A bit short...

I know, I know, I am a bit short in height as all those who know me will attest to, but so will this post be. I was hoping that Ian would be able to upload some photos but he couldn't and my camera battery is out of juice. I also forgot to pack my charger. I have got a new to me iphone but it is not up and running yet either. So apologies for the lack of photos but there are one or two.

A happy smiley face. My sixth grandchild

I have had a rather hectic week. I got to my daughter's on the Monday evening of last week and had some quick lessons on Tuesday on what to expect with her two children before she went into hospital the following day to have her third baby. It is good that I got some practice last week on how to look after a nearly 2 and a 4 year old, as it has stood me in good stead this week. In both cases the younger of the two are little dynamos but the one I am looking after this week is also a whirlwind of activity. My flatter stomach has returned as I lose some of the winter flab chasing after the wee one.

At the hospital with his older
sister. His brother was not
interested in holding him.
At least now he is quite concerned
if he doesn't have a dummy

Fortunately for the most part the youngest one is quite amenable, although he seems to be having a few issues in the last day or two, but teething, new baby etc. does that too you. His older sister likes to be helpful or at least tries to, quite sweet really...... most of the time. It is good fun trying to remember what to do and how to handle the little ones, but I have also had lots and lots of cuddles with the newest arrival.

In chatty mode

He arrived at 11:14am on Wednesday and I went to see him that evening. The first grandchild I have been able to see within hours of his birth. I saw his eldest sister within days, but the others were all older. He is the same weight exactly as my middle baby was, at 4.02kg or 8lb 13oz, quite a size really. Unfortunately whoever programmed him got the programming wrong and he likes to keep his Mum occupied at night and sleeps well during the day. I have had several chats with him about the appropriateness of this behaviour but he only listened to me once.

My two able teachers from last week. Here they are with
some waistcoats I made. They are lined with alpaca fleece
for warmth

I am quite proud of myself, I have had the eldest one to pre-school on time and picked up on time twice and even remembered the packed lunch. We won't mention the fact I had to take the bag for the change of clothing on the first day after leaving it on the pushchair. I also got absolutely drenched today as it was teeming it down on the way, my coat is still drying. I don't think that has anything to do with me coming down with a chesty cough, I think that is something to do with nature's little petri-dishes, aka small children. We are just hoping and praying the youngest one has been getting plenty of immunity from Mum. Anyway I am wrapped up in bed for the evening and had an antibacterial herbal tea of thyme, sage, honey and lemon. Hopefully that will kick it into touch for tomorrow and I will be running around after the human whirlwind again. Also hopefully some photos to follow next week as I get some breathing space and the iphone working.

If you are wondering how Ian is getting on, he has been taking alpacas out for a walk and they have been enjoying seeing blades of grass now that the dumping last week disappeared. There was a dusting yesterday but nothing serious. He has been sorting out shearing in Estonia for the months ahead. Some are going to do it themselves this year, which is fair enough but a few of the smaller ones are still wanting help. At least we shouldn't have the bother of getting cutters sharpened this year, since we have a portable sharpener. It will make the job a lot easier.

It's a .......

A baby sleeping bag in process for another new grandchild.
This one is made from a recycled picture I was making for one
of our children that never got finished. It was going to have
velcro dinosaurs to stick on the fleecy fabric. The picture
was completed but the dinosaurs never materialised.

Boy! Yes our first grandson was born on Wednesday, carrying on the family tradition of being born on that day of the week. I was born on a Wednesday as were all three of our children, one only scraping in by 10 minutes, having been born at ten minutes past midnight. Ian is the odd one out, as he was born on Friday. It was meant to be a home birth but ended up a hospital birth at the last minute due to a minor scare, nothing serious and mother and baby are now doing fine. What was scary was to discover that he is one lucky little boy, as there was a knot in his cord, which does not seem to have caused him a problem in the end. I knew about the impending delivery in the morning and was on tenterhooks all day and in the end had to stay up quite late, knowing nothing of the transfer to hospital until after the event. It was a little nerve wracking as I didn't want to intrude too much, but I was also obviously concerned about what was happening. At one point during the day I had to go out to the shops and as I was walking the name Calum came into my head. When I got home I looked the name up and it is a Celtic name for dove, a peace bringer. His name is not Calum, but his name has a similar meaning (sorry no names here) and he is already spreading some peace and reconciliation, as a neighbour of the young family, who they were not getting on well with for one reason and another has given them gifts for the arrival of the new baby, obviously an opportunity for reconciliation.

