One word? When seven would do…

A round up then, as it is no less than would be expected (and frankly, some of you fell down badly in your task as text alert comment bloggers 😉 )

Saturday – Left home on schedule to have a couple of hours with the Clarke’s for lunch to break up the journey with a spot of blog bumping. Route finder said just over 3 hours, Sarah later told me it would have been more like 4 even on a good day and it was over 5 🙁 . It also rained on and off and we had Mum and Dad following us in their car which always adds a certain level of stress to driving having to watch out for someone behind you not getting lost.

The kids should have slept on that first part of the journey – that was the plan. We’d installed the dvd player and that was slowly driving me insane from behind – there are only so many times you can hear Finding Nemo without the joy of the pictures before ‘just keeping swimming’ loses it’s charm altogether! They were also doing a fine line in inane questions from the back and Ady was listening to his Hall and Oates cd whilst trying to have a grown up conversation with me and not get totally put off his track by the voices in the back asking for juice, food, why the sky is blue and so on constantly. Eventually at Davies’ request we put War of the worlds on the cd player, turned Nemo off, Tarly fell asleep and we all sung along about the chances of anything coming from Mars being a million to one.

I do quite like that drive along the coast heading west – you do pass through some pretty places, it is a memory filled route from a jaunt to Weymouth I believe I have mentioned before as my first big drive alone when I was 18 (across three counties!) and having had a lovely holiday in Dorset last Autumn and staying fairly nearby for HESFes again earlier this year I am quite fond of ‘The Road to Bridport’ and Ady is ever hopeful we may catch a glimpse of Hugh Fearnley – Whittingstall along the way too! I do quite like that part of the country but there are other parts with greater draw’s for me – so I won’t be joining Merry in my yearning for an EX postcode 😉

So having gone even further west that I’ve been before to Exeter we arrived at Sarah’s a mere two hours later than I had planned, giving us a very small window before piano teacher’s arrived and my parents returned from being sent off to ‘do something for an hour’. We managed to cram in yummy home made soup, chocolates, coffee and chats for grown ups, scattering into the house and playing for the children into our hour though so didn’t do too badly. I guess the blog induced intimacy and shorthand helps 😉

The second part of the journey was equally blighted by traffic – and to the soundtrack from the back seat of three hours worth of taped Nick Jnr which took in Ruby and Max, Maggie and the ferocious beast and Blues Clues- so even Ady now knows the theme tunes off by heart too 😉 Our Travelinn, once found, was well located and we will definitely be returning to Cornwall again in the not too distant future to follow some of the more interesting looking brown signed attractions.

We had an early dinner and I ended up downing most of a bottle of wine very speedily and then felt it rush to my head shortly after ordering a second. The children were tired and fractious and after doing a grand job of eating and being really quite restuarant friendly I called it a night and took them back to the room for a bath, story and bedtime. Ady stayed on in the bar for a further couple of hours with my parents – which I think we all enjoyed. I got the kids to sleep, got into bed and read my book, did my texting and finally left the door on the latch and was asleep before 11!

Sunday – The Eden Project.

Really enjoyed it here. I thought the entry fee was pretty reasonable (and we didn’t even get Home Ed rates, but paid for a year’s pass for me and Ady – Davies won’t be under five next time so will use the Home Ed rate for him then). Sarah had told us about the zip wire the day before so I was keen to do that and Ady was keen to face his fear of heights and give it a go too, so we left the kids with my parents and clambered back up to give it a go. I barely squeezed under the weight restriction rather embarrassingly but the harnesses still had a fair bit of tightening needed so my blushes were saved! We listened to the H&S talks with growing consternation and despite having planned to leap together side by side Ady did a great big leap off while I was still collecting myself together and hurtled way infront of me the whole way! It lasts 30 seconds and the first 10 were spent thinking ‘argh, what am I doing!!??’, the second 10 thinking ‘actually this is really rather fun!’ and the final 10 waving madly and yelling to the children who were stood below wondering what on earth their parents were up to!! If it hadn’t been a tenner a throw I’d have happily spent the whole day doing it!

We then walked round the outside attractions for a bit, then did the humid biome, then lunch, the the warm biome. Back outside for some more of the outside stuff including the children taking part in their big daffodil bulb planting extravaganza before slowly working our way back up to the top. I could talk more about it but you have either been there and know already or have not been and would therefore wonder what I was on about, so I won’t!

Loads of educational conversations with Davies, all of which I have now forgotten but he refered to afterwards so I know he hasn’t!

Dinner that night was very jovial. The children were on their best behaviour after having a bath with me to perk them up before hand. Davies has been getting really whingey during the day but he pulled himself round very well. He sat and told my dad all about nocturnal animals, amphibians, the life cycle of a frog and a turtle in great detail and was generally an admirable PR officer for HE 🙂

Monday – off to Centerparcs.

Another several hours journey – this time Davies watched Scooby Doo and Tarly slept which made it slightly more peaceful. Arrived at about 1pm so dumped the car, walked in to get some lunch and buy some shopping from the Parcmarket to be delivered before heading back to collect the car and get into our villa. Confess to a heartsinking moment when we pulled up outside it as we have only previously been to the Cumbria one where all the villas are beautiful log cabin style affairs. This looked more like a large ugly flat roofed static (infact all week the kids refered to it as ‘our caravan’). But looks were deceptive and inside was lovely, with more bathrooms than people, a shower and steam room, a jacuzzi and radio piped into all the bathrooms.

We were a bit miffed to discover that we had to purchase a grill to use the brick built BBQ so ended up using a couple of disposables we had brought with us for dinner that night from the patio (which Ady cooked outside alone in the dark and then brought inside for us to eat!).

