We had a really nice day today. First i dropped the kids off at the playgroup summer club – they are going two days this week, two next and two the week after. The i took Bubba into town and got her her first shoes – i hadn’t intended actually buying any – i was just going to try some on then come home and sift through the offcasts – but the pair she tried on were blue with pink flowers and when we tried to remove them she had hysterics and clung to them!!!! Giggle… third child tenacity!

Then i picked up the big girls and drove up to Burghley House

Burghley House, Stamford

This fab Elizabethan House is free to go around the gardens in the week, so we had a picnic, although i seemed to do more eating while they climbed….

then we went into the sculpture garden…
the_gardens

where we played Dora Explorer in a maze….

climbed on some sculptures while feeling others and doing rubbings of others…. (note the start of the word education here!)

and were frankly awe-inspired by others.

The boxing hares were a big hit…

But Bubba preferred a beer… i mean juice!

The girls in front of the house….

…and stood next to a very big toadstool/mushroom.

Pud is very into Weeping Willow trees at the mo and points out every single one we see so we took a tree book and brought back some leaves to look at too. The house was home to an advisor to Elizabeth 1, William Cecil, which made it just fine by her and she bought a couple of postcards to add to her little book of him and the house – and counted out the money and paid! Thats all come from a reader rabbit maths game which makes you pay to release a character with proper GB coins. it was a pretty big deal for her to be brave enough too!

We sat for ages at what was probably an old drained lake, near the big face, which was studded with big carved cones. It was slightly sureal because it was exactly the same shape and size, and the view down into it was also the same, as the “bottom lawn” at my junior school, its was like gonig to it after hundred of years and seeing it all reclaimed by nature. A bit like that bit in Prince Caspian, where they gradually realize they are sitting in the ruined Cair Paravel…. made me feel quite odd!