We went to visit Grandpa and Jo for a few days at their new house in Southbourne. It just so happened Georgina was visiting for a few days too, so it was really nice to spend some time with all of them. We had plenty of fun on the beach, rode on a steam train and a diesel train, a chain boat ferry and visited corfe castle. Everyone's favourite part was the beach, and Matt made the comment that his sand castle was probably the best thing he'd ever made, right be...

Today we decided to take a family bike ride. The problem is that our bikes are knackered (I haven't ridden mine in seven years and it's been stored outside), so we hired some. I pictured the day; beautiful, sunny, a picnic by the adventure trail followed by a leisurely pedal around the stanwick lakes sculpture trail. It was going to be beautiful. Maybe we'd do it every Exeat and holiday; maybe I'd even take the kids without Matt and do it sometimes whilst he's at...

Today we went to a vicious venoms and poisonous parasites workshop at centre of the cell in London. My goodness it was good. Mamie, Ruby and Christine joined us, whilst daddy and Lila stayed home. The day began with a train journey into London, or should I say Luton, where I got kicked off the train for having a cheap ticket. Turns out I'm not allowed to ride on virgin trains if I have an FCC ticket, much to Christine's amusement. So we got into St Pancras ...

Today we had to travel to Nottingham to pick up a new train track for Will that we won on ebay. It's a long trip for two little ones, so we took our time and broke it up. We stopped to look at a canal, and a park, some windmills and for lunch and a run around in a play barn. Once we had the track we stopped in on some friends and spent a lovely afternoon playing with them and going for a walk. Unfortunately both kids fell asleep in the car for a lot longer th...

We scored some free tickets to Woburn safari park this week, that had to be used before new years, so we decided to go today. We had a great time, despite appalling weather, because there's loads to do inside and out. In fact, despite being there the entire day (seriously, we were the last car to leave and the ranger had to kick us out!) we didn't get around everything. Lila's favourites were no surprise - anything fluffy which could be petted. Weirdly she wa...