I always dreaded my P.E. report at school. It was far from my strongest subject. Apart from swimming, the only other sport I have enjoyed taking part in is tennis. I joined a tennis club and enjoyed spending my weekends rallying with my sister. I can get a bit competitive. I am not John McEnroe, but I do like the ball to be in! To be honest my husband is extremely lucky I accepted his marriage proposal after he beat me at a game on the day he proposed! I still think that if I was him, missing the odd shot to ensure a "yes" later in the evening would have been a wise idea.

So now Wimbeldon is upon us, I decided it was time to get the boys interested in tennis. I headed to Sainsbury's and stocked up on Coke and snacks. Middle man loves strawberries so that was a sure fire way to get him to sit still for 10 minutes. I had a look at the Coke calculator before I left, which may have swayed my choice for Diet Coke.

Click here to see the Google + album of my shop

Big man was excited that I got a Coke bottle with his name on. Although he did show some disappointment that it wasn't his full name, and that the popcorn in my shopping bag didn't even have his initials on. You just can't please some people!



So what happened when we sat down to watch the tennis?

I realised that what I thought was a very simple sport, is actually very difficult to explain. "You have to serve into the opposite small box, then just keep the ball in the court but not in those side bits. Unless it is a doubles match and then it can go in there" Scoring is confusing for a 5 year old too. "If they haven't scored we say love, and 40 all is deuce.Then it goes to advantage points but might go back to deuce if they lose the point." I think it went over big man's head. He got the idea of hitting the ball over a net and settled with that.


So what do you do after watching Wimbledon on the TV? In our house you have a game of swingball. I was actually quite impressed that big man could hit the ball and mainly backhand.


I am not quite sure how this happened, but before big man knew it, Mummy and Daddy had taken over his game of swingball and made him chief photographer. I had years of pent up frustration. I needed to win this game. Did my husband miss a shot to make me feel better?


Of course not, he thrashed me 3 games to 1. I am therefore planning on spending the Summer holidays playing swingball with big man so that I can up my game and beat my husband. And who knows all this practice could mean that big man is the next Andy Murray. This is of course if I ever manage to explain the rules of tennis well enough to him.

Whilst I made the odd den as a child, we mainly used our under stairs cupboard as our little hideout. My boys are however, slightly obsessed with den making. It is a sure fire way to keep them entertained for most of an afternoon. Whilst big man didn't share my stamina for igloo building, he certainly enjoyed the finished project. I am now hoping that there is not a large snow fall in the next few years as only last week, he was asking when we would be building another!


A walk in the woods is always made fun if there are done fallen branches to make a den with.



However, most of our den building is made in our back garden (or conservatory if it's raining)

When you look at this picture, what do you see?



A few old blankets thrown over a slide and some chairs?

Take another look.

Through the eyes of my little ones it is their very own tent. Middle man got his saw out to make a door. Big man bought the bean bag from his room to make it more comfortable.


They even have their own pet ant!


The play then extends to needing a campfire. Big man even rubbed some sticks together to pretend to light it.



Then they made their specialty leaf soup to eat.


Middle man starts yawning and decides he needs to have a little lay down in his tent.



So yes, you may see a load of old blankets slung on some chairs, but to me it is an afternoon of watching my boys play together with their beautiful imaginations.

This is my entry to the Tots100/Center Parcs June Challenge

There were loads of great talks and Katie Piper's Keynote was emotional and inspirational. I quickly learnt that a lot of bloggers are called Sarah. Brands were available to chat to and Friday evening saw the Brilliance in Blogging Awards. Walking into a room of 500 bloggers made me realise what an achievement it was for me to be a finalist in the Family category. Thank you to everyone that took the time to vote for me. The winner in my category was Mum in the South, but I really do feel like a winner by making it to the final 6 from all the thousands of blogs out there.

Saturday saw more talks and networking. I was rather over excited to meet Bex from The Mummy Adventure. I may have come across as a complete stalker as I introduced myself and told her how she was one of the first blogs I had started following. Luckily though she was really nice and let me have some baby cuddles with her gorgeous little man. Katy Hill stepped in last minute and made me laugh and the conference ended with some bloggers reading their own posts. There was a mix of emotional and funny posts, but my personal favourite was that of Older Mum's Birth Day post.

Those that know me, will know that I am a massive Harry Potter fan. So imagine my excitement when I got to have wand lessons courtesy of Warner Bros. Studio Tour.



And then I met the Owl himself! Well one of the Owls they used as Hedwig.




And if that wasn't enough they gave us some Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. Big man was as excited as me when he saw them. Who can't get excited about eating earthworm flavoured jelly beans? The faces he pulled were priceless.



I had a great time, even if I felt out of my comfort zone at times. None more so than when I decided to test my acting skills with the Visit Orlando stand. It is actually a thousand times better than I imagined, but I don't think you'll be seeing me on the big screen any time soon. Bless him, big man didn't understand the concept of a green screen, and asked whether I had actually been there.




As you can probably tell from this post, I am easily pleased, and just to prove it here's my Diet Coke with my name on. Although the control freak in me would like a capital S and C.


