Reasons to be Cheerful: family time #R2BC

As you can see by the badge the blog hop is back to Jo at Ojo's World and she is looking after us for the rest of the month! Thanks everyone who took part with me last month and made the world a happier place. Now here are my reasons to be cheerful this week as we have had so much fun as a family this week:

1) Kid's cooking

Seeing and sampling food my children rustled up together in the kitchen was amazing!

2) A trip to Manchester

We had a 3 generation trip to Manchester at the weekend which had been re-arranged from Christmas (as my mum broke her ankle). It started with lunch at Bella Italia in the Lowry Outlet:

 

This was followed by a walk around the Quays:

Wish I had more time to explore and see Media City and the Imperial War Museum of the North. We were on a tight schedule as we had tickets to see War Horse at the Lowry:

Now I have a) read the book b) watched the film but the stage show still had me on the verge of tears. Knowing approximately what was going to happen next was really emotional. If you haven't been yet then it is an amazing piece of theatre. Suitable for 10+ but by nearly 8 year old coped well with it but other children might not.

We rounded off our trip by visiting family friends for dinner and a good old natter! My mum and her friend met whilst student nurses in London back in the 1960s and I grew up with the other children. 

3) Operation House

This is one that seems to have fits and starts and sometimes in school holidays it goes backwards.. It was full steam ahead in the kitchen this week as I rescued our kitchen table from all the stuff that tends to gravitate there. Such a lovely feeling to sit back down to tea around the table properly every night:

Now the challenge is to keep it that way whilst working on the rest of the house... My daughter sorted the hat/gloves/sports gear storage unit today so that looks better. I have also chucked out several bags of rubbish from my room as I sorted out paperwork etc.