Back to school finally

We are a week behind the rest of the country by the sounds of it as our back to school only happened yesterday. Which means I’ve been waiting nearly a week to link up with Tara’s “Back to school” themed gallery.

Having this extra week when most of the country and London was back at school was great, especially with the weather we had last week, and we made the most of those last few days of summer.

Tuesday saw us heading to Kensington Gardens and the Diana memorial playground. I cannot recommend this place enough, it really does tick every box (especially when the weather is glorious!): the whole place is secured and adults can only enter accompanied by children and children can only leave accompanied by adults, there are friendly adults going round to make sure all the kids are ok, it is free, there are clean toilets and baby change facilities, there’s a reasonably priced café with yummy food, drinks and – all importantly – ice creams, but you can also picnic there. We went with friends who have children and babies the same age and everyone had a ball.

On Thursday they announced we should expect it to be the last day of the summer weather, with temperatures of around 27-30°C, so we hot-footed it over to the paddling pool at Tooting Lido which had reopened exceptionally due to the hot weather. We had a fab time, with friends again, and really felt like we’d squeezed the last drops out of summer. It’s just as well we did as on Friday we were greeted by a rainy, grey sky.

It’s been an amazing summer but L was ready to go back to school yesterday and to meet her Year 2 teacher.

It’s been such an incredible summer as it’s the first time I’ve ever been able to spend the whole summer with my child(ren), having fun and just enjoying each other’s company.

I am linking up with Tara at Sticky Fingers for this week’s Gallery theme: Back to school. As I was writing this post though all I could think was that these were all such magic moments, so I’m also linking up with The Oliver’s Madhouse and Magic Moments.