Making Bath Time MORE Fun!

As part of our 104 Days of Summer or Family Fun on a Phineas and Ferb Scale, we needed some ideas that only took a few minutes to arrange. We had already decided that not all our days needed to be on a grand scale, that it was the Fun that had to be on a grand scale. The one thing that I know that can turn anything from small to big is imagination and so I told Top Ender and Baby Boy that they were going to go Deep Sea Diving just before Bath time.

Of course my bathroom isn't built over an ocean and Top Ender and Baby Boy don't have any scuba gear or training, so this was going to be Deep Sea Diving with a difference. This was deep sea diving with food colouring...

When you add a few drops of food colouring to bathwater it changes colour. It is diluted enough that it doesn't stain the children (or the bath, but if you have a porcelain bath you might want to be careful) despite what my Nan might tell you. Everybody knows that the sea is blue and so blue food colouring was added to the running water and we got this;

Top Ender and Baby Boy loved the bath and it was a struggle to get them out that evening, but I was able to bribe them out with a promise of a new bath adventure the following evening. Coming up with an idea the following evening was as hard as opening my cake decorating gels and looking to see what colour took my fancy!

I decided that yellow would probably be the best bet, and added some yellow gel to the water. It required a bit more swishing around, but then that just serves me right for being fancy and having gels instead of the liquid kind that most people have.

The result was a sunshine bath and although I didn't think this looked as impressive as the Deep Sea Diving bath, Top Ender and Baby Boy loved it... as you can hear from our singing in the video!

So the next time you can't face having a boring old bath, or you want to add some excitement to your children's bath time why not go and raid the cake decorations for food colouring to add to the water!

The Magical Menagerie (Le Manege Carre Senart)

At the moment in Milton Keynes there is a fantastical carousel, which is quite unlike any carousel I have ever seen before. For a start the carousel is square and instead of horses to ride on, there are mechanical creatures such as buffalo, fish and insects that are operated by the people riding on them!

When Daddy first heard about the Manege Carre Senart coming to Milton Keynes as part of the Milton Keynes International Festival, he sent me the link so that I could see the carousel as he knew that I would have to see it to believe it. Since it opened for business on the 16th July, we have been up to see the Carousel a couple of times and finally we got our chance to go last night and to have a ride.

The carousel is huge, it is said in the information that it is as tall as a house and it is just as impressive. The whole structure is decorated, with the metal work on the roof in the shapes of Snails and Frogs and other creatures.

The outer ring of the Carousel are one seater creatures and they travel in a clockwise direction and as you can see are fairly large in size!

  

The inner ring are larger multiple rider creatures which travel in a anticlockwise direction. If you have a child under seven who wants to ride, then this is where you should head as children under seven have to be accompanied by an adult.

We were really lucky that we got to ride the entire Carousel by ourselves and Top Ender chose for us to go on a Buffalo in the centre. We climbed up wooden steps to sit upon the top of the mechanical creature, where five separate seats with seat belts were waiting for us.

We seated Top Ender and Baby Boy in the front and Daddy and I took two of the rear seats and started to look round at the various levers and handles that were around us (and between our legs!). Top Ender was in heaven and Baby Boy were in heaven with the noise and the movement and loved every second.

  

As soon as Top Ender got off the ride she asked if we could go back on, we explained that the Carousel will be in Milton Keynes (just outside The Point) until the 8th August and so we would have plenty of time to go back and have another ride and time to save up!

The Carousel is open from 12 noon until 8pm (but not at all on the 2nd August). If you book in advance Weekday tickets cost £10 for a family of four (£12 if you just turn up) and at weekends booked in advanced tickets cost £14 (or £16 if you just turn up). The ride itself lasts for around five minutes, but the happy feeling you get from riding will last for a lot longer!

Family Fun on a Phineas and Ferb Scale!

In our house we love Disney, we especially love watching Phineas and Ferb together as a family. We love the crazy schemes that the boys get up to, the ways in which the days activities are magically cleared up by Doofenshmirtz's latest "-inator" and it has inspired us to have some family fun on a Phineas and Ferb scale. Well it inspired Top Ender first...

You see in the theme song to the cartoon it is stated that the boys have 104 days of Summer Vacation and Top Ender was inspired to tell me that we (as a family) should do something fun every day for 104 days. Now this would be really easy if we were a cartoon family (I know that in the header we are, but its pretend, we don't really look like that!) and if we had 104 days for a Summer Holiday.

Top Ender understands that she only gets 40 days for her Summer Holidays (and doesn't mind this) so we figured that we had better start doing fun things before the Summer Holidays starts. We thought that May 28th would be a good start, seeing as that was the first day of the half term and so we started doing fun things...

We can't doing anything as grand as the boys, as we are pretty sure there isn't any evil scientist near by who could accidentally use an "-inator" of his to tidy everything up! We soon figured out that it is the fun that should be on a grand scale and our schemes don't need to be on a grand scale. So this is what we are up to...

28th May - Picnic Day
29th May - Ponyo Lunch
30th May - Book Day
31st May - Brand New Bike Day
1st June  - Pajama Day
2nd June - Visit London for The Elephant Parade part two.
3rd June - Arts and Crafts Day
4th June - Flag making Day
5th June - Cinema Day
6th June - Party Day
7th June - Frog jumping Evening
8th June - Food Tasting Night
9th June - South African Food Night
10th June - Deep Sea Diving Night

As we go through our 104 days we will add blog posts explaining what we did and we will also add links to this blog post...which if I can work out how to I will make stay on the front page of the blog!