Reasons to be Cheerful: Friends and Fun #R2BC

The blog hop is still being hosted over at Ojo's World this month so please go and say hello! I am glad she is in charge as I am rushing around like a mad thing at the moment.. and this is why:

1) Seeing friends

It is nearly 31 years since I started at school with my best friends! That is quite scary to contemplate but we all still get on so well when we gather with our many children. This weekend it was our summer gathering so we headed on down to Ascot (via Sudbury Hall). What is so great is that all 9 of our children seem to get on like a house on fire too:

2) Legoland

We hadn't been to Legoland since moving up to Cumbria 4 years ago so made the most of being close by to visit on Monday. There were plenty of smiles like these:

3) New neighbours

It was such a delight to see that a little hedgehog seems to have moved into the street. Let's hope he/she survives all the cats:

Hope lots of you join in and link up with Jo! 

Close encounters of the prickly kind

The last thing I expected when I went into work at a large secondary school was to have a close encounter with one of our native British mammals. So when my colleague said "Look there's a hedgehog coming in the door" I was gobsmacked! As it was not going to find any food in our reception area I carefully picked it up to take it back outside:

Excuse photo quality but I was snapping from my phone in the other hand!

I was very surprised it didn't curl up into a ball. The spikes weren't all that prickly luckily and I was able to safely release it back into the bushes outside where it scuttled off pretty promptly..

I feel so lucky to have got up so close to one of our most loved but endangered species. It has inspired me to look at how to encourage hedgehogs into our garden via Hedgehog Street. They are good as pest controllers and look adorable at the same time!

Just hope this prickly creature survives living on a school site with lots of moving cars and students...