We’ve been enjoying having lots of old friends visiting us over the past week.  Last week Katharine and her daughter, Emilia, decided to use our place as a base for a summer holiday to the capital so we had the pleasure of their company for nearly a week!  We took a pitifully small set of photographs of our week which is a shame as it was rather lovely!  We spent Sunday over in Stratford enjoying a birthday party at the Discover Story Centre.  We’d hoped to explore the Olympic Park, but sadly the weather was appalling so we avoided the rain in Westfield for a while before heading home to play in the house.

While we were off at work, Katharine and Emilia had a touristy week in London and we sadly only got to enjoy their company in the evenings.  But even in those short windows of time, the children had such fun together.  It was a real treat seeing Emilia old enough now to really play with Alex and Sophie – and I think she found them funny, if a little bit bemusing.

Most of their fun involved rather boisterous jumping games involving all my sofa cushions.

Emilia proved to be fearless, throwing herself off the sofa with abandon like her older friends.  I dread to think what’ll happen when she gets home to Katharine’s lovely sitting room!

They also loved splashing in the bath together

Sophie and Emilia, in particular, shared lots of giggles.  So cute!

The other highlight last week was Alex’s first tennis lessons.  Jacqui signed him up for a pre-school tennis holiday camp and he seemed to do really well.  I went to watch one morning and was impressed with how well he concentrated and how hard he tried! He’s keen to try more tennis so I hope we can sign him up for some more classes.  The teacher was great, running some really fun and physical games for them:

As well as the fun tennis related games, they all had some coaching on actual tennis skills with some clever spots on the ground to help them stand correctly.

This weekend we’ve had the pleasure of a visit from Catherine and Charlie with their children Phoebe and Henry.  After having so much fun together in Zurich recently, the children slotted straight back into their developing friendships which meant it was an easy and fun weekend.  Henry and Alex are at a great age and really hit it off, and Phoebe has taken Sophie under her wing and was seen most of the time hand-in-hand with her!

We’ve had a local day today making the most of the sunshine.  We started off in Brixton for our regular Sunday morning swim – here are the friends waiting for the bust together looking wonderfully coordinated!

After a long swim and a scrummy lunch in Brixton, we headed over to Crystal Palace to hunt for dinosaurs in the park!

Henry and Alex were inseparable.  I love these photos of them just enjoying each others company, deep in conversation.

After our very warm dinosaur hunt, we stopped to enjoy a well deserved ice cream in the shade before hitting the playground.

And we ended the day with a delicious BBQ

and some bedtime stories together!

It’s been a thoroughly lovely weekend – the kind that makes me sad that our good friends all live so far away so we can’t do this kind of thing more often – but glad that that makes it all the more special when we are together.