This post was originally written and published in 2016. And Christopher still wants to do stuff with us! It’s truly a mackerel!

This last weekend gave me the rare opportunity to spend some time with my son. My boyfriend was working nights and so Christopher and I headed off to find some adventures. The weekend wasn’t without its arguments. That child will  argue that black is white with me given half the chance. We had fun though, we always have fun, it’s so nice to see him growing up, you can hold a semi sensible conversation with him and sometimes he actually uses his brain. I forget that he’s not a little boy anymore. He’s becoming a young man and this point of his life is so confusing and difficult, it’s a painful transitional period. I know he needs his independence and he knows he needs it but it’s also important for him to know that he can come to me whenever he needs. It’s good for children to know that they can go out and spread their wings but they have a safe base to return to, no matter where they’ve been.

Christopher had decided that on our Friday together we should try to tackle the jungle of a garden that we have, this sounded like a good idea at the time but we soon came to realise that we have no idea what we’re doing, this seems to be an going trend in our house. We did manage to make a “pond”, we dug a hole in one of our tiers and popped an old washing up bowl in there, filled it with water, added a few stones and voila! A pond 🙂

I bit the bullet and downloaded Pokemon Go!… We packed up some water a couple of snacks and set off around the village to catch some Pokemon, I was actually quite excited about this prospect, I was never a Pokemon fan as a child/teenager/adult? I don’t even know when it was popular, but I saw this as an opportunity to bond. It didn’t work, not the bonding, I mean the app didn’t work, the stupid servers crashed, so no Pokemon for us! Instead we stopped off at a cake shop and ate and drank naughty things 🙂

We headed back home and Christopher thought it would be a good idea for us to play  ‘Don’t Laugh’. Basically you take a swig of water and listen to some funny video/audio clips and try your hardest not to laugh, if you do you end up spraying your opponent with water. I advise that you play this game outside on a hot day. It was good clean fun and made for another addition to his YouTube channel, which you can check out here.  So that was our Friday done and dusted.

Saturday was a whole other kettle of fish, it was Bingley Show down in Myrtle Park. We’ve never been before but I think we’ll definitely go again. It was £10 for me and £5 for Christopher and there was just so much to see and do! You don’t realise how big that park is until they have some sort of event there. They had rides and demonstrations, the Army Cadets were there with their climbing wall. There were sheep, geese, dogs, cats, mice, guinea pigs, hens, cockerels, ducks, snakes! Every stall imaginable! And I had one of the nicest burgers I have ever eaten from the Polish food stall. It was good to just wander round in the sunshine and soak up the Bingley inspired atmosphere. Highly recommended, put it in your diaries for next year.

On Sunday we had a drive out to Golden Acre Park at Adel in Leeds, purely to visit the Adel Nature Reserve. It did take some finding, the postcode given by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust handbook actually takes you to a Mercure Hotel…but we got there eventually. We’ve recently joined the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and so we’re now on a mission to visit these nature reserves. I say we’re on a mission when actually I just mean me, Chris and Christopher are more likely to just get dragged there 🙂

Anyway we started with Adel because it’s the first one in the book. It’s hidden inside Golden Acre Park, if you park in the car park where the ice cream van is, just follow the path next to the van and eventually you come to a sign for the Nature Reserve. As far as I’m aware it’s free entry, we didn’t pay but we are members so don’t quote me on the gratis.

I really enjoyed the little walk around, we probably spent an hour in there, testing how deep the bogs were, being fascinated by weird looking fungi. You could spend ages going on bug hunts, squirrel spotting, the trees were alive with them. They also had a bird watching hide and a lake hide, complete with volunteer guides to answer any questions. There had been a Kingfisher out that day but unfortunately he didn’t show his face whilst we were there and they’d also spotted a couple of fox cubs earlier that day but again we didn’t see these 😦  I did see a Robin and a Jay though, nothing out of the ordinary but still very pretty. All in all it was a good day, a chance to reconnect with nature and my son, who may well very soon stop wanting to come out with Chris and I on days out, so until then I’m going to squeeze every spare second out of him that I can. Make the most of the time when they’re little because it goes ever so fast. You really don’t have all the time in the world, at least not when you have children.♥