Shoulder ride

On his granddad's shoulders, walking around Buncton.

After a very lazy breakfast we went out for a walk - the best walks are those which are to the pub and back again. And this was one of them!

What can I say about the day...

Well.

I'll start last night. We congregated in the bar, the kids ran around taking various aunts, uncles and grandparents for walks around the place. Parents were pretty much ignored, which was fab! A late bedtime later and we settled down for the night.

This morning, after a very leisurely breakfast, we eventually managed to get out of the hotel before midday to go on our walk. We saw conkers, sweet chestnuts, acorns, mushrooms, horses, twigs, logs, trees, sky, ponds, grass, stately homes, Ben's Cottage; we had a lovely lunch at a pub halfway round, and took the long route back to the car following "nature trail" signposts - some of which were missing and so we had to rely on the GPS to find our way back to a recognised road and the carpark! At least, that's what it looked like to me, I'm sure Steve may have a different story.

Highlights...
breakfast in bed
mushrooms
group shot
inspired by noodlepix
singing happy birthday
Ben's Cottage

Back at the hotel we changed and freshened up ready for the Big Meal. Came down to find our table adorned with balloons, and a celebration cake in the corner! Ben was too excited to eat much, so he spent much of the meal playing with the balloons. We created a lot of noise but most of it was laughter, laughter of children having a ball, and laughter of adults laughing at the antics of the children. It was a happy time.

We threw in the towel at nearly 10 o'clock and all went to bed - poor Aunty Ruth had no-one to prop the bar up with (you can't really count her mum and Aunty Joan, who had cups of tea!) so gave up fairly soon after!

Lots more pictures on flickr, if you're interested!

Also if you've not seen it, this is the birthday cake I made for Ben (yesterday's back blip)! I am really quite proud of it - it's a bit of a parental rite of passage, really.