Reasons to be Cheerful: My family and other animals #R2BC

Back to hosting after the wonderful job done by Jo at Ojo's World and running late already! I had to dig deep for my reasons this week having spent most of it stuck in bed due to problems with my jaw and reacting to the meds.... However I am now mostly back on my feet so here is what kept me smiling through the pain:
1) Running bling
I had forgotten about some virtual races that I had signed up for so I was very pleased to get 3 lots of running bling through the post this week:

Virtual races mean that you can take part in an event with 100s of other people without having to travel miles to do so. Perfect when you live miles from most events like me:

2) My son having fun

My son has made a nice little group of friends in our new street. I sometimes fall over a group of them playing on our Wii but they are also often found outside playing cricket and football. He even got invited out to Barrow Baths with one of the boys:

3) Junior Masterchef

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:

Learning Life Skills

My children have been inspired by watching the Canadian and Irish versions on MasterChef to do some cooking this week. The first I knew of it was being banned from the kitchen and the occasional request for info, a clattering of pans and the sound of team work. They rustled me up a spicy vegetable pasta:

Seeing as they had never attempted anything like this before it was pretty impressive but with room for improvement. Buoyed with their success they decided to make me tea too. The starter was devised and created by my 7 year old, a salad sandwich: