Family Day in Cleveleys

Last Sunday found me, my girls, their boys and our men heading to Cleveleys for a fun day out.  All the men except Caroline’s husband, Trev, who was working, poor thing.  The weather wasn’t what we had hoped for.  Instead of a bright and fresh spring day we had a dull, windy and quite cold day.  We still took a picnic, albeit eaten sitting in our cars instead of in the open air, after which we braved the elements.  We took a bracing walk along the promenade and beach and breathed in that glorious salt sea air.

The boys found a wall to climb up, over and jump off.

You can tell by the number of layers my beautiful, windswept girls are wearing how cold it was.  Here’s my first born, Victoria.

My second born, Caroline.  Both smiling even though high winds were whipping around their ankles.

Gary, Victoria’s husband.  He was feeling the cold and definitely not impressed by the weather but still smiled, kind of, through it all.

George throwing stones in the sea and Harley chasing after them.  That dog should have been born with webbed feet.  He loves the water and it doesn’t matter how cold it is.  He just dives right in!

George and Nicholas running away from the waves.

Charlie had lots of fun riding his bike, which was good to see.  Up until now he hasn’t been very interested in it preferring his scooter.

All three boys playing together.  That’s what I like to see!

With Caroline at the water’s edge. 

You can see here that Nicholas is carrying a huge pebble under his arm.  He carried that and others for miles.

Nicholas smiling sweetly for me even though I was pointing the camera right at him!  I love his freckles.

 

As we walked along the beach together Nicholas shared his finds with me.  He did offer me some huge ones but I graciously declined those and stuck with the ones that would fit more easily in my pocket.

We had parked at the less pretty end of Cleveleys beach but that didn’t mean we had any less fun.  This part hasn’t been modernised.  Those stone columns are part of the sea defences and have been there as long as I can remember.  I can clearly remember the fun my cousin, Sylvia, and I had when we were kids jumping from one to the next as our mothers walked along chatting together.  Happy days!

The boys had great fun running in and out of, climbing up and over the columns.  I chased them with my camera and I have a hundred of those pics.  I'll turn them into a scrapbook page one day soon.

Meanwhile the girls watched and chatted together.  They’re never stuck for something to talk about when they’re together and that pleases me no end!  I have to mention that while all this was going on the men had retreated to the shelter of the car.  The big softies!

Getting to the end of the afternoon now and time to re-load the cars with bikes, scooters, kids and dogs and hit the road back to the ranch.  (American terminology creeping in.  Our trip to the USA in a couple of days must be in my subconscious!)  Anyway… there’s always somebody with wet feet on days like this.  This time it  was Charlie and he was the only one with wellies on!

Nicholas kindly helped sort him out by taking Charlie’s wringing-wet-through boots and socks off for him.  Charlie was more than happy to let Nicholas do it too! :-)

And so ended another family day out.  Everybody had a good time.  The boys and dogs ran off a lot of surplus energy and had loads of fun.  All these photographs will help the memories we made stay in their minds and that’s what blogging is all about for me.

Until next time,