My painful morning routine.

Mornings are always the hardest time of day for me, it’s when im in the most pain and in the most foul mood. I am not a morning person and I don’t think I will ever be a morning person.

I have an alarm set for 6am but most days I am up between 5-6am without my alarm. It would be great to say that I jump out of bed feeling fresh as a daisy, make my way down stairs feeling great and pop the kettle on…. Well that’s not gonna happen.

I have to spend the first 5-10 minutes after waking, flexing and stretching the tendons in my ankle because over night they have seized up and hurt like hell. I can then get out of bed, try to hobble quietly past my childrens rooms and venture down the stairs, Most mornings i’m in that much pain I have to go down the stairs on my bum. By the time i’m down I really need a strong coffee.

I love a really dark roast coffee first thing in the morning, I take my first round of tablets with it and I find the stronger the coffee the quicker the tablets kick-in.  (It may be just in My head but hey, a lot of thing are these days. lol) My first round of tablets are Omeprazole, to protect my stomach, vitamins, added  minerals, my contraceptive pill and then finally my first painkiller of the day is Naproxen. These are an anti-inflammatory drug that helps my tendons, so that is 5 tablets within the first 30 minutes i’m awake.

By now the dogs are starting to get restless as they want to go out in the garden. I grab my coffee, let the dogs out and have my first cigarette of the day. (YES I know this is bad for me, YES I know I should really give up and i’ve tried a few times but with everything else going on I just cant do it right now)

It’s then time to take round two of my tablets, I take three Gabapentin tablets and then head back upstairs to wake up the children.

My older children have learnt mornings are not great for me and try to help as much as they can.

Breakfast is next and to do this I have to sit on the top of our bin because I can’t stand up in one place for long. After they will get themselves dressed without much fuss. (Thankfully, my middle daughter used to be a nightmare to get dressed but now she’s getting older its getting easier)

We have a wall poster of their morning routine that they follow which is really helpful.

After they will go brush their teeth and wash their faces, the last step is to double-check their bags to make sure they have everything they need for the day.

My eldest rides his bike to school and I am lucky enough that my hubby is here to take my middle daughter to school. I would love to do the school run everyday and I know my daughter would love me to pick her up, its something I want to work on for her next year in school.

I like to walk my children to the door and give them a kiss goodbye every morning. My son will always say ‘Stay there mum, it’s ok’ but I always make an effort to see them out in the mornings.

At this point I take my third round of tablets if I need them. I use my co-dydramol as a back up if my pain is too bad. I don’t always need them, it’s just when i’m having a bad day or I have walked too much the day before.

After the children go to school it’s mine and Ellas turn to get washed, dressed and ready for the day.

This is around 9.30am now and my tablets have fully kicked in and I start to feel kind of normal and I’m able to do normal things again like laundry, hovering and playing games with Ella.  For the rest of the day I try to keep on top of the housework and keep Ella busy with games and activities.

If you liked this and want to see my evening or cleaning routine please let me know.         (These tend to be less painful)

xx

 

 

 

Leg ulcer progress! (Images included)

Around two weeks ago my husband saw a video about an amazing product. It’s was an Aloe Vera emergency spray.

The man in the video had a wound on his foot, he sprayed the Aloe Vera on it every day, let it dry and then redressed the wound. The progress was amazing. After 16 days of using this spray the wound had healed!!

On a whim, my husband brought some from eBay. It cost £20 for a 500ml bottle. A week later it had arrived!

I had nothing to lose. I’ve tried pretty much all other dressings and treatments.

I get really nervous about trying new things on my leg. It makes me feel quite vulnerable because I just don’t know how it will affect me or if it will make my leg worse. I was quite sceptical about the whole thing to be honest. If this was the miracle spray it has been made out to be, why has no-one every mentioned it before!

Day 1. Take all the old dressings off, give it a really good clean. Spray a generous amount Aloe Vera emergency spray  onto the ulcer… Shit! It stung like hell and felt like it was burning! At this point I started panicking thinking ‘OMG! What have I done? I’m gonna make this worse than it already is.’

