1 More Sleep......

Well only 1 more sleep until Joshua's 3rd birthday. Thanks to everyone who came to see the little guy today and bring him some presents ahead of his big day tomorrow. He has certainly enjoyed his day and loved his presents so far. This year has been really great as it is the first year Joshua has really understood his birthday, the fact that he is 3 years old and more importantly for him - that he is getting loads of presents. Something tells me he takes after his Dad with getting a bit over excited for such occasions which probably explains the 5:15am wake up call this morning. So if it was 5:15am on the eve of his 3rd birthday then I guess I might as well not bother going to bed tonight.

His Nanny and Grandad brought him this fab little laptop which he has not stopped playing with. Even tonight at about 6:45 we struggled to get him upstairs to get washed as he was sitting at his little table with his laptop saying he had work to do!

Tearing into presents is childs play. No assistance needed this year. In addition to the laptop Joshua also got a load of art stuff, some Toy Story Duplo, a Southend Football kit, and lots of clothes.

Despite Toy Story featuring heavily in this years birthday, Joshua has not forgotten his beloved Chuggington and specifically requested this as his birthday cake.

Joshua is usually pretty good at blowing out candles. But as you can see from this picture he was otherwise occupied with a lolly and so today it was a bit half hearted. Maybe tomorrow will be a bit better.

Brandon didn't really care much about how the candle was blown out. He just wanted to dive into a big chunk of cake.

All this and its only the Eve of his birthday, what ever will tomorrow bring?

Muscles

Only 5 more sleeps until Joshua is 3 years old.............

So what is new with the boys. Well at the dinner table tonight guess who counted to 3 for the first time all on his own. Yep, little Brandon. And even more impressive, guess who likes homemade chicken biryani and ate it all up. Yep, little Brandon. He is so good with his food and far more adventurous than Joshua, but even I was surprised he ate a huge plateful of biryani. Fortunately I will be at work tomorrow so I will not have to deal with the aftermath in the nappy.

As any parent will know, sometimes it can be a real challenge to get young children to eat vegetables. Well just lately I have started to explain to the boys what the different foods do for you. So for example the meats give you muscles, peas make you run fast, carrots give you good eyes, all the carbs give you energy etc.etc. So far it seems to be working well as both boys now tuck into their peas knowing they will run super fast. But the funny part is the muscles - I've have taught them to show me their muscles with a front double bicep. So now they both eat a bit of chicken and then the big guns come up to show me their bulging muscles. The way Brandon says "muscles" as he pulls his double bicep pose is just hilarious.

Final bit of news is that Joshua's phase in sessions into the "Toy Story" class at nursery are going really well. Once he turns 3 the nursery will move him up into this bigger class permanently.

One final final cute bit of news for today...................whilst sitting at the table tonight Joshua was telling us all how Brandon is his best friend. How nice is that? Lets just hope it always stays that way and the brothers both grow up as the very best of friends.

You spin me right round baby........

Little Brandon has recently taken a real liking to the blue spinning pod chair in Joshua's bedroom. So today it was a long over due trip to Ikea to buy the little dude his own one for in his bedroom. As you can see from the pictures below, Brandon is not in the slightest bit happy or interested in his chair (NOT!).

After tonight's bath-time it was a bit of a challenge to try and get the little dude out of his chair. He seems to think its a really funny game to spin himself around and pretend to be illusive as you try and grab him after each revolution.

11 sleeps and counting

Only 11 sleeps until Joshua's 3rd birthday. Can you believe my little man is nearly 3!!!!!!!! If anyone is stuck for ideas for presents for him then let me know as I have a list prepared of all his favourite things.

It has been a while since I wrote much about the boys development as recent blogs have focused more in places they have been and things they have done. Obviously both boys are developing there own personalities and traits as they grow into young men. So for today's blog I have pulled together an interesting little comparison which highlights some of the differences between the two of them.

I would be interested to hear if anyone agrees or disagrees with the above characteristics or even if you have observed different personality traits between the two boys. One thing is for sure, they are very different, individual little boys - but get on like two peas in a pod (brothers in arms).

