The Gallery - Travel

The Gallery theme this week is Travel, over at sticky fingers blog, they talk about amazing around the world journeys and mention a wonderful blog I hadn't come across until now but is most definitely worth a look It's a small world after all which is inspiring to say the least, it also makes me think of a blog I stumbled across a few months ago which is life inspiring too The Wonering Wanders, who are not traveling the world but are on a life changing adventure of self discovery around the UK.

These blogs really do take 'Travel' to its full sense and meaning, and where I would love to be able to write about my stories of places far and new, I can't. I have never been abroad, never seen the wonderful places splashed in tourist magazines, so my travel experiences are pretty grim in comparison. My mum and dad had a caravan when we were growing up and although we didn't do anything quite so radical as the Wondering wanders we did spend many many happy weekends around and about in local countryside, blissfully happy running through forests and watching the wildlife. With my own children we did have a caravan a few years back, but circumstances changed and we had to sell it, we also have had many tents and I do love camping, the furthest place we've travel has to be Shell Island in Wales, we went there a couple of years ago. It is a beautiful place nothing much in terms of amusement or entertainment, just other campers and a beautiful stretch of beach.


So this picture is one from Shell Island in wales. It may not be exotic or life changing, we may not have traveled the world but we have seen the sea and one day we may well get to cross it and explore them distant lands.

It's all in a name

With the Beckhams recently welcoming their new daughter into the world, Harper Seven, everyone seems to be talking about names.
It's pretty common place for celebrities to give their children weird and wonderful names, what with Apple, Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrows daughter and Bob Geldof and Paula Yates children Fifi Trixibell, Peaches and Pixie, even more bizzar are the likes of Moxie CrimeFighter daughter of Penn and Emily Jillette. But these are all celebrity children who will never have the playground ridicule like normal children get will they? they live in a world full of the rich and famous. However you hear of more and more names not of the rich or famous, which you just wince at when you hear them thinking what were they thinking?
Giving your child a name should really be something you put a fair amount of thought into, after all it is something that will impact on them a fair amount through their lives, they will have to learn to say it, spell it as one of their very first words, they will have to explain it to several people all the way through their lives, it will be the first thing alot of people know about them so you can't help but wonder why people go for the really strange names that some people do.
There is of course not just the first name to take into consideration alone, but you have to be weary of how it matches with the surname. What the initials spell might be a decision maker too.
But no matter how much thought you've put into picking the perfect name I guess there is always going to be someone who doesn't like it. That is of course the great thing about names they are all so individual, and it is a matter of personal choice what fits one family might never be suited to another, but wouldn't it be boring if everyone was called James and Sarah.

Silent Sunday

so tired

My youngest has been going to his new schools preschools the past couple of weeks and he's enjoying it so far, we had a slight blip the second and third days where he cried and didn't want me to go, but since then he's been really happy about going and I've not had to walk away feeling terrible.

Today hes been in his Reception class and had dinner at school, he loved it, but all this school business is tiring work!

Melissa and Doug Triangular Crayons and Jumbo Pad Review

In our Toys R us toyologist box we received this pack of crayons made by Melissa and Doug which will be coming soon to Toys R us, priced £4.99



Now my daughter really loves drawing and colouring so she was pleased to receive these, and I was interested to see how the Triangular shape worked out, my youngest has just turned 4 he also really liked the crayons, they don't have any irritating paper cover which keeps getting in the way as you rub down the crayon, and they really do colour well! I know that might sound like a pretty obvious thing to say about crayons, but you know sometimes you receive some cheap wax crayons and no matter how persistently you colour with them they just leave dots of colour hear and there and don't give a nice smooth coloured finish? well these crayons are nothing like that, yes they may be slightly more expensive than alot of crayons, seems as you can pick up crayons from most places very very cheaply, but these are a really nice set.
They come in a sturdy case too, which means they will get put away safely and be ready for the next colouring session, rather than be tipped all over the floor and lost under the sofa.
Another great thing about their unique triangular shape is they don't roll so will stay put on the table (again meaning you'll still have the set for next time!)



A really lovely Addition to these crayons is the Mellisa and Doug, jumbo colouring pad, again coming soon to Toys R us priced £4.99 also

This larger pad has 50 lovely bold outlines, the pad we were sent was the blue pad, which is all things geared at boys, knights and castles pirates and dinosaurs to name a few! The pictures are lovely not cartoony and not to realistic that the detail would be unattainable for young children, theres a lovely mix of pictures and all three of mine found several they wanted to colour straight away. The pages rip out easily, yet hold together perfectly well even after you have taken out several pages. The paper is good quality thick enough to use paint on and felt tips too. The drawing are only on one side of each sheet, which means you don't have to agonize on which picture to hide when you proudly showcase the children's efforts on the fridge!



Overall the Crayons and the Pad by Melissa and Doug are extremely good quality products so although they may seem alittle bit on the pricey side, they are worth the money. Thumbs up all round from us!