Within a minute the stinging and burning stopped and my whole leg started to relax. It was a strange feeling. I hadn’t realised the muscles in my leg were so tense, the sensation of my whole leg relaxing was very new to me but it was a positive feeling so I knew straight away the spray had at least one benefit.

I had to leave my ulcer open in the air for 10 minutes but keep spraying it if it dried out. After 10 minutes I redressed it with a simple dressing and put my compression stockings back on over the top.

Day 2. It had started to work in just one day. The ulcer had started to level itself out and was slowing coming back up to normal skin level. It had gone a yellow colour but that was my bodies reaction to the spray, it was getting rid of all the old skin to make way for fresh new skin.

Day 3. My ulcer was looking better and better each day. I felt like I could cry as I could actually see progress happening. Pain wise the stinging and burning were the same when I first sprayed it on but I was starting to get used to the pain as I knew it would be over in a minute.

Day 4. I actually couldn’t believe how much progress and improvement I was seeing. It was changing so much over the days and I seriously couldn’t believe it was down to something so simple as Aloe Vera emergency spray. Nearly all of the yellow (old) skin had gone and I could start to see fresh new skin underneath also around the edges of the ulcer there was fresh pale (BRAND NEW) skin forming so this meant the edges were coming in and the ulcer was starting to get smaller.

I am feeling really optimistic about this product now and I’m looking forward to see more progress as the days go along. I am really hoping that is the miracle I’ve been looking to find for so long. I have to admit that all my worrying at the start was for nothing and I’m glad that I took that leap of faith and tried it.

The picture below is the most recent picture. This is day 7. There is not as much improvement as the first four days but it’s still looking good. The red skin on the outer edge is the blood coming back to the surface of the skin. The skin around the edges are still improving and slowly the edges are creeping inwards. Nearly all of the yellow skin has gone, however I have done quite a lot of walking over the past 2 days and gravity is not my friend. Even though I’ve change the dressings every day the fluid that my leg produces for protection has gathered at the bottom of the dressing and the bottom corner of the ulcer got deeper again due being too wet.

I have ordered my next bottle of the emergency spray, I know it’s a bit expensive but if I keep getting as much progress as I have already I am willing to pay that price over and over.

xx

Birdworld review: A Great day out with the family.

As a child my mum and dad would take us to attractions, theme parks and zoos, during our school summer holidays. It was something that my brother and me would look forward to. I try to do the same for my children at least once or twice during the holidays.

My youngest daughter is currently obsessed with birds. All birds, any shape or form. My middle daughter loves anything flamingo. When BIRDWORLD gave me the opportunity to visit, I  jumped at the chance.  With my oldest being 11 years old, I didn’t want him to get too bored but once he found out they had penguins, he was happy to come. I asked my mum to come along with us incase I had any problems with my leg, she could help with the children.

When we first arrived, we had to walk through the gift shop before going out to see the birds. At the admissions desk we were offered the chance to buy some bird food. I was quite disapointented in the size of the pot and the amount in the little bag, my first thought was ‘ That’s not going to last long’  and as predicted by the time my children got to the fourth enclosure the food had gone. However I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed dotted around the sanctuary, there were little vending type machines, you put 50p in the side, turn the handle and a certain amount of food came out and re-filled the tubes. I think this is a great idea.

Walking from enclosure to enclosure was great. There were so many beautiful birds, among them we saw the Toco Toucans and Hornbills,  the colours and patterns on their feathers were just amazing. As we followed the path round we were guided towards a pond, where you can see all the ducks having a swim and enjoying the water.  The scenery  in the whole sanctuary is some thing on its own, They have beautiful flower gardens full of colourful flowers and beautiful shrubs.

We found a really nice picnic area to have lunch, Near this they have an outdoor cafe called ‘Safari Snacks’ Where you can find hot food like jacket potatoes, chips and hot dogs. They also offer a large range of ice creams here. This is nicely placed between the two play areas and the safari train is situated right next to this.

