Land of Hope and Glory

Below are some pics of a few things we've enjoyed before the warm weather leaves us... we took in the annual proms in the park, which is a celebration in hyde park of the last night of the 'proms' a classical musical festival with a bit of a twist.  Lots of pomp and circumstance and after some amazing classical music and opera, some true brittania songs such as 'Land of Hope and Glory' are proudly belted out.   Some of the musicians are in the royal albert hall, others are on stage in the parks around the country all joining together.  The atmosphere is really lively, and many people have spent the afternoon there, enjoying food and wine so maybe some are having more fun than others by the time the music starts:)  I have a video but appears to be too long to post...maybe I'll try again later.

Love this guy, so proud!

Pimms at the bar....yummm!

And on another warm day a few weeks ago, we took a different mode of transportation to the zoo...a waterbus along the canal.  It took about 1/2 hour and we were dropped off inside the zoo at a secret entrance:)

Grannie Annie arrives on Sunday and we are going to take a little trip to Devon, so there will be more fun posts coming up....

Reception!

Reception aka Kindergarten, has begun for Jake, so here are a few pics from the big first day...all went smoother than expected:)   Jake was excited to put on his uniform in the morning, and must say I love it too!  Although I need to order about 5 more shirts to have on standby.  We arrived and after the bell rang, Jake nervously showed us the way to his classroom, said good morning to his teacher, put away his lunchbox and water bottle.  He waved goodbye without a second look and started playing in the outdoor part of his classroom.  Its a very cool classroom with 3 separate classrooms which all have backdoors to share an outdoor space.


After pickup, he called me on Daddy's phone, and told me he had a fun day, got a sticker for tidying up, and his favourite part of the day was lunch, when he ate everything 'except my grapes mom!'   After Daddy picked him up, they had time for pitch 'n putt before picking up Ollie from nursery:)  

Shared outdoor space

Amazing greenspace behind the class

Pucker up

For those slightly squeemish this post may not be for you.  Our little Ollie chose to make our bank holiday weekend a bit more interesting by spending the day at a&e.  It all started at the playground, and as he has done many times before, Ol went to climb up the little 4 ft slide instead of slide down it.  Just as he reached the top, his foot slipped as it had recently rained, and whump, lip meets corner of metal slide.  Ouch!  While I was rushing around in a panic gathering scooter, bike, buggy & Jake, Rich was calmly but purposefully striding through the park holding Oliver to get a taxi to the hospital.  After a consultation from 'plastics', the decision was made to let his lip heal naturally, rather than administer a general anaesthetic to stitch it up.  The doctor also said, 'And besides, he's a lad!  A few scars add a bit of character:)'  Well, we are hoping it will be a small character-building scar, and maybe years from now he will say 'I got this scar from my days in London'.  ;-)

 A few hours later, we went in for the close-up pic

Eating is not a problem for him and has probably managed to score a few extra treats from us!

Even water shooting directly into his mouth doesn't make him flinch!

Still full of mischief too:)