It's adventurous

Early rise for us this morning. Consequently felt slightly lost when I found it was only 8.15 and we had been busy for well over an hour. The boys played in the garden before breakfast and after we played lotto together. Bean and Pumpkin made a cosy spot to read some books and lego land came out to play for the third day running. Elements of this ran smoothly but I was not feeling very perky even after two cups of tea, porridge and a shower, I rather suspected today was going to be fraut mostly due to my tiredness. Oh, how wrong could I be?

We took a trip to Nyman Gardens. Beautiful, stunning, fabulous, wow, amazing, fantastic, were just some of the words the boys used to describe the place. Awe and wonder were abound at the gardens, trees, and flowers, as well as the building and views. The ruins of the house are perfectly fairytale like currently ridden with wysteria. The grounds that we got to explore had everything from rhododendron to rose garden, magnolia and camelia, cedar tree, rock garden and we missed most of the grounds! The building was mostly ruin and one member of staff took time to tell the story of how it happened which Pumpkin went on to recount to me perfectly. She wasn't the only friendly member of staff there, in fact we didn't find one who wasn't pleased to see us all. The house had a quiz designed for the children which took us three trips around but we did it with a little help and a few pointers. It was perfect for the boys and they loved there clipboards and pencils. Pumpkin enjoyed the game of 'where's foxy?' most of all. They regularly move foxy around the house for the children to try and spot...brilliant!  

The rain was quite persistant by now so we went to the tent on the lawn where they had activities for their 'Gothic week.' The boys coloured some pictures whilst I fed Plum and then we made Grotesques out of clay. Both Bean and Pumpkin were particularly taken by the fountains and I remembered their interest in the fountain at Fisher's Farm last week, constantly going back for another look. As we left, Pumpkin and Plum both asleep. Bean said, 'that was a brilliant trip out' and it reminded me of the end of episodes Abney and Teal when they say, 'that was an adventure.' We will be adventuring here some more no doubt.