Days 125-131 of Project 365

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125-131 of 365

125. Silhouette (Earlier in the day Mr. TBaM and I had sold at a car boot sale, and we followed that up with a trip across the barrage to the Bay for some very special celebrations. Today was the day that Cardiff celebrated its football club returning to the premiership, something it hasn't experienced for fifty years. There was a huge event down in Cardiff Bay with tens of thousands of supporters and proud Cardiffians alike. Secretly we were only after catching a glimpse of Alex from CBeebies who made The Boy very happy with a wave and a thumbs up! We then walked back across the barrage to watch the amazing fireworks.)

126. Crash! (Monday was a stunningly beautiful day. The buzz of lawnmowers, sizzle of barbeques, shrieks of laughter from children splashing in their paddling pools and the buzz of the honey bees filled the air. We entertained friends that we hadn't seen in four years; I was four months pregnant with The Boy when we last saw them. I was going to show a photo of The Boy watering the garden wearing an incredibly cute straw hat, however this one topped everything. He settled down to eat his cheese on toast, asked daddy for a cuddle and within thirty seconds he was asleep!)

127. Hide and Seek (The day was milder than it had been over the weekend but still sunny, especially late afternoon. We spent the morning trying to find some Summer shoes for The Boy, which is the reason it's rained on and off ever since! When Mr. TBaM got home from work, he and The Boy had a mad hour in the garden playing hide and seek.)

128. Choo choo! (A shorter than usual INSET today meant that I was able to get home and play with The Boy more than I usually can on a Wednesday. I made this super train track, with plenty of space for the station master to sit and command the rails.)

129. Zoom! (I set up a free painting session for The Boy to get to grips with after breakfast but he couldn't wait to get to grips with it! Car painting is the easiest painting around, minimum effort and maximum fun!)

130. Quack! (We got home at lunchtime after finishing school and nursery, only to find a pair of ducks on the drive. They've been around the neighbourhood for about a week or so, but are starting to wander into gardens now. I phoned the local nature reserve and was told that they're 'wild' ducks and unless hurt (in which case phone the RSPB) then leave them alone. Apparently in the mating season they often take themselves off in pairs for peace and quiet. We probably shouldn't have fed them, but I The Boy was worried they may be hungry.)

131. Pink Snow (We nipped into Cardiff for a review of Wetherspoon's new menu and parked near the Civic Centre, which has a beautiful park full of cherry trees. All were in full blossom and as The Boy ran through the park, the strong Spring wind showered him in pink blossom confetti.)

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Days 118-124 of Project 365

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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.)

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Days 13-19 of Project 365

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13-19 of 365

13: 'Boardwalk' (We went to the local country parks to feed the ducks the copious amount of bread we ashamedly had not eaten over the past few days. It was a beautifully sunny day, we saw the squirrels and had fun jumping in muddy puddles.)

14: 'Akimbo' (Every night before I go to bed I check on The Boy and he's normally sleeping soundly. Occasionally he's untucked. This is the first time he's been in this position.)

15: 'On the farm' (Tuesdays are a busy day for us as I invariably try and fit loads in before having to return to work the next day. This Tuesday we made cakes, did craft, played jigsaws and board games, played with the Playmobil farm, and spent time playing with his cousins.)

16: 'Picnic' (I was exhausted today after a tiring day in work teaching year six, and The Boy was

n't much happier either. Time for a picnic tea on the sofa watching the television. I popped in to check on him – he was with daddy – and found him in this state. Never mind, he was happy!)

17: 'Blanket Tunnel' (He made a tunnel by placing a blanket over my legs which were resting on a chair. Then he crawled through the tunnel, stopped there for ten minutes and played on the iPad. Can't see how he was that comfortable – neither were my legs – but whatever makes him happy!)

18: 'Catch!' (Finally our longed-for snow arrived and we spent over three hours playing in the snow throughout the day. Mr. TBaM had to work unfortunately but my boss closed the school for health and safety reasons, which meant we could have great fun outside. Here he's throwing a snowball at me which landed square in the lens of my dSLR!) This is my photographic favourite of the week.

19: 'Family Fight!' (My 67 year old mother and 37 year old husband had a snowball fight in her back garden while The Boy looked on. This really made me laugh to see three generations having such fun. I put the camera away and joined in pretty quickly.) This is my personal favourite photo of the week

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The Gallery: Sunshine

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With the sunshine bursting all over the nation, Tara has decreed the theme this week to be just that:

Sunshine!

Watch it rain when she opens the linky!

