just another morning here

We had toyed with the idea of going to Longleat Safari Park today, but given the weather and the general health of the family we decided to opt for Paignton Zoo instead, and the kids were thrilled when we told them first thing this morning. While we’d been away over the summer we’d refused to take them to the zoo in Amsterdam on the grounds that it would be pretty similar to a zoo in the UK, at which point they commented that that was all very well, but we’d never taken them to the zoo in England. Entirely true, hence the trip this week.

It was grey and misty for most of the day, then rained in earnest early afternoon – we braved the rain for a while but having got wet and cold we decided to head home for cake (the orange chocolate potato cake is great btw) and a film!

Had a fantastic day though, the children loved it. Anna played photographer during the day, having been inspired by the exhibition of wildlife photography (these images) that we saw at the museum yesterday, although even she realised that a few snaps around the zoo were never going to be as amazing as some of the images we’d seen. Here are the best of hers, anyway … and a few of mine and Steve’s here and there – and a couple more on flickr for anyone who’s never seen an elephant wee!

I am going to gloss over the fact that today is going *really* badly, the boy is in his room and I feel that blogging about the lovely day we had yesterday will be a much better idea than paying any more attention to today.

So, we went on a home ed group trip to Cookworthy Forest yesterday, where they have a Celtic Roundhouse and run educational stuff as well as the working forest, and had a fantastic time.

The morning activities consisted of: leaf/tree identification, an un-nature trail, pretending to be bugs with ‘sky eyes’. Then came lunch, including cooking over the fire for some people – bacon, dampers, and marshmallows.

After lunch we went back into the forest for the ‘meet a tree’ activity, and then making micro-nature trails in the deer meadow.

All in all it was a great day out, as usual tinged with slight regret for me that the girls were stuck in a classroom rather than enjoying it with us, while on a normal day I still struggle with Josiah being on his own, I really don’t know how much longer I can carry on with both approaches to education at the same time in our family, roll on half term.

Joe spent this morning at Steve’s office using Education City to educate himself, as I was driving around with Russ doing last minute errands for the Motor Show this weekend. Oh, and having coffee with a friend! We ate fish & chips for lunch in the office before heading back into town to meet our home ed photography group at the Cathedral.

I had taken the wrong lens for indoor photography (doh) and Josiah was intent on following the leaflet he was given with numbered points of interest to look at in the Cathedral (in unswervingly numerical order and without looking at anything else, honestly, sometimes I worry about that boy), so we didn’t take many photos inside, and then it started drizzling, so our outdoor photos are a bit rubbish too, but we had fun anyway. I wished I had my f30 actually, but it is mysteriously broken and has been sent back to fuji to see what they can do with it.

Back home in time to meet the girls, then I helped them get their homework done and they had soup for tea before going out to Friday Fish (the church’s children’s group), which they really enjoyed. And tonight we have just crashed, as we have got a really early start tomorrow!

We worked hard this morning to get stuff done so that we could have some time out at Crealy with friends today. I wrote last week about the Air-Joe guns we discovered at Crealy; but today I had the camera with me. It was even more fun with friends to play with! The boys discovered the new climbing wall as well, and played on it for ages.

We walked down across all the bridges and around the lake where we saw some gorgeous brand new ducklings, honestly they looked so new they could have been going for their first ever swim in the lake. The mother duck didn’t like me getting so close with the camera and I had to move quickly at one point when she came towards me in a threatening tail wagging sort of a way. Even the boys thought they were cute!