Sunday 24 September 2006

a party, bees and giant pumpkins


Today we went to a party of one of the childrens friends at St Fagans, the National Museum of Welsh Life. It was really nice, the rainy weather from this morning cleared up by lunch time and the children were able to play in the play area , eat outside and play several rounds of favourite party games, pass-the-parcel, musical bumps, statues and so on.

Afterwards several families stayed on and had a walk around St Fagans. It has many old buildings which have been rebuilt and kept to what they would have been like, and there are often visiting craftsmen demonstrating traditional crafts. Today we found a beekeeper demonstrating how to make Skeps, straw bee hives, and look at his lovely smock too, it has bees as part of the detailed embroidery. Only earlier this week Esme was asking how honey was made, so this was great, the man explained everything to her very well, for a few minutes we had him all to ourselves and could ask all our questions. We even got to bring home some honey and honeycomb!

This is how skeps would be kept, although these ones dont have any bees.


We then caught back up with our group, who had gone on ahead of us, and after a quick break for gingerbread men and drinks, we got on the train bound for the castle! In the castle grounds the children had a great time chasing each other and having leaf fights with the fallen leaves. We found an exciting pumpkin garden, with loads of gourds and pumpkins.


the children liked this huge one best and I had to take everyones photo with it in turn!



Very tired now from our fun-packed weekend, I hope I can get the kids out of bed for school tomorrow morning. how come they wake up (very) early at the weekend, yet on weekdays I always have to wake them? it makes no sense.

6 comments:

Amy said...

Sounds like a great place for a kids party and how cool for Esme to have met the beekeeper!

Mine do that too with the early weekends, although Logan is pretty good about getting up during the week as long as we stay on schedule for bedtime. Caleb on the other hand is like waking the dead.

Jenny said...

I love those skeps , they look wonderful.

Anonymous said...

I love and adore St Fagans after my first and only visit there! WeirdBunny has also informed me of the exceptional cheese bread they do there so need to drag Mother-in-Law back for another visit. What is this castle of which you speak? Think I neeeed to go there too!

weirdbunny said...

OH Hannah you should have asked what variety those pumpkins were. Maybe I'll ring up st. Fagans and ask, we can grow those huge ones then next year too. Imagine the nightmare in carving them out though!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely day--I ran into beekeepers today as I was buying jars...so were they! I love bees but I especially love their honey.
Excellent job on Julia's banner.

Anonymous said...

sounds like you had a wonderful time. Your children are beautiful!