A lovely week away - Part One

We got home today from a really lovely week away, which we spent visiting and meeting up with family and friends and having some great days out with just our 'little family'.

We started off in North Wales, just over the border from Chester, where Nana and Little Grandad (that's A's parents) live.  It was lovely to see them, although very sad to realise that Little Grandad is becoming less and less aware of who we are as Alzheimer's continues to affect him more and more.  He still knows who A is, but not really who the girls and I are, although since he has always called us Your Majesty, Your Highness or Your pretty Highness (as he does for most people anyway and has done for some time, as his mechanism for coping with not remembering names) and he's happy to talk to us anyway, it doesn't show as much as it otherwise might.  K in particular got quite upset about the idea of him not knowing us, but day to day it doesn't really show, although I'm expecting her to need to talk about this when she's processed it some more.

We arrived on Sunday, on Monday, given the weather forecast wasn't good, we got the bus into Chester and went swimming in a pool with a particularly good flume.  On Tuesday all six of us went out for lunch and met up with two of A's cousins.  Then at the girls' request the little family (i.e. the four of us) went to our original 'Nature's playground', a phrase that is now used for anywhere natural that's got water that can be paddled in and preferably trees and/or rocks that can be climbed on.  While there, as well as having fun, we also did two more of the 50 Things.  We built a (not particularly effective, I must admit) dam in the stream (deconstructing it afterwards) and had a go at skimming stones.  We have done the latter before, but this is the first time that either K or M has managed to get the stone to bounce at all and they both managed it twice with two or three bounces, although some refining of technique is needed to more consistency.



50 Things to Do - Dam Building

Having fun in 'Nature's Playground'

Quite deep in places!

Exploring further.

Choosing good stones to skim - another of the 50 Things.

Our original plan had been to go to Chester Zoo on Monday, but we had decided to postpone given the weather forecast and instead went on Wednesday, which was definitely wise.  The idea was that we would then move on to our next port of call for the night straight from there, but in the end we had to go back to Nana and Little Grandad's to collect the coats that we'd forgotten!

We had a great day at Chester Zoo, where Little Grandad worked as a gardener about 35 years ago.  There are so many animals to see and plenty to read and talk about and most of the animals really do seem to have plenty of space and an environment that they can interact with.  I took far too many photos to put them all on here, so here are some of our highlights.

M trying to beat a monkey's time on a dexterity challenge.

Village weaver birds making their nests.

Another stunning bird, that I really should have written down the name of!

Meerkat having 'booboo' - something we always look out for.

The bat cave - not a brilliant photo, but a highlight for us all.  We went back for a second visit.

A in particular really liked the red panda.

Tall for their ages, but still shorter than a newborn giraffe!



Not newborn, but still very short compared to the adults!

One of the zoo's newest additions, a 2 month old tiger cub - again having 'booboo'.

Making things.

On Thursday we had an even more sociable day than the day before.  Unfortunately nobody dropped out of the activity at the library, so K & M didn't get to do that, but they did walk down to meet friends, Ka, Ma & A who were coming for lunch.  The children played Monopoly among other things and Ka & I had a nice chat.  Then after lunch K went to meet other friends who she was spending the afternoon with (M had been invited, but had decided not to go because N, K's friend, 'just thinks of me as K's sister').  We had a nice afternoon anyway, spending some of it in the park later and then M did want to walk round to pick up K with me after tea and K, M & N disappeared while I had a drink and a chat with N's parents.

Yesterday, I made some chocolates to take with us to give people we're staying with soon.  They weren't my best ones, but not bad, if I do say so myself.  It's rather tricky tempering chocolate, which involves heating it, cooling to 27 degrees C before warming to 29 degrees C when the ambient temperature is around 28!  Ho hum.

Over the past few days K & M have both been busy making things.  M has been making a bag for Mr Fox to take his things away on holiday.

