Reasons to be Cheerful the end of year round-up! #R2BC

As its the last Reasons to be Cheerful for 2016 I thought I would do a round-up of some of the biggest things that have made me cheerful this year. I will be handing the baton back to Michelle for January so I hope you will all carry on in 2017.

1) Completing my first (and last?) half marathon

One of the toughest things I have ever done was back in May when I ran in the inaugural Brathay Half Marathon. My finish line photo sums up what it meant to all of us:

Who knows if I will ever run one again...

2) Single with Kids holidays

We had our most ever trips with Single with Kids this year. With them we camped in the Peak District, Stourport and Kettering. There was also a trip to Robin Hood's Bay for a self-catering break. All of these put smiles on our faces:

3) Fun with family and friends

We are so lucky to be able to have great adventures almost on our doorstep. Adventures we have enjoyed have included:

• Wray Castle and Claife
• Cruising on Windermere
• Camping in Dent
• A weekend in Bowness
• Waterhead and Galava
• The Lakeland Maize Maze
• The Hobbit in Williamson Park
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• A walk on Hadrian's Wall
• A visit to Lanercost Priory

4) Family & Friends

Of course my family and friends have put plenty of smiles on my face this year too! Here is hoping for plenty of fun times in 2017 together too.

#CountryKids at the Lakeland Maize Maze

For the last few years my mum has taken my children to the Lakeland Maize Maze on a day that I have had to work in the school holidays. I haven't been since 5 years ago when we had to give up! It was a lovely day and the car park was already very busy when we arrived but most people where visiting the animals and not in the maze:

After the safety spiel we set off into the Mini Maze which would lead us to the Main Maze, The theme this year was The BFG and we had to find ink stamps and count magic beans in the mini maze which had massive maize:

At a few spots the maize wasn't as high at the edge and you could see the farm animals:

Reasons to be cheerful: Enjoying the holidays #R2BC

Thank you everyone who joined in last week despite it being the school holidays! Here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:
1) Rose
My roses are still going strong and they are looking stunning at the moment:

2) Car trouble

A reason not to be cheerful was my car failing its MOT this weekend... However the garage managed to make me legal again in time for a drive down south!

3) Fun with friends

We spent the weekend with my school friends back in Buckinghamshire. A super sunny day in their garden and my son loved their table tennis table:

4) Shiny fridge

Having a low stock of food in meant that I got a chance to give my fridge a thoroughly deep clean. A good chance to chuck out things that have expired and get everything better organised.

5) Maize Maze

A fun day to make up for a housework day! We got thoroughly lost in the maize maze:

get the InLinkz code

Family Fun: Lakeland Maize Maze

On what turned out to be the only dry day this week I went with my parents and children to the Lakeland Maize Maze near Sedgwick. We had visited the small maze with my nephew last year so decided to up the ante and go for the big one. The estimated time to complete this is 1.5 to 2 hours so we carried plenty of food and drink supplies (you can buy drinks and snacks in the middle!). You can buy an optional emergency map in a sealed envelope which is refundable if returned unused... There is a safety talk before setting off laying out the rules (no running, no damage, no eating corn etc.) and each group is supplied with a flag to wave in an emergency. Undaunted we set off into the maze with plenty of enthusiasm:

Sometimes it felt like we went on the same paths several times (in fact we did!) but we managed to find most of the different bug stamps to put on the game sheets. We also went under and over the various bridges quite a lot - it is more of a labyrinth than a maze so the normal take all the lefts or rights doesn't actually work...

Showing the scale of the maze

Reasons to be Cheerful XIX (#R2BC)

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you'll know that some of this week has been incredible stressful but I'm still finding reasons to be cheerful: 
1) My weight
Went down a little bit this week which is good news after the week before! Just need to try and keep weight stable or going down a little bit and then really crack on in September once the kids back at school (why are school holidays so fattening?).
2) Days out
The weather up here had a little window of gorgeousness on Tuesday and I went to the Lakeland Maize Maze with my parents and the kids. The maze is in a stunning location:

There will be a full write up of our visit sometime soon!
3) Blogging
My blog is creeping back up the Tots 100 index so I'm obviously doing something right! I'm lucky to have a great relationship with some PRs and my children and I have been able to review some amazing products this summer. I started off blogging as a way of letting off steam about my life but it has now moved on to a small income stream and made me part of an amazing community.