EMP in the US

Something that made me smile, that I forgot to mention, was an occurrence at a play park in the UK. The boys were playing on the roundabout and talking to other boys, who were older, and they were all discussing how old everyone was.

Ollie suddenly looked at a boy and said, “what’s your number?”

I realised he was asking the boy how old he was! He did it again to me recently, which is what reminded me. Better get this sorted before he starts meeting the girls…

We weighed the boys on the electronic scales. They both weighed exactly the same: 15.6kg.

We went back to Ruislip Lido, which we are all in agreement is totally brilliant. There is a small lake with lots of wild birds,

an enormous play park on a sandy beach, including sand pulley tools…

a water play ground, which was ideal in this hot weather,

a miniature railway, which Bedstemor took Ollie on, but Thomas wasn’t interested in, so you’ll have to look at last year’s blog post for photos, here,

and a kiosk to buy ice-cream, teas and coffees. The boys had a good play, Thomas happily bossing people around.

This is also all free! (well the train ride for Ollie and Bedstemor was £4.50).

Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, we have been soooooooooo busy! I am going to publish all the photos first, then I will go back and edit the post to fill in all the details…

So firstly, we went to Guildford castle, which was more interesting for the boys than I had expected… AND it only cost about £2.10 to be able to climb to the top and peer out (boys were free).

There were flowers. (This year they are celebrating the 70th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, hence the RAF circles).

There is a cage at the top, to stop people throwing themselves off in disgust at how rich everyone in Guildford is.

The castle was built by William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings in 1066, though the keep was build later in the 1130s.

There’s a small pond, with optional floating garbage.

On a different outing, we met up with my friends-since-childhood in Battersea Park. This was a really fantastic day. My friend Helen brought Pimms & Lemonade with loads of fruit and fresh mint, and also loads of food! (beat my marmite sandwiches anyway!)

Battersea Park has loads going on, and because it’s smaller than the big and famous London parks, everything is a short walk away, rather than a long one. There were fountains:

There was a band playing in the bandstand:
(Photo courtesy of Helen’s facebook uploads, without permission. (Shhhh!))

The boys got icecream:

They saw a BIG fish being caught:

Best of all, I got to spend time with friends that I hardly ever see, and who are essential for keeping me young, and up-to-date with all things modern. All for the price of a train ticket (kids still free).

OK, so yet another outing took us to Mizen’s Railway which is actually in Woking. Because Thomas can’t go near a railway line without saying “I _HATE_ trains!” we left him at home for this one.

Ollie, however, was in heaven. There was a lot to see, and a fire-engine to climb into, and of course, trains to ride.

A steam-powered one:

There is quite a lot of track, and they have strategically placed stuffed toys of all types around the route.

My favourite bit was the mini signal lights!

There was even a little bridge to stand on and watch trains. Ollie wanted to stay there all day.

A £3 ticket got each person 2 rides, and as it happened to be grandparent day, (or something like that) Bedstemor got a ride for free!

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Yet another outing took us to the paddling pool in Guildford. I blogged about this when we went last summer. It’s really a great place for kids, and totally free. Here’s last year’s post: Last year’s post about paddling pool

It also has one of the best playgrounds I’ve ever been to, including something where the kids can record and playback their voices, after turning a wheel 6 times to act as a dynamo to generate the electricity needed to power the electronics.

Then of course, while there is a lot of exciting places to go, it’s nice to stay home and enjoy the back garden. We have a smaller scale paddling pool, and Bedstemor and me can enjoy a GnT on the patio without having to worry about getting home!

We’ve been in Woking nearly a week and the boys are already settled into their new environment, and making themselves comfortable, well I think they’re comfortable… each to his own I guess.

We have been spending quite a lot of time at all the play parks around. There is a big playground in Woking Park. It takes us just under half an hour to walk there, which is good for keeping their walking stamina up, and they can manage it both there and home again, though there is always the opportunity of a lift home, if they get too tired. There is often an ice cream van parked there too, and the boys very graciously shared an ice cream together, which improved their joint chances of eating it before it melted all over themselves.

Thomas spends his entire time at the playground on the roundabout, chatting up the girls. Apparently he took one girl over to Aunty Jo to show-off his new cousin, and in the same breath said “Do you want to feel my muscles?”

