No Books Allowed (1)

Welcome to No Books Allowed. This is a monthly feature hosted by Raimy from Readaraptor, which is used to discuss things things in life which aren't connected to books. This post can be used to talk about days out, music, TV, video games, films etc for all those book bloggers out there who do occasionally do stuff other than read and go to book events!

My blogging friend, Raimy, has started up this excellent new feature and I thought that this month I would join in on the fun.  There are no shortage of non-book related posts here on Fluttering Butterflies, but it is always nice to participate in new features and discuss a group of things that individually I might not have written posts about.

So, March.  March has always been a busy month in our house.

Watching a basketball game 

Ever since the Olympics last year, N and I have been keen to take the boys to some more live sporting events.  It's something that I did quite a lot growing up (we'd see local baseball games, college sports, the occasional NBA game) and it's really something I'd like to share with my two little ones. It'd be really fun to get them to be excited about sports.  At the end of February we took them to see their first ice hockey match... It was okay, but what I really wanted was a more festive atmosphere in the audience. Some real team spirit and involvement like what happened when we went to the Olympics last year.  I wanted to do the Mexican wave and to cheer wildly.

Sadly, ice hockey wasn't for us in that respect. But this local basketball game we went to in Guildford? Was so much better.  We'd all stomp our feet and make noise when the opposing team were doing free-throws, and the Guildford mascot was pretty cool. He even posed for this photo with the Littlest.  And there was the Mexican wave and loads of chanting (DE-FENSE! etc) and it really was exactly what I wanted it to be.  I'm really hoping to find more sporting events like this in our area soon :)

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is always difficult for me, especially as my relationship with my own mother is pretty tenuous.  But the boys and N are absolutely lovely and the boys made me homemade cards and a necklace made out of pasta. I got flowers and taken out to both breakfast AND dinner.  Aww.

The Littlest's 5th birthday

How did it happen?! How on earth did my baby turn 5?! Surely he should still be wearing teeny tiny babygros and be small enough for me to carry about in a baby sling. But no.  He's an absolutely mischievious 5 year old.  Who wanted a Scooby Doo party for his birthday.  We couldn't find a Scooby Doo cake last minute, so bought these delicious Scooby Doo cupcakes from a local baker.  I now have a 7 year old and a 5 year old. Hold me.

The party was a great success.  We hired an entertainer to come and let the kids play with his circus-y toys.  It was quite good for the Littlest as he's only started in Reception in January and he doesn't really know the kids in his class very well, especially as he seems to be that little bit shy of other children.  He was a real champ and really joined in with everybody and I really couldn't be more proud of him!


N's birthday (Siro-A)

And because we like to make things interesting around here, 2 days after the little boy's birthday, it's N's birthday.  N is at the age where he forgets entirely what his actual age is and we have conversations that go something like this Me: I can't believe you're going to be 37 this year. N: What? No, I'm 36 this year. ...Right? No? Really, 37?  And I giggle like crazy.

To celebrate N's birthday this year, even though he was unwell, we all trekked into London to meet up with some friends for lunch and followed that with seeing a very unusual production called Siro-A.  It was billed as Japan's answer to the Blue Man Group which is what intrigued N.  It was a really fun and unusual way to spend the afternoon!  I had a brilliant time!



Friday Night Films

N and I decided on starting up Friday night film nights.  We've also taken up a Lovefilm subscription, so that helps.  So far, we've watched The Dark Knight Rises which we missed at the cinema and The Woman in Black, which I fell asleep through.  I've watched Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Part 1 and more cheesy dance films than I'd care to admit to :)

It seems that over the past year, I've slowly phased out watching any television whatsoever.  I've dropped all of the programmes I normally watch and unless it's children's cartoons (mostly Scooby Doo) the TV just isn't on in our house.  And I like that very much. It feels freeing.

Legoland

You'll see me regularly talking about Legoland during future No Books Allowed posts as now that Legoland is open again for the season, our family will be there quite often.  It is my (and the boys' I'm sure) favourite place on earth and we pretty much count down to when it will open again during the months between November and March when it's shut.  It is possibly a bit ridiculous how much of our schedules for the rest of the year will now be revolve around Legoland events and collecting badges and collector bricks!

Sadly, opening weekend was a real wash-out.  Rain, rain everywhere.  Still, even in the rain, Legoland is a pretty awesome place to be.  We picked up some of the new pop badges that we collect, N ruined his birthday surprise and we took some funny pictures with some of the new Lego models in the Big Shop! Fun all around :)

What non-bookish things did you get up to this month?