I could try to remember all the things we have done, but frankly it would be a pointless exercise as I can barely remember what we did 2 weeks ago, never mind 2 months ago. Suffice it to say there have been a great many life things going on... we have decorated our house to sell it, I have trained as an IPEN placenta specialist which I am doing alongside doulaing, Little has got a bit bigger and had her ninth (!!!) birthday, and most recently we went on holiday back to the cottage we went to last year (which I would link to except I wasn't blogging then so I can't). Just a warning now - I'll be linking to all the places where we went so that anybody else who is going up that way can check them out too :)
We arrived on Friday evening after a largely awful journey in which we had to stop multiple times for toilet breaks, and because both the girls were feeling queasy. Lesson for next time: avoid the A65 as it's a windy-windy-uppy-downy type road which isn't great when mixed with people who get travel sick. On Saturday we popped into Penrith for some groceries and then made a tour of the town centre shops - picked up some books in a charity shop for a grand total of 75p each...
...some dressing up bits and some fraction magnets, plus some other things like a windchime and a jumper for Small to grow into as he's growing like a weed at the moment.
On Sunday we had lunch at the Llama Karma Kafe. I succumbed to being one of those parents who does posed pictures for the sake of getting some shots which were in the same spots as last year... so they could be compared.
Last year:
This year:
We also bought some handmade lovelies :)
After we'd eaten we went into Penrith again and visited Crafty Monkeys. Little and Small painted a unicorn and a snake respectively, and Tiny painted herself a couple of pet rocks. Meanwhile, Podd and I decopatched a lizard...
... to go on our hearth stone :) both the kafe and Crafty Monkeys are places we visited last time we were here and they were such a hit we decided to repeat them this time.
On Monday we drove to see Podd's dad, who lives on a boat (very exciting!). The sprogs were loaned a hat by one of Grandpa's neighbours and had lots of fun taking turns pretending to be captain.
Tuesday we spent in the grounds of Lowther Castle. This is another place we visited the last time we went up to Cumbria and found their attitude to children to be fantastic (basically: go run wild, see if you can find all the rope swings and tell us how many trees you climbed!). They are slowly restoring the castle and grounds back to their former glory after being abandoned in the 1930s, so it was really great to see what they had accomplished since our last visit 13 months ago.
Last time we came they had only cleared enough of the actual castle to put in a cafe. This year they had cleared some of the right area of the building on this photo...
...with the centre and left areas still to be cleared. We enjoyed looking around the bits that are cleared now.
We found some rope swings and willow houses...
We walked a different way to last year and found the pond...
... which had a lovely summer house at the end of it ...
... cue artistic shot up the pond ...
... and stairs leading up to the next level of the garden.
We walked down to the far end of the gardens...
Do you have a flag?
... not really sure why the tree was weeping but we took a picture so we could find out later. We also found a dug out hollow which obviously used to be a small pond or pool, but it was empty of water, and instead filled with rather a lot of tiny baby frogs and toads around an inch long, which had clearly fallen in and gotten stuck there. The sprogs rescued one each but we decided against rescuing all of them as we'd have been there all day!
One of the new things they have added since the last time we were there is a 'natural playground' in the forest...
This was a source of much joy :)
... and plenty of tree climbing opportunities.
Oops!
... can you see Small's legs?
I also took a number of shots of different varieties of mushrooms around the gardens...
I really like this one... it looks like a fairy ring :)
On our way back to the cottage we stopped off at Abbott Lodge who do delicious ice cream made from milk from their own herd of Jersey cows. This is particularly exciting as one of their ice cream flavours is Small's name :)
We'd not made any plans for Wednesday but decided on the day to drive up to the Lake District Wildlife Park, and it turned out to be a great decision. The kids really enjoyed looking at all the animals, and we got to see them feeding the otters...
... and managed to get a video of them being fed, complete with squeaky noises that their mother taught them they needed to make to get fed!
The sprogs met a milk snake, a bearded dragon and held a royal python named Tommy...
...and have requested that next time they get to meet some of the other animals up close. The park offers hour-long encounters with either the meerkats or the lemurs with the money going to charities that support those living in Madagascar or Africa to try to preserve the animals' natural habitats. We said we'd talk about it ;)
In the evening we went out for dinner to the pub local to the cottage, where we had a wonderful meal... and Small told the barmaid that his chicken nuggets, chips and beans were the most delicious thing he had eaten in his whole life! Add that to him wanting to find out whether the rams had horns and the ewes didn't at the wildlife park and subsequently stunning one of the staff by calling him 'sir', and he definitely had a cuteness overload that day! :D
All in all, we had a fabulous time and can't wait for our trip back there next year :)
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