Flower power water table fun

Princess and Grapie were playing in the garden with their water table and I wanted to find a new twist on it for them (to take their mind off the fact they weren't able to use the sand that we had just bought, as we still need to get a cover for it!) Luckily the lawn was covered with daisies so we got picking, and had a flower power water table pretty soon.

Both girls had a wonderful time scooping and pouring the flowery potion, and both both absolutely soaked, Grapie got so wet, even her shoes and her nappy were drenched!

The flowers looked beautiful floating in the water, there were hundreds of them in there!

Obviously, Princess had to try to get the daisies to go through the water wheel, at one point she had about 50 daisies stuck in there!

And of course, every flower power princess needs a crown so I made her one out of daisy chains, she was fascinated with seeing the daisys get linked together.

What a pretty, fun and best of all, free way to play with our garden toys in a different way!

Thank you

To the lady who found me a sobbing wreck in the car park of the children's centre, thank you for helping. Thank you for stopping when others had kept on walking. Thank you for stopping even though I was mortified to be found like that. Thank you for gently taking my crying tired child from me, calming her down and putting her in her pushchair, something that I had spent 10minutes trying and failing to do. Thank you for confiding in me that you were late leaving the stay and play session we had been to because you too were seeking help wiyh coping. And thank you for not judging me, and going on to have a normal conversation with me. Thank you.

You see, most days I hold it together quite well, considering I could count the number of decent nights sleep I have in the past four years on one hand. Considering the fact that my youngest daughter still wakes every 2-3 hours throughout the night, despite being 20 months old. That my eldest daughter still wakes at night most nights too. That, despite not sleeping at night they both get up for the day at 5.30. Despite all those things, I still manage to function quite well. Hey sometimes I even manage to blog about some of the fun things we do!

But then other times, I don't hold it together so well at all. Times like this morning, when G just point blank refuses to go in her pram. Or walk. Or do anything other than cry and cling to me. Despite her tiny size, she is deceptively strong. And at that moment in time, I couldn't find a better option than to just hold her, and sit on the floor and cry. Because that is the thing about being a parent; every day is just a series of moments that you have to deal with, in the moment. And sometimes, usually, we can see the bigger picture, but just sometimes, we can't. And we just get consumed by the moment we are dealing with at the time.

Had a stranger not come along to rescue me, I'm sure I would have picked myself up again soon and carried on again, but, at the that moment, I was very glad to receive some help, and I would just like to say thank you.

Attracting some nature to our garden

We have made a new addition to our garden which is proving to be very popular. Popular with Princess and Grapie, and popular with a load of feathered friends too. We have added a bird feeder to our garden and it ia a big hit all round! 

We hung it on the fence close to our house so that we can see the birds having a sneak through the window, even when we are not in the garden. We have quite a few regular birds in our garden anyway, and one by one they are starting to find our feeder. Firstly the big wood pigeon found it, you can see him in the above photo, and he is so tame that he will stay where he is even if we open the door and go outsisde!

Next a pair of blackbirds found it and in the last few days I have seen a bluetit and a robin having some food too. Its great for the girls to watch and they had a book for Easter about garden wildlife, so we can identify our feathered friends too!

Easter

The girls were very excited on Easter Sunday to see that the Easter bunny had been and had left them an Easter egg hunt. They put on their Easter bonnets (for about 5 minutes!) and started looking for clues.

Their first basket contained some Easter masks, which they shared out nicely

Then, after finding some more Easter bits and pieces, it was onlt the serious business of finding the chocolate!

Their last basket contained a book about garden wildlife and a bug hotel, as I didn't want Easter to be completely about chocolate eggs (which was a bit lost on them at the time but they love now it's up in the garden!)

A lovely start to a lovely family day together

Fun in a DIY Teepee

We have loads of toys in our garden (ok, lots of them are from the pound shop, but still loads!) But still they want more, more, more! Every time they look at the Early Learning centre catalogue they spot about 20 things they fancy. But apart from not having an endless money supply, I don't want them growing up spoilt and always needing 'things' to make them happy.

So this weekend, inspired by here come the girls, we made this teepee and it was pretty easy to make. Start with 4 beanpoles and push them into the ground in a sqare shape. How far apart you put them will depend on how big you want your teepee to be.

Then tie the tops together with some string or ribbon if you happen to have some (we didn't so garden twine it was).

Next comes the walls. We used a blanket, which gave the teepee a cozy private feel, but sheet would work well too, and that is what we will be trying next. Wrap the blanket or sheet around the poles and use pegs to hold it in place. Depending on how you peg it and the size of your sheet you could have flaps for a door or leave one side open, or what we have which is half a door leaving a crawl-in entrance.

And that is it, hours of teepee fun created in about 5 minutes and without buying anything new! Perfect for hiding in, curling up with a pile of books, peekaboo or just having some quiet time. And when the girls are not using it, the cat has taken to hiding in it too! 

A day out at Longleat Safari park

We went to Longleat Safari park last week and had a fantastic day out. We started our day at Postman Pat world, the girls both love Postman Pat (as do I!) so there was no way we were going to be able to start anywhere else and they both loved it. In fact, it was the only thing out of the whole day that we went back to a second time! 

The girls loved pressing the buttons and seeing their favourite characters come to life, and also loved posting letters through the letter boxes of the Greendale houses (top tip, ask at the shop for some letters to post, we only discovered this after seeing someone else get some!)

Next it was to the animal part of the park, where we got up close and personal with some of the animals. We stoked a lizard, touched a stingray and Princess fed some fish to a penguin.

After lunch we took a spin on the teacups ride (Grapie's first time on a ride!)

Then onto the main event, the safari park. This was fantastic and was well worth visiting the park for in itself. I had been to longleat once before as a child and I remember the monkeys being brilliant but only seeing the lions and tigers at a distance. But this time we got amazingly close to the big cats, who were all awake and prowling around.

And the monkeys were as brilliant as ever, jumping on the car, much to Princess's delight (and Grapie's horror!) One of them even did a big poo on my windscreen, which was obviously hilarious. Ans even better, my car survived the ordeal too! Great fun!

A surprise new table for the girls

We had a surprise knock on the door today, it was our neighbour with a set of children's table and chairs. His grandchildren had outgrown them, so he offered them to my girls, who jumped at them. They now have a new favourite thing! They are very cute, with pencils for legs (and to be honest, I had the exact same ones on my Amazon wish list).

I found a little spot for them under the stairs and the girls got straight to work painting (the mess in the background is our overflowing craft box!) Princess has asked if they can eat their dinner at the new table tomorrow!

I'm going to set Princess up with a box of writing practice sheets so she can sit at her new table and practice her letters (hopefully this will encourage her to practice!) I was planning on doing this anyway, and it's funny how a spontaneous knock on the door has provided the perfect place to do it.

I think a thank you card is called for!