After lunch we headed into the penguin enclosure, called ‘Penguin beach’  This is where the African penguins are ( apparently they are known to be jackass penguins)  I wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was and it was really nice watching the penguins playing with each other in the water, It was a nice sunny day some of the penguins were sun bathing soaking up the sun, They were quite relaxed about having people walk across the bridge in their enclosure. My older children loved spending time in here especially my eldest, he loved the penguins.

We carried on following the path and came to ‘ Jenny Wren farm’ You can find many of the well-known farm animals here and a lot of the animals are roaming free, My middle daughter had great fun in the goat field and my youngest daughter really enjoyed seeing the chickens and pigs. You are also able to purchase many of the smaller animals here, for example rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs.

After playing in the park that is right outside Jenny wren farm entrance, we turned back on ourselves and went looking for the enclosures we had missed. Half way round we lost our map and just kind of winged it and followed the path. haha! This brought us back to the picnic area and the safari train, My mum offered to take the kids on the train so I could rest my leg for a bit. They seemed to really enjoy it, coming back telling me they had seen some cranes and emus and even ‘ Birdworlds Great BUSTARDS. ( No i didn’t swear, read it again. haha!)

Ella had wanted to walk from the moment we entered and now she was starting to get tired so we put her back into the pram and made our way to the remaining enclosures. we finally came to the enclosure my middle daughter had been waiting for all day for. The flamingo enclosure. This is one of the latest enclosures to be added to the park and I think the flamingos have settled in well, as you can see in my picture there are little grey fluffy babies walking around in the enclosure.

The final big enclose we went to was the owl enclosure. This is a group of beautiful wooden enclosures placed in a semi-circle with hands-on activities for the children to do. The owls themselves are gorgeous and there are two babies in an enclosure with their mum that so cute. The path then brings you out towards some more beautiful birds of prey and leads you round to the parrot enclosure. My children spent ages here watching the birds and trying to find brightly coloured feathers.

Our last stop of course was the gift shop at the end. The gift shop is linked to a really nice cafe where you can get two course from £12 and they do a lovely cup of coffee. My children had a certain amount they had to stick to from the gift shop. My youngest wanted some small stuffed birds and this came in a deal of 3 for £10, My middle daughter chose a large stuffed owl toy and my son chose a penguin cup with swirly straw, a dragon sand toy and a penguin sand toy.

Once you come out of birdworld, you can enter a different part called Underwater World. This is a smaller building with various fish tanks with lots of different species including a shoal of piranhas, also this is the home of their miniature crocodiles.

Overall we had a great day, My children loved it and I really enjoyed spending the whole day out with my family. I would really recommend taking the family here for a day out. If you have been to birdworld leave me comment below and let me know what you thought of it.

I would like to say a big thank you to birdworld for giving us the opportunity to visit and have a great day.

Morning cleaning routine.

With three children and four dogs our house can get in a mess very quickly. I have tried so many schedules, list books, to-do pages and nothing really fitted our family. So I wrote down every job that needed to be done around the house, jobs like hoovering, cleaning the bathroom, getting the washing done…

The list just kept getting bigger and bigger. 

I decided to break the list down into four groups. 

1. Morning cleaning routine. 
2. Weekly jobs to get done.
3. Evening cleaning routine.
4. Non-cleaning jobs to get done.

Instead of writing a list out everyday, I typed up the different groups and printed them out, put them into a clear wallet so I can check them off with a white board marker and wipe it clean when I’m finished. 

In this post I am going to focus on my morning cleaning routine as this is the biggest group. I’m always the first person awake in the mornings so my cleaning routine starts downstairs.

The very first thing I do is start or switch over the washing. Normally I set a timer on my washing machine to start early and finish just as im waking up. Some days this doesn’t happen so I just start a load straight away. 

