Ben's Blog

In year 5, Ben will have Mr Burke. He is apparently quite strict so hopefully he will keep them in line! 😉 Ben was happy with this, which is good.

The weekend before last, we went camping at Whitehill Country Park which is just outside of Paignton, with Alex, Josh, Caleb and Sophia. The place was great and the weather was awesome!

I had the day off work so Kelly and I arrived for 12pm (when we could setup on the pitch) and got the tent up nice and early before I left Kelly to finish off setting up and travelled back to pick up the boys from School and Bumblebees.  The sun was out and there were hardly any clouds in the sky, so it was really hot. When I got back with the boys we went for a swim in the onsite outdoor pool before we went back to the tent and had a BBQ for tea. The boys were loving it there and were playing all the time with Caleb. 

On the Saturday, we went swimming in the morning again, which was great, though cooler as we were earlier in the day.  Ben was fine in the pool on his own and Aaron was OK as well, though he seems to forget that he can swim now! Coby was doing very well as well, as he was in the big pool with just armbands on, and he was kicking around trying to swim and was doing a very good job of it. We then went back to camp and had some dinner before we went for a walk around the site. We went to a playground and along a woodland walk, and then had a look at the onsite shop, arcade and bar/cafe area, before getting a milkshake or ice cream.  We then went back to camp and relaxed for a bit before going back to the bar and ordering some food for tea. The food was great. It was very well priced and there was plenty of it! Everyone enjoyed their food. We then went to watch the evening entertainment in another area of the complex, which was in an old barn. The barn was boiling hot though and we were sweating buckets! The entertainers put on a show for the evening that comprised of children’s games and disco for the first hour, then Bingo (which we didn’t win) and then a Disney show where they sang several Disney songs.  Coby was up dancing and taking part in the children’s disco and games and loved it! It was great watching him dance and play. We didn’t leave there until nearly 10pm when the boys were starting to get really tired, so we then walked back to camp, after a 5 minute play in the park, and got the boys to sleep. We stayed up well into the night with Alex and Josh and we saw some shooting stars, which was great. The weather was still really warm even at 11:30pm!

Sunday was our final day so we started off packing some of our bits up. We didn’t have a set time to leave as we had booked for 3 nights so we didn’t take the tent down and do the majority of the packing until later on in the afternoon. We had a cooked breakfast and then got ready to go down for our last swim. The water seemed colder again though! The boys were again jumping in and having fun in the splash pad (that was working this time) and in the toddler pool. We then went back to camp and got washed and changed before heading back to the bar to get some food for dinner. We were going to have sandwiches but decided on getting some proper food as we wouldn’t be home until late in the end. So we had some nice food again and a big milkshake and a last play in the park before heading back to camp to pack up. We left at about 5ish in the end and drove home hot and tired out from a great weekend. The weather was amazing all weekend, which stopped us from sleeping though as the tent was boiling from about 6am, and the facilities on the site were excellent and we would definitely consider going there again.

For the first time, Ben was a lot more interested in the World Cup this year, especially as England made it to the semi-finals! He stayed up and watched most of the games with me although he did prefer to watch the Q/F with his friend instead of me, which was a little upsetting. Though I would probably have been the same at his age. He had his England kit on from Lidl most of the time and was cheering when England scored, though he was asking so many questions all of the time, it was doing my head in! haha He also has the Panini sticker album but has loads of stickers left to get! Shame England didn’t get to the final though!

Last Thursday at football, Ben scored a hat trick for the first time in his training match. He was very excited and thrilled about this with one of his goals coming when he was in goal by kicking it so hard it missed everyone else and went in the other end! 😉 He got given the training ball to take home for the week, which he was very proud to have. 😉

This morning, Ben received his next silver merit award. Kelly went to see him as I had to work. He is doing very well at school and is always getting loads of merits, which is why he is always getting the certificates! 😉