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Yesterday we had a lovely garden party for Olly’s (and Daddy’s) birthday with some of his school friends.

We awoke yesterday morning to torrential rain fall and began to panic about the upcoming garden party. Daddy went to swimming lesson with Oliver and Elliot while mummy began to prepare the house for the party in the afternoon. After swimming the boys went up to Gracie’s house in Overton to walk down to the Mining Museum to enjoy the LEGO exhibition that was running for the bank holiday weekend. Again, it was still raining so raincoats and umbrellas were required to stay dry during the short 15 minute walk.

The LEGO exhibition was really, really good and the boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves right up to the point where we realised that there was a shop at the end of the exhibits…. 🙁

We had a few sulks when the boys realised that daddy was not joking when he said that we were not buying anything today…

As we got home the rain began to let up a little and we found that the bouncy castle had been delivered – we were just hoping for sunshine.

Thankfully we got a break in the rain for over 5 hours so the children were able to play outside and fully enjoy the bouncy castle and the garden. It also meant that daddy was able to grill the food on the BBQ 🙂

We all had a fab time and then David and Julie arrived with Abbie just as the children had left Olly’s birthday party – we then sat and had a great time for the next 7 or so hours right up until around midnight – cracking evening 🙂

Today is all about clearing up, cleaning the outdoor seats and fixing a few things around the house such as the guttering that needed the gunge removing and painting the wall in the lounge from the red wine incident from a few weeks ago 🙂

Typically, the sun is shining brightly today – let’s hope it is here to stay a while 🙂

We have just returned from 30 hours in London town, having left on the 7:18 train on Saturday morning from Wakefield to Kings Cross.

We had a SUPER busy day on Saturday starting with Bacon butties, croissants and homework – that’s right we made them do their homework on the journey down – let’s face it, they had precious little else to do since we had also banned iPads from making the journey (well except for daddy’s which was to be used for the online homework that Olly had to do :-)).

Straight on the tube and over to the Tower of London and Tower bridge (writing this makes me realise we missed London bridge… (doh), before getting back on the tube and heading over to the London Eye for a trip up into the clouds to see the city from way above. The boys were really apprehensive about the London Eye but seemed to really enjoy it once we go up there 🙂

We went through the 4D experience at the Eye before walking over to Big Ben for the clock to strike 12 – then watched a couple of marching bands playing down Whitehall 🙂 This of course meant that Whitehall was closed off to the public so we walked along the banks of the Thames before heading back “inland” to Trafalgar Square for lunch.

From there we walked to Leicester Square for M&M’s World (a fantastic 4 storey M7M’s shop) where we found out just how much stuff a company can make around s SINGLE brand item 😀

We even managed to get some personalised goodies for a certain birthday that is coming up tomorrow – hope they are liked 🙂 The process of personalisation was very interesting to be part of but the cost was utterly outrageous really… 🙁

Then, we jumped on board a 453 bus to take us over to Madamme Tussauds to get tickets arranged for the following morning, only to find that we could go right in – we decided it would enable us to have a much more relaxed Sunday morning so dived right in.

We were in Madamme Tussauds for a little over an hour and a half and had begun to wonder if the cost was worth it – THEN we got a ride through the ages (from 1600’s) which was really good and then finally onto the Avengers 4D experience – it was utterly awesome.

Back on the 453 bus to take us to (the boys main event) Hamleys, the 5 floor mega toy shop. By this time, the lunch was trying to run from daddy’s lower body – shegits a plenty – thankfully there was a suitable disposal unit, sadly it was on the fifth floor…

The boys actually behaved impeccably in the store and that is some going given we were in there for well over an hour 🙂

We made the 1.0 mile walk to the hotel (Marriott Grosvenor Square) through a reasonable amount of complaining (that was easily rectified with a statement that the toys could always go back to Hamleys 🙂

The hotel was lovely – we had a suite so the boys would potentially be sleeping on the foldout bed in the main room and we would be in the bedroom – it ended up with Elliot in with mummy and daddy (as neither of them were sleeping) and then mummy went in with Olly as he was crying from about 11pm 🙁

Dinner was at our favourite Pizza Express just off Oxford Street (near Bond Street) and then back for bed. We were all shattered as had done a ton of walking around the city and had pretty much worn ourselves out. The Limoncello and pink champagne helped mummy and daddy with their tiredness 🙂

Today was just a case of heading out after a relaxing bath for breakfast – we found a really cute little waffle house called Pure Waffles just near the hotel and they did some wonderful waffles for us. We then walked on to Oxford Street to find most shops didn’t open until midday (an hour before our train home) so that left us a little out of luck. As we wandered down Oxford Street we found a store that was FULL of sweets from america (among other places) and they had TWO floors of candy !!! So we were in there fore about 30 minutes as we perused their goodies and selected a few little gems to take with us 🙂 We found some mint double stuffed Oreos that we used to LOVE in California – they were a mere 9 UK pounds – so only 4 times the cost in the US !!!! We will have to lock them away, else they will be gone before the day is out 🙂

Then a number 10 bus as our feet (and mummy and daddy’s ears) had endured enough, we got off at Kings Cross Station, found some sandwiches and crisps for lunch and waited for the train.

We really had a fun weekend despite the expected whinging when not in a toy shop or while walking 🙂 – next city, Edinburgh in the summer we think.

Take a look at some of the photos from the weekend below: