Swap parcels :)

I posted two quick pics with my phone but wanted to write a little more.
My secret Pal lives in Canada! Include in the lovely parcel was a birthay card with a cute little sheep, a set of 2mm bamboo dpn's, a cute little cow finger puppet (sorry the kids all agreed it was a cow not a goat or a sheep lol!) a ball of light blue fibernatura cottonwood (100%cotton) (no ideas what to do with this yet) and a skein (hank?) of alpaca with twist mojito in the best variegated colours I've ever seen. SP you have no idea how much I love that skein/hank! it is absolutely perfect (I am planning to knit these) I wish there was more of it!

My sock swap parcel also arrived with two cute socks loads of tiny sock yarn skeins chocolate buttons for the kids (they where gone in about 2 minutes!) a lovely smelling piece of soap which has dissapeared allready (I will hide hubbies conditioner until the soap gets returned...) a card a two knitted strawberries. I will add the socks to my collection shortly.

Euans ear got worse yesterday but strangly seems to be much better today. he got another sore on it and it was so red and swollen but still it didn't hurt him. the redness is gone as is the swelling just a couple of scabs left. hopefully this is it!
The rain doesn't seem to stop at al. The chickens have become excellent swimmers.
My little sister is coming over on Tuesday with her girlfriend yay! Euan is counting the days until tuesday keeping his fingers crossed for lots of presents :)
More family will be arriving the monday after so we'll be busy

The twins are asleep, Euan has crashed in front of the TV downstairs and I'm trying to catch up on some emails but decided to write a bit instead.
The cats (well Rodney mainly) are bringing in more birds than I thaught possible. At least Rosie will eat anything she catches leaving maybe a few feathers behind but thats it. With rodney I'm lucky if whatever it is he brings in is dead he tends to leave them for me to finish. We had a thrush yesterday that I found belly up in the kitchen unable to really move but still breathing. I *hate* finding them like that. You know you can't leave them to suffer but you also don't want finish the job.
I picked up two nice shrubs for the chickenrun for only a pounds each, once it stops raining I will put them in. Hopefully they will allow it to grow so they have some shade in the run. I'm running around with sheets everytime it gets hot now.
My little sister is coming over on the 4th of august with a friend for a few days and the week after mum is coming over for a few days.
It looks like James has found an rpg group locally which would be great because he really misses it.

Euan has started to sound out words, he's making letters with pieces of string that he finds in my knittingbacg and wipes away writing on the whiteboard to make new letters with.
Its really rather facinating to see how he is learning to read and write so naturally. Especially now I'm so involved with learning Japanese. I find the whole process of learning another languege anything but natural. which is rather odd since I speak several languages but they where all aquired whilst talking to other people so I guess I need to find myself a japanese person.

duty calls....