The sun always shines in a photo.

Last night I was off to the WI again. This time for a digital photography masterclass. The speaker had loads of fabulous pictures that he had taken there on display for us to look at and part of his demo was to show us what can be achieved through applications like photoshop. For me the most interesting aspect of the talk was probably the more personal/historical side to it. Hearing about how his father started out in photography in the early 1900's with one of those wooden fold out cameras (a bit like our caravan, really) and sharing his skill and knowledge with his son. But the pictures, too, were of particular interest to me. Lots of interesting, atmospheric landscapes. Some from just around the corner. Some from corners of the globe I'd be lucky to view in real life.
This may seem a bizarre connection but I have been an A-Ha fan for many years. Of course for the music. Not at all for the pretty Norweigan musicians(!) When I was 15 years old, Dad bought me the 'Scoundrel Days' album. I still often listen to this album but back then, when I should have been revising for my O'Levels, I would sit in my bedroom, with the music playing, sketching the amazing scenery from the album cover. (Oh, and Morten Harket's profile!). Their more recent 'Foot of the Mountain' video is also breathtaking to watch with some cool effects and so I have posted it to this blog. Not that I need an excuse.
Finally, Hubby and I have tickets to see A-Ha on their final tour in November. Brilliant!

a-ha - Foot Of The Mountain

Five go camping in Norfolk.

Lots of photos for this post. So many more I could have used but who likes looking at other people's holiday photos?
As I said before, we recently returned from a short camping break in Norfolk. I picked Norfolk because it is not too far from Kent, a couple of hours drive. We took our small fold-up caravan with awning (the girls and I slept in this) and a pop-up-tent which Hubby and Henry slept in.
The park was Pentney Park, near Kings Lynn and cost us just £98 for 5 days. There was a free outdoor pool and also an indoor one with jacuzzi, gym and sauna for a few quid extra. There was a fair bit of noise at night from the busy main road and the nearby RAF base.


Here is Honor reading a book to her little sister, Hope. I put up the curtain behind them to separate off Hope's cot from our sleeping area.

Hope was fantastic on this holiday. Full of enthusiasm and yet sat quietly and patiently in her pushchair whenever things needed to be done ie, putting the camp together etc. (Unlike her mother who did a fair bit of whinging and whining about the cold, damp and filth that is the essential fun of camping!)

I did, though I say so myself, put together a very good itinerary of excursions. I recently joined The National Trust which gives us free entry to many historical places and nature reserves aroung the UK.

Here we are about to embark on a boat trip to Blakeney nature reserve to see seals in their natural habitat. The weather was pretty cold and wet as is obvious in the pictures. I tried to be prepared with jumpers and waterproofs, however, the last month or so had been so hot and dry I had forgotten how miserable our summer weather could be. As Hubby didn't own anything so cool as a kagool, we had to spend £30 on one in the local village shops and I felt I had to get myself an extra fleece too!

But look at poor Henry. Smiling bravely through it.

And it was worth it to see those seals... and the look on the childrens' faces.

This visit is on a much sunnier, warmer day to Oxburgh Hall, another National Trust site.

There were lovely trails for us to follow...

swans with their cygnets in the moat....

and an old Tudor stately home which belongs to the Bedingfield family and contains tapestries made by Mary, Queen of Scots.

This is Honor coming out of 'the priests' hole'. The original family were Catholics and therefore had to hide their priests during that time of persecution.

Another day out was to a very nice town called Holt which had lots of nice shops selling nice things! After dragging the family around the shops we headed off to the Country Park.

More on that later...

About vegetables.

We have just returned from a little camping holiday in Norfolk. I shall post about that later. This post is just to comment on a couple of other blogs I have been looking at. Having just been down to the veg patch to pick some curly kale to go with the corned beef pie that Mum left us for dinner, I wanted to look up what I could be sowing now for later on. My tiny plot (see sidebar for link) gives advice on planting potatoes to be ready for Christmas. I like the idea of growing now what we'll have with our Christmas dinner so I think I'll give that a try. I've also just been looking at Salt and Chocolate. Mary Beth and her children have set up a lovely little veg stall outside their home to sell off the glut of produce from their garden. We barely seem to grow enough to feed ourselves so we won't be doing that but I'd love it if others from our neighbourhood did this. My nextdoor neighbour had a plant stall for a while and I enjoyed going to get little bargains there. I have also seen eggs and honey for sale at a couple of houses too. I was talking to one lady who lives nearby and she says that even though she freezes a lot of it, she gets a lot of extra produce and in the past some people have had little stalls like this but, unfortunately, money got stolen and the weights and measures police have also interfered. That is such a shame. I'd love to go pottering around the village to buy things from the neighbours. Much more pleasurable (and tasty, I'll bet) than fighting my way around Tesco's. My next-door-neighbour did have the smart idea, though, of leaving envelopes to put our money straight through the door.

