I try and make Sundays "Family Day". With us working and schooling all week, chores, shopping, homework and more working on Saturdays, I try and dedicate our Sundays to Family Days and so a few weeks ago on one such Sunday, we went to see the Moon in Chichester Cathedral.
The Moon was on tour and up until 14th November was on display in Chichester Cathedral, the nearest sighting for us, but the Museum of the Moon is still touring and dates of where it can be seen next can be found here.
The two attractions couldn't be more different. Diggerland in Kent is based on what appears to be an industrial site, with a rather interesting car park. With Covid19 restrictions lifted for outside events but capacity restrictions still in place, it was near to its limit when we arrived at 10.30am (pre-booking not essential, even though we had, so you could pay on the day too).
18th April is World Heritage Day, and the breathtaking Jurassic Coast is part of the UK World Heritage, and I'm so pleased we made that our holiday destination for Easter.
The biggest fairground with prices to match is what awaited us at Hyde Park's 2018 Winter Wonderland.
I'd heard lots of good things about Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland over the years. Mainly second hand, but still promising to be a good day out. So, for 2018 I made that our main Christmas Event.
Guess How Much I Love You is my son's favourite book. It's not often he will single something out as his favourite and usually when asked he will say everything, all of them etc. But as books go, this is his favourite.
As I've mentioned in my previous posts, we had a roarsome dinosaur themed weekend recently. We started looking for Fossils at Beachy Head on Saturday then a Dinosaur Safari on Sunday morning and ended with watching Dinosaurs roam the O2 arena on Sunday, in the spectacular Dinosaur Live Show - Walking with Dinosaurs.
Over the summer we had a dinosaur-themed weekend. We started looking for Fossils at Beachy Head on Saturday and ended with watching Dinosaurs roam the O2 on Sunday, and in between that, we went on a Dinosaur Safari!
Do you ever get one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" moments only to reflect and think sh*t?! Well, I signed my family up to the KAPOW run at Preston Park in Brighton on 14th July!
Did you catch that word in the second sentence? Run! RUN!! I haven't competed in any form of running event since I was 12 years old! I do not have the body of a runner!!
Wicked is entering its 12th years at London's West End. This means for 12 years, as I've gone to London and come out at Victoria Station and seen that green face glaring back at me I have been wondering - "What is that all about! Is it just a take on the wicked witch's version of events from the wizard of Oz?"
This year, we bought Merlin Passes so took the opportunity to see Santa at his Gruffalo themed Winter's Tail at Chessington for £10.
Big hit with my boy!
We got the early (10.30am) tickets to see Santa. My boy is an early bird and gets up before the sun, so 10.30 was a good time for him. Having looked at what was on display for the day, with only a select few rides open I'd also bought tickets to feed the giraffes in the afternoon, which spread the day out nicely.
First Stop, Santa
I'm not going to lie, I was extremely disappointed with this. When Santa is younger than you are, something's gone wrong! The presents weren't wrapped and considering we queued 30 minutes past our allotted time, we were in and out within minutes..... but....... my son loved seeing Santa, loved that the elf took us to Santa's hut (even though she made us practically run!) and was not phased in the slightest that he got to choose his present which was not wrapped.
So from a 6-year-old's point of view - it was a success.
There are various events going on throughout the park, with the theme being Gruffalo there was a hunt for each of the animals within the Gruffalo story and a quiz to see what they all wanted for Christmas.
The Gruffalo ride was open, and surprising not busy, and the story of the Gruffalo's child was read out in the storytime area, complete with snow.
The Zoo and Sealife centre were open and also the Pizza Pasta restaurant, which my son loves as he feels all grown up going up to get his pizza and salad all by himself.
There is an option for the children to decorate cookies, but the queue to get into the Gruffalo's kitchen was way too long for us, at least an hour's wait! No way was my son going to be able to hold it together that long in a queue. So we gave that a miss and headed over the giant snow-globe.
Such fun. Slightly DIY in that once you enter the snow-globe you have to make sure all the polystyrene is shovelled over to the right where the vacuum is, that and the 'official' photographer takes a few photos for £5. Ours were unclear due to the photos being taken when the snow was falling at its thickest and even the girls at the kiosk had trouble recognising my two in the globe!
But the boys had fun and I managed to get some photos myself, so all was not lost.
We finished our day off with a trip to the Giraffe house where we fed these little beauts, before heading off home with a very happy little boy, all excited and ready for Christmas.
