As you probably noticed

or maybe not, given that two blog posts appeared anyway, we’ve been away for a week. Nearly a week. We went last Saturday, only a few hours later than planned (I brought a bit of work home on Friday night, that somehow expanded to take 8 hours, which meant even working Friday evening and getting up early on Sat morning, I didn’t get done til lunchtime). But then we got away, and headed first of all for the Beans, where Big made happy noises and disappeared, and Small poddled about as he does. We adults drank tea, and later wine, and chatted lots, and it was lovely.

Sunday followed much the same pattern, along with a bit of crafting in the middle to focus attention away from the whinging of overly tired children

Monday we got away bright and early in order to let Chris clear off to wherever it was he was clearing off to and moments later a plaintive wail from the back of the car made it clear that we’d left Big’s doll behind. This was not a good thing. We stopped and called Chris but he’d already departed as well, so we made tentative arrangements to call again at the end of the week and proceeded towards Ely.

Ah, hang on, I forgot Tesco’s. While packing for the holiday I discovered a small problem with Big’s clothing – precisely that in fact. So we went to Tesco’s and I headed for the sale rack, and grabbed her a couple of skirts, three tops, 5 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of tights and a pair of trousers, all for under £30. Quite impressed by that. Then we also splashed out on a dvd each (with a bogof on Disney DVDs, it wasn’t that expensive either ) although somehow we got through the entire week without watching my Calendar Girls!

So, then on to Ely. We had some lunch in a lovely little cafe above one of those terribly quaint gift shops, and then Tim headed off to find grass for Small to run on while Big and I hunted for fabric to make dresses for our yarn dolls in the charity shops, remarkably unsuccessfully. Walking back to the car we were going to pass the cathedral, so we went across for a look at it, and then saw signs for the Stained Glass Museum. Big has been showing interest in stained glass recently, so we split our forces, and I took her into the museum while Tim and Small went for a walk.

They had a quiz sheet for children in the museum, that consisted of a sheet of numbered stickers, and a sheet of numbered questions. We pottered round the museum and each time we found a window we had a sticker of, added it to the question sheet and answered the question. Time really flew – I thought we’d been in there about 30 minutes when apparently it had been an hour when Tim texted to say if we were having fun keep going, and we were another 45 minutes after that. There was a light box to make patterns on, and a window specially designed with textured glasses for feeling, and more textured glass pieces for doing a rubbing to make your own stained glass picture. All in all it suited Big perfectly – I’d thought it was a bit pricey at £6 for the two of us, but I think we really got our money’s worth. Apparently they will do group educational visits so for anyone in the area, it might be worth adding it to your list of possible venues

Outside again, we met up with Tim and Small and headed back to the car, with a short detour as we passed a man attempting to take a picture of a building. Small likes cameras, and they are obviously meant to be aimed at him, so despite my embarrassed encouragement to move along, he stood there smiling up at the camera, squarely in the way until the guy gave in, took a picture and then showed him the result. Can’t help wondering what his holiday shots look like now – lots of piccies of architectural wonders, and then a small blond smily boy somewhere in the middle

And with that, we clambered back into the car, and headed off for the second part of our holiday at centerparcs.