Magic in the Park

I came down on Wednesday evening with something horrible.....some yukky, virusy, ucky thing. Consequently, all I inteded to do yesterday was to slink into bed and stay there.

As it turned out, however, it rained :-)) Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the rain. Emily does too. So when she wanted to go out and play in it, it didn't seem like such a bad idea after all. Crawled to the car and somehow made it as far as Normanby Hall without throwing up. Just.

Three and a half hours later, Emily and I were soaked, dripping, filthy and covered in mud.........and extremely happy, lol. We had the place to ourselves and it was utterly magical. Emily skated like a pro, collected things for potions, completed magical challenges, climbed trees (so did I! rofl) and laughed constantly. Needless to say we had plenty of chance for a good bit of Harry Potter pretend too.

Had the sun shone, I'm pretty certain I'd have skulked around at home feeling at death's door. It's truly magical what the laughter of a child and the restorative properties of nature can do for you.

Yesterday we also got to the bottom of some of the issues surrounding family and friends that have been bothering Emily recently. She takes my breath away with her levels of insight at times. There are an awful lot of negative, insincere, energy-draining people around us and Emily doesn't inhabit a la-la-la happy-ever-after world; she's well aware of the situations. Which, in my not-so-humble opinion, is a very healthy thing. So we had lots of discussions about loyalty, sincerity, duty, growing up, growing apart, tact, why people sometimes hurt other people's feelings, insecurities, everyone being different, whether or not you still have to do things when they're no longer fun, responsibilities, giving people the benefit of the doubt and much else besides. She has a teenage head on those shoulders, that one.

In other news, Emily's also spent hours devouring a fantastic little DK "Building a Website" book we got from Jules the other day (thank you!) and is champing at the bit to get started. She's now the proud owner of emilydana.co.uk - not that there's anything there, but hey, watch this space! Emily's also getting very excited about the possibility of riding lessons coming up, although she does understand that it probably wouldn't be until September, or not even until next year. A friend of ours who uses the village riding school has had some thought-provoking information for us, so, we shall see.