Swanage Holiday

We are just back on Saturday from a wonderful week on holiday in Swanage, Dorset.  We stayed in a holiday house, walking distance to the beach, with grandma, grandpa and Auntie Jane.

I think we picked the best week of the year to go as the sun shone and we made the most of it!

When we arrived the kids immediately insisted on a walk to the beach with grandma and grandpa. Steve and I caught up a few minutes later to find the most British of scenes - kids stripped down to undies, paddling in the sea. Unfortunately grandpa didn't finish the look with a knotted hanky- always next time!


We spent A LOT of time on the beach - Beth is definitely a Californian girl, happily trying out bodyboarding. Toby enjoyed the beach but as with most things wanted to move on once he'd been a couple of times - never still, always looking for something new! 

We did try a different beach, Kimmeridge, one morning. Toby was in his element as it was a stoney beach and he could lob rocks into the sea with no one telling him to stop. Nearer the end of the week he did venture into the sea with help from his newly purchased 'jet ski'. Despite it tipping him upside-down he still enjoyed sitting on it; probably more keen on dry land though!




Even with daily visits to the beach we did manage a few trips out. A lovely walk along the coastal path one morning took us to Durlston Castle. The scenery was beautiful and the kids were intrigued by the massive stone globe in the grounds. It took us a while to realise why they were so tired that afternoon - the walk was nearly five miles round trip!



Steve and I were lucky enough to get quite a few hours by ourselves thanks to g, g and Auntie J. Wednesday morning they took Beth and Toby on a steam train from Swanage station to Corfe Castle, a National Trust property about 20 minutes away. 



From the stories and photos, it sounded as if they'd had a fantastic time. I think that when we get into more of the Enid Blyton books we'll have to go back - she spent a lot of time in the area and based many of her books around features. All of them arrived back melting as it was probably the hottest day of the week - a few hours in the paddling pool solved that!

I'm sure I've missed something out and will have to add it later, but as far as holidays go, it was a pretty perfect week. :)

Allsorts

I have been really bad at writing posts this year and only managed to do birthdays and other 'bigger' news.  This one is going to be a mish-mash of all our news from the last few months.


Toby seems to have most news at the moment.  In April he started going to football (soccer).  He is very excited by it and despite looking rather lost for most of the training (and all of the match), he just loves it.  I suspect it's because it's him and 19 other boys with hardly a girl in sight (poor sod, having spent the first four years of his life totally surrounded by girls)!


To counter this, he has also started going to Beth's dancing lessons.  We have always loved these as there is no uniform, you can pay as and when you go (great since they seem to change their minds rather often when it comes to hobbies) and there are no big shows, just smaller ones through the year.  I wasn't sure if he would enjoy it even though he asked to go (rather than me asking him), but so far he is loving it and doesn't seem bothered that he is quite often the only boy.  It could be a very good thing as 'they' say dancing is good for football skills. :)


On top of all this, just this week he started swimming lessons again.  He went for a while when we first moved to the area but just wasn't interested so I pulled him out.  This time he is ready to listen and it is a big bonus that when we arrived for his first lesson, his best friend was in the same class.  Hopefully a bit of friendly competition will spur him on!


Beth has been doing loads at school and it's hard to believe she'll be going into year two in September.  I'm not quite sure when they have fitted lessons in this term since they've done a lot of 'extra-curricular' stuff like celebrating the Jubilee, the Olympic torch relay, a school play and sports day (along with many practices)!


For her birthday, Beth received a live butterfly garden from cousins Adam and William.  We sent off for the caterpillars and spent the next four weeks watching them grow huge, turn to chrysalides then emerge as Painted Lady butterflies.  I would highly recommend it as the kids just loved seeing them grow and change.  When we released the butterflies, they hung around the garden for a few hours before disappearing off.


Half term at the beginning of June was a welcome break and we had a few trips out.  One was to Bradgate Park where I worked as a park ranger for a few years.  The kids were very excited to see Dr Who's tardis as they are both fans!  We also did some rock scrambling and deer watching.  Amazingly the weather was fine that morning - I think we had our summer with 10 warm days back in May.

