Behind Again

It seems to me that for the past couple of months I keep getting behind on writing blog posts and then doing a big catch up. This is another of those. Oh well, better late than never I suppose. My scavenger hunt for October will also be late (surprise, surprise) and I haven't managed to get them all either.

So last week was half term. Monday was spent with my sister for her birhtday, Tuesday G and the children went to Salisbury and Wednesday morning we spent indoors playing Just Dance on the Wii. I do enjoy that. In the afternoon we went to the local duck pond and fed the ducks, walked through mud and puddles and the children ran around for a while too which always pleases me to see.



I became slightly obsessed with taking photos of all the different berries but won't bore you with all of them, just these blackberries

and these 'traffic light' ones.

Thursday was miserable weather wise and was spent indoors. T was off colour all week as he hadn't gone to school on the last day of term and we all got a bit grouchy with each other, so let's move swiftly on to Friday when we did our annual Hallowe'en trail through a country park. Which we followed with a trip to the garden centre to have a look at their Christmas decorations and enjoy a hot chocolate in the newly opened restaurant. Very nice indeed, will definitely be going back there again.

On Saturday G and I had ANOTHER night away! Get us, 2 in one month! It won't happen again now for AGES. This one had been arranged a while ago. Friends of ours are nearing the end of the adoption assessment process and felt a bit of hands on experience would be good. So they offered, we accpeted and off we toddled to Reading. Neither of us had visited this town before and G was in charge of booking a hotel and found a good deal so that's why we ended up there.

We wandered around the town centre for a couple of hours and during this time came across a meeting of a few troupes of Morris Men which we stood and watched for a while. I love the sound of all the bells and the wood when they knock the sticks together. There is probably a more technical name for that!

G's back was starting to give him a bit of pain so he went back to the hotel and I carried on looking around. I could have stood in front of the John Lewis window for ages, it looked so festive.

The next morning we took a different route back to the station and found a lovely restored Victorain style park

which had this magnificent lion in the middle.

We also found the town hall and art gallery building which is stunning.

Really I should have done a bit of research into Reading before we headed off but as I explained in the last post I have been preoccupied with work, more than I realised, plus T had another MRI scan on Monday morning. I know his doctor says they are just routine but I can't help worrying all the same. Well it's part of the job description isn't it?!

Monday afternoon saw me sat on the floor tracing and cutting out bat shapes from black card and then sellotaping small chocolate bars and fizzy sweets inside and then folding the bat wings over and securing with another piece of sellotape. Talk about leaving it to the last minute. I saw this idea ages ago on Pinterest, but they got done. I made 35 of these. In total I had nearly 80 trick or treat callers. Thankfully I had other sweets but in the end I did run out and had to put on a sign on the door to say 'sorry sweets all gone.'

I took a quick snap of both T and S before they went out too. T went with friends and S went with G. The mask T wore was really scary, just little holes for his eyes. S was much more excited this year than last and was very keen to get out there.

Finally I must include our 30 minute craft project from last week. Another idea from Pinterest, mummy lights. Empty glass jars wrapped in toilet roll with black card shapes for the faces and tea lights popped inside.. S's is on the left, mine in the middle and T's on the right. We were very pleased with them.