Thorndon Park Walk

This weekend we headed over to Thorndon Park for our weekly change of scenery and to get out in the fresh air as a family. As with Lake Meadows last week, it was fairly busy but everyone was staying alert and social distancing. 

We had a lovely long walk around the lake and exploring the woodland area and the kids all found a tonne of falled tree trunks etc to climb all over. The only downside this week was that the cafe was closed and therefore no ice-cream.

Holly and Brandon doing some tree climbing.

Brandon was almost stuck here for a minute with a stump dangerously close to his undercarriage!

An unusual hollowed half pipe type of tree trunk.

The insides have turned to saw dust.

Josh chilling on a tree (and yes we made him wear a cap as he still hasn't had a hair cut!).

Family walk time exploring South Thorndon.

Holly found this bridge with swamp land either side to get to the other side of the lake.

Ready built den for the kids to play in.

Didn't see any fish but plenty of bird life out on the lake.

The Thorndon lake fish statue.

Trouble is looming.

We left Tina behind and went off to explore some deeper parts of the woodland.

Luckily no trip to A&E but not through lack of trying by Joshua!!!!!

Holly exploring new trails. 

Look closely at the bottom of this hollowed out tree - its a Holly Tree!

As always we took a football for entertainment and it very nearly went in the lake on several occasions. 

Tina giving Holly a helping hand.

You are never too old to climb around on a tree trunk.

My life, my world, the reason I live - right here in this picture.

Holly and Brandon enjoying themselves at Thorndon.

Holly Plays some Geomag

Many years ago my Mum bought Joshua and Brandon this fantastic little magnetic building toy called Geomag. I had completely forgotten about the sets which were tucked away in the boys rooms until me and Holly stumbled across them today.

Me and Holly had loads of fun playing with the Geomag and she was fascinated with the way they different parts of the set either attracted or repelled other parts away. My Mum never got to meet Holly, but she would have been so proud to have seen how much fun Holly was having and to see the gift she bought for the boys still being used. It almost brought a tear to my eye seeing Holly playing with the set that my Mum bought for her grand kids.

Me and Holly had hours of fun playing with the Geomag set which my Mum bought for the boys years ago.

This was the largest of the builds which Holly made today. Once complete she even started adding Lego figures in to the structure.

Teaching Joshua some DIY

We have survived another week of home schooling and now it is bank holiday weekend and half term. To start the long weekend today was spent mostly doing jobs such as cleaning the house, cutting the grass, cleaning the car, cleaning the hot tub filters etc. In between all of that I had one little DIY job which needed doing and I decided to teach Joshua and let him do it instead of me. At some point he has got to learn to do some basic DIY and someone has got to teach him - so no time like the present.

So the job at hand for Joshua was to fix our key safe box to the side of the new extension porch. I provided hi the basic instructions and how to use the tools safely, but then it was entirely down to him. He had to mark the holes, drill them, hammer in the raw plugs, then screw the box to the wall. Despite being a little eager to use his first power tool (the drill), I have to say he has done an excellent job and the key box is very safe and secure in its new position.

So if anyone wants some cheap child labour to complete some DIY - Handyman Josh is available. PS I apologise for Joshua's hair in the pictures, we have been in lock down for 10 weeks and he refuses to let me cut it for him!!!!!

First job to mark the holes and make sure they don't cross cement and brick joint.

Add caption

Then it was time to let Josh loose with the drill in "hammer" mode on speed 2 to get through the brick.

With the holes the right size it was easy to tap in the raw plugs.

And finally the finished job all screwed securely to the wall. Well done Josh.

Lake Meadows Walk

So is there now a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for the lockdown. We are now advised that we can travel as a family in a car to further out parks etc for our daily exercise and that you can even meet up with 1 person from anther household as long as you social distance.

So after lunch last Sunday we headed over to Lake Meadows in Billericay for a walk around the lake, a bit of football and frisbee and even an ice-cream. The park was busy, but I have to say everyone was being really good with the social distancing. At times it was hard for Holly as she would go running off and not realise that she was getting closer then 2m to other people. It was absolutely heavenly to get out of Wickford for a couple of hours and have some family time, I think it did us all the world of good. Until this bloody lockdown is over I think we will plan to do something like this most weekends now, but explore different parks each week. Anything to keep some sanity.

The only downside of the trip was that Holly needed a poo and of course because of Covid-19 all the public toilets are closed. So we had to make a portaloo around her using picnic blankets and let he poo down a drain in the car park!!! Desperate times need desperate measures!