Delivered safe and sound

It was not the only delivery this week our microwave finally arrived, a day late but at least it arrived. I said last week it was late and so the following morning I phoned to ask what happened and within two hours it apperaed delivered by an older couple, not the normal delivery type of guy. We live on the second floor (UK), third floor (Europe and US) and so deliveries of heavy goods is never easy, the poor guy looked rather puffed out as he stood at the top of the stairs, he wasn't a sprightly chap shall we say. Our next challenge was the instructions, they are in Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian, not in English nor Danish or Swedish - languages I might have managed with a bit of checking. I now have to polish up my technical Latvian to understand the finer details of the cooking programmes. I have managed to work out though how to microwave, microwave with grill, microwave with fan oven and use the fan oven. Not bad for guesswork! The crisp function and steaming function are new to me and so I'm not sure how they work yet.

One of our better roads. The sides of the roads
are starting to get rather high. Another good
load of snow and it is likely that they will be
looking for places to dump it.

Ian is spending a lot of time out on the land on his own and I do try to get out with him occasionally. The problem for me is there is nothing I can do, except ski that is, and so Ian has made a trail for us to try out. It wasn't too bad, but not quite flat and no grooves for cross country skiing and so I ended up doing a little bit of skate skiing which I'm not terribly comfortable with. Ian meanwhile powered himself round, virtually by upper body strength with parallel skis - I did give that approach a little try but gave up after a minute, I haven't got his strength that's for sure. The track obviously needs a little working on, but it's a start. One of the interesting things about the snow this year is it is soft and powdery, nothing too unusual about that as that is the type of snow you get at this time of year in these temperatures; what we found out one day though as the sun came up is how easy it slides off the roof. We were stood at one end of the greenhouse, just chatting about this and that, when suddenly the snow started sliding off starting at one end and working its way systematically section by section to the opposite end, it was like we had shutters and someone had pressed the switch to open them in perfect order. Obviously the sun had set off a chain reaction, but it was so weird to observe.

My new rolling pin

Ian hasn't much to do either. Working in the forest is difficult with the snow clinging to trees from previous wetter snowfalls and getting quite deep now as bit by bit the snow builds up and so he doesn't do that. There is no land work, apart from clearing snow from time to time as it builds up a bit too much. The alpacas aren't cleared out, we let the bedding build up as that is supposed to keep them warmer and also you cannot move frozen bedding, so layering the dry bedding on top works just as well. Clearing that out will be a spring time job, that we are both looking forward to (well if you believe that you'll believe anything). The chickens likewise don't need much clearing as anything that is liquid freezes solid and cannot be a health hazard at that temperature, anything solid sinks to the bottom of the bedding, so again it gets layered up in the ark. Their sleeping compartments get cleared out on a regular basis and that is about it. Which all goes to mean that Ian still needs to find things to do and as mentioned last week, he is really getting into the woodworking lark.

A toasting fork. The copper wires works but they are soft, Ian
is hoping to find some stronger but thin wire and he is
going to soften the rather abrupt edge as well. 

Up until now, Ian has been what you could call a functional woodworker. His work has been solid but not exactly aesthetic, although I guess aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. His work this last week though, has been developing quite nicely with some quite artistic pieces being created. He has been finding out what it is like to work on different kinds of wood, alder and oak mainly. Alder has a lovely way of turning from a pale wood, to a wood with an orangey hue as it oxidises. The oak though has a lovely grain to it. So this week he has made two dibbers, one for us and one for a neighbour (a dibber is a handy gadget for making holes in the ground for planting young seedlings), a rolling pin just the right size for a tray I have, that I make my pastry on, and a toasting fork. The handle really is beautiful, but the wire for the fork needs a little working on.