This "year" my son started school, and this meant days out and holidays are to be taken with the masses in the holidays when the theme parks are busy and holidays are expensive. Bit of a shock to the system, but we knew this would happen.
So when my son's school had an inset day on Friday, we decided to take full advantage of it being a school day and take a trip to Chessington.
For Easter this year we took our first trip to the New Forest, which I've written a few times on what a fantastic experience it was. When I mentioned to a friend that we were off to the New Forest she told me about The Gruffalo Spotter.
I'd not heard of this app before but was told it works similar to Pokemon, where you go on the hunt for the Gruffalo through the woods and may see others on the way. Loving the sound of this, and knowing my son would love this app as he's a huge Gruffalo fan, we set off to Moors Valley Country Park.
Moors Valley is a lovely large country park with so much to do for the family! I went to reception to inquire about the Gruffalo Spotter and was informed there was free wifi at the park so we could download the app and then follow the signs and trail until we came across the Gruffalo, or a mouse, owl, snake or fox....
Not knowing what to expect we walked quite a way through the woods before we found the mouse sign. I had a very excited boy by this point, being in the woods roaming around was fun it itself but when he saw a reference to the Gruffalo he got very excited.
Once you see the signs you point your phone at the footprint sign and that's when the magic happens. Once registered on the app, the animation of the tree stump pops up and the mouse appears. There is then the option to take a phone of the mouse and log your findings within the app.
Oh my days, my son was so excited by this!
It was after the fox that we realised that we could be in the photo too!! I know it sounds obvious now, but when it's all new to you, the novelty of roaming through the woods look for a Gruffalo was our first thought, closely followed by being amused at the animation and taking photos, so it was only after our 2nd animation that we started to explore with the characters and posing.
It really was a magical experience for my 5-year-old son, and I'm so thankful for my friend for recommending this app and activity. The pictures above were all saved on the Gruffalo Spotter app, and you can take as many as you like. My son spent the journey back to our lodge scrolling through all the pictures and most amused at seeing himself with the animals.
There is a little clip on the Gruffalo Spotter website which shows you how it works and is exactly how we experienced it too. I've embedded it below if you wish to have a look or thinking of going. It's great fun I would totally recommend it.
As we finished our hunt, we found the best Gruffalo of all, along with his child and you can just see on my son's face how chuffed he was to see them.
This year was the first time I'd been to the New Forest! I don't know how I've gone this long and not travelled the 60 miles up the road to visit the ponies, alpacas and woodland, but somehow it had passed me by!!
Having said that, I will definitely be going back again, and probably as soon as next year!
We stayed at the lovely Sandy Balls. It had been recommended to my by a friend and I'm so glad it was! There is soo much to do there, you don't really need to leave the complex! We had morning and afternoon activities, a visit to a neighbouring town, and a Gruffalo Hunt to fit in.
Having a very active 5-year-old it's a good job we had so much planned. I had mentioned before that my favourite activity over the week was the Falconry and Owl experience, which is a must if you get the chance, but the Alpaca Introduction & Walk is a wonderful experience too.
You can opt for just the introduction or just the walk, but as I wasn't sure what either entailed we booked both.
The Alpaca Introduction at Sandy Balls
The Introduction takes place in the outside pen area. It lasts half an hour and you get to stroke and walk the alpacas in the pen and learn all about them from the very knowledge staff. The girl we had was fabulous with the kids and very knowledge about her alpacas.
Walking the Alpacas at Sandy Balls
The walk is an hour-long stroll around the complex. It would be good to have this activity booked near the beginning of your stay as you then get a feel for the whole complex. The Alpaca are so well mannered and looked after. They are so used to going for their walks, they just happily plod along in a group and every now and then veer off to a hedge for a nibble.
Somehow my son kept ending up slap bang in the middle of all 4 of them! Only he could manage that, and as when we reached Good Friday hill the white, yep white one.... decided to have a dust bath and rolled around for a good 5 minutes, closely followed by the others. We went up the hill with a white alpaca and came back with a grey one.
This was a lovely experience, and not one that you'd get to do often I'd say. I'm really pleased that I booked this in advance, as it was fully booked before we arrived at Sandy Balls.
That is one thing I would recommend you do, if you're staying at Sandy Balls, try and book a few of the activities sooner rather than later, as in school holidays, these get booked up quick.
Back in July, I came across Kidtropolis being advertised on my Facebook news feed. I'm not entirely sure what drew me to look into it further, maybe the name, maybe the fact Bumblebee and Optimus Prime were going to be there, or just the fact it looked like fun!
