Wednesday 25 March 2009

Spacesuits, wet feet and that darned BLUE PETER BADGE

A bit of catch up blogging and some photos of our recent trips away.



A few weekends ago - while dh decorated the lounge - I went away with the kids to visit friends in Nottingham. We went via The National Space Centre at Leicester. Well worth a visit and good value as you can exchange your day ticket for a year's pass. Unfortunately, although the home educator's discounts are very good, we couldnt' make use of them AND have the year's pass, so we paid in full.

Ok, so we live quite a distance from Leicester, and I don't think we'll be having frequent visits to the centre, but it'll give us an excuse to go and see our friends again.






Ds1 being David Bailey (though I'm guessing David Bailey would have chosen a more attractive model to photograph)



And ds2, trying on a spacesuit for size. Hmm...perhaps black would be more slimming?


Here's ds2 (and ds1 below) exploring a local park, just over the county border.


One thing I can say about Nottinghamshire and its nearby counties is that they seem to have amazing areas for kids to play; both the formal playgrounds and the less-formal parks. This particular park had lots of man-made follies, huge earth mounds, tree trunks, little streams, a huge lake, and rocks placed perfectly to be climbed on and explored. And so much space!! What would our equivalent be around here? A dishevelled piece of 1970s play equipment (disabled because it's considered too dangerous to play on), some pathetic attempt to entertain teens, and some muddy dog-poo encrusted grass. Ok, ok, exaggerating maybe, but I can't help thinking that the people who design our local playgrounds obviously don't have any contact with children...


Anyway, rant over..here are some more photos of our outings when we were in Nottingham:




Crossing the stepping stones.

Unfortunately you can't see it in this photo, but at one point across the river the stones were under water. And yes, I did get wet feet!


Fab scenery! And ds2 posing.

As you can see the sun was shining, but that wind...brrrr...hence the coats.Yep, I could certainly tell we were Up North; there was a definite temperature difference for us soft southerners lol.

It seems the older I get, the less hardy I become.



And the best bit of all. Eating ice cream afterwards!


Well that was our trip to Nottingham. I have more photos which may appear on the blog at a later date, AND I still need to post about our weekend in London. But maybe that'll be tomorrow.

AND some FAB news!


Do you remember ages and ages ago ds1 sent in a letter to Blue Peter with copies of the animations he'd worked on? Well we hadn't heard and I just assumed as months had gone by that either they had lost the letter, or it just wasn't good enough to get a badge. Anyway today he was sent a Blue Peter Badge!!! Naturally he's well-chuffed. And I'm pleased too cos it gets him in free to loads of places (with a paying adult of course, but hey, still good news). Ds2 is feeling a bit put out though, so we'll have to come up with something for him to write about or do. Anyway, it shows it's worth doing these things. If you're interested in your child(ren) having a go see http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bluepeter/central/badges/


And you can see the long drawn-out process that it took us to actually getting the badge from these blog pages. Here are all the blog references to the Blue Peter badge, starting in March last year!!






Well, my laptop battery is dying so I'd best end this blog entry now. Will try and play more catch-up tomorrow.

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