Perfect end to a lovely weekend

Wow - what a whirlwind weekend! The swimming went by the wayside after Friday night (mind you not for long as DD1 and I have a 6am swim scheduled in for the morning!) Gulp!

Yesterday was a big shopping day - my husband works as Transport Manager for Clarks Shoes and as an employee has a generous amount of discount on a certain number of shoes each year (33.3% which is not to be sneezed at as shoes are expensive over here)

This year's discount card runs out at the end of July so we decided that as I desperately needed summer sandals and trainers and DD2 has just about exhausted her school shoes - they're within milliseconds of collapse - she's worn them that much to death!

So off to the Clarks Shopping Village at Street (about 20 minutes from here and right next to DH's work) This is an outlet village with lots of other goodies as well as shoes but Clarks have their largest seconds shop there so not only do you get them at 'seconds prices' but we get the discount on top too.

The offshoot of the trip was new shorts and swimmers for DD1, England football shirts for DS and DD2, school shoes for DD2, trainers for DS and eight pairs of various sandals plus a pair of trainers for me - yes sorry girls you read that correctly - nine in total - gulp! Imelda Marcos would be proud of me. At least we've used up this years discount allocation.

However there is some justification here as I have horrid short fat feet which I find impossible to find shoes for normally - so the joy of finding one pair that fit and I liked, never mind all the others, was enough to make DH overlook the extravagance - in his words 'usually we have half an hours sulk as we come out of the shops empty handed' so he paid up with a smile (albeit slightly strained) and I have enough sandals to last me a month of Sundays!

We were going to do something touristy with the rest of the day - probably taking the kiddiwinks to Glastonbury to climb the Tor - which is a big hill with a tower on the top and is the legendary home of King Arthur and the Round Table - but it was just way too hot and we decided to come home and barbie for tea with our luscious local farm shop sausages and lamb and mint burgers.

As I think is the case in lots of other parts of the world - today in the UK is Fathers Day - so DH had a lay-in until about nine, cup of tea in bed to accompany the present and card opening ceremony and then we four took him out for the day. I did speak to my Dad as well but at 200 miles away it was too far for us to get together so I had to be satisfied with the phone instead.

As I've said before DH loves old forms of transport including trains, buses and trams, so we headed off to the East Devon Coast to Seaton Tramway which is about 30 miles from home - the novelty of living this close to the coast for the first time in my life is going to take some considerable time to wear off.

It was a surprise right up to the last few minutes when he sussed out where we were heading for because of the road signs. We rode the trams up and back down the line alongside the River Axe and then picnicked next to the line on our return.

A couple of hours on the beach at Exmouth and a meal at a lovely Carvery pub rounded off the afternoon before we headed off home.

Once back home at about 7pm we could hear the unusual event that was taking place in the town centre about 2 miles away from us. No other than THE Elton John was playing a concert at the Somerset County Cricket ground in the centre of Taunton. So we all decided to get out our bikes and ride along into town on the canal tow path to listen for free - BRILLIANT! As gorgeous as the kids were when they were tinies it is wonderful now that they're old enough to be able to do things like this all together.

The photos are a sunset taken from the back garden tonight - hence the post heading - and DH posing in front of one of the trams we rode on wearing his loudest pairs of shorts because he knows they wind up DD1 a treat. Not much stitching done but a lovely time had by all :o) and tomorrow's always another day!