#MMWELLYWALK

We're going to the #MMWellyWalk... Are you?
On 2 nd November 2013 we are going to the #MMWellyWalk at Beale Park in Reading. It is going to be a fab family fun day in aid of a great cause – The Lullaby Trust. The event is in memory of a beautiful angel baby, Matilda Mae, who died on 2 nd February 2013 at 9 months of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. You can read more about her legacy at www.edspire.co.uk.
We are going to be wanging our wellies, singing songs with Gymboree, painting, cutting and sticking with the Rainy Day Box Company, naming a giant teddy bear, frolicking in fair ground fun with Beebies Baby Store, bubble blowing, capturing magical moments with Scryver photography & Virtual Booth, taking a trip on the Beale Park Miniature Railway, eating cakes courtesy of Charlotte’s Kitchen Diary, reading stories, playing games and so much more!
There will also be lots of chances to win some fantastic prizes, meet some amazing people & bid for Wellies signed by the stars!
We look forward to seeing you there too! Tickets are available at www.beebiesbabystore.com and are £9.99 each. Under 11s go free!

Magic Chocolate Moment

This picture means so much to me, to some its just a picture of a child have a chocolate button but to us its way more than that.

My daughter was born on the 13th September 2012, she was born perfectly fine and was discharged from hospital with no concerns at all.

Well that soon changed, soon she became a poorly baby, every bottle feed came back straight back up with vengeance. We even tried changing milk brands but to no success.

After quite a few doctors appointments and health visitor consultations we were booked into see a dietician at our local hospital.

The dietician was lovely, caring and so understanding, which made a change to our doctor who seemed to have given up on us.

The dietician took L-A straight off shelf milk and tried her on neocate formula milk. Within two weeks L-A had regained the weight she had lost, gained her appetite back and was no longer being violently sick.

Although  L-A missed out on chocolate for her first christmas, thanks to the dietician putting her on a dairy free diet she was able to have chocolate at easter.

Thanks to Tesco she was able to enjoy a packet of dairy free chocolate button at easter too. 

Our holiday friend

My wife is a big kid at heart. So when we went to Disney World in Florida for our holiday she was able to let her inner child free. 

She decide that before we went she was going to purchase herself a new little friend, a talking Mickey Mouse who interacts with various points in Disney World.

This little chappie became our holiday companion, he went everywhere we did,

to take car rides to see shows,

 

to see parades/3D rides,

 have meals,

 meet and greet various characters

 

and even to the pub in Epcot lol.

  

Parenting

What is parenting? When you decide the time is right to have children no one says heres a manual that will guide you through the next 18 years (and more) of yours and their life. No they don't.

You walk past parents of all ages acting differently around their children, some polite, calm, sensitive and respectful other rude, loud and far to interested in anything else other than their children.

What lessons do you learn? What parenting values do you take on board? Some you discard straight out of hand, "I'll never be like those parents" you hear yourself saying but admiring the parenting skills of others "I hope I'll be like those, treat my kids nice".

No two parents are the same, not even two people who are together, we all have different paths in our minds of how perfect our children are going to be, how they will never fall off the straight and narrow.

Realistically all kids aren't perfect, they all do little things that are naughty, cheeky mischievous sometimes (sometimes more than others) but that is our learning path as the parent and theirs as the child to follow, to hopefully be that perfect child in every parents eye, one day they too will be the parent and want their children to be perfect.

Only time will tell how perfect they have become or even how perfect you have become as the parents.

Special Holiday Memory

I recently wrote a post about my holiday memories in regards to Halloween, well off the back of that I have decided to write another post about one of my special holiday memories at Magic Kingdom.

We had walked around Magic Kingdom for most of the day taking our own photos but also having photo taken off us by the parks photo crew. 

Towards the end of the day you can go along to the photo shops and view your pictures and purchase them if you wish (similar to how you do at Alton Towers or Drayton Manor).

Well we thought whilst it was parade time (which we had already seen by the way) we would go off to the photo shop and take as look at our photos, little did we expect to happen what happened to us whilst at the shop.

 

We went into the shop got greeted by the very friendly shop staff (like you do in all the Disney shops) and shown our pictures on the computer screen, some of the pictures we liked some we didn't to be honest. Well we decided which we were going to have and completed and transaction and left the shop.

Nothing unusual about that I hear you say and yes you're totally right nothing out of the ordinary at all, but as we were exiting the shop we noticed a side corridor leading to what looked like a mini cinema. We were right it was leading to a Kodak mini cinema area, full of old pictures of Disney World,  original Disney characters and it was also showing a short film about the history of Walt  Disney and the Disney Parks.

Boring I hear some of you say, yes possibly but here's where the magic of Disney gave us a special holiday memory, for we were the only ones in this room, little did we know it was where the characters came into for a break from the baking Florida sun.

This was where we got this special unique photo of my wife with Pinocchio posing in a photo. (You have to look very carefully to the left of my wife).

Scarecrow Weekend

Today my wife and I took the kids to a small village near us called Belbroughton.

Why did you take them there? I hear you ask, well I'm about to tell you.

Every year at around this time the village comes alive with visitors flocking to see their scarecrows.

Yes you heard me correctly their scarecrows, some of you may about now be thinking god good what's fun about scarecrows, obviously you haven't been to Belbroughton scarecrow weekend.

For 16 years now they have annually held this weekend of fun for all the family. The villagers make their own scarecrows and display them outside their houses. This year after a competition vote the village chose the theme 'What Made Britain Great'.