Tuesday – Not the best of days. Ady and I needed to go out and get a birthday cake for Davies and as Davies had specifically requested a Spiderman cake and refered to it a couple of times since I felt the need to get him just that. We were out of the village before 9.30am having left the children with my reluctant parents 🙁 but the first supermarket we came across didn’t have spiderman cakes, Ady decided to fill the car up with petrol which meant a half hour queue and then we rowed about whether Davies would rather have his spider man cake or us back with him at Centerparcs. Ady was insistant that he would not be bothered about the cake, I knew he would be. We only drove about 10 miles further that CP in the end to Trowbridge where we happened upon a Tescos and were back at the villa by midday – and not missed at all, but it had set my mood and after lunch when we set off to walk into the village centre again for the rest of the day I ended up having a complete hissy fit at everyone over something very minor and trivial and stomping off. 🙁 Hid in the woods for 20 minutes or so, had a quiet cry and composed myself to go back again.

We went into the village, booked the next two nights food events and had dinner at the American diner style place there. It started well with the kids going off to play in the soft play area but they were very tired after 4 late nights, too much stress in the atmosphere and too much sugar and Tarly ended up having a massive and very public tantrum too. I carted her off to a quieter corner and eventually calmed her down to finish the evening ok – but sadly my stress ;evels and the childrens’ behaviour generally was on a bit of a downward spiral from constant undermining of my authority and parenting style – which is a bit of a joke when I am the one who is with them 24/7 really, but I will not dwell on such things. I am confident that I do a very good job and that a snapshot opinion based on a weeks’ holiday is not accurate of my relationship with them anyway.

Wednesday – Davies’ birthday.

A bad night with Tarly and I ended up bed swapping with her so that I would wake up in the bedroom with Davies, which was odd really – so at 4.35am – the time he was born, he and I were in a small room alone together with me gazing at him wondering where those years had gone. We both woke up together at about 7.30am and he said to me ‘Is it morning time?’ ‘yes darling’ ‘Is it my birthday then?’ ‘yes darling!’

He waited for me to go and put some pjs on and wake Ady and then we let him out of the bedroom to see the decorated lounge and all his pressies. Scarlett and my parents joined us shortly afterwards and he was thrilled with all his gifts. He got a wooden castle and figures, three different micro machines, a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and various other bits and pieces, all of which he loved and I spent ages putting together and assembling!

We needed milk so my parents grudgingly agreed to go and get some as we were off swimming. They ended up actually going out of CP and into Bath where they rang me from at 5.30pm to check whether we still needed the milk!! In the end they met us at the restuarant in the evening, so the whole point of them joining us on holiday to spend more time with the children, particularly on Davies’ birthday was all a bit lost really. My Mum then had the cheek to be all afronted that we will be away again for Tarly’s birthday in December!

We went off swimming and had a lovely time actually. I like swimming although swimming is not something you get to do an awful lot of with when you are with two small people! But we did go down all the slides, splash about, do some floating and a bit of swimming lesson type stuff and it was a very nice couple of hours. We got the Land Train back to our villa and as the kids were wiped out and not looking likely to make it through the evening we sat them down to chill out with Shrek on dvd while I carried on making up the micro machines.

We walked back to the Pancake Restaurant where we were booked in for a fondue night with live music. I had popped in earlier with some banners and streamers and another birthday cake for Davies so he got appropriate fuss made of him and our table all decorated, later on the singer announced to the whole room it was Davies’ fifth birthday and a cake was brought out with the whole restaurant and the fiddler singing happy birthday to him. Very memorable and he had a lovely evening to round off a lovely day.

Thursday – We had promised Davies we’d play the crazy golf the previous day so we set off there first thing and despite the only rain of the week pouring down on us throughout we had a very nice time. Back to the villa for lunch before heading back into the village for swimming again. Another nice hour or so playing on the slides and wave machines before heading back to get dried and changed for the last nights Party on the Parc event.

This was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, but the kids enjoyed it and the food was good so we tried to overlook the fact it was a glorified Sparky’s! The kids loved the magician and both had great fun ‘dancing’ to the disco which was playing back to back novelty records such as Barbie Girl, Agadoo and Macarena – urgh! Scarlett had gotten overexcited and ended up wearing no pants so I was amused to see her dancing her ass off, flashing her no knickers status and generally having a ball on the dance floor – ooh that girl reminds me of someone! 😉 We left just before 10 as we were all fading fast and got the Land train back to the villa. The kids fell asleep very quickly and we started the packing up for the morning efforts.

Friday – after oversleeping and not scrambling out of the villa until a full hour after last eviction time we drove across the road and into Longleat. We had an excellent day there and it was well worth the money. We’d got a £1.50 each off voucher as we left CP and it was a very full day out for the money. We drove round the safari, did the train and the boats to feed sea lions, watched the parrot show, walked round the house (where Davies thorougly impressed the guide by asking whether the ceiling in one of the lower rooms was the one from the TV show (Animal Park) which had been repaired – it was!) and did the maze. A really good day out.

A couple of hours drive home and we arrived to the house in an utter shambles which took hours to clear up (cat mess which I will not gross you out with full details of 🙁 ). Scarlett had slept on the way home and was put into bed still sleeping, Davies took forever to get to sleep, we had a takeaway meal and then Ady headed off to bed to leave me to catch up online, but Tarly woke at 11.30 and didn’t go back to sleep until 3.30am so I didn’t get to sleep until 4 and although I managed a bit of reading I didn’t get much chance to upload photos or blog myself.

Today – after a small lie in to try and catch up – we have popped into town for lunch and to get the underwater camera photos developed, kids are now asleep and I am off for a bath and dinner. The washing mountain is still very much in evidence and as we are away again tomorrow night it may well be added to before it goes down – ah well, at least it means some of the lesser worn clothes we all own are getting an outing eh! 🙂