After much planning and preparation we finally made the trip out to the pet shop to buy ourselves some guinea pigs. We have been thinking about getting some for over a year and decided that this summer was the time to do it.

First up meet little ‘Squeak’. Emily chose this guinea pig and is very excited about her. Squeak seems quite shy at the moment but very calm.

Here is Sam with ‘Sweetpea’. She can run very quickly and has a good jump. Sam is delighted with her and can’t wait for her to settle in so he can look after her and hold her.

Happy Rich with Tiger

Lastly we bought ‘Tiger’ – Rich fell in love with this little lady while we were in the pet shop so after settling in our first two I headed back out to buy her. She seems to be the boldest of the three and is the first out exploring the hutch.

We have been having some lovely busy Summer days so far…

We’ve visited Formby beach with friends and though it was quite a windy day, we all still really enjoyed seashell hunting, sand castle making, picnicing, sand dune exploring…

and plenty of paddling.

Early on in the holiday we constructed this crazy marble run with quite a few toliet rolls… it has been much used – however beware if you come calling as it does mean our floors have many surprise marbles scattered about!

When the weather has been nice we’ve all been out in the garden and there has been some exciting painting being done with more toilet rolls and bubbly paint.

In between all of this Rich and I have also found some time to go on a ‘Go Ape’ adventure up in the treetops of Delamere forest.

The views up in the trees were beautiful

Rich really got into the swing of it 🙂

I hope you are all having a glorious Summer too!

Some how we are already in Summer and school sports day has come around. Both Sam and Emily have had a chance to run some fun races.

Emily had her sports day with her Preschool on a lovely day sunny day in June at the local park. To start with she was not keen on joining in the racing and this photo is from the obstacle course which is the only one she would do before refusing to do any more.

However once it was suggested that she could run the races with her good friend Zoe all was well again and the two girls joined hands for the rest of the event.

Sam’s school sports day was this morning and it was great fun. He was part of the ‘Tigers’ team which was a mix of children from year 1&2.

We discovered that hockey probably won’t be his sport (this is his teacher giving him a much needed hand) or anything involving balance or pushups. However he did get a goal in the penalty shot out and also scored very highly in the bean bag toss.

Today I got to join Emily’s preschool on a special trip out to a local farm. We all loaded on to a coach together this morning and travelled over to Stockley Farm park in Cheshire. When we got there Emily was straight in to be the first one to feed an animal.

She loved the baby goats ‘Elsa, Anna, Sven & Olaf’ and was very happy to give one his milk.

She also got to pet this fluffy chick and a very lovely baby (kitten?) rabbit too.

After a day of excitement there were some tired out little ones in the coach on the way home 🙂

Last month Jessica and I celebrated 10 years since we first started dating. I knew that Jessica would make a card and so I wanted to avoid buying one and make my own. With time running out I struck on the idea of using the Lego mini-figures that we have in or (very approximate) likeness.

You can see the picture that I attached to the card below, Samuel ‘helped’ me make the house in the background.

Jessica throws her cup in surprise

Samuel is a big fan of lego and I think he already has more Lego than I had as a child (before you take into account handed down Lego!). Yesterday Sam and Emily had some birthday money to spend so we took them to the Lego shop. Samuel picked out a treehouse set and Emily looked at the Lego Junior range as she is eager to start her collection. Emily chose a very pink Lego carry case that contains a number of starter bricks.

Whilst we were in the shop we decided to complete the mini-figure representation which can be seen on our mantelpiece or the image below. Sam and Emily were responsible for creating themselves and I have no idea why Sam picked a banana as his ‘accessory’.

A mini-family

The kids absorbed in their Lego.

I can’t believe that we are already in August – we’ve been having a hectic summer here and there are plenty of photos to share with you all… I just need to find half an hour somewhere to get them loaded up!

We had another July BBQ at Tea Towers and really enjoyed having so many good friends round to share it with us. Our garden is looking pretty good for a change so it was nice to show it off.

Party time

We’ve also just had some new neighbours move in this week. They are very busy tearing everything out of their home and redecorating it… which has made us feel very lazy. So today we finally had a go at re-seating some of the paving slabs on our front drive which has needed doing… oh since we moved in I think!

Here is Rich looking ready to get going with a rather worrying looking jack hammer type thing…

Rich is ready to go