"A museum is a place where one should lose one's head."

When I was young if someone had have mentioned the word 'museum' I'd have been filled with dread. Museums from what I remember, were 'the worst!'. I assumed that this was the norm and most people felt the same way but as it turns out I was very wrong. As I spent a lovely evening with Mrs M's family over Christmas, I got chatting to her auntie Jo (who is a lovely woman) about something completely unrelated to museums but during our conversation it clicked why I had those feelings and why I was negative about a lot of things during my childhood.

When I think about it now and as I type this out it makes me feel a little sad that until I met Mrs M (29 years into my life) I had never been inspired by ANYONE! school had given me nothing along those lines and my work life was pretty much the same. Sadly I lacked inspiring parents too so I just bumbled along not aiming for anything. That all changed when I met Mrs M though and she inspired me from day one with her contagious energy and love of life. When she first met me she had her reservations as she thought I was a bit of a joker and didn't take anything seriously, she soon changed that though and set me on a path that continues to make a better person.

Anyway back to museums... I've never wanted the boys to feel the way that I did growing up and I like to think that the way we bring them both up is really inspiring for them. Last week me and Opeie ended up in London and when asked what he wanted to do he replied "can we go to the museums". I love that he is genuinely interested in museums and I think its because myself and Mrs M are so interactive with him when it comes to learning.

Our day of going to 'the museums' ended up with us visiting four back to back and having a pretty amazing day out together, despite the drizzly weather.

First on our list was more for me, but while looking at the images online Opeie had showed quite a lot of interest in visiting a museum that had a brain in a jar of formaldehyde (strange I know but he loves learning about the body). When looking at a '100 things to do in London for free' article  early last year I had stumbled up on the Hunterian museum. Situated in the Royal college of surgeons, the Hunterian museum houses an amazing collection of the macabre. Animals, body parts and oddities. I could have stayed in there for hours but Opeie made his feelings clear early on when he said "daddy, can we go to another museum now please?" "It's a bit scary, I want to look at things with pretty colours". I think that museum may be for when he is a little older.

five minutes walk and we were at our second museum. The British museum is in a very grand building and is full off really interesting items and exhibitions. There was a lot more for Opeie to ask questions about and we spent a lot of our visit chatting about greek mythology, mummification and knights. I was so busy yapping to Opeie that I missed the name of one of the exhibitions that was on but part of it was based around the day of the dead celebrations and all of the pieces were very colourful and interesting, which was exactly what Opeie was looking for after museum number 1.

Time to jump back on the tube and make our way to museum number 3. The V&A museum of childhood is one of our favourite museums to visit in London after our friend Sam took us there a year or so ago. I love seeing many of the toys I had growing up and the boys are always interested in the things that kept me entertained as a child. Its also interesting to see how things have changed when it comes to childrens play things. With games to play and an enormous amount of items for your visual entertainment it really is the perfect place to take your inquisitive little ones.

Museum number 4 and it was clear that Opeie was getting tired (his little legs had done a lot of walking, bless them) he was desperate though to squeeze in his favourite museum before we headed back to the hotel. Usually when we visit the Museum of Natural History it is all about the Dinosaurs but this time round it was the birds taking centre stage. Every time we visit we seem to find another part that we have not seen before and even though we have been quite a few times I could still happily spend an entire day just pottering around there. I find it fascinating and I can see why it is always on the top of Opeie's London to do list.

As sad as it is that I felt the way I did when I was younger, in some ways I am kind of glad. I appreciate this kind of thing a lot more because of it and visiting now as a home schooling parent and learning with Opeie is the most amazing experience and something I will never take for granted.

Ok so he might have had a sneak peek at the dinosaurs!

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful."

As we took down the trees and the decorations last week we all felt a little gloomy as the house looks so bare once all the colour and glitter has gone. As we carefully packed away all the tree decorations we have collected over the years it made me realise that we needed the next installment of our Gifts from the Pirates fox hunt. Whenever we've been out shopping on the build up to Christmas and spotted a festive fox we've snapped them up straight away. So here are the sly ornaments that were making our trees look pretty this year...

Nanny and Grandad added an extra fox themed book to Opeie's ever expanding collection which was lovely. I love how family and friends pick up on the little quirks that make our family what it is.