Finally, this morning, we headed a few miles down the road to bag a prime spot to watch the demolition of the cooling towers at High Marnham Power Station.  It was very quick and quite impressive - if you'd blinked at the wrong time you would have missed it!

Summer Faire 2012

Today was the summer faire in the village.  In previous years it was held on May Day but after a lot of moaning by residents about it getting a bit old, the committee decided to move it and try and liven it up.


There was still the float parade round the village but this year there was a local town crier at the front and a kazoo marching band at the back.  The theme was 'The Olympics' and the pre-school decided to go with a theme for the float of the first Olympics.  Six of us spent a few hours last week building, painting and decorating it.  It turned out pretty well and for the third year in a row, when it came to the judging, we won!


Beth was on the Rainbows and Brownie float - they had to dress as an athlete from the Olympics.  Beth was a runner.  Some of the kids were in their swimming cossie's and hats - very apt since it chucked it down as soon as the parade set off and they all got soaked!


Back at the faire there was sheep racing, water balls (Beth loved going on this with her friend Sophie), face painting, bouncy castle, dog show and Pimm's tent (esp. for mums!).  Thankfully the sun came out and it was a fab afternoon.  Both kids are now worn out in bed. :)

Olympic Torch

Today the Olympic torch came right through the village, by Beth's school and past the end of our road.  Very exciting stuff.  Steve took the day off work and grandma and grandpa came for the festivities.  The roads were closed earlier this morning and school opened early so people could drop off before getting 'locked out' of the village.  


Lots of buses came through dropping school kids off from other villages - ours was the only school in the county that the torch comes directly by.  I think the population of the village tripled this morning - there are only around 460 houses in total and today it was busy!


The atmosphere was really nice, lots of flags and old ladies in deckchairs (!) and both pubs on the route through the village opened early though amazingly we abstained (well, at least until lunch)!


A few minutes before the torch passed there was a convoy of loads of police motorcycles and the three sponsors came by giving out stuff and playing music.  Not sure that Coca Cola is an appropriate sponsor - giving out nice sugary drinks and promoting chubb for a sporting event but who am I to say!  The other two were Samsung and Lloyds TSB; very disappointing that they didn't follow suit and hand out free TV's and money. :(




When the torch arrived it was a little bit of an anti-climax.  A couple of people I spoke to later actually turned to talk to friends and missed it completely!  We did see it and also had the chance to look/hold a torch as one of the dad's at school was a runner on Tuesday.


As soon as that was finished with it was Beth's sports day.  This year they did team sports rather than competitive sports.  The children move round activities and spend five minutes on each.  The idea is good but five minutes is a long time for each and by half way, Beth was disinterested and really couldn't be bothered.  It didn't help that the rain (and thunder and lightening) started but everyone carried on until the bitter end.


At this point we sneaked away for lunch at a new microbrewery that has opened just down the road.  It was very acceptable and after a lovely meal we returned to school for the summer faire.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't great so it was inside and we only stopped long enough to get some temporary tattoos, faces painted and cakes.


It was a very nice day and very nice to have the family all around for this 'historic' occasion.  

Happy 6th Birthday Beth!

Sorry for taking so long to finish this post - I started a couple of days after Beth's birthday on April 18th but it's taken a month to finish!  I'll put it down to a mixture of lack of time and lack of motivation! 

As with Toby, I can't quite believe that Beth is so grown up - six already!

 

I don't know if anyone else has come across this problem but we had huge issues finding what to give her for presents.  I think the perfect present that anyone could give would have been an hour of their time to be used dressing up and engaging in princess-themed play!  Of course, if you were to ask her she would say that she couldn't live without a hideous mechanical gerbil toy (or some other such monstrosity), but she never plays with those things and is drawn to craft things and imaginative play.

