Always like to finish off a long day

by disinfecting a car seat :/ (Anyone with a vomit aversion may wish to skim parts of this post).

Yes, Katy, I got the job.

And the rest of the day? Well, it started far too early. Having told Big last night that we needed to be up and out quickly this morning, she got up at 6.30 and refused point blank to go back to bed, waking everyone else up in the process. Tim got up with the kids and I turned over til the alarm went off…and then slept through the alarm and didn’t get up til 8.20. This was not conducive to leaving at 9.30 :/ and I had lots of those weird half dreams that you can’t quite disentangle to work out whether they are reality or not….

despite this, I excavated the kitchen, sorted out two children, got washing in, put washing on and made sandwiches, and still left the house only shortly after 10.

Took two *hours* to find Coldspring Mill. Not impressed. They don’t appear to believe in signs in that part of Yorkshire, apart from the occasional brown touristy one indicating that you are approaching Bronte Country. Hm, helpful. And if I hadn’t had an A-Z I think I’d have given up and gone home. Well, maybe not, given that Kirsty was also navigating the lesser signposted areas as well….

First sign that all might not be well with Small was in the cafe. We sat down for a drink before properly exploring the wool cellar, and he downed a good percentage of his very cold squash, then sort of hiccoughed and brought some of it back. He seemed to be fine though, not hot, didn’t want anything to eat, but he had had two bananas in the car, so I wrote it off as him just being overheated from being in the car so long. We had a lovely chat with the two ladies on the next table – one of them asked us to guess how old the other one was. I *hate* that game, but I would have been safe to say somewhere between 60 and 70 which was my best guess – she was 97. Fantastic. Lots of talk about children, and Small was lovely. They didn’t even blink at the idea of home education – no hint of a question about socialisation. They wanted to know about P.E. – but not to criticise, so that they could talk about teaching their children ice skating.

Then we went to the wool cellar.

Anyone who is not an avid collector of anything will struggle to understand the emotions we experienced in there. It was a bit good. In fact, it’s absolutely stunning. I will take photos of the stashes just as soon as I reunite camera and charged batteries, but I have a stash, Kris has a stash, Big has started a stash, and I believe Kirsty bought for herself and Joyce. And we *easily* saved the cost of petrol on the journey. Actually, I was a bit green to discover I could have bought something to do the wedding shrug for a fraction of the cost I’ve paid to get it from the states. Ah well, I’ll know better next time 😉

The other point to note is that next time, we’re going without kids. We’ll share one car, which will cut down on the petrol costs, and a couple of someone elses will be pressed into childcare service. We really couldn’t give the place the reverence it deserved with four small ppl bouncing off the walls. 🙂

So eventually we tore ourselves away from the woolshop, and headed off to Cliffe Castle so that we could call the day educational as well 🙂 Must blog Small’s newest word – as Kirsty pulled out of the carpark ahead of us, he was waving and saying “Bye, bye, bye, bye….” He realy does know how to do cute that boy 🙂

The museum place is equipped with aviaries and a cafe, so we explored them, then we found a playground and they all ran around frantically, and after that we went into the museum, which went down very well as well. There’s a room full of puzzles and optical illusions – Big particularly enjoyed the Tower of Hanoi, which I remember from my interview for WGHS. She got the hang of it really quickly.

And after that, Kirsty headed for home, and I set off to see my dad. With hindsight, I should have rung and cancelled this, but it’s been a while since we dropped by, and seemed a shame to miss the opportunity. Got there, shoved some food under the grill, spent a while cleaning up the living room floor where Small threw up again. 🙁

Big ate, we set off for home. And stopped on the way for more cleaning up. Hence the disinfecting of car seat.

Hohum.