Nanny Fran

A week in Wales: part one – getting there

Wednesday 11th June 2014Baggie

After four updates in a little over a week we are back to the self-imposed fortnight hiatus. However, the two week gap has not be idle and there has been a lot happening to the Bagnall clan, not necessarily in the Bagnall home though so this, once again, will be the first of a trilogy of updates that I will delight you with this week.

I have worked for my company for nigh on 19 years and as such I sit on the top tier of holiday entitlement (28 days plus the usual public holidays). My holiday entitlement runs with the calendar year so we are nearly halfway through and as yet I have not taken any days from the this year’s quota. This is not down to idleness just not had the opportunity and with the biggest technical move in IMG’s history reaching its conclusion in the next few months I probably will not have another opportunity until the autumn. Hence the Whitsun half-term break seemed like a logical time to use some of that entitlement. This was not a happy coincidence that just happened, this was something that we had identified at the beginning of the year and booked accordingly.

The main decision had been where to go. With three kids everything starts becoming very expensive. You can’t guarantee the weather in the UK at the end of May (or at any point in the year) and we felt that Ezra was a little too young to take on an aeroplane, mainly because of the paraphernalia that you have to take added to the fact that Éowyn and Amélie are a little too young to take responsibility for their own things so you end up carrying a truckload of gear while shepherding kids while trying to negotiate airport security before you even manage to get to the resort!

Lucinda was interested in taking a ferry to Brittany and staying in France for a week, which is definitely a possibility for the near future but in the end we decided to stay in the UK but head to foreign climes: Tenby (or Dinbych-y-pysgod – the little town of the fishes in Welsh) in Pembrokeshire in South West Wales and the Kiln Park Caravan site. Taking advantage of the two inset days that Éowyn’s school had tagged to the end of the half-term break we booked the caravan Monday to Monday as it was cheaper than going weekend to weekend.

I am unsure if this is a phenomenon in other countries but in the UK the holiday companies completely rip off families. Knowing that it is increasingly difficult to take children out of school during term time (in principal I agree although I completely disagree with the local education authority imposing fines on parents that do!) the holiday companies increase the price of holidays as much as three fold. It is outrageous that if we had taken Éowyn out of school the week before or indeed the week after the half-term break we would have saved over £700! Although you can see the supply and demand argument from the holiday companies point of view and the argument for the local education department to try and ensure that children have a fair chance at education but as fair as I can see it is profiteering on both sides. A week’s missed education at the age of five is not going to adversely affect a child, I missed nearly three months of education at the age of nine due to open heart surgery has that had a detrimental affect on my cerebral ability? This is going to become more of an issue for us as a family as the kids get older as my job means that my busy times are Christmas, Easter and July-September, all the major school holiday times. Watch this space to find out what happens.

However, before we headed into the principality we had a weekend off and so we decided to fire up the barbecue for the first time and invite a couple of our new neighbours around. Emma and Martin and Clair and David may be new neighbours but they are not new friends we met them nearly six years ago on our NCT course and thus both have children the same age as Éowyn. Emma and Martin live a couple of doors down from us and that is how we knew our new home was up for sale. Unfortunately the British summer wasn’t exactly barbecue friendly (heavy rain) but that is where a few strategically placed umbrellas held in the scaffolding that still adorns our home kept the worst of it off me while I cooked the meat. Despite the weather fun and food was had by all and it was a rather successful first barbecue.

Not really giving ourselves much time for relaxation the next morning both girls had been invited to separate birthday parties, so Lucinda took Amélie and I took Éowyn. We had managed to complete the packing so Lucinda’s car was full to the rafters (do cars have rafters?) ready for the afternoon drive to Nanny Fran’s.

Yes, after driving the girls to their parties we reconvened back at Chez Bagnall and headed up the M40 to West Bromwich. We hadn’t seen Nanny Fran for a while and so we thought we would pop up and see Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz and drive to Tenby from there. Although West Bromwich is a lot closer to Wales than Staines Upon Thames, it is only about 30 miles closer to Tenby however it did mean that we could head into Wales on the M50 and miss the toll on the Severn bridge (not really worth the extra diesel on its own though!).

