First a bit of gardening ...

Last week Kevin and Hayzel organised some gardening equipment and so this morning, we all got involved with a spot of gardening.   Kevin first had to assemble the lawnmower, which he did yesterday evening.    Then he got stuck into the grass, with a little bit of help (?) from the kiddies.   The videos are quite long, so I've only uploaded the one with Ewan:

Kevin's getting really good at assembling stuff that we buy online.   He also had to put together another chest of drawers for Faye's room yesterday, as well as another bookcase for the office.   We are slowly starting to get enough storage space together.   It took Hayzel most of Saturday to tidy up Faye's room, after she moved it all around.

I'm very pleased with our garden, it looks lovely in the sunlight.  Each day when you go outside, something else has started to flower, the owners of Spider's Web did a really good job planting all the bulbs and seeds before we arrived in December.   Here are a few photos of the garden, taken during our lovely sunny Sunday morning.

Aish not an Af in sight
Hayzel and I took a car full of cardboard boxes to the recycling plant about a mile or so down the road from Long Stratton this morning.   It was so weird pulling up to the 'dump' and not having a million zots run out to the car shouting 'meddem! meddem!' ,  trying to take the stuff out of your car before you'd parked it.    Instead it is so sophisticated and organised (and clean).

The place is neatly kitted out with super-large bins or containers/skips that take everything from laptops to cellphones.   Each thing you want to recycle has it's own designated dump station - there are separate bins for cellphones; computer monitors; foil; garden rubble; industrial rubble; nuts & bolts; car batteries, cell phone batteries, washing machines; vacuum cleaners; plastic; paper; cardboard, glass (and different bins for different coloured glass); old cooking oil, old engine oil ... etc. etc.   So bloody civilised.

Does anyone know what this flowering shrub is that's growing near our pond?

And then ...    Lost in the Woods - a trip to:
 

THETFORD FOREST PARK

After a quick lunch, we herded the kids and puppy into the car and drove the three-quarters of an hour or so to Thetford Forest, which is the largest lowland pine forest in Britain.   It's apparently just under 29 Hectares in size and was created after the First World War.    We went to the High Lodge entry point and did the very easy Nature Trail, which is about a mile long, although we fiddled about quite a bit and went off course more than once.   Our little puppy seemed to really enjoy it!

Next time we go, we'll try and stay for a longer visit and do a more adventurous trail, maybe have a barbeque.    It's a great place to go with kids, spotlessly clean, safe and relaxing.   There are places to picnic and barbeque (NOTE, we didn't see any refuse bins  - presumably because British people take their rubbish home with them). 

 There are loads of cycling trails, and about four walking trails from the High Lodge entry point. 

 I was impressed when we went into the loos before we started our walking to see a poster for an Elvis Costello gig on the back of my loo door.  Bloody hell, Elvis Costello.  Paul Weller (him of The Jam/Style Council fame) is also doing a concert at Thetford Forest and there is a billboard promoting the event as you enter the park.  I would have killed to see Paul Weller back in 1998!

Thetford Forest has seen many people perform here over the years - from Blondie to Van Morrison and Madness.

 There's a high-wire adventure course [Go Ape] that spans some of the trees behind the High Lodge itself.  We couldn't go on it today because the kids have to be over 10.  Like I would go on a high-wire adventure course ... ja, right.

A girl and her dog.

'Spoiler Alert' ... more videos to follow ... sorry to the peeps in SA if your bandwidth gets chewed up.

Eeek look what crept up on us when we were in the 'hide'

Bambi was here ...
Bok drols

Lions, Tigers and Bears ... oh my!

A Smurf! 

In other news, I got myself a Tablet at last.  It's an ASUS Memo Pad Smart 10.1" ... I'm loving it so far. SKYPE works well on it and I can watch my por ... er YouTube TV series (Like QI XL) in bed at night, without disturbing anyone.  My own little Telly!

Cheers for now - hope you all have a lovely week - lots of birthdays coming up soon! :)