Reasons to be Cheerful: End of the school year #R2BC

 
Gosh its the end of the school year already for us! So hopefully 6 weeks of things to keep us cheerful. But meanwhile here are just some of things that have made me cheerful this week:

1) Sedbergh Sports
It was a fabulous evening of traditional sports in aid of Sedbergh primary. My son was 2nd in his fell race and 3rd in the potato race. A smashing time (this was the egg toss):

2) Sorting out


The great purge and tidy before the central heating system is ripped out (this Monday!) has been coming on well. A couple of rooms are completely ready and others will be done by tomorrow. It's been a combination of dismantling furniture and organising things more efficiently that has helped. We now have all our board games away and easily accessible:

3) Family

My mum came over to babysit my son whilst I was out celebrating the end of year with my colleagues. This gave us a chance to get a 3 generation family selfie. Yes he is only 12 and I am 5ft 8.5!

Reasons to be Cheerful Week 20 - 2014 #R2BC

A dozen lovely bloggers joining in last week thanks everyone! Hope it makes you smile to read about all the the things that are making other people smile? There is definitely something contagious about happiness. Here are the things that made me cheerful this week:

1) A Movie Gala 

We all had an amazing time at the Postman Pat gala performance on Saturday. Not quite Hollywood glamour but it was an amazing experience:

Being interviewed by the BBC!

2) Sunshine

We have had to dig out the sun tan cream and hats this week! A taste of what summer could be like?

3) Celebrations

Its always great news when friends get engaged and we have a chance to celebrate:

Keeping it short this week as spent much of Wednesday night at casualty with my daughter who luckily hadn't broken her leg before being a bridesmaid! Why are you smiling?

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Reasons to be Cheerful Week 20 - 2014 #R2BC

So pleased to see even more lovely bloggers joining in last week! It makes me smile to read about all the the things that are making other people smile. There is definitely something contagious about happiness. Here are the things that made me cheerful this week:

1) Weekend away

We had a super time camping in Derbyshire at the weekend. There were so many smily moments like this:

I've already written about what we got up to on the Heights of Abraham and in Buxton. Camping for us is definitely a reason to smile even if the weather was horrendous!

2) Blue Skies

We briefly had some blue sky yesterday morning:

and today was almost wall to wall blue sky which enabled us to have a picnic tea in the park! Definitely smiles all round there.

3) Running

Today I achieved my longest ever workout of just over 11km including walking intervals with a total of 9km of running. Makes me feel that I am really getting back on form

What is making you smile this week? Post your links and grab the badge if you would like:



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Reasons to be Cheerful Week 13 #R2BC

I can't believe its my last week as host and that next week its back to the lovely Jo at Ojosworld I love sharing all the positive things people have blogged about! I will be back hosting in May but meanwhile here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:

1) My big girl

This weekend I had half of it just with my daughter whilst her brother went to stay with granddad. We watched Sport Relief together on the Friday night and she said that when she is grown up she would love to help in some of the situations we saw. She is growing up a caring and compassionate child. On the Saturday afternoon we went swimming together and she really tried hard to make up for the long gap since we last went. 

Then she went to stay with granddad for a night and day. I got back a lovely report of how well behaved she had been and what a delight it was to have her. They even baked a cake together! A lot of her day was spent constructing her Playmobil castle that we don't have room for in our house:

Tonight she learned another recipe and cooked us tea of grilled bacon and scrambled eggs - yummy!

2) My boy

He maybe testing the boundaries at the minute but there were some great moments this week. When he was with granddad he swam a whole 10 lengths of the 25 m pool which is pretty impressive at 7! Apparently he has passed his level 4 swimming badge but don't tell him that..

When back with me on Sunday he did the Sport Relief mile helping to do his bit to raise money. As a reward he and I had a lovely afternoon at Brockhole on Windermere. He very quickly made some new friends and was very happily playing with them for ages in the adventure playground which shows how good natured he can be. Here he is being adventurous:

3) Me

Well I was very pleased with myself for managing to complete Sport Relief albeit not too fast and then yesterday I had my most satisfying run for weeks. I was just about non stop for 5 km and although it was by no means my fastest ever it felt good. With a month to go until my big 10 km race its onwards and upwards for me!

So what do you have to smile about this week?

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Happy Healthy Children - Guest Post

Back in November last year I tweeted that my daughter was having sleep issues. Following the recommendation of Sue Atkins I ordered some CDs from Relax Kids. These have been a great success and Marneta from Relax Kids has kindly agreed to write this guest post so other parents can get assistance in getting their children to relax.

A recent poll run by Netmums showed there has been a 70% increase in children emotional problems.  The Office for National Statistics says that 1 in 10 children are suffering from mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.

These reports are worrying for any parent but there are things we can do to prevent our children from suffering from stress and anxiety.


I do believe children are never too young to learn tools to help them cope with stress.  Signs of stress and emotional strain can appear at any time and even the most happy child can start to display signs of irritability and anxiety.  Relaxation, play and exercise are key to ensuring children grow up feeling relaxed, happy and positive.


Teaching children to manage stress has now become as important as teaching them to eat well, sleep well and stay physically healthy. To cope, a child needs to understand stress as a “normal” feeling. One useful exercise is to trace around the child on a large piece of paper and then draw on to the body where they feel stress and how it appears ie headaches, unable to sleep, butterflies in the tummy, etc. Ask your child to talk about when they have those feelings and tell them about your experiences. Then help them to manage their stress: they should tell people how they feel, take some steady breaths, blow out imaginary birthday cake candles, keep a journal, distract themselves, take some time out and play a game or listen to music.