Tots100 Christmas Party weekend at Butlins

When it comes to holidays I admit I was a SNOB. Butlins ! no not for me.  All that Hi De Hi and organised activities for hundreds of people.  

How wrong was I ! All this time my family and I have been missing out.

This weekend I had the opportunity to take the family to Butlins Bognor Regis and to drive there in a brand spanking new Kia Cee'd car (more on this later) all thanks to the totally hugable   Sally Whittle. Sally organised the bloggers Tots100 Christmas party weekend for an unmissable price of just £100 for two days in the Ocean Hotel for a family of five. Over the years I have stayed in some amazing hotels including Disney hotels in Florida and the Ocean hotel more than holds its own.

You are met by cheerful, red coated staff as you drive into the complex. The ocean has its own car park with ample car parking, although at the weekend its probably best to arrive as early as you can. You can't officially check into your room until 12 noon, but you can still take advantage of all the facilities if you arrive early.

Although I was there for the Tots100 bloggers Christmas Party I thought it was just too good a deal to pass up for the family, so we arrived on Friday to make the most of the weekend.

The Ocean Hotel

The Lobby

Truly a room with a view - our balcony view

How thrilled were we when we saw all the space we had in the family rooms

The children's twin bedroom was funky and perfect, even had its own tv !

You can have coloured disco lights that change colour above and under your bed and in the bathroom or if you prefer just normal white ones.  Guess which were a hit with us.  Lying in the bath watching the bubbles change colour kept me amused for hours !

The boys were desperate to get to the Splash Water world but sadly when we popped over there at 4.30 it was just closing.  I will say this was one of the only disappointing things about the complex.  The opening and closing times.  Most shops, activities, Splash Waterworld etc don't open until 10 am.  Now if you have  children, which the majority of people I would imagine do have, you need activities  available from about 8am and certainly breakfast.  There were long queues for the hotel restaurants first thing, so I would highly recommend you take your own breakfast cereals, fruit etc and remember to take bowls and spoons.  saves lots of money and hanging around.

Most of the activities on site are included in the price, which really helps, but you do need to plan and book early.  Most of the popular events get booked up quickly.  We still managed to fit in lots of fun stuff.  The funfair, the playpark, the beach, The splash waterworld was the biggest hit, lots of great water slides and plenty of space to play.  Slightly over cautious on height restrictions for smaller children but apart from that it was the biggest hit of the weekend for the boys.

Lots of great shows and entertainment

Bjjorn the Bear was a massive hit and a real wonder to see .

So much to see and do we can highly recommend you book a break at Butlins.  Thank you so much to Sally for the opportunity and to all the amazing staff at Butlins for making our weekend so fab!

Onto the point of the weekend, about 35 bloggers met up in the afternoon for coffee, cake, mince pies and a little highly competitive, fighting and present stealing (yes I mean you Mrs Shoe Blogger ) , sorry I mean tree decorating competition.    Our team didn't win, even though we decorated our tree in reds and silver and made many references to Billy Butlin.  Hey ho, those judges had NO TASTE !  Sorry for lack of pictures, I forgot my camera, but you can see our teams and trees on the TOTS100 facebook page  

The evening kicked off in bar Rosso with lovely cocktails and trying desperately to put faces to blog names ! Then onto Turners Restaurant for dinner.  I sat with the totally gorgeous Kate who blogs at WitWitWoo  Wendy from InsideTheWendyHouse  and her equally lovely sister Paula from QwertyMum   a lovely evening of laughs and some unease when I tweeted about the stroppy waiter to then find Butlins are so hot on twitter the restaurant manager came out to tell us the waiter had been told to cheer up !  I was mortified, so much so I went into the kitchens to give him a big hug, visions of him being sacked running through my head.  Oh dear, wine and twitter Nooooooooo !

We had a wonderful evening and it was so lovely to sit and chat with these lovely ladies.  Once again, many thanks Sally for all your hard work, you put on a great event.

We were also really fortunate to be offered a Kia Cee'd for the weekend.  It arrived promptly at 9.30 am on Friday morning, brand spanking new, sparkly clean and delivered by the nicest smiley man ever ! After a quick familiarisation and packing of the boot we were off. 

 What a dream of a car to drive, after years of driving a petrol guzzling old banger this was heaven on earth.  A diesel car, it was delivered to us with 3/4 tank of diesel and when we handed it back on Monday morning after a 320 mile round trip it still had a 1/4 tank !  amazing fuel consumption.  Really made my husband and I see how cost effective this car would be for us as a family.  It was spacious and felt like real quality inside.  Not at all what I expected.  You really feel like you are driving a luxury car.  There are all sorts of extras take a look at the specification  We were totally blown away by this car and if we could afford a new one we would seriously go back to this one.

