Brooklands Museum

Today we had an outstanding day out at Brooklands Automotive and Aviation Museum. The weather was stunning, the boys were both well behaved and we all had good fun. So enjoy the blog update.

Once through the entrance Joshua quickly spotted an F1 car and suddenly all you could here whispering around your feet were the words "drive drive drive". Needless to say the next 10 mins were spent standing around whilst Joshua pretended to do a few laps of the old Brooklands track.

After the F1 car we headed straight over and booked Tina and Joshua on a flight on Concorde (what a bargain for £4).

Here they are boarding the plane.

A farewell wave to Dad and Brother...........

And then at the end of the flight.............

This may look like an innocent picture of Joshua standing in front of a pair of Concorde's wheels. However if you zoom in on his left hand you will notice he is proudly holding a bolt which he pulled out of the wheel assembly (sorry Brooklands!!!!!).

As always you can guarantee that Joshua will spot all the "nee nahs"......... here is the first.

For the next one we managed to get Brandon in the picture as well. More over Fireman Sam, there is a new crew in town..........

Me and my boys posing in front of a few of the plane exhibits.

Meet Pilot Joshua King reporting for duty. Yes his little back pack is his new body harness with a wrist leash which we were trying today for the first time. I have to say it worked very well and Joshua did not seem to mind using it. So no fear of losing the little guy when he does off for one of his "run run run's".

Pilot Joshua takes his Dad and Brother on a flight around a hanger. I guess we must have been distracting the pilot as he turned around to give us a telling off. Please fasten your seat belts whilst the sign is illuminated.

Mummy taking Joshua on a tour through a Wellington bomber. What an awesome plane.

Here are two of the awesome display cars. The Napier Railton and the Bluebird.

The panel behind Joshua has a few switches which allow him to control the propellers in the background. Joshie loved playing with these, "spin spin spin".

So lets get down to the nitty gritty as to why we were at Brooklands. Well James May was there today filming part of his new Toy Story serious. They were going to break the World Record for the longest ever Scalextrix track of 2.75 miles around the olds Brooklands race track. To give you an idea of the scale - below is a picture of one of the banked corners and the black line through the middle is the scalextric track!!!!

In addition to the World Record track they had organised a few other Scalextric events for visitors to participate in. So this was Dad's opportunity to introduce Joshua to the World of Scalextric's. The two main events were a Scalextric drag race and a hill climb up the famous Brooklands Hill.

Anyway after a week of hunting around prior to the event I managed to get Joshua a Lightning McQueen Scalextric car. So off we headed to the drag strip.......... here is me and Joshie at the start line with controller in hand.

And here is Joshua's Lightning car all ready at the start line. The car we was racing was seriously modified and even engineered to pull wheelies off the line. Needless to say poor Lightning got creamed in all 3 drag races. Oddly enough Joshua burst out crying after the first race - we are not sure whether it was the speed, maybe a little reaction from the controller, or just the shock of seeing his beloved car disappear down the track. But after calming him down he was fine for the 2nd and 3rd races...........

Here is Joshua proudly holding his first ever Scalextric car. Good luck in trying to prize that out of his hands.....

Like Father Like Son............."run run run"

Joshua has got used to watching his Daddy race over the last year and a half (both bike and on foot) and recognises anyone who is running or cycling when you are out. When we are out with Joshua he will quite often burst into a little run himself whilst shouting out "run run run". Anyway today I competed in a 5 mile Army Challenge with a 15kg rucksack on the Dunton test track. As you can see Joshua was soon copying his Dad and giving it some "run run run"!


Here is the little dude claiming all the glory. Looks like a scene from Chariots of Fire with his arms held aloft.


Millie, Joaben and Joshua were ganging up on poor Brandon wondering why the little guy would not join in the running. Perhaps I should have used Brandon in the harness as my 15kg's of ballast.

What are these 3 scheming together now???????????

Give Us A Bud..........

Is this just the most adorable little face ever....................?

This morning we took the boys to Wat Tyler park with the intention of giving them a ride down to the Marina on the mini railway. We started off with a nice walk through the park and the children's play area. Brandon enjoyed his view from the harness rather than the pram.

Land of the little people - can you spot a Joshie and a Brandon in this picture?

Time for some nursery rhymes - row, row, row your boat...............

Make a wish time.........Joshua enjoyed throwing a few coins into the wishing well.

Then it was into the play area - As you can see Joshua got up some serious speed on the slide and loved falling off the end!

Me and the boys and a big tyre swing.

Eventually we made it onto the miniature railway.

Joshua sat on his own seat very well for the full duration of the ride.

Joshua has learnt "tunnels" now. When ever we are out in the car - every bridge you go under is a tunnel. You can see the look on his little face as the train goes through the tunnel.

On the way back we swapped roles and I took Brandon and Tina sat with Joshua.

After lunch and a nap the boys were off to a pirate themed birthday party at their friends house, Millie and Joaben. They both had a great time and came away with some prizes and a balloon etc. Here is a nice picture of me and the boys chilling.

And then once Joshua went off to play pirates - me and Brandon enjoyed a nice Bud. I think the cold bottle must have felt nice on his new teeth.

1st Tooth (at last!)

As promised - holding his bottle.

Brandon is turning out to be a little human dustbin - completely the opposite of Joshua who is very temperamental with his food. The weaning process has gone so well that he is now enjoying homemade fish pies, chicken cock-a-leekie, lamb hotpot etc.etc. His weight is now over 15lb which in theory means he could potentially go into the same size nappies as Joshua!!!

Brandon is showing no signs of crawling and is doing very little rolling. He does not particularly like sitting on your lap - but he loves being on his feet. Put him in his door bouncer or walker and he is as happy as Larry. Even when we take him swimming he loves standing up in the baby pool and feeling out his feet. He is definitely getting stronger on his legs.

It looks like Brandon's lower teeth are finally breaking through - seems like he has been dribbling and drawling for about 3 months with no sign of any teeth. But the lower front tooth has now broken skin.

Joshua's speech just goes from strength to strength these days and he is picking up so many words and understanding so many sentences. Already we are very mindful of our p's and q's as he copies everything you say. What is really nice is that at bed time when you read him a story you can now ask him basic questions about the book, such as what colour is so and so?, where is the dog?, where is the tractor? etc.etc. and he answers.

Physically Joshua is learning a lot as well. He can pretty much do a two footed jump now, he can quite easily walk up and down the stairs without holding on, kicks footballs, throws darts (garden ones not sharp ones) and he is fearless at jumping in the deep end of a swimming pool on his own. I am trying to teach him to stand on one leg to help his balance but whenever we do it he sits on the floor and grabs his foot to lift it up!!!

Clip Clop

Check these pictures out. Joshua pinching the keys to Daddy's car and going off for a spin with a blond!!! The blond in question is little Sophia who lives just around the corner from us. The two of them had a blast playing around in the car for about half an hour or so. Fortunately Sophia has a 3 week old baby sister so Brandon also has a new little play mate.

So why is this blog update called "clip clop". Well Joshua seems to love horses and is always playing with the two toy horses in his animal set. Pretty much daily we have horses come past our house and Joshua recognises the sound and goes running out to the front garden shouting clip clop. Well tonight the horses were making their usual circuit past our house and the kind man who owns them (Brian) pulled over and offered Joshua a ride around the block. Not sure who enjoyed this the most out of me and Joshua, but what a treat for the little guy. When we got home his comments were, "more clip clop".

Despite Joshua's fascination with horses he was not brave enough to touch them and kept his distance.