The Gallery: My backyard

This week's Gallery theme over at Sticky Fingers is: My backyard. So if you are super nosey about what people's backyards look like, go check all the entries out.

This is our backyard in summer

And this is it in winter.

In summer we do this (naked trampolining obviously)

And in winter we do this

And when it gets flooded, it looks like this

The Gallery: Chilled Out

I think I've joined in the Gallery only once because I'm slovenly. But I liked this week's theme: Chilled Out - so thought I'd join in.

I instantly knew which picture to post. It was taken on our honeymoon in Tanzania. We were in the Selous Game Reserve which is the size of Switzerland with hardly any people in it. Our ranger had taken us by boat up the Sands River, stopped on this sandbank, shooed the hippos and crocodiles away and we'd got out. He set up fishing lines for us and we stood on the warm sand, with the sun setting, sipping on Tusker lager, waiting for a nibble. It was bliss and utterly chilled out.

But it's not so easy to nip off to Tanzania anymore. As a parent you have to find new, less exotic ways to chill out. I discovered two ways this afternoon, sadly I have pictures of neither.

First of all, I downed tools. All of them - blackberry, ipad, computer, dishes, laundry, dinner ingredients - and devoted myself to playing calvinball with my boys. It's a great game - part cricket, part baseball, part tennis, part rounders. Instead of looking at my watch and thinking about the next thing I needed to be doing, I just threw myself into the game wholeheartedly. I have the bird poo stains on my jeans to prove it.

Second, after dinner, while son 1 watched TV, I embarked on a game of tickles with son 2. I can't remember when last I did that. I even played 'this little piggy went to market' and 'round and round the garden path', which I haven't done for what feels like years. And when we were both too exhausted to tickle each other anymore, we did tongue twisters. Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry. She sells seashells. Three flags flying freely. And we laughed and laughed and laughed.

And by the end of the afternoon, I felt very chilled out.

Perhaps that's the art of chilling out - it's about living completely in the moment, no matter what that moment may be.

See the way other bloggers chill out here.