A brief trip away.

Tuesday brought piano lessons, as usual, and M in particular has been playing quite a lot in between.  She seems to be really enjoying it, although at the moment speed seems as important as accuracy in her playing!

Wednesday we continued with tidying/sorting/clearing out the playroom, with the focus being on Playmobil, of which K & M have rather a lot.  While they don't play with it as frequently as they used to, they definitely haven't grown out of it yet and occasionally it can provide hours of play.  They have both decided to get rid of some of it, mostly the parts that they now consider 'too girly', namely the fairytale/fairy themed things, but the dinosaur, camper vans and everyday type things are staying.

Swimming lesson was cancelled on Wednesday, I had a phone call to let me know, so we headed off to Granny and Big Grandad's a bit earlier than planned.  The reason for our, very brief, trip was because I had booked K & M on a sewing workshop, in the upstairs room of a haberdasher's shop (love that word!) on Thursday morning.  They spent just over 2 hours there, in a group of 8 children (aged about 7 - early teens I would guess) with 3 ladies helping them hand and machine sew a needlebook.  The results were very impressive.

K & her needlebook.

While K & M were busy sewing I went to visit my Grandma and had a lovely hour or so chatting.  Among other things she told me some of her life story, including the beginning of her nursing career, which started when she was 14 or 15, in a workhouse turned hospital, but at a time when there were still 'inmates' of the workhouse there.  She is 91, but it's quite incredible to think that something like a workhouse was still going within living memory!

In the afternoon we went to Mary Arden's Farm, but unfortunately I discovered that our family ticket, which is valid for a year and I bought only just over a month ago, wasn't in my bag where it lives.  I asked at the information desk if there was anything I could do, but sadly there isn't.  The lady on the desk very kindly let us in today though, but we're going to have to buy another one next time we want to go there or Shakespeare's Birthplace, both of which the girls love.  After spending some time at Mary Arden's Farm, including the three of us having a go at the archery, when K got two out of her four arrows in the centre of the target and M and I did pretty well too, watching the blacksmith at work and a while in the playground, where M very determinedly did the obstacle course with me timing her and getting steadily quicker, we popped into Stratford.  It was a long shot, but since we'd been to the Birthplace the day after I had bought the ticket at Mary Arden's Farm, there was the slight chance that they'd found it and hung on to it there, but sadly not.  Ho hum.

Finally, we have finally finished the last book in the Charlie Bone series.  None of the three of us had seen the ending (although I must admit I'm not got at spotting twists!), but it was a very satisfying conclusion all round.