Sea and stars

After a series of pretty quiet, local weekends – we woke up this Valentine’s Day determined to have a special day. We’re don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day (although I did have fun buying cards for my three special people, and enjoyed carefully writing a message for Alex that he could read himself – what a treat seeing my boy read my message of love to him!). So instead of doing anything romantic, we went on a family adventure to find out about the sea and stars in Greenwich!

After stopping for a quick fry up in the cafe on Peckham Rye, we got to the London Planetarium just in time for their children’s Space Safari Show. I was a bit nervous about taking Sophie in – but both children had a fantastic time. They loved watching the teddy in the film visit the planets of the solar system, and Alex seemed proud to show off his space knowledge answering all the questions posed by the astronomer leading the show! I love Sophie’s face in this picture (and her tummy!)

After exploring some of the space exhibits, we scooted down through Greenwich Park to the National Maritime Museum – a favourite place of ours and a great place for children. We went straight to the Children’s Gallery where Alex and Sophie tried morse code and radio operations, and clambered all over boats and cannons!

Alex loved operating the crane to load his boat – and was careful to balance it so it didn’t tip over!

About the only time the children stopped running and playing today was a brief ten minute art interlude in the gallery where they had a bit of a sketch and colour! Sophie mostly just emptied all of the coloured pencils out everywhere – ooops.

Alex was very proud to display his “art” on the gallery wall!

After a picnic lunch, the children had a run around on the “Great Map” in the middle of the museum. Sophie rolled and rolled all the way over the map of the world, loving the space and freedom to play

She even did rolly-pollys all across Africa and Australia!

She’s so gorgeous. At the moment, she’s really going through a period of “terrible twos” – throwing regular tantrums, saying “no” to almost everything and generally being quite contrary – but when I look at her like this, I can forgive everything. She’s so precious!

Once we’d exhausted the museum, we wandered into Greenwich centre for a cheeky ice cream in the fabulous “Black Vanilla” gelato shop. I sampled some amazing strawberry and champagne flavour – we’ll definitely be back there!

To top off our lovely family day out, we stopped in at the Goose Green playground for an explore before driving back for a peaceful evening of cooking