"If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older."

Since writing for Nintendo it has kick started some serious nostalgia when it comes to my gaming. As I have said many times before gaming was a big thing for me when I was younger, it was a way to escape from other things that were going on in my life and Nintendo definitely shaped a huge chunk of my mental and emotional development. Here in Shropshire we have a local Facebook page where people sell their unwanted items and a few weeks back there was a blast from my past that popped up in my news feed.

Instantly I thought about all the games I used to love and fun times camping in the garden getting drunk and sitting up all night playing with friends. I managed to haggle the seller down to £15 which was a steal and this little nerd was very excited when I got it home. The next few days were taken up by me mooching through eBay pages looking for the games I loved and it gave me a chance to play games I found that I didn't realise had even been released.

At first Seth thought the console was really funny, many of the games seem pretty basic compared to the hand held games that you get on the 3DS these days but what I love about the boys is how they get really excited about things from my youth. They love all the old shows I liked as a child (in fact we just woke up and are watching the Super Mario Bros Super Show). I wonder what the boys would think though if I got my hands on the original Gameboy, Seth had a good chuckle when he saw one in the science museum a few weeks back.

The recent retro addition to our Nintendo family has been a lot of fun and has reminded me of many good times with friends. It's nice to think that the boys will probably have some similar great memories of us all sitting down together and playing and I love that again their gaming development has been shaped by Nintendo.

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."

After getting over the initial shock of the sun being out and it being a lovely looking morning, I decided that We needed to make the most of the weather that was lighting up our back garden. We quickly hopped in the car before there was a sudden change and made our way to Shrewsbury to adventure around the castle and hit the charity shops looking for books.

It was such a nice change for the sun to be lighting up the sky and it put us boys on a great mood. If it hadn't have been for the wind blowing us about we might not have noticed the chill in the air.

We had a walk around the grounds and scaled the castle wall. Opeie had packed an adventure bag for himself, a book to read, some toys and a telescope for just in case, well you never know where we're going to end up.

After investigating the area we sat down to read the book Opeie had chosen for the outing 'what was I scared of?' By Dr Seuss. It was nice to be sitting outside reading and it made me think how much I want to be using the trampoline again this year for lying in the back garden and reading books like last summer.

It wasn't long before my little companion was feeling tired so he hopped on his favourite spot, perched on my shoulders and off we went in search of the car.

But not before helping one of the charity shops part with a few Dr. Seuss classics.

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight."

Just a very quick post today. Mrs M has been feeling a little down the last few days so myself and my little assistant set about our 'make mommy smile morning'. Whenever Mrs M is having a bad day we make her a card, there is a big box in the house of 'I love you' cards that we have made and today we were adding to our collection. Firstly i looked to my partner in crime for some inspiration. "What shall we make Mommy today Opeie?"... "A Princess". Good clear instructions from a two year old, that's what i love.

I stood behind Opeie and helped him cut out the pieces for the face and then he did all of the gluing including googly eyes and gems for the crown, as always it was a real team effort. Opeie kept saying "Mommy's going to be so happy" which i thought was adorable. He's always so proud of himself when we give Mrs M something we have made together.

The head was complete so i asked Opeie what we were going to do about the body, to which he replied "Cat in the Hat dress". Good job i had been collecting all of those Dr. Seuss books for my future craft idea.

A few pages from The Cat in the Hat and we started to make our dress...

Opeie did say 'Princess' so he needed to stick lots more sparkly gems on for the full effect. I helped Opeie write a short message inside and then talked him through writing his name himself, which for 2 years old i think he did an amazing job of (he just needed a little help on the tails of the E's).

As expected Opeie was eager to get the card to Mommy and as he showed her he looked very chuffed with himself. The card did exactly what we intended it to do and put a huge smile on mommies face. A little bit of effort goes a long way and its important for me and the boys to show Mrs M just how much we love her, she does after all put everything she has in to looking after us.

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!"

I'm not the sort person that makes New Years resolutions. You either want to change things about yourself or you don't, being the start of the year doesn't give these things any more chance of happening. I have however told myself that this year I'm going to embrace my creative side a bit more. I'm always thinking of things I want to do and I've started a couple of things that i need to get stuck in to, but writing the blog takes up a lot of my time in the evenings. I'm going to start making more time for it though.

The week before Christmas I started hitting the charity shops and used book shops looking for and loading up on all the Dr. Seuss books I could find for an idea I had for a long drawn out craft session that I'm yet to start. Everywhere we have been recently I've made sure to go into every local charity shop I can find. It's been about three weeks and I've not done to bad, plenty of books for me to destroy in the name of art and even a couple I didn't own for our own personal collection. I've managed to find all these during my outings.

Stay tuned! If it comes out even half as good as I'm expecting it will make for an interesting piece and fun blog post.