Thank you so much to Kia UK for the opportunity to drive this car, we loved it.

Family Football Festival

We were recently invited by Netmums to go along to see Bristol City play at their home ground of Ashton Gate. This is part of the Family Football Festival taking place during the months of October, November and December.  Follow the link to their facebook page and go see what its all about.  It's a great initiative designed to combine the excitement of a football match with activities and events which would appeal to children and families.

This was the twins first ever football match and only my second !  Daddy is a seasoned Birmingham City supporter, but we won't hold that against him.  We set off early to make sure we arrived in Bristol in plenty of time and even managed to find a craft fair to have a mooch around beforehand along with some amazing wall art !

Painted on the side of the Tobacco factory Theatre, amazing and just a little bit freaky.

Arriving at the ground we were on the list for on site parking, feeling just like VIP's we drove into our allotted space.    As we were a little early we decided to have a hot dog and a walk around the ground.  Jarvis, who is fast becoming football obsessed found a souvenir in a bin !

Then onto the Festival part of the day.  Designed to encourage more families to attend matches, a large hanger was filled with local family friendly companies :including  Bristol Zoo, Noah's Ark Zoo farm, Heart Radio, Frankie & Bennies, Bristol Aquarium and more.   Each had informative stands with live animals or interactive activities for the children to get involved with and all offering discount vouchers to their attractions. 

There was also face painting, bouncy castle and beat the goalie.

The twins meeting a real live dragon ! 

The Boa didn't feel like they expected it to ! 

Lots of experiments for Milo the "Geek" boy "my favourite part of the day mummy"

FACE PAINTING From Heart Radio

Scrumpy the Bristol Mascot

Tickets !

Daddy said the BCFC Stood for Birmingham City Football Club, erm nooooo daddy don't say that too loudly whilst sat amongst all this red and white of the Bristol City supporters.

One for the girls *cough*  David James - goalkeeper !

and finally some football .......

We had a great day out at Bristol City, I must admit I wasn't too thrilled initially at the thought of going to watch a football match but I can honestly say with all the activities, the wonderful atmosphere in the stadium, all the half time entertainment from local schools, teams, dancers, competition winners etc it really did make for an enjoyable family day out.  We were seated in the family area which was really friendly, everybody had seats (and stayed in them for the most part, except of course when a goal was scored).  The twins loved it and it was lovely to go as a family and see so many people involved in sport.  We will certainly be taking the twins to see our local team play from now on.

Many thanks to Netmums & Bristol City for offering us this opportunity.

I was paid and  received family entry to the event.  All content, views expressed and photographs are my own.

Growing our own

We are finally nearing the end with the renovations on the house and have even started making plans for our garden.  Although not in a poor condition when we moved in, it has been left mainly as was, untouched or tended save for the occasional mowing of the "lawn" and trimming of bushes. 

We are lucky to have a lovely old apple tree and a lot of the bushes and shrubs look like they may well have been in residence since the original owners took occupancy of the house.  We are only the third family to have lived here.  There is evidence in the garden that there might have once been a greenhouse and a path to a back gate.  Neither now exist.

My dream is to clear out the bushes above to make room for us to have a shed next to the garage and then a greenhouse for growing vegetables and over wintering plants etc.  Of course this is just a dream at the moment.  Not much chance of us affording a shed or a greenhouse but until we can, we have made a start in a little corner of the garden ....

We will be planting tomatoes, peppers and hopefully potatoes soon.  Watch this space x

This is a sponsored post but it is about something we are actually doing with our home.

I've changed my plans for the Easter holidays.

When No1 son was 18 months old I became a single mum (through choice).  I needed to earn a living but  my mother lived in Cheshire and my son's biological father & his parents were refusing to help us in any way, shape or form.  I was desperate, a friend of mine at the time said she was sure her parents would be happy to help me out with some childcare.  I had met her parents they were the kind of people that you instantly take to.  They had a warm, loving family home always filled with family, friends and grandchildren. Nothing was too much trouble, food was always on offer and they welcomed us into their fold as if we were family. 

Nanna Jill and Uncle John as they became known looked after Jacob for me two days a week for a year, they refused payment of any kind, but I found ways (giving them M & S vouchers etc). When Jacob was 2.5 he moved onto kindergarten and a new chapter of our life began. 

