This picture makes me smile. She is getting fed up with posing for the camera as I complete my photography homework with a photo a day. I am having to resort to bribery to make her switch on the smile and participate naturally. This wasn’t the shot I was looking for on this particular occasion, but it was by far my best photo of the day. Sheer joy!
If you’re looking for a very sensible set of tips on how to have a successful family ski trip then you’re reading the wrong post. We wrote that one last week, and you can find it here. No, in this post I’m going to tell you how to really have fun. Read on… Secret 1: Eat whatever you want. As I sat in Hotel Le Val d’Isère on my first night, experimenting with my first ever Beouf Bourgignon, I got to thinking about food. “I’m going to have an enormous croissant for breakfast tomorrow,” I declared, already savouring the thought of my favourite …
Last weekend we went to a wedding. It was the first time I have been an actual wedding, where the people involved weren’t married already. M&D’s renewal of vows was awesome fun, but this was an all day long event, full of sunshine, flowers, humour, and love. I adored it! This was my cousin’s wedding; him being 28 and me being 9 made my Mum feel old. She talked about how it felt like only yesterday (why do grown-ups say that?) that she held him in her arms as a tiny baby, but then she’ll openly admit that she was a …
As the coach weaves us out of Val d’Isère I suffer a pang and tears threaten. I don’t think it has anything to do with my aching legs or the grey clouds that have appeared – as if to mark the occasion. No, this strange homesick feeling is more about the end of a beginning. For this was not just a holiday, not merely a week of hanging out with the family, away from the chores of laundry, the routines of school, and the demands of work. This was a first in my children’s lives – a whole raft of …
By Actually Daddy. Given the importance of skiing for Actually Daddy I’ve decided to hand over the blog to him for the day. Here’s what he thinks of Easter skiing in Val d’Isère. I’ve used my bible, Where to Ski and Snowboard as the basis for my report; there is a short précis online, and much more detail in the book. It gives a great summary of the pros and cons of a ski trip to Val D’Isère, so rather than repeat what is a very accurate guide I will attempt to add some value around it. Why go to Val D’Isère with …
According to The Bug… You may recall that I was a reluctant skier. I was totally happy to sip a hot chocolate while my sister did the energetic bit. But my Dad insisted, and so my Mum set about getting me ready for our first family ski holiday. We spent last week in Val d’Isère with Mark Warner, and the person least inclined to come home when it was all over was me. So how exactly do you prepare a child to enjoy his first ski trip? Tips for a successful family ski trip: Book Lessons: I had several lessons at …
… before and after kids. By Helen… Whilst making a packing list for our forthcoming ski trip it struck me that what I’m taking now is considerably different from what I would have packed 10 years ago, before we had the children. So for anyone planning a holiday in the snow, with or without kids, here’s my advice. What to pack for a ski trip Before kids: Fleece headband that matches your ski jacket – prevents earache, but avoids the shame of hat-hair. Duty-free Absolut vodka – distracts the mind from occasional sprains and bruises. Multivitamins – with all that …
15 minutes is a long time to wait when you’re 6. Even if you do have a comfy bench all to yourself. We were waiting for my sister’s Stagecoach performance. Man they took a long time to get ready. Still waiting. Wonder if I’ll get the loan of an iPhone if I act it really well? Will you stop already with the photos? Oh alright then, here’s a smile. Make the most of it – it’s all you’re getting.
