"Watch him wiggle! See him squirm! Hip, hip, hooray for SUPERWORM!"

The weather has been awful today and because of it its pretty much been a day in the house playing. To cheer myself up this evening though I've decided to catch up with a post about a sunnier part of this week. Opeie had been asking me for days if we could go on an adventure and visit the sleeping Gruffalo. If you are a regular reader of the blog you may remember that last year we went Gruffalo hunting thanks to the amazing sculptures dotted around the country at the forestry commission sites. They were due to be removed last year but we were emailed a while back to let us know that the Gruffalo was staying for now (i wouldn't want to try and move him either).

We packed up the car with important things like snacks, scooters, a mini Gruffalo and of course Rose the cat (Opeie's trusted companion). When we arrived Opeie's little face was all smiles when he noticed that the Gruffalo trail had been replaced by a Super worm trail, what an awesome surprise.

The great thing about the trails in Wyre forest is how easy it is for children to get around and find all the clues to get to the final destination. Opeie loves that he is in control too and was excited guiding me around.

So off we went...

...and with every clue found a fun activity to go with it.

Super hero? Opeie of course went for Flying, fighting skills and invisibility.

"Daddy! that grumpy tree looks just like you!" thanks Opeie.

"Dad that tree looks like a worm monster bursting out of the ground"

I love just pottering about in a forest, there's so much to look at and Opeie's imagination can run wild. The afternoon was filled with questions, who lives in that hole? whats that noise? How many different kinds of leaves are there?

The trail is great for kids and anything that gets Opeie excited and running about in the fresh air is great as far as I'm concerned. It would have been nice to take the scooters through the forest but i don't think the wheels would have dealt with the uneven ground. Anyway back to the trail...

 Opeie was getting very eager to find the Gruffalo and was doing a great job of getting us there by himself.

Eventually we spotted the sleeping monster in the distance and Opeie crept up very slow to make sure he didn't wake him. He was feeling a little tired from the walk and asked if he could have a sleep on the Gruffalo's nice warm tummy.

Then we sat against our sleeping friend and read books and ate our lunch, it was the perfect way to break up our forest adventure before continuing our Superworm trail.

We got talking again about rhyming words as we do most days and i told Opeie that we couldn't leave until we had found two things that Rhyme with Rose (Opeie's best friend). After a short deliberation Opeie came up with Nose and Toes, so off we went on our adventures.

We got round the trail in a couple of hours and i thought Opeie might be tired but no, we had to jump straight in the car and find somewhere to scoot for a couple of hours. It was a perfect afternoon of adventuring, reading and learning with the best company i could ask for.

Opeie may have been full of beans but after an early morning wake up i was feeling the strain. Until next time readers...

"The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain."

It's been a pretty bleak few weeks with all of us being ill at some point or other. I still feel really awful myself and I'm surprised I'm writing this instead of curling up on the sofa under a blanket. It's typical that we would all feel like this during Seth's summer holiday and Mrs Ms week off last week that she had booked for a long time seemed like a bit of a waste.

This morning I didn't feel to bad (that didn't last) but the weather had other ideas about us getting out and doing anything. It was absolutely thrashing it down and with Mrs M going back to work today the two kick started the day on a bit of a down note. On the way home from dropping her off we chatted and decided to write a list of activities to do today and tick them off as we go along.

First up make a mask! I've been introducing the boys to more cartoons from when I was younger, they love hearing stories from my childhood and I think they feel a part of it when we are watching old shows. Opeie's latest retro cartoon obsession is Bananaman, so Opeie made it quite clear that on this drizzly day he wanted to be transformed in to the banana eating hero. Seth as always wanted to be the bad guy so he decided on Appleman. I love craft activities like this as they are quick and we can move on before they lose interest.

Next we built a base which soon became  two bases so that we could combine that  with 'play fight' off the list. The Boomco guns came out and within minutes there were darts flying round everywhere.

Next up was 'play on the Wii', which suited me perfectly as it gave me the chance to clear up the battle arena quickly without either boys hanging round my legs. It also meant that I could get the lunch on early in hope that I could get Opeie down for a decent timed nap.

It turned out that I didn't need to worry about that though as the adorable big brother had it covered. We took Opeie to bed with a pile of books and after I'd read a couple Seth offered up his services which resulted in a very relaxed Opeie and a poorly Pauly getting about 10 minutes myself, Oopsy.

While Opeie was asleep we moved on to LEGO and Seth continued working on something pretty awesome which I will write a full post about very soon. I'm so proud of how creative he's getting with his building.

By the time Opeie had woken up the rain had stopped and the sky was relatively clear so we jumped at the chance to get our shoes on and venture out in hope that the weather was going to play ball. Mrs M had mentioned that she needed some apples and Blackberries so we hit all the hotspots from last years scrumping but our haul was a little disappointing.

Opeie soon had enough so we headed home to play some more LEGO. It wasn't long before it was time to pick Mrs M up again so we were all excited about seeing that beautiful face of hers. It was great actually being out of the house for a bit and I had high hopes for tomorrow but as Mrs M has just had to ring our out of hours doctor for an appointment this evening I think I'm going to need a little more than hope. Guess we'll be making another list in the morning and fingers crossed Seth can get me down for a well deserved afternoon nap.

"I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes."

Many of my posts are written about a single event, somewhere we've been, something we've built and sometimes something we are reviewing. Throughout the day though there are a whole bunch of things that we do aside from the boring housework to keep us entertained. Sometimes I feel a little like Hugh Grant's character from 'about a boy' thinking of the day as units of time, each unit lasting no longer than 30 minutes. "Full hours can be a little intimidating and most activities take about half an hour" (before Opeie starts losing interest anyway).

Today was one of those days crammed with mini activities, each as I said lasting no longer than 30 minutes...

Activity 1: a good old fashioned wrestle, all that pent up aggression and anger that builds up as a 2 year old unleashed on to a poor unsuspecting dad.

Activity 2: learning our alphabet. I'm quite sure I've got it down to a T but there's no harm in practising.

Activity 3: working on our creativity, Opeie informed me as soon as we had dropped Seth off that today he wanted to do some painting, which is great. Today's masterpiece was 'the cat in the hat! and the thingamajigger. Which spurred on activity 4.

Activity 4: watching an episode of 'the cat in the hat knows a lot about that', which gave us an idea for a craft activity that we will be doing tomorrow as disorganised daddy doesn't have any glue in the house (oops).

Activity 5: still feeling in a Dr Seuss mood and being quite excited about me finding one of his favourite books that had been missing for a while, Opeie asked if we could read 'Gerald Mcboing boing', while fetching his book though he spotted another of his favourite books, the one I wrote for Mrs M as part of my proposal. This then became half an hour of reading.

Activity 6: bath time, a little paint was spilled and Opeie was sweaty from the wrestling so we had a bath. The super heroes joined us and took it in turns to have their faces and bottoms washed (Opeie is a funny thing).

And all of this before lunch time, just goes to show how much you can do in a few hours. After lunch it was time to pick up Mrs M and then Seth and that brings me to now, sitting in the car waiting to walk up to the playground before starting our 30 minute units of time for this afternoon which so far looks like it is going to consist of blackberry picking, tea, possibly Lego (because we fit it in where we can) and cuddles before bed.