Our Day Out In Manchester

On Wednesday 28th May we took the kids to Manchester for the day.

If you have read my previous post, you will be fully aware that we spent yesterday in Blackpool, so here's where the story continues.

After being woken at 6 am by two bright eyed fully awake boys I decided to take them and their sister for a walk down to the beach to give their mum some peaceful time to herself. This was short lived for as soon as we got down to the beach it started raining, so soon afterwards we made our way back to our guest house.

Well we returned back to our room, where my wife was already up and packing the bags for home. We had our breakfast made one last check to see if we hadn't forgotten anything said our goodbyes and made our way to our next adventure point, the Imperial War Museum, Manchester.

Upon entry to the museum we took the plunge and jumped in the lift which took us up to the Air Shard. This is a platform which stands nearly 100 feet above the ground. From here you can see out across Media City, The Quays, the Coronation Street set and Old Trafford too.

  

The museum is full of wonderful and interesting facts about the World Wars, how it affected the people of Britain and indeed anyone caught up in any wars anywhere in the world.

There were many vehicles and weaponry item to see which the boys found amazing and wanted to try and get in or play with most of them.   

 

Having thankfully never experienced any part of World Wars I can only ever come to places like this and imagine what it would of been like to live through those awful events in our history. These places do let you remember and be thankful to all those who valiantly fought for our freedom.

One section of the museum did have a piece of  recent history that will forever be etched in my memory bank. This being the collapsing of the Twin Towers in New York. Like most parts of the museum probably does to others this made me stop and instantly remember that awful day of 9/11.

       

( A piece of the Twin Towers)

After we had finished in the War Museum we made our way over to Media City, as the kids love Cbeebies we thought we would show them where it is filmed.

They really enjoy it here, they got to have their photos taken with 

Tree Fu Tom, 

with two Daleks 

and the TARDIS 

and they even got to sit a mock set of BBC Breakfast News.

  

You can book to have guided tours round the sets, but we didn't have time for that on this visit unfortunately. 

After we had finished looking round Media City we thought we would take the kids to Old Trafford as we had gone to Manchester City's ground on our last visit to Manchester.

We took the kids round the club shop then we went round to the Munich memorial wall, here we saw a poster advertising free entrance to the museum so we thought why not take a look round.

The museum as you would expect is full of wonderful trophies, shirts, boots, gloves from all the past and present players and legends to ever grace the 'Theatre of Dreams'.

Whilst in the museum at Old Trafford we pointed out to the boys our family connection, this being that the late great Duncan Edwards is their great great great Uncle on their Mums side.

 

On the way back from Old Trafford we came across this funky climbing frame and slide which the kids wanted to have a go on, yes including the biggest kid of all my wife lol.

Before we left and headed of home the boys wanted one last photo with this impressive army tank. 

Our Day Out In Blackpool

On Tuesday 27th May we took the kids to Blackpool for the day.

My wife had been sent tickets to go to Blackpool's new attraction for 2014, which was only opened in April called 'ILLUMINASIA'.

So we decided that we would make a few days of it and go to Blackpool then onto Manchester the following day (read about it here). 

We had a look on the internet at hotels and booked ourselves to stay the Summerville Guest House. 

We packed a few things into trucki and went to bed ready for our early start the next day.

We set off early so we would be up in Blackpool by late morning, we actually arrived at Blackpool at bout 10 am then it took us 30 mins to find the hotel as the sat nav kept sending us the wrong way.

Well we finally found the hotel, checked to see where we could park and parked up, the lovely hotel owners even allowed us to check in as as room was ready for us which was a massive help as it meant we didn't have to leave all our stuff in the car unattended all day.

Once we had checked in and sorted ourselves out, we made our way to the Winter Gardens to go Illuminasia.

As I said earlier this is a new feature attraction for 2014. Whilst my wife was in the queue collecting our tickets, I took the kids to look around the foyer to see the dance costumes as there was a dance festival on that week, as well as looking at the costumes the boys decided they would have their own little dance show which was very cute to be honest.

It was our turn to go into the attraction, the kids were so excited, they didn't really know what was going to be the other side of the doors but they were still so excited to find out. The excitement was built up even more by the search and seek chart they were given, they knew they had to find answers to the questions whilst walking around and at the end they'd get a certificate for it.

The attraction was brilliant, it was filled with so much colour and fine craftsmanship, it was also accompanied by various audio interaction throughout various zones. 

We learnt to speak Chinese and found out what our year of birth was represented by in the Chinese calendar.

 We found out some history behind Blackpool's famous Tower and even facts about planets and space.

We were thrown into the Land of the Giants and The Dark Zone, which the kids found fascinating to see all the bugs and creepy crawlies on a grand scale. 

  

We were also whooshed of into the magical realms of The Deep, a zone full of all kinds of sea creatures.

   

The very last part of the attraction is a laser light show with a switch on of the rooms lights by a child out of the audience which is a good way to finish the visit.

