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A super bank holiday was had by all the Mad family this week.
There has been Dangerous Den building, mending and making too, plotting and planting, the first BBQ of the season, a trip to Durham, baking and just being together as a family.
As part of the Tefal innovation panel I was asked if I would take the fresh week pledge to commit to giving up processed food from Monday 13 May – Sunday 19 May 2013 in favour of fresh, unprocessed food. For me this is a bit of a no brainer as I cook from scratch most days.
Since getting cancer I have been wary of processed foods. I know that not everything processed is bad, but I make the effort to give myself and my family the best food I can and for me this means cooking from scratch.
As a perk of being a Tefal Innovator they sent me a Fresh Express and a riverford food box this week, so kick starting my menu planning for next week. So I am going to share with you my menu for this week and see if you would be willing to take the pledge. If you do there is a chance that you too could win a Fresh Express and a Vegetable Box.
Bank holiday Monday
Homemade pancakes and fruit
Salad Sandwiches with homemade bread
BBQ with Fish, fennel, salad and homemade flatbreads
Tuesday
Scrambled egg with chopped tomato
The boys are back at school so school lunch for them.
Lentil bolognese (diced peppers, onions, passata, herbs)
Wednesday
Dippy eggs
Spelt pizza bases with lentil sauce topping and vegetables, served with salad
Thursday
Banana Muffins
Chickpea daah and homemade naan bread
Friday
Fruit and yogurt
Boys are at a party, but me and MadDad will be having homemade fish and chips
Saturday
Pancakes with fruit and yogurt
Poached eggs with smoked haddock
Sunday
Breakfast Muffins
Roast Chicken with yorkshire puddings and vegetables
Homemade roast vegetables soup and homemade bread
We also pack family board games, card and domino’s. We try to limit screen time whilst we are on holiday and we love family games night. The boys will write league tables and keep a record of who wins what so that we can have a family winner at the end of the holiday. We introduced the boys to Scrabble and Boggle whist we were on holiday. It is so much fun to revisit games that you used to play as a child.
Provide your children with an adventure pack with binoculars, compass and handbooks so they can explore the area you are holidaying.
I also pack pencils and colouring pads for creative moments.
Let your child chose a number of new books before you go on holiday. We have quiet time after dinner and reading is a great way to ensure that children do got get board.
Allow a day or so for decompression, especially if your childrens days are packed with activities at home. Places such as Richardson’s Holiday Parks have onsite entertainment. Click here for more information.
Headphone are essential – my children never agree on music, so I make sure they take headphones with them so they can play their own music in the car.
See if you can take a pup tent, so they can have their own adventures.
Encourage them to make friends. Take a ball and a kite. Things like this usually attract all the children nearby and veola friends for the holiday.
Be unselfish with your time. Children crave the company of their parents. Holidays are the perfect time to give it to them freely. Why not join in with them rolling down hills. You might be surprised d at just how much fun it can me.
I would love to know how you react when you hear “I’m bored”!
How to Stop Kids Getting Bored on a Family Holiday Read More »
Then I move on to Mini’s room…………………..
“I love you” I say
“I love you more” he responds
“I love you MORE” I reply
“I love you the MOST” he says with such conviction it makes my heart ache
Not possible I think to myself, not possible.
What is Home Legal Expenses Insurance and why do I need it?
Legal Expenses Insurance (LEI) can provide cover for legal costs if you have to go to court for a claim. Generally, the most common scenarios involve what is known in legal parlance as pursuing a claim, which means trying to get compensation from a third party for causing loss or damage to you or your property. In other circumstances you may be defending a claim – if for example you have crashed into another person’s car – and in fact many LEI policies are sold alongside or included in car and home insurance packages.
Home LEI policies, includes cover for things like personal injury and compensation claims, and consumer disputes over the buying and selling of goods and services. Home Legal Expenses Insurance can also meet the cost of pursuing a claim against your employer for breach of contract, such as unfair dismissal, and can also provide funds to finance the mediation of disputes with your neighbours – this can be issues like access to your home, or the boundaries of your land, or complaints about noise.
So just how important is it to have Home Legal Expenses Insurance? Like all insurance, a sensible way to look at the situation is to consider the alternative to taking out cover. This could mean having to cover the cost of legal action on your own, if you end up in court for a claim that would have been covered by a Home LEI policy.
Perhaps a comparison could be useful here. Home insurance is considered a necessity because of the massive cost of rebuilding your home, should a disaster such a house fire occur. When you consider that the cost of legal action can run to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, Home LEI starts to look like an essential type of cover.
You may find that the basic LEI provided through your home insurance leaves you underinsured, and that you need additional cover. However, it is also important not to over insure – most Home LEI policies cover the whole family, so unlike car insurance, two partners don’t usually need separate policies.