Instead of a sloping side, Ian has straightened
the side to create a nesting area.

Ian did get back to the more functional woodwork in the week though as he made an extension for one of our chicken arks. The accommodation area for the first ark he made now seems a little small for the number of chickens to be cooped up in at night since they have grown quite big and so Ian added on a little chamber for nesting and removed the hardboard separator where the previous nesting area was. This has opened up the main area and made it more comfortable for the birds at night - at least we hope so, without actually hooking up a camera we can't tell for sure, but at least the chickens are using the new nesting area. We had a record number of eggs today, four, two from each ark, which at least means that some of the hens in the other ark are now coming into lay. We are still waiting for the day when we have nine eggs, then we will know they are all in production.

Here you see the access area to the nesting area
so we can get to all those lovely eggs. The string,
by the way is not to hold it on, it is the string to
raise and lower the door for getting into the
accommodation block

A dibber

We had a lovely unexpected chat this last week with the kind of friends who you can pick up and chat with as if it was only yesterday you last chatted. We haven't actually chatted for at least a year I think, maybe even more. They have a new Kindle and unbeknown to me, one of the things you can use them for is for Skype and so they were trying it out and I happened to be on. They are two people I really respect for growing in wisdom, not from book learning but from listening to God. People not defined by their education but by their faith. They have always been folks who sought to walk with Jesus from the start, even though they have been a bit isolated at times due to the fact they lived further away than most and to be honest not your usual church going backgrounds. It makes them more real at times than some folks I have known and their faith more immediate and it shines out of them. Love 'em! Skype is wonderful for keeping up with our new grandson too, we had a lovely chat today while he was awake - clever kid you see! Okay! I'll be honest, he cooed a bit, and I chatted to him and his dad, but he was listening, you could tell. Will be fantastic when we can interact more, looking forward to it, although I am looking forward more to when we get the chance of a cuddle.

Spring! Yay!

Catkins

Spring has finally arrived here, the snow is now rapidly disappearing and we only have small piles of the stuff lying about now, plus only a dusting of snow since last week, the roads are drying out and bumpy, the storks are here and mating (honestly it's like an x-rated movie outside our kitchen window), and the Latvians are lighting their smoky bonfires. It is so good! Ian can finally get out on the land and get things done as the land begins to dry out, which he loves doing. Just today he made some guttering for our workshop, finished taking apart the remaining bits of greenhouse using his new drill (the batteries on his old one were only lasting about 15 minutes before dying, and it costs nearly as much as the new drill for one battery and he needs two) and he rigged up the wire fence in readiness for taking the winter wraps of the trees later on this week, when the chance of frosts have reduced. Not bad for a days work. The electric fence is to keep the deer away from the new tasty shoots on the trees, since the grass is still a bit scarce, just in case the lynx isn't doing its job properly. Over the weekend we were having a look at the trees to see how they were doing and one of our new trees, the Ginko biloba, seemed to have disappeared completely. Admittedly it was not much more than a stick when we put it in, but we felt sure it should have appeared above the level of the snow by now, and so we started scraping back the layers of snow still on the ground in the general area of where we thought the tree should be. We did finally find it, squashed flat to the ground by the weight of snow. At least it wasn't completely snapped like one of the plum trees so we propped it up and are hoping for the best.

A bit misty this day but here are our two storks behaving
modestly at least for the camera.

