A couple of weekends ago we had a family trip out to the Lego Show at Event City in Manchester. I had found out that it was happening a few weeks before, and booked us a ticket, despite having no idea of what would be there. It was a very reasonable price, and I reasoned that if it involved Lego it would be both enjoyable and family friendly, so I took the chance. Plus it was right next door to the Trafford Centre so if it didn’t turn out to be those things we could simply enjoy a little light shopping instead!

In the end it turned out to be a great family day out, and it even managed to change my attitude over something I’ve been quite opinionated about recently…

The new Lego Friends range has caused quite a controversy in the Geek household. As a tomboy-girl who grew up with “normal” Lego and loved it, I was quite incensed that Lego now felt the need to produce a new “simplified” version of Lego aimed at girls. It seemed condescending to me – why can’t girls play with the same Lego as boys?! I had a bit of a rant about this in an audio blog entry a while ago:

The geekdaddy, as I mention in my audio blog, has taken the opposite stance. He sees nothing wrong with it, as it’s basically a way to expand the range of Lego’s appeal, designed to appeal to those girls who don’t show an interest in the current range. We’ve had a few heated discussions around this in our house, I can tell you!

Robot made with Lego Friends

As well as there being some fantastic displays of Lego at the Lego Show (including a Mindstorms robot which holds the Guinness World Record for fastest solution of a Rubik’s cube, and several amazing railways that the geekson could have watched all day!) there was an area showing most of the Lego ranges, with an opportunity to meet the designers behind them. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet a Friends designer, but we did get to chat to a Ninjago designer who also seemed pretty clued up about the Friends range. I’m going to paraphrase what he said, as I can’t remember it word for word. He basically said:

• The Lego range has changed over the years from when we were little. Back then there were a lot more generic sets, whereas now Lego has expanded into more “branded” sets – City, Harry Potter, Cars, Batman etc.
• This “branding” has alienated a large percentage of little girls, who are now seeing Lego as a “boy’s toy” rather than the universal toy we used to play with.
• The designers of Lego Friends were mostly female.
• Lego Friends uses standard Lego bricks. The range is no more a barrier to creativity than any other Lego set (to demonstrate this he showed us a spaceship and a robot, both made with pieces from Friends sets). The only exception are the mini figures, which are designed to be more poseable than the standard mini figures.
• Lastly, and most importantly, the Friends range is proving to be a gateway into other Lego ranges. They’ve seen people who bought Friends sets for their little girls 4 or 5 months ago when it launched already expanding out to other ranges like City or Harry Potter.

Lego designer shows the geekdaughter a spaceship made from Lego Friends bricks

So, according to this designer, the Friends range is broadening the appeal of Lego, and bringing a wider audience to the brand. I must confess I hadn’t really thought about it that way before, but thinking about it now, I can see how Lego has changed over the years, and I’m wondering if maybe the Friends range is not as evil as I initially thought it might be. I have certainly now heard stories from friends who are parents of girls slightly older than the geekdaughter, and they tell me that in a number of cases their daughters showed no interest in Lego until they saw the Friends range. So if the range is fundamentally the same standard Lego bricks, but it’s expanding the appeal and encouraging more children to play with Lego, it can’t be all bad, can it?

The geekdaughter's new Lego

At the end of the show we took the geekdaughter to the Lego show at the exhibition and told her we would buy her some new Lego. Up until this point she’s had Lego Duplo, but she decided she wanted to have a go with the “more grown up Lego”. I must confess I was rather pleased when she skipped right past the Friends range and chose a more generic “starter kit” type thing. Admittedly it was in a pink box, but it’s got a good range of bricks in it, and we’ve already done some great creative play with it. She is absolutely delighted with it. I hope that means she’s one of the minority who will enjoy Lego without being sucked in with a specific “girlie” range!

As a family we all found the Lego Show really inspiring, and the minute we got back home, both kids were asking to play with Lego – the geekdaughter wanted to play with her stuff, and the geekson got to play with our Duplo, as he’s not big enough for the normal sized Lego yet. I must confess to being delighted that both children are showing an interest in playing with Lego, as it was one of my favourite toys when I was a kid, and I love that it still appeals today.

