Yiiiiii ha!! Cowboy;-)

At long last I have found the farm I had been looking for ever since I moved to the States. It only took 2 1/2 years and a 40 min drive out to Powhatan, but it was well worth it.
Martina and Lilly came along as babysitter while I rode a handsome 17
hand, four year old gelding named Helmet **@#**??. What the hell where
they thinking when they named that horse??
Name aside, Helmet (let's call him Helmi) has only been ridden for about 90 days and needs all the help he can get from his rider. Donna Crossman,
the stable owner took me and him under her wings and guided us trough
our first adventure together. He has beautiful gaits and is a real
sweetheart. Having not really done much in the field of horses ever
since Finley entered the scene, I am happy to be working with Donna and
look forward to learning a lot from her.
Reedwind farm is a lovely place and Donna mainly trains quarter horses, but also has a few boarders and does the occasional lesson.
Both,
Finley and Lilly had a little ride on the farm's 'granny horse' Holly
and judging by the look on their faces, they really enjoyed it. We all
got to ride around in a golf cart. The kids took turns steering, which
was rather scary. Took a long time to get from A to B;-))Finley took a
crash course in roping and mastered it like a pro.
It was a great day and we all look forward to many more days on the farm and lots of riding;-)))))

Transition to Spring

Winter has gone and spring is here...but not quite. It is still
shockingly cold and the lovely blooming fruit trees in our back yard
are shivering in the cold wintry chill. I am actually looking right at
them, admiring their beautiful pink flowers and...what's that little
grey thing there next to the wheelbarrow? Uhhhhhh Finley would love that. He'd probably call it a Hasi,
(German name for rabbit) although the one out there is a little smaller
with a very, very long tail and not domesticated...at least not in
usual sense.
Over a month has past since my last entry. Shocking!!! This just shows that February
and March are pretty boring month...unless you spend them in the
Bahamas;-) However, the Bahamas are already a thing of the past and we
need to move forward to new adventures. Finley is getting more and more
active as the days go by and I need to find activities to fill our days.
There is a lot of playground action and some nice walks with Martina and Lilly. Every Thursday he meets Camille at a kiddy gym. Finley is a bit of a ladies man, just like his daddy;-)
We got a little taste of spring this past weekend. Very conveniently at Easter time. Steve got bitten by the DIY
bug and started digging up the back garden in order to create a oasis
for the summer month. The grass had to go, as it never really grew
anyway and the gaps between the bushes where filled with white pebbles.
This does not only look good but hopefully will prevent the hoards of mosquitoes
from breeding in the moist ground. Not that the ground is ever moist
here...it's a dessert in the summer;-(((((, but our monster mossies find
every drop of water and hang out there until something better comes
along. They really like Finley blood and mine too;-((
Anyway, I
digress. Instead of grass we now have a beautiful sand pit for the heir
where he can go wild and an enormous hole in the ground, which will
hopefully one day be a brick patio. My landscape gardener husband is
very talented and I really mean that.

Saturday
afternoon we celebrated little Olly's first birthday with Katie and
Joel and some of their friends. Unfortunately the weather turned really
cold and we hurried of to the next B-Party, which -O dear- was a BBQ.
Anyway, it turned out be really nice, as Dennis has a huge fire pit where we first roasted our toes and than some marshmallows!!!
Easter
Sunday, we went to Monument Avenue and strolled along the road with
hundreds, maybe thousands (that might be a bit exaggerated) of fellowRichmonders.
It felt a bit like walking along Brighton Peer on the first days of
spring, which in the UK that would be sometimes in August;-))))
There where certainly more dogs than people. Hard work as Finley needed to pat every single one. Luckily
we found some ponies and a petting zoo with lots of tiny goats, cows,
bunnies and a very lazy llama that did not get up once. Mind you it
looked pretty big. At least Finley was able to mount it better, which
the
owners did not like at all. He tried the same with the bunny, which luckily
was in a cage otherwise that could have been the end of the Easter
Bunny;-)))

Some
of the photos are from our latest trip to Nags Head, two weeks ago,
featuring the young boy and the sea, admiring the elements and hanging
out with the surfer chicks!!

