"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

Seth loves getting involved when it comes to food preperation which used to be great because he would stand on a chair next to me hacking at a piece of broccoli with a plastic knife. As you can imagine that would take some time so it kept him occupied giving me the chance to get on with what needed to be done. We've not really been able to do that much when Mrs M is out because Opeie needs supervising as you can imagine being two.

Today our first package came from Bigjigs, inside our first two Play Patrol Missions. The boys were over the moon and what was inside gave me a great chance to get Opeie involved in food preperation. Plus i needed to get the veg ready for tea so after the boys changed in to their secret agent attire we headed outside to view our mission instructions. We had been sent the Cutting Vegetables Set and Opeie couldn't wait to get chopping.

 Suprisingly Opeie didn't go for his 'Hulk Smash' approach to everything. Instead he watched lovingly at what Seth was doing and copied him. The fruit and veg are wooden and each piece is connected by velcro so easily cut by children. The boys really enjoyed role playing with these and thankfully there were no Gordon Ramsey style choice words as they played. The only disappointing part of the kit was that the chef's hat didn't fit either of the boys so either they are quite small or the genetics in our house produce children with freakishly large heads???

During play Seth managed to find a clever way around the consumption of his 'five a day', take a slice of each fruit and veg, join them together and create one uber fruit...

The quality of the product is everything you would expect from Bigjigs, sturdy and high quality materials. The colours are great for teaching Opeie and we had fun getting Opeie to count the parts of the carrot, changing it each time while i cut our carrots in to the same amount of pieces. It was great to see that he really felt included in the food preperation.

I am just like any other girl, a sucker for bromance.

We had a great afternoon yesterday with our good friend Chris. Chris writes a photo blog called Gingerjamphoto.com and can always been seen about with his camera attached to him, its like an extra limb. We love spending time with him because he is a genuinely nice guy and is very thoughtful. He always makes a lot of effort playing with the boys and they love it when he visits too. One of the other reasons i love catching up (as selfish as it sounds) is that because he always has his camera with him he always gets some great shots while were out and about. They are natural shots too, most of the time he is snapping away and you don't even realise, he's like some sort of photographic ninja. Its not that I'm a poser just that not having access to photo's of myself when i was younger anymore i crave great family pictures of us all and Chris knows how to capture that.

We headed down to Ironbridge, the plan was to have a walk about and take Opeie to the park and we thought that Chris could get some pictures of the Iron bridge itself. The weather was amazing and it was such a nice way to spend a bank holiday. Ironbridge is one of our favourite places and its perfect for those sunny days.

After pottering around the bridge we headed down to the park as Opeie was itching to get the ball out and Chris being the lovely bloke that he is had brought the boys some bubble camera's and old school planes for throwing. Laura used this as an excuse to get hold of Chris' camera which gave us chance to fully embrace what Mrs M calls our 'Bromance'. I love the guy what can i say.

Opeie was having a great time running round the park, throwing aeroplane's and blowing bubbles.

After an hour or so of park fun we headed back to ours for a spot of lunch made by that lovely lady of mine while us three boys ran around the garden, read books and played with the rabbits. Mrs M was booked in with her personal trainer after lunch so after dropping her off us three boys headed off for a walk up the Wrekin. Opeie resumed his favourite place on my shoulders and away we went.

While we were walking Chris spotted some Bluebells and asked if me and Opeie could go and sit in them while he took some photos. Me and Opeie being the posers that we are were happy to oblige. Who's going to turn down lovely father and son pictures? not me that's for sure. Opeie loves flowers so he was in his element, Although the cute sniffing and picking soon turned in to 'Hulk Smash", he's definitely my boy that's for sure, Oops.

We had such a great day with Chris. Not having a family outside of Mrs M and the boys means that i really appreciate the friends that go the extra mile to make the effort. The boys love him too which is great. We've been friends for quite some time but its only been the last year that we've all become close and i feel so lucky to have a great friend that's always there for a chat and loves spending time with us.  Our Bromance is sure to blossom!!

To see more of Chris' great pictures be sure to visit his blog gingerjamphoto.com, it's always nice for us to read about our days out from an outside perspective.

