"Physical wounds can be treated without much difficulty, but emotional wounds are not so easy to heal."

I asked Seth if he wouldn't mind writing this post, firstly because I am awful at fighting games. Its always been this way ever since I first played Street fighter 2 as a kid. I don't know what it is about them, I just find them so frustrating, I literally can't beat the boys. Secondly Seth is a HUGE Pokémon fan so it seemed like him writing it was the obvious choice. Anyway that said, over to Seth...

Hi It's Seth. I just want to start by saying I love Pokémon games. My favourite Pokémon is Dragonite because he is a dragon type and he is cute. As well as liking Dragonite I like Jiggly-puff. I wasn't sure about Pokémon at first but I tried watching Pokémon indigo league and then it all changed. I asked Pauly if I could save up for Pokémon omega ruby and he said "I have got it up stairs on my 3DS" so I sat down and started to play . That is how I got into Pokémon games. To add onto this I LOVE!!!!!! Nintendo more than any other computer gaming brand. My favourite console is the Wii U. 

One of the things I enjoyed on omega ruby was the battling so I was really excited when Pauly told me about Pokkén tournament. I was really excited as I also love a game called Marvel vs Capcom it is a super hero fighting game and Pokkén tournament is a Pokémon fighting game were I can use some of my favourite characters to battle.

 My favourite part of Pokkén tournament is when you mega evolve and you can turn into a new evolution. To mega evolve you have to get a few hits and wait for a bar to go up and then you press two buttons to trigger off mega-evolution. You can also play multi-player which is lots of fun. A few days ago my next door neighbours and us had a tournament and I won it. You can also play in single player mode. In the single player mode you can play against the computer and level up  your Pokémon to make it stronger. On Pokkén tournament you have extra characters that you can send in and help you.When they help you they will only help you for a few seconds and then you'll have to wait a while before you can call for backup again.

I play mostly on two player but I hope when I play on one player that I can unlock more things to use or play as. My favourite character on this game is Charazard because he is easy to control but I also love Lucario. On Pokkén tournament the controls are easy. Opeie really likes playing as Machamp and sometimes it is really hard to beat him because he just keeps smashing us and Mega evolving.

 As well as mega-evolving there is a massive selection of arena's to battle in. There's a Dojo one and lots of others for battle. The magma one is my favourite.

    By the way I'm really excited about Pokémon sun and moon on the 3DSbecause they are brand new Pokémon games and I love being able to take my Pokémon games out with me on my 3DS. Pauly said that when it comes out we can maybe get sun and moon so that we can play together, I am excited about that the most.

"Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice"

If you are anything like us when it comes to gaming then you love a good brawl, I'm not a violent person at all in fact I am quite the softy but there is something quite satisfying about letting out your inner rage on a games console. The latest scrapping game to be released is Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends and it is being released ahead of the next installment of what will now be the Kung Fu panda trilogy. Myself and the boys have been having a good old fisty cuffs over the last few days with Po and his friends.

The game follows a similar style to Super Smash brothers, giving the player the chance to battle in many different arena's with upper levels to bounce around on and special moves to master along the way. I am not ashamed to say that I am terrible at it and I follow the same fighting style as I did playing the first Street fighter game many many years ago, hit every button and hope for the best. Opeie however being the wise old age of 4 seems to know exactly what he is doing and puts my gaming style to shame.

With a great selection of characters to chose from, from both the Kung fu Panda movies and the Legends of awesomeness series and plenty of stages to fight in, Showdown of legendary legends could have you happily brawling for hours. 

 

“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!”

UPDATE:

Thank you all for taking part in The competition. The winner of the Hobbit goodies is  jamieisbell....., an email has been sent and we look forward to hearing from you. Congratulations.

Stay tuned for more fun competitions In The new year.

I love a good competition and being able to reward our readers with great products every now and again is a lovely feeling (especially when its LEGO)

To celebrate the release of The Hobbit Battle of Five Armies, in cinemas from December 12, we’re giving one lucky person the chance to win a LEGO® Lonely Mountain set, a signed sword plus a goody bag filled with Hobbit action figures and even a themed t-shirt! 

 

About The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 

New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Present a Wingnut Films Production, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies . As with the first two films in the Trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , the final film is a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), with New Line managing production. Warner Bros. Pictures is handling worldwide theatrical distribution, with select international territories as well as all international television distribution being handled by MGM. www.thehobbit.net 

The Lonely Mountain set is the must have for any Hobbit enthusiast – containing a sought after Smaug dragon figure, a first for LEGO®! 

Bilbo Baggins™ has been sent to look for the Arkenstone™ inside The Lonely Mountain. Find the secret door into the lair of Smaug™ and enter with the Dwarves. Smaug is an enormous fire-breathing Dragon, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, so move fast! Includes five minifigures with assorted weapons and accessories: Bilbo Baggins, Balin the Dwarf, Dwalin the Dwarf, Fili the Dwarf and Kili the Dwarf, plus a Smaug figure. 