Happy Easter everyone;-))))))))))

Bahamamamamamamaamas...*ggg*;-)))

Tini pitter patter of footsteps are slowly making their way upstairs...and there it is...Mammi!!!Hallo!!! Here comes Finley with his chuchu, which is of course a car, but everything with weels is a chuchu these days. Fine with me. I know what he means.
Right now he is busy sticking money in the air condition vents. I guess whoever will move in here next is in for a nice surprise;-))
So, Finley has gone back downstairs. I have put Dora on rerun and he is still in love with her, prefers her to sitting on Mammi's lap...thank god!!!
This, of course buys me some time to quickly write a summary of our ever so relaxing, but much too short holiday at the Bahamas. Freeport really is - just around the corner- and it took no time at all to get there. Unfortunately there are no direct flights out of Richmond and we had to fly via Atlanta where we had a seven hour layover on the way back...BORING, to say the least. I read every magazin on the planet, know that Angie and JLO are having twins, Brad stays home with the kids, Jennifer hates to go to the Academy Awards for fear of facing Angie, Ryan Seacrest is a prick and last but not least...a bunch of people seemed to have a great time at Heath Ledger's funeral in Perth. It is important to know these things, that's what life is all about;-)))))))))))))
We all cought some bug there or in the Bahamas. Finley and I are sitting at home feeling poorly and Steve braved the elements and drove to work in arctic temperatures of -5C.
But hey, let's not dwell on that and live in the past for a moment.The Bahamas where great. Very small island...aparently 90 miles long and 17 wide, which ever way you want to look at it. Steve's Dad greeted us at the - very small- airport, looking suspiciously like an indigenous after having been there for nearly 6 weeks;-)) The drive to Coral Beach took about 10 minutes. Granny welcomed us with open arms and...a beer!!!
Freeport offers all the usual tourist activities like riding on the beach, canooing, para sailing, fishing, diving...and the rest of it. I of course did nothing at all apart from sitting on the beach, reading lots of books and strolling all along the beach into town for a mocca and chocolate ice cream (tasted like frozen chocolate mousse hmmmmmm)to Island Java, my favorite coffee shop nearly every day. It felt a bit like 'Home and Away' for anyone who is familiar with that.
A really great storm on Wednesday gave us a taste of what a hurricane must be like. Of course it was nowhere near that bad, but crazy enough to settle into the apartment for the day and read.
I took some photos of the wild elements. It felt really amazing and a little scary to be at their mercy.
On Sunday we visited a really remote beach in the national park where we had to...cross the road, hike throught he mangrove forest and walk on a wooden walkway to get to the beach. Sound familiar? All that without the map (I am the map, I am the map, I am the map;-)) Sorry, no I am not crazy, just watching to much Dora!!!!
Steve and I walked for miles to find the spot where a scene from Pirates of the Caribbian was filmed. It also reminded me of that scene from Shakespeare in Love, when Gwyneth gets shipwrecked and walks barefoot into the distance on a remote island and the voice over narator saying: "My story starts at sea...a perilous voyage to an unknown land. A shipwreck. The wild waters roar and heave. The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her ...drowned. All save one: a lady...whose soul is greater than the ocean and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace. Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be...Viola...."
For some reason this is my favorite movie quote ever, probably because I was stoned when I watched it;-)))
Moving on...it was beautiful to say the least and coming back was hard, but living there is not an option as only Bahamians are alowed to work on the Island. I guess I have to find another place to live. If only there wheren't so many nice places!!!

Children's books

Writing Children's Books is one hell of a job and I am sure J.K, Rowlings knew that all too well. Still she managed to write Harry Potter with a small child on her lap or perhaps in the crib next to her when the kid was asleep.
There are days, when it flows really nicely and inspiration is on my side. Some days, however, are dreadful and uninspiring. Those are the days when I am desperatly on the lookout for a Muse helping me to get the flow going.
I guess every writer has the same problem and I am really writing this to test the new Amazon quick link widget.
Guess I could use Organic Gardening as a guineapig, but hey who cares...as long as it works.
Well, let's have a look at it now and see if the widgets link to Amazon. If they do I will be very proud of myself;-)))))

