Center Parcs

It was a lovely weekend

As I mention before I was my Mum's 60Th Birthday and to celebrate we had a family weekend away to Center Parc at Elvendon Forest near Norwich.We stayed from Friday to Monday, we had a great time, the apartment was away from the main complex and nice and quiet. Well that is apart from the odd bits of noise generated by Ivy and Freddie. This is the most time that I've spent with them and I felt that I got to know them a bit more. Certainly some of their sleeping habit like waking up at 6 am! Freddie has just managed to hold largish plastic balls (a little larger than his hand) and its very funny because he hasn't learned to let go and as he waves hand around he looks someone has super glued the ball to his hand! Ivy is a real dynamo and I don't know how her mum, Emma has the energy to keep up with her.

We hired bikes to get us around and a buggy bike thing for the kids to sit in. Having bike was Ideal as the place is a bit large to walk to every thing but not big enough that you can't easily reach stuff by bike.
The down side to the bikes was that they aren't the best in the world as I found out on Sunday morning. I had gone out to pick up the morning copy of the Telegraph, using a free voucher we got and I decided to have a bit of a tour around the side and some of the back lanes. I had covered most of the park and was doing the loop closest to the flat when the chain popped right off. Bang!
I went straight over the handle bars and landing part on the concrete road and part in the bushes by the side. first to hit was my right elbow and it was this arm that took all the damage. It felt for a minute or so like I'd dislocated it as it hurt and didn't respond to my trying to move it. fortunately I had only badly bruised it and apart from it being sore, the main injury was to take the skin off the elbow. Its amazing how much blood comes from such a little wound, only about the size of a 50p. It bled for hours.

So I gathered myself up and wheeled my bike back along the path. Almost straight away Ed, my brother in law cycled up and was able to guide me straight back to the flat via a short cut. Everyone help me get tidied up and clean the wound.

The paper was fine.

Apart from that, the weekend was great just being together as a family. We didn't manage to do too many things while we where there, partly because everything cost and we didn't fancy anything enough to pay for it, but mainly because it was a holiday for relaxing. Not that we didn't make good use of the pool with its different types of slides and rides. We (well I did) went each evening after most of the kid had gone home for there tea, so we got on all the rides when it wasn't too crowded. Also the salt water pool was good for my elbow!

I hope we do a holiday like this again sometime soon.

My mum loved her present we had all clubbed together to buy her a stained glass round window to go in her hallway. Emma designed it based a bit on art deco and Charles Rennie Macintosh and Sunrises, and Claire organised it from a place near where she lives in Horsham. The window when it's in place will look amazing with the sun pouring through the different colours, gold, red, blue, green and purple.