Looking for Dinosaurs in Lanark

This weekend was a new experience for us - looking after my eldest neice and nephew (16 and 12 years old)! Long story short, my nephew has recently got into all things geeky (pokemon cards, anime etc) and has decided that hubby and I (who are completely unabashed about how geekey we are with out fortnightly online RPGs and miniatures in addition to the above), are clearly the best grown ups he knows. Not that his parents aren't supportive of his new interests, they just don't help themselves when the call anime "those weird Japanese cartoons" amongst other faux pa's! We'd said that, once covid allowed, we'd take him for a weekend of unashamed geekery and then that evolved to also taking his sister who, being at that age where they want to do all the hobbies, has realised that my house is only short a few balls of wool to become viable to be listed as a craft store... 

Its nice that they've grown back into us being the cool aunt and uncle again! 

So, we had them dropped off on Friday and the games, literally, commenced as we played Mario Party for the evening. 

Saturday was the main day. We decided to check out Jurassic Lanark - a Dino themed treasure hunt where each display gave a letter which formed a word for which you got a badge upon completion. 

We started at the Tolbooth in Lanark town centre and then, after finding all 3 displays, moved onto New Lanark for the final 4. 

We had deliberately chosen that order as we knew there was an open air market at New Lanark that the neice would love it if the dinos were beneath her (she stated that she enjoyed getting photos of them, when I checked how she was finding it). Talking cameras, nephew got to play with mine for the day, which really got him to engage with everything. He took being Missys personally pupperazzi very seriously! 

The market was a success too. Both managed to spend all their pocket money and, I think they were pleasantly surprised that we didn't stop them buying anything, but insisted they looked at everything first, we'd come back for what the wanted. Missy wasn't left out, she got some doggy black pudding for later in the week and the lovely lady selling dried meats shared some sausage with her! 

The evening was spent building pokemon decks, making jewellery and taste testing all the fudge we bought. 

Today we went hunting for UFOs at the Dechmont UFO trail. We wanted a walk that wasn't challenging but still fun and it met both of those criteria. A tree swing proved that no matter how old you are, there is still a 5 year old in all of us, and they were genuinely interested in the history of the walk. We may have broken them a little by insisting we go up the Law itself, but they appreciated the views once there. 

After that was Exploding Kittens before we went to Edinburgh Zoo to meet up with the parents and return the kids. Nephew had great fun running about with my camera again and tried to compete with his sister on the shots. I was soon giving both lessons as neice was surprised at the fact her photos were completely different (colour, focus abilities etc) at points and I explained the pros and cons of the different camera types they had (my DSLR vs her Hybrid camera). I made a point that, whilst mine was superior through glass, hers was better at going through fencing, amongst other things.

And that was the weekend gone! A very different experience to having my younger neice and nephew, but enjoyable all the same. My "completely 120% fun but I'm not gonna let you break rules" attitude has paid off as they were on best behaviour. I suspect another weekend is in the future, but later in the year, I need to recover from this one first!