Trip to London

For James' 5th birthday we decided to take him, along with his sister and cousins, Josh & Missy, to the natural history musuem. I learnt my lesson on his last birthday about parties at home - but that is another story - and thought this would be a good alternative. I also found out that the Christmas ice rink had just opened outside the musuem, and thought it would be an added treat to take him skating.

We caught the train from Strood and then the underground to South Kensington. It was the first time the kids had been on the underground. The kids were very amused that there were pigeons inside the train station and were interested in the buskers (a harpist and an keyboard player).

The musuem itself is huge and it's brilliant that the entrance is free. They also loan out 'explorer backpacks' for the under 7's which includes a safari hat, binoculors and a clipboard.

It was very busy and hard to keep an eye on the kids - luckly there were 4 adults to 4 kids so it worked out ok. The Dinosuar exhibition was the best - unfortunately we done this bit last and it was a bit of a rush as we were tired and wanted to go.





James was looking forward to iceskating, he'd been on rollerskates before - and that was like Bambi on ice - however i decided to take the risk of taking him and Joshua on the ice. They had special child skates which had a double blade and fitted over thier own shoes. It was raining a fair bit so the rink was covered in a layer of water. James was the first to fall, he was quite shocked and I thought he might want to get off, but he was fine. There was a smaller rink to the side for kids that was undercover and the boys skated round quite happily. I hadn't been skating in years and felt quite wobbly at first, but after a few minutes I felt fine. Unfortuntely I had to skate along side the kids so didn't really get the benefit fo the rink. I think the boys enjoyed it despite a few falls.





The day out was exhausing but fun - highly recommended.