Baking

Milestone today. Finally bit the bullet and risked baking with Ben. He loved it!! He kept calling the dough playdough though, but he was so good - helped roll the biscuit dough out, pressed out some shapes, and then while it was baking I got on with making mince pies and he played with the scraps of pastry, squashing it together, rolling it out, not quite getting the hang of pressing shapes out particularly but he had a lot of fun and it kept his attention for nearly half an hour. That's got to be some kind of record for my attention-span-of-a-gnat boy. The biscuits weren't bad either, we'll ice them tomorrow perhaps. And the mince pies were good too. Since discovering frangipan I've decided I like it quite a lot so my mince pies were frangipan and mince pies. And were lovely and chewy!

Up until we had such fun baking I'd already got my blip sorted out. Ben had seen a cat in the garden through the window and turned to me, "coat! hat! weyey boots!" so I trussed him up in his cold weather stuff, and turfed him out into the garden. Then he looked so cute that I had to stop my baking and go out with the camera. Poor thing, he loves that dayglo hat. When I bought it back in cold cold august, he wouldn't let me wear it and I had to buy a munkie hat. But as he can't see it when he's wearing it, he doesn't seem to mind and actually requests this hat. Together with the red and blue gloves it's really quite a fetching get-up. He had fun chasing the cat and jumping on his trampoline, then just as it was getting dark he played on the climbing frame for a bit and we chased each other round like monsters. All good fun.

Steve has been on a first aid course yesterday and today, and today he finished - passed with flying colours, as I would hope so too - and was home early. Not that I saw much of him, he snaffled the laptop and holed himself up in Ben's room to sort out a recording that needed doing for tonight. Once the girlies had gone home (it was a prayer night for our small group, and the ladies were at our house) I snaffled it back and have finally been able to see my pictures and get them all sorted out!

Time for bed now. Might just finish off those last few sausages in bacon.... and maybe a mince pie.... and maybe.... oooooh why not. Maybe a glass of wine.