Having an extra pair of hands at the park is really handy, and Jo was able to take a picture of the three of us.

On Monday we headed down to Boston to head for England. I was very excited to be able to meet up with an old schoolfriend on the way, who very conveniently married someone who’s folks live on the way to Boston.

We got to the airport where we were staying at the Hilton at Logan Airport. Ollie didn’t seem overly impressed. Hilton? Shmilton.

I, on the other hand, was quite impressed!

Now, every hotel corridor reminds me of ‘The Shining’, especially as we saw two small corn-blond boys staring silently at us in this one, though I thought it might be a bit dangerous to take a photo of them, so I made do with a photo of the corridor. I might start a “hotel-corridor collection”.

Overnight parking costs $30 (or $15 per hour!) and a burger at the in-house establishment cost $17. So we decided to venture out somewhere cheaper, and ended up at our new favourite “Chilis”, where it was fajita special night – two meals for £12.99, oh, and they do big drinks too!

Thomas displayed his true blogging heritage when I woke him up and told him there was a lovely sunrise to look at if he just looked out of the window. “I think you should take a picture of me in bed with the sunrise,” was the first thing he said to me that day.

The whole check-in business went very smoothly, with our boarding-passes being an image on my iphone. This was all good except at the gate, the stewardess said that it wasn’t a very efficient way to check-in 3 people, (I think because we would have to load each photo) but actually, she just took our names and it seemed quick enough to me!

Thankfully the plane ride was fine and the boys were really well-behaved. This was helped by good organisation, a near-constant supply of things to eat and some choice cartoons on my laptop to keep them quiet.

The main event of our visit was to meet our new cousin/niece, who certainly didn’t disappoint. She is all smiles and laughter, and particularly enjoys the blur which is Thomas buzzing around her at every opportunity.

I have lumped the above into one post because with all the football watching, and good friends, every weekend feels like a celebration.

The boys had to find their own things to do while I watched the Denmark game that started at 7.30am (ouch that’s early).

Luckily, on the weekends, the afternoon match-watching takes place outdoors, so our friends had a good idea to keep the kids occupied and set up a sprinkler:

After or during the weekend matches, there is usually a barbeque going, and after watching tense games, and therefore drinking quickly, there is much hilarity in the post-game digest:

I was building a bottle-organ out of all the empties.

Someone else benefits from all the barbeque spillages:

My birthday was a great day of football watching (and baby-cuddling):

We later watched the Germany game outdoors, with more BBQ. In fact, I didn’t have to cook at all on my birthday! We are having the real celebration on Saturday when David is back.

PHEW! That ends my posting-bonanza. Sorry it’s a lot to catch-up in one go!

Thomas continues to have his nose in a Tintin most of the time, and he continues with his “Secrets of Droon” series. Luckily there are hundreds of books in this series in the library, so it will be a while before we exhaust these.

The boys have taken more interest in the piano lately, perhaps because I haven’t been playing much.

Thomas has started trying to “compose” pieces:

I remember doing this as a kid. Thomas is helped by the fact that I have stuck the letter names of the notes all over the piano. This backfired a bit, when they got hold of the stickers when I wasn’t looking, and we had notes like “P” and “z” in the scale. Also, I noticed Thomas using an “h” on one of his compositions.

Ollie too has become more interested. I have been using what must now surely be the only way to teach solfège:

I have also been trying to maintain some old skills. When I worked on “The Bill” we seemed to be constantly fixing radios. The boys have a set of walkie-talkies, one of which wasn’t working properly.

I took it apart, but actually the problem is a mechanical one, which I tried to fix with blu-tack. The knob is not engaging with the pot properly (an unfortunate problem in any context). It held for a bit, but Ollie’s strong hands made short work of breaking it again.

Sorry for the long silence – I’ve been busy with all the football!

Last week I decided to have a bit of a sort out with all the boys clothes, I can’t believe we have so many! It was quite a long process, and the boys found ways to amuse themselves while I got on with it…

I gathered together most of the jumpers my mum has knitted over the last 4 years…

And I ended up with quite an amount to take to the charity shop:

It feels good to be getting rid of that much, and now I have to go through my own stuff!