Half Term and Halloween

Butterfly World, Celtic Harmony Camp, Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern, No Man's Land and the Lea Singers Swansong for an Empress - this sums up our week of half term.


The last week of October the girls had a week break from school. They are on a year-round system here where you have six weeks of school and then a week break. We didn't travel anywhere because I felt like we needed to explore the local area and explore we did!


Butterfly World
Our first stop was Butterfly World www.butterflyworldproject.com. This is a lovely park about a 15-20 minute drive from our house.

There is an array of different gardens from ‘The Theatre of Insects’ to ‘Through the Flowerpot Garden’, in which you are transformed into ‘insect size’ and can walk through a giant flowerpot. Butterfly World also has a designer gardens exhibition where garden designers from around the world created 12 thought-provoking and inspiring gardens in the shape of a caterpillar. It was so fun to explore each one and see the different designs. Oh and yes, they had lots of butterflies for us to see.

Celtic Harmony Camp

The next day we went to the Samhain Winter Festival at Celtic Harmony Camp celebrating the Celtic New Year.  I just happened to run across this while I was doing a search online of things to do. It turned into a fantastic day out. When we first arrived there was a warrior demonstration. The girls were so excited because they helped the "local celtic warrior" carry all his gear - swords and shields and spears etc. 

Here is Alexandra eating her apple while watching the warrior demonstration. I think she was giving me a proud warrior growl too.

Here is Sammy in front of the children's size Celtic home. There were several large ones at the camp that actually had camp fires in them.

I had a picture of Abby and Sammy with all the gear on but somehow it got deleted or lost.

After the warrior demonstration, there was storytelling. The story they told was about a dragon and this fire-breathing woman would breathe out fire (really she would spit out some kind of fuel to make a mini fire explosion) every time the dragon did in the story. 
Unfortunately, just after I took this picture of the fire-breathing woman my camera batteries died. So sad because I missed out on some great photo opportunities. Next we saw the Owl display where a handler brought out three large owls. The largest was almost the size of Alex. But she didn't mind she still thought that she could hold him so she kept wandering up to the man in front of the crowd putting out her hand. At one point, the owl leaped at her with wings spread but she didn't even flinch. She just wanted to "hold the bubby." (Note: Bubby is what she calls birds even though she can say the word "bird." None of the rest of us will let her say the right word.  We all make her continue to say "bubby" because it is so cute.) After the owls, the girls had their faces painted. It was pretty exciting for them because it was the first time they have had it done. Abby got an angel and Sammy had a butterfly. The most unfortunate part was that after they painted their faces, they went and did archery. Here is where I was dying to have my camera. Not only did Abby and Sammy do archery which would have been great to get pictures of (by the way, Sammy was a natural and got the target every time) but Alexandra - MY TWO YEAR OLD - insisted on doing archery as well! I asked if they ever had a two year old do it before and they said no but were willing to give it a try since she was pretty adamant about it. It was hilarious and she was pretty darn proud of herself. After archery, we went over fed the goats and had some "Celtic" hot chocolate! All in all, it was such a fun day. I was so pleased with myself for finding this activity for the girls. We all really enjoyed it.  

London - Millenium Bridge and Tate Modern

The next day, we got on the train that Charles rides everyday to work and went into London. The girls have been dying to do this. They complain that it is not fair that Daddy gets to ride the train to work everyday. We got on and experienced what a lovely commute Daddy really does have. It does not take long at all - about 20 minutes and you are in the middle of London. We got off at Charles stop and met him. He showed us his firm's building and then we all went for a picnic by Millenium Bridge. Charles works about a block or two from St. Paul's cathedral which is where all the sympathetic wall street protests are happening. There is quite a nice sized tent village set up outside with the protesters about their "down with government" duties. After lunch we walked across Millenium bridge and went into the Tate Modern museum. The girls enjoyed the day but loved riding the train most of all. No pictures since at this point, I had not even charged my camera batteries because I was unsure of what adaptor/transformer to plug it in to.

  

No Man's Land

No Man's Land is less than a five minute drive from our house. This is a large wooded area where people walk their dogs and fly model airplanes, ride horses and generally get out to enjoy the outdoors. Abby was dying to take us there because her school had a field trip to the area a few weeks before. They had walked the two or three miles all the way there and back. Abby showed us the huts they made out of large branches. I must say, we were all rather impressed by them. The girls all had fun running in and out of them all. We had a picnic up there that day as well. The funny thing is was that was October 30th and we were enjoying gorgeous weather while the east coast of America was being blanketed with snow! 

Lea Singers - Swansong for an Empress

That night Charles and I had an evening out (which has not happened in ages). We attended the Lea Singers performance of "Swansong for an Empress." Our landlord is in the choir and we have attended two of his performances now. The first one was geared to children during harvest and was all about food. This one was mostly in Latin and was performed in a lovely old church in Hemel Hampstead (a village not far from us). It was a perfect end to an active week. 

Halloween

Several people have asked if they do Halloween here. Yes, they do. It seems to get bigger every year but seems to be only a recent thing in the past ten years or so. I took the girls to a Halloween party at the church that sponsors their school. The party was right after school and so we rushed home and got ready and rushed back to the party. The party had storytelling, crafts, games, cupcake decorating,  and singing. The girls really enjoyed it. However, by the time we got home they were exhausted. I was trying to rush them around and get ready to go out trick-or-treating but we had some very grumpy girls. There was lots of drama and needless to say, there was not much trick-or-treating for us. The girls went to three houses on our street and Charles called it quits after all the complaining and moaning. They didn't seem too bothered. They got enough candy at the party with a little bit more from the few neighbors. They went to bed promptly at 8pm. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures because of all the chaos and grumpiness. Abby was Cinderella wearing a lovely dress made by our Naperville friend with long gloves and plenty of jewelry and high heel shoes. Sammy was a witch with hot pink fake eyelashes, black long haired wig and a broom. Alexandra refused to dress up which I found surprising since everything else Abby and Sammy does she seems to insist on doing. I think next year we just the party OR trick-or-treating but NOT both!