A few weeks ago we went on a little weekend trip to the New Forest to visit Katharine and her daughter Emilia.

Setting off on a gloriously sunny winter morning, we broke the journey in Shere to catch up with Matt’s brother and his family and see their newly refurbished house.  Alex adores his older cousins Thomas and Edward, and quickly began trashing the tidy living room by getting all the toys he could find out!  After lunch, we enforced some quiet time to stop the children running around for a while.  I love this picture of Sophie snuggled up with Thomas – so cute!

It was such a lovely, crisp day, we met Katharine and our friends Kate and Mike down at Lepe Beach to enjoy the last bit of daylight.  The children quickly got stuck into the excellent playground while us grownups enjoyed the stunning sunset over the Isle of Wight and the Solent.

Alex had a great time down on the beach getting suitably wet (am seriously regretting not getting him to do a Karate Kid pose down there!)

It was such a pleasure hanging out with such good friends – and seeing little Emilia who’s growing up so quickly:

When it got too dark and cold, we headed back to Katharine’s place for a very relaxed evening.  The children all slept brilliantly (with Alex and Sophie sharing a room – Alex complained that she wouldn’t stop talking!) leaving us to have a lovely meal and proper chat over a bottle of wine.  Heaven.

The next day wasn’t quite so sunny, but that didn’t stop us!  We hit the local playground with the children and whiled away a very pleasant hour with them.  Sophie and Emilia took it in turns to drive each other around in the mini fire engine, and Alex and Tom did a bit of Octonauts play, imagining they were in a whirlpool spinning around (hope Mike’s back recovered from spinning them!)

My pair of siblings played beautifully together – I’m loving watching their relationship develop.  Sophie follows Alex around (I think she thinks she’s four and can do everything he can), copying him in everything – and does a great job keeping him in line!  Here they are having fun together.

It was such a lovely trip – far too short, but hopefully we can go back again soon.

Two blogs in one day – aren’t you all lucky?!  Am desperately trying to get back on top of my blog as it’s been getting away from me over the past few weeks.  But nearly there – just have to cull the hundreds of photos I took at a big family weekend back in October, and then I’ll be up to date 🙂

Just a quick blog this evening about the past weekend – what a busy one we’ve had!  We started off with Halloween on Friday.  I’ve never really marked Halloween – we never trick-or-treated when I was growing up, but it’s becoming such a big thing that I agreed to take Alex with his friend Sam on Friday evening.  So, we really got into the spirit, trying our hand at pumpkin carving for the first time.  The kids loved getting their hands all messy, but very quickly they decided the pumpkin was too smelly, so I ended up carving it myself!

We had so much pumpkin, we ended up baking a pumpkin cake as well!  The house smelled very spicy!  Alex chose a skeleton costume, and loved it so much that he wore it to Jacqui’s on Friday for a day of Halloween themed activities – including some scary artwork:

We rushed home to get ready for trick-or-treating.  Wizard Sam came over with his mummy, and we headed off into Frankfurt Road.  I’d intended leaving Sophie with Matt to answer our door, but she wasn’t having any of it, so she grabbed a bag and came along with us!  I’d been a bit nervous about trick-or-treating – I always felt it was a bit frowned upon when I was younger – but I needn’t have worried.

Loads of the houses on my road had made it very clear they welcomed scary visitors, having decked out their houses with lights, pumpkins, spider’s webs etc – so the children found it easy to spot the houses they could visit.  Everyone was so friendly – I felt such a sense of community, it was fantastic!  Alex, Sam and Sophie were super polite, wishing everyone “Happy Halloween!” and gathering vast amounts of sweets and chocolate.

Matt was kept super busy back home with a constant stream of little ones – he ran out of sweets in about 30 minutes! I’m already looking forward to next year!

