Park, Park, Park & Park

Bella and I went to parent/teacher conferences at Sheringdale last night for both of the kids.  They're doing fine in their respective classes, and the school is doing a good job in educating them. The quotes we walked away with were: Mrs Somers on D:  "She responds really well to learning letters and numbers." Mrs Lambert on C:  "He shows a genuine interest in learning about the world around him."

At church today, we had an ash Wednesday-type service- they blessed ashes and crossed them on peoples' foreheads. Joy the priest did a sermon geared towards the kids, who then dutifully lined up for their ash-ing.  C waited patiently, but then backed out at the last minute.  He's always been resistant to blessings.  Finally, he did get one with Bella, but wiped it off soon after the holy application. During lunch afterwards, we had paprika on the table to accompany the lentil dish.  C decided it was appropriate to ash himself with the paprika as atonement.

I wish I could put this in D's passport.  This is awesome- which is her new word.

We ventured north across the Thames today to see Godfather Andy , Sophie and son Charlie.  The Hurlingham has a fantastic playground and equally good cakes for tea time.

And then the crowning achievement was Longleat Safari Park (Thanks Jane!).  This was superb. The first half of the experience is driving around the grounds seeing the animals.  Lions, Tigers, wolves, rhinos all ambling at their leisure near the cars.  Pretty impressive. The thing that really got C and D excited was when we drove through the monkey area.  They have 50+ rhesus monkey s running everywhere, who then jump on your car and try to remove souvenirs from your car. And then indoors, the kids got to hold big snakes.  C insists this is a rock python . And this is D just after handing the rock python back to the handler!

Next up was Avebury - A site like Stonehenge of large rocks propped up in the ground.  The difference is that you can touch these and walk among them.

We've just arrived back from a few days out of London.  First stop was Salisbury, with a tour of the Cathedral and a run up Old Sarum - the hillfort nearby.

In the proportion series- see here and way back here - we have an added instalment below. Top C, Dad in the middle and then D in the pink.

If you are so inclined, you can now view this blog easily on your mobile.  With the help of blogger, I've set things so that it works simply with any mobile phone in the world. Same address name- nothing extra to type in. Pictures, vignettes and the odd bit about Mum and Dad. Anywhere. Anytime.