Out and About

Today we took our Host Student to a local wood, with a visitor's centre and a long woodland walk. Drama Teen again chose to stay at home, although she did have a couple of friends round to visit and wanted to spend time with them.

Little Prince rushed through the visitors centre barely stopping to look at any of the exhibits, I did manage to get him interested in a couple, but that was as much as his attention span could stand. We then wandered round the wood, with Little Prince taking the lead and guarding us all with his wooden sword. Mr Messy managed to get him to pose for quite a few photos, looking fierce and peeping from behind trees, it is quite an achievement to get Little Prince to agree to have his photograph taken, and then an even bigger one to get him to stand still enough to get a good shot!! Little Prince used his sword to defend us from vicious trees and branches, and being Autumn managed to knock quite a few leaves off the trees, which of course made him the winner! About three quarters of the way round the tracks Little Prince's sword broke, while attacking a particularly mean and nasty fence!! Little Prince was upset, but didn't whinge and carry on like I'd expected him to! We explained that we would buy a new one at the visitor centre shop and he was quite happy with that, and even happier when he found a stick to wave around menancingly instead!!

Back at the visitors centre we even managed to persuade Little Prince to let us visit the onsite cafe before going to the shop to chose another sword. I thought it was a bit strange that there were two or three employees stopping going to one part of the cafe, when I noticed a customer lying on the floor. It turns out that someone had fainted or something and was unable to be moved until he either recovered or help arrived. Mr Messy and Host Student had a cream tea (cup of tea and scone with jam and cream), Little Prince had a kids sandwich snack box, and I had a donut and diet coke. After a lovely warm sit down and relax, and after I'd cleaned up Little Prince from his donut (he wants whatever I have, unless its vegetables lol) we went back outside. Mr Messy had thought he'd seen a playground, but after some aimless wandering round he had to admit it must have been a figment of his imagination lol. Little Prince was mollified by us finally going to buy him a new sword, although buying it just before walking through the car park probably wasn't out best parenting decision!! Remarkably we managed to reach our car without incident! We decided to visit a nearby village and look round, the car park was next to the village Church so we explored there. Little Prince was much more interested in the huge pile of leaves in the car park and spent ages jumping, throwing and messing about in the leaves :-) While Mr Messy and Host Student wandered round the churchyard and took photographs. There were many very old gravestones in the churchyard, but they were so weathered that hardly any of the names could be read, which is quite sad really. Hundreds of years ago these were beloved people, who's families wanted them to be remembered in perpetuity and now they are forgotten and what was supposed to be their permanent memorial has worn away. I suppose it just symbolises how transient our lives really are in the grand scheme of things.

On the way home both Little Prince and Host Student fell asleep, so it was a very quiet peaceful journey lol. Host Student is now completing some of her homework, Drama Teen and her friend are watching a movie in her room and Little Prince is playing on the new Star Wars Wii game. Luckily it must be the actual Wii console that stores the scores and stuff, as all the previous data for the games is still available. Which is lucky as Little Prince's game was over half way completed. Host Student has now completed her homework and Little Prince has now comandeered her into playing Star Wars with him. The only problem is that Host Student has never played on games consoles before in her life!! I don't think this is going to go well!!!