Nan's Birthday in Paradise Wildlife Park

A bit of a catch up blog from a week ago today when had a lovely day out at Paradise Wildlife Park to celebrate the boy's nanny's birthday. Tina was asked if she could do an extra day at work which just so happened to fall in the Easter holiday and on my Mum's birthday. So I took the day off to get our new car and then head off to the zoo.

Auntie Lisa, Joshua and Brandon.

The entrance to Paradise Wildlife Park is a parents worst nightmare. In order to get to see the animals you need to first pass the indoor play area, then the outdoor play area and sandpit, then some arcade ride-on machines and then the bouncy castle / helter skelta before you get to the animals. Needless to say it is quite an achievement to actually make it into the zoo part of the park. 

Joshua and Brandon driving their safari jeep.

After Longleat Safari last year, one of the first questions the boys asked me was if the naughty monkeys would be in a cage this time instead of trashing our car!

Which one is the cheeky monkey?

The boys are forever getting more and more confident with animals and were quite happy to hand feed a donkey.

This is one of the rarest creatures that the zoo has caged up. Apparently there is only one of these in the entire world.

Little Brandon looking on and watching Auntie Nicky's favourite animals - the otters.

Look at this beautiful pair of Jaguars.

No zoo trip and related blog are complete without a picture of a Meerkat. One of the boys favourite ted's is still their meerkats that they got from Tropical Wings.

Penguins..........I think the boys were expect them to surf like in the movie "Surfs Up".

The boys then had a nice little ride around the zoo on the back of this tractor trailer.

Daddy's favourite animal - the alligator.

And Brandon's favourite of the day - a big yellow snake.

I was lucky enough to get this stunning picture of a white tiger at full stretch throwing its head back. It must have stood a good 8 or 9ft high.

A Joshua meerkat.

And a Brandon Meerkat.

As well as feeding the donkeys we got to feed these lovely zebras. I think thanks to Madagascar the boys recognise zebras as friendly animals and had no trouble feeding these.

I think the boys were hinting that they want to go back to digger land again.

Since we last went to Paradise Wildlife Park they have expanded the children's area quite significantly and added a sand play area, a building brick area, and a ride on Thomas train. So there is absolutely plenty there to fill a whole day. 

Joshua and Brandon were mixing the brick play with the sand play.

Using the bricks as sand mouldings.

Clearly all my beach time with the boys is paying off as Joshua remembers how to bury his feet.

Brandon tried but just preferred flicking it everywhere (including his hair, his ears, his eyes, down his back and so on........

I owe Auntie Lisa for once showing the boys how to make snow angels! They remembered this and found it funny to make sand angels. Hence they were absolutely smothered in sand. 

Brandon loved playing on the bouncy castle whilst Joshua was up and down like a yo-yo on the helter skelta. Poor Brandon was not tall enough to go on it.

And finally a big Happy Birthday to the boys Nan and my Mum. May she have many more birthdays and enjoy sharing them with the family. Love, we four King's.

The boys Nan and Granddad riding on the Tomas train around the Wildlife walk.

The Great Easter Egg Hunt

Yesterday the boys awoke to find a rather unusual trail of bunny rabbits and footprints running thought the house. This was our first Easter egg trail that we have set out for the boys to get them into the Easter spirit.

The trail went all the way down the stairs.

Through the hallway........

This is a close up of the rabbit and the footprint trail which was left for them.

The Easter rabbit.

The paw print.

The trail continued through the kitchen............

And then finally into the conservatory where it split into two paths.

Joshua is starting to home in on the reward.

And finally found his Smartie Easter egg which he had asked for.

Brandon's Hotwheel Easter egg was soon to follow.

Over the Easter weekend we have done lots of craft type activities with the boys. Yesterday we decorated some eggs and then started to do some colouring on some blank Easter egg cards. I was absolutely shocked to see how Joshua's colouring skills have improved. He was doing a remarkable job of staying in the lines and picking his colours. He was so proud of his work and kept saying that this was for his Granddad and that he hoped he gets better soon. Once the card was finished he sealed it in an envelope and put it in Mummy's bag ready to pass on to Granddad. 

The artist at work doing his Easter card.

Joshua concentrating hard to stay within the lines.

Brandon was also joining in with the craft activities. Tonight he added an Easter table mat to his collection (apparently his one is for his Auntie).

This was Joshua's finished card. It may not look much to some, but to me this is an incredible improvement and some very good colouring for a 4 year old.

Today we continued with the craft activities and made some home made Easter Bunny masks. This involved plenty of cutting and sticking. The finished masks also featured a fluffy nose and some pipe cleaner whiskers.

Brandon with his mask. Whats up duck!

Joshua and his mask (less the whiskers and fluffy nose).

And finally our two pet Easter Bunnies together.

Forest Glade F.C.