Their were all kinds of decorated scarecrows from Winston Churchill to Wayne Rooney from Florence Nightingale to Mary Poppins and from Margaret Thatcher to Mo Farah.

As well as having all the wonderful scarecrows to see the boys got to make their own animal feeds at the RSPB stand, stroke a skunk at the animal stand and have their picture taken with a pumpkin man.

All in all it was a fun afternoon out for everyone.

  

My NFL Experience @ Wembly

With the NFL game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Pittsburgh Steelers being played at Wembley this evening, it got me thinking about the time I was lucky enough to be able to go to Wembley and watch a NFL game for myself.

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I went on Sunday 28th October 2008, along with my father in law, my sister in law and her husband who are both huge NFL fans to watch the game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Diego Chargers. My wife was left behind although she really wanted to go with us she was heavily pregnant and was due to give birth to our first child any day. 

  V  

I must admit that I am not really a NFL fan by any stretch of the imagination. I had seen bits and pieces of the odd game here and there but nothing more than a few minutes, certainly not enough to understand or even appreciate the sport by any means.

Saying that, when the opportunity arose to go to Wembley to be part of this huge fixture, of cause I jumped at the chance who wouldn't?

As I previously mentioned my sister in law and her hubby are massive NFL fans, they had already been to the previous year's fixture at Wembley, the inaugural game between the Miami Dolphins (who sis in law follows) and the New York Giants, they said the experience was so amazing that i wanted to go along and find out for myself just how amazing a game could be.

 V 

I had never been to Wembley before so that for me was a first in itself, to go and watch a game of American football at the home of  football seemed strange at first but once there I forgot all about soccer (shall we call it for our friends from across the ponds) and I got caught up in all the glitz and glamour of a football game.

Wembley was awash with colour, massive support for both teams, every direction you looked all you could see were jerseys and flags supporting not only the two game teams but every NFL team. It was an amazing sight to witness banners, flags and jerseys of all teams coming together for this one game. 

I must be totally honest with you now, although it was the longest four hours of my life, watching this sport I had no real idea of what was going on, what decision were being made for what tackle, who was throwing to who and why there were so many stoppages in play, I actually really enjoyed the experience of my first and probably my only ever American Football match.

The game finished 37 - 32 to New Orleans Saints, so the Saints fans both there and afar went home happy, but I think everyone at Wembley went home happy after enjoying such a great night of sport.

To end all I will say is come on you Vikings.     

My Sunday Photo 29th September

This photo is of my two boys playing nicely with their duplo sets. To be honest it lasted for quite a while before they got bored and started arguing over the same man to put in their respective fire truck.

Reminiscing Good Holiday Memories

Two customers of mine are off on their annual monthly holiday to Florida next week, (i have been to Disney World Florida twice and thoroughly enjoyed it) and along with my wife recently writing a post about halloween it got me thinking about when my wife and i went to Disney World, not only were we there celebrating our honeymoon but we also joined in with the many thousand of other visitors to Magic Kingdom and participated in their halloween celebrations of Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Whilst Disney obviously celebrated halloween in a kids and family friendly way, over at Universal Studios they were catering more for the adults who wished to join in their halloween celebrations. So much so that I have never seen such a scary advertisement boarding or have i seen one since as scary, the television advertisement was just as scary consisting of a young man getting his fortune read from a crystal ball and having freddy, jason and IT appear out of the dark and surround him. 

I think that i will stick to the Disney version of halloween celebrations thank you, although the villain Disney characters like Maleficent, Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook and Oogie Boogie come out to play, it is halloween after all lol

Walkers Mighty Lights Review

My eldest lad JR started reception school two weeks ago, at his school he is lucky enough to be able to chose between school dinners or a packed lunch from home.

My wife and I as parents try our best to give our three children as healthy meals and snacks as we can, whilst at school JR gets a healthy balance of meals if he opts for the hot school food, we like to think our lunch box alternative is equally healthy if he decides to go with that option.

Whilst we were searching the shelves in our local supermarket, deciding what crisps/snacks to include in JR's lunch box we noticed walkers mighty lights.

Upon further inspection we discovered that these crisps were 30% less fat than standard crisps and suitable for vegetarians too this made them perfect for JR's lunchboxes for him and his friends to share if he so desires.

You can pick up a multipack of these crisps in one of three different flavours - roast chicken, cheese and onion and lightly salted.

The recommended retail price is £1.59 but at the time of this review they were on offer at £1 for a multipack, which made them a perfect choice for health and finance.

The great thing about these crisps is the whole family can enjoy them at lunchtime or at snack time.

My youngest lad TP enjoys his snack time whilst his elder brother is at school, so we thought why not allow TP to enjoy a tasty healthy packet of crisps too.

He loves the roast chicken flavour, (he must take after his dad for that lol). He also enjoys the fact that the crisps are a ridged shape, he said "they bobbly on tongue daddy" I think that means he enjoyed them as he finished of the whole packet and asked for another one.

My daughter who recently celebrated her first birthday is also partial to a packet of the roast chicken flavour crisps, as these crisps are so full of flavour and healthy for you we allow L-A to have a packet with her lunch.

All three of my kids really enjoyed these crisps, usually we end up cleaning up other crisps and snacks left over at lunchtime but not these, the kids ate up every last crumb.

Jackson even turned to me and said "daddy I love these crisps they are the best ever".

I must agree with him there, the ridged shape of the crisps allows the crisps to be so full of flavor in every mouth full and at 30% less fat than standard crisps they are good for you too.

I must admit that I am partial to the odd packet of crisps from time to time but now i have found a packet of crisps that are not only good for value but they are also healthy and full of flavour.