Little Kickers Update

I think Joshua is now in his 3rd term at the Little Kickers football club and he still seems to enjoy it very much. He has made a good friend there, called Samuel, who also goes to his nursery. The last 2 weeks Joshua has been absolutely outstanding at football club. He has required absolutely no guidance or direction from me and has completed the whole class all on his own. He participates in all parts from the warm up, to the games, to the ball control, to the big kicks the goals and then the wind down. Its as if someone has flicked a switch and suddenly everything seems simple and fits into place. Maybe it is because I have backed off a bit, maybe it is because he has his little friend there..............what ever the reason, it is great for him, but bad for me. Why? Well to be honest I enjoyed chasing him around and kicking the ball with him? Now I just get to stand at the side talking with the other parents.

Anyway here he is taking a good crack at the goal.

 What a strike.



This is one of the games they play. The cones on the floor represent a snake and the kids have to straddle walk the length of the snake without touching the snake (because this will wake the snake). Once they have passed the snake they have to run along the court and then blast the football into the goal. The little boy you can see to Joshua's right on the yellow snake is his partner in crime, Samuel.

Day 7 The Finale

So we reach the final day of our holiday. The morning was more of the old routine, down the beach, then to the swimming pool, then to soft play and finally lunch and nap time. As you can see from the pictures below the sunshine blessed us nicely and we got some stunning pictures of the coastline showing the wind farm in the distance (or "spin spins" as Joshua calls them.

We had fun running away from the incoming waves. Both boys timed their retreats completely wrong and ended up with soaking wet shoes and trousers.

Brandon is interested in two things - cars and stone. If he can't have one then he will find the other and this was definitely the case on the beach. He thoroughly enjoys just picking up stones and pebbles and lobbing them into the sea.

The boys have become expectant of Dad building them some kind of sit on vehicle at soft play. So once again our imagination was let loose and this was today's soft play vehicles.

Notice Joshua even has a steering wheel this time.

And even a blue step at the side allowing the boys to climb into their vehicle.

I was asked to add a digger to the vehicle, the green and orange attachment was the best I could manage.

After lunch and a nap we headed into Great Yarmouth for the afternoon. Brandon was still asleep in the buggy so me and Joshua went on a few rides whilst we waited for him to wake.

Once Brandon finally decide to wake up and grace us with he presence we decided to have a scenic tour of the Yarmouth coastline from a horse and carriage. The trip was a couple of miles up and down the coastline but well worth the £15 for all 4 of us to go. The boys seemed to really enjoy the ride.

And the kind driver took a picture of all four of us in the carriage. Unfortunately Brandon would not let his cloth go and has it hanging from his mouth in the picture!

Mummy showing the boys the friendly horse and trying to encourage them to stroke his head. They were having none of it though.

THE END (UNTIL 2011 VACATION)

Day 6 Bewilderwood

So on Day 6 we headed out early to avoid road closures as a result of the tour of Britain racing through Norfolk. We headed just North of Norwich to an absolutely enchanting place called Bewilderwood. This was by far the best day of the holiday for me and a place which I will definitely take the boys back to one day. What a fantastic idea to set-up an environmentally friendly theme park based around tree houses with the story of the Boggles and Twiggles setting the scene. Anyway sit back and enjoy the pictures as this is a record breaking blog update with nearly 60 pictures.

Upon entry into Bewilderood you take a boat ride across scary lake which takes you off into the woods. The boat driver tells the kiddies the story of the Boggles and Twiggles to get everyone in the mood for what is to come.

In scary lake we found this vegetarian, friendly dragon.

Once in Bewilderwood there are absolutely endless trees, tree houses, zip wires and so forth to climb, explore and have an adventure. Me, Joshua and Brandon got straight down to business and headed up into the trees.

This pictures give you an idea just how high up we were and both boys were absolutely fearless. Joshua was pretty much off on his own. I had to help Brandon up some of the climbs but once he was up there, he was running around chasing his brother.

