Madhouse diaries : Some one-on-one time with Juliette

I feel sorry for Juliette sometimes as the middle child - she's either lumped in with Sophie as part of "the girls" who are old enough to fend for themselves or with Pierre as "the littlies" who drag around after me whether they want to or not ! Well, this week, I got a rare day out with just Juliette, as Madhouse Daddy was off (thanks to Bastille Day) so he looked after Pierre and Sophie went her own way doing whatever teens do in their bedroom all day ! I suggested we go geocaching, which she was up for, and we started off with a visit to the nearby Ferme Vernaelde to see the animals.

While slathering on suncream, I'd asked her to hold the camera and she decided that she was going to be chief photographer for the day.

She actually did a great job and it was nice to take a backseat and let someone else take my blog photos for a change !

Last time we visited, one of the goats had a very poorly bent foot so we were pleased to see that they were all looking healthy and happy today, munching away on the clover in their pen. In fact, every single one of them looked extremely pregnant so I've no doubt there will lots of baby goats to see next time we visit.

Juliette was on a mission to take a photo of every single animal that we saw !  

It was interesting to see a kids' eye view of things - she got down on the floor to take pictures of the guinea pigs munching lettuce in their house.

And the rabbit hiding away in the shade, as it was such a scorching hot day.

 You've heard of chicken nuggets but what about chicken mullets ?!

After having a good look round, we left the farm and headed off onto the adjoining country path to find some of the new geocaches that have been hidden.

We found the first one just off the path.

But the next ones took us into an area that had some rather worrying warning signs (official ones and hand-written ones) about traps being in this area - not great when you're digging about in the undergrowth looking for geocaches ! There is also a big sign next to it saying that hunting season is from September to February so I think it's safe outside of those months. We were also following around another geocacher who had done the whole circuit just a couple of hours before us so she obviously survived in one piece. I did use a big stick rather than my hand, just to be on the safe side though !

This one was hard work because it had to be pulled up on an extremely long chain !

I kept telling Juliette I'd take over with the GPS and beat through the bushes because she was in shorts, but she was determined to lead the way, despite getting a few nettle stings. Luckily there are usually dock leaves next to nettles and they seem to work to soothe stings - even though I'm never really sure if that's just an old wives' tale and it's purely psychological. I must admit, I just give the Madhouse kids any old leaf if I can't find a dock leaf and they're never any the wiser !