Out all day.

This morning A left for work at the office at his normal time, but is going straight from there to the airport this afternoon, heading to Berlin and not back until Thursday.  It's unusual for him to be travelling as much as he has been lately and even more unusual it's more than just a night or two, but after this trip I think he's home for a while at least.

The girls and I were out pretty much the whole day too, with an LLL toddler meeting this morning.

M, aged 9, in a toddler car!

We went straight from there to Wollaton Hall, where we met up with our friends E, C, L & J.  As we drove in towards the carpark, we went past some of the herd of red deer, so having met the others in the carpark, M & I went to have a look at them a bit closer and we talked about how you can tell how old they are from looking at their antlers.

Some of the red deer.

After having our packed lunches, we had a look at some more of the wildlife...

...like this little frog that C found.

We all had an ice-cream while we we for a walk around the lake, until we got to the little 'beach', where we stopped for a quite a while and the children got delightly wet and grubby.

The smaller people got their feet (and in some cases shorts/trousers) wet.

E & I made the most of the opportunity to talk to the girls about how to deal with disagreements with friends, which they sometimes struggle with with each other.

M, C & L decided to go on ahead to the climbing tree, which we had deliberately not headed for earlier, it not being very fair on J, whose broken arm means that he would have been rather left out.  E, K, J & I stayed a bit longer by/in the lake and between us we managed to rescue a damsel(fly) in distress.  It had got stuck on the water and the water surface tension had also stuck two of it's wings together, so it couldn't dry them out.  Happily, by gently sliding a till receipt between them, we managed to unstick the wings and soak up a bit of the water, so after about five minutes or so it was able to fly away.

The damsel in distress.

After a quick trip to the climbing tree, it was time to head home.  Where we watched another episode of The Human Body on dvd, which was about the brain and fascinating!

We also continued with our new book, which we started yesterday:  The Wombles!  Although I remember watching the tv programme as a child, I don't think I ever read the books and we're really enjoying the first one so far.  It also sparked a bit of geography, as all Wombles are named after places that they either choose or stick their finger on at random in Great Uncle Bulgaria's atlas, so K decided to find them.  She's only found Cholet and Tomsk so far, but is planning to look for them all.

This evening we took M to Brownies and then K & I listened to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and The Archers on the radio.  On The Archers, Brian and Jennifer Alridge have just got a new kitchen and K was delighted to hear that Brian wasn't happy with it (as she and M still aren't happy about ours, which unlike the Alridge's still isn't finished), and found it very funny when he said that the oven and the fridge had been communicating.