a mole....a prom and a Mother..... .

Look at this.... ! One of our chickens saw the earth move and dragged this little fella out of the ground !!!!! I cannot believe how small moles are - I have never seen one before. Weird! The size of the hills they make I thought they would be about 6 times the size of this one ... I read recently that these little chaps travel approx 2.5 miles per day underground... incredible. Anyhow, we rescued him and let him go again. Today Lee and I have planted some trees along our border - 2 pomegranates, a sharon fruit and a cherry tree, along with some prickly pears... Tashan came out and took a photo of us.

Tashan and I are off to the UK tomorrow - he is off to meet up with his friends and his Dad, I am going to hang out with friends and go to the Tiverton High School Prom on the 2nd.... I'm so excited to see everyone, I cannot wait ! I spent hours on Skype with my Sister Vicky yesterday morning... she managed to track down our Mum who now lives in Dorset and called her on a mobile number she got from a contact I had in my filofax. That feels odd as we have not spoken for years now... so I now have a number for her but I'm not quite sure what I will do with it.

Bolas !

A trip to the supermarket (Pingo Doce) on Wednesday turned out to be fun as we spent some time checking out the animals next door - part of the fire station, on the way home. It was 32 degrees and the shopping was melting fast ! We really need to be more organised and stop going shopping in the middle of the day when it is so hot. So what I thought was a couple of goats was far more interesting.... in addition we found a llama, reindeer, emu's, a pony, peacocks, a ton of different and very bizarre looking chickens and even a green wing macaw who said "ola". Very cute. I didnt take pictures of him or any of the birds as it makes me feel so sad to see pictures of them in a cage. They did look very healthy and well looked after though.... When we got home I decided to mow 'the lawn' and got a bit carried away ! Anyhow , I finished up and stood back to admire my new 'tame' area then went upstairs to call Lauren and wish her a Happy Birthday..... meanwhile..... Fernando a neighbour arrives with his son on a tractor and they begin to plough our garden......

BOLAS. (Balls).

Fernando tells me that whilst my courgette plants are beginning to produce weeners - his are as big as his arm... my tomato plants are a foot tall.... his are shoulder height.... you get the picture.. so bless him he thought he would help me out and be neighbourly. Our conversations are a mix of sign language, my basic pigeon portuguese and lots of giggling... goat impressions and so on.... Fernando looks funny bleating with hands for ears ! He didn't pick the best spot to plough but I am grateful for his kindness and praise the lord he didn't plough up the soak away pipe for the septic tank. Goodness knows what I am going to plant out there.... ! Maybe some radish ? I have some before pictures of my new veg patch area prior to installation here but will post some 'after ones' later on.... The first photo is the view of our house and next doors, taken from the top of the road that meets with ours. Great view.

Secret ingredient prawns.

Some more pictures from the Senhora Da Ribeira riverbeach.... between Mortagua and Santa Comba Dao. You can drive right down to the waters edge, there are built in BBQ's all over the place, toilets, restaurants.... You can even camp here for free ! There are showers too. This plate of prawns from Bar Do Pedrosa was €18 ... really the best prawns I have ever eaten.... they complimented our picnic perfectly ! The water was warm for swimming and you can even hire a pedal boat ! Lovely lovely lovely. :O)

FRIGGERIFICO !

Well we went to Mortagua market in the morning last Thurs to buy some Guinea Fowl (Fraca) we nearly bought some turkeys(Peru) by accident but thankfully got the right little dudes in the end. ...... We did buy our house on Thursday too and whilst I know i'm supposed to say how happy and exited I was.. to be honest I felt completely freaked out... it was not the most relaxing process and made me feel a bit anxious. Partly due to emotional stuff for the seller.... partly to do with the permanence of it all perhaps ? So we arrived home to find a bottle of bubbly and some sparklers all wrapped up in a ribbon by our lovely new neighbors.... and exhausted I went indoors and read my new book Precious.The whole thing. Whoa. Really enjoyed it but I could perhaps have chosen a cheerier read for the moment. Still I guess it gave me the get a grip tablet I needed. Tashan broke up from School for the summer on Friday, so I am now living with full time hormone puddle instead of the part time one I was getting used to. We were invited to go to a party on Saturday with a hog roast.... mmmm and live music ! Sienna managed to eat some plant which made her itch like crazy... Tashan met some nice kids his age and I got to see the couples gorgeous house and gardens which was great. So nice to meet new people and have a laugh. Mickaella was the life and soul of the party. We slept over at M&M's then went to Senhora Da Ribeira river beach for the day on Sunday....We had such a good day, swam in the lake ate the best prawns ever, rowed dinghy's, laughed, built a tepee, drank wine and laughed some more. We then had a second sleepover at M&Ms last night and woke up to blue sky's and sunshine again..... will I ever get bored of that ?

