" Lazy is a very strong word, I like to call it 'selective participation.' "

As much as i would love to waffle on about our weekend, its late, I am tired and i want early night so that we can continue our summer adventures early tomorrow morning. Tonight our usual adventure filled stories will be replaced by photos. Yes i am a lazy boy! enjoy.

"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."

It's been 6 months since we moved in to our new home and although we are completely settled now we didn't have a single light shade up in the house! Well until this week anyhow. You would think lampshades would be something that would get sorted as soon as we moved in but we didn't take any of the ones from the previous house and just hadn't spotted any that had taken out fancy.

It was starting to get to the point where it was annoying us so we went looking for some lighting accessories to cover the bulbs and perk the rooms up a little. Mrs M spotted some odd looking shades while we were out shopping one afternoon and although i couldn't stand the look of them I went along with it and we brought them to try (they were returned the following day, I don't know what she was thinking??).

I was hoping to find something quite simple that was very 'US' but nothing was getting my attention.

If you have been reading the blog for a while then you will be aware that I love recycling old books and I'm always picking up extra copies of the picture books we love for future craft ideas. As reading is such a big thing with our house we wanted to incorporate the stories and illustrators we love as much as we could in to our home. While we were out at Ikea last week we spotted some really simple shades that you velcro to a frame and we knew they would look great lined with pages from our favorite books. 

Oliver Jeffers has now dominated the two lights in our hall and the extra copies of 'The amazing book eating boy' and 'The great paper caper' I had found a while back worked out great because of the amazing illustrations and colours he uses. For the boys room it had to be Dr Seuss as the books are really important to me and we have had some great times together reading them. I asked Opeie which book he would like me to use and he asked for Green eggs and ham, great choice I thought.

We love the way they look so much that I think that these illustrations will be popping up throughout the house now in various ways and we still need to add shades to other rooms. Its amazing that some old books and some double sided sticky tape can transform a room this much. Adding these decorations to our home just shows even more the importance of books and the impact they have on us as a family.

 

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page."

We had big plans this week to head towards Cambridge for what we had hoped to be an afternoon of real dinosaurs. Sadly the M6 and the M5 had other ideas and as we sat in what seemed like a never ending amount of traffic we decided to change our plans. A while back I had read about 'The town of books' a quaint little market town famous for its bookshops and love of literature. So after mentioning this to Mrs M she filled me in on the name of this idyllic sounding place and we changed course and headed towards Ross-on-wye.

Five minutes before we arrived Mrs M realised that we should have been heading towards Hay-on-Wye, Oops. So another 50 minutes was added to our journey but we finally made it to our destination and the weather was gorgeous. There was a queue of people coming out of a lovely looking ice cream parlour which sadly us none dairy eating folk couldn't eat at, but because of the heat we were craving ice cream so Mrs M did some investigating online and found a deli that stocked Booja booja ice cream, result.

Hay-on-Wye definitely earned its 'town of books' status. It was such a great little town filled with lovely little book shops for everyone, there was a children's book shop that Laura said reminded her of the shop in 'you've got mail' and a 'Murder and mystery' bookshop, all with a reading area where you could just pop your feet up and get engrossed.

Opeie, as always at the moment, had dinosaurs on the brain so that is what we went looking for bookwise and him and Mrs M found an interesting pop up book about Dinosaur babies and eggs, Cute! While me and Opeie hopped from book shop to book shop Mrs M spent some time talking to a lovely lady in a shop about her other big love, 'Stationary'! My lady loves a good pen! 

Aside for the scenery (it was a lovely looking little town) there were plenty of great boutique style shops to keep us entertained. Mrs M spotted some lovely things and had some great ideas for things to make our home even prettier.

Hay-on-wye will definitely be seeing us again, anywhere that has that many books will get a lot of attention from us, it is the sort of place where you could buy a book from a shop and spend the whole day reading it anywhere there as it seemed like the whole town hade been made for your reading pleasure.  After a good few hours pottering about we made our way home, which was considerably shorter than detour from Ross-on-wye.

"You may be different, but we're all creatures. All dinosaurs have different features."

The subject of 'how much time our children spend in front of the TV' seems to come up quite a bit amongst friends, it's a hot topic. Although we don't have a TV license at home the boys do squeeze in a bit of Netflix between all the other exciting things that we get up to. I love the fact that with Netflix we can keep an eye easier on what the boys are watching. For us, most importantly, is the fact that they are not subjected to the utter tripe on TV (including most importantly, the news).