Next I will empty the dishwasher so it’s ready to be filled up during the day. By now the kids are up and eating breakfast. Children will be children and will make a mess so after they have finished, I clean up after breakfast. Our main recycling bin is out the front of our house and to make it easier on my leg I have a storage basket that is kept in the kitchen to collect recycling during the day, we empty the recycling basket every morning to stop the build up. 

My children like to get changed downstairs in the mornings, I don’t no why but they do, so there tends to be some clothes left laying around. The next jobs is going around and picking up any dirty washing.  After everything has been cleared and picked up my last jobs for downstairs are to Hoover and mop the floors. 

While the floors are drying I head up stairs and make the beds and open all the windows. I find making the beds everyday makes a room look so much better. 

Next I pick up dirty washing, there is a laundry basket in every bedroom which makes it easier for the kids to keep the washing off the floor. 

Now we have a play room downstairs, my kids tends to keep their bedrooms quite tidy so I just do a quick bedroom tidy up and put things away.  If i dont put the washing away in the morning i end up with a big build up and it takes me an hour to put it all away. My older children are old enough now to put their own washing away so I fold their washing and place it on their bed.

I like to do a quick clean of the bathroom everyday. I give the bath and sink a quick wipe over to get rid of bubble or toothpaste marks. I give the toilet a once over to keep it clean. 

Then I go back downstairs and have a well deserved  coffee break. 
 This routine will normally take me about an hour each day and it means when I do a deeper clean it doesn’t take me as long because ive kept on top if things. 

I dont always do all of these jobs on my own I do get the children to help me out as well. I hope you enjoyed finding out my morning cleaning routine. Let me know below if you would like to find out about my evening routine. 

RED VAPE E-LIQUID REVIEW

Red vape are a British company that make gourmet E-liquids using only the finest natural ingredients.

Redvape.com currently have four E-liquids in their premium range and five E-liquids in their reserva range.

PREMIUM RANGE. British made E-liquids use only the finest quality ingredients to produce a collection of exciting flavours that has something to suit everyone’s taste.

RESERVA RANGE. This collection is an exquisite range of naturally extracted tobacco E-liquids (NET’s) Each liquid has been expertly crafted from some of the world’s very best tobaccos.

I picked two E-liquids to test from the Premium range.

ANGEL BERRY and NOBEL MINT ( nicotine 6mg)

The E-liquids come in 10ml bottles with childproof dropper caps. The bottle arrived in cardboard packaging with an information leaflet inside. The packaging and labels are very stylish. The black and silver work really well together and you get the splash of colour depending on which E-liquid you choose. All of the labels and packaging feature very clear information and the correct warnings for the product.

All of the liquids are mixed to 50vg/50pg and are available in three different nicotine strengths. 12mg, 6mg, 3mg.

ANGEL BERRY (Raspberry, Dewberry, Blueberry and Granny smith apple extract blended with a hint of sweet water mint creates this fruity and refreshing E-liquid)

When you first inhale you get a lovely taste of Raspberry and Blueberry which is subtly joined by the Dewberry and you are left with a delicious Apple after taste. Unfortunately I didn’t really get any hit of the Mint but that doesn’t take away anything from the overall flavours. My normal E-liquid choice is generally berry flavours. In my opinion if you are like me and enjoy the berry flavours this is definitely one try, I really enjoyed vaping this E-liquid. The flavours are not overpowering and blend really well together. I had this E-liquid in 6mg and it gives you a very nice smooth throat hit.

NOBEL MINT (Spearmint, Swedish Lingonberry with a hint of Red currant extract creates a beautiful subtle and refreshing fruity mint vape.)

On the first inhale you taste the Spearmint flavour, it is very refreshing and is not too strong, this is closely followed by the Lingonberry flavour before finally blending with the Red currant to leave a lovely fruity after taste. The overall mix of these flavours work really well together and none of the flavours are stronger than the next. The throat hit is very mild and I could happily vape this E-liquid all day without getting bored with it.

