Weekend away

We went camping this weekend. It was good 🙂

Campsite was very well ordered, with good size, flat, grassy pitches, nicely laid out, and lots of little hedges between them. We were just slightly away from the main body of the group, which was a shame for the putting up, putting down sessions, but otherwise no major hardship, given that the beans had their big tent, complete with a greenhouse heater, making for very cosy evening chats 🙂

On the way up we stopped off at Norwich Camping, mainly to buy new camping crockery. We treated ourselves to an Outwell Calablash Picnic Rucksack. Rather more expensive than I would usually consider, but oh so beautifully made. And where we live we do a lot of picnicking now 🙂 I also considered it to be my consolation prize for having decided against buying a new tent.

Tim splurged too, on a hookup kit. We’ve camped for 6 years without hookup, without me ever realising that it would hugely improve the camping experience for him (apart from the coffee, I knew that an electric kettle would make the whole coffee thing better, but hadn’t realised that that wasn’t the whole of it) The campsite was wifi enabled as well, so with his laptop along for the ride, he was very happy.

Once our stop off was done, we were only half an hour from the site. Arrived and pitched the tent quickly and easily – do like tunnel tents for that. Getting set up took a little while longer, but got back into the swing of things over the weekend.

Didn’t see much of the other children – there was a playground complete with sandpit and they pretty much lived in there. Small hooked up with Nic’s Monster and Teeny which is the first time I’ve seen him play with them – I was really pleased that he had such a good time. Very often he kind of bounces around on the edge of groups and doesn’t quite manage to slide in, but I think there was a small enough number and a central enough attraction in the form of the sandpit that he managed to slot in quite well for once 🙂 Of course this wasn’t without its drawbacks and there was some misunderstanding over a fort at some point which led to him coming back to the tent wanting to get his money so that he could go to the shop and buy sweets to apologies to Monster for hitting him. We offered cookies for the group instead, but I was so impressed that he’d even realised that apologising and giving a gift could be a good thing – a huge step forward for him.

Big had a great time too, lots of girls around her age. They even enjoyed a walk in the woods without any adults, though some confusion was caused when Marcus and I were giving contradictory instructions to our offspring over the same frequency to the separate walkie talkies 😆 Turned out that the rest of the kids should have been listening to C as she knew where she was, even when most of the others weren’t quite sure. Although Big did tell her that she believed her, which earned brownie points with Michelle 🙂

Their C gave me a wake up call too. At one point Big was standing next to her pointing at something I couldn’t see and getting quite stressed with me for not seeing it. C said quite calmly to Big – there’s a caravan in the way. She could put herself in my place and realise that from my perspective I couldn’t see it, while Big just couldn’t translate herself like that. Need to do more work on that obviously. (Neither of my children can do the remote places thing – to the extent that if I point at something, Small has to come over and sight down my arm to work out what I’m pointing at.)

Lovely evenings spent with Beans, one with Fishes and added Zoe and family.

And although I had much more to say, that will have to do as the baby wants my attention now. I may add more later.