Aaron's Blog

Archive for the ‘Year 5 to 6’ Category

For my birthday this year, I decided to spend my money on taking us all to the Harry Potter Studio tour near Hemel Hempstead, as we all love Harry Potter! 😉

We traveled up on the Friday, straight from school, and stopped half way to have homemade pasties in the car. Whilst we all went to the toilet though, Coby decided to make a run for it so Kelly had to chase him all through the services and he nearly got out on to the main road. He was a very naughty boy for doing this and was properly told off! Anyway, we made it to our hotel in Hemel Hempstead in good time and sorted our stuff out. Kelly and the boys gave me my birthday cake there and I was surprised to see it was a Harry Potter themed cake that Kelly had made. It was great!

The next day, after not much sleep, we had our full buffet breakfast and made our way to the studios for the tour, which was only about 15 minutes away.  We found it easily enough, parked up and got our reserved tickets from the machines. We then had to go and join a massive queue, even though we had a time slot, but had a good look around the reception area where there was Harry Potter memorabilia hung up. We were all quite excited, and probably too excited, as the boys were being naughty at this point.  Once we made it through the queue, we started on the tour, which was brilliant. There was a short cinema where the actors described certain aspects of the tour and then the screen moved upwards to reveal the actual doors to the main hall at Hogwarts. We then had to go through them and thus entered Hogwarts’ main hall. It was great! We carried on through the tour and looked at various sets, such as the Gryffindor common room and bedrooms, other class rooms at Hogwarts, and lots of other exciting things to do with the movie. The Hogwarts Express train was amazing to see and we had some pictures taken of us sat in the set area where they filmed the actors sat inside the train. We also had some food in the cafe and Kelly and I had some Butterbeer, but the boys wouldn’t taste it!  Next was the outdoor lot where number 4 Privit Drive was, and the Knight Bus and the bridge set that leads to Hogwarts in the films. Moving into the other stage area, we saw lots of dummies and puppets for the various creatures in the films but the best was towards the end when we walked through Diagon Alley and then to the actual scale model of Hogwarts that was used in the film. These two areas were absolutely amazing and the castle was breathtaking. By this time, Coby was tired out and fell asleep on me, so I had to carry him around the final part of the tour and into the shop, where he finally woke a little (surprise that!). We had a good look around and bought some souvenirs which included Harry Potter’s wand for Ben, and a glow tip wand for Aaron (where the tip lights up when you move it like casting a spell for light) and a Hogwarts mug for Coby. Kelly and I also bought a few things.  We all had had a great time, apart from the fuss with the boys being naughty and not doing as they were told, and we would definitely go again, as it was a lot to take in in one go!

Afterwards, we drove back to Hemel Hempstead and to a leisure park where we had some food in a restaurant and then went back to the hotel to pack and go to sleep, before our full buffet breakfast again in the morning and the drive home.

Yesterday, Aaron did a reading test at school and the results said that he has the reading age of a 6 year old, so he is well ahead of what he should be at, which is great! 😉

Last week Aaron reached 30 merit marks at School so has now got a Gold Merit Award. We went in to assembly this morning to see him receive it, and the deputy head (Miss Conday) gave him his certificate and Aaron obviously said ‘thank you’ and shook her hand nicely as we heard her say ‘lovely manners’ to him. 😉 Well done Aaron, now just need to get another 10 to reach the Headmaster’s Merit Award (40 merit marks).

Finally, after well over a year of trying to swim, Aaron finally completed his Stage 1 swimming award during the Summer holidays! Well done, Aaron!

So he has now moved on to Stage 2, which is still in the learner pool, but the children are spending more and more time in the big pool. As expected though, Aaron has reverted to being silly and not wanting to try it or even put a toe in the big pool. It is a little annoying as we know he can actually swim a bit now as we have seen him when we have gone swimming as a family. His swimming instructors wouldn’t have moved him up a level if they didn’t think he could do it either! During the holidays, he had no problems at all in Stage 2 but since he has started back at school, he has gone all silly again. This last week, he was actually in the water for about 10 minutes out of the 30 we are paying for. Nightmare! It looks like we may have to start bribing him again as swimming is one of those things that he has to learn!

This year we did another kind of road trip to various places in the country, and we all had a wonderful time!

We started off by going to Wookey Hole but the weather was wet and miserable unfortunately.  The caves were great though, and the boys enjoyed being underground, especially as they each had a glow stick! Aaron was a bit frightened as we first went in though but he soon forgot about it. After the tour of the caves had ended, we looked around the rest of the venue and watched a SciFi Circus, wondered through the land of the dinosaurs, had a look at some old machinery from the mill that Wookey Hole used to be and wondered through an old Penny Arcade.  There were also paper making sessions, which looked interesting, and a 4D cinema which we didn’t go in. The boys went in an indoor soft play area and loved it in there. On the way out, we stopped in the Wookey Hole Ice Cream parlour and had some ice cream, which was delicious, before heading off back to the car and driving to the Premier Inn near Kidderminster, where we were going to stay the next couple of nights.

For tea that night, we went into the Beefeater which was right next door to the hotel, but it wasn’t very nice at all and extremely expensive!  We left there feeling quite annoyed as the food wasn’t great and there wasn’t much of it and it cost so much. Oh well!

