It's taken me a while, but I wanted to write a post about all the lovely things we did during February half term, even though the memories of the week are now fading into the distance. We spent the whole week at home, and I for one really enjoyed not having to set an alarm every day to make the journey to school and/or work. Don't get me wrong, the kids still woke us up by 6.30am every morning, but at least we could all have breakfast in our pyjamas and then start the day gently, rather than having to rush about and get showered, dressed and ready for the train by 7.30am every day.
Our first day was spent going to the Bank of England Museum, which is one of my favourite museums in London. The 11yo informed me on the way there that it his second favourite museum, second only to the Natural History Museum. It is quite small, but completely free, and they organise some excellent themed tours for children. This half term the theme was Mary Poppins - with an excellent actor taking the kids through a treasure hunt to find some 'gold' ingots. At the end they were rewarded with some chocolate coins for their efforts. It was quite a cloudy day, but I think you'll agree that the Bank of England looked pretty impressive nonetheless.
We also visited Eltham Palace, where some more excellent actors showed the kids all the places in and around the house that had animal references. The 9yo and the 6yo particularly enjoyed the story of the pet lemur that used to live in the house in the 1930s. And they were all as impressed as I was with the rather fabulous gold bathroom just off Virginia Courtauld's bedroom.
We were so taken with Eltham Palace that we ended up taking out yearly membership of English Heritage, which will allow us to visit any of their sites for free for the next year. As we have now moved to Kent we are closer to many of the sites, and I'm really looking forward to exploring some of the stately homes and historical sites in our new county. Membership comes with a guide to all the sites that can be visited, which we showed to the kids, and now it seems that we also have to go to the Isle of Wight at some point, as they all want to go and visit Osborne House one day. The 11yo and 9yo have been before, when they were 5 and 3, but they don't remember it and are really keen to go again.
We still play board games with the kids every evening, and this half term was no different. They rotate between whose turn it is to choose which board game to play, which normally results in us playing quite a variety of games as their preferences change on a daily basis. Not this half term though - instead they all chose to play their newest game every single night - Exploding Kittens*. If you have children aged 6 and upwards I can't recommend it highly enough.
We also had a visit from my brother and his family over half term, , and it was lovely to show them our new house and town. On the first day they were here we took advantage of our new English Heritage membership and went to Down House, Charles Darwin's home. While I was at school I read On the Origin of Species, and have always been fascinated by the life of Charles Darwin, so I was really interested to see his house and learn more about his life. The kids loved the house too and also spent a very enjoyable half hour playing 'cops and robbers' in the beautiful gardens. (I have tried to get my head around the rules of their entirely made up game, but with no luck. As far as I can see it just involves them all running about and randomly shouting "who is cop now?" at regular intervals).
That evening we found some time to play a board game with my brother and my oldest niece while the younger kids played outside in the park opposite the house. My brother was very excited to see the vintage Go for Broke* game that my partner had found in a charity shop, so that is what we played. I have always played board games with my brother, and it is no less fun now that we are both in our forties.
On the second day of the cousins' visit we all walked into Gravesend so they could see the town. It was very misty when we arrived, especially down by the river, so that the view was pretty unexciting. After we had walked around Gravesend for a while though, and had lunch, the sun came out in full force, and when we wandered down to the river again the view that we had seen earlier had completely changed.
The other thing that we spent a lot of time doing in half term was reading books to the kids, and I think I will write a separate blog post about all the books that the kids (and my partner and I) have been reading recently. Books are such a huge part of all of our lives, and I love the idea of having a record on this blog of some of the books that we have read.
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