Seafood anyone?

Today we went to the seaside. One short bus ride and we were there. Amazing considering we live miles away from the sea.

Dewsbury on Sea is a yearly thing a local town does. They get tons of sand donated and turn part of the town centre into a beach. They have donkeys, fairground rides, face painting (which I always have to check out, naturally) and this. Never seen anything like it before and it's the biggest lobster I've ever seen. The kids thought it was ace. Along with the stilt walking mermaid (amazing, who knew a mermaid could stilt walk?).

So they had fun building sandcastles and digging holes, Malakai cried when I tried to replace a very large spade with one more suited to his baby size. Maddy made beautiful sandcastles then jumped on them. Morgan refused to turn over his bucket to make a castle and filled it to over flowing instead.

On the way home I had to control someone else's child after she pissed off the whole bus by being a little madam. You could even see the driver in his mirrors silently fuming. Seriously, why can some parents not just get up off their arses and sort their kids out? Threatening a slapped bum and no sweets was really working well. Not. The mum was thankful when I followed her kid to the back and blocked her in the back seat to stop her crawling down the middle of the bus pretending to be a cat, stopped her standing on the back of those sideways facing front seats, stopped her lying on her back across the shopping bag bit... BUT SHE WASN'T MY CHILD. IT WASN'T MY RESPONSIBILITY. Someone needed to stop her to avoid injury.

I'm so thankful for my kids after that. They might take telling a few times before they listen, but they know you need to sit still and behave sensibly on a bus. They're no angels, but I can honestly say I've done my best to teach them good manners. More than can be said for some... (Rant over :-) )