Why canal boats can be fun: Ellesmere Port Boat Museum with kids

"If you want to get soaked, go to the boat museum."

That became our eldest's motto during trips there in 2014. Not because we allowed them to fall into the canal, but because we chose rainy days for every visit. On one particularly torrential trip one of the shop assistants came out to the car with us, holding a big 'Canal & River Trust' umbrella over our heads.

But today the sun shone, and we were all looking forward to a rain-free day at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port. To set the scene, they've put together an introductory video...



It's safe to say that none of us is passionate about canals - the history, the construction, the boats, we can take them or leave them. But there are lots of things to like about the museum. Here are the top five things that we, and our two small kids, enjoyed today:

Porters Row Cottages

Easy to miss, these former canal workers' homes have been refurbished in period style (1850, 1900s, 1930s, 1940s) and are tucked away behind the main museum. The different styles, and strange items like mangles and washtubs, were enough to hold the attention of our daughter (age 5) for about three minutes.

The real draw of the Porter's Row Cottages is out through the back gates. Go out through the first couple of houses and you'll find an assortment of old-fashioned toys in the yard: quoits, skittles, spinning tops, wooden horses, and tin cans to knock down with bean bags (a clear winner today).

At the rear of another of the cottages is a veg garden. It had been a communal garden for the original residents and is now looked after by volunteers at the museum.

Power Hall

The Power Hall is a room full of engines. If you know about engines then the technical stuff might interest you. All I know is this: some of the engines are small, and some are big. More importantly some are whirring around constantly, and some go when you press the button.

Children don't need to debate the merits of diesel, or know the fundamentals of internal combustion. They know that if you press the button then the big, noisy, whirry engine will start to go, and it will be great fun. My kids love the Power Hall, solely because of the buttons.

Play Area

This is the main reason my kids like the museum. There is a big narrowboat made of soft play pieces, with barrels and boxes of goods to load aboard. They love taking it all apart and putting it back together, and diving off it head first. This bit is obviously in high demand on busy days.

Next to this there's a room for younger kids, which is usually quieter. There is a drawing table, foam building blocks, standard stuff really. The best bits are a tunnel and a big box of squishy balls.

Boats

There are, obviously, loads of boats. The ones I'm referring to are those than you can get inside.

There's one floating on the water that you can board, to have a look around the tiny sleeping and cooking area, and see the brightly painted panels. There's another inside the museum which you can walk the full length of.

They even do boat trips. We haven't been on one, but we saw one departing today and it appeared to be fairly popular.

The Views

I'm sure my kids weren't bothered, but the boat museum has a lot of fine views. Even in the car park you get an expansive vista of the River Mersey. Within the museum grounds you can see out across the Shropshire Union Canal and Manchester Ship Canal.

On a mild February day like today, with the bright sun shimmering across the canals and still a touch of wintery freshness in the air, watching the colourful boats bobbing in the water... It's almost enough to make you see the appeal of it all.

Adam ---

Anything we missed? Anywhere you'd like us to review? Let us know in the comments below.

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Come Slide with Me

Which are the best soft plays in Chester?

Hint - we've reviewed three (and a bit). Our Chester soft play reviews are below.

Soft play centres - when did these become a thing? My mum swears that we never had them as nippers. We were rolling around in open meadows, collecting pebbles on the beach or painting and sticking like Picasso. My mum also didn't drive, which I think is more the reason that my two siblings and I endured a soft vinyl, sensory room, disco cave deprivation.

There are now soft plays in abundance, in every city, town and village. They can be an absolute money-spinner and a winter life-saver. I have an almost-18-month-old boy and five-year-old girl, so something we can all do together is a total win. And something where the eldest can do a little parenting (while I have a sit) is even more welcome.

 A few things that annoy me about these colourful wonderlands though. I don't get why some charge for adults and babies (under one) - the rate for kids is usually quite pricey already. I only have two wee ones but I know friends with three and it mounts up fast.

