The wind is back. Not scary wind, just noisy and taunting us by making the wind turbine whizz round noisily while creating no power. We’ll try and take it down maybe tomorrow.
Scarlett had a lovely birthday – after such a bad nights sleep the night before we were very relieved when everyone slept in later than planned – after 8am seemed like a very respectable time to be getting up when Davies was asking if he could get out of bed yet from about 5am on his birthday!
Rum is currently egg-less island with all of the many resident domestic birds on the island including all our own off lay for the season. The non arrival of Thursdays boat meant no eggs to be had and so Scarlett’s first, second and third birthday breakfast choices were all off the menu (fresh toast, cinnamon rolls, pancakes) so I made cinnamon doughnuts instead. They were a little doughier than we’d have liked which sounds like an odd complaint for dough-nuts really I guess but she assured me were a satisfactory substitute!
Presents from us included Playmobil, candle making bits and bobs – after having several candle making kits last year I was able to top up supplies such as wicks, wax, wick holders and wax dye which meant more supplies for the money. She’d asked for a home made cuddly toy of one of the Croft animals so I’d made a Barbara Pig and a Bonnie and some bits and bobs including an edible Christmas decoration for Humphrey’s cage, some Adventure Time tattoos. From my parents she had a Playmobil ferry (which looks a lot like our calmac Loch Nevis). I’m glad we are still in the age of toys and not just gadgets but her main gift was a DSlite. Although both Davies and Scarlett have a 3DS they miss playing their rumble pack games (they had hundreds!) on old DSlites so both asked for one of those. Davies paid half of his, we bought Scarlett’s. I am fairly sure they are copies, imported from Hong Kong off ebay but they work fine and at 50 quid each seem worth the money. Except they didn’t arrive in time due to the cancelled ferry on Thursday. Davies had spent weeks making Scarlett a book – a full 30 odd pages long, fully illustrated called Adventure Croft – a combination of Adventure Time and Croft 3 featuring Davies, Scarlett and Bonnie and characters from Adventure Time. It’s all a bit over my head but is their current favourite thing to disappear and giggle over on youtube. She was very delighted with all her gifts but says she loves the home made ones the best. 🙂
After breakfast the kids played mostly with Scarlett’s playmobil – Davies is now chief instruction follower and construction manager of making up the pieces – I sort of miss that role as it always used to fall to me, but it’s lovely to see them heads together working on stuff so I left them to it and made birthday cake and birthday tiffin instead.
Lunch was also menu planned by Scarlett – crackers, cheese (stilton, brie, cheddar), twiglets, pringles, peanuts, olives, pickled onions, chorizo followed by tiffin. We watched the Advent Movie of the day which was Merry Madagascar while eating.
In the afternoon the kids went out to play in the snow for a bit and then Scarlett and I did some candlemaking together. I assembled the cake and we all went down to the village to share it with friends and sing Happy Birthday. There was a HUGE turn out at the shop with loads of people there to sing, eat cake and wish her Happy Birthday. And a big pile of presents too – £10 in cash, a box of chocolates, a zebra hat, soft toy, owl necklace, books, modelling clay, sweets, tie dye dylon, notepad made from elephant dung, a mini tent, a DS game, pens and more. Lucky girl 🙂 The childrens’ birthdays here always restore my faith in our choice to live on Rum when I see how much Rum belongs to them and they belong to Rum, how the community sees them as ‘our Rum children’ and know them so well. They never miss the parties of old when they still get to celebrate birthdays with people who mean so much to them and are so thoroughly spoilt.
Home later than planned due to such a nice evening at the shop for Scarlett’s dinner choice of roast gammon and mashed potatoes. Much joking about the Nigella ham in coke having a whole new meaning these days! 🙂 A late night all round.
Yesterday morning I worked and had my usual nice Saturday morning playing shop. Norman brought me down a cheese and onion pasty fresh from his oven, still warm for my elevenses 🙂 Delicious. Dave and Naomi came down to the shop to say goodbye before Ady took them all along to the ferry to leave. Then he and the kids came back to collect me, having got our parcels from the ferry which included all the missing birthday presents and some cards from family too.
It had been our plan to find our Christmas tree but we popped down to the yurt to light Claires fire and discovered some damage that needed attention so by the time we arrived home for a very late lunch it was already nearly 230pm and starting to get dark. We were still missing a turkey and I had found some piles of feathers so Ady and went off searching. We found it tucked into the hedge, still alive and well aside from a broken or dislocated leg. We took it back to the rest of the group but it couldn’t keep up so we went down to the river with an axe but stood debating what to do for so long we lost daylight. The dilemma is whether to kill it now and have to freeze it or keep it alive for another week to have fresh. we were always going to be eating either this or one of the other male turkeys for our Christmas dinner so it is not a problem but we are short of space in our freezer anyway and a fresh bird would be nicer. We delayed the decision by sticking it in the car with food and water for the night where it gobbled down both and looked very comfortable.
I spent the evening ordering a replacement wind turbine and all of the Christmas presents for Davies and Scarlett – not really feasible to do much earlier than this as there is nowhere to store presents when they arrive but hopefully early enough to allow for postal or delivery delays and any more cancelled ferries.
Today it has rained all day. Ady did a few bits outside while I have been in all day, chatting with the kids, brushed Scarlett’s hair, knitted, wrote the handful of Christmas cards we’re sending and letters to go in with them and made a start on the Rum newsletter. Despite a fairly quiet day we all still feel tired but have Mike up for dinner tomorrow and a plan to fetch that elusive Christmas tree.