I’m about to head to bed, but just wanted to share some pictures from a really wonderful weekend.  The sun has shone throughout and we’ve spent almost every minute outside with so many family and friends.

Yesterday we headed off to Reading for a fabulous family party.   My grandparents and aunt were visiting my parents for a week, and so we all got together at my brother’s place for a garden party!  Four generations of one family all together in the sunshine – and all four of my parents’ grandchildren!  Quite a treat given how far we all live apart – and such a pleasure to see my grandparents meeting their newest great-grandchildren.

Alex and Sophie were in their element having a huge garden to run around in.  And coupled with homemade cupcakes and lots of attention from their doting relatives, they were on cloud nine!  I even got Sophie to wear a dress for an entire day (usually she protests after 10 minutes!).  Here are my happy children:

Despite the dress, Sophie had a great game of rugby with my dad!

Here are my grandparents enjoying their very first cuddle with baby Rose!

And here we (almost) all are – keeping cool under a canopy.  Baby Lucy was napping in her cot, so it isn’t quite the entire family, but it’s the closest we’ll get for a while!  Such a treat – I’m so pleased my children know their great grandparents, we really are very lucky.

But that wasn’t all the family we managed to squeeze into Saturday.  We stopped in to Matt’s dad’s house on the way home for some supper and more running around a garden!  They enjoyed cuddles with the dogs and spotting all of Grandad’s fish!  Here’s Alex showing Grandad lots of photos on my phone:

We were all pretty tired this morning after such a packed day yesterday, so we stayed local and had a really lovely time.  After a leisurely morning, we popped to Brixton for our first family swim in a while which was great fun.  After a massive pizza in Franca Manca and some frozen yoghurt, we headed out to Windrush Square to watch a carnival go past (for the “Prams and Poppies Festival” taking place down the road today).  We all loved the samba drumming.

The boys then headed to Brockwell Park for some water play in the fountains there, and on to Herne Hill market where they made their own smoothies using pedal power on a bicycle powered stall!  And Sophie and I popped to East Dulwich to stock up on a Summer wardrobe.

We ended our weekend in Belair Park where a huge group of families had gathered to bid farewell to our friends Katy and Tim (and their children Jake and Emily) as they are shortly moving to Sydney!  Our children are exactly the same age, and we’ve shared so much over the past three years, so we’re all v sad to see them go – but we had a lovely last afternoon together in the sunshine.

It was so relaxing catching up with old friends in the beautiful grounds of Belair House – and there was even a fabulous children’s entertainer keeping the little ones occupied while we chatted!

Sophie and Emily looked beautiful in their Summer clothes together.

Sophie is currently obsessed with shoes so she spent most of the time stealing shoes that had been abandoned by their owners and trying to put them on

The boys ran wild together, exploring the bushes and lake, running away from their imaginary monsters and chatting on a walkie-talkie!

But there were moments of calm – although you can see from Alex’s face that he wasn’t really interested in hanging out with us!

I wish it was a Bank Holiday weekend – would like to do this one all over again.

Looking back at our photos, I realise I didn’t blog about last week.  It wasn’t quite such a stunning weekend as it began with Sophie being horribly sick on the Friday evening.  Nothing like having to deal with toddler sick after a very long and tiring week at work!

But thankfully it was shortlived and no-one else caught her bug.  We had a quiet Saturday to make sure she was better, sticking to our local park and Herne Hill.  On Saturday afternoon we went along to the local church hall where there was a very cute Summer fair.  Alex got to hold a real fire hose and see a fire engine, there were loads of old fashioned stalls and a bouncy castle.  And best of all, Alex’s best friend Sam was there too (along with his baby sister Una!). Lots of sweets were had by all and we had a brilliant time.  Here’s Alex taking part:

On Sunday, we decided to pop up to the Marylebone Summer Fair – and we were so glad we travelled there – it was fantastic.  I guess that’s what you get when you hold a family fair in a very affluent part of town!  The entertainment was amazing (such brilliant new musical talent performing live all afternoon), the food was delicious, the fun fair really high quality and the atmosphere safe and buzzing.  We’ll definitely be back next year.

We love a good fun fair!