Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while, there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the 120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure. Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog, but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

Posted by Wordmobi

Thankfully, Yuki’s dad is here staying with us and he was looking after the kids.. Yuki and I managed to sleep in until nearly 9am, which was nice.  In fact, we managed to sleep in until nearly 10am Friday and Saturday.   I can’t even begin to recall sleeping in that late when vast amounts of alcohol was the direct cause of it.  So can’t really complain much.

Anyhow, the day started with breakfast as usual.. then we sent the kids up stairs with their lao ye (grandfather in Chinese, it’s more specific then that, but trust me, you don’t want me to open that can of worms here and now ).  Yuki and I took to hiding all the stuff for the kids.. candy, chocolate eggs, bunny’s, all sorts of rubbish haha.  Then it was time to unleash the kids..

First, here is a quick tour of the hiding places of all the candy

Here’s a video of the “hunt” under way .. I love Emma’s comment at one point “I’ve got so many…”

Here are a few pics…

You can see all the pics and videos taken today by CLICKING HERE.

Enjoy the pics and videos.  I hope to do more blogging in the future.. I’ve been pretty slack at getting out updates, but life has been full of upheavals that… well… frankly made blogging a chore. 

Besides, I’m booked to attend WordCamp UK in July.  It’s the second year for the event and the first year I’m going … it’s a weekend full of meeting other bloggers, some who do it for a living but most because they enjoy it (I assume anyhow).   With enjoy luck this event will encourage me to blog more, or even just give me loads of ideas to make my blogging better (which frankly wouldn’t take much, I know I suck at blogging).

It was a good time there.  Emma, Lisa and Daddy went along with Yang, Oliver and Olivia.  Yuki stayed home to sleep as she was working today.  The kids all had a great time.  They made hats and decorated them with all sorts of bits and pieces that could be drawn on or glued on.  The kids also got to see Santa, sort of the main reason for going really.   They waiting in a very very short queue since we got there early, then sat with Santa and bent his ear for a few minutes no doubt giving a list longer then his arm of things they want.  Emma was actually quite quiet, she really want sure what to make of Santa… looked like she might actually cry but managed to get some courage and spoke to him haha.

(More pics on Flickr – CLICK HERE)

After we got home from this it was time to get dressed up in their party outfits for an evening at a birthday party for Ted, Emma’s classmate that turned 3.  Sorry, no pics from that

[flickr video=3043417693]

Check out all the pics and videos taken at the pool today .. CLICK HERE

We’ll have pictures later today once the kids get home from school, I’ll update this entry then.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

EMMA

Video of Emma getting her "cake" (Cup cakes)

You can see the rest of the pics in the gallery by clicking on any of the photos, it will take you to Our Flickr Gallery.

I decided to take the kids to the Linton Zoo, south of Cambridge.  We’ve been there a few times before.  It’s a nice little local zoo.  We heard a talk about the tigers they have, the youngest one which is just over 2 years old will be sent to Sweden for breeding.  Apparently it’s quite common for zoos to pimp out their animals for breeding purposes

Here are some of the pics from today, see the all the pics at Linton Zoo Pics

From this year Lisa has to wear uniforms to school.  That’s a good thing.. uniforms are pretty cheap and it means no fighting with her on what she can wear for the day   Well she can decide between the 2 official uniforms of the school so it’s limited choices.

You can see the rest of the pics here: Ready for School

Sorry, no pics from the school.. it was was chucking it down with rain today and couldn’t be bothered.

We kept telling Emma she’ll get spots too and she had keep looking for them and tell us as soon as she found her spots.  The day they came, she came running to tell us she’s finally got spots.  About 2 days later she stopped liking them

Emma can’t quite say “chicken pox”, it comes out sounding more like “chin chin box”.

All in all both of the kids have come through this pretty easy.  Lisa has only one spot that was on the verge of getting infected but I don’t think it really did.  It’s quite large and still visible, but it is going away slowly.   Emma so far only has one that looks like it’s going the same way as Lisa’s, but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

I’m glad both have gotten it now and it’ll be clear before they go back to school in early Sept.  It also means we won’t have to deal with this ever again.

The weather couldn’t have been better for the day.. it was a little overcast, but that kept the heat down which was good.

(click to see full sized images)

You can see the rest of the pics taken yesterday by CLICKING HERE

Click to read on ….

It was a great day out, the kids had such a great time.  We were in the “Diving Beetles” group.  The first thing we did was pond dipping.  This involved using nets on the end of sticks.  The kids (with help from the adults) swept the nets through the water then tipped the nets into pans filled with water.  In Lisa’s first dip she got a large snail and a couple small bugs.  We also managed to get a pretty good sized newt.  The Wicken Fen staff managed to fish out a massive newt that was about 3 or 4 times the size of the one we had.

The second “adventure” was the mini-beast hunt.  This had the kids looking under logs for whatever sorts of things they could find.  There were worms and a few other bugs to find as well.   The second part of this was to use large nets on sticks, sweeping them through the long grass to see what they could catch.  There wasn’t much here as there was already another group that did this before us so everything was already scared off

The final event of the day was a short walk along the spectacular boardwalk they have that winds through the Fen.  The boardwalk itself is interesting, it’s constructed entirely from a plastic material that has been completely made from recycled materials.  The walk on the boardwalk was a guided tour by one of the Wicken Fen staff.  The kids were given pencils and a sheet of paper with several animals, birds and other critters that are found in the Fen, they had to find these.  This was made easy in that they only had to look for the wooden cut outs of the creatures that were left on the boardwalk for them.  The guide would then tell us about these and give other info about the Fen. 

It’s a great place and I think we will go back again one day to explore the boardwalk and other paths that wander through the Fen.

You can easily get to our Flickr page by going to:

http://flickr.uk-experience.com 

Here’s a new video of Emma, and more can be found in The Kids Collection on Flickr.

I also shoved all the pics from Mull up on Flickr as well, they are here

Isle of Mull – 2008 album.

The girls are both off school now until April 7 for the Easter/half term break.  The school is putting on an Easter Egg hunt party on April 26 and the girls will be going to that with their school mates and Yuki.  It should be good fun for them, hopefully Yuki will get some pics and we’ll post them to the blog.

Check out the other pictures and the video in the GALLERY

Ok, so her words aren’t good but she does keep up pretty well with the song and knows when to come in and and stop too haha that’s better then some singers today

Anyhow, here’s the video (wait for it to load…)

Download Emma singing

You can see her reaching for the phone from time to time .. she’s pushing buttons so the screen back light will come on again so she can watch the equalizer jumping around to the music. She also seems to have gotten a wedgie or something and is trying to get something out from under her butt.

When I got home and asked Emma how school was she said good.. haha but then again she says that about a lot of things so it’s hard to really tell what she means.

We’ll post more news about Emma’s progress in pre-school as time goes on…