This week we took a round trip of 200 miles to see the dentists, the bill for my filling was less than the cost of the petrol. Our dentist who is really lovely and speaks good English had moved from the nearest big town to much further away, to a place called Rēzekne, almost too far for us to bother but we have a friend who lives nearby, who we had meant to see over the winter and hadn't managed to so we decided to take the opportunity of seeing a town we hadn't seen before, and see our friend. I did so well navigating us to the right place until we got to a junction and I suddenly realised that the roadworks we had just crossed over was the road I wanted us to take, and we were in the middle of strange town wondering how to get to where we wanted to get too, fortunately Rēzekne is not Rīga and it wasn't too hard to navigate our way around, well kind of! Where we wanted to park was full and so we had to wander around looking for somewhere. We eventually found a parking place and managed to find the dentists which of course was in a medical centre situated in a hotel - as you would expect, right? When we got back to the car, I was beginning to wonder at the wisdom of our choice, as I hadn't noticed how near a rather swollen river it was.

The stork looking for frogs and toads

Had a really good time talking about faith, life and development. It has been a tough winter for him as he was one of those without electric for two weeks over the winter and that meant no heat either, not much fun when temperatures can dip pretty low. It certainly made me think about what we need to do, to make sure we can still run our boiler even if the pump goes off, there must be a way of keeping it going either with a manual pump or one run from a battery. Anyway, I think he was glad that someone had finally made it out to see him. He gets to see many folks over the summer period but not as many apart from locals over the winter, and many of them have lots of needs which can be wearing to deal with all the time. Also left him with a pile of websites to check out that might be useful, one of the good things about my course is the myriad of useful sites I come across. The place where he lives used to supply the Czars with fish from the lake, nowadays there is not much coming out of the little place where he lives but funnily enough, such an out of the way place ends up supplying Riga with hand me down clothing. Our friend has a lot of humanitarian aid coming in and word gets around resulting in a phone call from someone in Riga wondering if they had any clothing to give away. Must make sure we don't let time run away again and get out and see him sooner rather than later.

Our neighbour has been having their forest cut down as
most of it was alder and birch which don't last so long,
around 40 years. This pile here is the second
load to come out.

I said that the snow has been disappearing rapidly and that means there are areas where it is pretty damp and whereas many of the roads are drying out nicely, some sections are not doing so well and one of those sections is on the road next to our ski hill. Our neighbour lives at the top of the hill and had managed to get out in the morning to pick up their daughter who had been on an exchange visit to Germany, but they got well and truly stuck on the way back. We had only just driven past the road that morning thinking it looked pretty nasty and driven back to our village, done some shopping and then we got the phone call, can we come and pull them out. First Ian tried to pull the car forwards up the hill to dry ground but that didn't work and for a moment looked like he might get stuck himself, he ended up pulling the car out backwards, back onto the dry road and then they took a run at the road together with Ian keeping the neighbour's car going when it started struggling. It was close, it was nearly a get the tractor out job.

Finally grass and our tractor implements are no longer
encased in a wintery blanket

With the arrival of spring has come the arrival of a new baby in our apartments, a little girl too! All the other children who live here are boys, all six of them. It does mean though that any news from our heating company will have to wait as it is our house manager's little girl and she will have more than enough on her hands with two little ones, without having to argue with heating companies. Such is life here in Latvia, things get sorted out in their own time and not necessarily according to a timescale of our own choosing.

Our temporary lake re-appearing

I forgot to mention an amusing incident last week at the hotel. We sat down with the menus at the table and were busy deciding when a few minutes later the waitress turns up at the table with a grin on her face and two cups of tea in her hand. We are just so predictable we don't even have to ask!

Had some good news finally on our sale of our house in England, we are fairly sure we have a buyer but these things are never certainties until people sign on the dotted line in there. We have now had a valuation done for the mortgage for the prospective buyer and so little by little and very slowly it is moving forward.

We have steps again, these bushes
were buried up to their tops in snow not
long ago.

River in full flow, the trees in the background
are not normally in the river

I have been playing around with the video on my new phone and had hoped to post  a video of the local river as there is a lot of water flowing through the weir at the moment but unfortunately the video keeps posting over my writing and it won't work for me anyway, so you will have to put up with a static picture of a very full river. The river is overflowing in a few places and I wouldn't like to be down stream from it as we are at the source pretty much.

We have ponds again!