I've been really impressed recently how well Netfix and the books we are reading have been working hand in hand and it's got me asking 'is screen time really bad for your children if you are picking what they are watching?'. The blog has been a bit 'Dinosaur' heavy recently  but Opeie's fascination in the subject has got me hooked. We've been reading all sorts of books and doing dinosaur activities, then a few weeks back we sat down to eat lunch and Opeie asked if there were any kids dinosaur programmes on Netflix. We had been watching the walking with dinosaurs series but I think Opeie wanted something a little less bleak so I searched 'dinosaur'. This is where we first found dinosaur train and if I am honest I have been as hooked as Opeie ever since. This show is what all kids TV should be like, fun, colourful and with fascinating educational content. We've both learnt so much about dinosaurs over the last few weeks and Opeie has been soaking it up.

The last month or so of Dinosaur fun has been awesome and we've ploughed though all the books we can find in our local libraries but what has blown me away is what Opeie has picked up from the show while I've been making lunch in the afternoons. He has explained to me how to tell if a dinosaur is a theropod, which dinosaurs were from which time period (including a woman's jaw dropping when me and Opeie were playing dinosaurs in Ikea and I said 'I'll be a Giganotosaurus", to which Opeie replied "they were found in South America!)". As he stood at the counter in Holland and Barrett last week he informed both myself and the staff that Archaeopteryx means 'old feather', he is full on entertainment and his passion for dinosaurs is addictive.

So is screen time really that bad?

When I started to write this post it got me thinking about all the things me and Mrs M have have learnt over the years from Netflix. All the Ted talks we have watch and fascinating documentaries, including the ones that changed my diet (yes Netflix stopped me eating meat and dairy). There are a huge amount of educational resources out there, if you have young children then Dinosaur train is a must, slightly older kids? Horrible histories is amazing. Switch your TV on and take full advantage of the information that Netflix is making available to you, it's worth every penny of your monthly subscription.

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usherstorm, but to add color to my sunset sky."

We've had such a lovely weekend, quality family time and great friends. Despite things not so great that linger in the background it was a weekend of smiles and laughter. As I came downstairs this evening and sat at the back door the beautiful pink sky summed up how I was feeling. 

I hope you all had a great weekend.

"We are what we see. We are products of our surroundings."

When i started the blog i had hoped that somewhere down the line i would get to work with companies that would make a lasting impression on the boys growing up and brands i really respected. I had two in mind that had had a HUGE impact on my own childhood, had shaped the person i am today and helped with my development, not to mention getting me through some bleak home situations. I feel really lucky that I got to work with them both early on and continue to work with them on a regular basis. Despite these two companies having a huge impact on the boys lives too and that they give us countless hours of father son bonding time, an unexpected brand crept into the top spot and has opened up the way we play together (By giving us wheels).

Micro-scooters completely changed the father son dynamic and being able to take the boys on scooting adventures really added another level to the crazyiness we get up to on a daily basis, not to mention the confidence scooting gives the boys, especially Opeie. I'll never forget the day my black Micro scooter was delivered, i had thoughts of packing backpacks full of things we would need for Goonies style adventures. It was clear from that day that those two wheels were going to change everything.

There's something so addictive about scooting, especially as a parent because scooting with your children puts you right in the middle of the action. I love listening and watching the boys play and being able to be a part of it is so morish. The time spent whizzing around with them takes you right in to their world and Seth and Opeie love having me on their team. Its like being the head honcho of an MC only with vehicles powered by feet and the cutest bunch of misfits you can imagine.

The scooters have been everywhere with us and can pretty much always be found in the boot ready for action. In fact we've been out scooting every day for the past three weeks, we are always on the look out for flat land and smooth trails to investigate.

I ride into the school grounds to pick Seth up most days and its interesting that many of the moms want to have a go, who wouldn't, they are so much fun. Once you've had a try you don't want to get off. When we first got the scooters even nanny and grandad got into the spirit of things on one of our outings too.

I own a lovely black micro scooter which has taken me everywhere, I had become part of a scooting gang and my life was complete. That was until the day a courier came to the house with a large intriguing package. The contents of the package were going to change the way i scooted and being the big kid i am i was very excited! The Micro Suspension scooter is what i can only describe as the Bentley of scooters.With a sleek new shape and a classy bronze paint job I couldn't wait to get it out of the box and take it for a test ride. 

Hypothesis:

Seth informed me that i should include a Hypothesis because he had been learning about it at school. At first glance i thought it was going to be a lot heavier and i was concerned about the suspension under the deck as it seemed low. But i expected the twin suspension to make journeys a lot smoother.

I love the micro black but as with everything there were a few things i would have personally changed to make the ride smoother and more practicle. The double suspension on this new beauty instantly sorted my first issue. I don't live in a big city and there is a lot of uneven walkways, making some scooting quite bumpy and i think as the heaviest member of our scooting gang i probably notice the bumps a little more. I thought that having air filled tyres would be a great idea for solving that but the two part suspension makes an unbelievably huge difference to the smoothness of the ride, taking out a huge amount of the bumps.