CONCLUSION

I found these E-liquids to be made at a very high standard and all the flavours used are blended really well together. I really enjoyed testing these E-liquids. My favorite out of the two E-liquids I tried was the Angel berry and I will be ordering some more bottles. I would highly recommend both E-liquids to berry vapers and menthol vapers.

If you would like to try these E-liquids for yourself, You can purchase them at https://www.redvape.com/

I would like to say a big thank you to redvape.com for kindly sending me these E-liquids to review.

Leg ulcer update. Using medi-honey. (Images included)

I have written a post before about using medi-honey on my leg ulcer but I never really went into too much detail about the dressings. so first I would just like tell you some info about them. There are so many benefits from using medi-honey. These are the best ones and the reasons I decided to try honey again.

• Antibacterial – Every wound has bacteria living on the surface of the skin and when this bacteria starts to take over that’s when you get an infection. These dressings keep the bacteria under control.
• Debridgement – This is the term used for removal of dead skin. Due to the high sugar in the honey dressings, it breaks down the dead skin and make it easier to remove.
• Anti-inflammatory – Open wounds have high Ph levels which cause inflammation. The dressings have a low Ph level, once applied over the top of the wound it works with your body to lower the Ph level and in turn reduce the inflammation.
• Eliminates odour – Some wounds leak quite a lot and can give off an awful smell, The honey dressing reduce the amount of leaking and the smell.
• Immune stimulating – All the other element working together, kick starts your bodies own natural anti-bodies to heal the wound.

My leg ulcer has responded really well to the medi-honey. I’ve been using it for just under 2 weeks now and nearly half of the slough ( Dead skin) has softened enough that I’ve manually been able to remove it.

This treatment is really not good for the faint hearted, it’s so painful, it feels like someone has a blow touch on my leg, at the same time a hundred bees are stinging me. It hurts like this because it’s my bodies reaction to the sugar and quick change of the Ph level. (It may not affect other peopel like this, I’ve not really spoke to anyone else that has used medi-honey) I’m really not good with pain, this will normally lasts couple of hours before it settles down but it is worth putting up with the pain because I know it’s doing a really good job.

The images below were taken 12 days apart and you can see a huge reduction in the amount of yellow dead skin that is on top of the wound. The top image was taken on July 27th and the bottom image was taken on August 8th. I have been changing the dressings every 2/3 days. I also wear a compression stocking over the top of these dressings, this helps the fluid in my leg return back up to my heart instead of pooling in my ankle.

I know this is not a subject a lot of people are interested in and many people don’t want to see these pictures but it has taken a lot for me to open up to the world about what’s going on with my leg and it would be really great to hear back from the people who are reading this post. If you have any questions I am happy to answer them or if you have an opinion on anything involved with my leg, I would really like to hear from you.

You can leave me a comment below or contact me via my Facebook page @limpingmum

I also have an Instagram and twitter account.

xx

20 Minute Dash – My own version of the famous ‘Power hour’

Before I get into my 20 Minute dash, I want to explain a bit about the Power hour.

Image credit: Pixaby

A very lovely lady on Youtube called Kimberley has a channel called ‘Style mom XO’ ( I will link one of her power hour video here she came up with an idea where you write a list of cleaning chores you need to get done, you turn off all distractions and you set yourself a timer for an hour and try to get all the jobs done. It has taken off all over Youtube and nearly all of the channels I’ve watched have tried it at least once.

I absolutely love this idea and my kids love to join in as well but with my leg being bad, I can’t rush around like that for a whole hour so I came up with my own version of it. In my ’20 Minute Dash’ It’s not really cleaning it more just tidying up and putting things away.

It’s the same concept of writing a list and turning off all distractions but the challenge only last for 20 Minutes.

The Day I did this Dash was a Sunday and it was such a manic day, I really let the house work slip and it was a mess. I’ll start by telling you a bit about our day and then show you the picture of my house.

