Marriage - a 5 year old's view

"E" has recently developed an interest in marriage and has already lined up the boy in her class that she plans to marry - "When I am 34 Mummy", I have at least managed to persuade her to have some fun first. The main reason for her boy of choice? His surname is the same as her middle name - obviously. Now this has got me thinking about where this interest has come from. Admittedly I have not banished fairytales or Disney from the house so maybe that has sparked the interest in falling in love and the big 'happily ever after' but is this necessarily the right message to be sending out? I did my university dissertation on gender equality & working mother's choices and sometimes feel I am betraying the 'sisterhood' for leaving a career for the family. I often ask myself what example am I setting my daughter? Does she see a woman's role as getting married, having babies and staying home? Hopefully not as she has declared that she wants to be a doctor, I have yet to dampen her spirits with the financial burden she will face as a future student!

We have cleared up the issue that no she cannot marry daddy or "A" but she recently declared that, "mummy, girls can marry girls". Is that on the school curriculum already?! I, being a modern mummy, did not disagree with her and merely said, "Yes, sometimes they do".

So today, just as we were finishing lunch, "E" asks, "Do some people marry more than 1 person?" Well "E" has friends whose parents have split up & re-married so she has some realisation that families are made up in different ways. My answer? "Yes, but some people stay married to one person forever". She looked at me with a shocked expression and stated, "WHAT???"

Maybe the idea of a big romance and 'happily ever after' isn't for her after all?!

We're all going on a Camp Besti Holiday!!

It's that time of year that I like to call Festivaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!!
It took me until last summer to go to my first music festival and thought "let's do it properly with a 4 and 2 year old and grumpy hubby who just LOVES to camp!" Please note the sarcasm, I do that alot when referring to the other half. So I did my research and discovered Camp Bestival, touted as the best family festival so trusted that, and bought tickets - OUCH! that hit the bank balance. Well, I like to plan (the teacher in me) and lists were drawn up, online forums visited and thanks to me we were set on having a well organised jaunt down to Lulworth. Once parked we loaded up the Phil & Teds with tent, cider and all the other paraphanalia that is needed to camp with children and off we bumped to get our wristbands and find a pitch. First thing I noticed was the Cath Kidston influence of the campsite, no crappy pop up tents here but huge monster tents with gazebos, bunting, fairy lights - I have noted this on my list for this week! Second thing I noticed was the Boden-class influence of the festival site (I felt right at home as I like to pretend I fit in there!), there was Hugh F-W's cafe, the WI tent, Boden itself, a huge choice of yummy food, 1000s of children that looked like they had fallen straight off the pages of the mini-Boden catalogue and....us!
So the list is ready, complete with fairy lights and bunting, the tutus are made and we are counting down the days!

My First Blog - Welcome!

Hi and welcome to my blog! Firstly a little bit about how I have come to join the thousands of SAHM bloggers like myself - I have recently become addicted to Twitter and via that medium an addiction to blogs has started and I thought I would jump on board. I am secretly very pleased with myself that I have got this far due to a fear of technology and it all going horribly wrong. In fact I seem to be scared of more things these days and am sure that goes hand in hand with my increased time at home and completely losing touch with some elements of the real world. I feel some future blogs already bubbling in my head about that. My blogs will not be super intelligent musings as my intellect has waned somewhat in the past few years but I hope to be able to spill out onto my blog page my views and feelings on whatever I feel fit for isn't that a reason for writing a blog? I have read a few blogs via Twitter and some are so clever and witty and I fear I may not be up to that standard of writing - English at school was never my strongpoint - but I am willing to give it a go. I so hope I don't offend but will speak my mind, and hopefully I will make some readers smile or maybe laugh, who knows?
So please bear with me and give my blogs a go. I am learning technically on the job so please excuse any school-girl errors.
Welcome and hopefully someone will be back when I find something interesting & witty to blog about! x x