On a whim at the beginning of the week I decided to see if we could get our hands on some tickets to see In The Night Garden Live at the Birmingham Rep. H loves In The Night Garden and it is largely relied upon as part of her bedtime routine! The Sky planner is full of episodes! I picked up tickets for Thursday morning setting me back £56+! eeek!
I’m always apprehensive taking H anywhere now, she is an awkward age and we never really know how she will react. So, I was a little worried about how she would cope with the show but honestly I couldn’t have been more surprised. She was beautifully behaved and was in awe of the entire show. And even if she hadn’t been it wouldn’t have mattered much at all. The show is entirely focused around children 6 months+ and children are encouraged to sing dance and clap along. There was not one moment in the show the audience was quiet, this didn’t take anything away from everyone’s enjoyment at all and made the atmosphere so relaxed. Some children grumbled or refused to sit still, but who cares? The show is for kids – let them be kids and enjoy it in their own way!
The show was truly magical. H was so excited to see all her favourite characters in front of her. The flying pinky ponk circling above the audience was amazing, H was so surprised and amazed! In all, although it was a bit pricey it was worth every penny. It was a fantastic family day with our girl and one I will remember for a long time!
Hallie attends nursery term-time only as hubby is a primary school teacher so we are lucky that he can take care of childcare in the holidays along with my in-laws. However, I am sure I am not the only one that wakes up in the morning some days and thinks ‘how on earth am I going to entertain her today!?’ You spend moments of panic trying to rattle through things to do, nothing is prepared and you end up winging it and either spending lots of money or scrabbling something together. I decided to be a little proactive for the summer break and create a board of activities we can tick off our list. It will be a fun thing to do to let Hallie choose some activities off the board and plan some other ahead of time.
Some of the things we included were:
Visit our local Splash Pad
Have a day out at the Farm Park
Morning at Soft Play
Go on a Scavenger Hunt
Park Picnic
Make Pizza’s
Make Rice Krispie Cakes
Make Wind chimes for the garden
Film Afternoon
Visit the Safari Park
Water Bead sensory play
Ice Cream Date with Daddy
Trip to the beach
Morning at the Play Village (A Small World Roleplay Centre in Warwick)
Hobby Craft Decorate your own Play House
Strawberry picking
Lots of art and craft ideas courtesy of pinterest!
There’s plenty of ideas to keep her and us busy over the summer! If it works for us I may introduce it for each season as I am always trying to think on my feet of fun and engaging activites for our days together at the end of the week and weekend.
Just 25 minutes from our front door is this beautiful field that comes into a burst of colour for a few weeks every year. The Real Flower Petal Confetti Company open their flower field to the public for 10 days every year and it is absolutely stunning. We visited last year in sweltering heat and had some photos taken by a local photographer. Hallie was 10 months old back then and still very bald! The colours and the setting was just perfect, it was a beautiful few hours walking around the flower field.
It was a given that we would return this year when it reopened for its annual 10 day opening. We visited last Saturday for some more family portraits with another photographer and the flowers were still in the process of blooming. It still made for a lovely setting albeit not a full wash of colour as last year just yet. It was expanded massively from our trip last year. They moved to a much bigger field and expanded their cafe on site. I just had to return on one of my mummy days this week to see the flowers fully in bloom and it was definitely worth it. We are still awaiting photos back from our photographer but I managed to snap a few amateur photos of our girl exploring with a DSLR camera I was loaned. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at more photography and am totally sold after having a play around with the canon I was loaned.
Sadly the field is now closed for the flowers to be harvested, dried and sold as confetti. Though no doubt they will be back open again next year around a similar time for another 10 day opening, think it will become a yearly trip for us!
I have to give a mention also to a local Worcestershire based artist, Hayley Reynolds. She is an artist in residence at the flower field and her artwork is absolutely stunning. I couldn’t resist one of her watercolour orignals which now hangs proudly in our house.
We’re fresh off the boat from our trip to Disneyland Paris and wanted to share our trip and how we survived travelling with a toddler and on a budget.
We went via ferry at Dover and stayed overnight at The Premier Inn a hop skip and a jump away from the port. This was a genius move for us as we travelled during toddlers nap time and were able to have a good dinner and rest before our morning crossing. The room was super clean and comfy, we had a travel cot all set up and made ready for us that was (to our surprise) immaculate. The view from our room was amazing, I mean who doesn’t love a sea view! The only downside was that there was a little noise from the boats during the night, but that was the price of staying so close to port.