A beautiful Sunday afternoon over at Lake Meadows.

Holly with a large wooden wizard.

A bit of frisbee fun in a beautiful flower garden.

Holly thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Catching a bit of shade under a tree in between footy and frisbee.

And the highlight of the trip, we managed to buy an ice-cream each. Just lovely.

2020 Holiday to Bulgaria (no more)

This year we had booked a 2 week summer holiday to Laguna Park in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria which we were all so excited about and looking forward too. Bulgaria is somewhere that I have been with work but the family have never been and we thought it would be somewhere different from the Mediterranean resorts we typically go too.

Although the holiday has not yet officially been cancelled by Tui, I think that given the Covid-19 situation it is safe to say we will not be going now. We are all absolutely gutted and needed this holiday badly. Fortunately we had only paid a small deposit so hopefully don't stand to lose much money, maybe we will get it re-booked for next year, but that seems an awful long way away!!! Even then it is questionable whether we will be able to travel as I can't see travelling abroad ever being as easy as it used to be and if social distance measures cannot be relaxed then holiday flights may become a thing of the past due to affordability with planes only being a a fraction full. Even if social distancing is relaxed, will countries impose a 14 day social distancing when you travel in or out? Again if so this would kill off holidays abroad as you would need to take 6 weeks off work for a 2 week holiday!

How scary is it to think you may never holiday abroad again if Covid-19 and social distancing kill the tourism / travel industry. I think back to some of the places we have traveled and some of the memories we have made as a couple before kids and as a growing family, and I just think it would be devastating if we never had these opportunities again. I guess only time will tell.

This is a close to Bulgaria as we are going to get in 2020.

The hotel looked amazing and we were all so excited.

Will this be our holiday for 2021????? Watch this space.

Cycle to the Memorial Park & Covid-19 Update

This Covid-19 lock down is getting really tough now on both me, Tina and the kids and I just want it all to be over. The kids are all starting to really suffer and they are all actually missing school, their friends and their daily structure. Josh, Brandon and Holly have all said that they now can't wait to go back to school. We are trying our best to home school them and to keep them entertained, but all too often we hear the dreaded words that they are bored again. After last nights speech from Boris there might be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel he announced that there might be a "conditional" plan for Primary year 1-6 to return to school in June after the bank holiday.

For me it seems like everyday has become a bit of a ground hog day with working from home, training in the garage, home schooling and not being able to go out. At the weekend we took our first drive out in probably 6 or 7 weeks as a family of 5 to head over to Nicky's and sing her happy birthday. As we were driving over I said to Tina how nice it was to just be out in the car as a family of 5. We literally haven't used a fuel pump in probably 8 weeks and still have loads of fuel in the car.

The lock down really makes you sit back and reflect on your family and just how fortunate you are in life and the realisation that it can all be taken away in the blink of an eye. I am just desperate for society to return to some sort of normal (what ever that might be), to see Josh head off cycling to the swimming pool on a weekend with his mates, or to be able to head out to Papermill Lock and do some paddle boarding, to go and visit some of the family and actually go in their house, to get up on a Saturday morning and go and coach the football team - I miss our old normal life. It scares me to think what kind of World will be left for our three kids in the future, to the point that if I was a young couple starting out now I would be thinking very wisely about whether I want to bring a child in to this World.

A cycle trip over to the Memorial Park and a quick stop in the woods for some daily exercise.

Just how unfair is this to visit a relative for their birthday and to only see them from the end of their driveway due to social distancing.

The best we can manage for a family gathering is a drive by "happy birthday" greeting, all standing outside and keeping 2m away from everyone. Crazy times.

75th Anniversary VE Day

May 8th 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and as such the May Monday bank holiday was moved to Friday so that everyone was off of work to celebrate. Of course in these unprecedented times the planned street parties and celebrations were all somewhat subdued as the nation (and most of the World) are still under lock down due to Covid-19.

The weather was absolutely beautiful today and so we tried to make the best of the day and involved the kiddies in as many of the activities as possible so that they could appreciate just why this is such an important occasion. In the morning we strung up some home made bunting outside the house ready for our garden part later in the day. Due to lock down we had not managed to get any Union Jacks so we used some old St Georges cross flags and added the kids painted bunting signs in between the flags. 

