“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart…”

“…I am, I am, I am.”

England experienced somewhat of a heat wave the other week and, lucky me, I was off work and on holiday with my family in Wiltshire, staying in Longleat Centre Parcs.

It was lovely.

It was so very hot that it was actually rather difficult to do much – which I personally regarded as an added benefit! CB and I don’t own bikes so we rented a couple, and went on a cycle ride all around the park most days. The ride took less than an hour (unless we parked up and explored some of the sites) but we would come back to the lodge absolutely dripping in sweat. Yum.

There were nine of us in the group in total, seven adults and two toddlers – my mother, my father, my sister and her daughter, my brother and my sister in law and their son. Oh, plus CB and yours truly. So, as you can imagine, there were few quiet moments, multiple ‘smelly nappy’ moments, and lots of silly family jokes.

It was particularly nice for me to spend some time with the niblings now they’re walking and chattering away. I don’t attract or keep their attention much when competing with their parents but, seeing how exhausted my brother and sisters were, I think I got the best of both worlds!

We enjoyed the ‘sub-tropical swimming paradise’ and all the flumes, had a couple of games of bowling - one of which I won! (What was that? Did I have the barriers up? Err…I don’t remember…….) and, after some baby handprints gave my sister the bug, we did some pottery painting which is a personal favourite activity of mine. My sister painted a fantastic mug for her partner (and, just between you and me, I was green with envy at how good she was and how nicely it turned out, as it was her first time pottery painting) CB painted a plate with a sort of aerial view of Tekapo in New Zealand which is our combined happy-place (blog entry here), and I painted a series of cartoon monsters on a bowl I intend to use for yarn.

This is CB’s plate:

And this is my yarn bowl:

 

 

It was the perfect way to unwind after my last week at work and to prepare for the big move up North before starting the new job. And it was the perfect way to spend some quality time with the fam. 

Soppy Philly.



*Quote from Sylvia Plath