This week has seemed really busy, maybe because the end of the summer holidays is fast approaching and so we are trying to pack everything in! In no particular order, here is what has been making smile this week.

• Old Trafford Tour – Mr T is a huge Manchester United fan and for Father’s Day I bought him a family ticket for a tour of Old Trafford. We finally got around to booking it in and so we headed up to Manchester on Tuesday. We had such a good day, I worried about how Tinker and Totsy would behave but they were pretty amazing to be fair! There was a couple of times that things got a bit stressful like when we had half an hour to kill before our tour started and Tinker decided she had to have a drink because she was so thirsty (and was dramatically clutching at her stomach and moaning loudly to emphasise the point, honestly that kid deserves an oscar!) so despite the fact that she had just left her apple juice from lunch on the table almost untouched we got her a slushy drink (mainly to stop the dramatic display of supposed agony that Tinker was putting on, which was drawing attention!) which had to be green (even though I told her she’d probably prefer the red one, but hey, what do I know?) only for her to declare she didn’t really like green and could she have a red one. But once we got started Mr T got over the fact that he had forked out a ridiculous amount on slushy drinks, Tinker’s dramatics had stopped and we all really enjoyed the tour. Mr T managed to shoehorn in an announcement to the whole tour that he had once played football there (in a corporate event), the girls were actually quite interested in it all and followed the tour guide like little shadows, Mr T was in his element and even I found it all quite interesting having a nosey behind the scenes! We had a lovely lunch in Cafe Football where the staff were AMAZING with the kids and the food was great too (it’s inside Hotel Football next to Old Trafford) and headed into the city to buy the girls some Lush bath bombs and dinner at Pizza Hut as they had been so good all day.
• Farm visit – we visited Bluebell’s dairy farm where they make the most delicious ice cream on site. The girls fed the animals, raced go karts, bounced on the inflatable pillow and ate ice cream and it was a lovely afternoon out in the sunshine. I can highly recommend the Amaretto & Cherry ice cream (my two all time favourites combined, it’s like it was made for me!) but to be fair it was all amazing (I had to taste the girls’ vanilla and chocolate just to be a responsible parent and check it was ok for them, obviously!!)

As you can see, Luna was not especially enthralled!

• IKEA – yes, I know IKEA made this list last week too, but we have now been 3 times in the last two weeks! We took my mum and dad to IKEA to look at some chairs for them and sofas for us which sounds like a really boring shopping trip but actually we had a lovely time with them, browsing in IKEA and the other sofa shops on the retail park, had lunch out, a few coffee stops and it was really nice. I used to do things like this all the time with my parents but recently it just hasn’t happened (mainly due to my mum’s health not being great) so it was nice to spend the day meandering around IKEA and the other sofa shops just chatting. After drawing up a shortlist of the sofas we liked during that trip Mr T and I measured up our living room and returned a few days later to make a final decision. It was just us and Luna as Totsy stayed at Grandma and Grandad’s house so it was nice and relaxed for us to be able to wander around and chat without having to rescue an over excited Totsy from using the sofa showroom as a trampoline (and there was plenty of sitting down because it was sofa shopping – bonus!!) I even sat and breastfed Luna in the middle of the sofa showroom while the sales assistant worked out exactly which pieces of sofa we needed.
• Birthdays – it was my beautiful goddaughter’s 21st birthday this week and it was absolutely lovely to go to her party. There were lots of children similar ages to mine and Tinker especially loved running around with them all. Lots of our extended family were there and it was so nice to see everyone. I didn’t take one single photo (rubbish blogger!) but sometimes it’s nice to be in the moment and not even think about capturing a picture.
• My nephew turned 9 this week so we travelled to Lincolnshire for his party. As they live a couple of hours away we don’t see them as much as I’d like so it is is great when we do get to catch up. Tinker and Totsy adore their cousins so they were both super excited and had a brilliant time, especially playing in the garden at the barbecue after the soft play/laser tag party. Again I barely took any photos and only managed a couple of snaps of them in the garden.

Keep smiling! xx