Elise spent the week learning how to write recipes for disasters. Her class started by learning a recipe for a disastrous family picnic (stir fed up parents, arguing children, and crying baby together in car for 45 minutes; add a tyre puncture; mix together with ants swarming your picnic items, and wash down with a thunderstorm). She adapted the approach to write a recipe for a disastrous Roman invasion. It involved a cowardly Roman emperor, poorly trained legionaries, a courageous Celtic queen (i.e., Boudicca), bold and well-trained Celtic warriors, and a muddy battlefield mixed with large quantities of spilled Roman blood.
I share the story because it's fun insight for me into what she's learning about British history. It's also almost how this weekend turned out. We wanted to reward for the girls for how well they've handled the transition to the UK. We had several ingredients that could have turned it into a disaster: booking the weekend without travel insurance on Monday night, Charis getting a scarlet fever scare on Tuesday that resulted in missing school on Wednesday, parking lot traffic driving to Center Parcs through Nottingham on Friday night, a toddler who decided (after we booked the nonrefundable weekend) to potty train but then wasn't taking to it well, resulting in stress for both toddler and mother, and several "weekends away when potty training are not ideal" discussions.
In the end, though, the ingredients did not produce a disastrous family vacation. Clare turned a major corner in her potty training while we were on our weekend away. Most importantly, the girls really enjoyed our time. So, with a bit of relief that the disaster didn't materialize, here are some of the highlights.
We went to the Center Parcs resort at Sherwood Forest. I found out about it during one of the not infrequent conversations in our office with friendly colleagues who are happily giving advice to the American secondees about places to visit. This one came highly recommended from both an older colleague who had been there as a parent, and a younger colleague who had been there as a child. Their only caution was the cost. They said it costs a small fortune. It does. But we haven't hit our travel budget for much since we moved here, mostly because so many of our activities have involved time with friends and family. And we wanted to do something special for the girls besides take them on a hike and hoping their active imaginations would take over and provide lots of fun (ala Elvaston Castle).
We had a 3 bedroom cabin with kitchen, living room, and dining room. It as nicely set back from the road, and they do an excellent job of blending the cabins into the trees. We finally figured out that this was one of the first times we've been in the UK and not seen lodging constructed from brick. The cabins are also constructed to give a strong feeling of privacy. Our cabin was actually connected to several others, but the paths from the road only go to one or two at a time. In our case, the path splits to ours, and to the one on the right that was in a separate building.
Center Parcs makes a point of telling you when you check in that they want the roads within the resort to be free for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. They have a parking lot at the edge of the resort where they ask you to put your car once you've unloaded at your cabin. The problem is that like most places in England, parking is at a premium. It's less than straightforward to find an open spot during the daytime, much less if you arrive after dark. We parked our Golf on the side of the road in front of the cabin on Friday night. Saturday morning, we and about 15 other cars on our road had polite papers on our car window from Center Parcs security asking us to move our car to the parking lot as soon as convenient. Somewhat to my surprise, I did find a spot without having to creatively use the side of the parking lot road.
Center Parcs is a high class resort with loads of activities available for their guests. Naturally, we took advantage of that by jumping into things as soon as possible Saturday morning. Okay, maybe not. After all, if you've got a whole chalkboard in your kitchen, who wouldn't want to spend an hour creating art on it? Especially when you can divide it into three areas and almost have both of your sisters creating art with you without a squabble?
We did eventually hit the trails to go exploring. Unlike their father, the girls are still committed to walking on paths instead of taking shortcuts through grass or dirt. Even though it was probably less than 25 meters from our door to the path into the resort, they dutifully walked out to the street, up the street for a few meters, and turned onto the path.
Once on the path, they started running.
They did slow to a walk eventually.
When I asked my colleague about his experience at Center Parcs, he told me it would take more arms and legs than I've got to fund all the activities we could do. He also said the reservation fee gave us access to the water park. We made it to water park shortly after it opened at 10 am Saturday morning. We left after a couple hours to have lunch and let the girls rest. We went back for a couple hours, came home for supper, slept, went back Sunday morning, returned to the cabin to pack, and went back one more time before driving home.