Visit to Meadow Farm

Earlier in my blog I mentioned that I would find great things to do in Richmond and than write about it so other people (if anyone should ever read this!!) can go and see them as well.
Meadow Farm is one of those places and I learned about it from my friend Martina who had been there many times and it seems so had everyone else. It was just me who did not know about it. So much for discovering Richmond. Well, it looked like I had some catching up to do and therefore went there two days in a row!!! On the second day, Sunday, I took my boys and we took a TOUR of the place. The tour consisted of walking from chicken pen to sheep pen to pig pen and of course horsy paddock and not to forget the vegetable garden, which looked more like a barren wasteland. Andi our guide still managed to find some hardy herbs and gave us great tips of how to prevent mice from entering your house by planting rosemary and lavender close to wherever the cute rodents have their little doors. Might just try that with our permanent house guest who refuses to eat the yummie stuff we put into the traps.
Andi also introduced us to Frosty the lamb, which was hand raised as it had been rejected by its mom. Needless to say the lamb is looking well and will go nicely with the home grown rosemary when the time has come;-)
We where also able to admire a praying mantis nest, which really looked like a dried up leaf, but according to Andi housed about 20 of the lovely creatures. On our tour, we where joined by another family and Finley quickly made friends with the two girls. He borrowed the youngest one's stroller and had a ball pushing it through the farm yard. Steve put a Rugby ball in it to remind him that he is actually a boy;-)))
Meadow farm has largely been keept as it was in 1860 and the aniamals and plants all derive from those days. This does not sound right!! The animals and plants are not really that old, they had of course fathers and mothers and grannnies and great great...bla, bla bla...!!!
Nice place for kids and I bet really great in the summer when they do all kinds of courses and lessons and people can help shear the sheep, every Saturday in April if I remember correctly.

Why I didn't make it to the Super Bowl party!!!

You just know it is still very early in the morning when your bedroom is pretty dark and there is no noise outside apart from maybe a confused finch or sparrow. The streets are quiet, because it is Sunday and everyone is sleeping...everyone apart from my husband!! And I know this, because of that hand, creeping across our King Size Bed (reason for having such a thing is so he cannot reach me unless having to really make an effort:-)))) starting to poke me , probably with the intention of getting me aroused. AT 6 IN THE MORNING...you've got to be kidding me!!!!
Of course I pretend to be fast asleep...even snore a little - for dramatic effect. Not working. I snore a little louder. Still not working. Now I get angry and tell him to f... off.
Anyway, I really don't want to go into any more details as this is already quite bold. However, this is by no means the end of it. As I try to find a way back into my lovely dreams, Finley starts crying. Well, it was no real crying, but annoying enough to end my Sunday sleep in once and for all!!!
So I drag myself out of bed and turn the TV on. No Dora, damn! I guess she is still sleeping??? Luckily there is other stuff on. Of course there is...this is bloody America. There is no test picture after the nine o clock news like there was in Austria (at least when I was little), here we have round the clock cartoons...yippie!!
I proceed to make our favorite breakfast, porridge, which at 6.30 am tastes exactly like it looks. No...I meant cardbord;-))
Now, with Finley watching...stuff and both of us finished with breakfast, what next? I, of course, need watching cartoons like a hole in the head and decide to make a carrot cake. What else can you do on a Sunday morning with a five kilo bag of carrots? I don't know what posessed me when I bought that!!! Hoping the noise of the machine will wake Steve, I start to grate about 20 cups up carrots, 3 of which are required for the recipe. In the end I use about 5 cups for the cake. Needless to say - it is very, very moist!!! It was in fact so moist that I thought it was still raw when I tasted it at lunch time..perhaps it was a little. Steve's fault! He was in charge of taking it out of the oven, because I went back to bed.
Right, I went back to bed and so did Finley. We both had like a full day's work behind us and where ready for a nap.
And so I crawl back into bed, sinking deep into my lovely foam matress. There was a lot of catching up to be done. Half way into dreamy land, I get hit by a sledge hammer. I could almost see our next door neighbour standing on the other side of my bedroom wall holding the biggest hammer above his head...big develish grin from ear to ear!! Why, why do people not honor Sundays...God did, or did he not say: 'Hey guys, we have been working really hard...renovating this place. We did all that plumming and drilling and lots of other noisy and nasty things that drove Ingrid crazy all week long. Hey, lets have a break and not work on Sunday!!!!!'
No!!! Of course not!! We work on Sunday too, and make sure Ingrid does not get anymore sleep.
Well there you go. No more sleep for me. Finley, however, who does not have any problems sleeping trough sledge hammers during day time, but wakes up every time I tiptoe past his bedroom door at night, got his pre lunch nap.

After that we all decided we needed some fresh air and drove out to meadow farm where we looked at...a whole lot of stuff and animals. It was really nice, but I was too tired to fully appreciate it and therefore there will be no further mention of the farm until tomorrow, after I had some sleep and remember all the things Andi (the guide) told us.
And there you have it...my mini diatribe on why I did not make the Super Bowl Party!! I feel so much better now and I really hope the Americans win;-)))))

