The Gallery: My Awesome Photo

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This week's theme is quite simple:

My awesome photo

I'm late to The Gallery this week because I've been cogitating on the theme. I've got lots of photos that I really love and so picking one is really hard. However, as I opened up a browser this morning, one image caught me eye:

Visitors to my blog will recognise this as my header image, The Boy sat on a shingle beach playing with some pebbles. It was taken by me last year on holiday in Dorset and is one of my favourite pictures of him. I love the way that he stands out against the neutral tones of the shingle and the big pile of stones in front of him. I want to stroke his hair in the photo and I love the way that he is knelt down in the way that toddlers do, with his little Doodles: his first pair of shoes. And yes, I loved those dungarees as well!

It was our first holiday with The Boy, we had gone to Dorset with my parents for a week's holiday staying in a cottage on the coastline of Lyme Bay. It was a fab holiday and we had a great time in one of my favourite places in the world. The beach was a two hundred yard walk along the coast and down through the sand-dunes amongst sea cabbages and abandoned bonfires.

What you can't see in that photo though is that he's sat at the start of the 26 mile Chesil Beach, and far away in the background is Portland Bill with the most amazing storm brewing. Here's the photo in all its glory:

What do you think?

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One Last Fling With Summer

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Just as soon as I'd packed away The Boy's shorts and sunsuit, the sun comes out with temperatures in the mid twenties, azure blue skies and Mother Nature beckoning us outside for one last frolic.

So we did, we've spent much of the weekend outdoors. Yesterday we went to a beautiful Victorian park in Cardiff, then went and played on our town's beach. The Boy's never been on a pebbly beach before, I had been waiting until he was more stable on his feet and then I kept forgetting to take him down. Which is ridiculous because it's our beach! He and Mr. TheBoyandMe had a good old play while I ordered the take-out pizza and chips, then we went and sat on the pier and scoffed a veritable feast!

Today we took advantage of the fabulous weather and went 'down the Island'. The tide was just going out as we arrived so we set up on the slightly damp sand and set to building a moat and castle. Several hours later, picnic consumed and moats built we tottered home for showers and sleep.

We've just finished the weekend up with a lovely light meal of asparagus risotto and a glass of white zinfandel. Bye-bye Summer, I'll see you again in March!

The Gallery: Travel

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So the lovely Tara has set us the following challenge this week:

This week it's time to access your happy memories once again about places you've been, things you've seen, experiences you've had.

This week's theme is: Travel.

Which quite frankly after the emotional outpouring about my grandparents last week is a relief.

Now the obvious one for me, is our road-trip around America from six years ago, but I did that one for the Unofficial Gallery several weeks ago. Therefore I'm going to choose a few photos from our first trip away with The Boy.

He was born on Friday 12th June 2009 three hours before my entire family attended my great-aunt's funeral in Dorset, hence none of them being able to visit immediately. I was devastated that I couldn't go to Aunty Nell's funeral because I was so very fond of her, and due to not being allowed to travel in the last month or so I hadn't seen her before she died either. However, contractions had other plans for me that day!

In the September my mum arranged for us all to spend the weekend back down where she used to live and to scatter her ashes. This is not the type of thing my family normally does; someone dies then that's it, they get cremated and their ashes scattered in the garden of rememberance. I firmly believe that my mum arranged this for me. In the end, because none of the others knew what to do (through lack of experience) I ended up taking the bag and scattering Aunty Nell's ashes into the bay at West Bay, where she used to go to mark her school books. I stood there by myself, watching her ashes swishing in the sea, hanging around and not wanting to leave the party. There was my moment of parting, there was the goodbye that I had missed.

When I turned around, the others had joined me from a distance.

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Oh I do Like to be Beside the Seaside…

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This was the song that we had The Boy singing this morning en route to the beach for a few hours. Between the pair of us we managed to concoct the vast majority of the song to chant as we drove through the plushy, thatched villages of the deepest and richest parts of the county.

Following our revelation yesterday morning that actually if we got up and did things in the morning rather than laying-in and dossing around the house until 2pm, we managed to set off at 10.30 with a picnic, bucket and spade in hand. By 11.15 we were parked three rows back from the beach, and set up on the golden sands.

The best thing about Southerndown beach is that it has a vast expanse of sand but also lots of rock pools towards the top end. This was fantastic because it meant that we only had to trot down to the sea twice; both times were for splashing in the sea, not collecting water. Also meant that the sun heated up the little rockpool by us, and we could rinse The Boy off when we eventually packed up to come home.

We had such fun there; it's an absolutely beautiful beach which was used as the location for 'Bad Wolf Bay' in Dr. Who. Unfortunately I didn't see the Tardis or Mr. Tennant there, not sure I'd have liked to see his scrawny legs anyway.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't waste the morning!

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