At Allianz Your Cover (www.yourcoverinsurance.co.uk) you can add Home Legal Expenses insurance to your current Allianz Your Cover home insurance policy at any time.
What is Home Legal Expenses Insurance and why do I need it? Read More »
Three Special Family Holidays
Your children are only going to be young once, so you should treat them to a magical holiday before they consider themselves too old for family breaks. Create memories to treasure for decades to come, and fill up at least some of the weeks when they are out of school and clamouring for activities to keep them occupied. From a trip to Lapland before Christmas to a Hawaiian paradise during the summer months, here are three destinations that are sure to give you some inspiration for 2013.
Hula Your Worries Away in Hawaii
For a completely different pace of life and beautiful scenery, check out Hawaii this summer. With pleasant tropical temperatures all year round, families can pack light and enjoy T-shirt and beach weather. There are plenty of family-oriented tour packages and resorts in Hawaii that have child-friendly activities. Make sure that you choose a resort that includes a bit of luxury and chill-out time for parents, as well as plenty of amusements for the kids. Camp Menehune at the Hilton Waikoloa Village includes fun activities such as exploring tide-pools and tropical gardens, water sports, interactive dolphin programmes and feeding local wildlife.
Go Totally Wild in Orlando Florida
Another option is the Animal Kingdom Lodge, a part of DisneyWorld in Florida. Little animal enthusiasts can experience the wilds of Africa, within the safe and comfortable environment of a Disney resort. The Animal Kingdom Lodge is a 33 acre property that offers views from all of the rooms onto the Serengeti style zoo outside. There are over 200 animals from 100 different species, such as antelopes and gazelles. Each room is tastefully decorated in African style décor and the resort’s restaurants, Jiko and Boma, cook African-style food in wood-burning ovens.
A Lapland Trip into the Arctic Wilderness
Later on in the year, Finnish Lapland is the traditional hangout of Santa, his wife, the elves, plus of course his reindeer. Make sure that you go there kitted out in thermals and ski gear. Bracing cold isn’t the right way to describe the place, below freezing is more appropriate.
As a wonderful consolation, there’s a flurry of Christmas activity in Lapland. Mulled wine and Finnish saunas are brilliant for the adults while husky-led forays into the icy wilderness keep the kids occupied. The occasional appearance of the hypnotic and truly remarkable Northern Lights is nature’s way of lighting up the sky. During the winter time the sun barely peaks over the horizon.
There are plenty of tour operators that offer families some face time with the jolly red man, comfortable digs and amazing food to stave off the Arctic cold. For the traditional Christmas memory that will go down in family history, a Lapland trip is the ultimate in Christmas merriment and magic.
A well-planned, fun and relaxing family holiday is very feasible when you know where to go! Find a good mix of kid-friendly activities, and the chance for parents to get some well-deserved R&R.
A child’s life is full of firsts. So why not make the most of each and every one of them? Make a seemingly mundane occasion slightly more ceremonial with some added excitement. Such an approach can often encourage a child to engage in a task or tackle a daunting chore a little more willingly
I love spring days out as a family. Exploring places and enjoying each others company. Over the Spring and summer we try to ensure that we spend one day at the weekend out as a family. The thing is that the boys love being out and about as much as me and MadDad do and we spent Sunday pottering in the garden and the weekend was pretty screen free for all of us.
We are really focussing on trying to encourage our boys to move away from the electronic and take up more tactile pursuits! I gave you some ideas for encouraging writing earlier in the week, but I wanted to concentrate on recording holiday memories this time. When I was younger one of the most exciting aspects of any family holiday was receiving the developed film back from the chemist and putting together an album of the photographs and writing the name of the holiday in the inside page.
In todays digital world I find that my images stay on my PC, phone and on the digital photo frame we have and that made me sad, so I decided to encourage Maxi to make a scrapbook of our recent Orlando visit. This was made even easier as we were gifted a whole host of scrapbooking things in a travel theme from
Whilst we were in Orlando Maxi made sure that he took maps, leaflets and keep all his tickets in to the theme parks, so in addition to any pictures I printed out he could also keep all this memorabilia and have a wonderful physical memory of our holiday.
Firstly we sat at the PC and decided which images to print. In future I think that I would send them off to an online provider to print, that way we could have a better quality print.
Then we cut all the photographs out using the guillotine and then I let Maxi lose with the glue and a pen!
As much as I wanted everything to be neat and in a certain way, I knew that it was best that I just stayed on the sideline and let him fill the scrapbook in how he wanted it to be. Afterall this is his holiday memories we are recording.
Encouraging writing in Boys – Scrapbooking holiday memories Read More »
