Easter Weekend

Sorry my posts have been missing for a while, I was rather poorly last week, unanticipated as these things always are, a quick two days in bed with the worst case of D&V I've had in years.....not recommended during your kids Easter holidays.........but I was better just in time for the chocolate and had obviously a huge excuse to eat my fill and gain the weight I'd lost being poorly!

However Easter came and went with a calculated lack of chocolate in our household. I'd anticipated the possibility of chocolate overdose, and worked around it, so the kids only ended up with one egg and a few mini eggs each, hurrah, a less fattening Easter all round. The pictures below show a few painted
eggs by dd2.
This one is by dd1.

On Easter Monday we managed a day out at Papplewick Pumping Station (with the Grandparents) as they were having an open day, which also involved Egg Rolling. dd1 a surprising hit there, she got the hang of it and came 3rd, much to her and our surprise! The Pumping Station itself is a fantastic grand venue and I'm sorry I only had my phone with me, so my photos are still on it! It opens its door to the public every now and again, and they had the old Victorian steam driven workings pumping away for all to see, quite a sight, when you consider the effort put into building such a structure in the first place. I think it took 6 boilers to keep it stoked enough in the days when steam did the trick on a local level, rather than the huge power stations and the grid that does the trick now. A great little site for the kids to see though, and it had some nice play areas, both park and science based, so the girls now know a bit more about the water cycle, getting water out of underground reservoir's, to houses etc.

Our back garden looking slightly more spring like.

Ok so here I attempted to show the Cherry Blossom in full swing, but the photo sure doesn't do the view from our garden justice. What a week its been in the garden......RAT is the main cry, we'll actually it went 'mummy, is that a squirrel hanging off the bird feeder?' to which I replied, yuk, no.......and thus the catcher man from the council is coming around tomorrow sometime to sort out our lovely row of houses, as it appears that our neighbour has the actual nest, whilst the rest of us, have a run through our gardens......shudder....it put paid to me doing an egg hunt in the garden let me tell you........

Owl

I thought I'd blog a picture of this fantastic Owl carving that we saw last week whilst away in Staithes, available from the local gallery there, although sorry folkes, I don't recall the name, but I'm sure if you search you'll find it! I also quite like the metal shoal of fish to the left of Owl, although you can't see them as clearly.

A trip up North

Fishing Boats moored on the river.

The harbour is just around the corner.

Where's the pirates?

Ah there they are!

A view to the beach at Staithes.

Ok I'm working backwards here, because I did the stuff in this post at the Beginning of the kids Easter Holidays, but here goes!

Friday 3rd April, kids break up from school, dh and I do the decent thing and promptly take them to the grandparents for the weekend! Oh, I know this sounds callous, but this was to be our wedding anniversary weekend away, ok so it was a few weeks late, but better late than never and the kids got spoilt with a trip to the seaside whilst they were there and anyone who know us, will know the GP's (as we shall call them) didn't have the kids at all last year, so this year, they're unwittingly making up for it!

Dh and I made our way to York, to the lovely Premier Inn and had a lovely night, eating and drinking in the pub next door, followed by wonderful sleep, not disturbed by anyone or anything. Shame we couldn't say this on the next evening, when the bit of the pub we were in got invaded by 5 families (count 'em) of loud Liverpudlians, who proceeded to sit, women, kids and blokes across the whole area on seperate tables, then shouting across to each other........they also set the fire alarm off at 7am the next morning, not impressed. But anyway I digress.....

Saturday was spent wondering around Harrogate first, with dh and I miss timing breakfast at every cafe we attempted to go into, ie they'd all just stopped serving by 5 mins.......teach us to be leisurely in our day....no all day breakfasts up there! that we found anyway. So we browsed shops and book stores, then bailed out back to York for the afternoon, where we made ourselves at home in Borders, Neros and several other random stores, as we pootled around savouring the atmosphere.

Sunday we headed upto Redcar to see Mark and Amanda. As it was Marks 50th Birthday, we all headed to Staithes, on the Cleveland Coast, for a spot of lunch, at a fabby proper music and local type pub, that M & A have been gigging at recently. All lunched out, we headed down the hill to see what the village was like, and boy is it lovely, as the photos will attest to. A 'reete' good piratey place, if ever I saw one, which has been turned mainly by the looks of it, into holiday lets or gift shops, galleries and restaurants. Beautiful all the same, as I hope you can see from the pictures above.

I'll fill you in on the rest of Easter later on this week, but sleep beckons for now and work has to be done for rather a long time tomorrow, so until the next time, adieu.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all, been a bit weird here lately what with hols, illness and then Easter, but will post properly to catch up with you all soon, some nice photos too I hope!