Over the summer holidays Rich got hold of some exciting tickets for us to attend an iTV sports day on the film set of Coronation Street.

We got to pretend to be sporting stars in our own Team GB t-shirts – don’t we all look fine with our groovy matching headbands?

Sam meet a real olympian – Bianca Walkden who won a bronze medal in the Woman’s Taekwondo.

We all had a try at the different sports avaliable, Emily really got into the table tennis (see that look of fierce concentration on her face) and Sam did a great job on the climbing walls. Rich got to do some badminton with Sam and before leaving we all did some hula hooping!

Summer seems to be properly here at Tea Towers now – the paddling pool has finally been dusted off and filled and much fun has been had splashing about in it.

Water everywhere

We’ve been busy with work inside the house too with Sam and Emily doing a spot of baking.

Baking fun

I’ve also had them working hard at getting the sofa hovered… though this seems to mostly involve making towers of cushions to jump on!

Cushion testing

The sun has come out so we’ve just been for a walk round our favourite park.

We gave some recently repaired rhinos some love.

Blew some bubbles.

Gazed up…

…and enjoyed the beautiful sky.

Then finished up by improving our frisbee skills.

Over the bank holiday weekend we made the most of our time and did some exploring in new places

We spent Saturday at Alderley Edge – an area maintained by the National Trust which has some fantastic views.

While there we meet up with some friends and had a lovely time exploring and playing together.

On the bank holiday Monday we decided to take Sam and Emily out to the natural caverns in Poole.

These strange stalagmites are formed super fast due to a lime ash dump situated on the ground above them. They are also a ‘Site of special scientific interest’ due to their strange orange coloration that no one seems to be able to explain.

After our trip down into the caves we came up for an explore around Poole – here is Emily pointing the way up to a strange castle shaped folly.

Lots of fun 🙂

We’ve had another few opportunities to dress up recently with World book day in March and then much parading in our bonnets for the Easter bonnet parades.

Sam decided he wanted to dress as ‘Charlotte’ from Charlotte’s Web so this is the spider costume we came up with. Plenty of kitchen rolls were used to produce all his legs, the scary spider mask was fun and then a bit of crochet finished it with a special ‘Some pig’ written across.

Emily and Sam helped put together their Easter bonnets. Emily worked on painting and decorating the eggs surrounding her crown. We added lots of chicks and she loved showing it off on the nursery parade.

Sam did most of the work on his bonnet. He came up with the idea to just have it as a big egg around his head… I helped do the cardboard construction and then left Sam to decorate it. Apart from it being a bit top heavy and catching a few of his classmates while doing their spring songs on the stage it brought plenty of smiles to all who saw it 🙂

This weekend Emily got to go for a pony party with some of her new nursery friends.

To start with they got to groom a very docile pony who was so gentle and let a whole bunch of little girls pet her. Emily started out quite shy but quickly decided she liked the pony and giggled whenever the pony turned to look at her.

Emily then got to ride a rather grumpy pony who had already shaken a little girl loose earlier and would occasionally try to nip the young girl who was leading her. Emily did fine though and really enjoyed the trotting round the practice yard.

In February Rich and I celebrated our 10 year date-a-versary by going off for a long spa weekend at the Mill Spa hotel in Chester – it was lovely 🙂

In March Rich and I snuck off for a day time date ice skating…

…during which I managed to fracture my left elbow, oops!

We had a lovely summer holiday and also spent the day out at Beeston castle where Sam had a quick go at medieval sword fighting and we also got to see some catapults in action.

Sam joined the ranks of a local Beaver group and went on a couple of trips camping which he loved.

We bought these little fluffy creatures home to live with us.

We travelled down south to visit friends and family

and came back up through Wales to see my lovely sister and Myf.

We had a mini fireworks night in our garden and also some fun with sparklers

Then we got ready for Christmas.