Sometimes there is a lack of healthy food options. I know that they won't always be popular with the kids, but they are for a mum who already feels guilty about giving her kids Shreddies and biscuits that day.

I enjoy soft plays with a tannoy. Ones who police. Ones that remove the older children from the under-twos section, often with considerable levels of gusto and commitment. I'm aware that in coming years I may not delight in these ones so much, as it's very likely to be my son running amok on a ladybird ride-along, taking down toddlers on a whim.

The best ones also have real coffee machines. I'm not expecting 100% Arabica but come on, even caffeine addicts have standards.

The list below isn't comprehensive, but these are the ones we visit most often:

Funky Town

Funky Town, formerly known as Funky Monkey's, is walking distance from the city centre. It's not the biggest, but it's got everything you need. There's a padded sensory room, with its own colour-changing ball pool, projections and an illuminated bubble tube with fish in it. But not real fish. That would be irresponsible.

There's a disco room, with lights. There are party packages, including The Avengers and Frozen. We saw a particularly realistic Iron Man once.

They have multiple slides across three stories of soft play. There are those sucky tubes in the ball pit, which feed all of the balls into a big hopper that unloads on your head.

They have TV screens which show rolling BBC News coverage with subtitles, and their food selection is probably the best, and definitely the most varied, you can get: pasta, pizza, wraps, salads, even an 'English Breakfast' panini.

The toddler area has its own ball pit, padded slide and carousel.

Their pricing system is complicated, ranging up to £4.25 (£4.75 weekends and hols) for kids aged 5+.

Free Wi-Fi.

Also, major points for their Facebook page being so up-to-date.

Crazy Daisy's at the Ice Cream Farm

Ignoring for a moment the billion varieties of amazing ice cream, and also the farm animals, and the tractors, the soft play at the Ice Cream Farm is reason enough to go.

It is ice cream themed! There are cartoon cows everywhere (the eponymous Crazy Daisy). The big slide looks like melted strawberry and chocolate ice cream. It also has four lanes, which is brilliant if you want to race against your kids.

Crazy Daisy's also has sucky ball pit tubes. There is a cannon which shoots squidgy balls at ducks. There's a little enclosed football court, and they have magnetic locking gates making it more difficult (but by no means impossible) for your child to escape the larger soft play.

The toddler soft play is high class, and has its own ball pool and a zealously guarded entry gate. If you're over 90cm, you're not coming in.

The cafe sells jacket potatoes, sandwiches, reasonable coffee. You definitely can't bring your own food - just to make sure they've stuck up about 30 laminated posters saying so. But there is an outside picnic area for when the weather's nice.

£3 per child in the week, £3.50 at weekends. No charge for adults, or for younger kids using the toddler play area.

Free Wi-Fi.

Wizz Kidz

Wizz Kidz, in Saltney, is definitely the biggest soft play I've ever been to. I'm sure they have a full-sized five-a-side pitch inside, and their three storey soft play has a trampoline on one of its levels. And a massive slide.

There are separate baby and toddler areas, which is pretty unique. Apparently they've just got a new sensory room but I haven't been to see it. They also have a disco room.

Free entry up to 3pm on Monday & Thursday during term times.

Free Wi-Fi, and lots of comfy couches.

Topsy Tumbles

Adam insists that I include Topsy Tumbles (at Northgate Arena) even though it is totally not a soft play. They do have a bouncy castle, though, and lots of those Little Tikes cars, and balls. And it's £2.70 for one adult and child, with a free slice of toast.

Tuesday & Thursday mornings, 9:30 - 11:30.

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Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts and favourites below!

Sarah

How we got our 18-month-old to brush his teeth.

Our little chap got his first tooth at about three months old. Despite the screaming, sleepless nights and various minor ailments ("Oh, he has a runny nose? Must be teething"), he decided that he quite liked having a tooth and so produced a few more. By age one he had all but two of his gnashers, which have arrived subsequently.

