Felixstowe

 

The long drive was uneventful, the children happy, the weather warm.  We arrived with a surprising amount of calm.  Of course, within an hour we'd managed to get a parking fine...  But never mind.  Everything else that could have gone wrong mercifully did not.  And we booked in to a surprisingly large family room in a lovely bed and breakfast without a hitch.

The girls loved the rooms!  And yeah, that's a nappy free baby in a bed and breakfast.  We didn't leave any little damp patches on the floor though!  This tiny toddler, having worn a nappy frequently since about seven months old, mostly uses the toilet now (and has fewer misses than Morgan lol).

Meal with family, also uneventful.  Roo didn't much want to stay at the table, but in the end we kept her seated with a zoo leaflet.  "Cat" she says to the lion.  "Roar!" she says to the lizards (I assume she thinks they are dragons - but she roared recently at a little frilled lizard in a pet store and it freaked out so much it fell into its water bowl, oops).  Best of all, she points at a gorilla and says "Morga!"  I think, rather than insulting her sister, she is trying to say "monkey".  Right?

Then a night time walk on the (very cold) beach.  We'd already spent a while on the beach earlier in the day, but no pictures - too busy trying to keep the baby out of the sea.  For the walk she was safely wrapped lol, but Not At All Sleepy.  "Down, down" she shouts.  All the time at the moment.  I put her down.  "Up!  Up!  Huggle!!"  *sigh*  Not Tired.  Right.  ;)

 

You can just see Jenna determinedly climbing on some rocks here by the light of the moon.  The camera refused to go to the "no flash" mode, so what you can't see includes an astounding array of stars and the horizon flashing with a rainbow of lights from all the boats signalling to each other.  :)

 

 These two big girls went to bed in their own single beds, but look what my full-to-bursting heart found in the morning!

 

The flash woke Morgan up.  Look at that little happy sleepy smile! 

Aw Rowan, you want to climb in too and get a cuddle?  Hehehe, why not?

Out we went for a long cold windy walk.  Yeah, Morgan still won't do footwear, but at least we don't get funny looks on the coast!  We do have at least three people stop to tell us how cold it is though (lol) and one to tell us that we're crazy for having the children out on such a wet day.  We smile and say, "oh we don't get to the beach very often, it's an adventure in any weather".

The children collected stones to make a little cairn just a few metres away from the house where Nadia grew up.

This house, here, "oh a castle" the children say, as if it is only fitting that Grandma lived in a castle when she was little.  We wait for the rest of the family, whiling away the time telling stories from Nadia's life.  How she was sent away to have her first baby because the family thought she was too young.  How she adopted another baby, and how every child she ever met became part of her family.  How she and Martin both nearly died (pre-eclampsia) and Roland wasn't allowed to know what was happening.

  

Jenna wrote a love note in the sand.  Besides the heart it says, "granmor".  Everyone takes it in turns to scatter some ashes into the sea (even the children).  The sea wets a few ankles, and has us all laughing.  It would have been JUST Nadia's sense of humour.

And a quick stop at Felixstowe Ferry, to inspect some boats, and look at the fresh catch (Roland buys rock eel, and we don't).  Jenna is a bit worried about the live lobster.  We buy hot chocolate and cake instead (!) and the children have ice cream because it's always the right weather for ice cream when you are six (and when you are three).

 

 

(PS: please excuse the lousy formatting, Blogger's new uploader appears to be set to "random spacing". *sigh*)