... A stroll around Peel Castle...
...A trip to Cregneash and the Sound, including a precarious trip out on the rocks to get a close up look at the locals...
...Lots of fun at home...
...All of which was very tiring work!
When out and about, it gave us a reason to take some pictures with the "proper" camera, which is nice to do every now and again:
If you thought that Orry's pose was unusual, you would be correct; he was impersonating Sophie, who wanted to be made into a mermaid through Cori's "photoshop" skills. She also made two excellent versions of Finn and Orry, which are oh-so-natural and utterly convincing, I think you'll agree:
After the departure of our London friends, the excitement continued with our first trip to Onchan pleasure park, which was very exciting: we watched grown-up go-kart racing on a track, played in the playground, and did these excellent things:
We sadly didn't get on the Crazy Golf as well, but I'm sure we'll be back again soon.
Next up was Easter, which was celebrated with the (in this house hold) traditional manner, with egg painting, egg finding (stuffed with sweets, so Orry can enjoy them), and the finding of a bag of final goodies... followed by much pigging-out:
The nice pictures of them working on their eggs come from the new camera which I was trying out for work, which is doing a good job:
The final pictures will be recognised as taken at the House of Manannan, outside of which Orry found the perfect thing to crawl under and get dirty by:
Also in April, we had a couple of great beach trips with Granny, starting with one not far north of Peel, which was great fun investigating, especially with all the caves:
We even found a shark egg, which buoyed us up for the tricky climb back up to the road:
The other good beach with granny was a Maughold Social Club event at Port Mooar, where the Man Wildlife Trust led families to find things in the rock pools and bring them all together to sort through and identify etc. The boys had a great time, with Finn going off with Granny and finding some great creatures, and Orry... well... mostly just getting wet and putting rocks in his wellies!
Next up, here are some pictures of the boys being Finn and Orry...
... With the Lego Finn got with his Christmas money...
Orry also got something from the shop, but it was actually just the rock he found outside and was determined to "buy" from the lady at the counter. She humoured him and he left a satisfied customer.
We don't have a picture of Orry with his rock, but we do have one of Orry's lovely silliness - with a bit of dancing:
Here is Finn doing more fine "inventing", this time with the magnets on the fridge:
As much as Finn likes machines, Orry appears to like jeel (mischief). For a solid run of a couple of weeks, Orry would go quietly to his bed and say goodnight without complaint. But shortly after leaving the room and getting back downstairs, we began to hear movement, and then clunk... clunk... clunk... We didn't go in to disturb him further, but it would go on for about an hour. When eventually it stopped, and further time had passed, in which Orry had fallen asleep, we went up to find his bookshelf closest to his bed looking like this...
... You will be able to see that those empty shelves are the ones which he can reach from within his bed. - He was obviously merrily browsing the books at his leisure and tossing them onto the floor when he was done, until he'd done the lot, and then he went to sleep!
We figured that it was at least a win that he wasn't getting out of bed!
Here is a similar picture of Orry doing a similar thing during one of his daytime naps - this is how Cori found him after he'd banished her from the room so that he could read:
And two more pictures of a silly Orry: the first is a bit of fancy dress; the second is the time that Orry decided that the clothes he wanted to wear that day were his (fresh, clean and straight of the drawer) pyjamas - I guess we were asking for it if we were so foolish as to give him a choice as to what he is to wear!
A silly pair of boys, but loveable, as they show, every now and again (though mainly when they're watching a spot of TV together!):
Rather excitingly, Cori bought a car in April. Having missed, by years, the period in which she would have been able to transfer a US to a British driving licence, she now has to take the British driving test the same as any first-time learner. Because Automatic cars are the absolute norm in America, Cori wanted an automatic car when she has passed, and so she figured that it would make sense to get it now to learn now, and then she can cut out the need for all that manual/clutch faff. So we bought a car (off a mother of someone who I went to nursery school with in Maughold, as it turned out, by chance). It got the seal of approval from Orry:
Cori has leapt straight into doing all the weekend driving, which is great for us both; Cori to get the practice in, and me to sit quietly for a bit each weekend! One of the early trips, inevitably was to Ramsey, where we got to try out the driver's seat in a tram (we hadn't anywhere to be going that day, so we were just sitting), and we also, rather excitingly, sorted out Granny's new (to her) trampoline:
A trip north, without Cori, was to go and watch the F.A. Cup semi-final between Spurs (our team) and Chelsea (the cousins' team). We even dug out the Spurs shirts (or, in the case of Finn, made one):
The result didn't go as we'd hoped, but at least we'd tagged on a nice day out, going for a picnic up Cronk Sumark, where Orry showed everyone the gorse flowers and then arranged rocks with Granny as everyone else scared her by clambering over the rocks:
One of the fun things that Cori got up to with the boys in my absence was to go with friends on to an event run by Out2Play (a movable troupe of lovely people who facilitate adventure play that encourages kids to explore the outdoors without the usual limitations of intense health and safety). They had a great time and Finn and Orry, with all the other children, had a great time. The main thing was pulling water up in a bucket onto the bridge and letting it run back through a drain-pipe back into the stream. The thing they enjoyed less was when they went with Cori in a go-kart, only for her to crash it as they went at speed down the hill. Still, at least it was mainly Cori who got hurt!
Here is a picture of the happier times:
... We're close to the end now - don't worry! Three clumps of photos:
Firstly, two stragglers, which are kind of lovely:
Secondly, the time we had our own camera out for our first dinner out of the year - sat down by the harbour opposite the Castle (and rather chilly when in the shade at the end!):
Thirdly, the trip to Ballaglass (actually Cori's first drive in the new car), in the hope of finding a billey cuirn (mountain ash tree) - we didn't find one, but we did find frogspawn, lots of bluebells and a fun time:
... "But why were you looking for the cuirn?!" I hear you cry. Good question! It was so that we could arm ourselves with a Crosh Cuirn to protect ourselves against "Themselves"... it's kind of Manx. There'll be more about it in May.