The next day we went back there again for breakfast, which we had already booked, which was OK, though you couldn’t eat as much bacon and egg etc as you liked.  Instead, you had to order it so it wasn’t much of an all you can eat. The boys were fine though as they were scoffing cereal, crumpets, buns etc and also had some beans and egg on toast! They ate loads!

We then went to visit the West Midland Safari Park, which was absolutely brilliant! We all thought the place was amazing! The drive around the safari was nothing we had done before, so we didn’t know what to expect, but it was amazing being so close to the animals and being able to open the car window to some and stroke them. It was crazy how close the lions were as well, as they were just ambling along near the car and lazing around.  There were some amazing animals such as the Lions and Tigers, but also white Tigers and white Lions that we had never seen before.  There was also a baby Rhino which was cute and some dodgy camels that wouldn’t get out of the road! It took roughly 3 hours to get around the safari and then park up to go into the park itself.  As we had 2 days in the park, on our first day, we ignored all the rides and had a look at the rest of the animals and enclosures, such as a walk through a bat cave (where the bats were flying around our heads!), the Hippo feed, a Sea Lion show and we also walked through the new Land of the Dinosaurs with really good models that moved and made various dinosaur noises. We had a lovely first day there and didn’t leave until late as the place didn’t close until 9pm! We had had food there so we went back to our hotel for the night, after a detour to the shop to get some chocolate, as we had to pack our bags up again as this would be our last night in the Premier Inn.

The next morning, we went across and had our breakfast again and then loaded everything into the car. We then set off for our second day at the safari park and enjoyed the safari as much, if not more, than we did on the 1st day! After we had parked up, we spent the rest of the day going on all the rides. We did also go through the bat cave again, as that was great fun! All the rides were excellent and we all went on a varied amount with the boys loving them all! We again had tea there and didn’t leave until about 8:30pm as we were enjoying the place so much, we didn’t really want to leave! But we did, and drove all the way to a Travel Lodge at Barry in Wales.

It took longer than expected to get there as the M4 was closed, so we had NO idea where we were going! By this time it was gone 10pm and the boys were all asleep, and we ended up being diverted through Newport before eventually getting to Cardiff and on to Barry.  It was a crazy drive as it was pitch black, raining and a bit foggy!

The following day, we went in the Toby Carvery for breakfast (which was right next door) and stuffed ourselves with lovely bacon and eggs! The boys ate loads again (mostly beans!) but were quite tired so were being a bit naughty, especially Coby who just wouldn’t sit still. Once finished, we drove to Barry Island and spent the day walking along the beach front and along the cliffs, and in the amusements and fairground. It was a really hot day so we first went into a cafe and had a nice milkshake!  The boys (and me and Kelly) loved the arcades and we won a few toys on the 2p machines, and we also all went on a few rides in the fair.  Towards tea time, the shops were closing up so we decided to walk back to the car (we were all tired out really) and drove down the road from where we were parked to Asda and got some bits and pieces for tea. We then went back to the same car park and had a picnic in the car, before going for a quick walk along the estuary. We then drove to another beach side car park just along from Barry and parked up overlooking the sea.  It was lovely there and reminded Kelly and I of Carlyon Bay when we first started going out, before they tore it all up for development! After this, we then went back to the hotel and packed again, before getting some good nights sleep.

The next day was our final day of our road trip holiday this year and the weather was awful!  We first went to Asda at Barry for a nice big cooked breakfast and got a few things whilst we were there, before heading off to Cardiff Bay and the Mermaid Quay car park. It was a shame that the weather was so bad as our first impression of Cardiff Bay was wet and dreary! We went in to the Millennium Centre and had a quick look around, mainly to get out of the rain, before spotting the bus stop to catch the sight seeing tour of Cardiff bus. We had already booked this previous to our holiday so when it arrived, we jumped on.  But due to the weather, we were unable to sit on the open top deck and had to sit in the stuffy lower level, which wasn’t very nice at all. As the bus drove around, we couldn’t really see anything as the windows were steamed up so the boys started to get a bit naughty. Eventually, we got off at Cardiff Castle, which we had already got tickets for, and went in.  The weather was still bad to begin with, but gradually cleared up and became hot and sunnier as we made our way around the location. The boys seemed to find most of it fascinating, however, when we were in the bomb tunnels and the noises of the bombs from the war were playing (in the dark as well!), they all got a bit scared! Coby was in his push chair and Kelly had to hold his hand as we made our way along them. I think they were all glad when we got outside again! Towards the end of the visit, a birds of prey show started and Ben and Coby ended up lying on the wet grass (along with many other people) and had a big owl fly over the top of them. They thought it was brill! After we had had a good look around and bought something in the shop, we left the castle and finally went on our open top bus tour of Cardiff. We did it twice as we wanted to do the full circle and then carry on again until we could get off at Cardiff Bay. We then had tea in a Wetherspoons there (where Coby spilt his drink over everything!) and then had some dessert in a nearby American Diner that sold proper Sundaes, before making our way back to the car and driving home.

We all had a great holiday and visited some really excellent places. I think the firm favourite was the drive through the safari at the West Midlands Safari Park, as we hadn’t experienced anything like that before. The weather was mostly pretty good, apart from Wookey Hole and most of our day in Cardiff, and we had some good food! Roll on next year when we are going to Scotland for a week! 😉