outdoor fun | TheBoyandMe

The Pumpkin Patch

September 30, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 12 Comments

We intended to spend a quiet day in the house, pottering around and baking, but the weather had different ideas. Unlike yesterday which was grey and dreary, the sky was azure and the temperature balmy for late September, and I really didn't want to waste the day inside. I'd also seen one or two photos recently of pumpkins being harvested, and so we headed down to Hendrewennol, our local pick-your-own farm.

Fortune was on our side, as today was the last day for pumpkin picking; the inclement weather meant that the chap in charge was harvesting them all today to prevent them going manky. We were handed a pair of secateurs (with instructions not to hurt ourselves!) and trotted off through the field exploring with our trusty trug.

Hendrewennol PYO

It was great fun examining all the different sized pumpkins, and finding the right coloured ones too. Orange are perfect for eating now, but green with a slight hint of orange will keep for several weeks until the end of October, especially if kept in a dark space and brought out a fortnight before Hallowe'en. We also picked a load of lovely 'munchkin' pumpkins, which I have great plans for!

Hendrewennol PYO

After we'd unloaded the trug into the car, we went off in search of acorns en route to the maize maze, which was empty of people but full to bursting of sweetcorn cobs. The Boy was fascinated by them and I did take the liberty of stripping a few down (on the plant) to show him that under the silks and leaves were wonderfully, juicy golden cobs.

Hendrewennol PYO

This was the second time we'd been to Hendrewennol this season, the first was in July to pick strawberries. Within a few weeks they will be closed until May as there will be no crops to harvest; that really brought home to me how seasonal fruit and vegetables should be. We spent a wonderful Autumn afternoon here, learning about the food we eat, finding 'loose parts', navigating the maize maze, and then exploring the fabulous sandpit in the play area.

Hendrewennol play area

I also really enjoyed getting to grips with manual on my camera a little bit more, it's starting to make a little more sense to me, and where better to work out the best settings than in this beautiful location?

Hendrewennol PYO

—

Linking this up to Country Kids and The Outdoor Play Party for outdoor fun, and The Sunday Prop Shop to show off my wonderful trug and how gorgeous it looks with miniature pumpkins in it being carried by The Boy.

country kids Outdoor play party

Days 195-201 of Project 365

July 20, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 24 Comments

195-201 of 365

195. Edible (On the way down to Burton's birthday party, we stopped off at Tyntesfield National Trust site to wander around. Unfortunately it was the hottest day of the year and so we did little more than sit under a tree and have a very edible picnic.)

196. Outside The Window (Such a boring photo to everyone else… this window has been broken for a month, and during this hot weather it has been a nightmare as it is perfectly positioned to catch and direct an amazing breeze through the downstairs rooms. We couldn't find our guarantee so bit the bullet and phoned up the double glazing company, expecting to need a new window: £15 for a new handle was all the damage! And outside the window is my son's play-haven.)

197. Bottle (We met up with friends of ours at our local nature reserve. Despite having lived in Cardiff for twenty years until university, she'd never actually been there and so we were happy to show them how to feed the swans, where the squirrels can be found, the best trees for climbing and the wonderful play park. My friend adored it, and both of the children loved it when I produced some clay from my bag ready for a very special craft activity! I was amazed to see The Boy climb all the way up this tree, completely unaided; he's got a lot of bottle nowadays when it comes to tree climbing!)

198. Inspirational (A fairly contrived photo of the prompt, but this boy of mine is inspirational to me to try my hardest to provide stimulating play opportunities and be the best mummy I can.)

199. Number (I know it's Summer and therefore we should be used to the fact that it should be hot, but I've never seen it this hot in The Boy's bedroom at night; a ridiculous number. No rain in weeks, and it's so sticky and muggy that we do actually need a thunderstorm.)

200. Building (Last day of term! When I finally arrived home from work, we settled down with coloured pencils, building his 'to-do' list for the Summer.)

201. Hot (As it was the town's annual carnival, we went down to see what was going on down the beach. The answer was not very much indeed, apart from a downhill derby, so we ended up 'plopping' pebbles into the sea to cool us down as we were hot and bothered. After we treated ourselves to pizza, chips, onion rings, doughnuts and candy floss, and needed winching back up the hill!)

—

Diving In! (Country Kids)

July 15, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 21 Comments

As parents one of our jobs is to prevent our children from being afraid of the things we were; to prevent irrational fears.

