Dreams over breakfast...

...Sitting here listening to my youngest son play his guitar, cuddled up with my border collie...could life be better? I love watching my kids grow and learn...

 This morning over breakfast youngest son was telling me how he wishes 'Cherub' existed, this is an organisation that trains child spies in the book he is reading, The Recruit.  Along with wanting to be a spy, he wanted to know what were the views like from the top of Mount Everest, iPad came out, over sausage and eggs we googled mountain views, came across an interesting blog.  We especially liked the facts about how most of the year because of the jet stream there are 118 mile an hour winds across the top of the mountain.Then his eyes got bigger at the thought that Mount Everest is getting higher ever year by a few centimeters, he started calculating how high it would be in a thousand years.

...it's very hard to type a blog with a wet dog nose snuffling under your iPad, the dog has worked out how to flip the cover of my iPad shut, so I have to look at him instead!...


I asked young son if he knew what acclimatisation mean't, he said no but when I said its your body adjusting to the reduction of Oxygen as you climb the mountain, he then said, oh I know how climbers deal with that, they go up the mountain, then come down a bit to rest, then go up some more, so they gradually adjust to the lack of Oxygen.

...Oh ok! Now the Border Collie is snuggling up to me, by pushing and wriggling, knocking my iPad out of my hand...shove off Mutt!...

Then we checked the weather for the Lake District, we head off in two days for the mountains, I am seriously excited now. Camping equipment is piled up on our floor, I am getting slightly fed up of tripping over it, so I will be happy to get it all organised in to my car on Saturday. The weather is going to be perfect and the day we climb Scarfell Pike is looking to be the best day, so I have checked I have enough batteries for my camera so I can get some mountain photo's.

Young son is now planning in his head, he wants to climb all the highest mountains and he asked whilst munching his sausage,"If I climb enough mountains, do you think I could climb Mount Everest?" ...I love big dreams.

Son's on a mountain in the Italian Alps

Capturing Beauty...

I have seen so many beautiful things when out walking my dog, here is a few I caught on camera.  These were taken all in the same field....every day I head out with a camera and dog, early in the morning. I have been there for those special photographers dream moments, where the light is just perfect and the flora and fauna pose for you.

I love photographing beautiful things it's like trying to capture all that beauty to keep it for a life time, to look back... sigh...but what was reality to get those amazing shots I wanted, it was patience, consistency, loss of sleep and lots of getting wet, cold and muddy.

When I first started home educating my eldest son the reality of what it will cost to do this really hit me, and what skills I needed...I am not talking about education qualifications or intelligence. I went from school to polytechnic to work, with barely a break, with all of these I had someone else telling me what to do and when, but suddenly it was all up to me. Two things I really noticed was I had to learn rapidly huge amounts of patience and bundles of self discipline. I have lost sleep, had crying children with me wondering what to do, a trashed house, no time for me and .... well the 'and' is I have been there to catch those beautiful amazing moments in my children's life and write them on my heart...sigh... so worth every minute.