A Matter of Choice

Earlier this year we visited the Cyprus Historic and Classic Motor Museum in Limassol. It's been on my 'to-do list' for several years now and I'm glad we finally got there! The museum originally opened 2014, and moved to larger premises in 2015. Today it covers an area of 3000sq meters and more than 150 exhibits covering more than 130 years of motoring history. Each of the vehicles had an information board, in both Greek and English although of course the boys were not patient enough to stop and read these without prompting.  However they enjoyed listening too Aaron tell them about the cars, especially when the stories were personal. He was amazed to see three makes of cars that his Mum had owned,  the Talbot (Matra) Rancho, Range Rover and Fiat 500.   This brought the cars to life for the boys as he told them about days out he'd had as a child in cars like these. My absolute highlight was the red double decker bus for several reasons, ...

Following on from my recent 80's toy flashback post I wanted to elaborate,  while I had been writing the first post I had been browsing on pinterest and of course now it keeps showing me more of the same type of pins assuming that is what I am now interested in.  Well of course it is right, I love memories! Last time I mentioned my favourites - Care Bears and My Little Pony, plus a couple of less popular toys but now it's all about the dolls. Surely every girl growing up in any decade has to have a doll at one point, whether it's a baby, Barbie or Bratz, or whatever the latest is (I don't know, I have boys!) I had a Tiny Tears (or similar) doll, you know the one - feed it and change it, ahh the aspirations we all had!   I wasn't a fan though,  I remember it annoying me that it didn't really look like a young baby and so it seemed silly. This changed when I received Gemma (not sure why I wanted to call it something so close to my own name)   S...

Like so many parents I often despair over what my children eat, more accurately what they refuse to eat. Whilst Leo is much better than he used to be and is willing to try some things at least once, Louka is hard work when it comes to dinner time.  I think he is probably 90% pasta at this point. His dinner choices consist of pasta, usually plain or maybe a little bit of BBQ sauce or mayo, with sweetcorn and hot dogs, ham or salami,    chicken nuggets, pizza or sausages  and a few variations on that but using mainly the same ingredients.  Chips are ok as long as there are just a few, and homemade chips are not included, potatoes in any other form are definitely out.  It seems we spend a lot of time telling the boys what dinners were like when we were kids - yes I have become THAT person... 'Back in my day...... We had a roast every Sunday lunch,  I didn't like roast potatoes so I usually got mashed instead.  I was lucky, Aaron...

My favourite thing about my blog is the chance it has given me to write about some of my old photos and share the stories in flashback posts.   I love the fact it is creating a record for my boys and maybe their children for years to come and giving them the opportunity to get a glimpse into what my childhood and life was like before they came along.  Last year I introduced Leo to the BBC  'Back in Time' series'.  The first series 'Back in Time for the Weekend', took the participating family from the 1950s to the 1990s examining how Britain spent it's leisure time, and was followed up with 'Back in Time for Dinner'  which focused more on how eating habits changed over the years.  We are now watching 'Back in Time for School' and it's making Leo very glad to be at school now and not 100 years ago!   I am pleased he enjoys them as it's showing him more than just history,  to see 'real life' England is a rarity for him too havin...

I was very lucky growing up in the fact I always had plenty of things to do and play with, of course I didn't always realise this and used to drive my Mum crazy with repeatedly whining 'Muuuuum I'm bored'   I did suffer from a huge lack of imagination and I hope Leo doesn't take after me in that respect - it seems so far though he's streets ahead of me already in that respect! I remember setting up my Sindy house and dressing the dolls and then not really knowing what to 'do' with them, once I'd played the same thing each time with them   - Wedding, with Sindy marrying Ken, (while Barbie was bridesmaid in what now seems a bizarre love triangle kind of fashion!)  My favourite part was organising the wedding, setting up the house and the chairs, arranging the food and dressing the dolls only to then be a bit stumped for further scenarios to act out! Looking back it appears that all my playing was based in reality, as you can see i...

Everyone is talking toys at the moment as we approach Christmas and it got me thinking about the toys I loved as a child. Jenny from Mummy Mishaps looked back at some toys from her toddler hood (and I had a couple of those like many of us did in the early 80's, Fisher Price phone anyone?) so thought I'd look at my childhood toys. I had a Cabbage Patch Baby all dressed in pink which I think was called Norma, not a name I really liked for my little doll but that's what it said on her birth certificate so I stuck with it!  I had a bigger 'real life baby' doll which I had for years and probably got played with more but I did love this one - do you remember they used to smell like Talculm powder! Image credit Care bears....the love of my childhood life!  I was their biggest fan, I had 3 years of 'Care Bear parties - so 3 birthday cakes (that was must have been quite easy - same cake, different colour, different picture but I didn't think of that!), ...