'The epic first Lego kit build of Mrs M'

Today Mrs M completed her first Lego kit and were all really proud of her, I feel like we have now reached the next level in our relationship and we will become even closer than we already are. This week is one of 'The Sun' free Lego weeks which is always great and Mrs M took on the challenge of today's kit.

I'm loving the Monster Fighters range and this is definitely the best free kit of the week, well done Mrs M were all really proud of you even if you did look very stressed at one point and found it difficult to follow the numbers on the instructions enough to do them in the right order.

Also Mrs M wanted to add a picture of her Halloween nail so here it is in all its glory...

Very Cute!!!

"But the girl wasn't just a girl... she was a witch"

Although I'm not overly impressed by Halloween i still love a good children's book and being Halloween it seemed like as good a day as any to read The Haunted House by Kazuno Kohara, weve had this book for a few years, the story is great and the illustrations are amazing. The story is about a little girl, who isn't just a little girl but is also a witch...

The little girl moves into a haunted house (worrying for any first time buyer) but luckily she knows how to catch ghosts...

What do you do with ghosts once you've caught them i hear you ask?? well.... you pop them in the washing machine of course! Der!

And then hang them outside to dry. Sounds crazy i know but its surprising what you can actually do with freshly laundered ghosts, this little trick is enough to put even Dunelm out of business...

And the best part of a hectic day ploughing through a mountain of Supernatural washing, is you can curl up in bed and use one as a blanket. Very cute.

I love this book and the boys love it too, great reading for Halloween.

'Watching a little more time pass by from the drivers seat'

Well here I am sitting in the car again waiting. Opeie is asleep and Mrs M is getting her hair cut and all I have to look at is a peach coloured garage door. I'm living the dream. I did pick my DS up to keep me occupied but i switched it on and it died. So glad i had my phone so i could at least write a post.

It's Seth's birthday this week which is very exciting. He's feeling a bit anxious though as we have told him we haven't got round to getting his presents yet (yes we're meanies). The truth is we've had Seth's birthday presents sorted for 2 months, we've also got all his Christmas presents sorted too, we're very well organised this year.

We offered Seth a party to celebrate but he said he just wants William to come over for a sleep over and he wants to go on an adventure somewhere so that's what we have planned.

It's crazy to think that another year has just flown by, and Seth has changed so much since being at school. Thankfully he is still the overly affectionate boy that he always has been. I think we'll all be upset when he inevitably stops asking for cuddles every 5 minutes.

I feel so lucky to have the boys and Mrs M in my life they really are my best friends. They are the three people I can always rely on. I would be lost without them. They can always rely on me to be there too but that's usually because i can be found in the car waiting patiently for them!

"It's Halloween at the house of spooks, Ghost's and goblin's have us shaking in our boots"

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween itself, i don't agree with going round knocking on peoples doors scavenging for things that rot your teeth. I'm always shocked by the amount of small children that knock our door that arn't accompanied by there parents. I find the whole thing a bit concerning. To be fair i have an issue with ANYONE knocking our door that isn't expected, Door to door sales, Charities (we give plenty throughout the year at our own choice) and especially religious callers (i don't have any problem with belief i just don't want to talk about it on my doorstep).

Another thing i don't like about Halloween is children walking about with daggers with blood on and other such props. Although Seth wanted one i didn't think it was appropriate to give our 5 year old a blood covered Machete. I'm quite sure its not just me being boring, If you read the blog regularly then you know i could never be branded boring, we just have certain standards when it comes to our children.

Anyway all that said, i do love dressing up and this weekend we had a great excuse to do such that. We had brought tickets to Ghostly Gaslight at Blists Hill not far from ours. We asked Seth what he wanted to wear but during the day it got really cold so we asked him if he would just like his face painted but sadly he didn't as he said it makes his face itchy. He wanted to be The Hulk and wear his mask. We had brought tickets for our friends Chris and Michelle too as we thought it would be a great place for Chris to take some photo's for his blog too, plus we love spending time with them.

Well the spooky festivities started when Chris and Michelle arrived, they brought the boys some ghost and skeleton lollies from thornton's, very cute. We didn't have much time but i let Mrs M have free reign and do her thing with my face and i think she did a great job with the 20 mins spare time we had before leaving the house.

We got to Blists hill and it looked amazing at the entrance, dark and eerey with thick smoke filling the air. There were some great costumes and the people that had come to enjoy this night had really made the effort.

