Unexpectedly beautifully fabulous

Today, we went to Formby. I've never been there before. I thought I'd take the boys. We arranged to meet up with the Sweet Dusty Bones clan too, so that the Bean and Bear would have playmates!

Amazingly we made it out of the house before 11am. I am still astonished at that. And that was even after feeding everyone, packing the car, AND popping to the shop intending to buy brioche for lunch which I then forgot to get anyway. Bean said it was okay, we'd still have our picnic lunch.

Made it to Formby without getting lost (thankyou Satnav lol) and had our picnic lunch sitting in the boot of Dad's car in the sunshine in the fairly empty carpark, after investigating the beach briefly while we waited for the SDB clan to arrive. It is a good beach. It may have just been added to our go-to list of "we need to get out somewhere" destinations, along with Priory Gardens! When Hazel et al had arrived and we'd finished lunch we headed over the dunes to the beach again. We barely saw Bean and Boo for dust, they headed straight for the sea (quite a fair distance out) and went straight in - fully clothed!!!!! I had half expected this and had brought a full change of clothes for each of my two, I just didn't expect it to happen within five minutes of us getting onto the beach! Bear and Bash joined in too so we had four soggy happy children before very long. Bear felt the chill first and begged for cuddles, Bash was stripped and re-dressed along with Boo, but Bean elected not to bother with getting dry or changed, but rather to simply run around and dig and play in the sunshine. Before long he was warm, and he was even almost fully dry by the time we packed up to go home late afternoon!! We stopped at a chipshop before heading home and tipped half the beach back out of the car and out of Bean's trousers when we stopped. He decided it would be a good idea to put clean trousers on for the rest of the journey. Tea finished, the boys fell asleep as we drove back to Manchester for a quick respite stop for me and to gather torches - I'd completely forgotten about the torchlight woodland wander we'd said we'd go to this evening! Sadly my phone (also my satnav) was running out of juice so while the boys slept in the car I checked on the laptop to see how easy it would be to get to Walton Gardens without the use of a map or satnav. Easy, I thought. Then went a different way to the one I'd jotted down quick directions for. Idiot!! I now have a larger understanding of the geography of the A50 / A56 area, including where Thelwall and Stockton Heath are in relation to the A50 / A56 and each other; and I know where Walton Hall is. Although I imagine if you asked me to find it in daylight I might struggle. I also finally figured out before it got fully dark how to turn the full beams off in dad's car! Little things, it's the little things. Bean was happy that I gave us one more chance to find our friends before giving in and going home - I thought I spotted torchlight in a graveyard, and remembered they'd said they were going to go through a church yard for part of this walk. Eventually we found how to get into the church yard, and incredibly, about two hours after they'd all met up, we happened to meet up as they were headed back to the churchyard to play in the shadows cast by the floodlights! We had one more picnic in the car boot when we got home, which then moved into the house when Bean said he was cold, and the boys were more than happy to go to bed despite their mammoth nap on the drive back from Formby and then back out to Stockton Heath.

Steve meanwhile has been a busy bee back in Worthing - look!! Looking forward to seeing him tomorrow :)