There wasn't much to the weekend besides the cabin and the water park. Except for the birds. There seemed to be a wider variety of typical English birds here than places like Melbourne and Tissington. The highlight was definitely this friendly swan who showed up to investigate our back window, and then entertained Elise and Charis when they came over to see him.
This little guy doesn't show up much in the photo. I'm not sure what kind of bird he (or she) is.
I recognized this one. It's a goose (I think).
I didn't recognize this one. It might be a grebe. I saw one on our Tissington hike, but didn't get a good photo.
Ducks are pretty common here. The uncommon thing about the ducks at Center Parcs was getting to see so many of them in flight. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera when I saw them flying. Several times we saw them with heads down and tails up, going after something in the water. The girls got a kick out of that because they know the duck characters Upside and Down from Michael Morpugo's Mudpuddle Farm stories. I didn't get a photo of that either. So the ducks get a boring photo of two drakes swimming.
The other interesting thing about the birds at Center Parcs was how active they were. Several of our walks took us past groups of very conversational ducks and geese. It was a different experience of walking with birds around than just having them mob you if you've got bread bits to throw (which we didn't). The highlight of the active birds thing for me was watching two swans chase a goose out of the water up onto the bank. I didn't pull the camera out quickly enough to catch the swans with wings flared, or the goose in mad flight out of the water. Here's the satisfied swans calming down, and the goose being consoled by another goose on the bank.
We spent most of our time at the water park. It's a water park, so naturally the kid's play area has a pirate ship theme. We're in Sherwood Forest, so naturally Robin Hood's got to be worked into things. Hence playing in a pirate ship called Maid Marian.
On the spur of the moment I walked into the swimming gear store to look at goggles (Clare lost the good pair I'd bought from IUPUI a while ago, so I figured I'd check and see what they had for adults). The girls swindled that quick visit into goggles for each of them. It did involve a little bargaining where we agreed they'd each chip in a couple pounds from their allowance. Clare's exempt from cost sharing because she's only got 10 pence in her piggy bank. It took the girls a while to figure out the whole goggle thing. They tried them on the slide in a few different configurations.
Partially on the eyes.
Off the face but still around the neck.
And completely off.
Clare spent pretty much the whole time around the Maid Marian pirate ship and slide. This meant the rest of us spent quite a bit of time there as well.
The girls got creative with this by posting themselves at the bottom of the slide to watch for her.
And to cheer her when she came down.
Other than a couple trips down bigger slides, Elise and Charis spent the rest of their time in the pool. They figured out how to keep their goggles on underwater. Here's Charis. This is a kid who freaked out when we took her to her first swimming lesson at IUPUI two years ago. She's come a long way, thanks to some great instructors at the IUPUI Natatorium and Butler.
Elise had comparable fun with the goggles. She's worn them during swimming lessons in the US for a while. This was the first time I've seen her really take advantage of the fact that goggles let you play under water for as long as you can hold your breath. Both girls had fun in the pool, and I enjoyed watching them.
Quiet times in our family tend to involve lots of reading. This trip was no exception. Elise's class all got Children's Bibles when they went to the parish church in Melbourne. Here's Charis reading it. Yes - she's 5, and she's reading a book given to her 8 yr old sister. Such is the unanticipated consequence of having her sit out of school for a month while we waited for the appeal to run its course.
Clare, not to be outdone by her older sisters, insisted on sitting down next to Kristine with her own book to read.
Elise had to give a presentation Monday morning about the goddess Diana. We're still getting adjusted to what we perceive as very open-ended assignments in her class: You need to give a presentation in 6 weeks; see you then. This one involved some pretty focused work every day for the week before it was due. She did well, and it was less of a scramble than the assignment that was due right after we moved from our apartment in Darley Abbey into our house in Melbourne. So I think we're making progress (Kristine and I on giving Elise small bits to complete each day, and Elise on completing those bits when she'd rather be reading Famous Five or Jacqueline Wilson). By Sunday afternoon she was copying her rough draft into its final form.
Elise insisted on going to school in her uniform and changing into her costume for her presentation, so we didn't get to see her in it. A few days later she and Charis decided to play a game where Charis was Diana and Elise was her pixie servant. The stuffed animal in Charis's belt is Speedy. Speedy is a squirrel who goes home with a different student every day. He has a diary that the student writes in to record Speedy's adventures at their home.
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