Arsenal Youth Team

Well today we caught a very rare glimpse of some exceptional talent training at the Arsenal Youth Training Camp. First off in their training sessions was a long warm up run around the track.

After the warm-up it was time to do some stretching out on the field.

With the warm-up and stretching out of the way it was time to get down and dirty on the ball skills.

Its been a while since I included a video on the blog. So here is some sneak video footage of that Arsenal Youth Team training session.

After all that exercise it was time to have a chill out for a while.

After football training we took the boys for a nice walk around Langdon Hills. Joshua was a little star and walked for miles up and down hills. He was a little nervous around some of the dogs over the park. Also we have discovered that Joshua has a remarkable skill for spotting planes!!! He seems to be able to spot the smallest plane on the brink of the earths atmosphere with no trouble at all. Roll on the May Air Show - he should love that.

During all this time Brandon was awake and enjoyed having a good look around the park and keeping guard on Joshua's football.

Joshua even decided to help Mummy out by pushing Brandon in the buggy.

Dad foolishly taught Joshua how to play with sticks - stick and stones............

And then as if that wasn't bad enough - gave him a quick 101 lesson in tree climbing.

After about an hour and a half the little guys legs finally tired and it was time to ride high on Dad's shoulders.

And after all of the days excitement and the fresh air - Brandon was still wide awake once we got home.

Olympic Playpen

Well with two children and Tina on basic maternity pay the credit crunch is taking its toll. So it is unfortunate that Joshua's nursery has been cut down to 3 days a week for now. This gives Tina the difficult task of managing both boys a couple of days a week. So in order to help out a little we invested in this playpen so that she has somewhere safe to put one of the boys whilst attending to the other. As you can see below Joshua seems to enjoy just playing in the playpen. Speaking of nursery, Joshua made Mummy a nice little jewelery box at nursery this week.


Joshua's climbing skills are developing all the time. His latest antics include climbing on the dining room chairs (see below), sliding across the patio table, climbing onto the conservatory window seal, and worst of all, he has found away past our make shift stair gate to get into the loft conversion!!!


Below is a picture of Joshua, Brandon and Mia which Tina took when they all went to SeaLife Centre last week.


Joshua is always very keen to give his little brother cuddles and kisses. Slowly he is learning to be gentle, but he does end up saying sorry a lot!


At the weekend Joshua was playing with his cars and desperately tried to hand one to Brandon. He seemed completely confused as to why Brandon would not take the car and play with him. Still at least he is prepared to share his toys and not sit on them all like my elder sister did with me!


A rare picture of Dad sitting with two tired boys (thumb in the mouth is always a sign Joshua is ready for a nap).

As you can see from above Brandon is getting bigger and bigger. He is now 12 weeks old and has finally topped Joshua's birth weight as he is around 10lb now. Can you believe that Joshua turned a year and half this week!!!

Wat Tyler Park

As Brandon grows ever bigger he is starting to fit into some of his new outfits which have been bought by various people. Here is a nice little suit bought by Nanny King, aptly labelled "Boss of the family"!


The boss dictated that we had a family day out on Easter Monday and therefore while the turkey was cooking away in the oven we headed off to Wat Tyler Park for a little stroll around. Joshua walked absolutely everywhere (well ran I should say) and loved playing in the toddler park. After expelling all that energy the nursery reported back that today he had a lunchtime nap lasting 2 hours 45 mins. Guess the little guy needed some R&R after the busy Easter weekend.

New House

Well as promised here are the latest pictures from Pixi Foto. These are mainly of Brandon since we was using his Bounty voucher. However we did try and get a nice photo of the two boys together. The quality is not great as these are scanned from small proof pictures. Once we have the masters I will scan them at a better quality for anyone who would like a copy.

Also since spring has arrived and summer is rapidly approaching then this weekends objective was to get some garden toys for Joshua and Brandon. Whilst in Toys R Us Joshua fell in love with this play house and would not come out for blood or money. When we tried to leave the shop he really went into a sulk/cry. So we decided to buy it for him, luckily we got a real bargain at almost half price and therefore decided to buy them the rocker as well.

The rocker can take either 1, 2 or 3 people at a time so Joshua is more than happy using it on his own at the moment. Then when Brandon is a bit older (or when Mia or someone comes over) then they can go end to end. And of necessary someone can also sit in the middle making it a 3 way rocker.

Good Friday

Yesterday's blog was all about Brandon and his swimming, so today is primarily all about Joshua. Since it is Good Friday I decided to try Joshua with his first ever soft boiled egg with soldiers. He soon got the idea of dipping the soldiers into the egg, but then gave up and started eating directly out of the egg cup.

And after all that fun this was the aftermath.................

After breakfast we hit the garden to decorate some hard boiled eggs and colour some Easter egg colouring books. Joshua seemed to love doing this - although he did manage to break a few eggs and got more ink on himself and his clothes than on the eggs!

As you can see he decorated his hand far better than he decorated the eggs!!!!!!

For lunch today Joshua also tried kiwi fruit for the first time and absolutely loved that. All in all a good day. In the afternoon we took Brandon to Pixie Foto for his first photo shoot. Check in tomorrow for some pictures from the shoot.