Chaos family weekends, brave houseguests, a bit of wanderlust

I've never been a continuity blogger before - as you may know I dip in and out of life happenings and to do lists as if they hold equal value.  But now I'm behind in the blogging world and I don't really know what the most important thing to catch up on first is... so let's go for...

Clara made a friend!

It's Kyria!

Travel blogger extraordinaire and all around super cool human Kyria came to Wales last weekend, and I took the opportunity to do some local exploring with her and to appreciate how great it is for people to come visit chaos families with young kids.  She arrived on Thursday and as we took the bus to my house (I was on the way back from work) I said "when we get home the twins should be asleep, and then I'll put the big kids to sleep and we can have dinner" and instead I opened the door to four yelling kids having a chaos dinner.  Oops.  Kyria took it well, hung out with the big kids while I helped put the twins to bed, and even helped inflate her own airbed with the "help" of the 5 & 7 year olds.

On Friday Kyria babysat sleeping twins so Andy and I could go out to the Banff Mountain Film Festival in Cardiff.  I had bought these tickets in February so it was super fortuitous that we had a babysitter! I can't remember the last time Andy and I left the house on a Friday.  It was great.

On Saturday we visited an open air museum and then had a quick walk through Cardiff center.  In the afternoon Andy helped set up my touring bike so Kyria could do some cycle touring in Wales... Aubrey wanted to go on the test ride as well:

On Sunday we headed to my favourite local castle with just Lily and Clara.  It's a super photogenic castle and I got zero photos.  Oops. In the afternoon we got out for a quick local hike/walk up a local ridge.  Kyria replaced her travel backpack with a Clara backpack:

In the evening we had a takeaway curry dinner, and then on Monday Kyria caught the train to North Wales for her own cycle adventure.  

I did get a bit of wanderlust having such a cool adventure human in my house, and on Tuesday I booked a trip to France for me and the big kids in February.  We are going to Provence for 5 nights.  The flight out was only £50 for the three of us! The flight back was £230 for the three of us.  We are going to have to reevaluate our holiday budget for next year because I have big travel dreams now.

We have a slightly more chilled out weekend coming up, which is great because the kids are super tired and I am super tired and I I feel firmly in the "countdown to Christmas" now with 4 weeks left of work. On Sunday we are celebrating Thanksgiving (observed) since I'll be in meetings on actual Thanksgiving.  Yay turkey!

And then it's just 4 more working weeks till the Christmas holidays...!