I woke up to the news of what had happened in Paris yesterday morning and felt instantly saddened at this horribly cruel world we live in. It made me want to squeeze my children extra tight, and be thankful for what we have (even if sometimes it doesn't seem like much).
Money has been extra tight recently, treats have been few and far between, and sometimes I feel guilty that our kids may be missing out on things.
We've not really been out much in the past three weeks, when we mentioned going for a walk on Saturday morning, it was met with a resounding "no".
"it's raining, going to the woods is boring!"
I was lucky enough to have won a prize on #WhateverTheWeather last week, a linky hosted by Jenny and Chloe. The prize was a colour changing umbrella from Squid Kids. It's purple with pandas and raindrops on, when the umbrella is wet the pandas and raindrops change colour. We managed to bribe the kids out the door with a flask of hot chocolate and some biscuits.
When we got into the woods we discovered lots of squelchy mud, we crossed the bridge over the bypass and headed down a track with some huge puddles, and believe it or not all the kids were actually enjoying themselves! Fin said the puddle was like "custard soup" AND that it was "the best rainy day ever!".
To keep the kids interested we told them to look for colourful objects - they spotted berries and leaves in different colours.
We got down to a valley (this is where we wild camped in August) and came across a lot of huge puddles, it was raining a lot now.
We also saw a deer looking right at us, I didn't snap a picture in time before it bounced off into the woods.
I think we may need to invest in some wet weather clothing soon - we were all pretty soggy by now. Cold and wet - we promised that we'd find some shelter in the trees and have some hot chocolate (I was lucky enough to win a flask from Mountain Warehouse a couple of months ago) it's come in handy!
When we got home, we all got changed into dry clothes and decided to watch a film and have an early dinner. I'm glad we managed to get outside for a few hours and escape from reality for a while.