Aug
2017

SEA LIFE Manchester Review

categories: Our Family Life, Reviews, Things to do, Trips and Travel

Last week we visited Sea Life Manchester – where the girls had loads of fun meeting the Octonauts, stroking snakes and starfish, and (kind of) high-fiving a turtle. We were kindly given entry to Sea Life to review the attraction, and it was a lovely way to spend a few hours as a family.

Exploring the aquarium 

There are lots of different zones within the aquarium, starting with Turtle beach. Here you find out about the life of a sea turtle through an interactive presentation, and it’s cute seeing the baby turtles projected onto the sand. Next you get to see some of the most unusual looking fish and sea creatures in the rocky hideout, find out more about sharks and seahorses and explore the coral reefs. Of course the “Nemos” were Clara’s favourites, and she enjoyed ducking through the tunnel to watch them. There are a few tunnels dotted around the aquarium so children can really get up close to the fish.

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Aug
2017

Our July Roundup

categories: Our Family Life, Our Weekly Roundup

July was a busy month – we moved house at the end of June so we have mainly been getting our new home sorted, but we are now happily settled in and ready to catch up on everything else that’s been put on hold while we’ve unpacked, painted and built furniture – like blogging. I really enjoyed writing our Weekly roundups and they were a good way to document all the little things that have happened – which is the whole reason I started this blog in the first place, as an online diary of our family life. But, it was hard to keep up and weekly posts turned into fortnightly or even less frequently, so I’ve decided to start a monthly roundup instead. Maybe I will have better luck keeping up with this one!

So what else happened in July?

  • Izzy finished Year 1 and was quite upset about her Year 2 friends moving on to the Junior School. They are in mixed classes, so half her classmates have left, and will be replaced with new school friends come September. She is happy that she gets to have the same teacher though – and one of the new additions to her class is her cousin, so she’s pretty happy about that!
  • She had a disco to celebrate the end of the school year, and of course sports day. She came last in the egg and spoon race, but still had a huge grin on her face as she crossed the finish line way behind everyone else. She did come second in the sack race though so she was pretty proud of that.
  • We went on a mini break to Ullswater, in the Lake District, where we stayed in a Wigwam. Unfortunately the weather rained off our planned BBQ for one of the two evenings we spent there, but the kids loved sleeping in the wooden pod. And I was happy that it was like camping but with a little more room than a tent and our own bathroom! I don’t think that camping in a muddy field and having to find the toilet block by torchlight is really something I’d be all that comfortable with, so this was about as much of a compromise as I was willing to make. Izzy was really lucky and got to sail one of the boats on Ullswater – she was really chuffed with herself, although I’m sure the 20 other passengers onboard were completely unaware that they were being ferried across the water by a 6 year old!
  • We visited Lowther Castle for the first time – the girls enjoyed exploring (especially seeing a frog!) and the adventure playground there is amazing. In the section for younger kids they have a zip wire with a baby swing seat – Clara loved it so much she has asked if we can have a “Baby zip wire” in our garden. (We can’t, I have no idea how much those things cost, but its cute that she loved it that much).

Blog Roundup 

 


Aug
2017

Moving Home

categories: Home life, Our Family Life

We’ve been in our new house for about 6 weeks now. And we feel very much at home.

It’s been a busy few weeks of unpacking, organising, decorating and building furniture. But, we are getting there and with the exception of a couple of boxes we have yet to find homes for, we are happily settled in.

The girls both love it here so much. Izzy has been able to play out with her friends, which is something she was unable to do at our old house. She knows some of our neighbours from school and it didn’t take long until word got around that there were new playmates moving onto the street – I think Izzy had barely been in the house for half an hour when there was a swarm of kids on the drive asking if she could go out to play!

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Aug
2017

In The Night Garden Live Review

categories: Our Family Life, Reviews, Things to do, Trips and Travel

On Monday we went to see In The Night Garden Live, which brings all your children’s favourite characters from the CBeebies show to the stage.

We were kindly given tickets for the four of us in return for an honest review. As the nearest venue to us is Manchester, we decided to stay over night and spend some time at the Intu Trafford Centre, which is where the purpose-built inflatable In the Night Garden showdome is.

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Jul
2017

Roar-some third birthday celebrations

categories: Cumbria, Our Family Life

We now have a 3 year old! I know its a cliche but where oh where has the time gone. It’s been a couple of months since Clara’s birthday, but we moved house a few weeks ago so blogging has taken a back seat in favour of packing, unpacking, cleaning and DIY! However I really wanted to share some photos from her big day, as she is still talking about it now.

She celebrated her birthday in true Clara style – with a dinosaur themed party. It was her best friend Rosie’s 2nd birthday a few days after Clara turned 3, so they had a joint party at The Gincase, a farm park in Cumbria. They had a dinosaur cake, invitations, party bags and even matching dinosaur outfits!

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