The girls we as excited as ever to see Nanny Fran and while there we charged Nanny Fran with a challenge. You may recall that for various achievements both girls had been promised items from the Disney store and both had chosen Frozen related items. Frozen is the by far one of the biggest Disney films in recent history. For some reason it has captured children’s imaginations and the song ‘Let it go’ has become the bane of most parents life’s with constant non-stop renditions from their little ones and countless you-tube covers invading social media. However the success of the film seems to have caught Disney on the hop and dolls and costumes are incredibly difficult to get hold of, with some people paying up to £1000 off auction sites for the correct outfit. Éowyn bares a passing resemblance to Elsa and Amélie to Anna and with those characters being sisters in the movie then those are the two that the girls have identified with respectively. So with the demand so high we have been unable to source an Elsa dress and doll for Éowyn and an Anna dress and doll for Amélie, so we charged Nanny Fran with the one week challenge while we were on holiday.

We left Nanny Fran’s on Monday morning and headed to Tenby in glorious sunshine. The long term weather forecast had not been promising and so we thought that this was just another example of the Bagnall luck with the only beautiful day being our travel day.

The DVDs in the S-Max earn their money with the girls kept quiet with two films during the journey. The countryside was beautiful (except for the proliferation of mobile speed camera traps) however there was the odd countryside smell (if you know what I mean?). Indeed as we crossed the border into Monmouthshire and thus Wales, I asked Éowyn was she thought of the Welsh Countryside. ‘It smells like horse poo!‘ Although truthful was not exactly the ideal start for Anglo-Welsh relations.

We arrived mid-afternoon and the weather was still glorious and so, with half an eye on the long range weather forecast, after checking in and dropping the bags off at the caravan (5 Caldey View – although there was no view – unless you count the back end of another caravan – and you certainly couldn’t see Caldey Island!) we decided to take full advantage and follow the signs for the short (although longer than we expected) walk to the beach. Pembrokeshire is famous for some of the most beautiful sandy beaches, indeed the best beach in Europe, according to a recent tourist organisation, is the harbour beach in Tenby. So we were blessed that it was a short walk to the 2.5 miles of golden sand; sand, perfect for sandcastles. However, the sun was going down and we had three tired and hungry children so we headed into the leisure complex to investigate the pool and the food outlets.

The caravan park was blessed with a nice pool and with Éowyn’s (and to a lesser extent, Amélie’s) growing confidence in the water we decided that we would have to take advantage this week especially when we saw a notice for beginners lessons for the over fours. After a brief conversation we signed Éowyn up (Amélie still too young) for a 0900 lesson each morning.

A warm meal in the Mash and Barrel and a quick trip to the onsite supermarket for essentials (like toilet paper!) and it was back to the caravan for our first holiday sleep and the start of the holiday proper.

Tune into ‘A week in Wales: part two’ to read about the holiday but feel free to peruse the photos below as a taster of what is to come.

Peace and Love

Baggie

Hippy Child

Bounce!

Rainbow Pirate

Barbecue food?

The Bagnall Kids

Amélie and Ezra

To the beach

Tenby

Look up!

Narberth

Motorbikin’

Don’t make me angry

I’m going to tickle you

Shall I tickle you?

No, I will kiss you

Ezra

Éowyn

Mommy and Amélie

Push

Wheee

Moody breeches

Enjoying the beach

Sleeping Bubba

Sunset on Kiln Park

Easter eggs and a trip to the Seaside

Thursday 15th May 2014Baggie

Once again I feel that I have to apologise for the lack of updates through 2014. At this point last year you would have had 17 updates, this is only this year’s 8^th! In fairness, last year was busier than usual mainly due to the birth of Ezra but you have to admit I am normally more prolific than I have been this year. I have always said that this is a window into our world and it is more important for life to get in the way of this website than vice versa. There have been plenty of jobs to do around the house and garden, it has been the traditional end of the season business and there has been something that has been overhanging the family (or not overhanging the family – a little joke that you may understand when you read about it) over the last six weeks but more about that in the next update. Ah well, there are the excuses on with the update!

So what has been going on the in the Bagnall household?

