A day out with Thomas

Today the kids and I (and another mum friend) went to see Thomas and his other steam engine friends at Didcot Railway Centre.The kids all had lots of fun watching the troublesome trucks. I was most impressed with the train turntable, on which 2 men can turn a massive steam engine and truck full of coal. Now that must have some excellent engineering to it! Lunch on the train (as it went backwards and forwards on its 4 min trip between stations) was also quite relaxing.

6th wedding anniversary

Andrew and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary with two traditional gifts.

Iron: see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li4AvjG6Q98 (and yes, that is exactly how our garden sounds)

Sugar: High tea at The Old Parsonage (although the experience with kids wasn't quite as uber-posh as most meals here). Macaroons with glittery bits on them are yummy.

Two recent milestones for the kids are that William can ride a peddle bike all by himself (including starting off!) and that Sophie no longer calls William "Wuh Wuh" but now "Wim mem". Progress!

William's school sports day

I watched William and his class at their school sports day today. It was made that much more exciting by the (real) Olympic torch and gold medal Olympian (Lily was the cox for the LTAMix4+ boat which won gold in the Paralympics). William got to hold her gold medal!It was really heavy, he said.

The first time we've grown spuds!

The kids had such fun this evening digging through the dirt to unearth our home-grown potatoes. They have such lovely white skins! I'm thinking of turning them into a Summer potato salad, seeing as Summer is here this week.

Hidcot Manor Garden

Clare and Jen invited us all to Hidcot Manor Gardens and we had a LOVELY day.  Hidcot was designed by Major Lawrence Johnston, and is a great English garden as he combined the more formal French style with the English ‘cottage’ garden style.

Although the weather was threatening we didn’t get any rain (which was fortunate as it was St Swithian’s day (a British weather lore proverb says that if it rains on Saint Swithun's day, 15 July, it will rain for 40 days).

 Sophie needed some reminding about some of the rules when visiting gardens: ie don’t pick anything!

There was a tennis court there for anyone to use – Andrew and I lost 2 sets to Clare and Jen, even though the umpire and ball girl were meant to be on our side.

Although some people tried to pretend that they didn’t enjoy themselves, we all had a really nice day out, away from Oxford, with friends we don’t see often enough.

June 2012

William wrote this postcard to his best friend James:
I flew a kite and nearly fell over! Dear James Love William

 Sophie at the local park.

Rhossili Bay, Gower, South Wales. This first picture is William trying to wink.


 Worm's Head in the background.

First camping trip for Summer 2012

We've just returned from a lovely weekend camping in the sunshine. We were near Brill, a small country town 30 mins from Oxford. Highlights include a great walk through fields of buttercups to a pub lunch, a small, intimate feeling festival, we all have a little sunburn, and William stayed up until 11pm listening to a country folk band. Here is the view from next to our tent.

William off for a walk among the field of buttercups.

Sophie enjoying a bath with a plastic pint glass, in a bucket.