I can't possibly link to all the lovely bloggers I met, but in addition to those that I have already mentioned, I would like to thank Afra, Sarah Miles, Swazi, Jaime, Vic and Sam for being so welcoming and friendly.

So will I be back for more next year? I certainly intend to and I will take more photos.

As I have mentioned before, big man is really into his gardening. He views it as a science and that is his favourite subject.

Earlier this year, I wrote about his gardening plans, and here is our latest update.

1. Update Operation Bumble Bee



This hasn't gone quite to plan. Both pots of his "bee attracting" flowers have grown, but only one has flowered. However, I have yet to see a bumble bee on it. Unfortunately the bumble bees have once again got confused and have opted to live in our loft rather than big man's bumble bee house. Luckily he doesn't care. He hasn't noticed that the bees haven't been on his pot of flowers and is happy that some woodlice have moved into his bee building.

2. Operation Sunflower


We will never be able to hold our heads high in front of Grandad again. Some rather greedy slugs feasted on the majority of the sunflowers present and  we are left with this rather weedy and unhealthy looking one. Big man measured it at 40cm and I am not sure if it will make it much further.

3. Operation Courgette

Another failure. I don't know what has happened but if big man manages to each a vegetable from his crop it  will be amazing. For some reason they really aren't taking off and here is a radish he picked. "It's not big enough yet is it Mummy?"


So with all these operations at near failure, when he received his gardening set from Britmums/Moneysupermarket for the #KidsGrowWild Challenge, we decided that we would start another operation

Operation weeding and planting poppys.

The gardening gloves were an immediate hit. And big man seemed to enjoy weeding much more than me. So already I class this operation as a partial success! He particularly liked this sticky weed!



And here he is doing his own little part of the flower bed ready to plant his poppy seeds.



Only time will tell whether we manage to actually grow something half decent this year. Does it matter? No. Big man loves being outside digging, weeding and planting. He is proud of his efforts and is even more happy if he finds the odd mini-beast along the way. I am also pretty certain that he will even try one of the radishes by the end of the summer even if they don't grow much more.

This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge sponsored by Moneysupermarket.com  We received a children's gardening set for entering.

One of my favourite Friends episodes is where an inebriated Rachel calls Ross' mobile in order to get closure. This is why I am writing this post - but no alcohol has been consumed. I have wasted far too much time and energy getting angry about the service and attitude of PC World. For my own sanity I have accepted their insulting £20 gesture of goodwill, and just want to share with you their appalling service, so that if you have a KNOWHOW plan, you can decide whether it is worth continuing with it.

In the year we had our laptop, we have used the KNOWHOW agreement twice. On the first situation, we took it to store and were advised after a week it was ready to pick up. We got there to find it had accidentally been shipped for repair. It was gone another week, they gave us a £20 gesture of goodwill and we just put it down to a human mistake that happens now and then.

A few months later the laptop froze. The telephone support advised that it may be in repair for as much as 5 days. It turned out that the hard drive had gone. The store backed up our data and arranged for the laptop to be sent for repair. It is from here on in that the service was so unacceptable I asked for our agreement to be cancelled and refunded. They were happy to cancel but not refund!

Firstly the laptop sat around in store for 6 days until it was shipped to the repair centre (it was stated in the notes they gave us.) I think that this is an excessively long time.

Whilst at repair we were given no updates. Our reference number was not recognised on the internet tracking system, or telephone call system. We traveled to store (20mins drive away) just to try and find out what was going on.

After 3 long weeks, we received a text message stating our laptop was ready to collect from store on Thursday. I drove to store with baby man. It wasn't there. They advised that it must be on Thursdays delivery and they would call when it was there.

I received no call, but that didn't surprise me seeing as we had constantly chased them throughout the repair. I returned to store with baby man the following day. No laptop. After about half an hour they tracked it down to the south coast. They were unable to advise when it would be back and said we shouldn't have received a text (it seems to happen a lot from what was inferred.)

So it was left to us to chase the order again. Eventually on Monday afternoon, after another phone call it was found that our laptop was still on the south coast and couldn't be returned til the Wednesday.

After a month away we finally got our laptop returned!

The service we received was a shambles. E mails weren't answered quickly, no updates on the repair were freely given and although throughout the process, staff were advising us to complain, the customer service department wouldn't refund us for our agreement as they stated that the time to back up data isn't covered in the repair length so they met their terms and conditions of 28 days.

My blood boils just thinking about it, so I gave up and accepted their gesture of goodwill as I would rather give it to charity than it be with an incompetent company.

If you have read through this - well done! If you still need convincing Google PC World complaints - you will find loads. Look at the watchdog site - yep they are on there, oh and their twitter feed is clogged up with complaints regarding customer service too.

So with a deep breath I shall now draw a line under the matter and never be so foolish again. Please make sure you aren't either. In the words of Rachel "And that my friend is what they call closure"

When I was at school, we were proud to have a computer lab. Twenty five years ago it was something that was pretty rare. At home we had a ZX Spectrum that my Dad spent weeks programming to obtain a space raiders type game.

My how things have changed!