Kidtropolis is billed as a family event for children aged 12 and under, which was being run over the Autumn half term for 3 days at a fantastic price of £13.50!! I actually bought early bird tickets so mine only cost me £11.50, which for an event in London - is pretty good going!
Last year I wrote about the wonderful experience we had on the Gruffalo hunt thanks to HFT (who by the way, are running the hunt again this year so I highly recommend a visit). But this post is to mention something new I found through HFT - Core Fest!
Considering Paulton's Park is only an hour's drive away for us I've never actually been there, so when I decided to book tickets to the Christmas wonderland event (at the Peppa Pig World section of Paulton's Park) I was rather excited!
As we had tickets to see Santa in the afternoon so we decided to wait until after the rush hour to set off to Hampshire to visit Peppa Pig World. Hindsight - we could have set off earlier as there are lots of sites to see and do, and that's my error. The whole park is not open for Christmas so I assumed that there would be limited attractions and not really need a full day - wrong!
When we arrived we found where the Winter Wonderland section was then set off to Peppa Pig World.
Max was in awe of everything and loved every ride, the Christmas trees, the shops and especially the 4D cinema and we hadn't seen Santa yet! We visited Peppa Pig's house, rode on George's dinosaur, had a boat ride, train ride and car ride.
Dinosaur ride built for parent and child
Loving the boat ride again for parent and child
I love that all the rides are designed for parents to enjoy with their children - the dinosaur ride being a prime example, both my boys were having fun with that! Max also loved the car ride and wanted to drive us both around, and who are we to disagree with that.
We didn't actually get around to all the rides before it was time to meet Peppa and George which Max loved, he's seen a few of his favourite characters now and it's the best to watch, truly believing Peppa and her family have come out the television to visit him.
We also visited the 4D cinema as it's only a half-hour film so I figured we'd be safe. I say this because taking Max to the movies is very much hit and miss. We have taken him 3 times in total now the first and last time we went he watched the whole movie - the second time he got bored immediately and loud, we left 10 minutes in! But there was no chance of him going anywhere with this movie, he loved it, got into the story and left on a high.
And then it was time for Santa.
We were greeted by elves who showed us the way to the grotto and all the way round there is various snow, winter and Christmas scenes to keep the little ones amused.
Santa's Grotto
Children loved all the animals on the way round the Grotto
Finally arriving at the North Pole
He's excited really....
Once we reached the North Pole one of Santa's elves took us to see Father Christmas himself, and he was a very impressive Santa at that! With music playing, children being excited and the presence of elves all made it that little bit more magical.
Visiting Santa in his Grotto
After seeing Father Christmas, it was time to start our journey home even though we'd not seen everything in the park that was open! Our tickets cost me £25 per person and I think it was worth every single penny. So much so, we are planning to go back in the summer when the whole park is open. I can see that being a fantastic day and I'm rather excited!!
I highly recommend Peppa Pig World for little ones, I'm sure they will not be disappointed if my son is anything to go by.
For those of you who read my blog will know I have a whole separate blog which is written specifically for my son, which one day I will send him the link to. Sometimes I share some of the letters here.....
Dear Max, Last week we went to Peppa Pig world at Paulton's Park as we had it on very good authority that Santa Claus would be there and that he would be there for 2pm. So we set off rather late in the morning as you were milling around the house naked ... well almost naked, you did have daddy's hat on! It was over an hour's drive so needless to say by the time we got there - you were snoring your little head off - yes baby, you snore. We headed off to Pippa area and it was great fun! After having a little chat in the house with Peppa's family we headed off over to the cars which you love to drive - so daddy and I sat in the back :)
And that was it, after your first drive/ride you were off queuing for Mr dinosaur before we knew it - I'm not entirely sure which of you had more fun on this ride.
We had a photo shoot with green screens and then off for a train ride.
And to top off our rides before we went to see Peppa you guys went on the boats.
There was quite a queue to meet Peppa and George so you took daddy off to the play area whilst mummy waited in line for you, and I find out from daddy that you made a new friend and she shared her chips with you!
After giving Peppa and George a hug we went off to Santa's Workshop and to find out if you've been naughty or nice....
And yep, you've been a good lad. We finished our visit off with a 4D movie then headed off home, cold but happy.
We really did love the place, but because it's winter the park only has a section open for Christmas, so we are going back in the spring for a full day of fun, I don't know about you, but I can't wait. Love you little man, I'm so very proud of the boy you are becoming Love you always Mummy xxxxxxxx
