My (not so) sunny zoo day

One of my favourite things to do with my kids is to go to the zoo. We are incredibly lucky in that we live 7 minutes drive from Chester Zoo, one of the best attractions in the north west (I think). My family have been members for the last 3 years and we certainly get value for money out of our membership. On average we go once a week. On a good week we go twice. In fact if I were to look through all my photos of the "nest" in the orang-utan house I could probably do a time lapse of my kids growing up I have so many snaps of them there.


My friend and I have children the same age, our boys are 3 and our girls are 2(ish) and we have a proper little routine sorted out for our "Zoo days". We go through the monkey house and walk round the quieter bit with the zebras and painted dogs, before heading to the jaguar cafe for lunch. It's the little one in a corner that not many people seem to know about, so it's much more relaxing than the bigger cafes. It means the kiddy winks can wander round a bit more without getting in too many people's way, although I do feel sorry for the lady who has to clean sticky little finger marks off the windows after our visits (invasions). After lunch it's Jaguars, play area, orang-utans then penguins, round past the lions and up over the walkway with the cheetahs and warty pigs (love, love love that name). We end up back at the entrance for more coffee.

Because we go so often we probably don't spend much time looking at the animals, we have our favourites and always visit them but we don't feel bad if one day we miss out a lot of them. For us the zoo is more about a safe place to let the kids run round without worrying about cars. The layout means that they can get a fair distance from you without worrying about losing sight of them, and the indoor sections and the cafes mean that we are able to go through the winter and on damp days without getting to wet; although one day in January we did give up after lunch when the rain was torrential.

The title for this post was supposed to be My sunny zoo day. Last week was our first nice-ish weather and we were hoping to be able to start our summer picnic zoo days this week. It's cheaper because we take our own food and we get to sit on the grass and watch the kids run round with balls and play under the trees. Sadly the weather's playing silly beggars again and the sun didn't have his hat on - or if he did we didn't see it because he spent the whole day hiding behind a cloud. The rain mostly held off which was nice and we actually did sit on the grass for 20 minutes or so before getting too damp but it wasn't the glorious sunshine I'm longing for.




Hopefully soon the weather will pick up and we can have some more of the gorgeous sunny zoo days we so enjoyed last year.

From the Seychelles to Center Parcs in 5 years

Once upon a time we had a fairy tale wedding in a castle and a honeymoon in the Seychelles. Beautiful white sand beaches, cocktails at sunset and glorious sunshine. To be fair there was no internet and my husband would have been happier if the local hospital hadn't been on the next island but in general it was an amazing holiday. This year was our 5th wedding anniversary so naturally we wanted to do something a bit special, but the addition of two little people means that a 10 hour flight to the middle of nowhere is a lot less appealing and a bit too pricey. Instead we went for the less glamorous but much more practical Center Parcs in Sherwood forest. We've been before and knew it would be a child friendly, comfortable holiday with a reasonably short drive that potty training toddlers could cope with. We agreed that we wouldn't get each other presents as we were spending a decent amount on the holiday, but I found out the day before we left that my husband had been all romantic and got me something as a surprise. Because I never know what to get him I decided to make a cake, although naturally I'd run out of everything so had to make a mad dash to Sainsbury's. Apparently the 5th wedding anniversary is wood so I made a rectangular cake and cut it into a number 5. The morning we left involved packing the car and decorating the cake with the "help" of 2 toddlers. The wood effect icing and the ivy were my idea, the butterflies were my 3year old's.

Times change and so do holidays but we had a wonderful time as a family. The sub-tropical swimming pool was brilliant, the restaurants had crayons and colouring books for the kids and the wildlife was wonderful for entertaining little ones. At night we sat in front of the fire and just enjoyed relaxing.We had such a good time my son didn't want to leave. In fact he spent the next week saying he wanted to go back. I look at the last 5 years and so much has changed. We have two wonderful children, a grown-up house in suburbia and are well on our way to being "middle aged". It hasn't always been easy and anyone who has suffered sleep loss from a small baby will understand that it really really really is so much harder than you ever believe it will be. Like most people I always thought parents were exaggerating and that my baby would be different and perfect. But however hard it's been there are moments when you sit quietly and see how worthwhile it's all been. I can see the light at the end of the (sleep deprived) tunnel and wouldn't change it for anything.

Gardening...

Ok so this blog is supposed about things that make me feel good or allow me to spend time with my family. Well gardening doesn't make me feel good, I'm bad at it and I seem to kill more plants than I grow. That said, if I keep the garden reasonably pruned it let's me spend more time outside playing with my kids, or even better lets me send them outside to play while I get on with other jobs. I think the best that can be said about gardening from my point of view is that doing it lets me do other rewarding things later on.

Last week I gave the garden it's first "haircut" of the year. I started by cutting back the hedge on the road side - this makes no difference to family life but I'm really hoping it will stop the people touting for business door to door from continually knocking to ask if I want them to cut the hedge for me. True to form it didn't go too well, the cordless hedge trimmer died after 15 minutes and I had to do the rest by hand. Now you're probably sat there thinking just get a plug in one, here's the problem. We live on a corner plot, the front garden is probably twice the size of the back and is a triangle with the longest side running along the roadside. The previous owners were devoted gardeners and left us with a beautiful hedge and many many shrubs and bushes. While I would love to have a plug in hedge trimmer, the cable would need to be about 60 meters long to reach to the end of the hedge.

After the hedge was done (and the sweeping up which I REALLY REALLY hate) I had a go at the lawns. We have 2 at the front and neither had been touched since last year. I dug up the huge nettle that appeared last year and the little ones that were spreading from it and generally tried to make the garden look less abandoned.

