Ailsa turned 30 earlier this month. We had a lovely day trip to Leighton Moss (again) to celebrate, followed by a trip to Arteria to see Ailsa’s bowties.
March 15, 2014
2010 (again.)
Found these old clips on a disc. Delightful. Brought a smile or two to our faces. Amazing how much of Bea and Rose you can see in the twins. Lovely stuff.
February 10, 2014
Anna, Elsa and Olaf
Ivy, Violet and Rosabel have been quite taken with Disney’s ‘Frozen’ since they saw it at the cinema. Here are Ivy and Violet’s depiction of three of the main characters:
February 4, 2014
It’s just gone 5am
It’s just gone 5am and I have to write this down while it’s fresh.
There is noise in the world; lots of noise. It’s not unpleasant, but not relaxing. It has a regular pattern, a drone and some higher pitched variations on a short phrase. Gradually, it dawns on me that this strange music is not a dream. I wake up, confused. There is a simple but enthusiastic rhythmic shaking of some jingle bells, Rosabel’s voice can be heard rumbling out one of her made up songs and the twins are dancing all around and in and out of their room saying, “Rosabel’s being hilarious! Rosabel’s being hilarious!” as if it’s the chorus to a well known nursery rhyme. Soon, Ivy’s dancing spills into our room and she carries on with her chant, regardless of the fact that it’s very dark and Ailsa, Bea and I are clearly (no longer) sleeping. I investigate the situation and find that Ivy is quite right: Rosabel is being hilarious. She is sat like some sort of shaman, cross-legged in the middle of her room with the jingle bells shaking in one hand, singing in a low, slow, four-beat monotone, “Wake up, sun! Wake up, sun! Wake up, sun! Wake up, sun!” ignorant to the world around her without, it seems, any intention of stoping. For the sake of Elaine, our long suffering, saintly neighbour, I contain my glee and get the girls back in bed. Rosabel was being hilarious, and now it’s morning.
December 22, 2013
Pretty Food
Ailsa’s been baking, Ivy’s been decorating. Such talent! Well done, ladies! 🙂
December 22, 2013
Bop Turns Three
Rosabel had a delightful birthday; she turned three on Thursday. We’re still not quite used to this birthday-near-Christmas thing. Ailsa hung up bunting and we had lots of pink balloons, etc, to kind of de-Christmas the place. This works, but how does one deal with the birthday cards on top off all the Christmas cards? And how do you make sure you celebrate the birthday girl sufficiently without overwhelming them with Christmas a few days later? Big questions. And Ailsa made this amazing Sarah & Duck cake. If you’re unfamiliar with Sarah & Duck, do nothing else until you’ve watched them on iPlayer. Quack.
Anywho, have some pictures:
November 24, 2013
Always Together
During dinner, Ailsa asked Violet and Ivy if they liked being twins. Yes – they both did. When asked why, Violet responded with no hesitation,
“Always together!”
and Ivy said,
“We get two cakes on our birthday!”
November 20, 2013
Play
Violet and Ivy saw a play at school today: “Jack And The Beanstalk”. They’ve been producing their own plays all evening. It’s been wonderful.
Treetops Couldn’t Get Into His House by Ivy and Violet, followed by a review of Jack And The Beanstalk.
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The Daddy And The Beanstalk by Ivy
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The Baby Who Was Looking Somewhere by Violet
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The Three Babies And The Scary Bear by Ivy
September 30, 2013
Happy 3 month birthday, Beatrice!
Beatrice Francesca Lily was born 3 months ago today! And what a wonderful three months. We are so blessed to have her and she has become very much a part of our family. We love you Bea!
September 4, 2013
Five Years Old!
100% of the proceeds go to Lancaster Royal Infirmary Special Care Baby Unit.
Violet and Ivy Walton were born 11 weeks premature on September the 5th 2008. Thanks to the great care they received at Lancaster Royal Infirmary as well as Liverpool Women’s Hospital and Alder Hey, they have grown to be thriving, beautiful young ladies in so many ways. They have just started school and we are celebrating their fifth birthday today.
This short piece for brass, strings and percussion was written as a symbol of joy and hope for my amazing daughters. It consists of a short theme repeated five times with a wee bit of piano at the end for good luck 🙂
Buy this track and support the Special Care Baby Unit of Lancaster Royal Infirmary.
Thank you 🙂
James
September 3, 2013
Violet and Ivy: First Day at School Went Well!
Twas a good day for the twins. They really enjoyed their first day of school 🙂
June 13, 2013
Toilets, Soap and School
Ivy and Violet spent some time in their new classroom today in preparation for going to school in September. This is Ivy’s review of the afternoon.
April 4, 2013
Meditation of my Heart
meditationofmyheart.com is a free online database of liturgical music written by me and dedicated to the memory of my uncle, Melvyn Walton. Please help me get this project up and running by supporting me on KickStarter. Click here to find out more 🙂
Thank you so much,
James
April 3, 2013
Oh, they do make you laugh…
Happy Easter everyone! Alleluia, Alleluia!
Ivy has put a lot of time and effort into working out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Violet has been working very hard on the Dog & Bird piano scheme, so we bought them some cute little headphones for using with the big keyboard but, as you can see here, they even wear the headphones when there’s nothing to plug them in to (like this little toy-piano)!
