Me & Mine // A Family Portrait (May 2016)

It’s a bit late in the day but I am at least managing to publish this month’s Me & Mine post on the last day of the month. It’s been another month of ups and downs for us. There has been even more illness with Barry and the boys all having a stomach bug, and then Toby and Gabe have both had chicken pox too. There have been quite a lot of tears (a lot of them from me!) and not a lot of sleep. But amongst all the illness we also had a lovely holiday at Center Parcs, and sold our house!

That last one is a very exciting bit of news – after 13 years in Scotland, 5 of them living in this house with Barry, we are moving back to the north west of England to live nearer both sets of parents. It’s all very exciting, but also very stressful. Although we’ve sold our house and our buyers want to move in at the end of the first week of July we haven’t bought anywhere yet! It looks like we might be moving in with my mum and dad for a few weeks this summer! Fingers crossed it will all work out one way or another.

Anyway, this month’s photos were taken during our holiday at Center Parcs. We got a few funny looks from people walking past as we balanced the camera on a bin and Barry dashed back to get in the shot before the timer went off. I do like this month’s picture though – we’re even all looking at the camera!

Me & Mine May

And I just wanted to include this one too – because although we’re not all looking at the camera on this one I love our happy faces…

Me & Mine May - Center Parcs

My Wild Ones // Mini Trekkers at Center Parcs

Last week we were on holiday at Center Parcs in the Lake District. As I’m sure most of you are aware there are tons of different activities to do…and most of them cost extra! You do get quite a lot of emails before you go urging you to book things in advance but seeing as we didn’t know what we would feel like doing, or what the weather would be like we didn’t really book anything before got to Center Parcs.

It was a good job we didn’t as it happened as Toby’s chicken pox weren’t fully scabbed over until our second day there so we couldn’t really do anything when we first arrived. We did go for a walk around to get our bearings and saw the Mini Trekkers course.

Nearly finished the Mini Trekkers course

It’s a baby version of the high ropes course where the kids get to wear a harness and cross different bridges to collect the pieces of a jigsaw. We asked Toby if he’d like to have a go and when he said yes we booked it for later on our second day.

First steps at Mini Trekkers

This was a great activity for Toby, and it was lovely to watch him overcoming his fears.

Enjoying Mini Trekkers

He was a bit nervous at first but soon got into the idea.

Mini trekkers

By the end he only really needed my help to step from the platform onto the walk ways and then he was quite happy holding onto the ropes and walking along by himself.

Gaining confidence at Center Parcs

Holding on

Going it alone

It helped that he had to collect the jigsaw pieces on some of the platforms and he was so pleased with himself when he finished the squirrel picture at the end of the Mini Trekkers course.

Mini trekkers - done

And even more pleased when he was given a squirrel toy to keep as well.

Collecting his Center Parcs squirrel prize

MyWildOnes

Living Arrows 21/52 (2016)

Well, despite the pox we made it to Center Parcs and we had a brilliant week! We couldn’t do much the first day or so as Toby’s spots hadn’t completely crusted over but it didn’t really matter. We made sure we did plenty of activities in the rest of the week, and ate lots of delicious food too. I’ll be writing more about what we got up to in some other posts but safe to say we had a great time and I would definitely recommend Center Parcs to anyone looking for a family holiday.

This week’s Living Arrows photos are a couple from while we were away. Toby was a trooper throughout his week of chicken pox, he hardly complained at all, and he still slept really well which was a relief. It was a tiring week away for him though (and would have been even without recovering from illness) and we had a few meltdown moments but on the whole he just enjoyed the whole experience. It was fab to see him trying things he wouldn’t normally do and the big smiles on his face when he did them.

Smiles from Toby on holiday

Gabe spent quite a lot of his holiday napping and we did have disturbed nights from him too. He loved exploring the lodge though, his commando crawling is really getting him everywhere he wants to go now…and lots of places we don’t want him to go! He’s so determined, but still gets frustrated when he can’t do something he wants to. Just look at him though – I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s properly crawling and pulling himself up, and then nothing will be safe!

Crazy commando crawling Gabe

Living Arrows