More and the boys on a rather unique swing.

This picture does not really do justice to what Brandon is doing. Whilst it might look like a kids swing, this harness is actually attached to a zip wire and he has just blasted about 40ft across the ground.

And this is a stunning shot of Joshua zooming past on the zip wire.

Obviously being in the woods you have to keep an eye out for spiders. As you can see from below there are some pretty large and very dangerous beasts lurking in the cob webs.

Getting up to the tree houses is much harder than coming down. More often than not the route down is a simple slide from above.

And Brandon didn't mind the big slides one little bit.

Here is me and Brandon climbing up to one of the tree houses. No doubt on a hunt trying to find where Joshua is.

The next series of pictures was in an open bit of woodland where they allow and encourage you to build a den with your children. Regardless of what Joshua and Brandon want to do, it would take a heard of wild horses to keep me away from building a den in the forest. As you can see Joshua didn't mind getting his hands dirty to help his old man. Brandon just waited until we were finished and then enjoyed playing in our den.

Remember Arnie carrying the tree trunk across his shoulder in the film Commando!

And here is our finished den. Of course it was the biggest and grandest in the wood. As King's we have to be best.

 This part of Bewilderwood is called the pointless path. Its one of the meandering paths through the trees which you walk several times before realising why they call it the pointless path. (i,e, the fact that there is a much simpler, straight path which gets you to the same destination).

Some more shots from up in the trees.

How impressive does this look. As you can imagine this rope bridge wobbled around quite a bit once you were out in the middle.

This show gives you an idea of the sort of layout of the place and how you traverse from one tree house to the next.

Again another areal view which gives you a good idea just how high up the boys were.

Very impressively Joshua managed to climb this cargo net all on his own. He had second and third thoughts about it, but once I had carried Brandon up there is seemed to gain confidence and decided to go for it.

This is the broken bridge. Probably about 30ft up in the air and has missing planks which are replaced by perspex boards enabling you to look down at the ground below. Brandon was completely unphased and walked across all on his own.

Check out the size of this slide from one of the higher tree houses. You can see just how small mummy is at the bottom as she waits for Brandon to come steaming down.

A couple more pictures on the zip wires.

This was the forest maze. I stood on the lookout tower with the camera and successfully managed to get Tina, Joshua and Brandon completely lost inside it.

Little Brandon looking out of one of the tree houses to see if he can see his Mummy down on ground zero.

More rope bridges.

Check out Joshua's upper body strength as he completes the rope pull.

How about this for an enchanting entrance door to a kiddies park area.

And this was inside the park area.

Some of the tree houses are just stunning in design and colour.

This was a pleasant little tent which we found to camp up for our picnic lunch. Just check out the stunning mural painted onto the low level kids table.

There is even a stage area where twice a day there is a story telling for the children to enjoy and to dress up and participate in. Joshua and Brandon chose not to dress up but as you can see from the pictures that had no issues with jumping up on stage and joining in.

I think this was the marsh mellow potion which was made during the story to feed the dragon in the scary lake (or something like that). What ever it was, Brandon seemed to enjoy giving it a good mix.

Anyone seen a little boy running around with a green and blue hat on?

There they are, trying to run away from their Dad.

Joshua going up that cargo net yet again.

Another picture of one of the tree houses showing off the stunning design and colours.

This was the biggest slide in Bewilderwood and that little dot you can see half way down is actually Brandon!

Its great to get the boys out into the woods, running around getting loads of fresh air and exercise whilst also interacting with the surroundings. This place is just such a refreshing change from the lights, rides and glitz of most modern them parks.

We was somewhat fortunate on Day 6 as the road entering Bewilderwood was closed off for most of the day due to the Tour of Britain passing right by us. This was such a shame as it meant we was duty bound to stay in Bewilderwood pretty much until closing time (such a shame). But all good things must come to an end and eventually we had to catch the boat back to the entrance.

Read tomorrows final holiday update with a trip into Great Yarmouth on our final day.