The glorious Lakes

So we are very lucky to have good friends that own a house in the Lake District, which we visited last week for a short break.

The weather was indeed very kind so we spent loads of time outdoors, which is great since I feel we have been stuck in too much so far this year and I want our children to love playing outside.
On the first day there we went to Booths (hmm, nice supermarket) to stock up on local food and nice wine / ales (for the boys). We ate some fab meals - aubergines stuffed with lamb, steak night and seabass on a prawn risotto. We also drank. Lots. In fact more than I remember for a very long time.

What was lovely (and novel) was that come 7pm, rather than the usual feelings of tiredness mixed with trying to be sociable (our friends have a 10 month old so share these feelings) we were all really perky. 

Wilf did get up one night but he was so cute we  let him off

In fact on the third night at 10pm we embarked on a game of Monopoly (what the hell?) G Kisby loves Monopoly and has been asking to play it for months. So this was the night. We decided to play by the real rules (so no major cash win for landing on 'Free Parking' or other such anomolies) which made it a bit more interesting (worth doing I think). Basically 2 hours later G Kisby owned about one property, £20 and was sat in jail trying to avoid another trip around the board. I felt bad for him. I had lost interest (I wasn't winning - such a bad personality flaw of mine) and our friend Paul was demonstrating just why both in the game, as with life, he owns lots of property. Having run out of alcohol (again what the hell? Normally we buy two bottles and it is too much) he opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate about his 5th hotel purchase (bet he regretted that in the morning). Being the only one due to breastfeed early next morning, therefore having drunk the least, I finally persuaded the others to come to bed at about 1am.

Paul was then sick numerous times in the night, claiming he must have 'caught Mabel's sickness virus'. Very funny. It was really good to actually feel like we had a social life again. Not that we haven't been out at all since having children but inevitably you do have to fight tiredness and often I would swap conversation for sleep in an instant, which kind of makes it hard to enjoy the former without secretly counting how many minutes of sleep you are losing with every word that is uttered.  

Other highlights were visiting Tarn Hows, a man made lake (AMAZING views, pram friendly walking and lots of lovely picnic spots. Would highly recommend) and Mabel finally seeming to get over her dog phobia (friends own quite a lively and large dog which previously she has feared).

All in all a great trip captured by Ceri who took most of the photos...