Apfel

Finley has just learned a new word...'Apfel', which of course means apple in English. I am glad it's another German word as I was worried lately that he speaks to many English words already (all five of them!!!) Even though most of those sound almost the same in both languages like ball, fisch and banane;-)
Ohh..he just came and gave me a shoe, saying the word shoe or was it Schuh?
Anyway, I gave him my cell phone, whitch buys me a few more moments on the computer. Might get it back with an empty address book and almost everything else erased, deleted and locked, but thats a risk I am willing to take in order have some peaceful moments writing.
I am mostly writing about him anyway, so he sould be greatful that one day he'll get to read all those wonderfully embarassing stories. Here I might add that latley he is very fond of Dora (the explorer). He even says her name, first thing in the morning...pointing to the TV cabinet, as if that's where she lives!!!!Silly;-)
At this point I ask myself, 'should I be worried he is becoming addicted to TV or should I just be grateful for that god sent invention that enables me to do things that don't involve...and here is the list:
1. being bored to death at various playgrounds
2.Following my son with a damp cloth trying to remove pencil, crayon or other interesting marks from walls, cupboards, fridges, floors....!!
3.Reading stories in which he has absolutely no interest apart from when he manages to ripp out pages
4.Take him shopping or any places he sees things he wants (pretty much anywhere)
5.Bother to take out toys from the toy chest only so he can throw tham all over the place and not play with them...!!!!!
I guess the list is endless and at the moment nothing makes me happier than hearing Moose from Noggin singing 'days are the sunniest...cows are the moooiest...bla, bla, bla!!...and nothing else, because he is sitting and watching. I guess I am a bad mom, but at least I feed him. Oops that reminds me, it's dinner time. Better get cooking;-))

Movie night

Every once in a while one needs to do the movie night. Not at an actual
theater, but in your own cosy living room on the plasma screen with
surround sound, a glass of wine, homemade pizza and as many films as
possible.
We hired four at the video fan (still best place to get movies if net flix
hasn't arrived on time) and managed to watch a staggering two before Mr. Sandman
arrived.
However, those two where a pretty damn good choice!
We
thought we ease ourselves into the evening by watching The Wendell Baker Story, a
film I had not heard about.
Talk about a feel good movie.
The film released in 2005 with Luke Wilson directing and in the lead role and
his brother Owen playing the evil head nurse was the perfect choice to start of our movie night; very funny in a Life Aquatic kind of way.
I think it must be the Texan heat that gives those people their laid back
attitude and slow approach . The film had no hectic elements in it and
you always got the feeling everyone involved had all the time in the
world. I guess there is also a lot less pressure in a low budget film.
It's like, "which ever way it ends - it will be all right"!!!
Anyway, Luke Wilson playing the very sexy (in a droopy kind of way)con artist
Wendell, turning from bad to good (even though when he was bad, he
still managed to be more likable than...I don't know, any of those
modern saints!!) made my night and despite the Los Angeles Times
calling the film, "alternately sunny and charming, dark and weird,
confounding and dull" and that "you probably had to be there", I'd watch
it again tonight:-))))


Stardust on the other hand (film number two)was an entirely different story.
Tristan Thorne's quest to find the falling star in order to get jiggy with the boring village bicycle (adequately played by Sienna Miller)is packed with adventure from beginning to end.
Whatever a fairy tale needs...you name it, this film will have at least
one of them. From the ruthless aging king (Peter O'Toole) and blood thirsty
witches, to a very metro sexual Captain Shakespeare who makes a living
by harvesting lightning bolts??!! played by genius Robertde Niro, this film has it all and more.
Ricky Gervais cackling like a chicken, Claire Danes' star qualities, seeing Michelle Pfeiffer actually ageing and the most romantic picnic
setup ever in the history of fairy tales awards this film a magic feel
that combines romance, action and comedy all in one package!!

Awesome photos on Flickr

I found these photos on flickr, which have been put there by the Library of Congress, the U.S. national library.
There
are thousands and I have not yet seen all of them, but some of the
images are really amazing, the kind of photography that really stands
out.
Also women's dress sense in those days was fantastic and stylish all the way down to the factory workers.
Sadly, we have lost that ability completely.
To many fashion branches and to many styles to choose from. Perhaps one
day we'll come to our senses again and trade the comfort fast food and
jeans world for a bit more class.

Brand new face!

I just gave my blog a brand new face, which also includes some advertising. This blog will be the future home of Richmond research and also a character I am writing a book about.
Wizards and Witches deserve a break and now that Harry Potter is all grown up, it is time for a New Kid on the Blog. That new kid, however, is still in its baby shoes and to protect its identity, I will have to keep quiet about it until further notice.
There will be updates on its progress as I keep writing, so don't forget to check in and see how far I have got...also I will be raiding Richmond for awesome things to do!!!
Stick around;-)))