Sometimes the best things in life are free or 50p!

Well firstly, sorry for being AWOL for a little while! It has been rather busy here with Mr Y having to use the laptop most nights to prepare his best man's speech added on to that the manic month of June! We have our wedding anniversary and then Mrs Magee and Mr Magoo's birthdays ten days apart. So we are in a bit of a birthday blur at the moment. Last night I was busy trying to recreate a sugar paste Peter Rabbit and tonight will be spent making Mr McGregor's boots and various vegetables to top the cake that will be made tomorrow night! Tomorrow being Mrs Magee's big day and the grand old age of 2! Anyway on to the blog post. So recently we have done quite a few days/mornings/afternoons out which have been free or a very low price. This has been fabulous seeing as June is an expensive month for us! So last week a lovely friend (thank you Mrs M!) made us aware of the fact that Weston Park was opening it's doors for 50p entry to celebrate being open for 50 years. So Mrs Magee and I spent a great day there with our friends including our Gifts from the Pirates chums.

The adventure playground was fab and I know Mr Magoo would be in his element, so we are going to visit this Sunday as a treat with the inlaws too. Mrs Magee is fairly game for anything so enjoyed getting mucky and climbing the frames and sliding down some high adrenaline slides (I am saying high adrenaline as I nearly fell off the side!).

The grounds are beautiful and we enjoyed having a wander around and a spot of lunch. We are going back again to make use of the 50p entry (Tuesdays in June) next week and the week after! I am also probably going to invest in a season ticket as compared to some local attractions it is quite reasonable and under 4's are free anyway.

We have also enjoyed one of our local parks, it is such a great space and normally quite quiet too, apart from the tractors, but they are a welcome addition! Mr Magoo can safely go round and round the little track on his scooter and be seen at all times whilst I watch Mrs Magee on the other equipment. This is great as everyone is a winner. Yesterday the weather was great and we could relax there with Grandma so much so that we are going back again for a little birthday picnic!

Lastly in this post we visited Lilleshall Abbey again due to a recommendation by a friend (thank you Mrs W!), it is a stunning place, especially in the sunshine. Mrs Magee and I met up with some of our Mummy friends and their children and we enjoyed exploring the ruins and eating a picnic. I will let the photos do the talking! Bye for now, I am off for a date with some wellington boots!

Jurassic Park and Indoor Sandcastles!

Bookmarking and 'liking' pages on the internet and Facebook which have fun recipes and ideas on is a common occurrence. Actually remembering them and trying them out is less frequent! I have made home made playdough before and it was great, I only made half the quantity and it was loads and it lasted well past the 3 months it said and was probably more like 2 years! The colour had faded somewhat though! So one rainy day I decided to make a new batch so Magoo could play with it alongside his new dinosaurs. I used this recipe (I love the Imagination Tree website, so many fabulous ideas). I added green food dye as we felt it was the best suited colour and we got to work. Magee and Magoo loved playing with it, especially Magoo though, he really got in to it and was content for ages. Magee lasted a little while and then enjoyed chucking hers on the floor!

Another recipe I had wanted to try was Cloud Dough so we gave this a whirl too as it looked super easy. It was! So we had lots of fun experimenting with it and making sandcastles and using cake and jelly moulds. Then obviously they had to be destroyed by a dinosaur!

Imagine, imagine, imagine!

Having a good imagination is so great and really opens the door to whole new worlds. I go through fits and starts about worrying about the amount of TV the littles watch. It isn't on all day but neither is it limited to an hour a day. You feel bad when you hear about people that have banned the TV altogether but then not so bad when others have it on all day. Like most things in life I think you should do stuff in moderation and not feel guilty! For me the TV is great to keep them occupied whilst I need to start dinner or do something where they can't join in or help as there just isn't the room. I also put my hands up to using it sometimes to give me some peace for ten minutes so I can do something I want to do or just need some time out! We will sit and watch things together too and we'll talk about what's going on or join in with the counting/letters etc if it is something like Numtums or Alphablocks etc. Magoo is at the age now where he likes certain films and it has been really nice to sit and watch Toy Story or Cars with him and see how much he gets in to them. It certainly doesn't curtail his imagination afterwards either as he doesn't just reenact parts of the film he plays his own games with the different characters. Magee has an active imagination too and loves 'cooking' you things or playing cafes/shops with Magoo.