The geekdaughter plays with her Lego

The geekson with the Duplo. Notice he was so keen to start playing that he hasn't even taken his coat off yet!

Things might be a little quiet around here this week. I’m very busy preparing to do something I haven’t done for 20 years. I’m about to sit a three hour exam. A three hour written exam. Which is alarming me, because I don’t write any more. Indeed the exercises and practice questions I’ve been doing this week have shown me that my wrist starts aching after about 20 minutes of writing, so quite how I’m going to manage three hours I have NO idea!

The exam is for a qualification which is relevant to my day job. I’m spending the whole of this week away from home, away from my family and kids, on an intensive training course which is designed to get me to pass this exam. Three and a half days of training, one full (three hour) mock exam, loads of “homework” in the evening, and then the actual exam on Friday morning. With an official invigilator, and full “closed book” exam conditions. Two days in, and I must confess I’m finding a lot of it very tricky – whilst the subject matter is relevant to my day job, it’s not something I do every day, and there’s a lot of assumed knowledge on the course which I just don’t have. Thankfully there were a few topics today which I got on with very well, so I’m hoping I can absorb enough over the next couple of days to scrape a pass mark at the end. There’s a little bit of pressure, as there’s 4 or 5 members of my team doing the same exam over the next couple of weeks, and I don’t want to be the one that fails.

It’s the longest I’ve ever been away without the family, and I’m missing them like crazy. Sure, there are some nice things about being alone in a hotel, like being able to get up when I’m ready, not when a four year old decides I’m ready. And I can have a nice luxurious shower without said four year old trying to join me, or at least standing and watching! And somehow it feels like there are more hours in the day – I finished my homework this evening with a couple of hours to spare before bedtime, whereas if I was at home I know I would be working right up to bedtime, and probably past it too! I am trying to make the most of things like that, but I must say I am very grateful for the hotel’s WiFi Internet connection, and FaceTime on my iPad. Because these two things put together meant I could chat to my family this evening before the kids went to bed. And it was lovely, even if the kids were more interested in looking at the little “picture in picture” view of themselves, rather than their mother!

Seriously – check where their eyes are looking – that’s not me, that’s the picture in picture at their end, that is! Thankfully they seem to be in fine spirits and not missing me at all. I really can’t wait until I see them again on Friday!

Hopefully that explains why things are more quiet around here than usual – I really need to immerse myself in the course content to give myself the best chance of passing the exam, and whilst I hope to be able to get some blogging time, as that’s one of the ways I relax, I can’t be sure how much of that there’ll be. It’s just one week, so I’ll be back to normal very soon!

Image Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Silent Sunday. One photo, taken in the last week. No words. 
To see more great pictures search for the #SilentSunday hashtag on Twitter or click on the image below:

Oh, what a week it’s been. I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work as I’m out of the office on a training course for the whole of next week, and have a number of balls I am trying to juggle that I need to somehow keep in the air whilst I’m away. On top of all that I’ve had a cold. Not a really bad one, but enough to make me feel rotten and tired. This means that I’ve been having a few early nights, and as a result I’ve not blogged as much as I usually would. I tried to start a few posts, but wrote the first sentence and then completely lost inspiration. The good news is that I’m feeling brighter now, so I can share with you  my regular app roundup.

The geekson is still rather attached to the fabulous Trucks HD that I highlighted as my app of the week last week, but there is one other app he has enjoyed playing with this week that I would like to share with you. Magic Sorter – Igromatic (iPad only – £1.49) is a high quality, beautifully produced collection of 5 different puzzle/matching games suitable for toddlers and pre-schoolers. It’s a very simple interface, and ticks all my boxes in terms of ease of use – no adverts, no links out to the app store, no in-app purchases, completely child friendly. I love the bright colours, and thoroughly recommend it. I haven’t done amazingly well at catching the geekson in action with this app, but here’s a very short clip of one of the puzzles:

If you can’t see the video above you can watch it directly on the web here.

Another app we’ve all been having fun with this week is Monkey Drum – Flippfly, LLC (Universal – Free). It’s a very simple copying game – you tap out a rhythm on the drum (or play something on one of the other instruments), and when you stop, the monkey plays it back to you. The better you play, the happier the monkey is, and if you play really well you earn bananas which then give you access to buy additional in-game items. There is also a simple music editor which allows you to make your own songs. This game has a wide appeal – the geekson has had a go at it, and I even caught the geekdaddy trying to earn bananas as well!