My day started off wrong from the very begining… I slept straight through my alarm and even the girls had a lay in and we didn’t wake up until 9.30am, I had to get through my morning tablet routine with the kids around (Which I hate doing) then do a few chores around the house ( which I didn’t even get half of them done) I had also promised the girls that we would go and see the horses that day. ( They LOVE horses and there are some fields and stables near us and the girls love going to see them. We have permission from the owners and they lets us go any time we want to.) So around 11am I made the girls lunch and then we went to see the horses, we spent way to long down at the stables and had to rush back as Kira had a party that evening.

 

Before pictures

So in these pictures you can see the mess from my half done chores, mess from lunch and mess from us rushing around wrapping presents and getting Kira ready for the party. Also we are still toilet training the pup so when we go out we are putting paper down for him and I hadn’t had time to pick it up.

Thankfully my toddler had gone to bed without any problems. So I wrote my list, set my timer and off I started.

As you can see by my list they are simple chores to get done, nothing to time-consuming like organise cupboards or scrubbing floors. This is because 20 minutes might sound like a fair bit of time but when your actually doing the dash, time seems to go so quickly.

 

After pictures

 

With both older children out and my youngest gone to bed it was quite nice to whip round and pick everything up without a child wanting something in between rooms. For the first time in a while I actually managed to complete my list. I started in one room, finished my jobs and moved on to the next until I had finished all three rooms.

It would be great if you could have a go at the 20 Minute Dash and let me know how you got on.

xx

 

Craft time review – Make your own unicorn.

Before I start I want to make clear that I am in no way getting paid to write this review and I do not get paid if you order through my link to the shops home page. 

My middle daughter absolutely loved unicorns so when we saw this it was a no brainer, we just had to get it.

I got this crafting set at my local home bargains shop. It cost £1.99 which I thought was a really good price.

The packaging it come in is very bright and automatically caught my daughters eye. The design on the box is very simple and the text can be easily read. The content of this surprised me. I thought there would be one unicorn and a few embellishments that you can use to decorate it, However when Kira opened the box it had three thick cardboard unicorns to decorate and five cellophane bags containing different items to decorate the unicorn with.

In these cellophane bags were…

• 3D coloured gems
• Pink foam flowers
• Purple foam hearts
• Wooden beads
• Tube of pink glitter glue
• Tube of PVA glue

Also included were two pages of coloured paper and two pages of stickers, one with eyes on them and the other was full of lovely unicorns, butterflies, crowns and flowers. There also was a cellophane bag containing blue, pink and white wool to make the hair of the unicorn.

I Brought this crafting set because my children are off school for the summer and I thought it would be a nice activity for us to do together. Kira loved doing this activity and we sat together just chatting and decorating for about 45 minutes. Kira decided to only decorated 1 unicorn and save the others for another day.

I think this crafting set is mainly directed at girls between the ages of 4-7. Personal I think a child below 4 years old would struggle a bit with all the little stickers and plaiting the hair and knotting the beads. Girls older than 7 I think would find this a bit babyish and would get bored quite quckly.

To be completely honest, I was thinking this is too good to be true, this only cost me £1.99. There must be something to let it down but I can’t seem to find anything majorly wrong with this. I will admit that it could do with a few more of the foam stickers as there are three unicorns to decorate and not many stickers to cover all of them but this is not a major problem and Kira didn’t really mind.

I asked Kira what she thought about this unicorn crafting set and her reply was ” I love it mum, it was really fun doing this together. Can you get me another one next time you’re at the shop please?”

so it was a great hit with Kira and as a parent I really enjoyed spending time with her, doing something she really enjoyed. This product is really good for boosting childrens imagination and creativity. At the time Home bargains only had ‘ Make your own unicorns’ but I will be watching out for different characters in this crafting collection. Next time I am at Home bargains I will deffinatly be picking up some more of these and I would highly recommend them to any parent.

I just had a thought, This would also be a great top up birthday present for your childrens friends.

When Kira found out I was going to be doing a review on this, she made a comment about how it would be nice to see how other children decorated their unicorns. so I would like to set you a challenge. If you live near a home bargains please go and pickup one of these kits for your children, If you don’t live near a home bargains you can access their website here. Order you children one of these kits. Me and Kira would love to see all the different designs they can make. You can post your pictures below or tag me ( @limpingmum) in your images on Instagram or Facebook.