Here's Chris' take on the afternoon... http://gingerjamphoto.com/bankholidayfun/

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Were becoming increasingly aware of how important it is to help Seth understand how to use a  computer. His occupational therapist and physio are always telling us it would benefit him, which we know so we let him go on regularly and explain how things work. Seth has been learning recently about 'Money' at school and this has spurred on many inquisitive questions about 'Shopping online', Seth asks questions like "how do they give you change if you pay to much?" and "what happens if you want to take it back, how do you get your money back?". As we do a lot of shopping online the best way to show Seth how it works was to let him buy something himself so after i explained bank cards and Paypal to him we got to it and he was very excited.

Seth had the option of picking something to buy and going through the checkout etc. One of Seth's first questions was "what's the password to your Paypal?" was this going to be a very bad idea??

After receiving our Pirate dress up set a couple of weeks ago we had been mooching through The Toadstool.co.uk at what other things we liked. Seth had the budget of £10 to spend so i showed him how to search for items by price (starting with the cheapest) and left him to his own devices. Innevitably there was a few "i don't know how to get back on that page" which you would expect from an overzealous happy clicking child but over all Seth was confident with what he was doing.

Seth went through every page between the prices of 0-£10 about 6 times before deciding what he wanted and when he finally made his decision Seth did his usual loving and very thoughtful thing and told us that the reason he had picked this item was because he thought Opeie would really like it (He's so selfless). Seth chose the Haba play food fish as he has told us he would like lots of play food so that he can do some kitchen role play with Opeie (he loves helping us cook and bake and wants his brother included).

We explained the cost of the item against the budget but i think its harder to explain the concept of money to a child without having the coins and notes in front of them. There are some great online pocket money sites such as Virtual Piggy which is great for safe purchasing and pocket money saving online. Although i think this is a great concept i don't think that we as a family would benefit from it. Seth is saving up his pocket money for something very important (which you will find out about soon) and we have been giving him 50p every day for quite sometime if he finishes small tasks off before bedtime which he always does. I think from a saving point of view this works out better for us and Seth has a better understanding of money and its value because of it.

Seth found the checkout part interesting but said it would be better if you could just stick your card or cash in the side of the computer like at the Asda self service checkouts.

I think in the next few years Seth will become more interested in Online shopping, its great to have the things you want at your fingertips and the fact that there is so much more variety available to you as a shopper is what draws people in. I'm sure that in the meantime there will be plenty of Seth's time spent window shopping through his favourite toy shops but i wont be giving him my Paypal password just yet.

"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

Have you ever decided to do something and then half way through said activity wish you hadn't have been so stupid? Well that was me yesterday.... What an idiot, More from that later in the post though.
 

Seth has another life away from us and sometimes that can be quite difficult. We really miss him when he's not with us and sometimes its just not the same when we are doing things without him. This weekend Seth had a choice of where he wanted to be (which doesn't happen very often) and being the very caring and grown up boy that he is he decided to split his time equally so that he could spend his time with everyone.

We asked Seth what it was he wanted to do yesterday and he told us that he wanted to go somewhere where he could put his wellies on and go splashing in a stream. No problem i thought although on Friday night as we were heading to pick Mrs M up from work i was about to tell Seth that he was in charge of making sure the wellies were packed when i realised i hadn't picked up his wellies from school, Oops. Seth's idea... Break in to the school and retrieve them! As i didn't want to wind up on next weeks school news letter i thought i better not. Instead i quickly popped to the shops to get him a new pair (and that's why they call me super Dad).

We reached our destination and put the blanket down on the grass, it was lunch time and i was marvin. Unfortunately the great British weather had other ideas and although I'm happy sitting in a bit of rain Mrs M ran back to the car locking me and the boys out. What a sweetie. Thankfully it didn't last too long and after having a party in our tummies (Opeie's favourite phrase), we changed in to our boots and headed to the nearest water for adventure.

Seth was having a great time looking for wildlife and Opeie... well he had found the magic of Moss and was really investigating it.

