As I said when I first started this blog almost three months ago (woah – where did that time go?!), one of my motivations behind it was to create a record of the little things which bring me and my family joy and happiness. Part of this is most definitely covered by my Happy Friday posts, in which I record ten things which have made me happy in that week. But another aspect of blogging that I’m loving is being able to document, in words and photos, some of the oh-so-lovely times we have as a family. G and B are growing up so quickly, and we already feel that our days together as a four are numbered, so I feel that it will become even more special as time goes on to have this as a journal of the happy times that we have experienced together.

Talking of which, we have just enjoyed an absolutely lovely weekend! After the past few weeks having been taken up with G and B revising for their end of year exams, it felt so special to be able to spend Saturday all together. We began the day with a fabulous breakfast of the delicious croissants which I had bought at the farm shop earlier in the week, then we went back to Kedleston Hall, where I had walked the dogs the previous weekend, as it was a beautiful sunny day and I really wanted to share the lovely walk with them. We had a great time – lots of pleasant, relaxed chatter, fun with the dogs, with the prospect of our first picnic of the year at the end! We had walked fairly quickly, so felt that we truly deserved our lunch of bread, cheese, pate, crisps, sugar snap peas and watermelon  – and to be able to eat outside always feels like such a treat. Of course, we had to finish off our treat with ice creams, so we all went home very happy.

As the weather was so kind to us, we decided that we would light the fire pit and barbecue our evening meal over it, so we had homemade burgers, fish and homemade garlic bread baked on the side of the grill – it was so good! G, with her obsession with bacon, then decided to try cooking bacon over the fire, which, I have to say, worked very well. We had such a great night out there that we stayed out until 11 o’clock, with D cooking yet more bacon at about 10.30pm! It was a very special night.

The following day saw me and G going for a shopping trip into Derby to buy some final holiday clothes. It was a really lovely “girly” trip – and we may even have got some tasty lunch at Ed’s Diner whilst we were out!

See, I know already that this is one of those posts that I will come back to in the months and years to come, to remind myself of what a lovely weekend it was. I don’t want to suggest that such weekends are so few and far between, but some are just especially lovely, don’t you think?