The Survival Family definitely made a comeback today!!

And here we are...shelter from the drizzle for me and Willie as the catering corps, Tom and Jon in charge of the fire and David on wood collecting duty. Rob is obviously the cameraman here!!!

It is the first time in a long time that we have made a trip of this kind to our favourite remote woodland, and despite the threat of rain we had a great day. The food was all cooked to perfection,(thanks to George for the generous supplies!!) and went down a treat, with the addition of a few homemade rolls and cakes we were all fed and watered well.

Jon made a few arrows for his bow, David a spear and Tom did a great job of fire tending and cooking, although I don't think Scouts can take all the credit for his expanse of knowledge there!!!

It's amazing how long you can spend happily collecting the wood, making the fire, cooking and eating the food and yet it doesn't feel at all like hard work. The stress level is reduced to virtually zero because of us all being outside, and we are all totally happy. *sigh*

We came home and watched the woodland episode of Ray Mears 'Wild Food' to keep the feeling alive, but we would all have been quite happy to have stayed in the woods with a proper shelter with our lovely fire to keep us warm. It felt almost criminal to put it out with the heap of snow earlier today, and then come home to light another in our own fire place. Very strange.

It was also very strange to be doing all of that without a dog. Our dear Sophie went back to the dog's home yesterday..it is very sad but we were right in our decision. We had to put the family first and a dog of her breed was always going to demonstrate her strong herding and pack instincts with so many children in the family. It was reassuring for the lady to say all the same things that I had been saying for the last few weeks and for her to agree with our decision. Although it didn't make it any less sad. Rob said that Sophie had been put in with another couple of dogs there and looked quite settled when he left...I couldn't bear to go, and would have probably made it more difficult for everyone concerned. Emotional outbursts are no good in a situation like that, so I stayed home with David and we played Monopoly.

So here we are, dogless, and it feels very strange.

I think we will probably remain dogless for this summer at least, and will just keep our ears open for any suitable candidates that may arise to fill the position of Survival Family canine companion..it seems that Sonny is a hard act to follow.
And this is Willie's duck he made out of plastacine ( is that how you spell it?) tonight at teatime. No prompting, no help what so ever, he just made it and came over and was playing with making it quack and eating things!

It's a little blurry as it is taken with Rob's phone, but if you look carefully you can make out the tail feathers!!!!