Yurt-tastic

2 weeks ago we went for our family holiday to Cornwall. I've only been there once, probably about 18 years ago so thought it was high time we went back. Some friends of ours had stayed in a yurt and I thought it looked like fun too so I booked it. Only after booking it did all of the negatives creep out of the woodwork.... Ben remembered he was going to be in California until the day we were leaving for the holiday, it struck me how much Alice hates travelling in the car and screams, then I realised the practicalities of all 5 of us sleeping in one 18ft yurt. Hmmmm... suddenly all the excitement I had felt when booking the yurt suddenly slipped away....
In reality I needn't have worried. The girls and I stayed with Ben's parents in Surrey whilst Ben was away which cut down our journey to Corwall by 2 hours, we travelled the bigger drives at night when the kids slept and the kids loved being in the yurt and slept really well despite there beinga bit window thing and it being pretty light in there. It was in beautiful Cornish countryside with only 1 other yurt on the site. Our fellow Yurties for the week were Lynne and her 9 year old daughter Molly. Esther and Eliza loved to play with Molly and it was good to see them spending time doing different things than their usual routine. The only downside was that I was FREEZING at night! There is a woodburning stove in there which staves off the cold for a little and you have thick duvets and proper beds but it was still freezing. I had to have Alice in the bed with me because it was too cold to be in the travel cot so I couldn't snuggle down in the blankets as much as I might have. On night 3 of 7 I was in tears because I was so cold and also coming down with a cold. That was the worst night and the others were all fine because I wore a hoody - I was so happy when I woke after night 4 and wasn't too cold Alice and I left the others sleeping and took some pictures of our happy glamping. I have pictures of the inside of the yurt but they are on Ben's i-phone so I have to get them off.
This is our lovely yurt:
This is the Cow Shed Kitchen with our own private bathroom just behind and the fire pit on the gravel just infront. Needless to say it was the old cowshed converted into the kitchen:

Inside the Cow Shed - you had your own fridge, oven etc, there was a table football table and games too:

The view from the kitchen to our yurt:

I think we discovered that glamping is not really for us. It was fun for a week but that was enough. I was ready to come home to somewhere warmer! Good job we had nice weather - the week before was torrential rain and the weather changed literally the day our holiday began. Ben said he didn't realise how much he had needed the break - he has been under some pretty heavy pressure at work for the last 5 months. Despite being cold at night the weather couldn't have been better and it was just fantastic being away from any responsibility for a week. It was our first family holiday as our little family, we usually go with either my or Ben's parents which meant it was harder work for us but we played things our own way and to our own timescales which was nice. There was so much to see and do in Corwall we have to go back but next time I want to have 4 walls around me at night ....

Some other things we've been up to

At the end of May we went to my school friend Kathryn's wedding. She married Chris who seems to be a really lovely guy but then Kathryn wouldn't have married him if he were not! It was great to see them, especially since I hadn't seen Kathryn since my wedding!! They were married in an Oak wedding Barn in the country - the location was gorgeous as was the weather. I got to meet up with my friend Caroline who lives in Denmark with Christian her Danish hubby and their 2 kiddiewinks Alfie and Molly and Caroline's dad came to the wedding too. Another friend Claire was there with her fiance so it was good to cath up! The girls were desperate to dance on the dance floor and spent a lot of time running around on it. Unfortunately we had to leave before the dancing began - Esther was devastated! Esther took some of these picture herself! We've been planting some vegtables. We have mega huge raspberries that were planted before we moved in and always produce massive berries which is good because they are my favourite and the girls love any type of berries. We were given a courgette seedling from my sister, a runner bean from Helen and a tomato plant curtesy of Tesco. We've got some strawberries too but they only give us tiny berries so I'm not sure we've eaten any from it yet....the birds get there first... I took these pictures about a month ago now so they are all huge in comparison - our courgette plant has 3 courgettes growing, the runner bean have tons and the tomato plant has some flowers so here's hoping some tomatoes grow!

At the beginning of June all my family were visiting for Adam's graduation - oh yes my brother is Dr Adam Beevers, PHD in some kind of Engineering! SO we took the opportunity to have a family holiday before Joel moves to Florida in 2 weeks time (aaaarrrghhhhh can't believe it is so soon!). One of the days we went to Belton House up by Grantham. It has a fab children's adventure playground, I shouldn't really say 'children's' since as you can see by the pictures the grown up's rather liked it too.... Everyone should go there - it's great! Esther even went down the big enclosed slide (I'm not sure if it's as exciting as the one at Harewood House which is painted like a snake - do you remember that Thiriot's??), well not just Esther...I think everyone except mum went down it! Bex took our family new header picture in the gardens there for us. Oh and who can resist a miniture train - unfortunately the seats were really designed for 2 adults to sit in so Bex and I were a bit squished.

Other than that the weather has been great so there has been lots of playing out and eating outside.