Easter has come and gone since the last update and with it school holidays. Yes, Easter marks the end of the second term and a fortnight break from school for both of the girls. This came at an opportune time for Éowyn as she was beginning to get a little tired and was in need of the break. It is hard enough as an adult doing a full week of work, week after week without a break (I know I have not used an of this year’s annual leave as yet!), it must be ten times as hard for a five year old. Unfortunately we could not take full advantage of this hiatus from school because Easter is also a traditionally busy time in the football calendar and thus it is difficult for me to take time off work. (It has to be said that the busy points in my work calendar: Christmas, Easter and August unfortunately coincide with the term breaks and thus school holidays, that’s what you get for being the Head of Operations of the World’s largest independent sports production companies!).

A week off work was therefore out of the question but a tip to the seaside was still in order. The weather hadn’t truly warmed up but nevertheless this has not stopped the Bagnalls in the past and it certainly isn’t going to stop the Bagnalls in the future. So the S-Max was packed, a DVD loaded to keep the girls entertained and we headed to one of Lucinda’s favourite places, in probably her favourite county: Hengistbury Head in Dorset.

We arrived in good time and parked the car at Mudeford Key before heading across Christchurch harbor on the ferry to Hengistbury Head. Our arrival coincided with a heavy downpour and unfortunately we were on the open top ferry when it hit. As you can see from the photo below there was nothing we could do except grin and bear it.

It was no surprise then that we didn’t head straight to the beach, but rather the cover of the beach café and lunch. The rain clouds blew away while we were indoors and we headed to the beach; if not in bright sunshine at least it was more ‘cloudy with occasional breaks for the sun to peak through’.

The girls love playing on the beach (as I am sure that most kids do) and they do not feel the cold as much as adults. While Lucinda and I barely took our coats off they wanted to strip off (thankfully managed to dissuade them from that!) and paddle in the sea. Despite Daddy trying to convince them that the sea would be cold (it has barely had chance to warm up since the winter) it wasn’t until they had run in that they believed their Daddy.

Despite the weather, fun was had by all and three very tired kids reluctantly were convinced to return to the car for the journey home. Éowyn and Amélie both protested the return but both (indeed Ezra too) were asleep before we made it to the M27 and the journey home.

The Easter holidays also saw a visit from Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz. Nanny Fran’s birthday fell on Easter Sunday this year (a day that both Lucinda and I were working!) and so she came down on Good Friday to stay for the weekend. Her visit wasn’t just to get her present and deliver Easter Eggs.; it was to finally take advantage of last year’s present a ride over London in a helicopter. This was, if memory serves me correctly, the third time that she had tried to take to the skies. The previous two times the weather had put pay to the experience. This time however it was successful and she had a great time viewing the sites of our Capital City from an unusual vantage point.

Before we let her take to the skies though both she and Auntie Liz had to be roped into an Easter egg hunt. You may recall that a couple of years ago Lucinda and I organized an Easter Egg Hunt around Lucinda’s parents’ garden for our friends children, unfortunately without having weekends off and not quite the time to prepare that remains the first and only time (so far) that we have managed to organize such a big event, however that doesn’t mean that Éowyn, Amélie and Ezra should miss out. Therefore, while we were talking to Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz, Lucinda nipped outside and hid Easter Eggs around the garden for the girls to find.

With Éowyn paired up with Nanny Fran and Amélie with Auntie Liz they headed into the garden armed with Easter baskets. All but one of the eggs were found (I am sure the local foxes will have found it by now) and divided evenly – you have to be fair! These were then added to their, not too unreasonable, hoard of eggs and other assorted chocolates. I would like to know whose idea it was to associate Easter with chocolate; I don’t recall Jesus telling us all to eat chocolate in memory of his resurrection.

As you may have guessed from the above, the Easter term break also saw Lucinda’s return to work. Not great timing on our part but she has had nearly 14 months off and you can’t put off the inevitable. As avid readers and friends will know this return was going to be more emotional than her previous returns as the end of April saw Air Canada cease ground control of their flights at Heathrow Airport, responsibilities now undertaken by ASIG a general handling company. Therefore Lucinda returned for her half a dozen or so last shifts for Air Canada.