Heres our video review :D

Pasta sauce and 10p's

I'm not great at being the strict parent I'm a pushover, I let the kids do a fair amount of whatever they please in the hope that leading by example and having fundamental morals will eventually instill in them the qualities they need to get by, and yes pretty much they are fairly well behaved. But more so recently there has been too many occasions when I squirm in my skin at their sheer disorder and disregard to my wishes, and in all honestly it saddens me, so my aim this summer is to rein them in, get them on the same page as me and hopefully make them into model children!

So for the past few weeks I've been talking to them asking them what they thought of various different tactics, one of which I suggested was if we had 4 jars, one each for them and then a main one, and filled the main one with 10p's and each time they did something I was happy about I'd give them a 10p and each time they did something less pleasing I would remove one from their jar and return it to the main jar. They seemed fairly interested in this idea so today I thought I'd put it in to practise, after all talking about great wonderful ideas never will be enough will it, its putting the best plans into action that get results.



So I merrily went and brought 4 jars of sainsburys basic pasta sauce 18p each. and proceeded to the post office to get £20 worth of 10ps returning home pleased with myself and hoping for them to come home from school and enjoy some time decorating their jars which I could then reward them for being good and hey presto we'd be away

Shame is even the best plans don't always work out the way you want.

So I fetch them from school, on the way met an old friend so was talking for 5 minutes longer than maybe I should, which resulted in me being 5 minutes late to the school gate for the older two, and me being late signals major strop from Jake, I have no idea why but he seems to be majorly disgruntled if I'm not standing waiting for him the second he comes out of the classroom, even if I am there literally 30 seconds later. Anyway so that was a bad start, he was grumpy on the way home, mean to his friend and proceeded to push Chloe, not great at all.

We arrived home I tried to lift their spirits, big up my wonderful idea, my great plan, how everything would be wonderful, I was met with 'I don't even want any money!' from Chloe and 'I've been too naughty you're just going to take them away before we start!' from Jake. oh dear, so I tried to stick to my blissful image I had conjured up and said we would forget whatever happened in the past these jars were a new start and we start from now, Chloe still met with such disinterest I was stumped as to what to actually do about it, I genuinely thought this would be completely up her street, Jake still sat with a fowl scowl on his face and the only one who seemed half interested in my plan was my youngest, so I stuck to the idea and started showing him the jars and the money, getting the paper and pens and the argos catalogue out for him, and talking all the time to him about how much of a great idea this was, whilst Jake and Chloe had now decided to team up against my plan and were just laughing together mocking my idea and generally being complete pains.

So I stuck to my guns Mikey helped me set up the jars, put the 10p's in the main Jar. I told Jake to go sit in the Kitchen and Chloe on the stairs.

So much for my lets make them behave well task, it seemed to only mean they behaved worse.

But after a stint apart Jake softened and appologised and then Chloe followed suit, they have behaved well for the remaining of the evening so I guess the jars may work yet.

Listography - 5 things I want to do this summer

I've often read the listographys and always say 'I'll join in with that' then one thing or the other turns up and I don't get to write my list, however I saw this weeks theme and instantly thought oh yes I must join this one so here I am, joining in :)

This weeks is hosted by Keith - the reluctant housedad whilst KateTakes5 is taking five this week to focus on setting up the new Netmums blogger network.

Right so this weeks theme is what 5 things do you want to do this summer?

1, Set up and make work a good positive parent reward scheme, I'm notoriously soft on the kids, We kinda run on a free for all and am not great at the whole boundaries thing, yes I do expect the kids to behave and they can and do surprise me more often than not and behave really well, but then other times they just do the opposite and I'm really not great at discipline I hate to shout at them, and they have always been a tad too young to fully understand the whole rewards system or more likely I never had the determination to stick it through, and always just coasted along being soft with them, but now really they are getting older and I need the boundaries set in stone so they don't start to push their limits.

2, Teach my youngest to ride his bike with no stabilizers, my eldest two were really great at their bikes from fairly young, and I love riding bikes Mikey really loves his bike too so this summer we're going to crack the 2 wheel thing!

3, Keep on top with my blog, but not let it take over my time, I love the kids being at home but also love sitting in my own little world doing not much scouting the old interweb! So I need to make sure I manage my time well.

4, Help Jake out as much as possible with his reading and writing, he'll be in year 5 after the summer, that's so old! and I really want to make sure his writing doesn't stop all together for the six weeks hes off school, we've been writing a story together the past few months and I really want to finish that, its something he is really interested in, although he doesn't actually write much of it, he dictates it to me most of the time, BUT we are sitting together doing something to do with words, which is better than nothing, and although I do write more than him, the bits he writes are more than nothing which seems good to me!

5, get a trip to the seaside in somewhere, we aren't going on any holidays, we haven't done for years because we simply can't afford to go away properly but we do like to take day trips to the sea, I love the seaside so I really hope we can make at least one visit during the holidays

thats about it, I hope I can do them things, Ill give it my best shot!