Work Perk of the week : days off

I moan about my days off, and seem to work them far too much recently, but I kind of enjoy the fact that I get a random day off during the week when so many people have a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday routine. So often days off are frittered away doing domestic chores or just recovering from work tiredness so it has been good to spend time more productively recently.

Visiting babies is always a lovely break from our very teenage family life. Last year on Julie and Al's 20th anniversary we had their kids to stay while they went to Cyprus for the week (we are not as lovely friends as it sounds, go here for the truth :-) This year we visited and baby sat (fortunately she is nice and squishy and quite comfortable to sit on) while they went out for dinner. Who could resist this face?

Then this weekend my sister Claire and my niece came to visit so we popped over to the West Midlands Safari Park where we like to crawl round very slowly and see how many animals we can get to actually touch.

Not this White Wallaby, which if you look closely has a joey poking out of it's pouch.
Not this baby camel, which was staying very close to it's mum.
But this huge Giraffe was loitering by the exit saying goodbye to anyone with an open window, so he came down and slobbered on everyone (am pleased with this shot, really gives an impression of how he towers over you.)
We also got very friendly with the bats in the walk-through Twilight house. After finding what appeared to be an injured bat the girls insisted on going back before we left. They then picked up a piece of the fruit that the bats were feeding from and held it out and the bats just fluttered round and landed on their hands to feed (this was not strictly allowed but the house was not staffed and there was nobody else around at nearly 5pm) So they came away absolutely thrilled.