A picnic and Michaelmas bread dragons

Yesterday we went along to a Not Back To School Picnic (more info about the picnics nationwide here). It was a bit of a trek for us and not really what Cameron had expected so he didn't feel like joining in, which was a shame. He spent some time camped out under a tree while I chatted to a few other parents, took some (bad) photographs and generally fretted about whether or not we were setting a bad example for the newspaper reporter!


Cameron did have a great time on this massive swing at the park


and we found more conkers than we could carry home - great big ones - so it wasn't a completely negative experience.

Today we made Michaelmas dragons - an activity we've been doing for three years now. I use the guide in All Year Round for telling The story of the Harvest loaf as you mix the dough ingredients (egg yolk to represent the sun etc). It's a really magical activity and the story of michaelmas is useful for some inner reflection whether you follow the particular religion or not. With the dough, we made dragons. This is always quite comical as the shapes mutate as the dough rises! We like to use flaked almonds for scales.

Here are our baked dragons, mine is the two headed one and the other is Cameron's


I looked back through the blog archives to find a picture of last years dragons and found that I'd mixed the post about Michaelmas dragons with one about Cameron's diagnosis. It's hard to believe it's only been a year since all that happened.

This afternoon we went out with Grandad to look for more conkers and we came home for Dennis and Gnasher and some chickpea chilli from the slow cooker - yum!