Change is sometimes good and sometimes beneficial. Time will tell if this change is good, but it has certainly been beneficial with Air Canada offering V.S.P. (redundancy for want of a better phrase – which Lucinda took) and ASIG requiring a large influx of staff trained in Air Canada procedures (which Lucinda obviously is – if a little rusty). Thus redundancy was taken and a new job at ASIG applied for and got. A little Brucie Bonus that doesn’t happen very often in life and thus one that should certainly be taken advantage of when the opportunity arises. It neatly concludes where 2013 left off, with new house, car, child etc.

So with Lucinda returning to work and with me in full time employment we are in need of an alternative child care facility when grandparents are in need of a rest and when we can’t manage between ourselves through holidays and shift swaps. This makes it difficult to arrange child care. Most nurseries and child minders want a set number of hours a week and set days, then they can plan other children around the slots in availability that they have. This is understandable but very frustrating from our point of view. However, a friend of ours uses a child minder literally around the corner from us, someone who only wants a few extra days a month. An ideal scenario.

After meeting her we took Ezra around for a one hour taster session to see how he got on. He was fine, thoroughly enjoyed himself and so we were happy to book some dates with her.

Lucinda’s shifts tend to be earlies. This can be anything from a 0500 start! This means a few things. Lucinda needs to go to bed not long after the kids in order to get a decent amount of sleep. Lucinda has to get up about 0345 (at the latest) in order to get ready and out for work. This means that I have to rise a little earlier in order to get myself and three kids washes, dressed and fed. Bags packed and out the door ready for three different drop-off points before heading to do a full day’s shift at work. Indeed I feel like I have done a full day’s shift before I get there. It doesn’t help with the little inter-sibling squabbling that tends to happen and when your youngest starts to cry and try and hold on to you when you drop him off at the child minders for the first time. By all accounts he soon settled down and was fine for the rest of the day (and in that respect was no different to Éowyn or Amélie on their first days too!) but when your enduring image is of your little one in floods of tears reaching out to you it doesn’t set the day up very well.

Ezra is still tending on the lazy side (Lucinda would disagree). He crawls at lightning speed and is on his feet whenever there is something to support him but he still is not interested in walking. If you encourage him to take a few steps he immediately sits down. Legs are for standing so that your arms can stretch to reach whatever it is that you are not allowed to have. They are also useful for climbing. He has been able to climb the stairs for a while but now his little mind has worked out that if there is something shiny out of reach that climbing may just help. He started off by pushing his walker or Lego table towards the settee and using it as a ladder to climb higher. Now anything that gives him a little extra lift is fair game. Indeed Lucinda left him in his high chair momentarily to find upon her return Ezra sitting on the kitchen table. He had seen the biscuit barrel on the table and thought to himself while there is no one around I’ll have a couple of those. For that is exactly how Lucinda found him, sitting crossed legged on the table with two malted milk biscuits!

That is a bit of an epic but there a few more stories I would like to regale so pop by in the next few days for another snippet (or two) on our world. In the meantime enjoy some of the photos of the past month or so.

Love and Peace

Baggie

We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Olivia Lynn Eccles to the world,the first child of my 2nd cousin Charlotte and her husband Paul. Congratulations to them both.

Ezra’s first birthday

Tuesday 18th March 2014Tuesday 18th March 2014Baggie

Spring is nearly upon us and the weather has certainly got a vernal disposition at the moment, temperatures up to 18°C not bad for what is still, technically, winter (despite what the Met Office tell you). It has been nearly three weeks since you last had your fix of the Bagnall family, so what has been happening in sunny Staines Upon Thames?

It has actually been quite a momentous time for three of us in chez Bagnall. Firstly, and most importantly Ezra has celebrated one circuit around the Sun. Yes, our little baby is one year old, how quickly time flies. His actual first birthday fell on a Thursday (a very difficult day – especially at the moment – to get the day off) but by a stroke of fate the Sunday before his birthday was a ‘Dark‘ Sunday (a Sunday without any Premier League games, due this week to various Premier League teams still on active duty in the F.A. Cup). This meant that I didn’t need to go into work and we could have a party!

