Tabitha tells me that Cally was a tad mystified to discover last Monday that her school had closed for a week.  After all, her nursery had never closed for a week. It was pretty much always open.

But I think she came round to the idea of a "school holiday" when she discovered that her mother had taken the week off work too and that there were many fun things planned to do.  Such as taking the bus into Chesterfield on Friday, where she and her mother met me and The Builder in the Chesterfield Museum, which is small but very cute.  And which was doing children's craft activities on Friday. Cally had a great time making and decorating a paper bat, and then looking around the museum with the rest of us.

The art gallery area has an exhibition about Time at the moment:

Then we went to the Rutland for lunch. It is possible that I really shouldn't have had the burger with additional chicken fillet and prawns, accompanied by chips and onion rings.  I was very full after all that!

It wasn't raining, so we all ambled off to Queens Park to play on the children's play equipment

And then it was time to go home. We headed back to Tupton on the 51 bus, while Cally and Tabitha went back on the train.  They did lots of interesting things during the schools' week off.  On Wednesday they went to the Butterfly House  where they discovered that the lemurs wander about at will.

Photo by Gareth

*I* Want to go and play with the lemurs!!!

Instead, we went, on Saturday, to Sheffield where we collected Freyja and Simon and headed out to Costco for a mammoth shopping session.  I had a list which had certainly been growing over the past few weeks, but I hadn't realised that it had grown to the extent that it pretty much emptied our bank accounts!  We are definitely going to have to be frugal over the coming few weeks - although at least we are unlikely to starve :-D

Freyja and Simon's attic bedroom has now been completed by the builders and is looking great

It is very definitely a Room with a View:

Sunday we spent sorting out and clearing up and making habitable the front bedroom.  We have moved into it temporarily while The Builder does our room.  Photos to come - but to my mind it is looking rather lovely now.  And definitely very spacious.  I'm hoping that our room will look just as lovely when it too is finished, though it won't ever be spacious - although it does have a view.