Celebrations in Portsmouth

We headed off to Portsmouth last weekend to celebrate my Uncle's 70th birthday (which was actually in February) and to meet up with some of the family for a good old natter (on the adults side) and a good old play (on the childrens side).


After a rather boring and long winded 5 hour car journey down we reached Portsmouth in time for a much needed buffet lunch and a (very) few hours of chill time catching up with the latest gos and letting the children unwind and play. Ben enjoyed playing air hockey and Katie took charge of teaching her Auntie and various cousins how to make woollie horses! I do believe these little woollen creatures will soon be taking over the world. People young and old seem to enjoy making them (or variations of them, my sister made a rather cute woollie fox) and Katie has had interest shown from as far afield as America! Perhaps she'll make me rich one day.
A growing collection of woollie horses.

Anyway. After much chatter, tea, wine, beer, cake etc., etc., we had to head off to the campsite as we'd decided to put our tents and other camping paraphernalla to good use. We were pretty surprised how we managed to fit:

2 x 3 man tents, 4 fold up chairs, 4 sleeping bags, 4 pillows, 4 blow up single beds, one hand pump, throw-away bbq, 2 x trays, 1 x cooling rack (for the bbq to stand on), cool box with yummy breakfast inside, 1 good sized box of essentials, camping burner and gas, 1 large bottle of water, 1 fleece, 4 thick jumpers (it was pretty cool that evening), 1 large and 2 small overnight drawstring bags and 4 towels

all in our boot! It was good fun and we were extremely lucky that the weather had turned warm and dry. Not too sure if we'd enjoy ourselves as much if it was pouring with rain, we'd need a bigger tent(s) for this or some kind of shelter for cooking.

Took some lovely family photos but I'll keep those for our eyes only! However, here's a good one of P blowing up one of the (very comfortable and extremely reasonably priced (T...co)) beds. Actually, the hand pump broke just as he started to blow up the first bed, but he's a handy man and he managed to fix in the end (lucky it wasn't raining, or dark!). I've just realised it looks like he's wearing a skirt!

On the Sunday we packed up early and headed for an hour on the beach, which was a stone's throw from the campsite, as it was, again, a gorgeous day. We all had a paddle and Katie had a swim - very brave, the water was pretty cold, and Ben and I hunted for pretty shells and pebbles with holes in. Then we headed back to my cousin's home for a delicious roast chicken lunch and another three hours of chatter (and play) before heading home. Luckily the journey home was much quicker, although a couple of accidents ahead of us, just as we reached the first main road, made us think we were in for another hot and tiresome journey.

Thanks guys and gals for a brilliant weekend. We've been shown a much quicker route down to your neck of the woods for next time, skipping the dreaded M25 and the A3!

All things quiet here. Well, I say that, but it's not that quiet, just not much worth blogging about really.

I have been busy sorting, typing and posting the new schedule for our local HE group for next term and using the list of outings and group meetings to sort out a brief schedule for our own work next term too.

One of our first group outings is to the local museum to view an exhibition on the Titanic and take part in a drama session which will highlight the different classes of people that travelled on the doomed liner. Ben and I went along this week to take a peek at the exhibition to see what's in store while Katie was away at a rather wet pony day at the riding school. Ben and I were really impressed with the displays and hands on activities. We especially liked the costume section where they displayed some of the beautiful outfits and dresses from the Titanic film which Ben had watched on TV a couple of weeks ago, so it was all fresh in his memory. As it all seems so interesting and thought provoking, we've decided to do a lapbook on the Titanic for our history project this term.

Alot more of my time has been spent pulling up never ending weeds, trimming hedges, digging up endless amounts of buried rubbish and shifting tonnes of rubble left over from fitting the bathroom, all to be shovelled into a skip. With every shovel load I kept thinking how awful it is to dump so much junk into the ground. When you think how many other people are filling skips with rubbish too, all to be dumped in the ground, that's a terrible thought. Now that the garden rubbish is sort of under control (although P mowed the grass today and created another three or four piles of cuttings) we will be able to start composting properly, but all the other rubbish was stuff that couldn't really be recycled. I did managed to shift a bundle of unbroken tiles on freecycle which pleased me, and the taker came from our village which made it alot easier!

While in the garden, Katie has been busy planting on some of the lovely flowers she and Ben sowed soon after we moved in. The packet of mixed seeds that they scattered next to the conservatory look lovely now, mainly poppies but there where some great French Marigolds itching to be moved to a better spot which she's now done. It was good to see them thriving as I remembered planting a large amount of these years ago only to find the snails and slugs had eaten the lot by the next morning! Katie is very keen on plants and trees and she brought home some house plants from her stay at my mum and dad's which she's now carefully potted into larger containers.

Ben did really well sawing this log. Later that evening we set up a small fire pit and had sausages and baked potatoes by candle light. Wish I'd taken a photo, it looked quite magical.

Other garden activity have been the flowering of our very small plot of potatoes, the first tub of carrots are looking fab and the three tomato plants which were planted straight into the ground are going berserk. No red ones yet, but there's plenty of green ones and loads of flowers too. Peppers are shooting up thanks to all the rain and there's a few little flowers on those as well. We have one pumpkin so far, but again, probably due to the rain there looks like plenty more are on the way. Our wonderful next door neighbour has planted two rows of lettuce and two more rows of carrots for us in our newly prepared veggie plot. Will keep you posted.

Can't wait to pull these ... not too sure when they'll be ready though, pretty new to all this.

