This week has been crazily busy, and at times, frustratingly slow. We’ve got a date for moving house, and hopefully that will all go ahead as planned. So I’m starting to plan the move. Tim has been working serious overtime on a big project at work, and for 4 days this week, his car was in the garage, so he had to take mine. That had a bit of an impact on our days, but the weather has been incredible – I cannot remember another summer like this since moving to Manchester 10 years ago!
On Sunday, Ben woke up talking about “baby sharks.” We have no idea where he got this from, but Tim made him a little cardboard baby shark, and we took advantage of a 2 for 1 offer to go to Sealife Manchester at the Trafford Centre. 
The lighting, as you can imagine, was quite low, but here is Ben staring at some huge fish. Although I’d heard that the Manchester Sealife Centre wasn’t very big, but it was just about perfect for Ben – he walked around everywhere, and was suitably impressed by the little sharks in the tank. I preferred the turtle.
On Monday, we had our friends Emily and Isaac over to play. Isaac is nearly a year older than Ben, although they’ll be in the same school year, and Ben thinks he’s wonderful. They played together really happily in the garden. Here they are, having a snack. 
On Tuesday, Ben and I caught a train and a bus to go to MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry) in Manchester. This visit, he wanted to see the aeroplanes. 
MOSI is one of my favourite places to take Ben: it’s all really high quality exhibitions, never crowded, with loads of interactive stuff. Oh, and it’s all free.
We had a day at home on Wednesday, so we played with cars in the garden. 
On Thursday night, Tim and I had a real treat: a meal out in Manchester. As it will be one of our last opportunities to go for a date in Manchester, we opted for a meal at Sapporo Teppanyaki, where the food is cooked on a hot plate in front of you. I plan to do a review of this, but here’s a taster… 
Friday was another hot day (hasn’t this summer been amazing?) so Ben and I improvised a paddling pool with his old baby bath in the garden. Later on, we also went to visit his cousin James, where he played in a real paddling pool.
On Saturday, we set off on holiday. We broke up our journey by stopping at Leeds Armoury, where they currently have a ‘Dino Jaws’ exhibition. This was excellent, and brilliant for little boys who love dinosaurs. Here are Tim and Ben outside: 
My photos from inside the exhibition were really dark, so I’ll save them! Hope you’re all enjoying the summer as much as us!
I apologise for the original paragraphing errors in the original version of this post – it’s one of my own pet hates, so I can’t think how it happened. Hopefully I’ve fixed them now.
It's a fine, fine life 