Our Halloween themed weekend carried on into Saturday when we went to a spooky party with some Herne Hill friends, Ben and Nici.  We spent a wonderful few hours drinking pumpkin soup, enjoying a BBQ, watching a huge number of children running wild around the garden and even watching a great little fireworks display in the garden!  Alex loved his sparkler, although neither Alex or Sophie enjoyed the loud fireworks.  Quite glad I didn’t fork out on a big public display this year!  Hopefully they’ll be braver in 2015.

In contrast to the Autumn themed Halloween activities, with Saturday dawning unseasonably sunny and warm, we decided to cling to Summer and make an impromptu trip to the beach!  So we packed up the car with a picnic and the scooters and headed to Brighton.  It was probably a little bit too far for a short day trip, but it was such a pleasure spending a few hours on the coast.  The beach was really quiet, so we had it almost to ourselves in the sun.

We played around in the pebbles, looking for seaweed, shells and driftwood.

And, of course, spent most of the time throwing and attempting to skim stones – I love this picture of Matt attempting to teach Alex to skim stones!  Even Sophie had a go.

When we’d exhausted the beach, we wandered along the pier where we found a good spot for our picnic and wasted a few pennies in the arcades.  And just before we headed back up to London, we found space in our tummies for huge ice creams from a fab ice cream parlour, Boho Gelato.

Here we are by Brighton Pier.  Happy day.

It’s Sunday night again, and as usual, I’m avoiding getting organised for work tomorrow by distracting myself with photographs and blogging! We’ve had a very quiet day today, making the most of the gloriously warm and sunny weather.

We had a fun morning swim in Brixton (Alex cycled all the way there alongside Matt who ran – Sophie and I got the bus!) and a delicious trip to the wonderful Herne Hill Market which was celebrating its second birthday today. With our shopping bags filled with an array of yummy food, including haddock scotch eggs, tartiflette and popcorn, we headed home to make the most of our new garden with an al fresco lunch.  We pottered around for ages on the grass, Alex digging in the mud and searching for snails, Sophie hiding her cuddly toys in various flower pots and driving her little car around the patio.  Matt and I preferred to lie on picnic blankets snoozing!  Such a relaxing day after a crazy busy one yesterday…

We had a family focused day back in Berkshire, starting at a favourite place – The Look Out.  Once more, we met Matt’s dad, and the boys set off on their bikes on the easiest mountain bike trails in the forest.  I think Grandad loves cycling with grandson, and Alex seemed to hold his own on his new, lighter bike!

Sophie was sad not to be with the boys, but soon brightened up when she remembered how good the children’s play area was!

We enjoyed a picnic lunch together, before enjoying some more playtime, and some teepee building in the woods!

With the children on good form, I attempted to take a picture of my siblings together.  They weren’t having any of it!

But I just about got one that was passable:

Then it was off to Reading for a very special party.  My gorgeous twin nieces have just turned six months old – and so my brother and sister-in-law combined their annual summer party with a naming ceremony.  We had such fun getting together with family to celebrate Lucy and Rose.  Here’s my dad with the children listening to the speeches, and my brother with beautiful Rose:

We enjoyed some surprise entertainment from some hugely talented children – Alex was enthralled!

But the best entertainment was the cake competition!  Nearly 20 families (including my own) baked and decorated cakes to celebrate the girls – and David and Sarah (or should I call them Paul and Mary) were the judges!  Sadly I didn’t win, but the range of cakes was incredible.  They have some very talented friends!

As you can imagine, my children (along with all the others present) found the cake competition very exciting indeed.  I’m surprised they didn’t fall into a sugar coma given how much they sampled.  Here’s Sophie partaking of a cake pop!

And, just what you need when you’ve consumed huge quantities of cake and sugar – a bouncy castle! We could barely keep Alex and Sophie off it!

We all had a wonderful afternoon – just so sad my mum was feeling under the weather and couldn’t make it.  Hope she enjoys the photos!

