One of the things that struck me this holiday was how happily my children are entertained by very simple pleasures. I know lots of people like to pack holidays full of educational days out and seeing everything? and I know that essentially we are quite boring as we tend to just go back to the same place each time. There is something to be said for both ways of course, new places and lots of experiences are great – but we don’t seem to be a family that cope well with that pace. Some of us never have and even more since last year we all seem to need a lot of down time and one way of getting that is to go to familiar places and do familiar things. But more than that, I love that the girls seem to be happy just to walk for hours, paddle for hours, sit chatting, play running around games without the need to spend too much money or have too much ‘created’ input from places. It makes it very easy.
It is of course possible that when they grow up they will moan that all their parents ever did was walk them up hills 😉
This summer in general has not been the best for harmony somehow; it’s been fractious. We’re going through a phase where Fran is pulling away in age but the younger three have more friction among them and less ability to find their way through arguments. It’s been a little wearing but as we settled into the holiday, the dynamic altered between them in a very dramatic fashion. Within a couple of days I had my old set of 4 lovely girls who like each other back. It was lovely. Even better, it has carried on since we’ve been home 🙂
Tuesday was a bit cold; I wanted to go to Bovey Tracey to Spin a Yarn which was where I bought the wool to finish the big blanket. I’d done the edging to it the first couple of days of the holiday, which felt a very suitable thing to do – and it felt like the right thing as to go back to that shop and buy wool to make a blanket for the new baby. So I did. I shall take a picture later. I don’t quite feel ready to knit it yet, but I liked deciding to buy it.
After that we went off to the House of Marbles and then back to Lustleigh Cleave for a walk. There were masses of blackberries so the kids foraged, although I almost ate one with a worm in it that rather put my off. Yuck!
Lots of nature to look at as well. One thing we found loads of were fallen green hazelnuts. We didn’t know if they ripen on or off the tree but we brought a bundle home and they do seem to be ripening slowly. We’ll see.
The petrified water dragon was still there.
Beam skills not forgotten 😉
Josie had arrived on holiday with a list of things she wanted to see. It consisted of a frog, a crab and an anemone and some of this seemed harder than others potentially so we were rather pleased to find this just sat on the road.
Okay, I admit it is probably a toad, but it pleased her very much indeed. In fact, it seemed rather magic for it to be so very accessible and easily discovered 😆 (Later in the week we also found frogs in a puddle on a walk…. very obliging!)
Our holiday went mostly something like, “So, shall we go out and do something then?” “Well … anyone fancy a game of Scrabble?” [90 minutes later.] “So, anyone up for actually leaving the house?” “Let’s have lunch first.” etc etc etc. Kept thinking MDJ or T41 would have killed us!
Thats a blooming huge frog toad.
All sounds delightful to me
Xxx
Can’t believe it’s a year since the last water dragon photo. Hope the break recharged you.
I suspect the difference in the type of holidays is that you get to do the educational bits and ‘see everything’ as part of your normal life where many/most others only get to spent that kind of time with their children in the holidays so try and do the most they can as part of that time together. No idea how you keep it up full time though 🙂
Lovely the four of them are still happy with similar things. It must be difficult for the younger 3 to adjust to Fran moving into new things and their relationships to change. Being the oldest I have no idea what that would be like but can empathise with her wanting to separate from the ‘little ones’. The next few years will be very interesting.
Sarah