During the short spell of sunshine (yes, we did have a few days of good weather) this little lady has been chasing us around the garden. She lives up the road and we don't know her name but we call her Kanda (after a house name), now shortened to Kan Kan. She's a breath of fresh air, very young and full of beans and she has us in fits of laughter with the pranks and mishaps she gets herself into. Two things she seems to enjoy doing are climbing up the poles of the trampoline which are covered with squashy plastic tubing (now also covered in holes) and hiding in undergrowth while you're busy gardening to periodically run out and jump on your back to terrify the life out of you. Luckily, being a youngster, the claws don't really come out to do any damage!

Mad puss, Kan Kan next to the pile of rubbish ready for shovelling into the skip.

Ben and I did some art using shaving foam and paint. The pictures have lasted really well (usually the shaving foam just rubs away) - very artistic.


I'll finish with the disaster of the week! Our car is blowing and juddering (due to something or other under the bonnet) and needs some serious work doing to it in the region of £500 + (depending on what the garage uncovers). Pretty p...d off as we spent a huge amount of money on the car just before we moved. I guess the poor old girl is ageing now (R reg), but there's no spare dosh in the kitty for a newer four wheeled friend just yet!

That's it - oh, take a peek at my ebay stuff (link on the side bar), you never know you might be interested. Thanks.

Butterfly Farm

Having received a postcard from Katie, who was away last week at my mum and dad's, from their local butterfly farm, Ben and I decided to go the huge 5 miles down the road to our local butterfly farm! Apart from the sea marshes and various walks, which the kids are very quickly tiring of, this is our one and only really local attraction (although there is a Maize Maze open along the same road at the moment which we'll try and get to in the not too distant future), and until little legs get a lot stronger, we'll still need the car to reach it! Luckily for us, we had the car last week. Unlucky for P, the reason for this was because he sprained his ankle on one of "those" walks Monday evening and spent most of the week with his foot propped up sporting a fetching a lovely granny style support sock around the offending hurting spot!

So, lovely day at the farm. Glorious weather as well, so took a picnic. Started off with the birds of prey flying display where a buzzard and an owl (Indian I think, but probably wrong) went swooping over heads so close you could feel the breeze. And a floor display by their eldest resident, a jet black vulture, with lots of character, rounded off this part of the day. After our picnic and a very short play in the adventure playground (Ben desperately missed Katie last week), we did a round of crazy golf before heading off to see the various animals which included these darling racoons. Must admit I'm not a lover of seeing caged animals and although the four racoons had a large and well kitted out enclosure, it broke my heart to see them reaching through the bars when a passer by decided to throw some cherry tomatoes in for them. It left them climbing the bars and scrabbling on the floor for more tit-bits - a very sorry site.

Butterflies were the hit of the day. It's a tropical butterfly enclosure and very beautifully done with finches, quails and doves competing with the most colourful (and transparent) butterflies I've ever seen. Ponds of fish and terrapins, iguanas, scorpians, terrantulas and cockroaches (these last ones were secured inside glass tanks, don't worry) added to the experience. The best for Ben were the live ants that travelled along long ropes carrying leaves to it's huge colony. What hard work for such little creatures.

Typical, I took a photo of a butterfly not listed in the guide!


This reminded me of our escapades last year when trying to successfuly rear cabbage whites - lovely sugar solution.

Enjoying the great outdoors

We have been continuing to do some maths work this week as I've found from past experience that maths is the hardest subject for us all to "get back into" after any kind of break.

I planned to focus on fractions for Ben and was lucky to find a fun and easy to follow book from the library from the "Maths is Fun" series. With plenty of hands on exercises like making and cutting up cardboard pizzas (or real ones, naturally), making a fractions wall (which he loved fiddling with, especially after I showed him how to convert the fractions to decimals to check his answers) and using all his marbles (glass ones, not his brain!) to play a sharing game, this book is going down very well with him. Today, Katie got involved too when learning about ratios. They each made refreshing drinks using a variety of soda water and juices using an egg cup to do the ratio quantities. After following instructions, they made their own versions. As temperatures reached the high 40s again in the conservatory, making cool drinks soon turned to Katie making cool smoothies using yoghurt, strawberries and vanilla ice cream. It was so good we've put some of the mixture into the ice cream molds for later.

Making the most of the sunshine.

Maths and working the kitchen - always a good combination for my two.

Ben celebrated his 8th birthday last weekend and he was pretty chuffed to get a small aquarium from Paul and me for the big day. He was just as chuffed to receive his first proper mechano set (help, it looks mighty boggling all those drawn instructions), a "Best Lock" Lego style racing car building set, a brilliant sized swimming bag and ever popular Lego Exo-Force figure. Any money that he received he very quickly spent on goodies for his aquarium which is now filled and waiting for new fishy arrivals hopefully by the end of next week.

Katie and I made a mini campsite for her woollie ponies and woollie riders. We made tents and rain covers using a roll of plastic and some old material for blinds which we picked up ages ago from our local "restore". Katie added bits and pieces from her dolls house - a bench, saucepans and plates of food while I built a mini barbeque from building bricks. Katie finally added a drinking pool for her horses which, later in the day, the new ducklings (there are 10 this time, mum is "Snowy") decided to use as their swimming pool. They also used our small pond in the nature garden which was particularly cute!


Campsite piccies.

They spent hours on this ... trying to light mini bonfires at the campsite!


Ben found the "old" gameboy - it's getting plenty of use, again.

Yesterday, Katie exhibited some of her model horses at a Model Horse Show and came away with a number of certificates and ribbons, including two first place. Now she's with her Gram and Gambo for a week. I know today she'll be spending her hard earned cash at Utterly Horses and I also know that during the week there will be a few riding lessons as well as trips to the beach if this glorious weather holds.

By the way the temperature in the conservatory today reached ...