Reasons to be Cheerful: Week 16 end of the holidays #R2BC

My life may not be as exciting as Michelle's at the minute but I have lots of reasons to be cheerful this week! Here are the things that are making me smile:
1) Last of the Easter fun
Boy did we pack in the fun this Easter! We rounded off our holidays with a couple more fabulous family days out. The first was the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss:

And then on Sunday we went to a bloggers' day at Legoland Discovery Centre in Manchester.  Not only did we have fun but I enjoyed meeting bloggers I had met before or who I had only talked to online. Interesting being described as the blogger with the lovely view from her kitchen window!
2) Praise for my children
I had some lovely things said about my children this week. Some from bloggers such as Chaos and Calm who enjoyed my children at Legoland. Also from other people telling me what polite and well brought up children I have! I will have to remember that when they are driving me mental! Also check over on my daughter's blog for her amazing Gollum impressions.
3) Diet and Fitness
After the previous 2 bad weeks there was a loss on the scales this week! I will be writing more about my plans for doing better when I join in with Fitness Fanatics Fridays from tomorrow. Having lots of support on and off line is oh so helpful. Going out for a total of 40 minutes running on Tuesday really put me in a great frame of mind too. Come back tomorrow if you want to know more..
4) Operation House
An impending visit by a surveyor for the landlady forced me into ramping up the house sorting this weekend. This wasn't a happy experience in itself as I'd rather have been doing something fun with the kids but it has left me smiling in the end! The previous moving of furniture from my bedroom to the living room had left my room in even more chaos than normal. Now I can access my bed from both sides again and the room seems twice the size. The landing is also cleared of all the boxes of stuff looking for a home - I did stash these on the bottom bunk so I know what I'm doing this weekend! The front room is a lot clearer too. I did have empty space all the way across the room at one point this week:

5) Spring?
We briefly got teased into thinking it was properly Spring on Monday and Tuesday again! The blossoms were out and we got to spend 2 evenings having picnic teas outside:

#CountryKids RSPB Leighton Moss

Today our family drop in group had a mini day out to the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss this is only 30 minutes south of us but we hadn't yet been there as a visit. It's pleasing to know its an affordable day out with adults £5 and children £1 (with 2 adults the children are free!).

We started by watching the birds at the plentiful feeders near the visitor centre. These were birds that between us we could easily recognise: sparrows, blue tits, great tits, pheasants, mallards, chaffinches, bullfinches, robin... There were also quite a few rats enjoying the leftovers!

Then we took a short walk to the first hide. It took the children a bit of getting used to being quiet but they were pretty good (not all other bird watchers appreciated hordes of kids around though!). It was fun for them to pop open the windows to look out and then try and spot birds. Another mum had brought a spy type listening device that was fabulous for picking up bird calls too:

After a while we had to move on as the children had had enough so we headed to the next hide which wasn't too far away. It was interesting walking through the reed beds and seeing things like the bearded tit reed wigwams:

The next hide opened onto a wider stretch of water and a helpful gentleman told us the names of some of the birds we were looking at including Shovelers and Gadwall ducks:

There were plenty of useful pictures and information boards in the hides to help you work out what it was you had seen:

After lunch the rest of the group went home in the minibus but we stayed on for another few hours which enabled us to see the rest of the nature reserve. It was worth walking a couple of miles on a round trip to see the other 2 hides. We also found that people were more laid back about 2 "well behaved" children than hordes of slightly noisy ones:

The path from one side of the moss to the other is hard standing and its a straight forward walk. Its only getting to the Lower Hide that took you onto narrower dirt tracks:

On the way we caught glimpses of the famous Marsh Harriers but nothing I could photograph! This last hide turned out to be the best of the bunch though as we saw species we hadn't seen before such as a Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe as well as the Marsh Harrier plus a herd of red deer. The 3 gentleman in the hide were all very kind in letting the children look through telescopes and telling us where to look. They were of the mind that children had to learn somehow!

Our favourite bird at this hide was the heron who kept posing away and got in close enough for me to take far too many photographs before he flew away:

On our way back my son came running up to me saying he had seen an osprey. Having glimpsed one whilst driving to Whinlatter on Tuesday I was really keen to see one when I could take photographs. Of course birds don't appear to order and with my not super zoom it took a few practice shots to get a final cracker:

We were also lucky to hear the sound of the male bittern calling in the reeds. Such a wonderful place we will have to go back and see what little ones we can spot after all the flirting we saw going on today!