Monday 5 September 2016

Familiar Faces and Places

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Our round-up this week is Familiar Faces and Places. We go back to places we love and for Grandad and me a visit home to see family and friends.

We started the week travelling to Hertfordshire to see my Dad and to meet up with Grandad's family. He is the eldest of seven children and so we have loads of nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews. We thought it would be a good idea to travel on bank holiday Friday, and so did thousands of others. Our route should be M4, M25 and A1M but not on a bank holiday. These motorways are car parks at the best of times so we decided to take the long slow route on the A40. It was fine except anywhere near a junction with a motorway, then we had 2 mile queues. 
We had a great weekend so it was worth it.

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I love the irony of the matrix sign. We had been in a queue for about a mile.

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Friends and family. It's great when we all get together and the children (big and small!) have fun on the bouncy slide


The rest of the week the weather was unsettled so we decided to stay close to home and visit familiar places. That way if it did rain all day and we had to leave early we didn't miss out. It was the last week of the school holidays too so everywhere was busy.

Our first visit was Roath Park, it started out wet and empty then as the rain stopped the park filled up.

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Bear having fun in Roath Park

We then went to Dyffryn Gardens, what a beautiful place that is. The weather was glorious and the gardens were magnificent. The volunteers work so hard here. We are yet to take Bear around the house but have visited the gardens many times before.


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The beautiful Dyffryn Gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan


Finally we decided to visit St Fagans. Again it was very busy and the weather threatening but we were lucky as it stayed dry. They have a fun fair at the moment with traditional rides and stalls. Bear went on the roundabout but I had left my camera with Grandad so I didn't get any photo's. 

Although the museum is free to enter it does cost on the rides and stalls. The roundabout was £1.50 which I thought a bit expensive, especially if you have a couple of children and they want to go on more than one thing. Bear really wanted more than one go but luckily he was distracted by a road train passing. We jumped on the train and had a little ride up to the House. This costs £1.20 each, Bear travelled free and I thought it was really good value as it saves a long walk back and Bear loved it. 

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Bear loved the tractor train at St Fagans. He sat patiently for it to go.

When we were at St Fagans Bear saw smoke coming from a chimney in the distance, we just had to go and investigate. I am always amazed at what he remembers, it was here we last saw wood smoke and that was back in October.


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Smoke just visible from the chimney of a cottage at St Fagans

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The fire inside the cottage. Bear knew not to touch "Hot, hot"

What is new this week?


I haven't done a what is new for a couple of weeks because Bear is developing the skills he has rather than reaching new milestones. 

He can run up and down slopes without falling over, if he does stumble then most of the time he manages to keep his balance and stop himself from hitting the ground. 

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He loved this slope at Dyffryn Gardens

He is really into climbing so we must take him somewhere he can climb safely rather than museums where he just climbs everything.

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What's out there?

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Ah! A window

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OK lets go


He can sing the beginning of songs Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Wheels on the Bus to name a few.

He can scroll my iPhone and iPad to find the app he wants and he knows how to open them and wait for things to load. His favourites at the moment are You Tube, he loves the animated nursery rhymes, and Happy Street, a town building game.


He saw a "man" in his food



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We also play games where I say something silly like pointing at myself and saying "Daddy" he laughs and says "No". He has such a cute voice.


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Bear mastered the wobbly bridge in moments

If you'd like to see more of these wonderful places the links take you to our Toddler Explores pages and if you'd like some more ideas of where to visit in South Wales click here.



It's back to school for all the big children so we have lots of places to ourselves again. We have a few new places in mind to visit and soft play will be a first for me.

If you know of anywhere near Cardiff we can visit please let us know as we love exploring.


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1 comment

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