Each year we pick a toy to sit on top of the tree (angels are so last season). We've had Holly from Ben and Holly, Cat in the hat and Miffy and this year foxes made their way to the top of two of our trees.

Nanny and Grandad again turned up a few weeks before Christmas and gave the boys a very cute Fox each that spent the build up to Christmas keeping each other warm on our stairs. It was a lovely little touch to our festive looking home, thank you Nanny Roo.

I'm already looking forward to what foxey treats next year has to offer. 

A is for Adventure. F is for Family.

Christmas this year was AMAZING! We got to spend a huge amount of time with Mrs M which made our festive celebrations. To add to the excitement Mrs M had set up one of her treasure hunts around the house, with a very exciting booty to be found. More from that later in the year though, exciting times!!!

"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings."

Dinosaurs are still on the top spot of Opeie's interests which is great but he is starting to now branch out a little (I could have turned that in to a pun had I have used it later on in the post but sadly it is lost now). Anyway back to what I was talking about. Opeie's latest topic of interest is birds since watching a couple running around in our garden a few weeks back. So yesterday we had one of those days where Mrs M was in London working and there was no afternoon school run so we decided to go bird spotting and where better but Lake Vyrnwy which is the centre piece of the RSBP reserve.

We've been before a few times but back then we were there for the stunning scenery, the huge dam and the very beautiful Rhiwargor waterfall. This time though it was all about the birds and we were really excited when we pulled in to the car park and was greeted at the door by a Robin (a great start to our bird watching morning).

It was freezing, but we had wrapped up warm (despite my usual shorts) and we were armed with grandads binoculars (which I should have returned 2 years ago, oops). Apart from the Robin when we arrived, as we walked around taking in the sites the bird watching was pretty slow. We could hear them but had no idea where they were hiding.

Being able to have days like this really makes our home schooling special, it is effortless learning. we talked about the the dam, the bridge and the wildlife and I also got to hear about how Opeie felt about the pieces in the sculpture park.

Opeie was desperate to see some birds though so we made our way over the dam to get to the RSPB visitor centre, not before making use of Grandad's binoculars again though over the lake. The view is stunning and Lake Vyrnwy is definitely one of my favourite places to visit.

While at the RSPB visitor centre we picked up a Michelin I-SPY bird book and asked where the best place was to spot birds and we were pointed towards a cabin that we had walked past everytime we had visited before. The cabin is a large hide where you can sit and watch so many different woodland birds up close while they feed. We got to tick off Greenfinch, Siskin, Blue tit, King tit, Nut hatch and a few others, when we stood up to look about the cabin we saw lots of Pheasants too picking up the dropped seed. Being able to watch the birds up close like that was a lovely experience for Opeie and we sat there for quite some time, chatting to the other visitors and reading the information on the boards inside.

As I have been writing this Opeie has sat next to me and we have been talking about visiting Lake Vyrnwy again soon, but in the dark for a spot of star gazing. Because there is minimal light pollution around the area I think it would be a great spot to take in the magic of our solar system at night and maybe add that to Opeie's list of learning interests.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"Can we stay up till midnight tonight please?" is not something that we hear a lot but when it comes to new years eve it is used regularly. There is no way the boys would hack staying up till midnight without being like a pair of miserable zombies the following day. So every year we deceive them by using the London firework display on Youtube from the previous year. I'm sure we are not the only family that pull out some craftyness on the final day of the year. This year though thanks to Netflix we didn't need to use the fireworks display as they had come up with a genius way to see in the new year at any time of the evening so as we all relaxed watching the TV we counted down the hours approaching (Ahem) midnight.

This year we saw the first new year in with Mr. Peabody and Sherman with a special Netflix countdown helping us parents dupe our little ones into thinking they have made it all the way to 12, genius. With 6 different characters to choose from including Care bears, Puffin Rock and Inspector Gadget. The Netflix new years countdown was a great addition to out celebrations.

And with the little ones tucked up with smiles on their faces it gave me and Mrs M the chance to relax. We were planning on being in bed before 12 but we received a facetime call from our friends Sam and Jamie from South America and we stayed on the phone for 2 hours. We opened wine and ate Nachos, it was like being out to dinner together. A pretty perfect end to a pretty perfect year.