60 Days of Summer: Week 5

This past week has been crazily busy. When I went through my diary last Sunday, we had something scheduled in every single day, and all of those things were out-and-about things. So it’s been a really fun week.

Sunday was our Godson, Sebastian’s, first birthday party and dedication. We are really good friends with Carina and Andre, his parents, and they are godparents to Ben. We were privileged to be asked to be his godparents, and we really enjoyed visiting our old church for his dedication. Tim and I prayed over him during the service, and Ben had a great time too.

His party was lovely – an animal themed party in the church hall. Carina made an amazing lion cake, which Ben thought was brilliant. It was lovely to meet so many of Carina and Andre’s friends too, many of whom I had heard about but never met. 

On Monday, I met up with my Sister in Law, Pippa, and my Brother in Law, Si, and their three children. We went to the viewing park at Manchester Airport. The children really enjoyed the play area and running around through puddles, and I think Si probably enjoyed the plane-spotting most.

Another place on my ‘Places to go before we leave Manchester’ list was Dunham Massey. We’ve been several times, but I really wanted to go around the house as it is currently being the ‘Stamford Military Hospital,’ as it was during WW1. We met Tim’s parents there, and they kindly looked after Ben while I toured the house, which was excellent. I’m hoping to do a separate blog post on it when I have the time, so I’ll leave you with this photo of a deer. The deer were the most settled, and the closest to the house, that I’ve ever seen them. 

 

On Wednesday, we went to Reddish Vale Farm with some of our NCT friends. Ben had a new splash suit that he was very proud of, and spend more time playing in the soft play area than actually feeding the animals. But we got him and Ariana to share a bucket of carrots and pose from some photos. 

We did do exciting things on Thursday – swimming and a play date – but I didn’t take any photos. So I took a photo of our trusty car going over 185,000 miles on the clock. Let’s hope it lasts until we move house!

On Friday, I took Ben to ‘Play and Cake’ at the Chill Factore, Manchester’s ski slope, with real snow. This is a session aimed at under 4s, and is a combination of soft play and snow play. Again, I’d like to do a blog post about this, but let’s just say it was really good fun. 

We went to the Trafford Centre after this. I was hoping Ben would fall asleep in his buggy; he didn’t. Instead, he played in the Barton Square Beach – a huge sandpit, where buckets and spades are provided. Fortunately, he was then so exhausted that he didn’t protest too much as I dragged him round the home shops.

On Saturday, we headed over to Liverpool to celebrate our nephew Luke’s 6th birthday. He was on holiday in South Africa for his actual birthday, so he had his cake in the shape and design of the South African flag. Ben loves seeing his cousins, and we had a great time with our family. 

Andre, Carina and Sebastian came over for dinner on Saturday evening, which was lovely. We now have only 5 days left (all being well) in this house, so packing is well underway.

I think I will be taking a break with 60 days of summer for a couple of weeks while we move, and until we get our broadband set up. Instead, I’ll leave you with a photo along the lines of the next week.

 

 

 

60 Days of Summer: Week 4

This has been a week of birthdays in our home. We went to a 2nd birthday party on Sunday, and Ben had an incredible time on the bouncy castle.

Ben also met up with some of his friends from his old nursery, which was hilarious as he remembered them. Thanks for inviting us to your party, Annabella!

On Monday, it was Ben’s 2nd birthday. We had three of his cousins, his grandparents and his Aunt and Uncle over for the morning and for lunch. He absolutely loved opening all his presents, and did recognise that his hurriedly-made cake was a dinosaur. I got to meet my newest nephew, Joseph, as well, so I enjoyed some baby-cuddles before my own son got too jealous.

 

On Tuesday, we took his new balance bike out to the park for a bit of a practice. Ben just loves pushing it along.

We also visited the National Football Museum in Manchester, which was fun, and also heard that we have exchanged contracts on our new house, hooray!

On Wednesday, we had a quieter day and stayed at home. We did lots of painting and playing with glue and glitter.

On Thursday, we went swimming and then went to the park in the afternoon. I went out for dinner with my NCT friends, and completely meant to take a photo of us for the blog. However, we were so engrossed in catching up that I completely forgot. So instead, here is a photo of Ben on the roundabout at the park.

On Friday, we went to a place I have been meaning to go to for ages, Brookside Garden Centre in Poynton, where they have a miniature railway. Ben is train-obsessed, and this place was perfect for him: a train-themed play area, a shop for all your Thomas the Tank Engine based requirements, and a really good miniature railway. Rides were a bit pricey at £1.80 for all over 2s (should have gone last week), but he absolutely loved it. It’s also a lovely garden centre, with lots of playhouses and a good aquatic centre where were spent a while watching the fish. I think we’ll try to go back before we go.

Saturday was the day before my birthday, so I arranged to go out for brunch with some of my best friends to The Ash Tea Rooms. If you haven’t been to The Ash, I highly recommend it: in a converted hotel, you will find a chocolatier, a cake-decorating business, and a gorgeous tea room. The food is excellent, and the cakes are divine.

Again, it was lovely to catch up with the girls, and really lovely to have some grown-up time – we actually managed to have whole, complete conversations, and the only distraction was the food.

I hope you’ve all had a lovely week too. I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.

 

 

 

 

 

60 Days of Summer: Week 3

 

 

This week, we had our holiday in Northumberland. We went with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and my parents’ dog, Petra.

I love Northumberland. Tim knows it really well, having studied there, and we went 3 years ago for a weekend celebrating our wedding anniversary. So when my parents suggested going for a week for our family holiday, we signed up straight away.

