Ending of a good Summer

Tobey enjoying a nice big mug of homemade iced mint tea on a hot day..."aaaaahhh..nice" he said.

The weather has been rather unsettled lately. Amidst the sunshine that we are so used to now, we have very windy and rainy days. Autumn is fast approaching. Sigh! Before you know it, it would be grey, cold and miserable again. I can bear the run up to Christmas, but January and February has always been difficult. Chinese New Year season and away from family back home. Anyhoo, here's another post on the joy of Summer this year. I think Tobey really enjoyed this one. Hopefully, he will have equally much fun (or more) next Summer.

1) Cambourne 10th Anniversary...

was held on the 15th August. It started off with march of the school band. As soon as we heard it from our garden, we quickly walked out to the centre to show our support. It was celebrated in the usual English Fete style, with reenactments of medieval war times (they actually used swear words in this one, and the head of the war troop actually hit one of his soldier's steel hat with something that looked like an axe), fun fair, face painting, stalls selling food and such. The only twist was the Chinese Lion Dance. Strange. They probably found it to be loud and amusing for the kids.

This "Man-On -Sticks" kept talking to Tobey. The boy just froze and stared at him each time.

As usual, he insisted on going on the ride. £1 a ride. What a rip-off.

2) Chives-Tomatoes-Pumpkin-Pear

I've been distributing lettuces to my friends around the village. As we found it hard to finish these garden crops even though we eat them almost (more like every single meal) everyday. Some of my friends also have vege patches in their gardens. One of them gave me bags of Chinese Chives. I love them. I used them in wonton, fried with eggs and also with coriander in a savoury pancake mix of flour, egg, salt and water.

These three wontons are the only few dainty ones I made for this pic. After that they were all "rushed-for-time" sized. During dinner SK said " This is not wonton, this is a ping-pong ball staring at me!" You get the idea..hehe

My Chinese pancakes :P

The Tomatoes are beginning to ripen. I've stopped buying tomatoes from the supermarket for 2 weeks already. We've planted tomatoes in our old place before so we know from now on, they will keep on coming...aaarghhh help! Tomatoes soup anyone?

We planted our fruit trees this year without expecting any harvest until at least next Spring obviously. But this Pear tree seems quite enthusiastic to show us a preview of what it can bear.

Don't think this will grow to be a proper sized pear before winter sets in.Again, this is the first time I saw a pear growing. I was expecting them to grow like Rambutans, but not bulging from the bottom of a flower. SK was the one that pointed it out to me. Can't wait for next year's harvest :)

We are now seeing some form of Pumpkin growing. Unfortunately, these would not grow into a pumpkin big enough to carve for Halloween. More like those for a lovely pumpkin soup.

3) Injury

I don't really like to blog about Tobey's sickness or injury in this blog. I find it too painful to reread/remember it. But this has to be recorded as it is officially his full fledged toddler play injury. We were invited for a weekday lunch by a mommy friend. Tobey was having fun playing with the other toddler boys. Whilst playing hugging with one of them, that boy probably lost his balance and fell on Tobey, or maybe he just decided to push out of over-excitement. My darling baby fell backwards and hit the back of his head on a corner of a table. There was blood. My heart was ripped out. I concentrated in staying focus and stopped his bleeding. Checked for any other anomaly. By then he was back on his feet and wanted to continue playing. Brought him to the surgery to be looked at. Nurse told us that it's a superficial shallow cut. The reason why it bled so much was because the scalp is full of capillaries. She just cleaned it with salt water, put band aids on and told us to keep his hair dry for 3 days. I took him there for another check-up after that. After a week, on his second check-up, we were instructed to wash his band aids off as the cut has closed. He still has a small swell around the wound which I am keeping an eye on. If only I can rewind time. Then I can take the fall for him. I think only mommies out there can understand this.

4) Best friend?

Hong-Hong is now officially the boy's "best -friend" . Even though at a picnic today, Hong-Hong fell down, Tobey tried to help him up but instead of a thanks, Hong-Hong gave him a slap, Tobey still smile and asked to play with him whenever possible...Hmmmmm....