Mrs M and Opeie hadnt come with us and once there i was really glad as Opeie wouldn't have liked it one bit, plus it was a very very cold evening. We had a good potter about taking in the Sites. The shops were open and the shop staff were all dressed the part. I especially liked the drunken zombie looking fella in a shop window and Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hydes pharmacy.

Seth wasn't a fan of the pharmacy, while we were in there there was a VERY load scream from a little girl that was having her teeth pulled out by a mad dentist. Ive never felt seth squeeze my hand so tight. He just looked up at me and said 'can we go outside please' in a very soft voice.

Unfortunately that had a bit of a knock on effect for the rest of the night. Seth didnt really want to go inside any of the buildings from that point and understandable i guess, he is 5 after all. From that point he aslo wanted to be sitting on my shoulders, i think he felt safer up there.

The way the buildings had been lit up was great, unfortunately myself and Chris being the pair of photography amateurs that we are we spent a fair bit of time messing with our cameras to try and get decent shots. i took a few pictures and because of the flash it looked like we were out in full sunlight. Obviously i wont be adding those to the post.

It was such a cold night so we went off looking for somewhere to get a nice hot drink. While Chris and Michelle went off to get us some hot chocolate i spotted a family and the dad and son had some pretty impressive home made proton packs so i had to get a picture. It did make me chuckle when i asked if he'd mind and he backed up to his wife and said 'would you mind switching us on'. He was a very nice chap, the pictures don't do them justice though as you cant see all the flashing lights.

It was an interesting place to look around but having never been there before i think i would probably enjoy it more during the day time so ill definitely take Opeie there one of the days for a look about. At least i know the photo's i take will be Ok during the day. While walking about we did start noticing some badly done touches and a few of the staff that didn't really look like they had made the effort. We found one of the buildings quite amusing as it looked like they had just pushed a TV against the window and was playing a video of an apparently creepy man. Michelle made me laugh making some comment about those TV'S that were popular during victorian times.

Seth had been to Ghostly Gaslight before and wanted to show us where there was a coconut shy as he wanted to win a coconut. So we all had a go on that, Seth was close but no luck. I managed to knock off two but was very disappointed to find out that there were no prizes. How rude!

Well I'm glad we went, as i said it was interesting to walk around but sadly it did lose its appeal pretty quickly and after the coconut incident i think Seth just wanted to head home. We did get some great pictures though thanks to Chris. I think the most disappointing part was not getting any decent pictures of Chris or Michelle to include in the post.

Well we headed home and i could see that Seth was getting very excited as he had opened his birthday presents early from Chris and Michelle and he really wanted to play with them before going to bed. But i will leave the contents of their packages for another post as im quite sure that Seth will want to write the post about them.

So until next time don't forget to check under your beds before going to sleep, and Happy Halloween!!

"A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love."

We bring the boys up to be as open minded as we can, well Opeie doesn't really understand but we try our hardest with Seth. Unfortunately outside influences are damaging our good work. Last week while we were in Toys R Us Opeie picked up a Toy Story Barbie doll and Seth said those words i hoped i would never hear come from his mouth 'Opeie you cant play with that, those are for girls'. That's what starting school does to you i guess, Seth instantly became that little more Macho. I took Opeie to Toys R Us about 6 months ago and he picked a doll to take home which personally i thought was really nice. There's loads of action figures in our house and for him to choose a doll over his beloved Spider-man was really sweet and showed us that he's not growing up to quickly (which I'm sure makes Mrs M very happy).

Changing the subject completely, although we will come back to where i started, Opeie has become a nightmare with his feeding. He's going through an 'i don't want to eat, bath or brush my teeth phase' everything seems to just send him into floods of tears so we thought we would change around his plates and bowls etc to see if that might spur on some proper eating. I was so impressed with the I Monster range from Nuby when i wrote my last post about Opeie's eating habits that i decided to give the flower child range a try, this was also spurred on by Seth's macho comment (told you I'd find my way back to the start).

The great thing about this range for us is that as you know if you've been reading the blog a while Opeie loves Yo Gabba Gabba, in fact we all like it and the range looks a little like Foofa which Opeie loves. She's a flower child herself...

 The plates went down great. He didn't eat loads but the fact that he ate some if his food today was a bonus and means Mrs M can rest that little bit easier. It can be a little worrying when he just refuses to eat anything but he is still milking Mrs M dry so at least we know he's getting his nutrients. 

I did actually prefer this range over the I Monster range, first and foremost because I'm a sucker for anything pink, but also because of the soft rubber around the base. When eating with the I monster range if Opeie was in an excitable mood meal time would turn into a mini game of air hockey.