Once we had finished in Illuminasia we took a walk, well a very long walk to be honest all the way down to the Pleasure Beach. 

Then we walked all the way back via a walk along Central Pier and North Pier (whilst on North Pier we saw a rescue helicopter bringing someone to an awaiting ambulance on the beach) to the Tower where we had tea in Coral Island Amusements. 

  

We then had a little wander round town let the kids go on a few amusement rides, won them some tickets which they exchanged for some goodies from the shop, made our way back to the hotel and crashed with exhaustion lol. 

C Is For ...... Carvery Alphabet Project

I am linking this post up with the lovely Charly Dove and her fabulous Alphabet Project. 

 This week it C Is For ........ Carvery.

On Sunday we decided we'd go out for Sunday Lunch.

 So we went to our local Crowne Carveries.

My wife and I had a lovely meal but best of all the kids ate free so we didn't mind them not eating it all or dropping the odd piece on the floor (well we did but hey ho). 

It made a change to slaving over a hot oven lol.

Well that was my C Is For .......

Stay tuned for my D Is For  Coming Soon.

B Is For .... Birthday Cake Alphabet Project

I am linking this post up with The Alphabet Project which is being run by Charly Dove.

  

 B Is For .... Birthday Cake 

 Yes I've chosen birthday cake for this letter as for my daughter's first birthday last year I thought at the time it would be a nice for daddy to attempt to cake her a birthday cake. 

 To be honest this was my first ever attempt at a birthday cake. I thought how hard can it be. Throw a few ingredients into a bowl, whisk them together add a splash of food colouring and whala baked cake. 

 Not being big headed but that's exactly what I did and as you can see frim the pictures below, a very impressive first attempt I must said lol. 

 That was my B Is For ..... 

 Stayed tuned for my C Is For ...... Post coming soon

A Is For ..... Astronaut, The Alphabet Project

I'm linking this post up with The Alphabet Project which is being run by Charly Dove, so here goes

A Is For .... Astronaut

Whilst on our honeymoon to Florida in 2006, we decided that as well as going to the Disney Parks and Universal Studios we'd also go to The Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral.

There is so much to do and see there I don't know where to start but that might be for another time to be honest this post is about Astronaut, or more particular our meet and greet session with a proper astronaut.

Our meet and greet session was with Jon Andrew McBride who was the lead chase pilot on the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Columbia, this is one of many NASA assignments his been included in.

We had an awesome afternoon meeting Jon and finding out about his involvement with NASA and all the assignments he was involved with. 

Well that was my A Is ..... In the Photo Project

Stay tuned for B is ......

BOOMco Twisted Spinner

I was recently contacted by Donna Bennett, PR consultant of Mattel UK to see if I would be interested in reviewing the BOOMco Twisted Spinner. 

 I obviously thought that this would be a great chance for me to have some father and son time with JR and myself. 

 My Nephews have Nerf Guns and my boys they love playing with them so I thought they'd love trying this Twisted Spinner out. 

 As soon as they opened the packaging up they were overcome with excitement and couldn't wait to try the Twisted Spinner out. 

 

 This is where we hit a snag and is my only negative point to this product review, the age guide of the product. 

It is clearly indicated as 6+ but and a big but I don't believe this to be ok or safe to be honest. 

 My son is nearly six and my Nephew is seven, yet both of them struggled to use this product. As you can see from this video, the spinner requires you to pump the lever to fire the darts which my Son and Nephew struggled to do whilst being able to safely aim the twisted at the target.

 With that said though the product is very good. 

It is a air powered blaster so requires no batteries at all. The twister comes with a smart stick target and darts, which are available in cool colours and patterns. 

 Smart stick technology allows you to see where you nailed your target, the Smart stick darts will only stick to the smart stick shields and sticky targets. 

 As well as targets the spinner has transforming shields which allow you to catch incoming opponents darts, re-load them into your barrel and fire them back. The spinner has a awesome 70 foot firing range too. 

 The spinner is priced at £24.99 which when I compared to other similar products I found the price to be very reasonable indeed.

 You can purchase the twisted spinner from SMYTHS, ASDA, John Lewis and Toys R Us.

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If you enjoyed these videos head on over to the official BOOMco youtube channel for
more fun and BOOMco excitement.

This product was given to me free of charge for the purpose of the review, all views and opinions are my own. 

Scooby Dooby Doo - Mystery Machine

Whilst we were sorting through the childrens toys today looking for a lost train track piece, TP stumbled across his magazine containing a build your own Scooby Doo Mystery Machine.

Whilst TP sat and played with a roll of sellotape I carefully cut along the dotted lines so that TP could use said sellotape to keep the sides of the van together.

 

 He carefully tried to stick the sides together but I had to offer a little help as he stuck the sellotape on the wrong places but never mind. 

 Eventually between the two of us we managed the successfully stick all the sides together and produce a funky little Mystery Machine.