We welcomed Vanessa to her very first GoodGym session this evening - it was lovely to meet you!

After a run and chat down to Somerstown, we successfully deactivated the alarms. I felt like Ethan Hunt! Shovels were then handed through office windows before being taken out to the garden.

The dry couple of weeks we've had made the soil harder to break up, but many hands made light(er) work and we managed to free the cursed groundsheet! We finished off the evening with spreading some compost and top soil, ready for the children to plant wildflowers next week.

What started out as a slightly sketchy task - "We need to meet a man called Alan outside The Bridge Centre to buy some bark" evolved into a very pleasant evening.

Our rendezvous was a success, and after hulking bags of woodchip through the shopping centre, we filled in all of the gaps in the new planters to reduce the number of weeds coming through. Garden Goddess Judy noticed the plants were in need of a drink, so with a bit of help from the Security Team, we started a chain of bucket-filling and watering.

As Vicki beautifully put it, it was like we were putting the plants to bed for the evening. So cute!

With a bit of time to spare, we headed over to Spoons for a drink and a catch-up. I feel more tasks should have a pub stop!

We enjoyed a lovely afternoon in the sun at Buckland Family Hub, and managed to complete our checklist of jobs!

Our main task was ensuring the freshly delivered saplings were planted, staked and wrapped - Dave is a pro at this now!

We were able to dig up and old and rotting planter, assemble and paint it's replacement and redistribute some plants into some super-cute planters.

We were very please to have Louisa with us this evening, who was able to confirm that "breaking and entering" isn't a term in the UK, and that we weren't actually breaking into Northern Parade Family Hub as we had keys, codes and permission!

With that cleared up, and a near-miss deactivating the alarm, we headed out to the garden to get painting. Lucy certainly left her mark with her "blue rinse" approach to painting! The grass has a lovely tinge to it now.

Meanwhile, Judy's good name was slandered by Jen, who misheard who made a sarcastic comment!

This is a public apology from Jen to Judy. I am sorry for slandering you!

At the end of the session we got cosy with a wooden kangaroo, who may also need a lick of paint at some point, enjoyed some story books in the play room and got musical with the giant xylophone.

There were definitely not enough tree for an official Tiny Forest, but we planted fifteen teeny tiny trees at Paulsgrove Family Hub.

I think we spent longer protecting the little saplings than we did planting them, but hopefully they will grow super soon!

The biggest challenge of this task? Arming the Hub alarm system and escaping before setting it off again.

We enjoyed the best part of the day transforming an old brown shed into a beautiful striped beach hut down at Milton Family Hub.

We learned that Jen can't give clear instructions and that JB may not be able to count to three*, but we had lots of fun along the way.

Richard was then off to do more painting at home in the afternoon - maybe he should start his own decorating business?

*JB can definitely count to three. This was also down to Jen's poor instruction giving!