Things I'm Loving: That it Happened At All

I wholeheartedly believe that no matter what is happening in your life, there is always something you can be thankful for..no matter how simple it is.

I'm trying hard to find things to love back here at home this week. But in reality I have the post-holiday blues big time. I was awake at 3am Monday morning dreading the thought of going back to work at all. It's been a looooooooong week so I'm pretty thankful it's Friday! So this week it's a pretty random mix of loves so please bear with!

London love

Despite the rainy day we had on our bus tour, we totally embraced all there is to love about this amazing place. The kids just soaked up every experience and didn't complain once about walking miles and miles all over the city. I love that we had this 3-day adventure to remember for all time.

I hope that in years to come we still can remember it with as much fondness as we do right now!

Middle Eastern love

I'm not quite sure what we expected of our time in Abu Dhabi - all I know is it far exceeded all our expectations for being a decadent and luxurious stopover (but pretty fantastic value for money!), one that nicely framed the beginning and end of our journey. I'm not sure if we would deliberately travel Etihad Airways again unless it was by far the cheapest option for us like this time, but I definitely wouldn't hesitate to go back to Abu Dhabi again - and next time would be sure to get to the Ferrari World theme park as well!

Spidey boy, spidey boy

On the flight from Abu Dhabi to London, we enjoyed our best Flying Nanny experience of the whole trip on Etihad Airways when Noah got a trip down the back of the plane for some face painting.

And the flight attendant kindly sent me the photo of Noah rocking his spiderman moves with the crew via Whats App afterwards. That Spiderman face sure made for an interesting conversation when we got to passport control at Heathrow.

Mixing it up

Back in the day we used to do sticker charts for rewarding good behaviour with a money value at the end once the sticker charts were full - usually $10 for 100 stickers. The thing I didn't like about this was that a) it was dollars driven and b) it was always done on an individual child basis. So we changed this a while back and got the kids to fill up button jar together instead to put towards a family treat together - much nicer to have family time as a reward than dollars spent on some material item I think. So the boys had pretty much filled up the jar before we left but then we ran out of time to do anything so it was great to be able to look forward to our first ever trip to Carlucciland when we got home.

It's actually a super hard course to play, and I had a terrible round - even Noah beat me, but the boys loved the funny hidden holes and places where the ball could get caught up by wire pipes and carried along so the fact they loved it is really all that matters!

Getting back to baking basics

I soooooo missed my healthy baking while we were away, so it didn't take me long to want to get back into the kitchen - try less than 24 hours back in the country. This recipe for carrot, coconut and chia seed muffins is simply divine and you would NEVER know they are gluten, dairy and sugar free!

Happy mail

Look what came in the mail this week! I was so thrilled to be quick enough off the mark to get a limited edition copy of the The Little Tree book and matching crochet tree from Faery Sarah. This is Sarah's first foray into children's literature and I just LOVE LOVE LOVE the storyline of the Little Tree searching for his place within NZ's native tree heritage. This is being squirreled secretly away and kept as a gift for my boys for Christmas this year - although I think I may just have to get it out and read it to myself from time to time in the meantime - it's that awesome!

You can get your very own copy of The Little Tree book on Felt here. It would make a fantastic gift for someone you love this Christmas. Friday update: scratch that they are now ALL sold out, but you can still get the e-book version here!

Here's how you can join in this week:

Link up below with your blog post telling us what you're loving, and grab the Things I'm Loving button below for your post too. Don't forget to share the love by visiting all the other lovelies who have joined in - the linky is open till same time next week!

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08 November 2013