Thank fully we didn't hear a peep out of Seth about them being girly`and hopefully after me talking to him we wont hear anything like that for a while at least. I think its really important to let your children play with what they want in terms of colour etc. There's no need for macho behaviour when it comes to your toddler, their going to go for things that are bright and colourful, i still do myself. If Opeie wants to play with dolls, wear mommy's shoes, push a pushchair around or have a tea party with his toys then obviously I'm going to join in with him

We tried the Flower child feeder too as i loved the monster one that we had brought. It had lost the Flash Gordon feel (if you remember my previous post) but Opeie loved it just as much. I think that anything that he has to push his hand in to find out whats inside is going to be a winner.

Im really impressed with the whole range and would definitely advise people to give them a try. I still looking for some tableware with suckers on the bottom to try so i will be keeping them peeled for them. If you have any idea's then please let me know. I'm sure there will be many more post's about Opeie's eating. He's now starting to use cutlery more so I'm sure thats a post ill be writing soon.

Now its time for me to try and get Seth wearing something pink...

'A new lease of life for some old forgotten toys'

A few months back i wrote a post about the retiring of old toys when Seth decided that he didn't really like Disney Cars anymore. Back when i was buying the Playskool and Fisher Price chunky super hero and Star Wars figures i stumbled upon the Fisher Price Rescue Heroes range. The chunky figures were great for the boys so i snapped up all the ones i could get hold of. I figured that even if they ended up in the toy storage box outside they would get played with in the summer.

They have had plenty of play, they've been outside, in the bath and have zip-wired from ceiling to floor. Sadly they've now been in a box for quite sometime and have not really been getting the attention they deserve. No surprise that the boys would favour Spider-man and his chunky friends.

I didn't really want to get rid of them for the sake of it as they are great figures for the boys to play with. So instead of putting them on ebay i decided i would send some of them to Mrs M's parents. Nanny Roo is always apologising for not having toys there for the boys to play with.

Well the toys have had a new lease of life, the boys forget that they had them so when they see them again they are instantly interested in playing with them which is great for when the grown ups are talking but i bet secretly Nanny Roo and grandad Gary have had a little play with them. We've been round there today and had them out and grandad Gary commented on how sturdy they are and seemed genuinely impressed by the quality.

We love going round to see the family. Mrs M's family are lovely people and i feel lucky to have them as part of my life. They've welcomed me in with open arms from day one and we all get on great.

Despite finding a new home for the boys toys i know there is an inevitable culling of the toy's on the horizon, Its coming up to Christmas and i need to find some space for the boys new things so I'm going to have to be brutal and get rid of the rubbish and somehow put into storage the things that arn't played with that i want to keep so keep reading as I'm sure there will be a post about that very soon.

"Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods! "

Today Seth found some wings in the Lego box and decided to transform Captain America's Motorbike into Robin's Motorbike. Genius. Then i found the robin logo in a sticker book, job done.

I don't think i need to say anymore.

"I think I'm done with the sofa"

When i was younger and i was taken to the park you could pretty much guarantee that when i got there it would be packed with children running about rushing to get on the swings etc before everyone else. These days when we go to the park were lucky to see any other children. Whats happened over the years? The park is a great way to fill an hour or break up a day when you haven't got much else planned. Both Seth and Opeie love going to the park and are always excited.

Parks can also be used as a great distraction, as an adult there are times when you have boring mundane things that just need to be done and sometimes as grim as it is you have to take the kids along. But the thought of a visit to the park on the way home or while your out and about can usually make whatever were having to do a little more bearable for them.

I do wish that they made some of the play things adult size. I'm always falling off these springy things, clearly they are not designed for such a beefcake. Luckily as you can see in a crisis Opeie will always run to my rescue. It's lovely to know he's watching over his dear old dad.

Rather than write loads of posts about going to different parks i just thought id include pictures from a few visits into one post. Last week we decided to give Mrs M's folks a surprise visit and ended up down the park with Grandad Gary and Dylan (who was looking very dashing in his little pink jumper! very metrosexual.

Opeie as usual enjoyed investigating the giant Mushrooms and going down the slide. It wasn't the warmest of days but even if the weather isn't great its still lovely to get out and about and its always lovely to spend time with family.

The park never gets boring and i don't expect it to until the boys are teenagers at least. The last thing we want is the boys cooped up inside all the time and it does them good to be out in the fresh air. Although the temperature has dropped loads and were now having to wrap up more there's something really beautiful about walking about on an autumn day.