Sooooo busy!

There are so many lovely things happening in our life at the moment and sometimes I have trouble just keeping up!

Finn's birthday trip to London was a huge success, especially compared to last time...  We had a great trip on the train from Somerset to London but at 2 hours 40 minutes it was around 40 minutes too long.   We spent the last section humouring, placating, reprimanding and diverting our two dearly loved ones.  In the nanosecond we had to discuss during the disaster aversion tactics we worried each other by wondering aloud how 14 hours to Singapore in August will be....hmmmm.  I wonder.

We went to The Diner in Soho for Finn's birthday lunch which was really nice and for a little while I felt like a cosmopolitan Mummy around town rather than a practical and slightly obsessive aspiring domestic goddess.  It made me wonder if we could live in the inner suburbs of Sydney in a smaller place but much more in the cut and thrust of things and enjoying the trappings of a city life.

One of my favourite places in London and in fact the UK was on the itinerary for the Sunday and in fact numerous other families - The Natural History Museum.  I am pretty keen for Finn to have an interest in dinosaurs so I am nurturing and igniting this for him by providing plenty of books and toys around the subject which we purchased from the shop.  If he is going to be 'into' something I fancy this may be a good subject to be passionate about.  I got Isla a Tyrannosaurus model also but at this time she is not quite as interested.  We bought a big reference book for Finn and he really enjoys looking at all of the dinosaurs and keeps asking me to pronounce the names for him - there is a bit of guess work from me here!  I have taught him about extinction (which he has a grasp of now) and tonight we moved on to herbivores and carnivores.  Sometimes I think I underestimate the capability he has to grasp things like this as I feel he is still so young, but grasp it he does!

Took a spin around Harrods before tea in Leicester Square and then a lovely walk down past 10 Downing Street and around Westminster.  Lovely evening and Finn fed the squirrels in the park monkey nuts donated to him by a very kind lady.

The next day we hit the London Eye again and had a much better time than on the last visit (see 1st link!) which, to be fair, wouldn't be hard!

We also caught the train home, which was on the Monday evening, so we now had two toddlers who were pretty tired from a busy weekend of walking, early starts and late nights.  We started in Paddington with a relatively empty train, only around 5 other groups of people in our carriage.  Within around 45 minutes we had the carriage to ourselves!  Can't say I blame them all really - Finn & Isla were pretty noisy and quite a bit tetchy...  Andy and I joked that if we could have been in another carriage we would have been!

Great weekend had by all.

Today we have been to the Royal Bath & West Show (which I love) with Andy's Mum.  I have been going for as long as I can remember.  I bumped into 3 sets of people who I know through work, which was really bizarre as it is a pretty big event with a lot of people.  We took a picnic and looked at all the animals, stalls and displays.  Another lovely day in the sun - it must of been around 25 degrees today which was lovely.  The children were really good and Finn walked the whole day without being crabby, they were both great company.  This will be last show I go to for quite a while.

10 weeks on Wednesday until we fly.