The second issue was one that wouldn't effect most scooterers (is that a word? what do you call someone that scoots?) but there is something the new suspension scooter offers that makes my adventures with the boys a little easier. A while back we borrowed a Gopro from a friend of ours and of course we attached it to the scooters. Seth has a Micro Flex classic scooter which has a 360 degree turn on the front wheel which i was always a little jealous of as the front mud guard on the micro black stopped that from happening. The suspension scooter adds the 360 turn (why do i need it i hear you ask?). Well, we fell in love with the Gopro and Mrs M brought us one to continue our adventures. Using a secure and solid bracket, Sometimes we film ahead of us and sometimes we film ourselves talking directly to the camera, the 360 degree turn means we can just spin the handlebars to change the shot, genius!

I wanted to really put the scooter to the test to review it. Our micro scooters aren't something that come out occasionally and are hidden away most of the time. Ive had the suspension scooter about a month and i estimate that its done about 50 miles. That probably sounds crazy but a huge chunk of that was actually racked up a week ago when me and Opeie decided to go to London for a few days. The plan was to get to all the places we needed to be without using the tube. We scooted from Paddington (where we were staying) to the London eye (3.2miles) and back, also to Leicester square (2.4miles) and back and to the natural history museum (1.7miles) and back just to name a few. It was an awesome few days and being able to scoot long distance smoothly is great and so convenient. The thing that really blew me away though was that we saw London from a completely different angle and visited beautiful places that we would never have seen underground.

Some may say i am biased but i think if you're young at heart and want to get in on and be a part of all the fun and adventures your children are having then any of the adult scooters from the Micro-scooter range are a must. I didn't think for one second that they would have this much of an impact on the amazing time i have always had with the boys but scooting together really opened up our world to a huge list of possibilities and (especially with London) helped us see a beautiful more natural side to the big city.

from Archaeopteryx to Zuniceratops, the dinosaur ABC

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs.... it's all about the Dinosaurs, Opeie is hooked and he has surprisingly dragged his brother in on all the excitement. These wonderful beasts have kept us well entertained over the last few weeks with some great themed activities. Earlier this week me and Opeie were chatting about his new favourite subject and we got on to the topic of whether there is a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet. Obviously a conversation like that is clearly going to kick start an activity.

I wanted to answer Opeie's question but i didn't know myself so aside from the fun of finding out if we could complete a dinosaur ABC i wanted to show Opeie how we find the information we need. We headed down to out local library, we can walk to which is great so we went looking for books that could help us with our task. I'm always surprised at how quiet our library is most of the time. We've been there today and considering it is the school holiday and it was raining out it was a ghost town. 

With a stack of books to scan out we headed home and found out a big roll of paper ready for our fun research activity. We wrote A-Z down the one side of the page and then started by seeing how much we could fill in from the information we knew ourselves. I thought Opeie would go straight in for his favourite Triceratops but he actually started from 'A' and shouted Archaeopteryx which i was really impressed by, followed by Brachiosaurus. C was our first issue but we did manage to fill in quite a few before turning to our first research device, books.

As expected there was a great source of research material at the library and as we sat in the hallway surrounded by books we looked through them together hoping to fill in all the blanks from our dinosaur ABC.  We managed two thirds of our activity before Opeie wanted to move on to something else, so today we picked up where we left off and got stuck in hoping to complete what we had started. This time though we had Seth on hand who turned out to be an excellent researcher.

We had looked through around 20 Dinosaur books but we still hadn't completed our A-Z so we moved on to our next place for information, the internet. Now i know we could have just gone straight on to the internet to get all the relevant information we needed but wheres the fun in that? The boys love reading and going to the library and i think it is really important for them to know that that information is there readily available to them, i did explain though that sometimes the books and information are not always on hand and that is where the internet will reign supreme.

The National History Museum's Dino directory filled in all the gaps we needed. Saying that though we were only missing F,J,X,Y and Z so we had done pretty well. We also learned some interesting facts too as we searched on the 'in your country' section and found out that 23 dinosaurs were discovered in England, we are unsure how accurate this is though as Opeie pointed out that all the Pterosaurs were missing from the directory.

 Thanks to some great researching from the boys we found a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet and picked up some great dinosaur facts a long the way. I cant stress to people that i meet enough about the importance of using the library and the information that is available to you cost free. Having access to that kind of literature is a great tool for children to be able to use in all aspects of their learning.

Now its time for me to do some research of my own for the next big Dino activity...

ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!

*NOTE, Opeie was so excited about 'W for Wooley Mammoth that I didn't have the heart to tell him.