Mr Fox's bag

The button was especially selected, because it has a ship on it and Mr Fox is quite frequently Captain Fox.

K's creation was in a different medium.  She's attempted a number of ways of fixing the pieces together and the final result was done with staples.  It's a cage for Wom, her owl that she bought when we went to Mary Arden's Farm last month.  It even has a perch and a door.



The door bar is attached with a split pin to allow easy opening and closing.  I think it's really rather impressive!

Finally, K has been getting a lot of comments about how tall she is, which she's finding rather wearing.  I do think she does seem to have shot up lately though I must admit.  M also is getting rather fed up with it, as she'd really like to be taller.  So I suggest that we measure them and look in their 'red books' (the personal child health record) at the growth charts.  K is 10 in October and is 150cm and M was 8 in June and is 133cm.  As I suspected K is indeed very tall for her height, on the 98th centile in fact but M is also well above average height just above the 75 centile.  Not surprising given that most of the family on my side is tall and A's mum's side of the family too.

A social whirl!

We, or rather K & M, have been rather busy over the past few days.  On Sunday afternoon they had a friend, I, round from a few doors down.  They started off with a water fight in the garden, M has been asking if they could have another one since they had one in I's garden a while back.  Then they came inside to dry off, warm up a bit (it wasn't as warm as the first time) and they disappeared up to 'Granny's room' (aka our loft conversion), which has a laminate floor to do 'ice-skating'.

Monday was our quiet day, we stayed in continued with our tidying and then in the afternoon continued with the rats projects.  M had done a rather good drawing of a rat and she went on to write a bit about cages.  K read through some information she'd printed out and highlighted the parts she thought were most important and colour coded them with the topics in the brainstorming mindmap she'd done previously.  Afterwards, K finally got dressed as she'd decided she wanted to go to the library, so she took The Witches with her, of which she'd just got a few chapters left to read.  She told me she read it on the way and had a conversation with a group of children who were up a tree in the park on the way, who'd said they thought it was a good book, but not to watch the film as it was very scary.  That was her sixth and final book in the Summer Reading Challenge.  Both girls really enjoy doing this, although they do both read anyway, they certainly get through books quicker when taking part in it.

Tuesday K & M had their piano lessons in the morning and we called into the library on the way home, in the hope of signing them up for one of their summer activities on Thursday.  Unfortunately it was full though, so they're on the waiting list (2nd & 3rd) and we told them we live close enough to be there in 5 minutes if someone doesn't turn up on the day, although we may well be in the library anyway!  On the way home we met our friends, J, A & K, who live across the road and the four girls played at being spider monkeys up a tree for a while.  We walked home together and agreed to meet up the next day for lunch and play.  We also ended up popping over for a play in the afternoon anyway.

Today after K & M had more or less tidied their bedrooms, something that happens once a month and means that the floor will be visible for the a couple of days at least!  K & M went over a bit before me (I was hanging the washing out!) when I got there  K, M, A & little K were all happily playing with playdough.  Shortly before lunch they started watching a dvd of The Lion King, partly because we'd been talking about it as they had been to see the theatre production in Birmingham.  After that all four girls, aged from (a very young) 5.5 to nearly 10 spent over three hours dressing up and singing and performing various parts of the show.  J & I had a lovely afternoon chatting and relaxing, but we got to watch some parts as A had videoed bits.  We only left because we had to get to K & M's swimming lesson. 

Finally I found more cherry trees!  They are next to the leisure centre where the girls have their swimming lesson, but the other side from the one we knew already knew about.  They are absolutely laden with perfectly ripe fruit, an enormous amount of which is easy to reach with feet firmly on the ground.  We picked enough for another pie or crumble, but unfortunately so much of it is going to go to waste as clearly nobody has been picking them.

A lovely walk.

