Aaron's Blog

Over the first Bank Holiday weekend in May, we camped at Woodlands again, but for 3 nights this year. The same families from School (plus a couple new ones) stayed as well and we all had a great time. The weather was perfect all weekend – clear blue skies and hot! We were in a different field this year though, which was a shame as we were actually on a slight hill which meant we had trouble sleeping and not sliding out of the bed! It was a nightmare really as Kelly and I had hardly any sleep at all due to it! Hopefully next year, we will be in the other field again.

The boys had an excellent time all weekend, especially as it was actually Aaron’s birthday on our first night there. So we took some party food with us and, once the tent was up and sorted, we put the food out so Aaron and all of the other children from school came and had a good scoff! There was hardly any food left at the end! Kelly also brought the cake that she made for him, but we held off eating that until the next day, as it was nearly 21:30 by the time everyone had stopped snacking on the treats.

On both of our full days there (Saturday and Sunday), we spent the entire day in Woodlands, looking at the animals and going on the rides. Towards the end of the first day, myself and Aaron plucked up enough courage to go on one of the big water slides – even Coby came on! It was the twister that Coby and I went on and we got absolutely drenched when we reached the bottom! It was good fun, though I did think we were going to slide out of the tube at one point before a massive splosh of water went right over mine and Coby’s heads! The poor boy was crying afterwards as he was so wet! 😉 By this time, Aaron was happy going on the other water rides (which was a complete change for him!) with other adults. We also went on the Toboggan Run, as it is a firm favourite for us all, and the boys went in the climbing frame areas. We had a BBQ on the Saturday night for tea and then we got takeaway Pizza on Sunday evening, which was delicious. We also had a good game of Rounders on the Sunday evening and I ended up being the last one standing (men vs women), so Ben and I were pleased with that!

The Monday was our final day so we had to start packing the tent and the other bits and pieces up and cramming it all back into the car. We did some of it in the morning before leaving the rest and the tent itself until later on in the afternoon. We had until 4pm to leave the pitch, so we had plenty of time. So we went into the park again and into the indoor soft play area where I ended up climbing around with 5 of the little ones (inc Coby) as they were too small to go in there without an adult. I was absolutely sweating by the time I got out! The children were fine though and were still full of it and wanted to go back in, so one of the other Dad’s took them back in again! Phew! After we had finished in there, we went and got some food and then ended up on the water slides again. This time we had come prepared for getting wet though! I went on one of them with Ben and all of the boys went on with their friends as well, apart from Coby, who went on with one of the Mum’s. Coby loved them even though I, and even Kelly, wouldn’t go on two of them! They all loved it! By this time, Kelly and I had to go back to camp and finish taking the tent down so the boys stayed with the other parents and carried on having fun. We eventually got the tent down in the searing sun and packed it all away into the car.

We had had an awesome weekend and were sad to be packing up and going home as we could have easily stayed the week, especially as the weather was so perfect! Roll on 2019! 😉

A couple of weeks ago, Aaron had his awards assembly where he was given his latest swimming certificates. Unfortunately, he was very grumpy for some reason and hardly smiled.

For this half term, Aaron has joined the Pebble Art Club which runs after school on a thursday. In the club, Aaron will get to design and paint a pebble and then go out and hide it somewhere. He has only had one lesson so far, which was to design the picture that was going to go on the pebble, but he said he really enjoyed that. Hopefully he will enjoy each lesson as he likes drawing on pebbles and a lot of his friends are at the club as well.

2 weeks after Aaron got his 20 metres certificate, he completed stage 3! He had been on 90%+ for several weeks but just couldn’t get over the finishing line but his teacher, Jess, passed him and he has now moved up a level. Typically, there are no spaces at the same time on a Monday (16:30) so he has had to change to 16:00 on a Monday, which isn’t too bad, but a rush from School to get there again. As Ben has moved to a Saturday morning now, it still means two separate trips to Meadowlands each week. Well done Aaron for completing this stage and it is amazing to see how well he can swim (and especially swim underwater for so long) now, compared with a year ago. 😉

A couple of weeks ago, Aaron got his 20 metres swimming certificate. He was very proud to achieve this and wasn’t actually very far away from a full length, which is 25 metres, but got too tired as he reached the 20 metre point. We are very proud of him for reaching this level! X