Newbury Show and back to pre-school!

Emily started back at preschool 2 weeks ago and is loving every minute. She gets quite upset on the days she doesn't go and asks when she can go all the time! She is now doing a wednesday morning, friday morning and all day tuesday. She stays for lunch with her Dora the Explorer lunch box and then in the afternoon they have been going out for walks and getting really muddy. Every time I collect her on a tuesday she is in her spare clothes as they have been jumping in puddles!

The theme at pre-school this term is fairy tales and Emily shocked all the teachers by reciting the exact story of Goldilocks. We do not read this story much at home - we have it but only read it about once a month and she was almost word perfect, the teachers said she was brilliant! They have flagged her up as a "bit special" in that she is more advanced than all the other children of her age. They make notes on it and pass the notes onto the school but they think she is much wiser than her 3 1/2 years!! Unfortunately Emily is signed up to Great Shefford school for next September but we have just heard a friend of ours has pulled their child out as it is not up to standard, so I am going to go and have a proper look around it then suss out the other schools in the area if needs be. It will be a real pain if she can't go to the local school as it is easy to get to - any other school will be a 20 minute round trip twice a day but it would be worth it if she is getting the best education.

We went to the Royal Berkshire County Show on saturday. The weather was amazing and Wayne was in a golf championship so I packed up the kids and a picnic and off we went. I have been a couple of times and we took Emily 2 years ago but she was only small then. We saw sheep, pigs, cows, horses, ducks, chickens and loads of other animals like Llamas and Hawks! We looked round all the stalls, there were crafts, food, clothes all sorts! We had our picnic and Emily had an ice cream then Emily went on a few fairground rides that were there and then I took my sleepy children home! The weather has been great this weekend so we have been in the garden a lot, unfortunately I am suffering with a terrible cold, possibly bought on by a very very long but brilliant day at Alton Towers last sunday!!

Long time no see!

It has been a very very long time since I have posted anything on here so I will try to be better organised from now on! We have had a really busy summer with trips to the zoo, days out, seeing friends and finally a camping trip! Our first ever camping experience as a family! We have a huge tent which Wayne and I managed to set up in just under an hour! We went to the south coast between Swanage and Weymouth and the weather was fantastic. We were so lucky. We set the children up in their own "pods" in the tent, both on blow up beds and crossed our fingers that they would sleep ok. Emily messed around a bit but they were both sound asleep by 9pm every night and then woke around 7am the next day - perfect! We went to the beach every day, Swanage, Weymouth and Bournemouth. We went to Monkey World, Portland Bill and had a BBQ. We also realised that we were missing a few vital bits of camping equipment like a table and realised that if we intended to cook a full breakfast or anything more complex than a pot noodle we would need more than a small gas burner!

We stopped at the Bournemouth Air show on the way home and spent a scorching afternoon on the beach watching the Red Arrows and various other planes pass over us. We had a paddle in the sea and both children were completely freaked out when the new plane the "Vulcan" took a very noisy pass over our heads! We also spotted the site for the Olympics 2012 sailing venues in Weymouth.

On a educational note Tom can now say about 10 words and Emily can write her name, Tom's name and mummy and daddy! She can also tell you what letter most things start with and says "T" is for table and "curly c" is for car!!