Over a week's catching up to do, oops.

Fri/Sat/Sun (26th to 28th)
We had a lovely weekend away in Bristol. One thing that was particularly nice for me was that J arranged all the travel and accommodation so I didn't even have to think about it - that's quite a novelty for me, felt rather relaxing. He was much more sensible than me and actually reserved seats, which proved a wise move on Glastonbury weekend.
The journeys were very smooth and fast with comfy air-conditioned trains. F read her book, played Populous on her DS and looked out of the window. We arrived in Bristol on Friday at 2ish and walked 10 mins to our hotel to settle in. F and I each had a bath and then we went out to the cinema to see Night at the Museum 2 - lovely luxurious city cinema. Film was OK, we thought, F enjoyed it a lot but we found it very sequelly.
Had dinner at a nice Eastern Asian food place - F had Japanese tempura with plum sauce dip and I had a Thai curry, J had Indonesian noodles and we all had a go with our chopsticks - nearly got the hang of it.

Saturday - we walked into the centre, where F paddled a bit in the lovely paddling pool water features. We went for a wander and saw a choir practising (here they are later in the day but I think their voices were better suited to the songs we heard earlier) at the amphitheatre by the water, stopped to watch and listen for a while, then had breakfast at a cafe where J was able to have a veggie cooked breakfast and F and I were able to have fruit and smoothies.
Then we got on the open-top bus and enjoyed the sightseeing tour, especially views of the gorge, before getting off at the zoo.
The best bits of the zoo visit were seeing an Asiatic lion quite close, seeing gorillas only feet away out in the open, seeing a mother and baby seal and walking through a butterfly 'forest' where a large blue butterfly kept landing on F. It was a lovely afternoon, really enjoyed it.
We got the open-top bus again to get back to the centre, so we did the full circuit, good commentary, nice little snippets of info rather than overdoing the dates and lists.
In the evening we ate at Flavourz, a crazy eat-all-you-want type place that had a Mexican/Chinese/Indian/Italian buffet! All well catered for there then... We didn't eat vast quantities (honest!), but it was nice for us to be able to have spicy food while F had her favourite pizza and other less hot items. Surprisingly good quality too. Back at the hotel we watched a film before bed.

On Sunday our destination was this place, where we played with all sorts of science kit, from interactive screen type stuff, to water with pumps, dams, locks, to air experiments, light, sound, magnetics, mechanics. Really excellent place, we all loved it, and we went to a short planetarium show there too.
Pictures on Flickr

Tues/Wed/Thurs (23rd to 25th):
F had her friend E over on Wednesday and they spent an hour in the paddling pool, also played Cluedo (sort of - simplified version!) and did a bit of trampolining and various other things. F was in a right old strop before and after E's visit, but was fine with her, thank goodness, just stroppy with me!
Tues and Thurs were home days, I was doing paid work and house chores plus pumping up paddling pool and similar tasks.
F was expounding on theories of how to hypnotize Rorschach not to eat rotten leaves and asking me to print out pictures of various people to stick in her diary. She also did lots of reading The Magic Faraway Tree and playing Sims 3, experimenting with different traits and lifetime wishes. At one stage my hayfever was terrible and she thoughtfully picked some lavender and gave it to me - it is one thing that really helps. Very kind.

Monday 22nd:
F decided she'd like to go to Monday group - bit of a trek on 2 buses but we manage it occasionally. It tends to involve setting an alarm as we'd otherwise not be up in time to do breakfast and packed lunch and get out. We often have interesting conversations on the bus on the way there - this time we covered the idea of open-top trains, which led on to the first trains, open carriages, first class, third class, Queen Victoria, queens, kings, their names. F had a good time at group, playing with a number of different people and also by herself, quite happily.
Afterwards we met J in Brighton - he was getting new glasses - and had some food. F showed J exactly where she fell and broke her arm last summer.
Think we all talked on the bus on the way back about which inventions existed when I was born and which had happened since and when, e.g. mobile phones, CDs, DVDs, home computers, etc.

Weekend 20-21st:
We went to the local raft race launch, which is very good fun, costumes worn by competing teams, crazy vessels, eggs and flour thrown at them and water sprayed at the crowd in return. We got soaked at one point but it was a beautiful day so quickly dried out.