April Showers

The weekend's activities mainly involved avoiding the rain showers and eating. We went to the shops for provisions so that John could make a ragu sauce. This is one of John's specialities, and he often makes it when he has a day off. He retreats into the kitchen, puts on some music and potters around. He makes the best ragu sauce ever, I will share it with you one day.

Angus built one of his speciality traffic jams, where he likes to spend hours lining up all his toy cars, trucks, fire engines and other vehicles in a perfectly straight line. Sometimes they are in size order, sometimes not. No-one is allowed to touch them (this causes problems when other children come round to play) but we are permitted to admire his creative efforts.

Some time with the paints. I've found letting them use these watercolours is so much less mess than getting out the poster paints, and they seem to enjoy it just as much. Bella painted a row of flowers...

And Angus painted "a rainbow".

The finished results:

Angus poring over one of his favourite books. I can't remember the title, he just calls it the "police car book" and he loves to stare really closely at the images as though committing them to memory.

On Sunday we ventured into Leeds. We visited the City Museum to see the Pharaoh - King of Egypt exhibition on tour from the British Museum. It was very interesting, but did not really grab the children's attention so we didn't spend that long there. 

But another exhibition, "Silver Seventies" really caught our attention. My fellow Leeds blogger,   Jen at little birdie, wrote a great post about it on Saturday.

It was brilliant - colourful, well laid out, informative and funny. I was born in 1978 so I don't really feel that I am a true child of the seventies, as most of my childhood memories are from the eighties. But there was so much in this exhibition that provoked memories for John and I - styles of decorating, home furnishings, board games. I was particularly taken with the sewing patterns.

Then to Carluccio's for lunch. We'd never been here before and it was very nice. Lovely style of interior design and good service.

I was so impressed with how child friendly is it. As soon as we sat down the children were given an activity pack with paper and crayons. Their drinks came in plastic cups which always causes me to breathe a sigh of relief. The lovely Italian waitress made a fuss of Angus ("ah, such a cute leeeetle boy!") and he allowed her to stroke his cheek. I ordered the spinach and ricotta ravioli in sage butter sauce and oh, it was so utterly delicious. Then coffee gelato for desert, which was rich and bitter and dark. Strangely, Bella loved it, so I traded her some of mine for her vanilla gelato, and that really was delicious.

And a lovely gift from friends in the afternoon..

A rye fruit loaf (or "malt loaf for grown ups") from our friends Kate and Dean. Dean is a talented and passionate baker. There is nothing he does not know about bread and he spends a large part of his spare time baking various and wonderful loaves. I've gone round in the evening to babysit before and found rows of sourdough, brioche and croissants lined up, cooling, ready for the week ahead.

Good friends to know! Especially when they give you random and delicious bread. What did you do over the weekend? I hope you stayed dry and had fun.