As soon as I saw that Tots 100 were looking for bloggers and their children to go on a review trip to the SEA LIFE London Aquarium I jumped at the chance. It's somewhere that I've wanted to take the kids for ages, and Mr C has been particularly keen to take Little Miss C but unfortunately he had to work on that day. Still - an opportunity too good to miss! I set off from St Albans with Claire from Being a Mummy and two of her little ones. It worked really well as all our kids are friends anyway and they all helped entertain each other on the train. Now that London Blackfriars station ... read more
Woburn Safari Park
For years I've driven up the M1 past Junction 13 and seen the elephant on the brown sign pointing to Woburn Safari Park, yet for some reason we've not visited until now. It's only about 40 minutes from where we live so getting there was nice and simple - always important when you have a toddler and baby in the car. What's there to see The safari park is in two halves - the road safari and the foot safari. The road safari gives you the opportunity to see some of the bigger, badder animals (lions, tigers, bears, wolves etc.) from the comfort of your own car, whilst the foot safari is more like ... read more
Wrest Park
On a weekend there's nothing we like more than a family trip out to a stately home with large grounds that we can explore with the children. The National Trust do this kind of venue very well and they're incredibly in tune with what families want. Kids activities are laid on during holidays, there's often a playground and you know that there will be baby changing facilities and high chairs in the cafe. Unfortunately for us though there is a distinct shortage of National Trust properties near where we live. I was therefore intrigued when Mr C came home from work one day saying that ... read more
Blowing away the cobwebs
Many thanks for all your kind words following my last post. I've had so many tweets, emails and Facebook comments that I'm struggling to respond to them all in a timely fashion. I'm somewhat blown away by the messages that I have had, especially from old school friends who have fond memories of my Dad when he used to regularly come and cheer on our lacrosse team from the sidelines. Another old school friend also reminded me of the time that he came and "helped" on our Gold Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition (if the Duke's reading, which I'm sure he is, he ... read more
Visiting the animals
I'm always on the look out for new places to take Little Miss C - especially ones that don't cost much. I worry that there's a lot of pressure on parents to pay to take their children to loads of expensive attractions but that need not be the case. On Friday morning we went along to one of our favourite free attractions - the local garden centre's pet department! We're lucky enough to have a short drive away a garden centre that sells chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, budgies and reptiles, as well as a selection of fish. It obviously costs nothing to visit the ... read more
Taking a step back
This week was supposed to be a nice little "holiday" between Mr C leaving one job and starting a new one. We acknowledged that there were likely to be some little jobs left to finish off in our new loft conversion, but the reality is that we've actually been running round like headless chickens all week trying to make decisions, but things and get everything sorted. Today we've made quite an effort to make the day a bit calmer and fun. A spot of baking - mainly prompted by the need to use up some bananas that were going very brown in the fruit bowl - a pub lunch and a wander ... read more
Olympics with a large bump
Back in April last year (16 months ago) I joined in the frenzy of applying for as many Olympic tickets as I could through the ballot. At the time I obviously had no idea that by the time the games came to London I would be nearly eight months pregnant with a rather large bump. I went for the cheapest tickets in all the obvious events - opening and closing ceremony, 100m final, swimming etc and also added on the canoe sessions that are local to us in Hertfordshire and a few odd-ball ones - mainly the tennis as I figured it might be the cheapest way to see some WImbledon Centre Court ... read more
BigJigs Rail – Record Breakers!
When I wrote about the planned BigJigs World Record attempt I was looking forward to going along with Little Miss C, but I have to admit that I had absolutely no idea what a fantastic day we were going to have, or just how much I was about to completely fall even more in love with the BigJigs brand. LMC and I have already seen two Guinness World Records broken this year thanks to this blog and as soon as we arrived and met the BigJigs team I was pretty sure that this was going to make it three. Having taken over one of the slips at Chatham Dockyard the BigJigs team started laying ... read more
Bigjigs – The World’s Longest Wooden Toy Train Track
There are some companies that I just want to work with through this blog and Bigjigs (and in particular Bigjigs Rail) falls squarely into that category. Ever since Little Miss C first unwrapped the train set that we bought her last Christmas the whole family have loved the traditional nature of their train sets and we have played with it for hours. We were also lucky enough to review the Farmyard Crossing and Veg Train earlier in the year and I've also been introduced to other things in their wider range thanks to the lovely people at our local toyshop, Cuthberts in St Albans. I was ... read more
A record breaking holiday?
How fast can you assemble a Mr Potato Head? And what about if you were blindfolded? How long would it take you then? Unless you've got some very strange hobbies I'm guessing that the above questions have probably never troubled you before. I certainly hadn't given them a second thought before a box arrived in the post a couple of weeks ago. In it was a Mr Potato Head, a water pistol, a colouring book, stickers, coloured pencils and some sweets. Also included were some details of the Thomson Family Holidays Guinness World Records Event that I'd been invited to a Whipsnade Zoo. ... read more