'Robin! To the Bat Boat'

I love how in to our LEGO posts the boys get and it was only a matter of time before Seth decided that he would be reviewing a kit by himself. After all of our LEGO stories it was his turn to have full reign and show me what he's got. We were sent kit 76034 Super heroes the Batboat Harbour Pursuit and with Seth being the biggest Batman fan in the house it made sense that it would be him telling the story, so over to Seth...

The LEGO Batboat harbour Pursuit is another great kit from the DC Super heroes range. The thing I love most about the Batman kits is the gadgets and the way LEGO have really embraced Batman's amazing vehicles. While playing it was great that the bat boat split off in to 2 seperate Batpods adding to the adventure of the chase while stopping any 'I want to play with that part'. Sadly it didn't stop the 'I want to be Batman' (but then who really wants to be the sidekick?).

COMING SOON...

See what happens when the boys meet Scooby Doo and embark on their spookiest mission yet, Zoinks!!

 

 





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" 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.