Phyl's Blog

I've seen a number of kids around Newton Mearns over the last week or two wearing various High School leavers' hoodies. That...

Marcel and Gregor leave school after their first day of p1. Marcel has left the building! After nearly thirteen years at school, M...

Amaia (Looking closely at my eyes): Mummy, you've got little red lines on your eyes. What is that? Me: Veins, I suppose. Amaia: Wo...

It's amazing how quickly a garden can change. Yesterday I took a snapshot of which flowers and herbs were in blossom in my garden. This ...

We were up at Whitelee yesterday morning but none of the windmills were turning. The silence was quite eerie.

It's a tense week in the Buchanan-Widmann household... By April 30th, both the smallest and the biggest will know where they are...

Anna and Amaia are very different. Anna is very extrovert and confident. She's always first to volunteer when the school needs some...

Amaia: You know how some people say they don't like kids, mum? Me: Y eah Amaia: Well that's a bit daft... Don't they remembe...

You can always rely on your kids to put you in your place. I'm working on an Italian dictionary project this morning, so I leave va...

I am so relieved I am already married... Anna and Amaia have been off school for ten days on holiday and have discovered a particul...

We managed to grow this in the garden. It is obviously from the daffodil family and has no less than six heads on the one stem! Isn't it...

Why is student accommodation prohibitively expensive in Scotland? I remember when I lived on campus at Konstanz uni, paying about 25% of wh...

Braces are starting to stress me out and I've never even had any! Marcel had braces for three years and simply got on with it. Afterwa...

Partial (95%) solar eclipse.

It has come round astoundingly quickly. Yesterday, I had this tiny little blond boy who was starting primary school and today, thirteen ...

When dad died, we took over his car loan. The car came complete with two extras that we left in place. The first was a Buchanan tartan r...

I never really thought before about how it feels at five to have a brother who is 17. Marcel will leave school a few months before Amaia...

We were shopping in See Woo the other day doing an exotic stock-up. The kids were more than impressed with the dragons left over from New Y...

Amaia has grown out of her black indoor shoes for nursery, so I have replaced them with the next size up. Nursery has two rooms, each with...

Cute conversation overheard by Thomas on passing the bathroom... Anna: ... and he fainted. Amaia: What does fainted mean? Anna: ...