Before Scarlett fell asleep last night she asked me to sleep in her bed with her. I explained that I wouldn’t, but if she woke in the night then she could come straight to our bed rather than calling me. So I *knew* she would appear at some point during the night and sure enough by about 3am she was there snuggled in beside me. She failed to sleep through the night for such a long, long time that it’s not something I want to make a habit of but actually she has gone from waking in the night and staying awake thus keeping us up too, to if she does wake in the night (a very, very rare occurance now, less than once a month I’d say) she is happy to snuggle up in our bed and go back to sleep. Wish she’d been like that for all those years before :roll:. I don’t actually object to middle of the night sneaking into our bed and to be honest it is generally because they want to cuddle me, which I am fine with, so it’s Ady who gets kicked out to share their bed with Wallace and Gromit or several hundred cuddly toys when he’s had enough of feet in his head and elbows in his back! 😆 This all meant that when Davies woke in great excitement about swimming lessons starting this morning I was completely tangled up with Scarlett while Ady was downstairs in her bed so he ended up getting up with him instead of me :oops:.
Speedy breakfast and getting dressed to be at the swimming pool just before 9am with Davies really excited about it. Ady and Tarly went and sat in the spectators bit while I took Davies into the changing rooms to get changed and then out to the pool. We were really early so we watched the class before and chatted a bit about what he was going to do, then they all got out so I hopped over into the spectators bit too and we all watched him. I think there was 8 or 9 children in total, all about the same age as Davies and he was one of only two boys, which suited him as he was chatting away to the girls either side of him and exchanging grins with them :roll:. Unfortunately he didn’t listen to the instructor as well as he should have done and a couple of times he appeared to not have a clue what he was supposed to be doing but he really enjoyed it and we told him how well he’d done. They all got a free swimming bag too which he was delighted with and then I hopped back over the barrier to go and help him get changed.
We then headed over to the big car boot sale we went to last week and wandered round that for a couple of hours. I wanted a second rubber mallet for camping which Scarlett spotted and with a winning smile she got for a quid (result 🙂 ), we got various other bargains including five puzzles for 10p each, really good ELC ones with 100 and 200 pieces too so that was great, our puzzle selection is now complete again. Oh and a Pink Panther (the cartoon pink cat not the Peter Sellers films) video too as me and the children really like the theme tune. :). A quick detour home to collect our tent and to the supermarket for beer and salad and then round to Lucy’s for tent putting up and barbecuing for the afternoon.
There is a big patch of grass just outside Lucy’s back garden which was ideal for the purpose of putting up their massive Khyam and our more modest dome tent. We’re really chuffed with ours, it is exactly what we wanted. Having perused tents for the previous two years and initially thinking we’d want a really big one (not dissimilar to Lucy’s new one) the first year we then borrowed a far smaller one last year which did us admirably for three camping trips and decided us that all we actually wanted was one extra bedroom pod for storage of the potty, clothes etc. Cost issue aside (as in, we couldn’t have afforded anything bigger or grander) there is also the issue of space for storage and transporting the tent, time taken to put it up and actually one of the things we liked most about camping was the whole bare minimum-ness of it, I like being all cosy in a smallish area, having to be sensible about what you pack to bring, and I like the light in the smaller, paler tents as oppsed to the darkness inside the bigger ones. I guess if money were no object we might be tempted to have a bigger one too, for longer trips of a week or more but given most of our anticipated usage will be weekends I think what we’ve got is pretty darn near perfect. 🙂 We had no instructions but worked out how to put it up pretty easily and, this is what always amazes me, we managed to get it all back in it’s tiny bag again :).
Lucy’s brother, SIL and their two boys were there too so the children had a great time playing in and out of the tents and then in the garden while we all ate lots, drank lots and chatted lots (Ady ate lots, I drank lots and Mandy chatted lots 😉 ). The children were all really good and just had a great day, Davies and Scarlett are so excited about having our own tent and we can’t wait to go and try it out :). We ended up staying until about 7pm, having come inside once it started to get chilly and could probably have stayed longer but it’d had been a long day already and I knew if the children started to go downhill it would degenerate pretty quickly so we left on a high :). The children had a quick bath, Scarlett had a complete trauma about her favourite nightdress being in the wash (proving we’d been right to leave, poor child was sooo tired) and then I sat with Scarlett for all of about two minutes before she was asleep, Davies was not far behind.
It’s been a really nice weekend all round, pictures on flickr, and now I am off to bed, to dream of tenting 🙂
Sounds like a great weekend 🙂 Your tent looks good, and I’m glad D enjoyed his swimming!
Comment by Alison — 23 April 2007 @ 10:39 am
Tents look fab. Very funny that Lucy has gone fromt he teeniest tent to a HUGE one lol!
Comment by Em — 23 April 2007 @ 12:40 pm
Glad swimming went well 🙂
Another big tent issue is it-won’t-fit-in-the-car syndrome 🙁
Comment by layla — 23 April 2007 @ 4:28 pm
yep – love your tent. and that is an enormous khyam!!
we should pretty much be there on time on mon. i will have been on call sun, and managed to arm twist colleague to cover from 7 am – which should be enough time depending on traffic!
Comment by HelenHaricot — 23 April 2007 @ 8:41 pm
It was a great day! Em I’ve also been thinking how funny it is we’ve gone from teeniest to hugest, it was actually Colin that hit the button so it has very little to do with me. Layla I keep having those nightmares!
Comment by Lucy — 24 April 2007 @ 7:56 pm