With Alex and Sophie high on sugar, we decided to stop in Windsor on the way home to see if they could run off some of their excess energy in the Great Park.  They made a good attempt, running around like crazy things.  But not enough to prevent them staying wide awake all the way home in the car when they were supposed to be sleeping.  At least, given their late night, they let us have a bit of a lie in this morning!

We’re entering a run of packed weekends, full of parties and social engagements – with so many of Alex’s friends born in September and October, he has a particularly busy diary!

Knowing we had a 4th birthday party to go to in the afternoon, we had a relatively quiet Saturday morning. The boys decided to go swimming – but building on last week’s cycling success, Matt decided to run to Brixton pool accompanied by Alex on his bike. I was a bit worried it was too far, and that Matt would have to deal with a meltdown half way there, but they did brilliantly – doing a circuit of Brockwell Park before heading to the pool, 4km in total! Go Alex!

While the boys were at the pool, Sophie and I were checking out the new softplay cafe in Herne Hill – Jelly Tots Cafe.   Sophie had a brilliant time, whiling away an hour with all the toys and softplay, while I enjoyed a delicious slice of cake.  I wish it had been open when I was on maternity leave (although suspect my waistline would have been even bigger!).

We spent the afternoon at Alex’s friend Sam’s 4th birthday party in Sunray Gardens.  His parents had taken over a secure corner of the park, laid on a fabulous spread of food and an old school sports day and party games for the children.  Here’s Sam with his fab football cake, and the boys helping each other with pass the parcel:

They enjoyed a few rounds of “egg and spoon” races (with potatoes instead of eggs!) – although Alex got frustrated that he couldn’t do it very quickly, and Sam wasn’t keen on other people winning!

Alex tried his hand at bowling at cricket, with Sophie to run after the ball.  And Sophie enjoyed lots of tickles!

It was a lovely party with good friends and a very relaxed way to spend a Saturday afternoon – although we were all on a bit of a sugar high after the cakes, brownies and flapjacks!  Yum!

With Sunday due to be a sunny, Autumnal day, we decided to head out on a proper day trip with our friend John and his daughter Sasha.  We opted to use our National Trust membership to visit Polesden Lacey in Surrey. We’ve not been since I was pregnant with Sophie, so it was such a pleasure to go back with both children.  Alex, Sophie and Sasha ran around the massive grounds – climbing trees, searching for bugs and rolling down hills.  I love living in the city, but it’s fab to see them running around in the fresh air and woods!

They particularly enjoyed the play area and the natural sculptures and climbing frames:

We seemed to run around the woods a lot – not sure why we didn’t walk – but at least we could justify lovely big lunches and cakes in the National Trust cafe at the end of the visit.

Back in Herne Hill, we ended our lovely weekend with a playdate in the local park with our NCT friend Shelly and her son, Ralph. Another keen climber, Ralph joined Alex in his favourite climbing tree, and they both got terrifyingly high!

Sophie thankfully stayed a little bit lower down, but looked pretty happy about it!

After Alex’s first try of his new bike on Friday resulted in him going straight over the handle bars, we had a very bicycle themed day today to get him really comfortable on it.

We started off with a bit of inspiration – watching the pros in the Tour of Britain!  We headed up to Parliament Square to watch some of the final stage Time Trial.

Alex and Sophie enjoyed cheering and clapping every rider and got excited every time they heard people cheering down the course which told us when a rider was coming!

We lasted about an hour – wish we could have stayed for the second race of the day, but not sure the children would have been so enthusiastic hours later!

We caught a glimpse of Mark Cavendish speeding by, and even saw Sir Bradley Wiggins making his way to the start looking very cool!  We decided to wander over to the South Bank, crossing the river at Westminster Bridge.  That happened to be where all the team buses were, so we were lucky enough to see loads of cyclists warming up and down, and heading in and out of their team areas.  There was a lot of amazing kit about!

Here’s Alex in the Team Sky area. Surprised we weren’t spotted by a talent scout!  Should have got him a blue bike!