IN CINEMAS EVERYWHERE DECEMBER 12 th Cert: 12A 

LEGO and the LEGO logo are trademarks of the LEGO Group © 2014 The LEGO Group, All Rights Reserved 

© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES and the names of the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises under license to New Line Productions, Inc. (s14) 

Competition open to UK residents only. Competition closes on 26 th December 2014 at 11.59pm.

One Winner will be chosen at random from the list of correct answers and will receive: 

1 x LEGO ® The Lonely Mountain set 

1 x signed sword 

1 x Hobbit t-shirt 

1 x LEGO notebook 

1 x action sword 

1 x double action figure set 

1 x single action figure set 

For your chance to win, just answer the question below: 

What is the name of Bilbo Baggins ’ home ? 

   1. a. Bag-End 

   2. b. Bag Land 

   3. c. Baggins Hole 

   4. d. Baggins Shire

Leave your name and email address in the comment box.

Good luck and Gifts from the Pirates hope you enjoy the festive season.

"Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war."

I wont lie, we love a good scrap! we're proper boys and that's what boys do, roll about wrestling, make up crazy martial arts and diving off things we are probably not supposed to (says mom). I tend to double up as Stay at home Dad/Climbing frame and i'm expected to crawl around with those two special items of cargo comfortably on my back, in between the usual play beating that i get which usually ends when one of them stomps on a spot they shouldn't ouch.

Obviously i'm not complaining though, the boys are the greatest thing to happen to me, along with Mrs M they are my best friends. I love the fact that there is no need for me to grow up and i can live my days reliving my youth. A few months back we reviewed the Boomco twisted spinner and had lots of fun playing with our friends so when we were asked if we would be interested in trying out the new product, i couldn't wait to get in to battle mode with the boys.

On the day the package arrived i answered the door and thought 'what on earth is that, it's huge', i soon realised that inside that box was the game changer in our play battles. The Boomco rapid madness is an insane play thing and i was hooked from the second i fired the first round, a 20 shot clip that fires like a machine gun. Today i was selfish and fired the first round myself and Seth's eyes lit up when he saw what it was capable of. He then responded with 'i need to fire that while i'm sitting in a tree'... awwwww, our adorable little sniper.

The power in the blaster made it quite clear that we needed to be outdoors with plenty of space for action, It was time for battle and some of us take this sort of thing very seriously, oops!! The Rapid Madness really ups your game on the battle field as it is air powered and can blast out all 20 darts in the clip in literally seconds. If you are in to running about having a play battle with the kids then this bit of kit is really morish once you have fired once.

After running about for a while and spending some time looking for missing darts (because the range on the shots is up to 50 feet and Seth was firing shots all over) Seth finally got his chance to fire from the tree's when our battle came to a stand off. Thankfully our battle came to an end with the shaking of hands and a big hug, If only wars were ended the same way.

The Boomco rapid madness is a serious addition to your play armoury and i can see we are going to have a lot of fun playing with it over the coming weeks. Since playing with the Boomco blasters all the ones we owned from another well known company have been given away, i think that pretty much sums up the awesomeness of this product

Need more reassurance before you purchase? check this fun video out...

Boomco Rapid Madness Epic Battle

There is also the Zoom 'n' Boom event still going in Glasgow until the end of August, stay tuned for future events.

"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.

Gifts from the Pirates in Orlando - Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament

Seth is really in to knights and castles, if he has a sword, a shield and someone to battle he's a very happy boy, because of this a meal out at 'medieval times dinner & tournament' was one of the things Seth was looking forward to most. Seth is very much like Mrs M, he wanted to fully research every place we were going so has spent the last few months watching videos on YouTube and looking at pictures. The videos can't really prepare you for the awesomeness that is medieval times. Thanks to Visit Orlando we were there as press. We were booked in for the 18:00 show and we realised at the condo at 17:00 that they advise you are there an hour before the show, oops! We rushed out and after the 45mins drive to get there from where we are staying we realised it wasn't a neccessaty, 15 mins before was fine. (Just want to point out that 45 mins drive does sound like a like a long time but driving in Orlando is so much nicer than driving in the UK and you don't really notice the distance)

On arrival we were handed crowns and got to have our picture taken with the king and queen before being shown to our seats. The dining arena was fantastic and Seth was clearly impressed, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing your children with huge smiles on their faces and full of excitement.

 As with pretty much everywhere in Orlando the staff are amazingly friendly and can't do enough for you and our medieval waiter was no exception, Nicholas was a great chap and very friendly. What stuck out for me was that medieval times had been the only restaurant we had been to that had been able to accommodate both Mrs M's and Opeie's dietary issues without offering just a salad, I was really impressed and it was obviously no big ask from them either, it's a shame more restaurants aren't like this.

One of the things I loved most about the experience was that everything was very authentic, the knights looked like knights, the king looked like someone you would expect to be ruled by and the food was very in keeping with what you would expect from dining during that era, big pieces of meat (to eat with your hands), rustic bread, soup and potatoes, lush!

