We had a really nice weekend with Mum, Dad and Lola-pup last weekend. It was really relaxing, just hanging out, looking at holiday photos, chatting and catching up. It's nice to have guests who don't demand anything and are just happy to go with the flow. We went to a cafe in Dusseldorf called Bastions which was amazing. They had the best (and most gigantic) cheesecake ever. I went on about it so much that lots of people from work have now been there over the past week!
The relaxation came to an end on Monday morning, when I headed off for 5 days of torture with year 6 on our 'summer' residential. We had snow blizzards and hail for 5 days solid. Most of the activities were outside, so we were all freezing cold, and some activities had to be cancelled. It was like a week of wet-play. Everyone was a bit stir-crazy by the end. Trying to keep spirits up was really hard work! We did have some good moments; the go-karting was fun, as was ice-skating (two very sweet boys held my hands and led me around because I was so crap at skating). The team building was good, even though most of our kids were truly horrendous at working in a team. They had to climb a Jacob's ladder in pairs, which was fun to watch. The kids also went swimming, and I sat in the cafe with my book and bought them all ice cream, which was nice.However, there was a lot of down-time, when last year (when they went a month later) was filled with playing games outside. We couldn't do any of that, so we were stuck inside a lot. We had nothing planned one day until 2.30, so we went for a walk in the hills. The blizzard got so strong, we had to turn back after 30 minutes!
The evenings were OK, but they didn't sleep at all on the first night, and they were awake early every day. I got a 4am knock on the door for medicine too, which wasn't fun.
The final day was fun; we went to the Tierpark, which was a bizarre place, full of petting zoo type animals, little rides that the kids could operate themselves (we could only use these for the last 30 minutes of our visit because the snow had made them dangerous to use). All around the park were these odd little huts full of dolls depicting a famous story, ie snow white, or rapunzel. They had creepy music to go with them, and were just the most strange things! I ended up walking around the park with one of the boys, laughing hysterically at these dolls (I may have gone a bit crazy by day 5 afternoon). We had fun anyway! Below are some photos from the park...
I'm blogging today because I (inevitably) got sick after the trip. I was fine on Friday night, when we went to the pub for lots of wine, and on Saturday when we went for burgers and to see Captain America 3 at the cinema. But Sunday morning I woke up with a sore chest and very sore throat. Everyone at work is panicking at even the tiniest hint of illness, because one of our friends has been in hospital this week with mumps. I'm fine though, I think I just needed an extra day to recover. I'm sure i'll be OK for work tomorrow. We're off on Thursday and Friday this week anyway, so I only have to survive for two days at work before a long weekend!
Oh well you've done your bit now and you survived.....well done! That cheesecake was amazing!
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