They tell you - 'they' being health visitors, dentists, general well-meaning folk - that you need to start brushing your child's teeth as soon as they appear. Which is fine for them to say, because they're not the ones who need to put their hands near the mouth of your extremely toothy child.

Just look at those!

The chap never liked having his teeth brushed. We got him those round toothbrushes with the thumbhole in the middle. We got various toothbrushes printed with characters he was, at best, only vaguely familiar with. He did not like having the toothbrush in his mouth.

Like the good parents we are, we tried to forcibly brush his teeth for him. He proved to be surprisingly strong, and very stubborn.

We tried distraction. At one point there were three toothbrushes, two parents and one big sister involved. He was not to be fooled, and retaliated by developing a lizard-like ability to lock his teeth on any incoming object, whether it was a toothbrush or a finger.

We had pretty much reached the end of our resources of patience and ingenuity. We didn't particularly want all of his baby teeth to turn brown and rot away. Nor did we want to have a 15-minute 'Battle of the Bathroom Sink' every morning and evening, and risk further damage to our fingers.

Then Santa came.

Or, more accurately, we bought his big sister a Disney Princess electric toothbrush to go in her Christmas stocking. Since that fateful morning, December 25th, he has been absolutely obsessed with it. He even let us brush his teeth with it!

Obviously his sister wasn't best pleased at having to share her toothbrush with him, so this week we finally got around to buying him his very own Batman electric toothbrush. It cost £3 and it is worth every one of those 300 pennies. He doesn't have the first clue who Batman is, but he likes that you need to turn it on, and that it buzzes in his mouth while we brush his teeth.

Seems like Batman's been in the toothbrush game a while.

Thanks for reading,

Adam

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Anyone else had a similar experience? Or something their baby/toddler just refused to do, until you found an ingenious solution? Let us know in the comments below.

Please don't comment sharing a link to some article saying that electric toothbrushes are going to ruin our kids' teeth. I just couldn't handle it.


You can connect with Adam on Google+

Jaunty Goat

This is a profile which was published on Independent Chester last year of a lovely coffee shop called Jaunty Goat in Chester. Unfortunately that website no longer exists, so here's the article in full. The words are by Adam, and the pictures by Sarah.

Ed White is no fan of the big coffee chains. “There’s a new one around the corner from us”, he tells me during a busy Wednesday afternoon. “It hasn’t affected us, but it’s frustrating. I see people going past with their Costa and Nero cups and I know they’d get a better coffee if they came in here.”

Ed is the owner of The Jaunty Goat on Bridge Street and, as he reminds me several times, he is “all about the coffee.” And it shows. The Jaunty Goat is one of a handful of ‘third wave’ cafes in Chester, with an emphasis on well-crafted, quality coffee. We’re sat at one of their copper-covered communal tables, under industrial lightbulbs. The design is slick and clean, with idiosyncratic vintage touches – old school milk bottles, and sugar served in Lyle’s Treacle cans. Ed explains that he wanted to move away from the look of the chains.

I have a cafetiere and my wife has a flat white, beautifully topped with a rose of foamed milk. We share a slice of red velvet cake, and wonderfully moist carrot cake. It’s £3.95 for any coffee and a slice of cake, which are baked by an American woman living in Hoole. Even the chocolatey zucchini cake gets the approval of our four-year-old daughter. The cake is good but it is, of course, all about the coffee. That passion extends to every step of the process – the beans are digitally weighed and then freshly ground for each cup; the equipment is pristine and shiny. The result is a wonderful coffee. The flat white is smooth, well-balanced and silky. The cafetiere coffee was impeccably presented, and reveals more of the flavour of the bean, but isn’t perfectly suited to their current blend of 80% arabica / 20% robusta coffee, with a slight edge of bitterness.

There’s change afoot, though. Ed becomes more animated talking to me about the new beans they’re introducing in the next few weeks. They’ve been working with a roaster to make a new house blend. It’s 100% arabica, from five different origins. There are also plans to have two guest single-origin beans, which will rotate regularly.  Ed recommends drinking these as filter coffee, either the cafetiere or one of their Hario drip filters, to really appreciate the unique flavours of single-origin coffee.