When I worked as a secondary school teacher, it was expected that every child had access to a computer. If a parent was concerned that their child  needed to do some extra revision then they would often ask for online resources as they felt their children were more likely to be willing to do this type of study.

Even now, if I have the computer on in the day, big and middle man come up asking if they can use it. If big man has a question and we don't know the answer, he immediately asks us to Google it. Today I found out a millipede can have between 80 and 400 legs. The world has changed a lot and computers are part of everyday life. I have no idea when a child needs their own laptop, but I imagine that within a few years we will be purchasing one for big man to use.

Unfortunately, along with the wealth of knowledge that our children can access on the internet, it comes with it's dangers. I have a lot to learn in this area and any advice you can offer would be much appreciated. At the moment we have taken the follow steps:

1. In order to ensure that the boys are only accessing the sites that we want them too, my husband has set up the sites we are happy for them to use on the bookmark bar. They see the icon they want, click it and they are there (usually at the Disney Junior website.) Whilst they are still little, I think this is great, but in the future we will need to look further into parental blocking.

2. Incase the boys somehow manage to get onto another page and click onto something unsuitable, we have used the service restrictions offered by our internet service provider. This blocks out unsuitable sites but is sometimes a bit over zealous as I have had the odd occasion when it has stopped me from getting onto parenting blogs!

3.Big man is still a big Smurfs Village fan. At the tender age of 5, he has not yet learnt the value of money and does not understand why he can't buy a massive basket of Smurfberries at the pricey sum of £69.99.
So our tablet has all the restrictions turned on, with the in app purchases disabled.

My theory is that technology changes so quickly, that you have to worry about each step as you reach it. I want to protect my children, but allow them to learn how to use a computer and the knowledge that it brings. At the moment I think these steps are fine. Have you got any other recommendations? How old was your child when they had a laptop of their own? Do you worry about the information they can access or cyber bullying?


(I tried to convince big man that baby man had been playing with his Smurf Village. I don't think he was fooled.)

Looking for something to keep the kids entertained on the way home from visiting my parents, we decided to stop off at Burghly Gardens in Stamford. It was a beautiful afternoon and once middle man had finished having the mother of all tantrums (due to tiredness and general over excitement of seeing Nanny and Grandad) we had a beautiful afternoon. The garden of surprises and sculpture garden are beautiful and well worth the entrance fee on a sunny day. The garden of surprises has lots of water jets/waterfalls and the children can play in these providing they are wearing swimwear and footwear (so Crocs or flip flops are a must - I didn't read the signs properly on the latter, but we still had fun.)


We spent 3 hours there in total and could have happily done a couple more. Next time we will take Daddy to visit and explore further. Middle man was particularly cute with his analysis of the art.






Step aside Tracey Emin, middle man is here to take the world of art by storm!

I have missed a few weeks of R2BC because I have been too busy and thankfully being cheerful! It hasn't been the easiest of times as my other half has been jetting the world with work, but now that his month of touring the US and Glasgow is over, I am hoping for a more relaxed month.

So this weeks (or few weeks) #R2BC are

It was my birthday. Yes I am the grand old age of "21 again!" Whilst I don't like to dwell on the face that I am another year older, I do like the fact that I had a lot of cakes! You will be meeting a "slightly chubbier that she would like to be", Louise at Britmums!

I have had a red letter day with my parents and the boys at the seaside. And then again at Burghley Gardens (but you will have to wait til tomorrow for that post!)

And then on Monday, big man had an inset day so we had a day at Drayton Manor. It was a risk that paid off and the queues were minimal so a good day was had.

I usually like to make my own meatballs, but sometimes I need a quick solution for tea. I was given £3 vouchers for Richmond mini meatballs to try them and come up with a recipe. (A pack for 20 costs £2.) I am afraid that I am not the kind of mum that spends ages creating happy faces for her children to tuck into. I am no Annabel Karmel and I fear that if I started then every mealtime I would be forced into dreaming up a more creative dinner plate just to get my kids to eat some carrots! If I am using a convenience product, it is because I need something that is quick. I therefore tend to try and describe the food in a more exciting way instead - so here are my "Mini Meatball Cannon Wraps"

The mini meatballs take just 8 minutes to oven cook, so that is how long this meal took. Pop the mini meatballs in the oven and grate some cheese. I bought some mini wraps and heated them in the microwave for a few seconds. Then I added ketchup and grated cheese.



I then added the meatballs and rolled up the wraps, and served up the mini meatball cannons to the boys. Small boys have great imaginations, luckily they ate their cannons rather than shoot them! Baby man found the meatballs easy to eat as they were soft difficult, and meat is usually difficult for him to eat.





This post is an entry for BritMums’ Hungry to Happy Challenge sponsored by Richmond Mini Meatballs

On Friday we spent a gorgeous day in Skegness. We went out in three layers of clothing and ended up needing sun cream! The boys played happily in the sea chasing waves and playing in the sand. Middle man rode a donkey for the first time, and when the tide went out he was extremely pleased with the large paddling pool that had been left behind. It really was a red letter day with my Mum and Dad. And who can't love a place where a 99 only costs 65p!