2 weeks ago the two boys started up at a new football club called Forest Glade over Barleylands. The club has some 22 acres of land and teams from under 5's all the way up to seniors and also has ladies teams and baseball teams. They benefit from support from local pro football clubs and even manage to get coaching sessions from Chelsea.

Currently we are on a 1 month trial to see if the boys take to outdoor football. If it all goes well then the plan will be to stop the Sunday morning Little Kickers and transfer fully to the Saturday Forest Glade. During the first week both boys were absolutely outstanding. They thoroughly enjoyed the football and listened intently to the coaches doing the entire session on their own with no help from me. The second week Joshua was even better and now no longer wants to go to Little Kickers. If you mention football club at the weekend he always asks if he can got to Forest Glade. Brandon was not as good on the second week because the weather was colder and he did not want to join in (he takes after his Mum and doesn't like the cold or wet - Joshua takes after me and just loves being outside).

Little Kickers has been great for the boys and I would recommend it to anyone with a 2 - 3 year old in order to get them introduced to football and to learn some basic ball skills. But Joshua is now at a stage where he needs so much more and has got a bit stagnant at Little Kickers. He needs that next level up, to start running around outdoors and playing proper football rather than indoor games. We may decide that Brandon is still a little young to move to Forest Glade and chose to keep him in Little Kickers a bit longer. Currently he does still prefer LK to FG., but arguably he is better than Joshua for his age at football. So if he can just overcome the cold/outdoors then I am sure Forest Glade will be a good move for him as well.

Week 1 of the under 5's Forest Glade and there was about 15 kids. They all did really good and all came off of the pitch with a huge smile on their face.

The white cones marked their little football pitch. Every kid had a ball at his feet pretty much from the time they arrived to the end of the hour session.

Disneyland Paris Day 4

So the final day of what has been an amazing holiday in Disneyland Paris. The boys have thoroughly enjoyed themselves and did not want to come home. We spent the morning back in Disneyland Park and pretty much just let the boys have one final go on all their favourite rides. We were pretty lucky on our last day in that the cues were virtually non existent for most of the rides and some of them we were managed to walk straight on (and even stay on for a second go).

The boys took the lazy route to the Park entrance on the final day and jumped about this little shuttle train from our hotel to the Cafe Mickey.

Tina wimped out on the tea cups because me and the boys like spinning it as fast as we can.



Back on the boats and I think Joshua was starting to flag a little and was quite happy to just sit on this ride and go around a few times.

The two boys on our boat.

Balancing the camera on the bow of the boat and using the timer function gave this rare shot of all four of us.

Joshua stays on the boat with Mummy for another ride whilst me and Brandon head for the Circus Train.

Due to the cues being pretty small today, me and Brandon managed to get prime spot driving at the front of the train.

The anticipation on Brandon's face before our train goes zooming off around the track.

Finally Brandon had realised that everything inside "Its a small world" is pretend and now finally enjoys the ride. So we squeezed in another few chillaxing rides around this.

Under the Tower Bridge.

A bit of Amsterdam.

The Rialto bridge from Venice.

The boys and mummy on the boat.

At around 11am the park started to get really busy and so we squeezed in one more ride and then headed off to Cafe Mickey for our final character dinner. Once again the boys were in the right place at the right time and managed to capitalise on some of the Disney transport with an old fire engine ride back to the main entrance. 

What a spectacular old fire engine.

And what a nice way to finish our time in Disneyland Park.

Off they go leaving me with the buggy and baggage!

Our last meal in Paris was very memorable as it was another character dinner in Mickey Cafe. We pretty much saw all the same characters as the breakfast we had on day 2, but the boys still thoroughly enjoyed it. Joshua got a Disney telling off though as he tried interact with the bunny by pulling his costume trying to get his attention for a high 5. 

Me and Brandon with the pooh bear bunny rabbit.

A family picture with Pluto. Pluto even did a good little dance routine to celebrate someones birthday in the restaurant.

Me and Brandon with Gepetto. Brandon was still a little cautious of Gepetto and insisted I went in the middle for the picture.

A red cheeked Joshua with the living legend, Mickey Mouse. As you can see Joshua was more worried about his dinner than Mickey.

A family picture with one of the chipmunks, check out Brandon's beautiful smile.

Finally Joshua takes his mind off of food and smiles for a character picture.

On a final tour of the gift shops there was a funny moment where Joshua found one of those CD towers with headphones to sample the music. It was hilarious to turn around and see him getting down and strutting his stuff to some Disney tunes!

The boys were once again fantastic on the way home. It was a long journey and they only actually slept for about 20 mins or so. Brandon was just excited about going through more tunnels, instead "Are we home yet", all we got from him is "Is the tunnel here yet?". After a very active 4 days in Paris I think we could all do with another week off to recover.