Free fun at Sheerness.

I've been having internet problems this week so not been able to blog for a few days, but we are enjoying the summer holidays so far.

I'm always on the look out for cheap, if not free, fun for the kids (and me!)

A few days ago, I took the children to the Isle of Sheppey, Sheerness to be precise, where there are some good, free, facilities for families. On the seafront, apart from the obvious seaside, there is a very nice sandy play area and paddling pool. There is also good facilities for older children, for their bikes and skateboards.

We had a good couple of hours fun here and will definitely go back again.
Today we visited Shorne Woods Country park. I forgot my camera but, again, all we had to pay was £2 for the car park. The kids loved the adventure play area there and Honor did very well using a map to follow one of the easier set trails there. They also do activities like pond dipping which cost a few extra quid. We might do some of that next time and I'll have to remember the camera.

This is just a picture of little Hope in a really cool outfit from Auntie Janice!

The Wildwood Maths Trail.

As today was an INSET day (teacher training day), the school summer holidays start here!
Honor has declared that she wants to improve her maths and is committed to practising over the break, so....


We are members of a local wildlife park called Wildwood at Herne. It is a fabulous place, dedicated to the conservation of British wildlife. I prepared 'maths trails' for the children to practise the skills they have covered over the past year at school. Honor has just finished year 4 so her questions involved calculating entrance fees using addition and multiplication, decimals and subtraction (working out the change for a family of 5 from £40). "Gosh, that's a lot of money!" she exclaimed. "Yes", I replied. "Good job we have membership!".
Then she went to the toilets and did some percentage calculations in there! (And spent a penny - hee, hee!)

She also collected statistics on some of the animals to practise converting measurements in cm and grammes into decimals and to compare later using different sorting strategies ie carroll and venn diagrams and also made a tally of the three different types of deer that she saw to later record on a bar chart. She is really into bar graphs at the moment!

She has also been learning about postion and direction and finds it hard to remember angle turns and clockwise/anti-clockwise, so we did a bit of this too. Facing these deer faces she had to make a 180 degree turn clockwise and record the name she could see in front of her. (It was Jeremy, a plaque on a tree marked the place where I think a beloved animal may be buried.)

Henry has just finished Reception year and his questions were brief and simple counting, addition and subtraction. I got him practising reading as much of the stuff we passed as possible, too.

They enjoyed doing their 'work'. But the park was probably the best bit. Especially as we bumped into some other of their friends on a day out .

I love this wooden dragonfly that Hope is sitting on.

Job done.

Well, I like it. Can't say that it appears to be any better than the 'Crown, Period' paint that I used in the hall, though.

I painted it yesterday, which turned out to be a very busy day and not altogether a very pleasant one either. Very sadly, my neighbour died. The children were upset by this news as they often chatted to her over her garden wall and she used to get her dog to bring them out packets of crisps in its' mouth!

And Hope stood on a rusty nail. I had to move a bucket of rubbish that was due to go in the log burner and a piece of wood fell out that had a rusty nail poking out of it. I forgot to pick it up straight away and poor Hope stood on it with her bare feet. The other 2 kids were brilliant at assisting me with the first aid but then I wasn't sure if I should get it looked at professionally. I couldn't bear the thought of going through the 'hospital' palava, but couldn't bear the thought of something worse developing even more. So I took the baby to the local hospital, to their minor injuries clinic (which is under threat of closure). I thought babies got priority in the triage system, but no. We had to wait over an hour, baby crying and getting hotter, and more tired. Eventually we were seen by a foreign nurse who did nothing except get surprised that she could walk:

Nurse: She's not walking yet though.

Me: Yes, she does walk.

Nurse: What? Already? How old is she?

Me:15 months

Nurse: And she can walk already? That's unusual.

Well. I just wanted to get out of there fast after that. I looked at her badge and it said 'advanced nurse'.

So poor Hope went through all that for nothing. Hopefully her foot will be ok. I'll keep an eye on it.