Review: LEGO® Awesome Ideas Book

When I was little I spent hours and hours with my LEGO box building multi-coloured house after multi-coloured house.  The base was a thick green rectangle (what's happened to them now?) and then I built up the walls with any and every colour I had with some windows nice and evenly dotted around then another green block on top.  We didn't have a 'set' that I can remember so had to be creative.

  

Not like now, the boys have tons of sets, fire stations, police stations, train stations, numerous vehicles and a proper house, not to mention a harbour and Hulks Hellicarrier.

Sadly as the models get broken up (as they do with a 7 and 4 year old) they don't always get rebuilt, as this happens all our pieces go into storage drawers.

  

Then we moved house and decided that would be a perfect sort out opportunity, well we got part way, we started to bag up the sets but only managed a few.

Now the instructions are all boxed away as we are re-decorating the boys rooms and (after climbing over boxes) I was able to bring their LEGO downstairs to play with, but they were lost.  You see that's the problem with buying sets now, my boys don't have the experience of building for the fun of building.  Which was why it was perfect timing for the DK LEGO® Awesome Ideas* book to land on our doorstep.

Review: The Rough Guide to The Lake District

It seems ages ago I was telling you all about my budget holiday, and I suppose it was - way back in February, what with moving house and work and blogging it has just flown.

This week I've got a few days off coming up and we've been trying to work out where to go and so I dug out my holiday stuff, guide books, maps things like that and remembered I'd not told you about a lovely book DK sent me in February.  I'd mentioned to them about going on holiday when they send me the fabulous Factivity books to review and they tucked some bonus treats into the box for me and the kids, among these was "The Rough Guide to The Lake District".

This book was so helpful both planning on holiday, as it is set out in a really easy to read format and covers all the popular touristy parts of the Lakes.

Our Budget Holiday - Step 2: Planning the journey

Well all our holiday is booked and I must remember to go and pick up the tickets from the train station.  If you missed Step 1 of my #BudgetHoliday series then you can catch up here.

The next step is to plan the train journey, because when you have kids nothing is as simple getting on a train and reading your book until it gets there.  Especially when the journey takes 3 hours (each way) and the kids happen to be 3 and 6.

They do have tablets, portable dvd players and ds's but to be honest I quite enjoy the 'family time', that and you are never guaranteed a seat - let alone one with a plug socket (and these things do seem to eat the battery). 
  On the other hand we are on a train with 2 small boys for a 5 night holiday - there is a limit as to how much we can carry..... I have learnt that lesson!

My aim on journey's is for each boy to have their own rucksack with everything they will need for the journey (including their favourite soft toy, drink and a snack or 2).  This is no easy feet, especially when you think the 3h journey involves 2 or more trains, and but here is my guide as to those little extras that either I have used historically or have spotted online that can make a very long journey fly.