Ben's Blog

Yesterday Ben found out that he will have Mr Harden as his new school teacher starting in September. He was very pleased about this as this is who he wanted! 😉

Ben has now completed his Stage 3 swimming and has moved on to Stage 4 which includes starting to learn different swim strokes.  His Stage 3 also included swimming 25 metres, so he has got a badge and certificate for that achievement as well. It is crazy to think that a year ago he didn’t like the water at all, but now he is very comfortable in it and likes jumping in! When we went to Wembury recently for a birthday party, he even wanted to go in with a Boogie Board and did with no qualms at all! He is like a different person with water! 😉

Stage 3 Swimming Certificate

Last week, Ben’s first milk tooth finally fell out! It apparently fell out whilst eating an Apple at School. He put it under his pillow the next night and got £2 from the Tooth Fairy, so he was very chuffed!

Ben is now a green belt in Karate and well on his way to becoming a blue belt! His grading went very well and he got through it pretty easily really, even though the instructor in the seminar before the grading was showing them the Kata for the blue belt and not the green belt! 😉 WELL DONE BEN!!

Over the Easter weekend (from the Thursday evening until the Monday afternoon), we stayed in a caravan at St Merryn, near Padstow.  We rented it from a guy just down the road from us who Kelly knows due to his children being at School with Ben and Aaron. The caravan had 3 bedrooms, 2 toilets, a nice kitchen and large dining room/lounge area. It was a lovely caravan, however the weather decided to be an absolute nightmare for the entire time we were there!  There were gale force winds, heavy driving rain and it was freezing in the caravan due to there being no central heating, only electric heaters and a gas fire in the lounge area. The wind was so bad on one of the nights that I actually though we were going to take off and end up in Oz.  It was quite scary as the caravan was rocking from side to side, although it only seemed to be me that was bothered by this!

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The first night that we got there, we didn’t actually know where the caravan was on the site! It was also heaving it down with rain, very windy and pitch black, so poor Kelly had to go outside with a wind up torch, on the wet grass, walking around the caravans to try and find ours. Typically, after she asked in the cafe that was open, we found that we were in the wrong bit entirely! I also nearly had the car stuck on the grass whilst driving to find the caravan, and only just managed to reverse off it! It was a very interesting start to the holiday, but we eventually unpacked and settled in for the weekend. 😉

Friday was the nicest day of the weekend as it was a lovely day, and quite warm as well! It was the only proper nice day when we were down there, so we decided to go to Paradise Park in Hayle for the day. We had a lovely time there and saw lots of birds and a couple of bird shows. Ben, Aaron and Coby enjoyed it very much, although Coby was naughty when we were trying to eat our bought dinner there, as he wouldn’t sit down and eat but had to get up and run around! All three of the boys especially liked the large indoor soft play area with a big slide. Even Coby was going down it on his own to the amazement of us both! He has no fear that one!  We finished the day by going and parking up overlooking St Michaels Mount at Marazion and getting some fish and chips to eat in the car, although everyone seemed quite full up still from dinner, apart from me!  I thought they were delicious! It was extremely windy down there but it meant we could sit in the car and watch lots of wind surfers on the sea. It was lovely there but just a shame it was so windy otherwise we would have had a quick walk along the beach.  We then drove through Penzance and back to the caravan, after having a lovely day.

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Saturday was a bit of a wash-out, so we stayed in the caravan and relaxed all morning and had some lovely home made pasties for dinner, before we set out for a ride and ended up at Ann’s Cottage at St Columb Major, before heading into Newquay for an Ice Cream Sundae. By this time, the weather had picked up and the constant rain had stopped, so we took a drive down to Perranporth and parked up overlooking the sea. We had brought some sandwiches with us, so we had that in the car whilst watching the tide coming in. It was a lovely evening and watching the waves was very relaxing.

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The next day was Easter Sunday, and the boys woke up to find that the Easter bunny had been overnight. Ben and Aaron had been worried that the Easter bunny wouldn’t have been able to find us in the caravan, but a pile of Easter eggs on the kitchen table showed otherwise! Ben even thought the Easter bunny came into his and Aaron’s room during the night and tucked him in. Maybe he did! We had decided to go to St Ives for the day, but unfortunately, when we got there at about mid-morning, St Ives was literally full up.  There were no parking spaces anywhere to be found, so we ended up driving along the coast to Lands End. When we had parked up there, a torrential hail storm hit! We were quite lucky really that we hadn’t got out of the car at that point, so we stayed in until the storm had passed.  Afterwards, we had a lovely walk along the cliff path and saw massive waves crashing against the coastline. It was still really windy so we were all wrapped up in jumpers, coats and hats! The boys enjoyed looking in the shop and spent some of their Easter money and then played in the small play area back at the main complex. As it was getting late, we headed back to the car and to find somewhere to eat. On the way, we took a small diversion to the Minack Theatre which was a nightmare to get to as there were stacks of people walking around and cars everywhere. It was too late to go in and have a look so we ended up turning around and driving back to the services at Hayle and went in a Brewers Fayre for tea.  We were lucky there as we had the last table! Phew! The food was OK but took a long time to get to us due to how busy it was! In fact, we got there just before 6pm and the Carvery meat had already gone! That’s how busy it was! Crazy! By the time we got back to the caravan, we were all completely shattered.

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Monday was our last day, so we went to Padstow for the morning to look around. It was a lovely morning there and was quiet when we first arrived, as we made sure we got there a decent time, but by the time we left at about midday, it was heaving! We then had to pack our stuff up again, tidy the caravan back to how it was when we arrived and leave to come home. We all had a great, fun time though and would definitely think about going there again – maybe for my birthday in October! 😉

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