Dates with Mommmy

Over the past few months, I have taken each child separately on a "date" to do something that they would really enjoy.  I saw an ad for a Thomas the Train show with the Royal Orchestra, and I thought it would be a something Drew would Love, and Lauren really wanted to go see "Hetty Feather," which is a play based on a book by her new favorite author, Jacqueline Wilson.  It took a bit to figure out where to go with Alison, but we finally settled on Clip N Climb, a climbing wall place in Chelsea.

Drew was first, and it was during the day on a Wednesday, so thankfully my friend Yvona was able to come over and stay with the girls!!  Drew was SOOO excited!

We took the Tube to Sloane Square, and walked a short ways to Cadogan Hall.  It was a pretty small place and we had seats close to the front so we had a good view!  The orchestra came out and tuned up their instruments, they dimmed the lights and the show came on.  They showed "Thomas and the Lost Treasure of Sodor" on the movie screen and the orchestra played the music throughout.  It was an hour long, so just right for Drew.  He is still talking about it!  And we have borrowed the book from the library a couple of times.  He was so enthusiastic, he didn't want to take the bus home, so he held my hand the whole way home.   Such a good outing with my sweet boy!

Lauren and I had our date the last Friday before school started, so Brad came home a little early and Lauren and I had dinner at KFC in Piccadilly Circus.  When we got off the train and walked up the steps to Picadilly Circus, Lauren was like "Wow, this is like New York!!"  She was fascinated by all the people and the lights and the hubbub of it all!  The KFC was VERY busy and right next to M&M World.  We were discussing how cool it would be to live in the flats above M&M World because you could just wake up and go right down and get some M&Ms.  I told if we lived there, we would all be sleeping in the same bedroom because its REALLY expensive to live right there in the middle of everything.

As we walked to the theatre, we passed a few street performers and lots more people.  The show was FANTASTIC!!!  The set was amazing, and the entire cast was about 8 actors.  Lauren was enthralled throughout the entire show!  I want to read the book now that I have seen the show; and there are four books in the series.  Lauren has read the book and she said they left out a lot of the book in the show, but I told her the book is almost always better than the movie or play!

After the show, we went to M&M world, which was HUGE and pretty busy considering it was 10:30 at night!!  It was three floors and there was pretty much every piece of merchandise you could imagine with an M&M logo on it.   We had a good time just looking around and seeing the different personalities they have given to each color of M&M.  It's a good place to take Lauren since Drew and  Alison can't go there because of the nuts.

As we were walking home, Lauren said "I like talking to you because you are very interesting."  That's a complement coming from her.  We had a great night, and it's so fun to hear her perspective on things.  I hope it's the first of many shows we are able to see together in London!





Alison and I went for our date in early October to this place called Clip N Climb in Chelsea.  I wasn't really sure what to expect, but she loves to climb and has amazing upper body strength from all her monkey bar climbing that I figured it would be perfect!  We arrived and were given our harnesses and then we had to wait for a few minutes until it was our turn.  Once it was our turn, they gave us the three rules:
1. Don't climb unless you are clipped in
2. when the mat in front of one of the climbing walls is down, don't stand on it to ensure you don't get hit
3. Don't pull on the rope.

It was quite a cool operation!  There were about 25-30 different apparatus to climb on, and each had a mat in front where the clips were, and to get clipped in, a member of staff had to help you.  And once you were finished, they had to un-clip your harness and clip the mat back in.  When you reached the top, or didn't want to climb any further, you just let go and the pulley let you down slowly.  Alison LOVED it, and I was able to climb a few myself!  She knew which one she wanted to do first, as soon as we got the go ahead, she ran right over to it.  My arms are going to be sore tomorrow no doubt.  I was proud of her persistence on a few of them because a couple of them, she couldn't get it on the first try, but she kept trying until she got to the top!  We had an hour of climbing, which I thought was going to be too much but it was just enough.

After all the climbing, we worked up an appetite so we went to Pizza Express for dinner.  Alison proclaimed that the dough balls were her new favorite food!  Although, she said she didn't like the pizza crust even though I have a feeling it was the same thing as the dough balls, just different presentation.  It was a great afternoon out with my little climber!

It's so nice to get to spend special time with each one of my kids because I can really focus on them, and I hope it's a special to them as well!