Saturday 30 March 2013

A mini holiday

Farewell horrible carpet!  The kids and I went to Bristol for a few days leaving Rob to sand the floorboards in the living room.
What a relief to get rid of it.
We had a great time in Bristol.  This will be brief, I didn't have internet access all week and I'm doing this quickly in between making dinner and doing the laundry!

We went to M Shed, a social history museum/gallery in the habourside.  
Later we visited our friends Kate and Tom on their dutch barge on the Avon.  In the old days I lived next door to them on a narrowboat in Brentford, and we played Uno and drank unfeasible amounts of wine.  Now we drink tea and eat cake!  Kate did some face painting, Betsy chose a devil face, Freddie wanted to be a vampire.
The next day I offered the kids three places to go - the zoo (I'd suggested it before I'd known quite how cold the week turned out to be), the aquarium or At Bristol (an amazing looking science museum and my preferred option).  Predictably, they chose the zoo.  Even though the weather was entirely arctic.

It is a great zoo. You can feed the rainbow lorikeets. They have some animatronic dinosaurs dotted around at the moment.  We totally froze though.  It was snowing.  The cafe was full so we ate outside.  This *wasn't* funny!  We lasted 3 hours before I decided enough was enough.  

On Thursday we went to the town museum, meeting up with Kate, Mo and baby Sid.
In the afternoon we went to a very very cool playground, but only for an hour because it was still stupidly cold.
We came home yesterday to a lovely lovely wooden floor.  Yay!
Today Freddie and Rob have been to see The Croods with Jarvis and Tor, Betsy has played with Erin, and Meg has been to the dump and the shops with Rob.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to go on an Easter egg hunt at Ashridge (complete with coats, hats and scarves.  In April.  Have I moaned about the weather much?!).

Sunday 24 March 2013

Crystals and snow

Crazy unseasonable weather at the moment.  We woke up to snow yesterday, not half as much as further north, but enough to play in.
An igloo for an owl!
Meg went out in the snow for a little while but came back after she fell into a freezing puddle.  She preferred to do play dough and marble run in the warm.
The salt and sugar crystals experiment has been very successful.  The sugar water produced nothing, but the salt solution has been fascinating.
After 1 day:
After 2 days:

After 3 days:
After 4 days:
After 6 days:
Very cool.  I'd love to know why salt did so much, and sugar so little.  

Thursday 21 March 2013

Egg results!

A quick post, it's late and I want my dinner.
The eggs look great.  I was surprised that the beetroot dyed them more brown than red/purple.  The blue ones are my favourite.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

First day of Spring

Spring, but pretty bloody cold.  The kids had pony riding this morning.  Betsy decided she'd like to have a go, the first time in weeks.  She looked so ridiculously happy on DeeDee!  She'd stopped as she said she found part of the lesson too hard, but today it was ok.  Meg had been looking forward to it all week, and Freddie really enjoyed trotting.  We'd stopped on the way to buy carrots and apples, and fed the horses after the lesson.
After lunch Freddie and I made some natural dyes to dye some duck eggs.  I chopped the beetroot, Freddie dismantled the red cabbage, and he measured out the turmeric.  He added vinegar, salt and water, and we simmered them for half an hour or so (I used this tutorial and used duck eggs as they are white).  We're all looking forward to seeing the colours of the eggs once they've soaked for a while.
Later we played some games: chess, sort-of-kind-of-backgammon (not really backgammon at all!), and shut the box.  Freddie beats me at shut the box every time.
Now Fred is at Jarvis's, Meg is watching Peppa Pig, Betsy is making a space rocket, and I'm excited about going to the cinema with my friend this evening!