Bowling Fun, Wildlife Park and Cousin Party!

I headed to my oldest sister's house to look after my niece and nephew for a few days, then celebrated being in my house for 1 whole year with a belated house warming party! 

Click here to watch the vlog or see below. There is also a bonus video of the kids, which if you know me personally you can see here. 

My sister and her husband were both working for the week, with no one to look after the kids. I'm sure they would have been fine playing around the house, especially as the kids love being on their iPads, Switch and watching TV. Plus, they both work from home. I wanted to see them all and I also happened to have a few days off mid-week so I managed to get down and look after them for a few days. 

I had a study day on Monday, so headed down straight after. I had a lovely big cuddle from my Bop, before we cuddled and talked and then headed to bed. The next day, we played in the lounge before heading out for lunch. We were going to Prezzo but ended up going to Ask and it was an absolutely delicious 3 course dinner. Afterwards, I took them to the cinema to see Elemental. I actually really enjoyed the film and it was so much fun. It wasn't at all what I was expecting but such a fun animation. Then I took them to the arcade where we played some games for an hour, before a game of bowling which was a lot of fun! 

The next day we got up early and all headed out to Paradise Wildlife Park. I've wanted to go for a long time but never had the chance to go. It was really beautiful and so much fun. We started by going around the dinosaur world exhibit, which the kids loved. It was so much bigger than I expected. 

Next, we went to the animal side of the park. I was super impressed with how lucky we got with all the animals, especially the lions and the tigers who came so close to us and it was so interesting to see their interactions. 

Ninja's favourite animal was the emu's and Bop's was the lemurs. Afterwards, we went to the beach in the park which was beautiful. There was also a little children's play area which the kids loved, a little wolf walk and of course a dinosaur train which the kids begged me to take them on. They also wanted to do the mini golf which was an absolute disaster. In a way, I'm glad I did because I was going to take them to a much longer and more expensive course the next day, which would have been ten times worse. 

The last day, I had an unexpected lie in until gone 11am. I did get up at 6am and was awake for a while which obviously resulted in me going back to sleep. After getting ready, I took the kids swimming where we played and swam for almost 2 hours. Then I treated them to McDonald's for lunch which was delicious! 

Ninja fell asleep in the car on the way back so I finally succeeded in tiring at least one of them out. Whilst he slept, we watched part of Matilda the Musical and played badminton in the garden which was so much fun. I forgot how much I liked it so I am going to have to invest in my own game for sure. We all watched the end of the film in the afternoon, before a delicious fajita evening meal and heading back to Nottingham.  

I had a counselling appointment the next morning, then headed out to my cousin's to hang out. I was a little disappointed because I was suppose to be having a 6 hour deep clean ready for the weekend, but they never showed up. I was also suppose to be having my patio done but again, they didn't show. The distraction was very much worth it. We all headed out on a walk around Wollaton Park, even stopping to have lunch. I headed home about 2pm to see the patio almost finished and make a start deep cleaning the house. 

It took a long time to get the house and garden ready for my one year house anniversary but it was about time I celebrated with a little house warming party. My cousin and nephew came over a little earlier to help moving the table back onto the patio and set things up. I was so happy to see the table completely set up for the first time and it was such a cute little set up. 

It was lovely to have a little girly weekend, spend time with the family and even see the dogs at my house for the first time. I would love to have a dog, but in the meantime, I'll borrow these two little ones every so often.