing football in the baking-hot courtyard and asking to play Frisbee!! 

We are planning a trip to a local mountain bike park tomorrow, and next week we are hoping to make it to Amsterdam and Le Hague for a few day trips. I can't wait! 

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A Year of Projects
My Sunday Photo
Sunday Snap