Then at 11am we joined the Nation in 2 minutes of silence which all three kids did amazingly (despite next doors children screaming the estate down) and we also watched the Duke of Edinburgh lay the reef in memory of the fallen. Then after this we enjoyed lunch in the front garden using our camping table and an Union Jack swimming towel as a table cloth. Then in the afternoon at 3pm we all gathered around to watch Sir Winston Churchill's victory speech on TV. 

4pm was probably one of my favourite parts of the day as we had our second little front garden party with tea, scones and cake followed by a little game of badminton. I then knocked up a nice BBQ dinner and we toasted the neighbours and nation. To end our VE day we will hopefully join the nation in a sing along at 9pm for our rendition of we'll meet again.

So quite a full on day, hopefully memorable for the kids although not quite what we would have done had we not been on lock down.

Our VE day plan.

The kids painted bunting mixed with St Georges Cross.

Holly coloured these bunting pictures absolutely beautifully.

Our first garden tea party of the day as we enjoy lunch in the front garden.

You can tell we have all been on lock down for so long due to the very long hair styles (or lack of style).

Holly did a bit of science and cooking at the same time to make a sun box oven to cook some delicious smores.

Back in the front garden at 4pm for our tea and scones followed by some badminton.

The scones were delicious and Holly made some chocolate chip cakes which we decorated with Union Jack flags.

To finish the day a sing-a-long to "We'll Meet Again".

Home Made Dolls Furniture

Like the boys, Holly has started watching YouTube almost like we would watch TV programmes. She tends to watch Barbie stuff, making slime and general arts and crafts stuff. Whilst watching these videos she got some inspiration to make some homemade dolls house furniture which we had an attempt at making last week.

Using cardboard boxes, toilet roll tubes and old scraps of carpet we fabricated a chair, a table and a rug which Holly now uses in her large doll house in her bedroom. Holly wanted to glue carpet on the chair seat and for some reason on the table top as well! Once the glue was all dried she then painted the furniture to make it look pretty amazing.

Holly hard at work painting a homemade dolls house chair.

The table used toilet roll tubes for the legs and cardboard with carpet glued on top for the table top.

And nice to see it wasn't all a waste of time as Holly is using the new furniture in her dolls house.

Swing-Bowling

I think we are all going a little stir crazy with the lock down now and every day is starting to feel like groundhog day. The home schooling is so hard and its a challenge to keep the kids entertained with different activities (especially now the weather has turned and the traditional British rain is back).

In an attempt to do something different yesterday I found an old inflatable garden bowling set which I decided to blow up. We started off using the inflatable bowling ball as the game was designed to be played. This soon progressed to kicking footballs at the pins. Then Brandon came up with the genius idea of using the swing-ball to try and knock the pics over, thus creating a new game called swing-bowl.

Also notice in the pictures that the old trampoline is finally fixed. God only knows how old it is, but the bouncing mat was tarting to tear so I figured I would order a new one before one of the kids fell through it and had a serious injury. It took 3 attempts to get the right size as I learnt you cannot just buy an 8ft mat, you need to know the correct spring size as well!!! 

Holly shoots a football at the inflatable pics.

2 down and four to go.

Brandon's genius idea of mixing swing-ball with bowling.

Joshua lines up for a serve.

And takes out the first blue pin.

Even Holly had a go and eventually knocked all the pics down, the purple one was a bit tough as it somehow had quite a bit of water in it which weighed it down somewhat.

Holly Learns to Pedal a Bike

After a week of consistently taking Holly out for short 10-15 min sessions on her bike, I am pleased to confirm that she can now pedal a bike on her own. She has the balance nailed now and can even turn around corners which is good. We still need to do a bit more work on the strength in her initial push off and she needs to remember to put one leg on the ground when she brings the bike to a stop (she learnt this the hard way when I let her fall to the ground!).

I feel quite proud of this achievement for both Holly and myself. I feel I let Holly down last year as it was one of my objectives to get her cycling and I failed dismally due to so much going on with the house extension etc. Having said that, this year was perfect timing as a felt she was ready to learn where as last year I am not sure it would have happened. For myself, I have taught all 3 of our children to ride a bike and I also helped my nieces, Amy and Zoe to learn so I must be doing something right. I hope I am still around and able enough the help my own grand kids to learn how to ride one day.

A sweaty Dad running alongside, but Holly has final mastered pedaling a bike.

Still need to work a bit on her push-off strength, but I think the balance buddy can come off the bike now. 

And she's off, with her bunny riding on the back. Can't wait until the lock down ends so we can all got to Hadleigh Olympic Mountain bike course for a cycle.