Wot so Funee? will be taking a break for the Easter holidays, and will return on 22 April. In the meantime I’m excited to be heading for Britmums Live this summer! She hardly slept the night before. Would her dress be appropriate? Should she have tried to meet up with someone she knew at Starbucks beforehand? What would she do with all those business cards? Surely it was too “look at me!” to hand them out, but maybe too laughable to spread them over tables, hoping nobody would notice until she’d left. On the day, she marched straight in, then …
Hi this is once again actually GG and I am going to be very serious and talk to you about why girls are amazing. I asked my lovely deputy headteacher to photocopy a survey that I had created last night for my fellow students to complete. I am very surprised about some of the results and hope that it helps you to understand why girls are amazing. Why girls are amazing: My results show that more girls like football than boys, and football is not really considered a feminine sport. It also shows that some boys spend time on their …
Mother’s Day, as always, was bliss. I saw some tweets bemoaning the fact that children make for a less than perfect (ie. relaxing) day, but that is not so for me. My children, at 9 and 6, are incredibly good company, well-behaved (mostly), thoughtful, and capable of helping their Dad in the kitchen. Happily, despite his usual tendency to chaos, and his penchant for chilling out, Actually Daddy pulls out all the stops on Mother’s Day. I know, I’m lucky. I am very partial to the children’s usual shopping list – what’s not to like about pic ‘n’ mix? But …
By the Bug… This winter I’m going skiing. I’ve been pretty nervous, but I’m ready for my first ski trip. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I’m exceeding expectations, and my plan is to ski faster than Mrs Kamikaze my sister before the holiday is over. How have I made this transition from cautious to courageous? It’s simple really – it’s all in the preparation. How to prepare for a family ski trip Get ski fit: some in our family have been training for long runs recently. This is good as you’ll need cardiovascular fitness on the …
You know that time of year when the first blossom appears on trees? You get excited for Spring, but then it stalls. You try to take photographs, but there’s just not quite enough. The branches are still there, just dotted with pink. I found my first candy floss tree this week – great big cotton wool balls of pink. And just look at the sky behind. Like a bag of pink and whites. It made me happy. And flowers! I got flowers this week, for Mother’s Day. Not from my kids – they will bounce onto my bed in a …
Easy cake pop recipe that children will find magical!
We are 3 years old today at Actually Mummy. What does a blog do on its birthday? Does it throw a party for all the words typed, a kind of free-for-all carousing of all that has gone before? Does it invite all its readers to offer words of celebration, or bring gifts of new stories it can use going forward? Maybe it shares its sweets with other blogs it engages with, or offers visitors a cup of tea and some flowers from its garden? Three years ago today I typed my first post. You can read it here, and pick up …
Before my mother was a mum, she had a job. Not (as an elderly aunt once asked) “a little part-time job,” but (as my mum corrected, emphatically) “a very big full-time job.” Her title was Operations Director. Not a lot of people know this, but my mother was once in charge of 185 London pubs. It was a BIG job. Needless to say, Grandma and Grandad were very proud. And when she gave up working to be a stay-at-home-mum, that was all to the good. Nowadays Mummy earns money through writing – some of it comes via this blog, other …
By the Bug… My mum is awesome. I tell her this most days, and I usually get a hug; on occasion a declaration like this might win me a Squares bar instead of a tangerine for my school snack. Today though, she hit me with a confusing one. Instead of a hug, she sat me down with a postcard and a pen, and asked me to write down why I thought so. Here’s what I wrote: Similarly, my sister wrote this 3 years ago in school, tasked with a literacy challenge on the theme of Mother’s Day: My mum is …
You would not believe the painful process of getting our girl onto wheels. From the tricycle tantrums of her terrible two’s, to the self-doubt of roller-skating, she wanted every speedy gadget, but freaked out when it came to the actual movement. Thankfully she has left those days behind, and insisted this week on testing out her birthday heelies on a skate to the park. The Bug too has had his fair share of bike-related meltdowns, but after weeks of enforced hibernation for the wheels it only took a few wobbles to get going again. To get this shot of The …
By GG… With the news this week that baby George, the future king, is off on his first holiday I decided it was high time I shared the benefit of nigh on 10 years of travel experience with children. As we pack for our forthcoming Mark Warner trip, I am reminded of the stressbucket that used to be my mother, and I savour a proud smile at how far she has come since our first holiday as a family. As an aside, I’m also going to tell you how bloggers can win a Mark Warner holiday themselves, as well as …
She was not a runner. She hated this winter term, when tennis was long-forgotten, and the hockey pitch too wet to play on. Cross-country running: the words struck nausea into her belly, her ribs and shoulder twitching with the learned weekly stitch she knew would develop the minute trainers hit pavement. She wasn’t a rule-breaker though. She couldn’t follow the short-cut girls through the housing estate; besides the PE teachers varied their lookout points so you’d never know whether you’d been spotted until you returned, red-faced and heaving, to the smelly changing rooms and the sting of hot water on …