A Modern Mother

Frankenparents or frankly right?

We live in a popular town near Newbury. It's full of Edwardian houses and nice antique shops. Our local primary school consistently scores in the top five percent in the country. Each year it receives 5x as many applications than it can accept for its coveted spaces. Many young families abandon London each year and financially stretch themselves to buy in on the local property ladder. And when they aren't happy with the local school, they turn into frakenparents.

Our Year Sixes were invited to participate in a tennis round robin competition with a nearby public school. We don't have an official school tennis programme, so the teacher in charge (a keen one just out of training) thought the fairest way to pick the players would be to choose randomly -- pull names out of the hat kind of thing. The public school of course has a full-on sports programme, with several coaches and facilities for a proper tea after the competition.

#passiton

The fabulous Rosie Scribble has tagged me in the #passiton, Save the Children's vaccination campaign to highlight that eight million children die each year from preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhea. They are sending three bloggers including Chris Mosler from Thinly Spread to Mozambique to follow the journey of a vaccine from the store in the city right down to a rural community. We can follow their journey via social media by using the hashtag #passiton.

How we can help

We can help support the trip by spreading word of the campaign and getting people to sign the petition to put pressure on the government leaders to meet the funding shortfall for vaccines at a conference in June.

When children grow up #sob

We spent the weekend at hotel in Cornwall that is very popular with families and goes to great lengths to help entertain the kids. The weekend culminated in a Saturday night fancy dress disco. My girls, aged 6, 7 and 9, even talked me into buying some pointy damsel hats from the NHS shop we visited that day, so they would look the part.

I let them put on some of my makeup for the night; pink lipstick, shiny lavender eye shadow and just a trace of brown eyeliner and pulled back their long hair, still sticky after spending the afternoon in the pool, and fastened their princess hats. They looked gorgeous.

We arrived at the disco and soon discovered they were the oldest children there! A load of toddlers were scattered around the hall in worn blue Cinderella dresses and fairy wings. The girls knew many of them, they had made all kinds of two-year-old friends at the playpark, pool and jungle gym that day.

Bedruthan Steps: Sustainable tourism, young families and a cracking good breakfast!

Review post

The Bedruthan Steps kindly asked the Modern Family to spend the weekend in Cornwall at their family eco hotel. Perched on the cliffs between Padtsow and Newquay, the four-star hotel is a beautifully renovated 60s-style building and a tribute to sustainable tourism. It has long been known for being innovative, including being one of the first to use grass roofs to improve views (and insulate rooms). The green theme is evident everywhere, including the locally produced handmade organic soap and shampoo bars and fairtrade coffee/tea/hot chocolate in the guest rooms. You are reminded to only ask for clean towels/linens when you need them and the electrics are based on the key system – to ensure lights are left off when you vacate the room.

*This is a pic of Mawgan Porth Beach, which is right below the hotel