It was over 5 years ago that we got the book Kiddiwalks in Nottinghamshire from our lovely local bookshop that sadly is no more.  In it there are 20 walks that are ideal for shorter legs and we went on quite a few of them in the first year or two that we had the book.  Today we had plans to 'go for a walk' with friends, but none of us had really given any thought as to where that should be and given that it's been so hot and sunny lately, I thought that a nice, shady walk in woods somewhere would be a good idea.  In dug the book and and found several in the book that would have fitted the bill, and so having gathered at our house, we had a look and agreed that the one I'd picked out sounded good.  There were six of us, K, M & me, R and her daughter, A and our mutual friend (who we'd met through and used to teach all three girls piano) C.

We got into two cars and headed for what the book delightfully calls Blidworth Bottoms (which is the name of a hamlet nearby), but is in fact Blidworth Woods.  Our first attempt to follow the 5km 'blue trail' didn't go entirely to plan and we ended up back at the picnic area by the car park after a short circular walk, so we stopped for the snacks we'd taken with us and then tried again more successfully.  There were posts with blue markers on at regular intervals along the path, except it seemed when there was a choice of ways to go!  We had a lovely walk though, in parts it was almost seaside like the paths were so sandy, which led K & M to taking their shoes off and they continued to walk much of the way barefoot (a barefoot walk is another of the 50 Things to Do Before You're 11 3/4, by the way).

M, A & K

When we got home I finished reading the fifth of eight Charlie Bone books and discovered that, without wanting to give anything away, the thing I was expecting to happen in the final book happens at the end of book five, so I'm intrigued to know what the final three books in the series hold.

Illness, animals and more.

Yesterday we spent the morning in my bedroom with me continuing to read the Charlie Bone book that we're on (Charlie Bone and the Hidden King) for several hours!  The plan for the afternoon was to continue with the projects on rats and do some more tidying, sorting and cleaning.  Unfortunately I started feeling really rather rotten, so that didn't really happen.  M did draw a picture of a rat for her project though and I dozed on the sofa.  I managed to take them to their swimming lesson and when we got home K sorted tea for them both.  I cut the bread and then she did boiled eggs and toast, I had to remind her of timings, but apart from that she was pretty competent.  It has made me think we should do some more cooking though (possibly not in this hot weather though) and it is 'Feed yourself Friday' tomorrow and we don't have anything in the diary at all, so we'll have to see. 

This morning I was feeling better, although not 100%, but had a quiet morning by myself anyway, as they went to their friend F's birthday pony party, which rather conveniently was a 5 minute drive away.  Horses present me with something of a dilemma.  On the one hand I had the opportunity to ride (when very young with our next-door neighbour who was our babysitter and we lived in a very rural area), on the other hand I am now extremely allergic to horses!  So I was hoping that they'd enjoy themselves at the party, but not too much, not so much that they would be really upset at not being able to ride regularly, as I really don't think I'd be able to cope with that.  They did enjoy themselves very much, and K is talking about having a pony party for her birthday next year (this year already having been sorted).  M bemoaned the fact that I'm allergic to so many animals (she would love a dog), but I don't think they're going to feel too deprived if they don't get to go horse riding on a regular basis. 

While K & M were out I cracked on with the clear out/tidy up (baby steps - we're still on the front room) and we did some more this afternoon.  The girls are both getting better at getting rid of things and now appreciate that it's really not possible for me to keep everything that they've ever made me forever!  I also read some more Charlie Bone.  Then we went out to the library, where M talked about her first two books for the summer reading challenge, a non-fiction book about rats and a collection of Dick King Smith short stories.  K has decided to read The Witches by Roald Dahl, both girls have listened to the story on cd, but haven't read the book.  Even though we do have a copy of the book, she decided to get it out of the library, even though I suggested she could ask if the books for the summer reading challenge could be one that they've got at home.  M went on ahead to the park, but came dashing back to find K to tell her that various friends were at the park, so we joined them and I got to chat and K & M played for a while, before coming home for tea.

Rain and rats.