Nice app - but it's upside down!

Whilst there is an in-app purchase option to buy yourself more bananas instead of earning them, you can switch that off in the Settings. This app isn’t specifically aimed at small children, but they can get some fun out of it, and it’s free, so I’d recommend it as a great family app. The only thing that irritates me is that it locks the screen display, so you can’t rotate the iPad, and it locks it exactly the wrong way round for an iPad 2 with the standard Apple cover on. This irritates me.

Finally this week I want to give you a heads up about a couple of apps from one of my favourite developers, Toca Boca, which are reduced. First up the great Toca Doctor (iPhone/iPod Touch only) and Toca Doctor HD (iPad only) are FREE until the end of this Sunday (13th May) in celebration of it being Monther’s Day in some countries (don’t panic, it’s not Mother’s Day in the UK!). Secondly Toca Tea Party (iPad only) has been permanently reduced to £1.49 (previously £1.99).

Disclosure: An asterisk (*) denotes an app I for which I received a promo code and thus did not purchase myself. The links above incorporate my iTunes affiliate ID. If you make a purchase after clicking on a link it doesn’t cost you any more money, but you contribute a few pennies towards the upkeep of this site. All prices were correct at the time of writing.

I don’t know what went wrong last week. The whole meal plan seemed to go to pot, and I ended up putting more stuff in the freezer than I had planned. It seemed to just be a catalogue of errors. First of all I had forgotten that it was the first Thursday of the month, which is the day the geekdaddy goes out for a curry with some of his friends. Then I failed to notice that the pot of cream in the fridge for my pork medallions was very out of date. And to add insult to injury I am still getting the hang of the Waitrose online shopping system, and when I intended to order 1 packet of pork medallions I managed to order 1kg, which is 3 packets! So we’re not going to run out of pork for a while!

So we ended up eating some things off the meal plan, and some things distinctly off the plan! I’m hoping that this week will be a little more organised, with a more successful online shop!

On Saturday I was solo-wrangling the kids, as the geekdaddy was working all day. So I took them and my Mum along to what is arguably the best farmer’s market locally – the one at Rode Hall. It’s a really good market, but it’s very popular and therefore there are lots of people there. It’s quite tricky to navigate the pushchair through the crowds, and consequently I found it hard to get close to the stalls and make purchases. I found that I was more prepared to make the effort in order to buy things that the geekdaddy or the kids might like than things for me. Hence we ended up with sushi, tortilla chips and salsa, and balloon animals! The only thing I bought that will be part of my meal plan for this week was two individual minted lamb pies (from the same pieman who comes to our local town farmer’s market so I know they’re good!).

I’m at another blogging conference on Saturday – yes, I can’t believe that it’s already time for CybHer. This means I will be in London all day, leaving early and getting back late. I’m not staying over because it saves money if I don’t, and because I don’t want to be away from the family for too long. My Mum has kindly offered to feed the rest of the family whilst I am out, which is very good of her, and means I’ll feel less guilty about heading off and abandoning them all for the day!

Anyway, here’s the plan for the week:

Monday: No plans – we’re out at the Lego Show all day so I expect we’ll grab something whilst we’re out.

Tuesday: Individual minted lamb pies (farmer’s marker)

Wednesday: Chicken breasts stuffed with Boursin wrapped in parma ham (didn’t make these last week)

Thursday: Pork medallions in a creamy mushroom sauce (didn’t happen last week!)

Friday: Tuna and pasta in cheese sauce

Saturday: no plans (me to CybHer, rest of the family to my Mum)

Sunday: Stew (from the freezer)

Here’s hoping that I can stick to this plan better than I did to last week’s…

You can find more Meal Planning Monday posts over at At Home with Mrs M - why not head over there and see what other people are eating this week?

Silent Sunday. One photo, taken in the last week. No words. 
To see more great pictures search for the #SilentSunday hashtag on Twitter or click on the image below:

Photo by John Arnold

We’ve lived in the small South Cheshire market town of Sandbach for 13 years now, and I must confess when we moved here we didn’t do an awful lot of research into the town and its history. We ended up here as it was pretty much the closest we could get to my in-laws that we could afford. So when we moved in, I didn’t know that Sandbach was the birthplace of Foden trucks. I didn’t know that heritage was still celebrated in the town – not only do we have the Foden’s brass band, but we have the annual transport festival.

