A slower start to the day and the benefit of the kids getting older is we no longer worry about them being noisy or troublesome or indeed up too early these days!
I came downstairs about 930am, did things like put chickens out and sort breakfast for Davies and coordinate them getting dressed. We all drank lots of tea, made picnics and left about 11ish. We detoured to collect Ali and Freya and convoyed to Paradise Park.
We had a really nice day there – a walk through all the Planet Earth stuff which initially Davies, Scarlett, Marcus and Alex ran through without really looking I think but I hoiked them back and they all did pause in places. Davies humoured me perfectly by coming back to me, holding my hand, chatting to me about all the exhibits and asking me questions and telling me things he knew. He’s so good at pulling it out of the bag at just the right moment that boy :).
We stopped for lunch (not all of us in the same area ;)) and as planned the kids disappeared off to various areas while we sat and chatted and finished eating in the sunshine. Chloe rather ingeniously worked out how to liberate some golf balls from the crazy golf end hole so they all played that for a while and then we went on the long trail walk around the gardens.
Paradise Park is something of a rich mans folly in many ways.The owner (who used to be married to my Dad’s cousin’s daughter so in my Mum’s eyes is family ;)) comes from a dynasty of local car dealership but while his brother runs all of the car businesses he had a passion for garden centres and he and Dad’s cousin’s wife opened up the garden centre and then bolted on various bits, I suspect, as their four children got interested in things. It’s like coming to our house and looking at our bookcases, toy shelves and resource stuff and seeing how over the years the kids have had interests and passions in different things. There is a big dinosaur bias with fossils and planet earth stuff like volcanoes, earthquakes and prehistoric stuff, a new underwater area, a cacti garden, an old fashioned amusements arcade, a minature train, shooting gallery and Sussex in miniature landmarks in the gardens. I love it there, it’s a fairly cheap, very full day out which when the weather is nice is extra specially lovely.
And today the weather was lovely, so sitting and chatting with friends and then walking round in the sunshine is pretty close to perfect really 🙂
We paused at the ship and bell and cannon area as we often do and the kids played a game altogether there until it was time to start heading for home.
We said our goodbyes to Michelle and Kirsty (happily only til the weekend), dropped Ali and Freya home on our way and returned to a quiet house. Davies had got one of those cheap foam glider planes so constructed that and then used the pieces as a template to make one out of cardboard.It doesn’t fly very well but does an impressive loop-the-loop before crashing to the ground so he called it ‘the flip plane’ and decorated it. Scarlett did some colouring and then it was time for their tea.
They both had baths and hairwashes – Badger parade tomorrow ;). Then stories. I didn’t choose wisely with the first one they picked from the pile which was about a pet cat dying. I went off to get Tarly’s milk and came back to find her cuddling Candle and sobbing 🙁 We redeemed the situation with the fantastic and slightly mindblowing which was just great. We all had a drink of water afterwards and marvelled at it.
They went off to bed, I had a bath and cooked dinner (tacos, mmmm) and tomorrow is back to work so now I know Michelle and Kirsty did arrive home again safely I am off to bed.