Over the years we haven't seen Nanna Jill & Uncle John as much as we should have considering how generous they had been to us.  We saw them from time to time and around town.  They had terrible tragedy in their life when two of their grandchildren died (one as a toddler and one as a teenager ) but they were always positive about life whenever I saw them.  A few weeks ago John died after a short battle with cancer.  I was told by a friend of the family and asked if I wanted to go to his funeral.  I felt I couldn't go, that somehow it was a bit like being an ambulance chaser as I hadn't kept in touch with them as I should have.  I felt, I feel, guilt that I wasn't the friend I should have been to them considering how kind they were to me when I most needed help.  What would I say.  I realise now it was my feelings I was concerned about.  I should have gone to the funeral to pay my respects to a kind, generous and funny man.   Yesterday I saw Nanna Jill in the park.  As she walked towards me it dawned on me who she was, almost changed beyond recognition.  She grabbed me in a big hug and we talked for a long, long time about John, how she felt, what had happened, so many words.  Her parting words to me " tell each other every day how much you love them".

I was also with another very special lady at the weekend who has recently lost her mother and is grieving terribly, because we were involved in a busy event and had our children, there never seemed the right moment to talk to her about her mum and I was scared that if I picked the wrong moment to mention mum she might be upset.  I should have gone ahead anyway. 

I come from a really small family I have been blessed to get this far in my life without loosing a close member of my immediate family.  I can't imagine the pain it causes.  So instead of putting the twins in club next week during the school holidays I have changed my plans.  We are going to Cheshire to visit Grandma.

I have this sign in my home, I try to live by it every day.

Cinema Paradiso

We watch a LOT of films in our house.  It is one of the few "pastimes" I can still share with all the members of my family together or as individuals.  When I was asked if I would like to review Cinema Paradiso free DVD Rental  for three months I was only to happy to give it ago.

 

I would not usually go for this type of service, receiving DVD's in the post and then having to go to the effort of posting them back, always seemed like a chore, preferring to select a film from the payview channels on my tv instead, but this can get very expensive and we have to limit ourselves.  I have to say this is a much cheaper option (obviously free during the trial) at only £8.16  per month for four rentals when the trial ends.

The website is clear, well set out and really easy to navigate, you can select by language (subtitled in an endless list of languages), hot lists, top 100, collections, award winners, or film explorer.

Under film explorer you can select by new, all, coming soon or in cinemas.

There are over 20 categories of Genre, including : children & family, classic, Indian cinema, adult it goes on and on. Something to suit everybody.

To start receiving discs, I had to create a list of films we wanted to watch. When you find a particular title either by searching through the catalogue or choosing from the collections, click the 'Add' button to add title to your list. You can add unlimited number of disc to your rental list.  Then on a regular bases top up your list with new titles to ensure you are sent your priority titles on time. I recommend keeping your list updated with about 25 titles to make sure you get the best possible allocation.

Once you receive your membership confirmation email, you then are sent your first disc or discs in the post.  They arrived in flimsy white paper envelopes, I was amazed by this .  You open down the perforated section and the disc was inside a plastic cover.  Both films worked perfectly well, I suppose I expected them not to after the trauma of the royal mail !  The envelope is a clever little design, its reversible with a return address on the inside cover so after you watch the film, you just pop it back in the envelope, remove the self seal strip, stick it down and FREEPOST it back.  Now as I go to the post office nearly every day, its proved no hassle at all to return the discs.  Even if you don't it would be really easy to just plop in a postbox on the morning school run or on your way to work.

You can keep the discs as long as you like, there are no late fees YIPEEE! Being a busy working mum and family this is where I was always falling foul of video clubs. 

Once Cinema Paradiso receive your disc back they then send you another selection from your list.  Ours usually arrive the next or second day after we post back!  Really quick, efficient, no hassle service.

I would highly recommend you take a look, only one little downside I would mention is the choice needs to be bigger, but I can appreciate this will probably improve as the service grows.

Do we expect too much ?

This weekend we were really lucky to be guests of Vosene at London zoo (post to follow).  We had a wonderful time on Saturday and were even given overnight accomodation in a Marriot Hotel enabling us the opprtunity to take the boys to see some of the sights of London and visit the Natural History Museum on Sunday, a wonderful Mother's Day treat for me.

 As we live on a very limited budget, we didn't have much money for extras etc, but we made some cut backs in the months before the planned trip so that we would have some extra cash for food and travel around London etc.  We had a wonderful time travelling on the underground, the twins had a ride on their first double decker bus, we saw lots of London's top landmarks and finished our trip at the Natural History Museum.  I can remember visiting the museum over 35 years ago on a school trip and the wonder of the size and majesty of the place.  The twins too were blown away by it, although it has updated considerably since my last visit!  Sadly, by about 1.30pm they had had enough, My husband and I were hoping we could pop into the V & A next door, but the twins were just too tired.  Milo had been up in the night at the hotel crying and complaining of stomach pains, he was hot and over tired from all the excitement so we decided perhaps it was best if we headed home.

