Skip to main content

Summer highlights 2018

Um, hello?  Is this thing on?

 Testing... testing...

 Ah, good.  Can you all hear me now?  It's been so long that I've almost forgotten how this works.

 Right then, the boys are back at school and it's on with the blog!  Here are a few highlights of what we got up to while they weren't at school.

The great outdoors

The weekend before the holidays, we headed to the Peak District to climb Mam Tor.  This takes about ten minutes from the car park, so it's not as strenuous as it sounds.  There are beautiful views from both sides of the ridge.  Just make sure you don't overbalance into a gorse bush like I did (ouch!)


Our National Trust membership got put to use again, as we returned to our local favourites.  The boys explored the maze at Calke Abbey and played giant Connect 4 on the lawn at Sudbury Hall.




We also visited somewhere new: Bradgate Park, near Leicester.  We were most impressed - it's a beautiful spot, with deer roaming free, a photogenic ruined house, and plenty of rocks to climb on.



And in our own back yard, the vegetable garden has been loving all the sun - we've eaten more tomatoes than you want to know about - and we camped out for a night.  Gotta love a campfire!




Vehicles

Aeroplanes at the Aeropark by East Midlands Airport


Trams at Crich Tramway Museum


Cars at Cars in the Park in Lichfield


More cars at Donington Racetrack



New experiences

Toby played in his first piano recital, held in his piano teacher's back garden.  He was very confident and did a great job!



Theo suddenly decided he wanted to take the stabilizers off his bike.  I spent 10 minutes hanging on to the back of his saddle while he got his balance, and then, suddenly, he was off!


We took the boys to the cinema for the first time.  Derby QUAD, our local independent cinema, offers extremely good value family tickets, so we went there to see Hotel Transylvania 3.  Vampires, werewolves, and strange jelly monsters on a cruise ship - what more could you want in a movie?


Friends and family

It's been a very sociable summer!  We enjoyed a visit from my grandparents, who flew over from America for a week, quite unexpectedly.  Grandma (always a 1st-grade-teacher!) had the boys counting chocolates, and Grandpa taught Toby a poem (A flea and a fly in a flue...).  They all had a great time together.  Various other family members dropped in while they were here, too, so we had a houseful for two days.

We also caught up with friends from Bristol and Sandhurst, visited Graham's sister in Yorkshire, and spent time with parents and local friends too.



And finally...

Graham and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with a couple of nights away in Lyme Regis.  My parents looked after the boys, and Graham had arranged everything, with a beautiful B&B, an enormous bunch of flowers, and even some perfect weather to top it all off!  It was such a treat to eat out, go for a long coast walk, and simply wander around without a care in the world (for two days).





And when we got back, our cares in the world had made us a very nice anniversary cake!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

National Forest Way: The End!

The National Forest Way finishes at Beacon Hill, Leicestershire, with beautiful wide-ranging views in all directions. I'd been hoping for a sunny day, and this one certainly fit the bill. The frosty earth lay under a glorious canopy of shining blue sky. I parked at Swithland Wood, close to where we finished the previous walk. Finding the waymarker on the first gate was bittersweet - this was the last time I would be following these familiar circles.   Swithland Wood had been acquired by the Rotary Club in 1931, and later passed on to Bradgate Park Trust. The lumpy terrain was due to slate quarrying. I skirted a couple of fenced-off pits. As I left the wood, I passed a lake which I assumed was another flooded quarry, but with an odd little tower next to the water. I followed a road up a steady hill towards Woodhouse Eaves. Many of the houses were surrounded by walls of the local slate. Woodhouse Eaves was a prosperous-looking village with some nice old buildings. Crossing the wide ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Theme: Body

I didn't plan this to be a theme week, but Toby's new refrain has become, "I want to do something else " (how does he know it's the school holidays?)  Something else turned into my digging out my body-themed activities and roll of cheap wallpaper.  So here we go! First thing to do is draw a body, and fortunately I had a handy template.  Lie down, Toby! Just ignore the face.  And lack of neck.  I know it's not a great likeness, but he really is that tall.  How on earth did that happen? He knew pretty much all the body labels already, so I can't really claim it as a learning opportunity.  Still, revision is good, right?  And everyone enjoys colouring on a huge sheet of paper. Another sheet of wallpaper became a blank canvas for hand and foot painting.  Fortunately it's been great weather, as outside is always the best place to do this.  Even with a strategically placed tub of water for washing off in. I've gone gree...
1 comment
Read more

Monthly Munch: July

The weather this month has been beautiful, so we've been out enjoying it as much as we can - fruit picking, fete attending, gardening and walking.  Preschool is finished for the summer; I've planned weekly themes in an effort to stay sane during the holidays, so expect a few activity posts coming up. Toby He wanted me to make a box into a TV.  Here he is eating his lunch in it. - has made friends with the girls next door, and is getting much more confident socially - still insists on always wearing odd socks - has been loving the sandbox our neighbours gave us.  Apparently they nicknamed him "The Sandman" at preschool due to his love of digging - pounced on a writing practice book I bought him, and worked his way all the way through to P, doing really well at tracing all the letters. - won the hula hoop race at his first preschool sports day Athlete in action One of his great big Megabloks trucks Drawing a car with about a million wind...
Post a Comment
Read more