An attitude of gratitude

I wanted to say a couple of thank yous before I set about recaping the last week and a half. First, thank you to cheryl for coming to visit, we really enjoyed your company and hope that you had a good time. However, could you please send back the nice weather because I think you took it home with you!!!

Another thank you to merry for organising the muddle puddle camp. Although we were only there for 4 days we had a fantastic time and it was so nice to meet everyone.

Friday we said a sad goodbye to cheryl, we are going to miss her. Sam was cheered up by the arrival of a package from my father containing two hot wheels cars. He spent the whole afternoon arranging his cars and counting them. He is getting very close to the 100 mark.

The past two weeks have flown by and we have managed to fit a lot in. The theme of this trip was in retrospect -stately homes. We visited Belton House, Sandringham, Burghley House, Woburn, and Framlingham Castle. It was nice being able to visit these places, normally cheryl comes in the winter so everywhere is closed.

We also managed to sneak in a visit to sutton hoo while we were at camp. I hadn't been back to sutton hoo since I excavated there back in the late 80s/early 90s. It was amazing to see the transformation. The visitor's centre and exhibition were fantastic and sam seemed to take everything in. In fairness though, I think he was more interested in my tales of the huge spoil heap and running wheel barrows up the barrow run than the items on display! The visit didn't seem to spark an interest in archaeology-thank goodness! No ologies for sam-he needs to have a nice clean career-that does not involve medicine or mud. I don't regret majoring in archaeology in college and feel priviledged to have actually done some field work before moving on to something else. Had I had more passion for the subject I would have carried on as a career but has it was I didn't feel strongly enough about any one area to want to specialise in it. I am looking forward to teaching sam about the subject and about history in general. History was always my favorite subject at school. I just hope he enjoys it as much as I do.

Camp was great-matthew and cheryl managed to pitch the tent in no time flat-something I am sure that he and I won't be able to replicate. They were aided in their task by the fact that sam had run off to find merry's girls. Sam really really enjoyed camp-he made so many new friends ( and so did I!) and he hasn't stopped talking about them all. He can't wait for next year. Everyone was so nice and made an effort to be friendly. We had such a good time that I may even brave the long drive to scotland for melrose in feb.

M's parents kindly watched sam for me today while I had a stall at the local school fete. It was better than I anticipated and doing well gave me a bit of enthusiasm for carrying on with the books. I am taking them to waddling on thursday so there may be a few more sales yet to come. M's parents took sam on Nene valley today which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Next week we will ease ourselves back into more structured work. Cheryl has lent us Handwriting without tears and I am excited about starting that. Sam is also keen to do some more science projects as well as making raspberry jam!