In the last few years the transport festival has been explanded from a single day to a full weekend event, with carnival activities, the Town Crier championships and all sorts of things to do, but the highlight remains the old vehicles, particularly the Foden vehicles, which arrive and take over our central car park. And the best part of all – half way through the day they close a load of our local roads, and all the vehicles parade around the town.

Waiting for the parade

We have no set “routine” for the transport festival. Sometimes we’re around for it, sometimes we’re away. If we’re around, we’ll visit it, but the last few years we’ve had to fit around children’s daytime naps and various other things, and it’s all been a bit hit and miss. This year though, somehow everything came together and we managed to have a fantastic family day out.

We finished lunch at just the right time for the parade, so we headed down to the end of our road, which is towards the end of the parade route, and joined the small group of people that were waiting there. Yes, this is a real community event, and I was hit with a very strong “I love my town” feeling standing waiting there.

Watching the parade

We didn’t have too long to wait. We could hear the parade coming closer, as many of the vehicles sound their horns whilst they’re driving. It’s all done at a very slow pace, so you get plenty of time to see all the gorgeous cars in action. Finally the police car heading up the parade turned into our road, which had the immediate effect of putting the geekson, who had been starting to get a little wriggly, into a very happy mood, and he sat next to me in his pram happily chanting “nar nee” at the police car.

I took loads of pictures of the cars, but it’s impossible to capture the atmosphere with a static picture, so I also took a couple of short videos, which I hope are better for showing how it felt to be there:

Just a few of the old cars on parade at the Sandbach Transport Festival

Apr 22, 2012 | Source: Keek.com

Some of the trucks on parade at the Sandbach Transport Festival

Apr 22, 2012 | Source: Keek.com

If the videos do not display above you can watch them directly on the web here and here.

Yes, we let them on this on their own!

When the last of the vehicles had paraded past us we walked down into the town centre to enjoy the rest of the transport festival. The vehicles all returned to the central car park for anyone who wanted to inpect them a little closer. Our fire station opened its doors and we got the chance to see what’s inside a fire engine, as well as some safety demonstrations. There was a small selection of child-friendly rides which both kids loved going on. We even had the scary experience of letting them  got on a ride together with no parental supervision – the geekdaddy and I watched that with our hearts in our mouths, I can tell you!

The hog roast, which had been on the go since early in the morning, had run out by this time, but I did enjoy watching some of the Town Crier championships whilst trying to persuade the geekson to have a nap. Thankfully he eventually dozed off, at which point I sent him and the geekdaddy off so that the geekdaddy could get close to the cars and take some photos (this is quite a time consuming process for the geekdaddy and is something he’s best left alone to do!). I had some one to one time with the geekdaughter, and we enjoyed some of the stalls, particularly the lucky dip and the chance to climb all over the old red double decker bus (thankfully I don’t think she realised it was the same one she saw Father Christmas in at the Christmas fair!

The geekdaddy’s been really busy with work recently, and when you work for yourself it can tend to fill up every available hour. This was our first family day out for quite a while, and we all really enjoyed it.

The Sandbach Transport Festical is held every April, and I highly recommend it for a fun family day out. There’s just one problem. Ever since she saw it in the parade, the geekdaughter has decided that she wants a mini. But not just any mini – a “mini and a half”…

A mini and a half

I must confess I think this was my favourite car too!