We live quite a long way from my parents, so having a holiday together for a week in the summer is a great way for them to spend lots of quality time with Ben. We had a great time in Essex last year, and a great time this year. UK holidays are excellent when you have a small child: you can take your car, you don’t have to worry about the heat, things are familiar enough for the child to be happy and it’s easy to arrange a doctor’s visit or a babysitter if necessary.

 

The house we stayed at was in Warkworth, and part of Tidal Properties. It was right next to the river, so on the first day we hired a boat and rowed upstream. Ben hated the first five minutes but loved it as soon as he got to help row. We didn’t let the men row the whole time, but they were a bit more skilled than my mum and I! I should also point out that in the photo we had our coats on because of a very short shower; the rest of the day was beautifully sunny.

The one place everyone wanted to go to was Alnwick castle, so we planned this for Monday. Tim and I had been before as it was our main destination on our anniversary weekend. There was one reason for this, originally: some of the first two Harry Potter films were shot there. With me being a massive Harry Potter fan, we spend most of our time on that visit in the castle. This time, as it was a beautiful day and we had Ben with us, we only visited the gardens.

Alnwick gardens were surely designed with children in mind. These fantastic dumper trucks were occupied all day, and Ben was lucky to grab one as soon as we arrived. The children can scoop up water from the fountain and then redistribute it elsewhere. There was also a scheduled water fight, as well as loads of interactive water features. The rest of the gardens are both fascinating and beautiful.

We were lucky enough to grab a table at the Treehouse cafe for lunch, which was much more reasonably priced than I expected. We eventually left around 2.30pm, with Ben falling asleep in his pushchair on the way back to the car. I cannot remember the last time he just fell asleep in his buggy, so he must have been suitable exhausted.

With family holidays, we’ve found it works well to alternate busy days with quiet ones, so we spend Tuesday pottering on Warkworth beach. Northumberland beaches are beautifully sandy, and with hardly anyone there. This was really the first time Ben has spent much time on the beach, and in between building sandcastles, paddling, collecting shells and pebbles, running and flying a kite, he had the time of his life.

I love this photo of my sister – you can really see her baby bump!

On Wednesday, we went to The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, which gets cut off from the main land at high tide. This is a really beautiful, dramatic place, with the ruins of a medieval priory and a castle in a stunning landscape.

We had another day on the beach on Thursday. Ben also tried beach cricket with his Dad, Grandad and Uncle Simon. We also booked a babysitter and went out for a grown-ups only meal.

 

Friday was the only rainy day we had on holiday. After a morning trip to Craster and Seahouses, we had a little family party for Ben, who turned 2 on 4th August. Tim baked and decorated this cake, with a seaside theme. The party was complete with Pass the Parcel and ‘Hop Little Bunnies,’ and everyone joined in.

On Saturday we headed home after a lovely holiday. When I was putting Ben to bed, I realised I hadn’t taken a photo of him that day, so I snapped this quickly as he was brushing his teeth.

 

I’m not very keen on the quality of my photos in WordPress at the moment. If anyone can give me any advice, please let me know!

 

 

60 Days of Summer: Week 2

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.

60 Days of Summer: Week 1

It’s been a while (on the blog, that is) since I did anything as disciplined as A Month of Slow Cooking. To be honest, it took us all a while to get over that. However, as the summer holidays are almost upon us, I’m going to start a new series.

Introducing… 60 Days of Summer!

The idea is inspired from Project 365, but, quite honestly, if I took a photo a day every day, some days you’d just end up looking at piles of exercise books. But during the summer, I’ve got time to have some fun. Seeing as one of the reasons I blog is to make memories, this seems like a really good way of doing that. Also, I want to take the blog more into this direction: sharing what our family is up to as we prepare to move away from Manchester.

I’m starting this on a Thursday, mostly because I don’t work on a Thursday at the moment, so Ben and I tend to have fun. So our first week is a it longer than 7 days long, but that’s ok.

On Thursday, Ben and I got the train to Marple, where we had lunch in a lovely cafe, walked along the canal and went to a lovely play area. The train was definitely Ben’s highlight.

When Ben napped on Friday (after a tantrum-filled morning), I went out into the garden and tidied up a bit. This hydrangea is looking beautiful.

Tim got up early with Ben on Saturday morning and they went outside to play in the garden. They found a little frog, and so tried to make him a temporary pond in a bucket with some branches and leaves. The frog stay around for a good half an hour before leaping away. You can see it in the photo perched on the edge of the bucket.

On Sunday, we went to visit Tim’s parents in North Wales. Even though Manchester was in blazing sunshine, in North Wales it was too cold for a barbecue, so Tim and his dad barbecued outside and we ate inside. Ben loves his Grumps, especially doing ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice,’ like in the photo.

This is a selfie taken after work. Ben’s current catchphrase is ‘What’s that?’ and that’s just what he’s asking.

Fun with Play Doh after nursery.

This is me with my English department. Kim (our lovely head of department) and I are both leaving this year, so we went out for a lovely meal in Gusto in Didsbury to mark the occasion.

Scooting in the park before it got too hot!

Before going to my leaving staff meeting, Ben and I went to the Trafford Centre. He hasn’t really been there before, as I work so close, so if I needed to go in I would pop in after work. He loved the dolphin fountain!

It poured with rain all morning yesterday. So when it finally brightened up, Tim said, “I think we should all get some fresh air,” and we walked to the park. Ben had an amazing time splashing in puddles and got his shoes well and truly soaked.

That was our first 10 days of summer!