An eventful start to our picnic at the park.

If you have read by blog before you will know I don’t go out very much and I don’t really know many of the parents at my daughter’s school, so when I was invited out with the other mums for a picnic, I thought It would be a great opportunity to get to know them a bit more.

One of the mums text me all the details, where and what time. I’m not great with park names and when I looked at the text I automatically thought we would be going to the park near our children’s school. The night before the picnic I made all the sandwiches and some pasta salad, I packed all the snacks and drinks and went to bed feeling prepared for the day ahead.

Picnic day had arrived, we were all up early, got dressed and ready to go, half past 10 came and we were out the door, giving us 30 minutes to walk to the park to meet the mums for 11am.

Photos taken from the first park.

We got there just after 11am. we were the only ones in the park, half an hour goes by and still no-one turned up. I text one of the mums and re-read the earlier message, only to realise we were at the wrong park!! The children were non the wiser and carried on playing but I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been not read the message properly. I bundled Ella back into the pram, told the older two to grab their scooters, as we’re walking down the road I open Google maps find the nearest bus that will take us to the right park and rush to the bus stop. Finally we were heading in the right direction.

Well that’s what I thought…

Still following Google maps, we get off where it told us to, Heading in the direction of the park, Kira is now scooting as fast as she can because she knows she is getting closer to seeing her friends. Then I get a phone call from one of the mums to find out where we were, I tell her the road we we’re on and she gives me directions to the park, however she thought we were at the other end of this stupidly long road and gave me direction from that end, we take the first right and then the next left, follow that to the bottom but now Google maps is having a complete breakdown because I’m not sticking to the directions they are giving me and I realise we’re walking away from the park not towards it. Now I’m having a mini break down, I have three moaning children and no clue where I am! Panic started to set in and I was starting to think enough is enough, I give up.

I hate feeling lost, especially when the children are with me because I can’t physically show that I am lost and have no idea where I’m going because I don’t want to scare them. It was at this point that I declared to myself, I am going to get out more and explore the area I actually live in.

I decided to reboot Google maps and try again. Right breakdown over and were back on track. Turned around and started walking back towards the park. For some reason Google maps decided to take me to the park entrance furthest away from where I was. (I’m sure it was payback for not following their directions first time around) We ended up walking for what felt like ages and all the houses kinda looked the same. Still not 100% we were walking the right way, I stopped and asked a very nice man outside the local pub for directions and it turned out we were just round the corner from the east entrance! Yay!! Finally we got to the park. By this time the older children were already tired from walking round and round in circles, Ella had enough of being stuck in the pram and was trying to escape.

We were an hour and a half late and most of them had already eaten their picnic but never mind, we made it.

when Kira saw her friends, the mood had lifted and all three children were sitting down happily eating the picnic.

In the end it turned out to be a really good day, the kids had great fun playing with the other children and it was nice to sit down with the other mums and properly talk to them.

Photos taken from the second park.

Ella started to get tired around 3pm so I called it a day and pre-warned the older two they had five minutes left while I packed up the bag, then we were going home. All of a sudden it dawned on me. I actually had no idea how to get home!  The mums were lovely and gave me directions from the west entrance, where they had parked their cars. (It seems like I’m the only one around here that doesn’t drive)

So here we go again, following directions, we take a left and then a right. OMG! OMG! Right in front of me was the rear entrance to my sons new secondary school! How could I not know the park was so close to his school. If I had, i wouldn’t have got lost and had a mini breakdown, I would have known exactly where I was! Stupid Google maps had taken me way past the park and round on a bloody goose chase.

We made it home and all-in-all we had a good day, Now I know how to get to the new park I’ve promised the kids we will go there more often.

If you have ever had a disastrous start to your day, I would love to hear how you dealt with it and if you had a positive outcome.

xx