Weekend away

Last weekend (*I changed the date on this post to reflect when it actually happened, so that should read this weekend. May 22nd. Thank you.) my parents invited us to join them in celebrating their ruby wedding. 40 years! We're shocked enough to discover that we'll be celebrating our 10th anniversary next year, with the less expensive gift options of tin and aluminium (biscuit tins? tin foil?). As I was the same age when I gave birth to J-cub as my Mum was when she gave birth to me, that means that J-cub will be my age when we get to that milestone, which makes it all the more difficult to imagine.

Anyway, we went down for a long weekend, stayed with my sister as my Mum's sister and husband were staying with them. We had all kinds of fun days out, and J-cub slept happily on his blow up ready bed (great invention), and us young 'uns catered the whole party.

On Friday, we went to a little train place, which had a whole gnome village in the woods...

...and staying with my sister meant that when J-cub wasn't really tired when it neared bedtime, we could pop out to a park near her house for some playing fun (my parents wouldn't really approve of such sleep-delaying shenanigans)...

When His Lordship was finally tucked up in bed (their thankfully-newly-installed double glazing meant that he went to sleep despite their neighbours doing some impromptu jazz-band rehearsing in their garden) we sat in their back yard for a barbecue, gazing upon the beautiful brickwork of the building behind...

...and my sister and I attempted to do some ANTM-worth smizing (but failed)...

On Saturday, my parents attempted to lead J-cub astray by plying him with chocolate cake...

And we escaped to Exmouth beach where the kites were stunning, and we hired a windbreak so the wind didn't spoil our fun...

...and we bought J-cub a bumble bee wind-spinny thing, which he loved...

...and my sister kindly took a picture of all three of us. J-cub was a bit cold, and demanded "Mummy! Tuddles!" over and over again. It was lovely.

We escaped the wind to play in a super-cool park, where my sister took J-cub down this huuuuuge slide...

...and a zoom in on their faces shows their complete horror as they picked up speed, but that didn't stop J-cub from jumping up and shouting "Again, again!" three times in a row.

After some serious bargaining with J-cub to let us join him on this retro slidy-horse thing, Jamie had to drag Catey and I off it, long after J-cub had had enough...

...and we finished the day chilling in a Little Red Boat.

I don't have any photos from the party itself, since I was wielding my Dad's new DSLR (and was very restrained in not squirreling it away into the car when we left). J-cub slept almost the whole way home, waking up about 10 minutes from home with a deafening shout of "Tuddle!" before lapsing back into a semi-doze, with his eyes shut but singing along to whatever CD we were listening to.

Home safe.