After  a little more stream adventuring Opeie made it clear that the nap he should have had on the journey there was due now and as the sun was out and it was warm we all sat on the grass and Opeie drifted off to sleep. Seth dragged me back in to the water and was desperately looking for fish, unfortunately all we found were rocks. so after half an hours disappointing fishing we headed back to sleeping beauty who was still fast asleep. Mrs M had sat down opposite a huge hill and as we all sat there staring at it i said those stupid words 'I reckon i could climb that no problem' what an idiot! 'go on then' Mrs M replied, so thinking i now had something to prove i jumped to my feet and trotted off confidently over the stream and to the bottom of the hill (i wanted to put 'mountain' here but i think that may have been a slight over exaggeration). I looked up and thought 'easy' and i began to climb the hill. Using a lot of energy to sprint up the first part wasn't a great idea and as my legs started to ache my motivation was the next thing to go. Who did i think i was, I'm not a fit person!

I managed 3/4 of the way before realising what a fool i had been and going any further wasn't an option. It was a lot higher than i had thought while looking up it and it was really windy. I sat down and had a little bit of a panic, i couldn't see Mrs M or the boys now and i knew if i didn't head back down soon Mrs M would freak out and probably do something crazy like call mountain rescue (are they on 999 too?)

 Can you spot me???

I'd love to say that i came down gracefully but the wind was blowing me all over, i slipped on some wet animal muck, tripped on a vine and sat on a prickly bush leaving spikes in my bum which wasn't pleasant, cut my ankle and my hand and almost sprained my other ankle. By the time i reached the bottom i was a bit of a wreck and every muscle in my legs seemed to be aching. Ive never been more happy to see my three favourite people. There was no rest for poor daddy though as i had to carry the little prince on my shoulders back to the car.

A valuable lesson was learnt that day, lets just say i wont be running up any valley hills any time soon, the boys seemed impressed though and as they are unaware of my panicking up there ill take that as a win. Soon after that it was obvious that Opeie had had his fill of watery excitement and his entertaining moss so we headed home (i was thankful of the sit down even if i was driving).

"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

I'm quite sure that over the last few days most of the UK bloggers have had a post about the sun coming out, sorry to disappoint you but I'm jumping on the ban wagon. It's so much nicer when its bright and sunny and warm. Over the winter i get really lax when it comes to tidying the garden, the shed seems to become a dumping ground and the weeds... well they just take over everything and i cant be bothered to tidy them. As soon as the sun comes out though its a different story. The grass in our back garden is finally cut making it a lot more inviting to the boys to come and play which they have been taking full advantage of.

The weeding still needs doing and there's plants that need putting in the ground but that will come with time. Right now its all about making the most of the sun (could all be gone tomorrow). The garden looks really bare since we sold our climbing frame last week so we're in need of filling it up with new toys, any recommendations?

 In the mean time we can concentrate on other garden fun like feeding the birds...

Feeding ourselves...

 And larger scale painting...

Like many of you i will have my fingers crossed for a good summer, it doesn't seem fair that its only the rabbits that get to take advantage of the garden. I'm going to make it my mission to get the garden looking pretty so we can make the most of it this year.

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb."

After dropping Mrs M off at the gym earlier we had an hour to kill before picking her up. I had noticed somewhere that looked like a hillside walk a few days back while driving and had no idea what it was so we headed there for a little walk. We walked a bit of the way up and stopped and asked a lady walking her dog where we were. turns out we were walking up the Wrekin. Ive lived in Shropshire a few years now but i still don't know where a lot of places are.

Opeie was happy walking for all of 5 minutes and as he has never liked being in his pushchair our relaxing walking turned in to something that resembled Luke's Dagobah Training from The Empire Strikes Back. Opeie had a big smile on his face though so i was happy.

We didn't walk to far as i didn't want us to be late picking up Mrs M, plus Opeie was stopping every few minutes to find rocks that he wanted me to put in my pocket for his apparent new collection. The ones he decided he didn't want got Hulk smashed (that's my boy). I'm one of those strange people you see in the street that says hi when they walk by, Ive always been that way. After passing a few people tackling the hill and saying hi Opeie started saying 'afternoon' to people too. It's nice to be friendly to people you don't know but i do get some funny looks sometimes.

I explained to Opeie that we couldn't take all the rocks home with us so he had to sort out his favourites, the rocks that he had become more attached to, Then we filled my pockets and we headed back to the car to get mommy.

What shall we do with the rocks, any ideas?