I always enjoy going to the swimming pool, and I do like swimming, but I have a real fear of water in my face and I can't contemplate swimming underwater or even with the correct head position for front crawl. The minute water splashes up in my face, the fear kicks in that I'm not going to be able to breathe. And just as with every irrational fear, there is something that started it off. For me it was swimming with my dad when I was around eight years old, he left me on the side of the fairly shallowish water while he went and tried out the diving board and plunge pool (he's not the most responsible of people), but unfortunately the pool's wave machine was turned on during that five minutes and I lost my footing and went under. I remember every second vividly and I was petrified that I wouldn't be able to get up again. Obviously I did, but it was one of the scariest moments of my life and accounts for my claustrophobia and fear of putting my face in the water.

I don't want to pass this onto The Boy, and I try really hard to bite my tongue and assess the situation first before rushing forward to him. However sometimes I am aware that a little slips out, and there might be an occasional "let me wipe your face".

So going to a birthday party of a friend whose water confidence is first rate filled me both with terror and hope for The Boy's own confidence.

Diving In 1

You can see the difference between the two boys: one has been swimming once since last September due to chronic glue ear in both ears (and even then that was probably only his tenth trip, at a generous guess), and the other boy has been swimming since he was a tiny baby. One has a few drops of water in his face and is rubbing the water out of his eyes, one has water pouring down his face. I'm not criticising my boy, it's just a stark contrast in the ability levels of both boys of the same age.

The Boy happily stayed in the pool for around thirty minutes before getting out to play on the bouncy castle, or with swing ball (playing a leftie is the easiest way of playing this!), and soon wanted to get changed back into his clothes.

Then after dinner, and once all the other party guests had left, both boys returned to play in the garden. Burton quickly stripped down to his pants and went into the pool, The Boy took a further ten minutes before he followed suit.

And this is what happened…

Diving In 2

And then, after another hour or so, we end up with this:

Diving In 3

And then the final shred of evidence that he is becoming the swimmer I'd like him to be?

Diving In 4

We'll be going swimming this week!

—

The Gallery: Sun

July 10, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 20 Comments

This past fortnight has shown us what Summer is all about; perfect blue skies with wispy white clouds, bird singing in the green-leafed trees, The Boy running bare foot over the scorching sands of the beaches we've been visiting.

Balmy evenings have meant later bedtimes, glasses of Pimm's (for us, not him), ball games, dancing in the sprinkler valiantly trying to rehydrate the parched lawn, and climbing frame fun.

Like this:

The Gallery Sun

—

Blue Skies Fun

July 9, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 13 Comments

In recent weeks we've started using a reward chart with The Boy, not for behaviour but to help promote independence and getting ready for school. So far the targets we've used have focused on getting dressed, eating meals within thirty minutes and tidying up, which are key things he'll need to do in the classroom and to make his lunchtime easier. If he gets all of the stickers on his chart then he achieves his reward which is something he chooses at the beginning of the week. By and large we've managed to get away with going to somewhere that we would normally go to anyway, bless him he's not cottoned onto this yet!

Last weekend he chose to go to Puxton's Park near Weston-Super-Mare, an all-weather adventure place he and I have been to a few times with Mummy Mishaps but never as a family. It was somewhere I wanted to go to over the Summer holidays anyway, so again was an easy choice. I was quite looking forward to the trip and showing it off to Mr. TBaM, I should have known that would be a sign of it being a bit rubbish really! It was their birthday weekend which meant cheap entry = bonus as it only cost us £12 to get in; it was their birthday weekend which meant cheap entry = downer because everyone else in the locality was there! Let's just say that I'm not a fan of men going topless or women wearing bikinis in anywhere other than the beach, a pool or their garden, and as a result the plethora of excess skin on display really spoilt the trip for me. Various play equipment was broken (cargo nets and ladders on the fort, and the bouncing pillow), the few animals out were fed up and hot with no shade, and combined with the fact that Puxton's seems to have virtually no shade in any form ensured I felt pretty dejected about our family fun time! Of course, The Boy had some fun with the zip wire and the sand play, but I suspect even he was a bit disappointed with the trip.

We left early and headed to our old faithful; Barry Island.

Country Kids Blue Skies Fun 1

Sunday promised to be an even hotter day than Saturday, and I'd initially planned for a quiet day at home. However, still dejected from the previous day, I decided that we'd head to Southerndown, one of my favourite beaches, via strawberry picking at a PYO fruit farm. On the National Trust list of 50 Things To Do Before You're 11 &¾ is 'eat an apple straight from a tree' and while picking strawberries is not exactly the same thing, I figure it's more about actually eating fruit straight from the plant and realising it doesn't come in plastic packaging from a shelf in the supermarket. Therefore I'm ticking that one off!