After some noodles, we headed back to Herne Hill.  We enjoyed some live music at the Farmer’s Market and a couple of trips on the miniature railway in Brockwell Park, before heading up to the BMX track.  Alex flew around it on his new, lighter bike, needing no help at all!  He looked so cool and confident!

He exhausted himself racing round multiple times – but our bike riding wasn’t over yet.  We popped home to pick up our bikes and cycled as a family to Dulwich Village.  Alex kept up beautifully and Sophie loved sitting on the back of my bike, not even complaining about wearing a helmet.  I see a whole range of weekend bike trips opening up at last now Alex can cycle a fair distance!

While I bought the children some new shoes, Matt edited a little video of super Alex speeding around the BMX track.  How cool is this?!

So in the past couple of weeks, my previously cautious son has taken a major liking to climbing!  He’d been getting better at it on the little climbing walls you find in most new playgrounds – but things took a new direction when we visited the Olympic Park again a couple of weeks ago.  One of the many brilliant things open to all visitors at the park is a climbing wall, significantly higher than anything Alex had ever seen.

And within seconds, my heart was in my mouth as he immediately started up.  But he did it first time and was so proud of himself.  Amazing!

After that, there was no stopping him.  When we got back home from the Olympic Park, we headed to Sunray Gardens for a play.  And he went straight for the most accessible tree and started climbing:

And in the weekend just past, we visited lovely Morden Hall Park.  After finding the lovely natural playground, and of course, he went for the tallest things available:

Perhaps some climbing lessons for this birthday…?

We have kept our feet on firm ground for at least some of the last fortnight! Morden Hall Park was a wonderful place to while away a few hours.  In the natural playground, there was loads to keep the children occupied, including a zip wire which Sophie in particular adored:

A river runs through the park, so we had a lovely time watching dogs splashing in the river, looking at the old water wheel at the mill and especially splashing in the tributary streams:

We had a lovely lunch in the National Trust cafe there and particularly enjoyed all the tactile toys around the cafe garden which gave the kids something to do while we waited for food and also taught them something about nature and the seasons.  And the cake was good too! We’ll definitely be back.

We also went on a canal walk last weekend.  With the weather really lovely, and no real plans – we picked a stop on the London Overground and wandered along the canal to King’s Cross where we caught the train home.  I love the canal path – loads to look at on the water, a view of some fabulous old buildings and warehouses you’d never see from the road and surprise little art galleries and cafes along the way.

We happened upon the brilliantly named “Haggerston Riviera” which was packed full of gorgeous places to visit. We wandered around an amazing exhibition of paper artists at The Proud Archivist gallery.  The art was incredible and the space perfect for little people to run around.  Can’t wait to go back and sample more of the food in the Riviera cafes!

On the August Bank Holiday weekend, before I headed up to Edinburgh for a work conference for the week, we attempted the Notting Hill Carnival for the first time.  I’ve always wanted to go, but was nervous about taking the children.  But we found out that the Sunday was family day, so we took Alex and Sophie to experience the music and colour.  With 20-30minutes between each float / performing group, we didn’t last long as the kids (and us) quickly got bored and uncomfortable.  And the music was so loud I felt terrible for not having ear defenders for the children.  We’ll try again in a few years I think!

We had a lovely day in and around Windsor on Bank Holiday Monday, visiting the fabulous family swimming pool and having a scrummy lunch at Dorney Court Kitchen Garden.  The weather was terrible, but the Garden was clearly an excellent place for families with a wonderful cafe and amazing playground / fort in the grounds.

And we enjoyed some quiet time in and around Herne HIll – and especially in our newly landscaped garden.  Now we are finally allowed on the new turf, I enjoyed spending some time lying on it with the children looking at the clouds.  So relaxing!  I love Sophie’s legs in the pic below!

Two videos to close tonight’s post.  The first is Sophie suddenly getting the hang of scooting – about a year younger than when her big brother mastered it!

And Alex going wild in the water fountains in the shadows of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium!