I'm quite pleased with the results. I still need to cut back the hedge on the garden side and trim all the bushes but I can let the kids go out now without feeling too guilty. As always, when I attack the garden it attacks right back. My nails are shredded and my arms are covered in scratches in spite of the gloves. I think this is one of my main dislikes of gardening; the destroying of my hands.

Anyhow that's my moan about the garden done. Thankfully the back garden is paved and easier to manage. The back corner is the only planted bit that gives me problems. There's an ornamental grass that grows huge every year, and a Wisteria that looks beautiful when it's in flower but drops masses of petals, seed pods and leaves every single year. The only other problem I have with the back garden has nothing to do with gardening. It has to do with small people. 3 days ago I came out of the house after doing some jobs to find my son happily throwing sand from the sandpit over the entire garden. When I told him to stop he turned to his sister (who wasn't anywhere near he sand) and told her very firmly "No more throwing!" We spent the next hour sweeping up :-D

Bread, bread and more bread!

Over the last couple of weeks I've become a little bit obsessed with baking my own bread. I think this is partly due to re-runs of the Great British Bake Off and partly because I'm trying to start making things that are better for me - baking cakes is brilliant but doesn't help with my diet and I seem to have stalled at a size 12 :(



It started badly due to a typo in Nigella Lawson's How to be a domestic goddess. The recipe stated a tablespoon of salt. A TABLESPOON! Now I haven't made bread for a while but even so if I'd been using even a 5th of my brain that should have rung alarm bells. Apparently though this is what happens when you have kids, you stop paying attention and accept what's written at face value. In fact the other day I got in the car to drive to the corner shop (it was raining) and automatically drove halfway to the supermarket before I even realised what I was doing. The bread did actually rise though by rights that much salt should have killed the yeast but was definitely inedible. The next couple of loaves were better - I slightly overcompensated and put almost no salt in before getting it right but ended up with yummy bread in a pretty plaited shape (above). Not perfect but very tasty. Tonight I was in a hurry so didn't plait the loaf - instead it's round(ish).



The kids have loved baking bread and the ex-science teacher in me has loved talking about the yeast making bubbles in the bread so it gets bigger. My husband is getting homemade bread for his sandwiches everyday and keeps winding me up that we'll be living the Good life pretty soon.

Little fun fest

Thanks to twitter blogger Tiredmummyoftwo we learned about an exciting festival for children being held in Altrincham near Manchester. The festival ran over two days so a friend and I decided to go on the Friday.

Little fun fest was held at Red house farm and had pretty much every thing small people could want, from fairies and dancing to Harry Potter, Hagrid and broomstick rides.

We were greeted by giants and fairies as we waited to hand over our tickets, before enjoying coffee and cake in the lovely little tea room.



Next we moved on to the open barn where some fairies made a rainbow from magical invisible coloured objects. The children loved handing over invisible creatures and ended up underneath a beautiful rainbow cloth before the next treat of storytime with cBeebies star Alex Winters.



Not just one story though - we had two stories. We went on a bear hunt and found room on the broom with a friendly witch. On the bear hunt the children went exploring round the barn, through all the obstacles before getting to run away from the "bear" (a poor dad with the misfortune to be sat in the middle). Alex was brilliant with the kids, he engaged them from the start while managing to keep their attention throughout.

There was so much to do we didn't get round everything although we were there from 10 till 4. Things we did do included watching cBeebies' Mr Bloom on stage and going on the free fairground rides. We played in the sandpit and on the slide before running in and out of the playhouse again and again (the children that is - we sat on the side and drank coffee).

The highlights of my son's day were when Alex said hello to him and when he got a high five from Mr Bloom while having his photo taken. His smiles when he met his cBeebies heroes were the best parts of my day.

Egg hunts and easter trees

Easter is a wonderful chance for families to spend time together but I have to admit that I struggle with the massive amounts of chocolate given to children. Although close family don't give us chocolate eggs we still seem to end up with quite a few. In true hippo-critical fashion that pretty much means more for me. I want my children to enjoy Easter but I won't give them massive amounts of sugar. We have an egg hunt on Easter morning with a very limited number of small eggs and try do do other things to make it special.

Easter Friday this year was spent making and "Easter tree" a german tradition that I vaguely remember my mum making one year when I was little. For the month up to Easter if I was making anything with eggs for the family I blew out the eggs instead of cracking them, meaning we ended up with about a dozen hollow egg shells (after breakages) to dye. It's a simple enough process - warm water, vinegar and food colouring. I thought this would be a great thing for the kids to get into and we tried putting stickers and sticky tape on some of the eggs to make patterns. They very much enjoyed making the eggs, although as the water was quite hot the couldn't join in as much as I originally hoped. We strung our eggs on brightly coloured ribbon and hung them from a "tree" which was really branches cut from one of the many overgrown bushes in our garden. (Our house's previous owners were very keen gardeners who left us with a lot of lovely bushes and trees. Unfortunately the extent of my gardening involves cutting them all back twice a year).



I have to admit to being pretty impressed with the results, although the original vase turned out to be too unstable meaning the final result was the picture below.



The tree lasted for a week and a half and according to my three year old one of the eggs cracked and there was a lovely baby bird inside.

The yellow flowers came out in the heat and looked great, every year I cut back this bush and think what a waste it is of beautiful flowers, so it was nice to get some use from them.

To finish off the weekend we went on an egg hunt at Erddig, a National Trust property in north Wales which runs one of the Cadbury Easter trails each year. In previous years we've gone to this event and picnicked on the grass in glorious sunshine while children played football around us. This year was a little different due to the late heavy snows. As we drove nearer the world got whiter. By the time we arrived there were banks of snow on the sides of the road. We had a lovely time searching for hidden nests and identifying which bird layed which eggs, but stayed well wrapped up and headed off for coffee and cake paninis at a local Starbucks as soon as we had finished.