Following our adventures in the strawberry field (where The Boy really needs to learn that he shouldn't switch sides during fruit picking as daddy is rubbish!) we headed down to Southerndown, along with half of south Wales. I suspect the other half were at Barry Island! Southerndown is a stunning beach with rockpools and a huge swathe of sand that can (and did) accommodate thousands at low tide, but is completely covered at high tide. Luckily we arrived just on the right side of low tide and spent a really pleasurable few hours in a magnificent location where all that can be heard is families and friends having fun.

Country Kids Blue Skies Fun 2

—

Have A Wild Time This Summer With The National Trust (Summer Activities)

July 3, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 4 Comments

The Summer holidays are one of the best times of the year for getting the children up off the sofa, jumping into the great outdoors and having heaps of fun discovering new places.

To keep the children entertained throughout, the National Trust is encouraging children to complete its '50 things to do before you're 11 & ¾' wild-time challenge and see if they can try and tick off more than 25 things on the list during the six weeks of summer (Monday 22 July – Sunday 1 September).

[Read more…]

Days 132-138 of Project 365

May 18, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 24 Comments

132-138 of 265

132. Stick it! (After such a beautifully sunny day on Saturday, Sunday saw the doldrums return to the skies over south Wales. The Boy managed a few hours garden play in the morning, then in the afternoon we did some Post-it note art.)

133. End of the day! (A very trying day today. As my car was still poorly with a mahoosive oil leak, I wasn't able to drive to the other side of Cardiff as I wanted to, so we went with my mum. It was a hot and bothersome day, and ultimately boring for The Boy. Mid-afternoon I had a row with the garage who hadn't even started my car, and my dad had to go and help them find the problem. Daddy's girl? Me? Never! The afternoon ended up with a ridiculously elongated dinner time (of well over an hour) and a late bedtime, and a row! Essentially this was all because he was overtired and bored, and it wasn't the best day in my parenting 'career'.)

134. Wet (The garage phoned me at 4.20 to tell me my car was ready and they shut at 5pm. It takes 30 minutes to walk across town to there, it was pouring with rain and The Boy had only just woken up from a nap. Time to test the excellence of the Kiddy raincover. He stayed dry, my Regatta raincoat and jeans were saturated. I made it in time and recovered my car, minus £230 in my bank account.)

135. Sly Fox! (This is a game he's learnt in nursery, a little like Grandma's footsteps or What's The Time, Mr. Wolf.)

136. Sculpture! (I finish work at around 4pm on Thursdays so we've developed a habit of nipping down the beach with my mum for an ice-cream. Today we did a treasure hunt as well for an activity I'm blogging on the 21st May for the '100 Days of Play' activity link-up I'm taking part in.)

137. Rebel! (Just out of shot is a sign saying 'No cycling'. Well I'm sorry but he's 3 and not about to mow someone down so I ignored it. We love this park in Cardiff and took my mum with us, who hasn't been in years, possibly decades. A few drops of rain fell and the park emptied, which I found very sad. We're hardcore and stayed on to see the black clouds off.)

138. Ding Dong ("Mummy, why don't bluebells ding?" The Boy's paternal grandparents came down for a visit today to take us out for lunch, so we took them to Dyffryn Gardens to walk off the pizza and garlic bread after. They were as enchanted as we are with it, and The Boy got to examine some bluebells up close.)

—

The Bottom Of My Garden

May 14, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 7 Comments

This is the bottom of my garden…

20130505_184844

…and I am deeply unhappy with it.

In theory it's a great area; a decent sized patio, a fabulous triangular pergola (I'm still in awe of my husband for working out how to build this, and then doing so), a beautiful cherry blossom tree, sheltered from the wind which blows up the 'tunnel' created by living in a long street of parallel houses. All of these things should mean it's a perfect area and it's certainly what I had in mind when I designed it.

However, as you can see it's a dumping ground. The Boy is far too big to play with those toys and we have nowhere else to put them. And because I'd like to grant him the joy of a sibling at some point, I refuse to get rid of them. Therefore they stay cluttering up the bottom patio and being no good to anyone. Furthermore, it doesn't get any sun and as a result it's not the idyllic space I'd hoped for. And that cherry tree has pushed up the paving slabs around it.

So you can see that it's just a space which is. And it's a waste.