I will never forget the release date of the first iPad, because it was the geekson’s due date – May 28th 2010. The geekdaddy had pre-ordered his iPad, and there was serious concern that the baby might arrive first, meaning we weren’t home to receive his precious new parcel. In actuality the iPad arrived a day early, and the geekson appeared a couple of days late, so we never had a problem. What this tells me is that the iPad will be two years old at the end of this month, and over the two years we’ve owned it we’ve bought a lot of kids apps. Longer than that actually, as we were buying kids apps for the iPhone before the iPad release. Along the way we’ve found a few favourite app developers, who we will pretty much buy anything they make. I told you about a couple of these in a previous app roundup, and today I want to tell you about another one…

We’ve been fans of Duck Duck Moose ever since we got their Wheels on the Bus – Duck Duck Moose (iPhone / iPod Touch only – 69p) app for the iPhone when the geekdaughter was little. We have since upgraded to the HD iPad version (iPad only – £1.49) for the geekson, and both kids have had a great amount of play from both apps. So when I heard this week that the developer had released a new app I investigated immediately. And when I discovered it was a motor-vehicle app I just knew that the geekson would love it. I was not disappointed. Trucks HD – by Duck Duck Moose – Duck Duck Moose (iPad only – £1.49) is a collection of 5 mini games, all involving motor vehicles. Your child can wash a car in the car wash, tow a car away and fix its flat tyre, sort and collect rubbish, dig with diggers and watch and interact with a car parade. Bright colours and smooth animation make for a really engaging app. I was sure the geekson would love it, but I wasn’t expecting the geekdaughter to be so taken with it as well. Both kids enjoyed all the mini games, which I would say are well pitched for a toddler or pre-schooler. Certainly the geekson found some easier than others (it took him a while to get the hang of sorting the rubbish out, for example), but I’m happy with that because it shows the app will be another great long-lived app.

The video below shows what happened within a few minutes of my showing the app to the kids for the first time:

(If the video above is not visible, you can watch it on the web here)

The geekson loved this app so much that he tried to take my iPad to bed with him last night as he didn’t want to let it go. I’d definitely recommend this app, particularly for car-loving toddlers!

Here’s a quick roundup of the other apps we’ve been playing with this week:

The geekdaughter has taken a bit of a shine to happyKids – Veterinarian HD – William Paten (iPad only – £1.49) recently. It reminds me a lot of Toca Doctor HD – Toca Boca (iPad only – £1.49) except it is set within a veterinary clinic rather than a doctor’s. It lacks a bit of the style and simplicity of the Toca Boca app, but it’s entertaining and contains a good selection of mini games for older toddlers or pre-schoolers. The app does contain a fairly easily-accessible screen with a list of all the developer’s other apps, plus links out to them in the iTunes store, and I’ve already had the geekdaughter asking me to buy them all for her…

I picked up a copy of Flori’s Birthday – Velago GmbH (Universal – 69p) when it was free for a short time, and the geekdaughter has found it mildly entertaining. It’s an interactive storybook starring animals, and the story centres on Flori the giraffe who is having a birthday party. From an adult point of view I find it a little inconsistent in the way you interact with the book, and I find the child’s voice narrating a little irritating (but it is a UK accent which is a plus). The app comes with both English and German narration, and I’d say it’s best suited for pre-schoolers, but there are better interactive storybooks out there (although to be fair they’re mostly more expensive). The app contains one screen promoting another app from the developer, which includes a link out to download that app from iTunes. The app also offers the child the option to take a picture of some of the things they create as they work though the book – thankfully these are not saved to your camera roll, but there is an option to email pictures to people (this option can be switched off in the options screen).

I was sent a promo code for Animals – Coloring, Matching, Spelling & Learning Activities for Your Creative Baby or Toddler – Kandoobi* (Universal – £1.99) recently, and the geekdaughter has enjoyed playing with this app. It’s a collection of 4 different games – Colouring (Choose from the 100+ page animal coloring book or blank pages), Matching – (pick the animal that matches the silhouette), Letters (drag and drop letter matching) and Scratch & Fill (swipe the image and colors fill in the animal drawing). The app has been well designed for kids, with brightly coloured animations and clear and easy navigation. There’s no advertising or links out to other apps or websites, but there is an option to save a colouring picture to your camera roll, so watch out for an assortment of strange pictures appearing in there! Narration is done with a US accent, but I didn’t find this overly distracting. This is a nice app for toddlers or pre-schoolers, and I’d recommend it.

Disclosure: An asterisk (*) denotes an app I for which I received a promo code and thus did not purchase myself. The links above incorporate my iTunes affiliate ID. If you make a purchase after clicking on a link it doesn’t cost you any more money, but you contribute a few pennies towards the upkeep of this site. All prices were correct at the time of writing.

