Strawberries and cream

A summer picnic in the park is not complete without strawberries and cream. This particular cream was Chantilly extra thick (reduced to 48p) and had a hint of vanilla and bourbon. Quite delicious.

The weather was lovely enough to sit on the grass in Wythenshaw park at 7pm!! We went out at around 3pm expecting to have just a couple of hours of warmth when actually the sun shone right up until we left for bedtime - the children's 'bedtime' not ours of course. ;-)

Carrots are scrummy

and very very small......

We made a little vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden earlier this spring and planted some lettuce and carrot seeds. The lettuce grew very quickly and successfully, so much so that we didn't even eat half of it! The children were excited to see the 'salad' grow but were less keen on eating it.

The carrots however caused significantly more excitement - especially because you can't really see them growing. This morning they rushed in from the garden "the carrots are growing and are really big." I went down to see what all the fuss was about and this was what I found. I pulled it up and before washing and chopping into three teeny chunks for them to taste, I took these shots.

This last one just gives an idea of the size, it's not actually a very good photo.

I used auto focus *sigh* silly me.

Day two of summer holidays

And today class we focus on developing our fine motor skills, creativity, concentration and determination......

I'm not sure if you've ever done this craft activity (I forget what it's actually called) but it is *really* fiddly and can go wrong very quickly! I sat and did one along with the kids and made a few mistakes myself. It took a good half hour for me to complete mine and one of the children put in an awful lot of effort to get his end product *exactly* as he wanted it.

We learned an unexpected lesson too or at least Big squish did - do not touch an iron when it is hot!

Our finished master pieces:

Water Fun!

We've been enjoying a fair amount of sunshine this past week, so on Wednesday I decided to take a trip into Manchester City Centre to make the most of it. The fountains in Piccadilly Gardens have become a popular attraction for parents with little toddlers.... and teenagers it seems!

Squishy was being particularly cute and the lighting was just perfect for photography. If only we'd been alone and there weren't so many horrid adverts and eye sores in the way! I got lots of lovely family snaps for our memory albums, but these few are some of my favourites. I was just starting to get into it trying out various compositions and angles when it was time to go.

Squish started off quite apprehensive but by the end of the afternoon she was running not only around the fountains but through them, in them and standing on top of them! she was quite desperate for me to get in there with her but I was quite persistent at staying dry. I did enjoy chasing her around with the camera though :-)

A lovely day was had by the both of us, only to be slightly ruined by the theft of our bike!!!

Windmill

Another couple of snap shots from our half term break in Bungay.