Rocking Your World Friday double helpings - weeks 25 and 26

Yup - I said 26 - so you're right Virginia, we are half way through 2012 already!  Cue assorted mumbles of "where HAS the time gone?" :)

But I've got week 25 to recap first, as I somehow managed to skip my RYWF post last week - I've been mega busy and blogging has been on the backburner a bit....apologies....

Week 25 started with a bang with a day trip to Longleat Adventure Park - love that place!  Once again, like most of our day trips, it was all paid for with Tesco Clubcard points - thank you Mr Tesco!!

I'll apologise right now for the photo overload that follows....

On the way in, we all had fun making totally-authentic-honest shadow puppets :)

Then we spent ages in the safari park - longer than usual - the animals were particularly active and interesting for once!

Highlights were having our car attacked by monkeys:

not our car, but they ripped the trim off ours too - luckily it was easy enough to stick back in place :)

feeding the deer:

and seeing the beautiful big cats up close and personal:

After the safari, we enjoyed all the usual attractions - the train, the giant hedge maze (not that we were in there long this time as we found our way out too soon by mistake!), the ride simulators, the bat cave, the boat trip with the sealions, the butterfly house etc - and also there was a brand new walk through area which features meerkats, monkeys and lorikeets that was absolutely fantastic:

the meerkats are free to roam around as they please - that's my foot there ....

so cute! could have stayed in this bit all day :)

the monkeys had freedom of movement too throughout their monkey temple area - but they seemed more interested in eating oranges on top of their big prayer wheel than coming over to say hi.... 

the lorikeets definitely weren't shy though! :D  I had four on me at one point :)

...which might have had something to do with the little cup of nectar I was holding....

The rest of the week was fairly quiet, and involved a few less than great things that don't belong in a Rocking My World Post (like the car breaking down and costing me an arm and a leg to get fixed!) - but there were definitely some positives too - there always are, aren't there, if you keep an eye out for them?

• on the Monday, as the car was stuck in the garage, I was working from home, which meant that I finally got to meet my new postman for the first time. Well, he's not that new as he's been delivering to my house for over a year, but I'm never normally home when he delivers....  He made a point of commenting (very favourably, I hasten to add!) on the mail art postcard he was delivering from Virginia (the person, not the place :) ) - and also on all the postcrossing postcards I get from all over the world.  He said that my house is his favourite place to deliver to on his whole route as we get so much interesting and colourful mail.  That really made me smile :)
• on Wednesday, I took a lunch break for the first time in a while (work has been uber busy), and wandered over to the local museum, where they had a new exhibition on in their gallery space - the Cotswold Craftsmen.  There was tons of beautiful eye candy there, from jewellery through to paintings, calligraphy and sculpture.  I treated myself to a lovely copper bracelet:

(the flatter one is the one I bought, the chain maille one is one I made myself )

• on the Thursday I got to cuddle a week old baby, which is a rare treat :)  Her daddy works with me and brought her into the office to show off  - so adorable!
• and pretty much all week I was grateful for the Index Card A Day project for forcing me to be creative every single day, even when I was tired or fed up and totally not in the mood for it - without exception I always felt better for having done SOMETHING, even if they weren't all exactly works of art!

So now we're on to week 26.....

On Saturday it was time to go and pick up my middle son Darby from Bristol Uni as he has now finished the first year of his Physics degree - always great to have him home, even if not for long (as he only came back for a day and then shot off to Italy for a fortnight!)

It was a mammoth effort to get all his belongings into the car - where did it all come from????  I'm sure we didn't take that much stuff out there to start with!!  

That's the view over my shoulder into the back of the car - not a square inch of space left!

Now of course all this stuff is scattered throughout my house, but never mind, it's nice to have him home in spirit :)

The next day we had an AWESOME time.  Like I said, Darby was off to Italy with his uni pals, and he was staying at a friend's house in London on the Sunday night before flying out the next morning, and I said I would give him a lift down.  

And seeing as that meant we had to drive to London anyway, we thought we might as well make a day out for the whole family out of it....

First up we parked up (free London parking meters on Sundays definitely rock my world! :) ) on Lambeth Road, and went to visit the Imperial War Museum ..... I've never been there before and it's HUGE, and fascinating.  

....and a beautiful looking building to boot

a bit of the Berlin Wall outside - I might have a few more photos like this to share next week ;)

Polaris missile inside

Next we walked down to the Tate Modern - where Jay was REALLY impressed with the modern art, not :)

the kids posing with the giant Damien Hirst outside....

On the way we passed the first of many pianos we saw this day - they are dotted around the city as part of the Festival of London, and are free for anyone to play.  The boys treated us to a few duets :)

Next we took a stroll along the South Bank in the glorious sunshine, all the way up to Tower Bridge and back.

We saw so many fantastic sights along the way, St Pauls, the Millenium Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Gherkin, the Tower of London, the London Dungeons, the Golden Hinde...... and tons of great sculptures ..... here's a taste:

my boys finding something very fascinating in the Thames....with St  Pauls in the background

this cool sculpture was called The Architect

  

there's something very surreal about turning a corner in the middle of a built up city centre and coming face to face with a life size replica of an Elizabethan galleon!

  

the Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Then we had ice creams :)

And also took some time to check out some of the cool decorated phone boxes that have been dotted around on the South Bank by BT as part of their Artbox trail in support of Childline:

We finished off our South of the River exploration with a close up look at the almost finished new building The Shard - the tallest building in the EU, apparently, and pretty spectacular!

I do love London!

Highlights for the rest of the week:

• Shirtless Nathan Stark on Eureka on Monday:

• I printed our boarding passes for Berlin on Wednesday, that step always makes a trip feel more real 

• Thursday was my last day in work for TEN WHOLE DAYS - yeeeaahhhhhh!!!!

• Dyed my hair on Friday and was pleased with how it turned out - darker than I thought it was going to be but I'll get used to that

• and also on Friday was Connor's school's 1960s picnic - the morning started off grey and wet and we thought it might be cancelled, but by lunchtime the sun was shining and the kids all looked fab in their 60s gear :)  Connor especially, he won best costume in his class, which he was chuffed about:

And that wraps up a truly rocking fortnight :)

Off to link this up over at Rockette Central (otherwise known as Virginia's blog) and go and see what all the other RYWF gals have been up to .....