Photo by John Arnold

When I was a kid there didn’t seem to be all this stress over school places. I went to my local village school, and then transferred to the secondary school that I was in catchment for. I was aware of there being maybe one or two kids in the village that didn’t go to the same school as me, but on the whole everyone went to their catchment school. Yes, the teaching was varied – we didn’t have the national curriculum back then – and I remember particularly fondly my year being taught by our deputy head, who was a keen nature lover – we had a lot of lessons outdoors and learnt much about nature and wildlife. Yes, perhaps my maths and literary ability didn’t increase as much that year as in other years, but I was still learning stuff, and I still did fine in my academic career.

So as we started looking at local primary schools for the geekdaughter, I was fairly relaxed about the whole thing. I imagined that I wouldn’t be particularly bothered about which school she was allocated. But something very strange happens once an element of choice comes in to play – people suddenly start having an opinion about things. If we’d been told that there was only one school we could send our daughter to we’d have accepted that, but because we had a form to fill in where we could state our first, second and third choices, we felt that we had to go and look at all the possible schools and carefully consider our choices. And through the process of doing this, we actually developed quite a strong opinion about which schools we preferred.

Thankfully, despite having had no plans to have kids when we moved to this house 13 years ago, we discovered that we were in the catchment area for the school we liked best. So I was hopeful that we would get our choice. However, it was still very stressful waiting to hear, especially as it seems like our local council released their results later than everyone else. I’ve seen lots of comments on Twitter over the last few weeks from friends, either delighted to have got the school choice they wanted, or despondent because they didn’t.

Last week was particularly hard for me. It started on Sunday morning, when I was suddenly wide awake at 5.15am, and couldn’t get back to sleep at all. From there I carried on not sleeping well and waking up early, and generally feeling “on edge” during the day. It was only around last Wednesday that I suddenly realised it might be caused by anxiety waiting for our school outcome.

We were out having a family lunch together last Friday when the email arrived, and I must confess I disgraced myself by crying when I read that we had been offered our first choice place. I couldn’t get home quickly enough to log on to the admissions system and accept the offer. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my mind, and that night I slept better than I had all week!

It’s a bittersweet feeling though – I am so relieved for myself and for the geekdaughter, but at the same time I feel such sympathy for those parents who didn’t manage to get their first choice, as I can imagine how I’d feel in their shoes. Sometimes having a choice isn’t necessarily a good thing…

I recorded an audio blog entry with some of my thoughts on this subject as well:

If you can’t see an audio player above you can listen directly on the web here.

I can’t believe it’s the last day of April? Seriously, where is this year going? I feel like it’s all running away with me! Next month my little baby boy will be TWO! And September is getting closer all the time, when my little baby girl will START SCHOOL! It was only just Christmas, for goodness sake!

OK, OK, I’m calming down now, I just needed to get that out of my system. Now I can focus on the smaller things, like what we’re going to eat this week…

Last week we had a bit of a major failure in the meal planning stakes. My internet shopping order arrived as planned, with everything in it except the pork steaks that I needed to cook that evening. This resulted in us absolutely having to order a takeaway. This is usually something I really enjoy, but unfortunately my meal was distinctly below par.

In fact I’m going to re-christen last week the week of the disappointing takeaway. Not only did I have a sub-par Indian, but we also ordered pizza another night, and I didn’t like the topping we chose for that either. So I reckon I’m owed a decent takeaway sometime soon! Probably not this week though, although we are going to stay with some friends next weekend and a takeaway might be on the cards then… A girl can dream, right?

Anyway, here’s the plan for the week:

Meals for two:

• Chicken stuffed with Boursin wrapped in Parma ham (it’s an old favourite, but we like it!)
• Fish pie (bought, not made!)
• Pork medallions in a creamy mushroom sauce
• Steak in a peppercorn sauce (from the Waitrose “meal for two for £10″ deal)

Family meals:

• Sausages, mash and beans (easy comfort food)
• Tuna with pasta in cheese sauce

Only two family meals planned this week; as I mentioned before we’re off to stay with friends at the weekend, and we’re all heading off to the Lego show at the Trafford Centre on Monday. It’s possible that the geekdaddy and I are more excited about this than the kids!

You can find more Meal Planning Monday posts over at At Home with Mrs M - why not head over there and see what other people are eating this week?