Love North East

Welcome back to #LoveNorthEast. Spring is officially here! Well according to the date it's Spring! The view from my window is telling a slightly soggier story! But this month see's us celebrating Easter AND another fabulous school holiday to look forward to.

Thankyou to everyone who joined in with last month's #LoveNorthEast - we loved reading all of your posts and hope you link up again this month. I'd love to see even more of our brilliant local bloggers so please help us spread the word.

How It Works
#LoveNorthEast is a place for North East bloggers to link up their favourite posts of the month so they are all in one convenient place - it's a fab way to build our community, discover new bloggers and receive extra views and comments on posts you would particularly like to shine.
Featured Post
My favourite post of last month was this one from Sam at North East Family Fun, we are heading to Kielder soon and thanks to this post we now know The Stick Man Trail is just down the road from our holiday let, so we have a who'd day planned without any effort at all!

The Rules
1 - Add our badge (copy and paste the code below into the HTML of your blog post at the bottom. If you are confused - just ask and we'll do our best to help). Alternatively, you can add a text link to this post or Sam's #LoveNorthEast post at the bottom of your blog post so people know where to find us.
2 - Comment on both host posts and a couple more in the linky. It is GOOD to share the love!
3 - You can link up one post every month. Posts must be written by a NE blogger or be based in the NE. Business posts are also welcome and posts can be old or new.
Bloggers that don't play by the rules will have their posts removed. Sam and I put a lot of work into promoting NE bloggers and blogs and it only takes 2 minutes to follow the above steps and keep us happy.
In return we will:-
1 - Both comment on every post that takes part.
2 - Share our favourite posts across our own social media (combined 20k+ followers).
3 - Both choose our favourite blog to showcase in next month's post.
Grab our badge
Add this HTML code to the bottom of your post or add a text link back to this page

<div align="center"><a href="http://blog.monkey-feet.com" rel="nofollow" title="North East Family Fun"><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c138/NEfamilyfun/LoveNorthEast%20small_zpsvkjsr9r2.jpg" alt="North East Family Fun" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

#LoveNorthEast will open on 1st of each month for 10 days. Grab our badge and then add your link to the tool below

An InLinkz Link-up

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy by The Monkeyfooted Mummy

Mini Scientist Mission 5 - Skating @ Life Review and a Giveaway

I'm not terrible at Ice Skating but Im also not brilliant at it and the thoought of taking my lot on the ice was a scary prospect but Peanut and The Golden Child have asked almost continuously for 2 weeks to head along and go Skating at Life so I bit the bullet and we popped along last weekend.

 

We arrived and were allocated a time slot (straight away) and given the right coloured wristband. I'm going to be honest and say when we walked past the rink there were lots of groups of teenagers (dun dun dun) and I was concerned we would be jostled and knocked and I'd have to put my old mother scowl on! But my fears were fruitless as it turns out as there are Marshall's on the ice and it seems to keep everyone moving safely and behaving nicely.

 

We popped through to swap our shoes for skates then got ready for skating. My one grumble of the day would be that we weren't told we needed to hand in each of the bands to get back our shoes, more on that later but it's a good point to keep in mind for your visit.

 

 

There a nice seating area between the rink and the shoe exchange so Termite and daddy stayed there (she had to try some skates on though) and watched us skating round the ice.

 

I decided, as the double blade kid skates were too small for my big footed children, that it was safer to divide and conquer as the littlies aren't so good at skating, so they took turns to skate with mummy. Turns out that skating is a rather tiring affair and after about half an hour of spinning round the rink my big two were ready to have a rest and go play inside. Here's where we had a bit of a delay, being a super efficient mummy (pahahaha). I stripped us all of skates then carried them all (with just socks on my feet) to the exchange where I was asked for all the bands, explaining I didn't know we had to hand them in I thought I might be able to get our shoes and bring the bands back as we passed but that wasn't to be so I trudged back for the bands then back for the shoes and back to the kids again which resulted in cold wet feet! I shall know for next time though and really 'first world problems' it was an extra 2 minutes!

After skating we headed upstairs where the kids enjoyed a 'nature discovery' some 'cookery' and some 'fish chasing'! I love how they can just play freely with all the great role play stuff here

Overall we loved our day at Life the kids were suitably exhausted from the skating, they loved playing inside too and we all had lots of fun. As a parent of three I would have loved to be able to take them all on the ice together, logistically a nightmare though. So it would have been nice to have some bigger double bade skates, some skate Guides (like those wee push along penguins), or to have been able to wear the ice shoes, I did try my hardest to wheedle the lady in the skate hut to let me have some but she wasn't to be swayed! We will definitely go back again though and as we didn't fall over I'm giving the day a firm thumbs up!

 

If you'd like to try skating I have two family passes to give away to be in with a chance of winning one, pop over to our facebook page and leave a message on the wall saying you'd like to win, or click here to pop over to our twitter page to retweet this message

 

Connect with Life on Facebook or Twitter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy