Fabulous, fizzing fireworks.

Surely everyone loves fireworks? We do, James, Esmé and I are all big fireworks fans. Without a doubt the best fireworks which James and I have been to are the Edinburgh Festival Fireworks ~ totally amazing, if you ever get the chance, go!















Back to this year, we were spoilt, we went to the Coastguard fireworks and then on Guy Fawkes Night we went up to Next Generation and met up with Simon and Eleanor, and Su, Mark and Benjamin. After soup and stovies the fun began.

















The only bad thing about the fireworks was that Margaret was poorly and unable to come along. It really was a shame, especially since she organised our fireworks evening!

I am however please to report that she is on the mend ~ get well soon Margaret xx

Busy weekend for birthday girl!!!!

Esmé turned 4 on Thursday and we seem to have been celebrating ever since!

Esmé was delighted to have Alex round to show her new big girl Lego off to and everyone at nursery sang Happy Birthday to her.

Aunts, Uncles, Grannies and Granda popped in to help Esmé blow out her candles on birthday cake number 1.

To be honest it really doesn't feel like 4 years since we were bathing her in a basin on the same table featured in the picture!








Friday was Halloween, I really did want Esmé to be born on Halloween, but when it came to it, that was never going to happen.....
Esmé had her nursery Halloween party and dressed up in her pumpkin dress and got plenty of party game practise for Sunday.
I did dress up as a witch for work, but was gutted that I forgot my broom stick...
I still managed to forget it when we popped into the Abourkir's kids party in the evening :(

We had our annual family outing to the Carnoustie fireworks on Saturday, this year followed by soup at OC's.

Hopefully there will still be fireworks and a torchlit procession to go to next year, but lack of donations last year had put this years fireworks in jeopardy. There have been a alot of people trying to raise money to support the fireworks and hopefully more people made contributions this year.

It really would be a sad day if this tradition came to an end.







Sunday was party time. Friends and family were invited to Esmé's fancy dress Halloween birthday party. There was a fabulous fancy dress turn out amongst the children and the 'big kids' effort was pretty good too! A big well done to the all the winners, but especially to the Ghostbusters in the adult/big kid category!!! (May I add that Indian Jones was one of our favourites.) Once more we had fantastic selection of carved pumpkins for the pumpkin competition - well done everyone. So much easier than the dreaded turnip scooping our childhood...
The party was huge, busy, noisy and a bit mad. I think everybody enjoyed themselves, Esmé certainly did. There is no way we could have pulled it off had it not have been for the help and support we received. Like the Oscars there are too many people to thank everyone by name, but must say a special thank you to Granny Sheona and Granny Phyllis, Auntie Dawn and Marta.

Esmé has received so many lovely presents she has truly been spoilt, Esmé sends a big thank you.

So we are almost back to normality, whatever that is in our house, but we still have the fireworks on November 5th to look forward too!!!!

Happy Birthday Cameron!!!!

Happy Birthday Cameron!!!

Lots of Love from

Auntie Gwen, Uncle James
and Esmé
x x x

Esmé's birthday card for Cameron

Labour of Love...

From when I first fell pregnant with Esmé, I have wanted to make something for her to keep. I couldn't knit, I have no obvious and useful skills, what could I make? I really couldn't think of anything, but it still bugged me I wanted to make her something. Over 6 months ago I started on her blanket...

...and I crocheted it!!! This time last year I could not crochet, I wouldn't even have known which end of a crochet hook was which! Around Christmas time last year, I saw lovely crocheted flower pins, for bags and jackets in DCA. They cost a small fortune and I was sure I could have a stab at making something similar. After all, the other women in the family seem to be able to use metal sticks to produce something wonderful out of yarn. And this was when I enlisted the Phyllis to help me.

Before Esmé was even born, Phyllis had made her a beautiful crocheted shawl, and we used it all the time. I loved it and marvelled at someone being able to produce something so lovely. It never crossed my mind that I could learn to crochet. However, after seeing the flowers I decided to ask Phyllis to help me and early this year, maybe 8 months ago, she started to teach me to crochet, may I add here that she is a wonderful tutor!

I diligently practised my squares and circles and at some point along the way, I decided that it would be a great idea to crochet Esmé a blanket. I eventually found the perfect wool, courtesy of Angels and Elephants, who have an Ebay online store. They buy in Shetland wool and dye it themselves. In fact they ended up dying a few batches especially for me, due to my complete inability to judge how much wool I would need! Thank you Kellie x

Of course, me being me, I couldn't find a pattern that was exactly what I wanted. In my wisdom I decided that, as a newbie hooker, the best thing to do would be to improvise on a pattern in one of Nicky's crocheting books and then make the rest up as I went along! As a result the blanket is the combination of five different patterns, with a little bit of Gwen for good measure!!!

Six months down the line and the blanket is finally finished. I am truly proud of my efforts and very grateful to James for his patience and support, to Kellie for keeping on dying more wool for me, to Phyllis for teaching me how to hook and for keeping me right, to those of you who have endured the blanket traumas and of course to Esmé for being so patient!

...I truly am a happy hooker!

Jambo Lizzy and Ruth

The holidays are here, the term has flown by. James is still in shock to find himself at the end of his first term at school. I don't think that James or I can quite believe that Esmé has completed her first term at school nursery. The fact that she will be going to school next summer really seems to becoming a reality! She has had a ball, Esmé's favourite things at nursery are gym and show and tell. She actually asked me this morning how many sleeps it was till nursery starts again!!!!

I do enjoy my job, but I have to say that the last weeks of a school term always seem a little stressful, as the kids start to get impatient for the end of term. This term has been entirely different. As most of you are aware Websters is linked with Litein High School, in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. Earlier in the year one of the geographers, Richard came for a visit as part of the Global Reciprocal Visit Scheme. For the past 2 weeks we have had Lizzy, an English teacher and Ruth, a History and RME teacher visiting.

They are both fantastic ladies and it has been a wonderful experience having them in school. They have been rushed off their feet visiting classes and groups both within the school and local community. The Home Economics dept. hosted a coffee morning in aid of the link. Which was very successful. Esmé was very excited about going and getting to meet Lizzy and Ruth. The three of them really seemed to hit it off!

I have been involved with the Kenyan link since the start, although mostly as an interested onloooker, Mike has been the driving force within the school. I always believed in the link and felt it would be an enriching experience. We have begun to amend our syllabus to include a study of Kenya, this is part of an enriched task and runs as part of a faculty wide project, working alongside History and RME. I know that Lizzy and Ruth have been working on curriculum development too. We also have a number of pupils who now have Kenyan penpals.

The link has however, bought so much with it, other than curriculum development and greater awareness and knowledge of another country. It is difficult to describe, but suddenly Kenya doesn't seem like a distant land. And I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to meet some truly wonderful people and dedicated teachers to boot!

I hope that Lizzy and Ruth have lovely last few days in Scotland and have a little time to chill out before returning home.

Happy tattie holidays!

Perthshire Open Studios

Our friend Mhairi makes lovely jewellery. Everything she makes is beautifully hand crafted.

This week she is been involved in the Perthshire Open Studios week and is been exhibiting with Gerry and Alison in their studio. It is a unique oppertunity to meet local artists and makers in their studio's, watch them work and even have a chance to buy something really lovely...Christmas is only 3 months away......

Visit http://www.perthshireopenstudios.com/ for more info and if you are free this week, why not go along!

So the world didn't end today....

Work today has consisted of much speculation about whether we would indeed be swallowed up into a great big black hole or not. There were a few interesting theories flying around my classes...

Firstly, the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) would create are enormous black hole and by 09.15 would would all have disappeared into it. Life as we know it would be at an end. As the day went on new deadlines for the black hole swallowing us up were created, to allow for the fact that we were still here.

The second theory argued was that the world was not going to end today. A black hole would be created, however it was apparently going to be so small the only small things would get sucked into it and we were too big. I can see this becoming an excuse for the mysterious ongoing disappearance of pencils, rulers, jotters and anything required in class! :p

A group of pupils informed me that since the world was going to end today, there would have be no point in wasting their last night on Earth doing their homework!!!!! I am glad to add that the homework in question was not for me!

After much speculation about 'Big Bang Day', it is good to see that the £5billion the French and Swiss spent creating it was well spent and that we were all still here to see the the two little lights on the screen. I was informed by a pupil at the end of the day that I was wrong, we had not yet survived 'Big Bang Day', because, wait for it, we are not going to get swallowed into said enormous black hole until tomorrow morning!Although who is to say? After all no-one seems to know exactly when they plan to run the first actual collision!!!

Gwen