The Circus

Yesterday Hannah's friend Coral and her grandma Chris picked us up, and Chris surprised us with tickets to the circus!! Hannah was beyond thrilled!! She has been yearning to go ever since she saw the posters at the beginning of the summer, and was soooo excited when we arrived and the surprise was revealed!

Very excited girls leaping up and down outside the box office!

You can't go to the circus without buying Candy Floss!!

I think the sugar is kicking in!

 

The show was amazing! Really professional and brilliantly entertaining. It was so hard to capture any decent shots though as there was no flash allowed, but I did my best to get a few.

This guy on the highwire has another man standing on his shoulders, and a woman on HIS shoulders!

And finally, this is Coral and Hannah with Chris. She is an amazing lady! She has been fighting cancer for almost two years now and has an amazing spirit and heart. We love her so much and it was especially lovely for the girls to make those memories with her yesterday.

Portchester Common

This weekend we discovered that Portchester has a common!!  It's right at the top of Portsdown Hill and full of wild flowers, butterflies and bees.

There are definitely a few signs around of Autumn being on it's way now. Blackberries ripening in the hedges and beautiful red Hawthorn berries on the branches.

 But lots of late summer wild flowers around as well! Ragwort and Yarrow with Self- Heal and Scabious growing in abundance here.

Hannah spotted many butterflies amongst the flowers, especially the Meadow Brown Butterfly.

She watched a Kestrel circling over head and then swooping down to it's prey.

We found Sweet Peas clambering over the shrubs and brambles, and quite a few Cinnabar Moths on the flowers nearby.

 Hannah took her silk streamer to fly in the wind !!

This is Portchester Castle as seen from the top of the hill (with a zoom lens!), and Spinnaker Tower in the distance.

 And the view over Portsmouth and Fareham without the zoom!

It's a lovely area for a walk and I'm sure we will be going back soon!

Blue Reef Aquarium

We have had the most lovely day today! We went to Blue Reef Aquarium with Hannah's friend Melissa, her mum and baby sister. The girls have been wanting to go for a while now and it was completely worth it. Hannah was fascinated, she wanted to know everything and see everything (several times over!), she loved the workshops and asked loads of questions and she and Melissa made a lovely collection of sealife crayon rubbings to take home.

There was mainly no flash photography in the aquarium so the pictures aren't so good, but here's a taster of what we saw!

Doing a Fishy Quiz

Playful Otters

We had a picnic lunch while the girls played in the splash park!

Stroking a Starfish in the Rockpool Workshop

Spider Crab