Both my kids are tired and grumpy today and I hit the ground with a big old bump...... ! Will they ever stop arguing ? I am loving these photo's of the kids at the river beach and M&M havin a good old cuddle up....

Anyhow, I have had a bloody lovely couple of days and have my very own brand new word .. friggerifico which for today means friggin triffic. x

Buying our house......today ?

Well it is looking hopeful that we will be buying our house today .... above is a picture of the back of it , taken in March. Yesterday our 'seller' Jen flew out with her daughter and we met them for the first time. They are both lovely. Fingers crossed it will all go smoothly. I am told it usually doesn't !! Out appointment is at 4pm.

It will be such a relief if it all gets sorted as we will all be able to move on and get on with things !

We are going to be house sitting for our lovely neighbours for six months, starting in September. I am really looking forward to it, (although we will miss them whilst they are away :o( )It will give us a chance to get the house sorted out and have a civilised space to live in whilst we work on it. Anyhow, lets see how we get on this afternoon.

Things that go bump in the night....

Every now and then there is a bump.. or loud crash in the night and I know Sienna has fallen out of bed.... I go in and pick her up ( she always continues to sleep) and pop her back into bed. Well she has been a bit of a disaster area these past two weeks..

First she walked sideways off a ledge into a river whilst at Roberts birthday party and went completely under in her best frock. Thankfully she was laughing about it when Marcus swiftly pulled her up for air.

Next she walked into a lamp post in Mortagua and somehow flew sideways into the hedgerow with her skirt up. After pulling down he skirt to hide her knickers from two passing (bemused) ladies.. she giggled again.

Well today she was on form. This morning I heard bloodcurdling screams and ran down to find she had fallen face down in the mud with her mouth open. (Unfortunate if you are not a fan of the stuff) I have advised her to close her mouth next time to avoid this. Not 20 minutes later there were more blood curdling screams and she has now learnt that when we said that prickly pear plants are not to be picked up or touched as they HURT, we really meant it.
This afternoon she bit her tongue on the trampoline. Then tonight I heard a crash when she fell out of bed. Unfortunately I didnt help matters when I went in to recover her from the floor and cracked her on the head with the door as I opened it to go in.

Blimey... whatever happened to bad luck coming in 3's ?
Better luck tomorrow Bubba ! x

Snakes, lizards, butterflys and lemon biscuits.

Yesterday we saw a ladder snake like the one on the right slide past us in the garden... it didnt hang about long and soon disappeared.... with me legging it in the opposite direction, squealing like Olive Oil. (Not the bottled stuff). I felt a bit vulnerable in my flip flops... It was a chunkey monkey - Lee reckoned it was about 4ft long. Eeek. Must get the grass cut. Then today, Nolly - caught this little lizard fella and Lee rescued him. Luckily he was in one piece and whilst he was busy playing dead Sienna was well chuffed to hold him. Had a relaxing day today really, pottered about and pondered in the garden. I took a walk along the track at the bottom of the garden and was surprised to see lavender growing in the forest alongside the track. It had a fantastic orange butterfly on it - they are everywhere at the moment, beautiful - remind me of being little when I would spend hours with my buddies chasing them with nets.

I got a whack on the head at one point today from our cat Nolly who was sitting above my head in an olive tree.... He really has been a mad thing this week. Nutcase.

Oh and Tashan made lemon biscuits this afternoon..... I came in to find that he had decided to use (oxo cube sized ) chunks of lemon peel instead of grated rind... (quicker innit ?) so I had a bit of a whinge etc.... anyhow somehow his tray of biscuits came out of the oven n disguise as a.... lemon cake. That boy of mine really does have issues with following instructions... ! Anyhow the cake was amazing.. shame he cant remember where online he found the recipe because it was miles better than my cakes ! It has given me some ideas for what to do with surplus lemons from our tree.... In March I picked about 40 from the tree here and made loads of homemade lemonade. I wonder if I could grow a lime tree.... haven't seen any of those here. I really do love lime. :o)