Sailing was great and went much quicker than we thought it would. P&O ferries also give kids activity packs to keep them entertained on the boat, you have to ask for these at Information. It kept our toddler entertained and quiet for the trip in between running around.
We stayed at a campsite North of Paris called La Croix Du Vieux pont as recommended by a friend who had travelled last year. I say campsite but it was more like Centre Parcs in France, there was so much to do on site and various accomodation options. We booked our trip via eurocamp with a discount through my workplace and stayed in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom Espirit. With the ferry crossings, this all came under £300 for 5 nights.
We spent our first full day around the campsite to give the toddler a bit of a break from travelling. It was baking hot for April so we spent the morning at the pool cooling off and going up and down the slide in the small pool with toddler! The afternoon toddler blessed us with a long lazy afternoon nap so we soaked up some rays on the veranda and drank french stubby beers and excitedly planned for disney the next day!
Our first day trip to disney the next day was a learning curve! We made lots of mistakes and lots of things that we would do differently! We thought the parks wouldn’t open til 10 so pointless leaving early. We were very wrong! Albeit we seem to have caught a busy day, probably because we travelled during european school holidays and the weather was exceptionally nice. There was a queue at the gate of the car park. A queue when we got to security to get into the Disney Village and by the Parks. Then we had to exchange our park ticket voucher for actual tickets, another queue. And then queue to get into the Disneyland Park. By the time we got into the park it was more like quarter past 11. Lesson learnt!
Honestly though, the annoyance of us being completely unprepared for how really busy it was going to be slipped away as soon as we walked through the gates! Simply magical! We made more rookie mistakes throughout the day and didn’t use any fastpasses (DOH!) and got caught in the crush at the castle for the parade. But we managed to reserve meet and greets with Mickey and Woody via the lineberty app, stumbled across a Tigger and Eeyore meet and we got on a good amount of rides all considered. Toddler was a trooper and so well behaved and surprisingly patient! We managed to stretch our day out by having dinner in the Disney village sat Earl of Sandwich which was a fab budget friendly quick and yummy meal. We stayed long enough to watch the illuminations from half way down main street, it was truly amazing and I am not embarrassed to say at 30 years old I sang my little heart out (should probably add that nobody else did, I sounded like beyonce in my head but a strangled cat in real life and I won’t apologise for it).
We had another rest day around the site the following day, more swimming, ice creams and another long afternoon nap was gifted to us by toddler. And this time we actually properly prepared for a second day at disney and learnt from our inital mistakes!
We left early the following day, toddler dressed as tinkerbell, our comfy trainers on and our rain macs with us for the predicted down pours! Our aim was to be parked up and through security before 10. We actually made it much earlier than that and was walking around the studio park by 9.45am with reservations to meet buzz! We rode aerosmith whilst the queue was short using baby swap. We reserved seats at the Motors, Action! Stunt Show using our mastercard privileges. Afterwards headed into the disneyland park for some more rides, we used fastpasses for buzz lightyear laser blast and did tea cups and a good few more rides after that.
We experienced a greatly appreciated pixie dust moment whilst queuing for the snow white ride, toddler had a wobble (her only one the whole trip) and there were tears and a tantrum brewing, we were half way through the queue and we were going to just jump out the queue when a cast member grabbed us and jumped us right up the queue. We had another pixie dust moment with a cast member whilst waiting to meet Minnie at the top of main street, throughout the queue the cast member accompanying Minnie would pull funny faces, blow kisses and tickle toddler. I should state first that toddler is shy, very shy and never willingly goes with strangers. When we got to the front of the queue Minnie had to go and answer the phone to mickey and the cast member promptly scooped toddler up and took her see Minnie’s front garden and front door and took her her dancing. For parents of a shy child, this was amazing and we were so happy to see our little girl being brave and outgoing!
We didn’t plan on staying for the parade the second day at disney, not after the crush from the 1st day by the castle! On our way out though we stumbled across a section that looked quite empty so we thought we would try our luck again. Just so happens that we had stumbled across a special section for children! Adults had to stand behind some spots but children could see all of the parade and the dancers without the crush! This was a real find and it was great to actually see the parade! And yet another pixie dust moment, Wendy and the lost boys came over to toddler during the parade to say hello to her dressed as tink! Was the loveliest end to our days at disney!
All in all we loved our trip! Husband is convinced of another disney trip soon and hopefully some family will come along with us next time.
Everyday Adventures 