We made it to a festival! – Mummascribbles

Myself and the other half have done our fair share of festivals over the years before and after we got together!  We’ve both done a few Reading’s and a few Glastonbury’s. Since having Zach, that has all changed.

Until yesterday!

It was yesterday that we finally found ourselves back in the middle of a field, surrounded by stages, tents, stalls and children!

We were at Lollibop

I’d booked the tickets a while back for our first visit and as typical festivals go, we picked the rainiest day of the weekend! Thankfully, there was only the one downpour though where everyone flocked to the tents – I’m not sure that the lady doing the singalong show was quite expecting that many people!

I wasn’t sure how Zach would be with the day, whether it would be a bit full on, a bit too old for him or whether he’d have the time of his life! He was a bit in between to be honest. I’d hoped that he’d fall asleep during the half an hour journey, enough to transfer him into his buggy where he’d finish his nap and wake up refreshed and raring to go.

Didn’t happen!

He stayed awake in the car, nodding off just as we were driving up the lane to the car park! Upon turning the engine off, he woke up, instantly interested in where we were.

He then stayed away for hours, he was quiet, pensive but there was so much going on around him that he just couldn’t go to sleep. He’d had a run around while we were having a look at what there was but he was a bit emotional and overwhelmed by it all (the tiredness didn’t help this). He sat and watched the National Geographic animal show which was fab and then we thought we should give him some lunch and see if he’d nap after that in the hope of getting a good few hours of fun in with him.

Didn’t happen!

We had lunch and it perked him up so we let him run some more, went into the Little Tikes section (upon after having to leave it after 4 minutes we had a tantrum) and queued for a photo on Thomas (another tantrum followed him having to leave this!). It was 2.50pm at this point and we were aware that Justin, aka Mr Tumble, was on the stage at 3pm so we took him over to that for a boogie on down.

Didn’t happen!

He was engrossed for about 10 minutes of the show, we were dancing around and singing the songs (us not Zach!) and then he curled into his Daddy’s shoulder and started falling asleep. So it was at that point, at 3.30pm he took his nap! We agreed to let him sleep for an hour so as not to completely mess up bedtime but he woke himself up before we had to rouse him.

The good thing was, he woke up raring to go so we took him over to the under 3’s tent for some messy play where he covered himself (and me) in oats and played with some play-doh. We then left once he’d properly woken up and he had a huuuuge run around, when he made his way over to the stage just in time for the Poppy Cat mini show which he loved!

He then ran around for a while again before we decided it was probably time to attempt to find the car – we hadn’t noted where in the huge field we’d parked but luckily Dean recognised the large tree and we found us!

Overall, we had a fab day out as a family. There was plenty to do for an almost 2 year old and he’d have had much more fun if he’d had his nap when I hoped he would. Unfortunately less fun was had because of this but that wasn’t at the fault of Lollibop.

The only negative that I do have which was something that didn’t affect me this year but potentially would in the future, the queues to get into the Lollipalladium. They were huge and I don’t know if the organisers have kids or not but children aren’t very good at queuing. Luckily everything in there was for slightly older children so we didn’t bother with any of it but I think they’d be better off having it as an outdoor stage like the Lollibop Live one was. Anything to avoid having to queue with littluns!

Otherwise, a big well done for Lollibop. We thoroughly enjoyed our first year and I’m sure we’ll be back again in 2015 with an almost 3 year old – I’m sure our experiences then will be very different to this one!

Here’s a few pics of our day