Their espresso-based coffees are lovely, and prepared with care. The service is great, too, and Ed is keen to praise his staff. “Great customer service is what independents survive on”, he explains. “and we don’t lose regulars.” I ask Ed what he would order, and he divulges his daily 4pm ritual: one latte, one blueberry Bakewell slice, and then another latte.

And the name? It comes from an Ethiopian folk tale about the discovery of coffee’s revitalising properties. Why not ask when you drop in? They tell it better than I do.

Adam

You can connect with Adam on Google+

Happy New Year

It is New Year's Day. Congratulations, good wishes, all the best, many happy returns, etc. You made it.

More to the point (after all, it is our blog) we made it. Though we spent a portion of the year jobless, a few weeks of it living in our friends' spare room, and more than a couple of hours wondering if moving to Chester was that great an idea, we have arrived in 2015 with a roof over our heads, plenty of milk in the fridge, overall good health and smiles on our faces.

Helping to plant a new church is hard. Moving cities to help plant said church is hard. Moving cities with two small kids in hard. Actually, having two small kids is hard - and Eliot has just entered the 'tantrum phase' - but we live to tell the tale. 

We have sustained each other. Our kids have sustained us. Our amazing neighbours and friends, old and new, have sustained us. Our church has sustained us in a new and wonderful way. Jesus has sustained us, reassured us, provided for us, and we're very grateful.

Esther has shown us amazing resilience, courage and generosity. She totally owned the idea of coming to Chester to start a church and has got stuck in with school and Vineyard Kids - though she does still miss friends from Nottingham, and having a bigger bedroom. She is loud, completely extroverted, very kind and comes up with the craziest stories. 

Eliot is fearless, and is definitely a 'grab the bull by the horns' character. Luckily he's not come across a bull, but he has poked dogs in the nose, fed cows and goats, and had his finger bitten by a duck. We've had to learn about sleeplessness, dealing with tantrums, being nice to each other at 3am. We're still not great at childproofing our house, but surely Esther was never this destructive? Having two kids also changes your dynamic, your routines and the demands on your time, and it would be so easy for time with Esther to get squeezed out; we've learned to book in date nights with her, to do craft or watch movies together.

This year Esther discovered Makaton, which she loves, and is quite happy to put on impromptu performances of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? for any friend or relative. 

This year Eliot discovered biscuits, but not fruit. He loves remote controls and prefers dancing to talking.

They are good eggs. And so are all of you. Thank you.

So that was Christmas

Happy December 29th everybody. I write this from the dining table of the home of my parents-in-law, with a half-eaten tub of Quality Street looming in my peripheral vision. I am staying strong. I've opted for a honey and lemon instead, to soothe the stomach and the soul after too much of everything else.

I hope you all had a merry and enjoyable Christmas, and that you were able to be near to your loved ones. Ours has been spent in a kind of suspended animation in Norfolk, and very enjoyable it's been, too.

There has been a lovely trip to Center Parcs (of which more later), presents aplenty, Christmas day paddles in the sea, board games, and much food, wine and merriment.

We will be heading back up to Chester (probably) tomorrow morning. No doubt there will be a few Sorry We Missed You cards from Royal Mail on our doorstep, but other than that we step into slightly unknown territory. (But only slightly.) Sarah will be returning to a mad week of mega-shifts at work and I will be returning to... no work at all.

For better or worse, we've not spent too much time worrying (read thinking) about our less-than-ideal job situation. After all, it will be waiting for us in Chester, right? When we get back there will be a few things to consider: What kind of job do I want? Which (if either) of us should be looking at a full time job? Is this the year for a 'sensible career move' or to be bold and daring? Or perhaps both? 

Answers in 2015, I think.