They made me laugh today as they went in to the yard and Magoo picked up part of his hotwheels track and asked me what pizza I would like! Magee copied and they were soon taking my orders and 'cooking' me up different pizzas with all sorts of elaborate toppings! The only pieces of equipment they had were the 'pizza peels' (a cricket stump and the track) and the 'ovens' (garden chairs), the rest was all made up! We had lots of different toppings including standard pizza express flavours with some added extras like cat crisps, strawberries and chocolate. Yes that was cat crisps! I determined that these were not made from cats or cat food but were cat shaped! Thank goodness!

The Gorgeous Gorge.

So Magee has been poorly this week with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease, we have had it before so knew the score more or less and that you just wait it out and have to get on with it basically and you aren't told to stay away from others! She was so, so grumpy last weekend, which is very out of sorts for her as she is usually very happy. We weren't sure what was up really but she was sleeping badly and was in with me whilst Mr Y was in with Magoo. Could it be her tummy? Could it be her teeth (her amber necklace had broken so was that related?)? The spots outed themselves anyway and a trip to the docs just to check confirmed HFM. We needed to get out of the house as they were both a bit fed up and the weather was beautiful. So I had already packed my well worn Ironbridge Gorge Museums Passport in anticipation that they would want to go out. We have used it so many times and I have had a passport for the last 2 years as it is fabulous value for money seeing as the children are still free until they are 5. So I will definitely be renewing in April! Anyway, we headed to Coalport China Museum and had a great time as we hadn't visited that particular museum before. They are set up well for children and we followed a trail around looking for animals to tick off on our clipboard. It is still very much a whistle stop tour as they don't want to hang around looking at stuff for long and are always eager to see what is in the next room! We found all of the animals though, apart from a pesky rat that was hiding in the dark where we missed it! Magee and Magoo enjoyed pretending to have tea and Magoo liked rebuilding the kilns and other buildings on the map in the children's area. The kilns were amazing and a little spooky! The sounds of the 'workers' made us all jump in the second kiln! We finished by walking along the canal to see the ducks, have a look at the Hay Incline and walk over the bridge over the river Severn. We also found the Tar Tunnel which we'll visit in the summer.

Tuesday saw us visit Jackfield Tile Museum after picking Magoo up from nursery. I knew he would be tired but he was keen to go somewhere new. So we called in and had a good look around. So many beautiful tiles and it was interesting seeing the recreated tube station, complete with train noises!!! That really confused Magoo, he was sure there was a train around the corner! Even after I thought I had explained that it was just sound effects and not real he still asked me 5 minutes later if the train would be around the corner!! Wednesday we met up with Magoo's best friend and had a play in the park and then went on to Enginuity. This is the museum we visit most often and is our rainy day fixture! They love it there as it is so hands on and as they get older they begin to understand more about what they actually see there. The favourite sections are the water part (goes without saying really!, the recycling sorting machine, the bead tipping truck, the penny squashing machine and the soft play area. It's a great museum as it isn't too big and normally I've found that you don't notice the school groups too much although it was the busiest I had ever seen it on this visit! We also love Blists Hill Victorian Town but didn't visit it this week. I'll have to do another blog post just on that one I think!! Magoo and I ended our week by popping in to Ironbridge for a milkshake and hot chocolate, just the two of us as that is a rarity really. We called in to Truffles and were impressed with our choices and Magoo loved the extra goodies he got with his drink! Magee was having fun at my parents' and Magoo was in need of some time with just me as he'd been feeling a bit left out I think with Magee being under the weather and being very needy! So we had a lovely time and will definitely be doing that more often. We stopped off at Queenies for some delicious cupcakes to take home and enjoyed tucking in to them after dinner! We are so lucky to have Ironbridge so close and it offers so much to do. I must remember to take lots of photos next time and put them on here!