In the end we decided to have a larger than normal party the weekend following her birthday and a few smaller presents rather than one large one.  Of course her friends and family also lavished her and she got some great gifts.  One of her favourites was a One Direction CD from Auntie Jane (though I'm sure she'd like me to clarify that this wasn't sent as a result of personal music choice!!).

Her party was a science party by a company called Sublime Science.  We thought that her friends had done the soft play parties, the magician, disco and general mayhem ones and we should try something different.  The kids were fairly mesmerised with the experiments and bits that Amelia (our scientist) performed.  They got to make their own sherbet (and eat it), make their own goo (to take home) and help out with some of the other experiments.

I didn't do a science-themed cake - Beth still likes a bit of princess pink and I thought a variation on Toby's cake would be easy. :)  As much fun as her birthday was, I'm very thankful birthday season is over for another year!

Belfast Weekend and Other Bits

On March 31, my cousin Garth married his girlfriend Johanna in Belfast.  Steve kindly sacrificed his invite to look after the kids for the weekend and I headed over.  They chose a good weekend for it as the weather was lovely.  

I managed to get a walk in down Stricklands Glen to the shore - a walk I love to do every time I visit.  The day after the wedding Jane and I got to walk along the shore from Crawfordsburn Country Park back to Bangor, it was beautiful.  In the photo you can just see Great Grandma Ruth's hospital (Crawfordsburn Hospital) that has now been converted into apartments.

The wedding was at the Belfast City Hall, rather a spectacular setting especially since it has recently been done up.  I have never been inside so it was great to get a peek!  

The wedding ceremony was short and sweet and was followed by a walk through the city to the Crown Bar, a National Trust property (one of the best of their properties I think!!;)).  

After a short stop there we crossed the road to the Europa hotel where the reception was being held.  The views from the penthouse ballroom of Belfast were fantastic, it was rather difficult to pull away from the window to eat as I could easily have stood looking for hours.  As yet I do not have any photos of me but I'm sure one will pop up at some point; I'll add it when it does.

It was a lovely day and a lovely wedding; congratulations Mr & Mrs G. McGuigan!

The rest of the photos are from the end of March and beginning of the Easter holidays.  The veg patch is rather overgrown and needs rather a lot of attention.  

This is the first crop of purple sprouting broccoli, unfortunately pigeons have since eaten the rest so I'll be pulling it up soon.  The only other things we have in are onions, garlic and potatoes.  I don't think I'll do as much this year as last - think I'll stick to the things we eat a lot of.  It seems cabbage is not one of those things and 22 cabbages all ready to consume at the same time shows my lack of thought and planning last year!

We also have a new batch of piglets.  The old ones are proving to be very tasty and good value.  The breed this year are slightly different, I believe they are Gloucester Old Spot crossed with Berkshire.

The last couple of pictures are from the Easter bonnet parade at playgroup (Toby is second from back) and the other is at our new village play area - I'm sure there'll be plenty more showing that in future posts as we seem to spend the majority of our spare time there at the moment.

Happy 4th Birthday Toby!

Believe it or not, our little baby is now four (yes, it's only taken a couple of weeks to write this post)!  He was very excited and has been counting down the sleeps for the last week.  I do feel sorry for parents with children born in January - it still seems close to Christmas even now and we've had problems thinking of presents to buy!

Originally I had planned to have a few children to the house for a party as we have done for the last couple of years.  However, when I started adding up the children we would need to invite, the total kept climbing and my enthusiasm for hosting diminished rapidly!   Instead, much to Beth's disapproval since she would be in school, we booked a party at the local soft play area.

Thankfully that worked really well - we scared everyone else away and had the entire play place to ourselves!  All 22 kids had a ball hurtling around; sugar highs for all. :)  Toby loved that all his friends came, especially Jack his best bud.  I'm not looking forward to breaking it to him that when he starts reception (kindergarten) in September, they won't be at the same school - at least they'll reunite in seven years at high school!

After the party we had a very relaxed afternoon and evening with both sets of grandparents and far too much cake and toys.