Lewis's Blog - Month 30

Lewis's Blog (Month 30)

Month 30

Finlay had two graduation ceremonies in the first week of July, one from Flowerpots and the other from school. He also had his last day at school nursery and Flowerpots and the start of the long summer holidays.

We met with Ruth for a walk at Crathes followed by a birthday lunch for her 40th. The boys tried a couple of different music classes Abricabeats and Talking Tots. Lewis especially likes banging wooden claves to the beat. Finlay and Annie went pond dipping at Castle Fraser as part of an NTS ranger activity. We bumped into Lisa who Annie used to work with and her daughters Erica and Violet. On the walk to the pond we saw and hopefully stepped over hundreds if not thousands of baby frogs no bigger than thumbnail size. Great fun was had pond dipping and then dredging among the mud. We found pond skaters, water boatman, caddis fly larvae and a rather large leech. We then spent the afternoon at a library creepy house event.

Annie and Nik had a night out to Stonehaven folk festival to see Dougie Maclean who was fantastic. And then after 9 months of preparation Nik's Quadrathalon was upon us. After a 6am 1 mile swim, 24 km hike over 7 Munroes, a 7 mile kayak and then a 35 mile cycle, a rather tired but elated Nik crossed the finishing line finding enough energy to grab and carry Lewis and Finlay across the line too. No chance for recovery we were off to Loch Lomond the next day to see the Octonauts at the aquarium. We

bizarrely bumped into Lorna, Ian and Christina who were over on the west visiting family. We had a lovely night camping by the loch edge. Certainly the first time Lewis had been camping and a long time since the rest of us had camped too as we have the campervan.

Finlay started sports camp at Inverurie and his first day was Superhero day. During the 2 days a week he went for the next month he did a mix of sport and craft activities. We all headed to Burn o' Vat on Deeside for a Paul Anderson concert in the open air. Armed with a picnic and a blanket it was a lovely way to expose the boys to some music.

While Annie took Finlay on an overnight camping trip to Aden country park with NCT Mums Nik took Lewis to the theatre to see Ben and Holly which he loved. Nik and Lewis met us the next day and Lewis got to play with the older boys and girls too. Finlay went on another NTS ranger walk this time a bog walk at Crathes. And finally we headed to Sandend next to Portsoy to meet up with Imogen, Ken, Harvey and Amelie in their motorhome. With such lovely weather a day was spent on the beach making sandcastles, fishing in a river and generally just having a lovely time.