Wet and muddy!

We had a really lovely weekend away for my mother-in-law's birthday.  We introduced her to Vapoosh!, had a lovely meal out with various members of the family, and I did tell her how much I consider myself fortunate to have her for a mother-in-law and I'm very glad I did.  She told me that it was the best birthday present that she could have had, that she had had doubts about our choices to start with but that the girls are clearly having a wonderful up-bringing.  I also had a rare lucid conversation with my father-in-law, who is suffering from Alzheimers and doesn't always know who the girls and I are.  He clearly did on this occasion and told me that he had been 'baffled' when we decided not to send them to school, but that we are doing a fantastic job and to keep it up.

The girls and I left A at the railway station in Chester as he was getting the train down to London with his uncle and aunt who had come up from Kent for the celebration and going straight to Brussels for a meeting today.  The trip home went fine, until we got home and I realised that, as is usually the case when we go somewhere as a family, I hadn't taken my house keys with me.  Fortunately the neighbours who have our spare were in, so it really wasn't a problem!

This morning we got up and went to pick up our friend R & A to go den building at Rushcliffe Country Park.  To say it was rainy is really something of an understatement, as we got absolutely drenched and also rather muddy.  It was great fun though and we were all rather proud of our den.

The five of us in our den.

 We then headed back to the visitor centre and the children each made a bug hotel and we dried out a bit.

Various different habitats in there.

We then headed back to R & A's where the girls started off by building another den, this time in the form of a 'tent' for a Swallows & Amazon's game.  Then after some lunch they decided to do some dressing up and got rather creative, as you can see from the couple of examples below.

The first outfits.

A suffragette sandwich!

Rather more bizarre choices.

 The girls finished off by giving a concert for some toys and then it was time to come home.  Where we watched a few more episodes of Heidi, a lovely end to a lovely day!