Reasons to be Cheerful XXXV ( #R2BC )

Another week and another set of reasons to smile!


1) Happy Birthday Granny!


My granny was 95 today!! The children and I visited her with a pile of birthday cards and mini birthday cake. Her main celebration is next week with all her sons, 3 daughters-in-law, 2 of her 7 grandchildren and 3 of her 8 grandchildren. Today it brought a smile to her face as we rolled up to see her. 


2) A Passion for Kendal


After all the months of planning and practising tomorrow is the big day! I have been running the social media for the project over at A Passion for Kendal and as a reward my children and I are playing silent roles as disciples. The town has already had banners put up on the streets and tonight we had our final rehearsal. Here's hoping the weather is as good tomorrow for the real thing:

3) Operation House

Following on from Monday's trip to Ikea I have successfully constructed all the flat pack furniture I bought for the kids' rooms. My son's bedroom is currently really tidy, my daughter's has work still to do! Here are the bits I built:

Toy Review: Moon Sand Pet Shop

Sponsored Post

My children were sent a Moon Sand Pet Shop to try out and review. This is the first time we have ever had any Moon Sand as people had told me horror stories about it! We made good preparations though and I covered the kitchen table in newspaper and made sure the children were well supervised. 

The set came with 2 different colours of sand which the children emptied into the container:

My son spread it out and my daughter started to fill in the decorative screens for the pet shop:

My daughter and the Prince

Today was an exciting one for the children of Staveley Primary and the rest of the village as Prince Charles came to visit the Mill Yard and see its little businesses in action. The head teacher had asked for as many children as possible to be there in uniform to greet the prince as he arrived.


We duly arrived well in advance of the scheduled time just as it started to rain! An enthusiastic crowd was already gathering and the rain didn't seem to dampen their anticipation:

A family day out to Ikea!

I'm a parent who really knows how to show her kids a great time in the school holidays... Today I loaded mine up in the car for an hour plus journey down the M6 to the joys of Ikea in Warrington. My daughter couldn't remember her last trip when we went to the Lightwater branch and my son was just a baby so it must have been a long time ago...


Before we left Kendal I made sure that they were sufficiently fed and watered to keep them happy on the drive down. I gave my 8 year old the road atlas and instructions on telling me to get off at junction 22. There was a slight issue that the page for junction 22 didn't have the start of our journey on it but it made her feel important to have the map. My 5 year old had the job of reading the junction numbers as we went to see how far we had to go (I was impressed at how well he subtracted them). A bit of a sing song also helped to pass the time. Once we got off the motorway my daughter used the Maps function on my phone to navigate the last stretch. 


On arrival at the store I was pleased how easy it was to find a parking space before we headed inside for lunch. I don't remember the funky multi layered cafe trollies that allowed more than one tray to be carried by one person. I do remember long zig zag queues but they did seem to move fairly quickly. We all opted for a kids' portion of meatballs but had a mix up of which ones had gravy on but eventually we all sat down to our Swedish lunch:

#SilentSunday 1st April 2012