Last night we had the most fantastic storm and today we've had plenty more rain along with rumbles of thunder for much of the day.  This has been something of a relief as it's also cooler, but it has also provided opportunity for going out and splashing in puddles!  On the way back from piano lessons, which are in the morning rather than afternoon over the summer, in the rain, M's very sharp eyes spotted something, so we stopped to have a look.

Tiny froglets!

It's not far from the canal, so they probably came from there.  There was at least five that we spotted and both girls had a closer look.  Then we went through the park, splashing in puddles on the way, to get a few bits and pieces from the shops and K & M went to the library before heading home.

This afternoon, I continued reading Charlie Bone, we started book five today.  Both girls wanted to do some work on their projects about rats.  Although we've got some books out of the library and K found some information on the internet, we hadn't really got any further than that.  So I spent some time with each of the individually.  M has started work on a lapbook, she's done the front cover and two sections, one with some facts abouts rats and one with some photos of different sorts of rats we found on the internet and printed off and M labelled them.  I encouraged her not to write in a random mixture of upper and lower case letters, so she's written in completely capital letters, but I was pleasantly surprised at how neat and small her writing was.  K has got an exercise book for her project, in which she has numbered the pages (she had actually already started one, and written a bit about why she wanted a pet, but she couldn't find it, so she's starting again).  We started off by talking about different ways of finding information (books, internet, people) and how you can read or talk to people about a subject generally and then pick things from it that you find interesting or you can look for specific information within a text or ask someone particular questions that you want to find out the answers to.  We also talked about different ways you can present the information, such as paragraphs of writing, bullet points, tables or diagrams.  Then we had a bit of a brainstorm of all the things she might want to include in her project, which she wrote down in the form of a mindmap.  Then she had a look at some of the websites that she'd found and that had been given in one of the library books we've got about rats and printed out some information, which I suggested she might like to read through with a highlighter pen in hand to mark some of the most interesting or useful parts, which she was very enthusiastic about.

We continued with our tidying of the front room, which is now looking much less of a mess than it did a couple of days ago.  There are a couple more areas left to do before we move on to the kitchen.  The playroom is a complete tip, as I suspect that much of the stuff that has been ejected from the front room has been dumped in there, but ho hum, we'll get there eventually.

Presents and books.

M has now signed up for the library summer reading challenge too.  She signed up while I was in an LLL meeting there this morning.  K, meanwhile, has been making a good start on it and she's read two Jeremy Strong books for the first two of her six books already.

K on the way back to the library this afternoon.

And one of M, just because.

We are currently in the middle (okay, near the beginning) of having, what I hope will become, a big tidy and clear out.  We've got so much stuff, in a house which is reasonably big, but with not so much storage space.  I find it very difficult to find the balance between keeping what the girls want to keep (pretty much everything) and doing what I'd like to do (have a massive cull).  This time K & M have a big incentive, as they really want to have rats, and I've pointed out in order to do so we need to make space to have somewhere to keep them.  I've also said that they need to show that they can keep the playroom (where they would live if we do get some) tidier, as it wouldn't be fair to get rats and not be able to get them out because of the mess.  I'm torn whether I actually want them to succeed to be honest, as I'm not 100% sure about getting some furry animals.  We'll see how we go anyway.

I forgot to mention in my previous post, that K & M spent most of Friday, from when they got up almost until we arrived in the Peak District in K's case, making birthday presents for Uncle S and Aunty P (whose birthday is only a few days before his).  K & M told me that it was up to Uncle S and Aunty P whether I'd be allowed to take photos, happily they said it was fine, so here they are.

M's joint present to Uncle S & Aunty P - all made of felt and sewn.

K's present for Aunty P...

...and Uncle S.

K's presents were also made out of felt, they're finger puppets.  Giraffe's are P's favourite animals (the left horn fell off unfortunately, and she accidentally sewed the ear in) and S likes dogs.