So busy!

Yesterday was Fun Club, with the theme being 'Giant Games and Co-operative games'.  K & M both had a lovely time, although I saw very little as when we arrived, I realised that I had left M's carefully decorated birthday cake at home!  So they stayed and had fun, while I drove 25 minutes each way to fetch it - whoops!

M (as a dog) and her tiger cake.

Then after lunch Fun Club decamped to the park.  I stayed behind to help with washing up and tidying as my girls are fine going with other people, so there weren't smaller children waiting impatiently for their mummy to be ready to go.  So I didn't seem much of my girls at Fun Club at all!

After Fun Club, we dashed back across town for K & M to meet what looks like being their new piano teacher.  Our lovely friend C, is no longer taking private pupils, although she carried on with K & M a long time after she had finished with most of them, and due to her surgery last autumn K & M hadn't had lessons for quite some time now.  Both girls took to E, who already teaches two of their friends, so we're going to give it half a term and see how they get on.  Their half an hour lesson also gave me a bit of uninterrupted one to one time with each of my girls, which is quite rare, and really lovely.  K and I talked mostly about rats, the pet sort.  We visited a colleague of A's last autumn, who had two rats and the girls were really taken with them.  At the time I said that if they were still really keen on the idea of getting a couple next Christmas (so that's this year now), then we would seriously consider it.  K is still, indeed, very keen on the idea, so I have suggested she look into it and so some research, so she can know what it would involve and I would see that she is serious about it.  She thought that was a good idea and has already found some information on the internet and is planning on seeing what they have in the library.

M made a snake for C, who we met up with on her birthday.

Today is M's birthday (it's finally arrived, having started it seems rather a long time ago!).  She was up very early and after having breakfast with K & A, brought up some of her presents to open before A went to work, on the bed with me rather bleary eyed!

We met up with friends, E, C, L & J at Belton House for most of the day.  It's somewhere that various friends have recommended and we hadn't ever got around to going, but will certainly be going back.  It's got a fantastic adventure playground, really lovely grounds and an indoor play area in the cafe and we didn't even get as far as the house!  We did do plenty of tree climbing and nature spotting though, including baby rabbits, ducklings, goslings and tadpoles.

A tiny fraction of the tadpoles.  There were thousands!

Quite amazingly nobody fell in!

All the small people

C & M

K

M

Everyone but me!

We finished off with an ice-cream for the small people and hot chocolate and chocolate brownies for E & me in the cafe and indoor play area, and agreed that we would definitely return soon.  If it hadn't been for swimming lessons for all the children, I think we would have stayed rather longer.

We got home from swimming to have chicken curry for tea with A, who'd got home in time to cook for us to eat soon after we'd got in.  Sadly, while we were having tea, we received news from A's cousin that his aunty, who at 85 has had many on-going health problems, some quite debilitating, for some time now, has just died.

That notwithstanding, M has had a lovely birthday and told me just before she went to bed that she'd had 'some brilliant presents', these include a Lego creator car, a number of photo frames and notebooks (she is very into both of these at the moment).  She also got a Harry Potter mug, although since it came direct from the seller with no clue as to the sender, it's going to be tricky sending a thank you for that!