Skip to main content

Two toddlers and a tent

As I mentioned in my last post, we came back from our family summer holiday a couple of weeks ago now. Whilst it was nice to spend time away from staring at a computer screen every day, this years holiday came with its own challenges.


We spent the first week in Sidmouth, as always, for the annual folk festival, sharing a house with my parents, my brothers and his wife and young son, and my mother-in-law. This year there was added complication as my Dad has spectacularly broken his foot, so not only did we have two buggies, we also had a wheelchair, zimmer frame and crutches to contend with. And if everyone had just done their fair share of washing up and been considerate of others, it would have been a lovely week. Sadly that wasn't always the case. Add on a musical line-up that wasn't the best ever and it wasn't the great festival we're use to. We will have to think very hard as to whether we go again next year. Nevertheless, the girls seemed to enjoy themselves.


Grandad in his "buggy", Jess in her buggy!
We headed from Sidmouth to Cornwall and a small campsite just outside of Fowey/St. Austell. We met up with my brother-in-law and his family and set up camp together. The camp site was fabulous, the tent went up easily and generally the weather was good. However, Jessica decided that her main aim of the week was to escape. We bought so many windbreakers to try and cut off all escape routes and she would still find a route through the guy ropes and out. Having used up a lot of patience and tolerance the previous week, this got quite wearing.

The kids had an absolute ball being on holiday together
Our trips out were good fun. We spent a day at Tintagel Castle - the hills and steps nearly killed me!


We went on a boat trip round Fowey harbour in the glorious sunshine.

We visited the Eden Project. Twice. I was blown away by it. They have a temporary space exhibition at the moment, and the girls were totally fascinated by it.
This was the West Australian Garden and I just loved the colours
And we visited St. Mawes... Bedruthen steps...

This is what the Cornish coast is all about!
...And Padstow. But we forgot that Jess is only 15 months old, and too much time in the car was starting to get to her. So after she's screamed around the narrow lanes of Cornwall, and escaped the tents 5 times in half an hour we called time, and headed home a few days early.

Proof that sh does sleep...
Much as I love my girls, it was great to hand them over to the child minder on the Friday, and to have a dinner out where the only person I had to worry about kicking off was my husband. And he's generally well behaved.

In between the frustrations we had a wonderful time and made some fabulous memories, but I think the holiday will go down in family legend as the one Jess made us come home from early!

Comments

Your story brings back memories! A holiday with my parents, brother, sister-in-law with a baby and my two babies!!! Lots of frustration, but also nice times. One decision....never again, so we can stay friends!!
Sounds less like a holiday and more like a test of endurance and patience! Bet you were glad to have everyone back in their own beds!

Popular posts from this blog

365 Quilt Challenge 2016 [A finish]

I can't believe I've just typed that heading! When I made the block for January 1st 2016 I could not have imagined the journey this quilt would have taken me on. So make yourselves comfortable and grab a cup of tea, because this blog post may get lengthy! I'd seen the 365 Quilt Challenge on Facebook. I think every quilter on Facebook must have been aware of it. Loads of my friends had signed up and it kept popping up as a "Page you might like" thing. In the end, in November 2015, I joined the group, had a poke round. Decided it wasn't for me. One of the things that really put me off were the fabric requirements: you needed x amount of dark dark fabric, x amount of medium dark fabric, x amount of dark medium, medium, light medium, light, background.... I just couldn't get my head round those requirements. I'd looked at the mock ups on the wesbite and couldn't bring myself to pick a colour. I put it to the back of my mind. But I had obvious...

Hidden Agenda [A Finish]

This is very possibly my favourite ever finish - I know I've said that in the past, but this one is going to be hard to beat. This time last year, I attended a day long lecture/workshop with Tula Pink and it was inspiring. Having not really loved her fabrics in the past (but loved her patterns), I suddenly saw them in a new light, linked with my 2018 new year's resolution to try more fussy cutting). Fast forward 8 months and I confess that my Tula stash has expanded quite a lot. I found some UK shops with older ranges of fabric, splurged on a few destashes and found the odd piece of her fabric already in my stash. The plan was always (and remains) to make a Smitten quilt, but I'm well aware that I have plenty of fabric to make other projects as well! So when I saw the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle, this fabric sprung instantly to mind.... and we all know I love a rainbow! And what could be better than rainbowfied Tula? I was ably assisted by my friend Ti...

February Embroidery Along [A Finish]

I've really been enjoying my embroidery this year, after not doing very much last year. One of the challenges I set myself at the start of the year was to learn to colour tint my fabric before adding the embroidery - I love buying the pre-printed panels, but I'd like to do this myself as well. And the opportunity to learn this arose in February. Meg Hawkey of Crab Apple Hill Studio hosted a stitchalong to celebrate National Embroidery Month, and the first step was colour your fabric. I bought the pencils she advises,  the blending stumps, something called fabric extender and the pigma pen. And I gave it a go. My first attempt ended badly. Because the one thing I didn't buy was a new, clean paintbrush. So when I came to add the fabric extended, it went all bleary and muddy as, despite cleaning the paintbrush thoroughly, it obviously wasn't clean enough. It was unsalvageable so I started again, and I was so much happier with the results. The practice piece was, in...

Labels

Show more

Archive

Show more