However, for the moment I am going to use an image that I took on the weekend when we went to London. We've never taken The Boy there before and haven't been ourselves for about eight years, so this was a big thing for us. Originally invited to a press event in the O2, we decided to turn it into a family day out and stayed overnight in a hotel in Slough. We got up early on the Saturday morning (we even had to wake our son, an unheard of event) and caught the train into 'the big smoke'. He adored it and found the underground fascinating.

After we'd finished in the O2, he asked if we were going to London again? I suppose the size of a place is quite a difficult thing for a two year old to understand and so we explained that we were in London. That's when he declared that London was where the London Eye was and Justin had been on that. We'd already discussed the possibility of taking him on it, but weren't sure if he'd 'get it'. After that little proclamation from him, we trekked off to the embankment and found ourselves queueing for an hour in the blazing early afternoon sunshine.

We queued for nearly an hour and he didn't complain once, why would you when you have this to enjoy?

Oh, and yes, he adored the whole experience. My 366 photo from Saturday shows that.

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Tuesday 1st May 2012 – 'Contentment' (122/366)

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I had it all sorted for today's 366. When the rain halted briefly at 11.30 this morning, I sent The Boy out onto the patio to splash around in the giant puddle that had accumulated. I took some fabulous shots on my dSLR of the water droplets flying up everywhere and I knew that my 366 would be one of those.

Then it turned out that the rain didn't start up again, and by 2pm the sun was blazing down turning all the water droplets on the plants into diamonds and helping the giant puddle to evaporate. By the time Mr. TBaM came in, it was glorious and the first bit of sunshine we'd had in well over a week and a half. I sent the boys outside to play while I prepared tea, watched them having fun and smiled to myself. I'd waited for this time of year to reappear for so many months and even if it only here for today, we were going to enjoy it. We ate our tea on the patio: me on the backstep, The Boy at his picnic table and Mr. TBaM sitting on the only dry grown-up seat. Both of them were splashing their welly-booted feet in the now rapidly-drying giant puddle.

If it rains again tomorrow and for the rest of the week, I can cope because we've had a glimpse of Summer.

Listography: Top 5 Places I'd Like To Visit

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The marvel and wit that is KateTakes5 has decreed that this week's Listography is places we'd like to visit.

I'm quite a homebird and don't like to spend weeks and weeks away from the little haven that is my three-bedroom, semi-detached suburban cocoon. Before The Boy we would have two breaks throughout the year, all just a long weekend normally in an European city. Some we revisited, like Prague and Barcelona, because when I find somewhere I like, I like to go back and explore more. However, I've always maintained that I will not take an infant abroad because I personally could not stand the stress it puts on them, you and every other person in the vicinity. That's me trying to have an easy life. It does however mean that I have deprived myself of feeling the sun on my skin for the forseeable future.

There are five places that I'd like to visit though before I'm too old and wrinkly to appreciate them:

1) The Greek Islands

We very nearly made it there. In the August before I fell pregnant with The Boy we started planning our October half-term holiday. I really wanted to go to the Greek Islands but was put off by the whole loo-paper in bin debacle. I decided that we'd probably do it through a cruise instead which would mean a) we'd see more of the islands, and b) I could flush my bog-paper! Finances meant that we'd have to put that off 'til the following year so we looked at Menorca instead. And then I fell pregnant so we stayed home and bought a car-seat and nappies instead!

2) The Galapagos Islands

I want to see the turtles lumbering around in their natural and protected environment. I want to see what made Charles Darwin think 'hang on a minute…' and I wouldn't mind enjoying the beaches either!

3) Alaska

Blame Northern Exposure!

4) Petra

I have inherited my dad's fascination with the place and it has nothing to do with Indiana Jones. I find the whole place completely astounding, a true Wonder of the World. To walk through that passage and see temples carved out of stone must be breathtaking.

5) The River Nile

This is somewhere that I've wanted to go for years and years! This one is completely down to Agatha Christie and Peter Ustinov, the glamour of the cruise-boats is amazing. So one day we will cruise 'up' the Nile from South to North (how bizarre?) enjoying the temples of Abu Simble and, of course, the Pyramids at Giza.

One day.

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Now pop over and read the other Top Fives using this little widgety thing:

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Is it here to stay?

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Shhh! I might scare it off by saying this but, do you think summer might be on its way?

This morning, after dropping the car off for a quick service (pah!), we ventured out in the pushchair for a jaunt up town. Well, him in the pushchair, me 'jaunting'. The sky was azure blue and the sun was beating it down. Very quickly I regretted wearing black, but the rather scrummy frappucino from Starbucks soon made up for it (did you know you can have skimmed milk frappucinos now? Significantly less calories, surely? Means I can have a big one!). We went to the Under Fives playgroup for the first time. They put an apostrophe in the 'Fives' which really annoyed me but I refrained from rubbing it out. Just! The Boy had a fabulous time and I wondered why I had never been there before.