Taking advantage of our four bedrooms we invited Nanny Fran and Auntie Liz down from West Bromwich for the weekend, so that they could be part of Ezra’s big day. It was also an opportunity to invite the greater Badger Clan to our home for the first time. So a quick tidy and delivery from Sainsbury’s later we had enough food to feed the masses and a chair delivery from Nanny and Granddad and we had enough chairs for everyone to sit. If we had known that the weather was going to be so glorious (18°c!) we would have dug the barbeque out of the shed and fired it up for burgers and sausages from the local butchers. Unfortunately we were not so trusting of the weather reports and decided that a buffet was a safer option.

Not sure that Ezra quite understood why so many people were in his house and why he wasn’t allowed to launch himself out of the patio doors into the garden. Éowyn and Amélie, however were beside themselves with a visit from their cousins and spent most of the day playing nicely with the girls or chasing Finley around the garden.

Overall it was a successful first party (although we did host a smaller gathering for the Cathrall clan on Christmas Eve) and a worthy celebration of our son’s first birthday and it was especially nice that all of his grandparents were down for his party.

We did not let Ezra’s actual birthday pass without a celebration though. I managed to leave work early (although the West London traffic was still a nightmare) to get home in time for dinner with the family and Nanny and Granddad. Ezra had a second birthday cake of the week and was centre of attention (more even than usual) for the second time that week.

It hasn’t all been about Ezra though. Amélie has taken a big step forward too. Amélie has been dry (i.e. hasn’t worn a nappy) in the day for a long time, but at night she has worn either a nappy or a pull-up nappy. Recently she has been waking up in the night to relieve herself and becoming a little distressed in her confused state to try and take, especially, a nappy off. Then the finger of fate intervened, we ran low of Amélie’s nappies (usually we have a packet in reserve) and instead of buying a new packet we asked Amélie if she wanted to try and go to sleep without a nappy. She was very keen to try and be a big girl, like Éowyn and so we jumped at the chance to encourage her into this brave new world.

Not that she needed it but as a reward for her to aim for, we said that when she managed 7 dry nights (we are not naïve to think that there would not be ‘accidents’) that she would earn a reward from the Disney store. We (or more accurately, I) still owe Éowyn an Elsa dressing up dress from the film Frozen as a reward for receiving 5 superstar certificates from school and Amélie has decided that she wanted the Anna dressing up dress from the same film. Fortunately, for me, unfortunately for the girls both dresses are currently out of stock at the Disney store, but I am true to my word so they will get them.

The third person going through a momentous time is Lucinda. As regular readers will know Air Canada is outsourcing ground operations at Heathrow Airport to ASIG. By the end of next week we will see a conclusion to the decisions that Lucinda has been wrestling with over the last month or so. Without overplaying the situation it is an emotional decision. As someone that has worked for 16 years for the same company it is hard to believe that your job (as you have known it) no longer exists. Obviously the work still exists but it will not be the same. The realisation, which is difficult for us creatures of habit to accept, that things change, and let us face it businesses have to in order to remain profitable, and that you are powerless to prevent that change takes a while to sink in. Although the decision is relatively easy from a logical point of view, emotions and a hankering for the ‘way it was’ cloud that decision and you really have to explore all options before you accept the inevitable. Choice is an illusion.

We will keep you all in touch with twists and turns in Lucinda’s career that are probably still to come between now and the end of April. This will only be three weeks after she returns to work after maternity leave. Life is never boring in the Bagnall household.

Mowing the garden is not going to be boring again either. Not now that I am the proud owner of a self-propelled petrol lawnmower that makes light work of the increased lawn size that the new house has. It takes a bit of getting used to and I would be afraid to use it with the kids in the garden as I need a little bit of practise with it to become comfortable. And that is not the only gardening I have been doing! Our little veg patch now has potatoes planted and the ground has been prepared for runner beans and pumpkins. The strawberry plant and herbs are next and we are going to have a sunflower growing competition too. This must be a sign of growing old, excitement over a lawnmower and gardening, I’ll be discussing boilers and zonal central heating systems next. Too late!

So with the sun shining (and let us hope that this is a template for the rest of the spring and summer, especially with our newest acquisition but more of that next time) and the garden beckoning I will be you adieu and leave you with the latest crop of photos.

Peace and Love

Baggie