It’s so wonderful how children take your plain and boring idea of something (headphones are for isolating sound, right?) and turn it upside-down and colour it in with love and laughter, because headphones, it turns out, are actually for wearing all the time, as a badge of musicality, a symbol of listening, a sign of “this is music time, now, ok?”.
So (and you might say this serves us right for buying them headphones), the girls now have to turn the volume of their dancing-CDs and their toy-pianos up to “volume 11” in order to hear it through the muffling irony of their unplugged-headgear!
Children are a wonder and a joy; the world will be safe in their hands.
March 14, 2013
Neep by Violet
If you don’t know who Neep is, then you really ought to be watching Abney and Teal. It’s the best thing since.
March 14, 2013
Hedgehog by Violet
This is just spot on. I love it. I think it’s eating a monkey-nut. Or possibly using the facilities.
March 14, 2013
2013 so far…
Sorry it’s been a while. It’s been busy.
And in case you weren’t aware, we are expecting a new little Walton some time in July… 🙂
November 25, 2012
Gingerbread House
So, Alex went to Australia, saw a picture I had retweeted of my nephews’ gingerbread houses and then sent a gingerbread house construction kit to the Walton girls all the way from Down Under. Thanks, McGee! 🙂
November 5, 2012
Rosabel counts to eleven
Rosabel can count infinately infinitely – not bad for a one-year-old – but due to a quirk of English rhyme, the number after eleven is always eight; so when Rosabel says the number nine, for example, it might equate to nine, or thirteen, seventeen, twenty-one…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWD1v4jpGok%5D
November 4, 2012
Bricks
One of the greatest pleasures in life is spending a couple of hours playing with Duplo bricks on the carpet of the living room with your children. Violet, Ivy and I – and now Rosabel too – sometimes end up devising such funky constructions and in some ways it’s a shame that I rarely document them. Part of the joy of Duplo etc is the practice of impermanence and non-attachment, but now and then it’s nice to share a bit of the fun and the architectural poetry.
As usual, today we wanted to build a house. There are only so many Duplo-flavoured metaphors for ‘house’ you can make – or at least that’s what you’d think – but no, it never ends. There’s always another way of doing ‘roof’, ‘door’, ‘wall’ and ‘window’.
This is what we made today:
August 23, 2012
Result!
Just a little shout out to say:
Wahooo!
to Josh and Phelim who have both made everyone so proud with their amazing GCSE results today. They’ve worked hard for this and they’ve done really, really well.
Outstanding work, chaps! 🙂
August 22, 2012
Don’t worry; I’m not going to show you a picture of it…
This morning, Rosabel used the potty for the first time! Hurray! Well done, little Bel. She said (true story) “I want a wee” and took herself off to sit on the pink potty for about 45 minutes. Talk about determination!
Watch this space 🙂
August 16, 2012
Leighton Moss
We went on a lovely day trip to Leighton Moss in Silverdale, Lancashire. We’re not bird-people (I believe the term is Twitcher, or something) but it was a great day out. It was both ruggedly-wild and family-with-three-children-and-a-pram-friendly. And the food at the café was amazing.
August 15, 2012
Foodie
So, it’s well known amongst the family that if Rosabel can neither be seen nor heard, then she has, sans doubt, found something to eat and is happily, sneakily, munching her way through it. Often this is a banana (with skin on), an apple, an ancient biscuit (found goodness-knows where) or someone’s leftover breakfast that hasn’t quite made it back to the kitchen. Well, talking of kitchens, the kitchen in our new house has recently been undergoing a transformation from its delightfully quirky complete-with-beautiful-solid-wood-original-cupboard state into a boring and somewhat unsightly modern state. It’s not what I would have chosen, but that’s another story… Anyway, whilst the kitchen is being (slowly) morphed, we’ve had to empty its contents into the conservatory: pots, pans, cutlery, coffee-grinders, toasty-makers, rolling pins, teacups, cooling-trays, baking-trays, rice-cakes, butchers blocks, tea-towels, ladles, spatulas, whisks, peelers, baked-beans, kidney-beans, jelly-beans and the drawer of batteries, rubber bands, foreign-coins and other dad-miscellany. There was also, buried amongst these strewn kitchen innards, a large, opened bar of dark, rich, calorifically-glorious cooking chocolate.
This morning, for a brief moment, Rosabel could neither been seen nor heard…
August 7, 2012
Centurion VI
Well, it’s been one of those English summer mornings where, upon seeing the lovely blue skies, you head to the park but end up taking shelter from the rain in the museum. But, as ever, Lancaster museum made for a lovely little trip; we even excavated some rather remarkably in-tact centurion uniforms…
Violet
Violet
Rosabel
August 6, 2012
Makka Pakkas at Old Holly Farm
So, we’ve been t’Old Holly Farm many times now; I can’t recommend it enough. The farm itself is home to cows, chickens, sheep, goats, a pair of donkeys called Ginger and Paul, pigs and, of course, mice. They also have a brilliant café which serves fresh farm-grown food, a lovely farm-shop and an excellent indoor soft-play area. We love it. We also love the latest (guest?) addition to the farm, some Cockerham alpacas.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSojZ1ChFo4&sns=em%5D
July 31, 2012
July 2012
We’ve been in the new house almost a couple of months now; the girls have settled in really well and we feel very much at home. Just a few clips of the monkeys getting up to their usual mischief.
June 5, 2012
Aunty Ursie
Well this is just too cute. Aunty Ursie when she was Rosabel’s age; check out the family resemblance!
Little Flowers 