Richard Hall sent me an e-mail the other day asking if I was okay as I hadn’t posted on my blog for a while. It’s nice to know that there are people out there that a) read the blog, and b) care enough to check everything’s okay when time is spent away from the blogosphere. Thanks for your concern Richard.

So why haven’t I posted here for a while? It’s mainly due to holidays and being very very busy at work. It’s good to be busy at work but it does take a lot of energy that means that when I get home the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer screen; that and Louise would object:)

What have we been up to during this hiatus? Well, I took two weeks off to spend time with the family during the summer holidays. Euan’s just had his first summer break and has spent a lot of time with his friends and having swimming lessons. I think he’s really into swimming now thanks to the Olympics. Last night he said that he wanted to do 4 jobs: a spaceman, a diver, a police officer and a swimmer. So I’ve told him he can apply to be a police diver.

Also during the holidays we got ourselves a new shed which meant I had to remove the old one. Not a problem I thought as it’s practically falling down anyway. It actually took a full day (9am to 8.30pm) to take it down! I hadn’t realised how much wood a shed is comprised of, it took a day and half to take it all to the waste disposal site.

We visited Gulliver’s Kingdom in Matlock with my brother and his children. Gulliver’s Kingdom is excellent for families with younger children as all the children except 2yr old Nalini could go on all the rides, unlike Alton Towers where they wouldn’t have been allowed on most of the best rides.

On the trip up to Sheffield I wanted to take a leisurely drive up and find a nice family friendly pub for lunch, so I turned to the Internet to find the perfect pub. Dave Edmondson neatly sums this experience up in this article. This lead me to thinking that I should set up a venture to create a family friendly review site covering the UK. Unfortunately family-friendly.org.uk is being sat on and is unused. There are alternatives but I may just add some categories here to do the same job. I think Netmums may have some info, but you need to register to get at it. I’d be thinking of covering pubs, restaurants, cafes, theme parks, etc. and their suitability for the 4-12 age range. So if anyone reading this has some valuable information that they’d like to submit contact me and I’ll see how this can be co-ordinated.

Finally, here anyway, we spent a week at the Sherwood Castle Holiday Forest. This was excellent as we were in a wooden cabin on the edge of the forest. There was lots to do on the site including archery, swimming, mountain biking, a maze, and animal centre, loads. It was safe for Euan to play outside unsupervised (but watched) with other kids on the park, and it was close to a number of very good activities for kids. One worthy of particular note is “Making It!” in Mansfield which is a fully interactive “museum” of how goods are made from the concept through to the manufacture and marketing.