I am planning on changing the garden around (yet again) in light of the fact that The Boy now has no climbing equipment in it. Well he does, but I'm not entirely sure that climbing up the side of the slide is the correct use for it. Nor is that what a swing is for. And so I've been investigating climbing frames which might be suitable for him and not take up too much space in the garden, although the only problem is that they unfortunately do take up a lot of space because an allowance has to be given for 'fall space'.

explorer 2

If only you knew how many times I've stood in the garden trying to work out how to fit it all in without changing too much of the structure.

Mr. TBaM and I have come to the conclusion that the best place would be along the side of the garden (as he still needs lawn space to run around and play ball games in), which means that we need to relocate his Little Tikes house from the beautifully laid, year old patio in the same spot. It's going to go down to the bottom of the garden on half of the patio above, the other half of the patio has already been taken up to provide the tree with more space for its roots, and to relocate the compost bin.

I'm also looking to set up two more things down in newly reclaimed area of garden; a mud pie kitchen and a willow den (somehow incorporating the trunk of the cherry tree).

garden

Mr. TBaM has no idea that I want to build a willow den at the bottom of the garden, but I think it's a fun thing to have and I can just imagine The Boy sitting and reading his books in it in the future.

And did I mention that he's having a party in the garden for his fourth birthday in a month. And of course I want it finished by then.

Wouldn't you?

Days 118-124 of Project 365

May 4, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 34 Comments

118-124 of 365

118. Zoom! (We went back to Hotham Park next to Butlin's today, this time taking Laura and her family from Tired Mummy of Two. The Boy had a great time playing with Alison and Elizabeth, especially showing Alison exactly how much fun a zipwire is!)

119. Every Drop Counts (We called into The Vyne, a National Trust venue, on the way home from Butlin's today. More about that in my Country Kids post!)

120. Builders' Yard (I set up another small-world play scene for The Boy today in his water table which he spent quite some time playing with, before we headed off to gymnastics and shopping.)

121. Green Fingers (Wednesday today = first day at work of the week. However, this is not a sleeping photo which is a bonus. The Boy was determined to water the plants in the garden, something tells me this could take some time!)

122. Turning Point (After a good day in work, where I was more than happy to be on playground duty due to the glorious weather – so much so I took my classes out on the playground to do ICT that afternoon – mum and I took The Boy down the pier for an ice-cream and cycle ride. The sun casts such amazing shadows at this time of year. The Boy was having an amazing time racing up and down the pier, until he fell off and ended up with more than fifteen splinters in his right hand!)

123. New Glasses (After picking The Boy up at lunchtime from nursery, we nipped over to a small park in Cardiff Bay which I found a month or two back. It's next to the busy area of the Bay, but because it's behind a high wall and in a residential street, it's usually empty and so we get a chance to play in peace and quiet. I love this snap today for the comedic value.)

124. #22 Explore Inside A Tree! (We went to Tredegar House in Newport for the first time today. I vaguely remember going there once as a child with my parents and sister, but didn't think there would be much for children aside from a play park. It transpires that the National Trust had done a huge amount of work to make it interactive for children and they were also having a launch weekend for the '50 Things To Do Before You're 11&¾' campaign. We actually spent so much time having fun exploring the house – more on that later – that we almost missed the opportunity to cross off about eight of the fifty things. In the end we saw them and got ideas of how to fulfill them, but we didn't actually do any apart from #22 with the help of daddy.)

—

Exploring The Hidden Realm (Country Kids)

May 4, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 48 Comments

On the way home from our weekend break in Butlin's on Monday, we decided to break up the journey with a visit to a National Trust venue. We picked The Vyne in Basingstoke as it would be a perfectly timed mid-way and mid-day break, and I'd also recently seen MummyMummyMum's post about the new Tolkein-inspired play area; The Hidden Realm.

The Hidden Realm is a new play area, only opened since the beginning of April, and inspired by the well-loved book The Hobbit. Tolkein is thought to have based his tales on the ancient, gold ring on display on site, and so it was an obvious theme for a play area to occupy the once abandoned area of walled garden. Over the past six months, it has been transformed into a unique fantasy landscape for children with elements of jungle, mountain and stream, based on the Middle-Earth landscapes.

When we arrived there were only a couple of other children playing and so we pretty much had free run of the place, the perks of weekday visits! It amazes me how much has been fitted into such a small space, bridges, tunnels (with inter-connecting communication pipes), slides, stepping stones, fireman's pole (very Middle-Earth), and the best bit (for me anyway) was a dammed stream with a standpipe nearby to allow the children to play with the water.

The Hidden Realm at The Vyne, Hampshire

I really hope that the National Trust start building some more of these themed play areas in their venues, such great fun and a joy for both adults and children to enjoy.

—

country kids