Thanks to all who let us know your Christmas traditions. Opening one gift on Christmas Eve seems to be a classic. On a culinary note, cheesy leeks to accompany Christmas Dinner is tr aditional for some. Sleeping in front of the Christmas tree and staging a family play were two of the more avant-garde suggestions.

We're still working on ours. We all got new pyjamas, as anticipated, in the run-up to Christmas. I'm wearing mine now, in fact.

Adam

Don't worry. It can't be as bad as last year.

So it's December, and in the lead up to Christmas we find ourselves at a point which causes us to think about the year gone by - particularly what we were doing this exact time last year. I had to pause last weekend as I saw the a jumper for my twenty-something brother. He is cool. I must be even cooler as he permits me to choose clothes for him. I saw this jumper, bought it and then thought, "Oh no, did I get him the exact same one last year? The same colour and vibe?" Hmm. Only time will tell.

Other things are also similar yet different in our lives this year. Come January, Adam will once again be without a job. He handed in his notice this week. The company he worked for changed to a shift pattern system which included weekends and evenings. As much as we looked a various combinations for how to work it, it just didn't fit with our family life and commitments.

The management were actually very kind and are sorry to see him go and will be writing a good reference. So this isn't exactly the best of Christmas gift but we have a strange peace about it. And as the title suggests 'it isn't as bad as last year'.

Last year in December we left Nottingham for Chester. Neither of us had jobs, we didn't have house, our furniture was in storage and we lived with friends in a small three bed house for a month with our five month old son and four year old daughter. This was a real low. However, once you have this as your bed-rock 'times are difficult' place, the only way is up. This year, okay, Adam doesn't have a job, but I do and we have a house. We also have increased faith that God has got our back in the good and bad times. This is an entry from diary last year:

Saturday 14th December 2013

We are on the move, packing as I write this and soon putting boxes on the van.

God's provision has already been immense. Sums of money in the last 8 weeks have featured an unmarked envelope of cash on by desk (£100), an anonymous letter full of notes through the front door (£500), a £1000 transfer to our bank account from a couple we barely know and now in last ten mins another £500 in cash through the door. I'm hope people are aware that we're not drug barons. 

The current total in the last three weeks, given to us: £2250. 

As it turned out, we were given around double that amount during our move to Chester.

As we enter the festive season we are of course a little nervous about next month but it could also be a great opportunity. Who knows, Adam may actually get a job is passionate about (this would be a copywriter, editor, designer, just in case you know of anything going). And even though things aren't exactly rosy, there is one family who had an even rougher Christmas 2,000 years ago. I can't get over the fact that May travelled so far on a donkey. At 38 weeks pregnant the bus used to make me feel queasy. They were also kind of homeless and ended up having a 'stable/shack birth', when still the idea of a home-birth freaks me out a little. 

So we are thankful and joyful. We have an incredible community around us here, who are part of Vineyard 53 (our church) and we have amazing loving families. We also have so many generous, supportive friends, both old and new. 

Grandma K on damage control in a very festive garden centre.

Esther is appearing as Mary in her first nativity and we are expecting it to be full-on hilarious. She has asked if she is required to the 'pop the baby out' but we said no need to bother, we think you will find him under your chair or something.

We have also been falling slowly more in love Chester this year. Vineyard 53 had the opportunity last Saturday to run an activity tent in the middle of the highly acclaimed Chester Christmas market. We offered a range of three different crafts, all of which could be done of free. We had 108 children in and out of the tent from the hours of 11am - 3pm and we had great chats with the grown-ups too. 

This Saturday Adam and folk from the church are singing carols in Ellesmere Port, with a giveaway of festive treats and warms drinks for the shoppers. On Sunday morning we are holding a Christmas Party for some children who are part of a Sunday kids' church we help run in a community centre. Lots of fun to be had.

Hopefully next time I write I will be reporting a flood of interviews for Adam, beautiful pics of our short (already paid for) trip to Center Parcs, and more answers to prayer. 

Much love,

Sarah K