Mums, Muffins and little misses

I thought I might have a slightly more domestic feel to this blog, just to underline an observation from my great friend Andy earlier this week that the preoccupations of our two family lives are pretty much the same no matter that we live in very different parts of the world. So here's a very familiar flavour of my week - getting everyone up, breakfasted and off to school and work on time with the right gear, snacks, drinks etc and then home again at the end of the day, the odd playground chat, keeping on top of the mounting heaps of washing, treating cuts and bruises and ear infections, negotiating sibling disputes, finding missing toys, socks, bits of sports equipment, making sure the kids have gifts to take to birthday parties, keeping the fridge suitably stocked, sorting supper for all, helping with homework, reading bed time stories - Katie and tim are working through the entire little miss collection and Matthew and I are really enjoying David walliams (as is Jamie when he tears himself away from his own book)


Of course there are some differences in the way I tackle the above. There is a cafe at school so playground chats sometimes come with latte and toast. Household shopping takes longer as I don't now where to find stuff and I'm still very unsure what some of the local fruit and veg are or how to begin preparing them - my questions to the grocer have been answered by "your house boy will know" but all my boys are as baffled as me. Similarly, baking is my default response to tackling the appetites of growing kids who are doing masses of exercise and come out of school ravenous but until our stuff arrives I'm working with a much reduced stack of kitchen equipment. And I'm indebted to my former team for the pocket cook book they gave the kids just before we left and for directing me to a couple of handy baking websites - although my iPad screen protector doesn't fare so well as I try and flick through the recipes with flour covered fingers. Without any fairy cake tins, my muffins come out a bit sprawling but these orange and Lemmon ones disappeared in moments. Luckily there is a pool near by to help keep the muffin tops at bay.

Anne