A Grand Day Out (and a very small confession…)

Last week, hubby had some time off (hurrah!) and we took the Smalls to the Natural History Museum.

BigSmall has been desperate to go ever since once of the bigger children at Pre-School bought in a video of the moving T-Rex that is there, a YEAR AGO. I thought he would forget about it, but he hasn’t, and it is after all one of THE MOST AMAZING places ever, so we decided to make a day trip.

We made it out of the house reasonably, and drove to Richmond, and then got the Underground to South Kensington and the Natural History Museum.
Trying to explain to a 4 year old why the Underground train wasn’t actually underground for most of the journey, took up most of the journey, and they were both VERY excited at seeing all the trains and waving at all the planes that kept flying overhead. I was slightly concerned that the actual purpose of our trip was going to be an anti-climax after the joys of London Transport…

And it may well have been for SmallSmall, who decided to have the biggest nap he has had in  several weeks, and slept for most of the way round…

But it wasn’t for the rest of us.

BigSmall LOVED it! He got his ‘Explorer Backpack’ complete with hat and binoculars from the Information Centre (these are free to borrow and have a few bits for the kids to do in them-BigSmall was chuffed to bits with his!) and we were off.

We had a fabulous day, learned lots, saw lots, walked lots.

BUT I have a teeny tiny confession. We bought something new….
Technically, we made a donation to the museum, of £5, for a kid’s guide to the museum, but really, we bought it. I was fully aware of what we were doing and that we were buying new, but I had thought about it and decided that it really wasn’t the end of the world on several levels:
-it is produced and printed ‘in house’ by the museum and so all the money goes straight back to supporting it
-it is printed on recycled paper and with soya ink (which I never even knew existed, but sounds pretty ecologically sound)
-it contains lots of information about the museum and the exhibits and dinosaurs and creepy crawlies and I knew BigSmall would love it, and why should he keep on having to miss out because of a decision I made? He didn’t even ask for it, but it was just one of those moments when I though “what the hell”.
So there we go, our third ‘slip’ in our year of Buying Nothing New (the others are here and here in case you missed them…), but I think the point is more that I thought carefully about the decision and weighed it up, and decided that on this occasion (this rarest of occasions over the whole of this year) that it was justified.

I hope you won’t judge me too harshly….