Here’s a picture post so I don’t forget all the ace things we got up to in our second week of holiday. After our trips to France and Northampton, we mostly stayed in London – but we packed a lot in (and Matt was amazing as I spent much of the week in choir rehearsals for the Prom).

We started the week at Battersea Zoo with our friends Caroline, Sam and Una.  Alex and Sam are “best friends” and Sophie and Una are starting to interact more.  I’m glad it’s a fairly self-contained place as the children spent much of their time running in different directions.  They loved it – although it must be said, they were more interested in the playground areas than the animals!

Of course, everyone loved the meercats – especially the tunnel under their enclosure!

Alex and Sam begged and begged for the coins needed to take on the water canons in the play area – and were so good at lunch I gave in:

The children just about long enough to eat some lunch – but they were soon back in the brilliant playground.  It’s a fabulous place – we’ll definitely be back soon.

On Tuesday we headed to Berkshire to visit Matt’s dad.  We met him at The Lookout – a really child friendly section of forest packed full of bike trails, walks, high ropes plus a great adventure playground and nature centre.  We met Matt’s cycling-mad Dad there to see how Alex fared on the beginner mountain bike trail.  I just love this picture of three generations of Agar cyclists!  Sophie was very keen to join in, but she had to make do with a trip to the playground while the boys attempted the trail.

Alex did brilliantly, managing to cycling most of the route on his own.  So proud of him!  Here’s a bit of footage of him speeding along the trail.

We had a quick lunch and catch up with Dick and Michele before hitting the road back to London in time for a park playdate with Alex’s friend Ralph:

Last week, we finally got round to visiting the top of the Shard – we’ve been meaning to do it for ages, but the sudden realisation that the already super-expensive entry cost gets even more ridiculous for children four and over,  a sense of urgency took over!  So with the weather clear and bright, we coughed up £50 (ouch) and sped up the tallest building in Western Europe!

It was incredibly expensive – but, it was quite a view!

The children ran a bit wild up there, but they loved it.  So many trains and boats to spot from so high!  When we weren’t running around after the kids, Matt and I really enjoyed looking for our favourite London landmarks from the air – it really was stunning.  Really want to go back at night. I bet that’s spectacular!

Just before we came back down, I snapped my new favourite picture of my family – love these guys!

Towards the end of our holidays, my prom choir rehearsals ramped up a bit, so Matt did some solo childcare – taking the kids to Vauxhall City Farm for the first time amongst other things.  They had a great morning making mud pies, painting and of course petting plenty of animals.

In between rehearsals, we had a fun morning in South Kensington, visiting the Natural History Museum with Caroline, Sam and Una.  It was incredibly busy being the middle of the school Summer holidays, but we managed to look at the dinosaurs without losing any children, and explored the current Mammoth exhibition.  I attempted to capture a pic of the four little ones together – pretty unsuccessfully, but here they are nevertheless!

Alex and Sam are so similar!

Once we couldn’t face any more crowds, we crossed the road to the Victoria and Albert Museum for a (horribly expensive) lunch and splash around their fountains and pool.  Sophie was on fine form, smiling at everyone as she splashed her way around the circumference.  It’s fun watching the smiles form on peoples faces as she walks past them with a cute grin.

On the final day of our holidays – and once my prom was finally complete – we had a brilliant trip down to Godstone Farm, one of our favourite places for a day trip.  We were meeting my old friends Kate and Marie and their families, along with Katharine and Emilia who’d been staying with us for a few days.

There’s so much to do there that we barely saw any animals!  All the little ones enjoyed the toboggan run on their bikes/cars!

Thankfully a rain shower persuaded the children to stop doing that, and we dragged them inside to meet some gorgeous little animals!  Cue smiles all round!

More rain meant an undercover picnic lunch and an extended play in the massive softplay barn.

We didn’t take nearly enough photographs given how rarely we all get together – but it was such a treat to see the gang, and a fun end to a really busy, but enjoyable fortnight away from the office!