Slow cooked carrot and lentil soup

I popped this on first thing this morning to use up some carrots on the turn and it was a lovely winter warmer to come back to at lunchtime after spending 2 hours at the park with an icy wind.

I chopped up 3 carrots, added a large handful of well-rinsed lentils, a stock cube and some boiling water and cooked on high for 4 hours before blending.

The Great Outdoors week 8: 2 hours 20

Quite pleased with last week's total and still managing to fit outdoors time in despite it being a really busy week for us with my freelance work commitments. 

We saw the first signs of spring:

The kids thought it would be great to take their binoculars out with them:

We had fun exploring a new park locally that we haven't been to before, and we built dens in some local woods. 

We even managed to have more garden time this week than the last few weeks. 

The Great Outdoors week 7: 30 minutes

A little late posting last week's total - just 30 minutes last week. A trip to the park with the kids and Viking on Thursday. I'm not sure why we weren't outside much, I think a combination of weather, disruptions to routine and other weekly commitments. I don't like to see the weekly total that low though! 

The Great Outdoors Week 6: 4:45

We've had some memorable moments outside this week. It's only been getting a couple of degrees above freezing (Eden's latest thing is to ask me the temperature everytime we get in the car) but we've had lots of sunshine. 

Monday morning we blew away the cobwebs and embraced a new week with a trip to the park with Viking in tow. He was very glad it was free-run day! 

On Tuesday we took the scooters to Mary Stevens Park in Stourbridge. This is one of our favourite parks as there's so much to do, we spent nearly 2 hours there before feeling it was time to go home to warm up! 

Thursday we took Viking up Walton Hills, it was sooooo icy! I loved the observations that nearly-3y.o Asher was coming out with about the effects that the ice has had on the usually squelchy mud. We spent longer out than I'd planned as we were having so much fun with the ice! 

Today's been much warmer, almost spring-like. We had lunch in the garden and a lovely family walk over the local fields, discovering a cow, calf and bull in one of the lower fields 

The great outdoors week 5: 2hours30

Some snow this week, although it melted far too quickly for a good play; clearing the back garden of hedge continued and a muddy walk up Clent Hills. Asher learnt to bounce on a space hopper this week! Last Monday we did enjoy a nice couple of hours playing in the garden. Still a long way off the amount of time I'd like to spend outside, can't wait for spring! Although I'd like some proper snow first!