just another morning here

The Saga of the Sweets
The french sweets ended up in a carrier bag on the kitchen side for the entire week, when on Friday morning we were cleaning the kitchen, we found that the bag had a hole in, had got very wet at some point, and all the sweets were a sticky soggy mess. We binned the lot, and thought we’d get away with it until of course we decided to drop in for lunch with my parents on the way home, so of course they had to hear the story, and lo and behold, Lorraine produced another whole bag! We are embracing the educational opportunity though, and asking for them in french every time

Swimming
Apart from being with friends, the obvious highlight of Centerparcs for the kids at least was the swimming. These photos aren’t supposed to be brilliant but they are the only way Steve will have a clue what the kids were up to, as he didn’t manage to spot us from his vantage point at all during the week.

Steve successfully stayed out of the way while I enjoyed the swimming pool with the children – well, the first day I enjoyed it … after that I was very grateful for company, and tried not to get too stressed about the fact that I often didn’t have a clue where two out of the three children were! Anna loved the rapids – I thought they were brill too but didn’t get a chance to go down without Abbie attached to my arm … next time maybe

Singstar
Many thanks to our friends for lending Singstar to us – the children are now requesting a copy of our own, they were very reluctant to give it back this morning! It did provide good entertainment on Chris’s birthday evening, after a fair few drinks had been consumed (and Chris had a sneaky practice beforehand)!

The kids also enjoyed playing it later in the week, although Steve and I soon had to escape next door after the hundredth rendition of Busted’s Year 3000 … in fact any of the tracks on those discs would become mildly irritating with karaoke overdubs

Syncopation
The children hogged the bongos all week, I think – well, I didn’t get as much of a look in as I’d have liked

It was incredibly funny and sweet to watch Fran on her first turn, she got really into it, and was concentrating *so* hard! She apparently was regaling Merry & Max with detailed descriptions of the bongo game at some unearthly hour the next morning, and I think the DK gamecube bundle is fast becoming a contender for blogring retail opportunity of the year.

In fact, do we need to have an award for that every month, do you think?!

Big and Small also did a great double act with the bongos during our singstar session, which was ultra cute too

Set
And other nice non-electronic games were played at the Puddle residence one night, which was nice – although we were all knackered that night so we went home early. Our children have really enjoyed set though, it’s a lovely game, much nicer to play together with cards than on the pc with people looking over your shoulder! Grandma, if you’re reading this, you must remind me to play it with you, you’d like it.

Scootering
We took scooters and in the end decided not to rent bikes as well – which was a good decision, the kids enjoyed them and despite leaving them unlocked everywhere we managed to come home with all three.

Sickness
Well, it wouldn’t be a communal holiday without it, would it?! No, I’m only kidding, I think Josiah must just have been travel sick on the way home because he was fine after throwing up once somewhere around Swindon. I blame the fromage frais Lorraine fed him (anything else I can blame on my parents?!) , that stuff absolutely stinks second time around. ew, and third, she says, having just tried to fold up a couple of fleeces that were in the sick wash, ugh! Sorry, verging on the tmi there, eh?

Stuff
Other things we enjoyed – erm, wine, walking, woodland – the kids were thrilled when they spotted this deer outside our chalet, not to mention all the squirrels as well …

The bowling was a really nice ‘last activity’ together too, despite the fact that I am completely and utterly pants at it, and everyone laughed at me. That’s about all I can think of for now but I reserve the right to come back and add more later.

I’ve spent today at swimming (which was great, Joe’s confidence has improved vastly after last week), and then here getting through mounds of washing. Managed to help Roger & Ruth on their hunt for a freezer, too – they were sitting here ringing round people from the paper when I remembered we had a freezer sitting in the garage not being used – doh, so they are now the proud owners of it (hope it still works!). Caitlin and Anna made some origami dinosaurs, too – with plenty of help from Ruth and me, and the others played, dressed up, went over to Mollie’s, lots of chilling out type stuff going on.

The kids conned me into a game of Mario Party this morning and I have since discovered that they set it to be a 50 turn game, so we’ve been playing that in fits and starts, thankfully one can fold washing at the same time as thrashing them, so I’m off to play a few more rounds.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2005 at 17:11 and is filed under away from home, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.