I checked our return tickets to discover that we did not have open returns but were booked on the 7pm train from Paddington to Exeter ! I accept all responsibility for this, I am sure that its is the train time that I requested from the PR company.  On previous occasions We have caught earlier trains than those stipulated on the ticket and the guards have never had a problem.  We arrived at Paddington and boarded a 2.pm fast train to Exeter.  Milo was crying and very hot, all of us were very tired.  We settled into unreserved seats and then the voice of the guard came over the speaker advising that if you were travelling with tickets for a later train you must disembark!  I began to panic, visions of being manhandled off the train by burly policemen at Reading, like you hear on the news.  So I went in search of the guard, explained that we had tickets for a later train but that we were really tired, had a poorly son and just wanted to get home could we please stay on the train! NO! she barked back, your tickets are for 7pm you must wait for that train.  I pleaded, NO ! You must get off, I have 6 yr old twins, its such a long time to wait, we will stand up in the corridor if you let us stay on.  NO! get off now, the train is about to leave or you risk being forceably removed from the train!  The guards name was KAREN ! I told her, her name was the only thing she had in common with me and ran off down the platform to get my family off the train. 

Left standing on the platform with one hysterical twin, one weeping twin and one embarrassed teenager.  I was furious!  Where did my honesty get me.  Off to the ticket office to see the ticket office supervisor, we were met with the same reply.  You can pay £100 and we can let you on the next train.  I don't have £100 I replied, well you will have to wait!

We tried two more times to get on the next two trains and were met with the same answer, one guard even admitted it was at his discretion whether he let us on the train and overlooked the time on the ticket, but still they would not let us on. 

The wonderful PR lady Holly from Vosene had seen my tweets and called me offering for the company to pay the money so that we could catch an earlier train, back to the ticket office I went and told them the story. NO! can't take a payment over the telephone !

By this time I was so exhausted with trying, I gave in.  We had 3 hours left to wait until our train at 7pm.  Holly called me again and offered to send pizza to the station ! Two wonderful London based twitter people offered to come down to the station to keep us company or for us to pop to their homes for an hour or so, How fab was that !  I have spent my life trying to be the best and kindest person I can be, I teach my children the same values, what examples of kindness they witnessed yesterday!  Some of the very best in human nature and some of the very worst!

My question though is, did I have a right to expect to get a train 5 hours earlier than I was booked on ?  even though there was space ?   Technically First Great Western, the train company wasn't doing anything wrong by insisting I stick to the train I was booked on.  Do we expect too much in these days of the ME! ME! ME! Society ?

One last thing, when we finally boarded our train at 7pm (which was a slow one to Exeter and was over an hour longer journey).  Our tickets were not checked at all by a guard and there were people sitting in every seat, most of them had not reserved their seats and they just got up and moved when the rightful owners came onto the train!

Gifted People

You know how it is, you need to buy a gift for somebody at short notice or they are the person who  "has everything", you panic and buy a gift voucher from the nearest store. Not very inspiring and often left to languish in a drawer unredeemed.

 I remember many years ago buying my husband a very expensive Horticultural Experience (which could only be redeemed at a certain place and had an end date) I thought it was the perfect gift for him.  Sadly he didn't, it was never used and £150 went down the drain ! Shocking now !

I was really interested to take a look at http://www.giftedpeople.co.uk/ a Scottish Company that specialises in ethically produced gifts and experiences from local Scottish makers and traders.  This does not mean their site is limited only to those lucky folk who live in Scotland though.  There are many beautiful items available to gift to friends, family and loved ones.    I must admit, it would be great if they did go nationwide I would LOVE to be gifted the Ironing experience !

With many options on the flexibility of the gift from ;

E-vouchers -  Your Order -  They are sent to you and copied to the gift provider. You can specify that you want the gift sent to the gift recipient and send them a copy of the e-voucher so that they can get in touch with the gift provider.

or

Gold Gift Vouchers are sent to your gift recipient. They then contact the gift provider.

You are sure to find something to suit the person who you are gifting and if they are not happy (we all know one of those people) then they have the flexibility to change the gift themselves.

The site is really easy to navigate and offers great treats like :

Second time Weddings - let them choose something to do together
Gifts for people by their Character
Pamper sessions - for men as well as women
Male Grooming
Learning Gifts
Beautiful Arts and Crafts
Gourmet Chocolates

The list is endless, a site full of different, thoughtful presents to suit all budgets.

If you are looking for something other than the usual boring bunch of flowers for your mum for Mothers Day pop over and take a look, there is sure to be something to delight her on this lovely site.

This is not a sponsored post but I was lucky enough to be offered a voucher to spend on the site and will update this post once I have decided what to buy and completed my gift experience.