One word? When seven would do…

Always make me smile 😉

It was Pulborough Brooks day today. We’ve not made the last two – in December it was the day after NicCamps and our mad day trip to France so we’d not got home til 2am the day before and if I recall correctly we weren’t actually even out of bed when we should have been meeting. In January the kids were both rough and it was pouring with rain and I had a rare moment of not being neglectful and unmaternal and pretended to be a grown up and keep them home in the warm and dry. The kids should have been there for Wildlife Explorers on Saturday but that was cancelled and we’ve not been out and about enough lately so I was of a Rain Or Shine mentality about it today and adamant we were going come what may.

Tasha sent me a text to say they weren’t up for it after all and due to both children wanting second helpings of breakfast and me getting caught up on the lastest downloaded DS game (picpic,it’s ace!) we were late to leave. For once we were suitably attired with raincoats and wellies. My car, which I’ve thought for a while has been a bit shakey about starting, with the tickover not sounding quite fast or throaty enough refused to start. We’ve had the Sharan for 7 years and aside from a battery that died it has never let me down so it was a bit of a shock. I have had my share of bangers over the years prior to owning decent cars though and managed to get it started.

Once we got there I paid for a couple of events later this year (one in May, one in August) that we’d picked out of the events leaflet and made a booking for but needed to confirm and pay. The children had a wander round the shop and spent some time doing a ‘spot the animals’ activity which Davies told me he’d read all of to Scarlett :). Then we headed off round the reserve. Although it was wet, very wet, it wasn’t cold and there was no wind so it wasn’t unpleasant to be out walking in and actually quite satisfying to be making good use of my lovely wellies again and splashing in puddles with confidence.

We had a look at the pond and spotted a few birds and several rabbits. We bumped into Katy who organises it on the way round – she was just leaving having already gotten soaked and both her children had fallen over in the mud. She is 8 months pregnant and blooming so we had a brief chat and then they headed for home and we carried on walking.

Scarlett wanted to walk in the stream, which has been fine during the summer but it was quite fast and full so I vetoed that idea. We talked to the cows for a while and then had a long conversation about what animals, crops and machinery we’d have if we ever lived on a farm. We decided on cows, pigs, ponies, sheep, a dog, several cats (I think Tarly settled on 14), hens, ducks, geese for livestock. Clearly if we had a farm it would be very comprehensive and diverse ;).

It was a shame the weather had kept others away but actually very nice to be walking along just the three of us chatting and finding the best puddles to take photos of. And, as predicted, it did us all good to get some fresh air and exercise.

On the way home having driven through a big puddle my car died again though. It was heading up a hill, which it tends to labour with anyway (it has no poke my car) and all the power went and it stalled. I managed to pull in to the side as much as possible and get my hazard lights on but we were across someone’s drive, at the bottom of a dip with limited visibility in the pouring rain :(. I had a few goes at starting it up, it instantly misted up as the engine wasn’t running and was flatly refusing to start again. I debated getting the kids out and onto the path and trying to flag someone down to either steer while I pushed or push while I steered to get us off the main road and decided to ring my Dad to get him on his way before dealing with it any further. We’ve not had breakdown cover on my car for a few years now as it has always been so reliable and we don’t use it really for long journeys so Dad was my best bet.

There was no signal on my phone though 🙁 No idea if that was due to the slight dip in the road, sods law or what but I was saved from having to deal with it further by having another go at turning it over again and getting it started. I was incredibly cautious about breaking down again and avoided any large puddles or sitting too close to cars infront and getting spray off the road but we made it home fine. Davies was very excited – ‘Have we actually broken down then?’ he said with delight :). Scarlett took it upon herself to be Puddle Monitor and assured me ‘you just need to drive Mummy, I’ll look out for puddles and tell you when they’re coming up’. :lol:They debated who would have been best to steer the car if I had to push it when I told them what my plans would have been if I’d not got it started. I explained neither of them would be steering it anywhere but agreed that I’d probably not been much older than Davies when I was steering my Dad’s van on it’s many breaking down adventures and bump starting while he pushed it escapades.

I think I might sort out some cheap breakdown cover though.

Once home we had popcorn for lunch. There was some debate about what to watch on TV but we found various things to entertain us and then they DS’d til teatime. I did some laundry processing and drank tea. Then made their dinner.

While it was cooking we all made banana and chocolate chip muffins together. I weighed out the ingredients, they chucked them in and operated the whizzer, Tarly chopped up the chocolate and Davies mashed the banana. He’s been wanting to do some baking for the last couple of days and we’d not gotten round to it at the weekend. Very nice they were too :).

They had dinner, followed by a couple of muffins, then did a bit more DSing until Ady got home. Lego Star Wars connecting is still a firm favourite with them. Those rumble packs were easily the best gift, next to the DSs of course, we’ve ever got them :).

We got onto the subject of whether there was anything really too hot to touch or whether that was a figure of speech which led somehow to talking about Simon Weston so Ady googled him to show the kids some pictures and told them a bit about him.

Then we read some more Humphrey. Really enjoying this series, very entertaining and with lots of little asides that offer little nuggets of information. Would highly recommend them – a bit Olga Da Polga-ish.

The kids went to bed, I made dinner, we watched tv and I played some more picpic until Davies’ DS ran out of charge 😳