The show was like nothing I've ever seen before. Six brave knights ready to do battle and a bad guy that caused the lights to drop and smoke to appear every time he entered the arena. Being able to sit and watch while pulling half a chicken apart with my hands and eating made it a real experience (sorry Mrs M and other vegans out there).

I won't give to much away about the show in case you are reading this before you go (although the show is changed every so often) but there was jousting, sword fighting and medieval games. The arena is sectioned into colours and you each get assigned a knight to cheer on during games and battle and obviously you get to boo the other knights which was great as you really feel like part of the show. Ours was the red knight a valiant warrior who when he wasn't battling for the kings acceptance was flirting with the ladies in the audience. Mrs M was to busy yapping to a staff member when she was hit in the side if the head from a flying rose, courtesy of the red knight, very romantic.

The experience from start to finish was around 2 hours and if you can go I can't recommend it enough. Seth informed us that it was his favourite part of the holiday so far and hearing Opeie shout 'come in you can do it' at the knights was great to watch. The whole experience was made even more enjoyable by our host Nicholas who was so helpful throughout and was more than happy to stop and chat to us after the show despite the fact we were keeping him from his work. A great knight was had by all (hahaha).

On the way out Seth purchased the red knights sword and shield from the armoury so that the medieval fun could continue back at the condo (even if he did fall straight to sleep in the car).

Thanks Medieval times dinner and tournament and thanks Nicholas it truly was a memorable evening and something we as a family can look back on and smile, a Knight to remember (I'll stop now). Good Knight. (Hehe)

$£%&@!**$%@&.....Brains!!! @£$!%&*£@$&!£@%$&*.......BRAAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNNSSSSSSSS!!

We lost a lot of good men today, they may have turned in to flesh eating zombies but they served our team well.

Today was D-day! The morning that Seth had been going on about all week. Excalibur martial arts (seth's Tae Kwon Do class) had organised a Nerf war to celebrate their sons birthday and it seems to be an annual event with these guys. To prepare ourselves for the big day I had brought myself and Seth new weapons as Seth found reloading our other guns difficult due to his muscle condition. I got the guns that could hold the most bullets thinking that would mean less reloading but when they arrived and Seth realised he couldn't load them on his own we had a week of stress and anxiety. Concerned that he would be open to attack it was obviously playing on his mind a lot especially at bedtime (when is he going to understand that best friends stick together and I'll always be his wing man).

They had a nice easy lesson today so that students could conserve their energy for Saturdays main event and as the older children and adults classes follow his we had a couple of hours to kill. Seth has been asking for weeks if he could go on the Bridgnorth cliff railway and our extra time loitering round Bridgnorth made it the perfect filler. We had Seth's friends from school William and Matthew and their dad Steve with us for company which made it more fun. Before going on the cliff railway though we walked along the city walls and admired the one remaining wall of the castle. Seth spotted a cobweb on the railings and with a very serious face asked if it was a medieval spiderweb? Genius!

After our mini adventure and cliff rail ride we headed back to base to prepare for battle. The leisure centre hall had been transformed into a battle zone with cardboard box barricades everywhere you looked and a camouflage netting covered maze in the centre, a role playing delight for all the kids (and us eager big kids). Mrs M had kindly filled my bag with face paint so quickly got the boys ready for their imminent scrap.

Seths taekwondo teacher had come up with an elaborate storyline and from just looking at his get up you could tell that he was really in to it. As he bellowed out commands us grown ups chuckled at he rear, the problem was us old timers at the back with our intermittent hearing had no idea what he was saying, so oblivious to any role playing that had been set we took the unclear directions and translated them in to something us dads could understand 'if its under 5 feet tall shoot at it'. The kids were darting about at crazy speed and for the first time I was really feeling my age. It seems that (although I had never seen them before) a couple of the kids had taken an instant disliking to me and were hell bent on unloading ALL of their ammo on me. (On the drive home Seth informed me that its because I have a villainous beard).

Everyone was having a whale of a time and I was most impressed by the 6 year old sniper that managed to shoot me in the jugular, quite the marksman. Seth and William were joined at the hip and whenever Seth managed to sneak up on me he managed to get me on the face which was closely followed by a second bullet from William. I seemed to spend most of my time picking up darts and reloading until a young lady called Emily started bringing me handfuls of ammo she had found, what a little angel. (sadly i didn't get a photo of her).

The final battle was understood by the grown ups clearly, as the children built one large barricade to hide behind us big kids were a pack of zombies coming to storm the trench. The children shot at us to try and fend us off and i lost both arms in the process but managed to get to the wall. As the zombies were tearing at the walls the children (especially the ones that had run out of ammo) were screaming excitably, it was a lot of fun.

It was two hours of mayhem and not eating since early that morning was taking its toll and i was getting very tired. So as everyone flattened the boxes for recycling we made a hasty get away (sorry guys). We definitely look forward to doing that again next time.

Thanks Excalibur and Happy Nerfday Reilly