The day went a bit haywire from there on in, mainly because I had mild hysteria that the 'quick service' turned into a 'you need new brakes and a new pollen filter' situation. At the start of the month you can do without double + the amount that you first expected going out the bank.

Yesterday was a much better day. Yesterday saw us trotting off to Barry Island with Little Miss Cheeky and Oldest-Friend for fun in the sun. She brought along her older children, both boys; Curly-Mop and Football-Mad, who commandeered a decent section of the huge beach as their football pitch. Little Miss Cheeky and The Boy had great fun digging for water and building sandcastle, while Oldest-Friend and I had a good old chin-wag and avoided footballs and flying sand.

We were very comfortably ensconced in our cocoon of oblivion; stunning canvas windbreaker from EcoFriendlyBags and parasol, which was bought from Lyme Regis beach years ago. I must be a snob here and say how nice it was, not only to be shielded from the wind, but also to be shielded from some of the sights on the beach! Put it away woman, cover yourself up mister (who looked 11 months pregnant); I don't want to see it!

Anyone fancy winning one of those windbreakers from EcoFriendlyBags? You can over here.

Listography: Simple Pleasures

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This is a simple Listography this week, Kate wants us to talk about our Simple Pleasures. It's a topic that's close to my heart, enjoying the little things that make the day tick by in an enjoyable manner.

  1. Watching The Boy sleep: I chose this one for The Gallery a while back, and it still is right up in my top five. I described it at the time as "Having a cwtch with my son and staring at his beautiful baby face."
  2. Chocolate: You know that urge don't you? I feel fraught and I need a bar of Dairy Milk now. The first chunk slowly melting on your tongue… bliss!
  3. Sitting in the garden: and feeling the grass between my toes, hearing the birds in the trees, children squealing with delight and the washing flapping on the line.
  4. A freshly made bed: specifically with line-dried sheets that smell of the outdoors. Slipping in between those sheets and feeling the cool side of the pillow.
  5. Sunshine: Not excessive heat to go with it because I don't do hot, but the gentle caress of the sun's rays on your skin and that glowing feeling.

Short and sweet. After all "Simple things for simple minds while greater fools look on".

A 'Good' Friday

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What better way to start the day than with a full English breakfast?

After a long night with one male snoring on one side of me and the other shouting semi-conscious demands of "up-py" (you work out which one was who), I was quite relieved to 'feel' the dawn break; sunlight peeking through the curtains, birds singing in the trees, silverware being delicately placed on the dining table next door to our bedroom. If the temperature last night is indicative of what the Summer will bring, I am moving to Alaska.

I've raced ahead, let me rewind. Yesterday we 'popped' up to Reading to see a couple of old friends; a few ex-colleagues of mine. We stayed with one of them in Thatcham last night having had a really pleasant evening consisting of a meal out at a local carvery (scrummy veggies galore), followed by red wine, nibbles and chat later on. The Boy decided that mummy and daddy didn't need sleep between 1.30 and 3.00am, which was marvellous because daddy had kepy mummy awake with his snoring between midnight and 1.30am. At 3.30 I fell into a state of comatosed delirium and woke at 7.25.

Once breakfast was troughed, the travelcot packed and the boot re-assembled we pegged it off to meet up with the other ex-work friend that I keep in touch with, at Beale Park. Beale Park is a fabulous wildlife park and gardens just outside Reading. It's great for children of all ages, but I think best for those under the age of 10 years. There's a selection of animals in really well thought out enclosures; nothing zoo-like, think wallabies, meerkats, prairie dogs, lemurs, storks, macaws, kookaburras, owls, etc. There's a dedicated safe area for picnic-ing in with a zip-wire for the older children once they get bored.

One of the best things about Beale Park is the train that runs around the gardens, the other is the Little Tikes Village, and the final one is the paddling pool found in the play area! This was the bit I was really looking forward to, testing out the all-in-one SPF50+ swimming costume that I'd recently bought for The Boy, and seeing him splashing around in the sunshine and having a good time.

People say that you shouldn't look back, and this is true. After we'd said our goodbyes we drove back past our old house (our first house) and the school where I first taught. On previous occasions I've felt a pang of, not remorse or regret, maybe sentimental what might have been. Not this time. I felt sorry that the residents of our old house don't care more for it, and I had a little wave of memories from my promising career, but generally I felt content. Happy knowing that moving back home seven years ago was the right decision; that the life that we have now is good and satisfying. I've kept in contact with the colleagues that matter and they have proven to be real friends, people who are genuine and caring. Everything happens for a reason, and our reason is The Boy.

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