No Icecream please

Today was the Ben and Jerry's icecream fest. On a hot and humid day at Clapham Common, an unlimited supply of icecream was just what we needed.

Babies asleep when we arrived so we queued up for the coffee flavour, mint flavour and cheesecakey flavour. Figured that while they were asleep we may as well queue up for another flavour while we ate 3 scoops between the 2 of us. Three cones of Cherry Garcia later and we were on our way to meet our friends.

After some expert steering of the Phil and Ted's we'd arrived at their spot by the tree, marked our territory with a picnic blanket and sat down to finish our icecream before it finished us. Daddy and IB went off for a wonder (and a sneaky icecream) while Mummy and PL enjoyed some frozen yoghurt (chocolate flavour). PL particularly enjoyed the bottom of the cone containing slightly melted icecream. Not only was it tasty, it made a good mess when shaken.

After giving the babies something other than icecream to eat, it was time to wander again. Various sights taken in included the merchandise stall, childrens' play area and more ice cream - phish food. Clearly we had to have a go at the magnetic fishing as well!

Oh and there was music there too! We left during the Charlatans as the idea of battling to Clapham Junction with the world and his wife really didn't appeal.

Now, what's for dinner?

Guess who's going to do the holiday packing

Having mastered the art of t-shirt folding in 2 seconds, A has voluteered to do the packing...

Geometry with a Pizza

When marking out the snowflakes, we needed a way of measuring the angles.

While A was folding a sheet of paper into elaborate folds, I noticed the slice of Pizza play-food. Hmmm, I thought, everyone knows a circular pizza slices perfectly into sixths. 360 divided by 6 - 60 degrees. Aha! Just what we need to measure out 60 degree snowflake arms.

The paper protractor did come in handy for the other measurements...

Culmination of two weeks' parental leave

So today is officially the last day of A's parental leave. It's been a nice leisurely two weeks - rather like a 14 day weekend.

We managed a second trip to Legoland. Probably more successful than the first as we arrived shortly after opening times and managed to persuade IB to go on more rides. Taking a picnic probably helped as it meant we didn't spend an hour queueing for and then eating lunch. Highlights for IB included the tub of fluff she had after lunch (aka candyfloss). The remains are in the porch - half a tub is quite enough for such tiny teeth. Other highlights included driving the cars again, driving the boats again - overtaking everyone and the duplo waterplay area. We went prepared with a swimming cossie for IB. She joined in with all the other small people sitting on the fountains and leaping up when they went off!

Today has seen a rare moment of domesticity for us. Painting. We've been talking for over a year about buying magnetic paint and painting the girls' walls. The aim being to create an interesting feature on the walls that we then use to display drawings and scrawlings.

Having ummed and aahed about designs, A suggested snowflakes. We found some designs online for inspiration and went up to IB's room to plan out the design. Having used IB as a height guide, we settled on one large snowflake and three smaller ones. The magnetic paint dries to a dark grey colour so the next decision was what colour to paint over the magnetic paint. We settled on a colour and headed out to B&Q to purchase said colour. Lunch and two B&Q trips later (first store didn't stock, but second did) we returned to start painting.

Keeping up the blog

So last post was a little while ago - three weeks or so. Since then we have been making the most of the wanderer's return with a daytrip to Brighton and the Sealife Centre.

Two week's paternity leave has seen a mix of the usual activities plus a daytrip to Legoland and today - IB's show - after what seems like weeks of extra rehearsals, the performances are finally here. I'm making the most of peace and quiet while she wiggles her pompoms and generally looks cute (she's the youngest in her number, although some of the learner fairies in the teddy bears' picnic ballet are even younger).

I will try and post a more thorough update after the show... Honest.... I'll try....