Yet another long weekend away!

That makes the fourth in the space of a month and a bit, so after a Christening in Durham, a wedding in Dorset, a visit to A's side of the family in Kent, this time it was a visit to my side of the family near Wokingham.  The reason for the trip was the La Leche League GB National Workshop, which I've missed for the previous two years (it's always around this time of year, so there's always the possibility of it clashing with K's birthday).  It was on Saturday, but A took the afternoon off on Friday and we travelled down then to my Uncle B & Aunty R's, who were putting us up.  While I was at the workshop (which was excellent, and I met two online friends for the first time), A, K & M walked and then took the train and the bus to spend the day at Legoland, where they had a fantastic time and although they got rather damp from various rides were very fortunate not to get wet from above.

Over our evening meal with B & R, I found it very entertaining when M was talking with R about some little glass pebbles that R had in a couple different places.  M has a few and she was telling R about the ones she had, which colours and that she didn't have any in the colours that R does.  She was so clearly hoping desperately that R would give her one of each colour; fishing, but not asking outright as she would have done a couple of years ago.  R did indeed give her a few of the pebbles and M was chuffed to bits.

On Sunday B & R were leaving us for their annual meet up with B's siblings and spouses (so my parents and other aunts & uncles on that side), so we said our goodbyes in the morning.  We were off to meet up with one of my oldest 'computer Mummy friends', another K (I'll call her Kd here to differentiate) and her family, along with our mutual friend, C who we met for the first time a few years back.  When Kd mentioned on Facebook that she was going to celebrate an old friend, I's, 40th birthday about 18 months ago and the friend had the same name as my cousin (Uncle B's son), who I knew was about the same age and was pretty sure lived where she was heading for the celebration.  You will probably have guessed that it was indeed my cousin, who it turned out was the best friend from school of Kd's husband, ex-boyfriend of Kd and had introduced them to each other.  Kd and I have 'known' each other since our eldest children were tiny and they are now 11, and as toddlers they looked freakily similar and even now you might take them for siblings.  It was so lovely to meet them all and after very little time indeed it was as though we'd known each other 'properly', and not just online, for years.  The children got on really well too (always a bit of a relief!) and we were particularly taken with Kd's absolutely gorgeous cats.

C, me and Kd.

On Monday, A had a work meeting not far from B & R's (he stays with them a couple of times a year when he has meetings at the head office of the company that has just taken over the one he works for) and was then heading straight to Brussels.  The girls and I had agreed that we would go (again) to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, fortunately we had checked the night before, as we found out that it's not open on a Monday!  After some searching online and looking at where was near our route home, I found that Bletchley Park was not far off the motorway at a sensible distance between B & R's and home, so slightly reluctantly the girls agreed we should go there instead.  It turned out to be an excellent choice.  I think K & M are probably the perfect age to take at 9 & 11, as they still get in free being under 12, but are old enough to get a lot out of it.

There were multimedia guides to use as we went round, which had a family tour option as well as the adult one, and it was excellent.  As well as description of the what happened in the different buildings around the place, there were clips about various different people and others to put the work done there into the context of the war and various puzzles and codes (admittedly mostly fairly easy ones) to have a go at too.  Among other things we looked at all of the stages that it took to get from the coded Morse Code messages that were picked up to the decoded and then translated from German and then sort of disguised to look as though the information were gathered by a spy (code-named Boniface), so that the Germans wouldn't realise that the Allies were able to decrypt their messages and about how that information was used.

The office in the library of the mansion.

K in the Post Office.

The Memorial to the works at Bletchley.