Welcome to my October personal family roundup.  It's my monthly roundup where you get an insight into the person behind this blog and what me and my little family have been up to for a whole month.  It's also a place for me to document our lives each month and save them in this category so we can look back through them and remember what we've done!

Read on to see what we've been up to in October 2018.

Once a month I look back through our photos and my planner to record the highlights of the previous month.  It’s a great way to create an online scrapbook that I, hubby and the children can look back on for years to come.  I bet they’ll love reading through this category when they’re grown up!

Bella's Inset Day

Bella had an inset day so we had a lovely mummy-daughter day together.  We went swimming in the morning, then sat in the cafe at David Lloyd for a drink and snack whilst mummy caught up on work emails and Bella coloured in.  Then we headed into town for Bella to choose some gloves and a scarf.  We popped to Bella Italia for lunch where they have lots of vegan options.  Bella had a vegan cheese pizza and I had some amazing spiralized veg with lentils and veg.  It was delicious!  I took Bella to Waterstones for the first time and she was amazed!  She could have stayed there all day.  As she recently had an amazing Parent's Evening, I let her choose two books as a reward.

Rhossili Bay, Gower Peninsula, Wales

Ben and I spent 24 hours in Rhossili Bay, The Gower, Wales on a last minute camping trip.  My mum had the kids overnight and we drove there in the camper finding a campsite for only £16 for the night.  I hope we can do more of these last minute trips next year.  The whole 24 hours away for fuel, camping, snacks and a meal out was £100.  Such a bargain!  We could even cut it down as we could take our own homemade food really.  We'd easily spend £100-300 per night just on a hotel room for the night, so an entire night away with food and fuel for only £100 is great to us.

Read what we got up to here: A last minute campervan camping trip to Rhossili Bay in the Gower, Wales

Bella's fun homework

These are pics of Bella doing her homework!  From now, year 2, until year 6 she has a homework folder called PAWS (Purposeful Activities Without School).  There are 8 sections with 3 tasks each and she gets to choose one task from each section.  They have around 1.5 terms to complete it all.  It's a great idea as she gets to choose which tasks/projects she wants to complete.  They're not all on paper either as these two weren't.  She was to tidy an area of the house so picked her bedroom.  I took photo evidence of the progress and we stuck it into the folder.  In the first photo she is making vegan flapjacks and documented her method and recipe with photos.  For now she enjoys doing these and I hope this continues through school!  She's also made a fire safety poster, penned a poem and discussed the secret of great friendship among other tasks.  It's so much more interesting than a piece of maths additions, though she may start to get those to bring home too, who knows.

Now, this wasn't Bella's homework, but I found it in her bedrrom!  Cute!

Half term - Brean

The half term was pretty normal in October as the kids went to holiday club 8.30am-3.30pm for four days.  We all took the Wednesday off though and went to Brean.  I wanted to check out the beach and have a nice sea-breeze walk.  We also climbed to the top of the cliff that separates Brean Sands and Weston-Super-Mare.  I wasn't sure the kids would make it up so many steps, but they managed and loved running around the top of the cliff.  The views were amazing and it was so refreshing to be up there.  I love the beach and Weston/Brean are the closest to us with a one hour drive.  One day I will live by the beach.  I feel so free and fresh by the beach.

Reuben’s swimming lessons

We decided to cancel Reuben's swimming lessons for now and restart them when he is four.  He didn't settle at all after four lessons and was really distressed.  He's such a monkey as I've since taken him swimming and he was trying to swim and jumping in no problem!  That's why I thought he was ready, but he was totally the opposite in the lessons.

Bella’s swimming lessons

She is so close!  Bella has swam around a meter to the edge but with kind of cycling arms and legs!  She needs to do her straight kicking legs and realise the water will hold her up and she'll be off!  Hoping she'll crack it in November!

Vix dental work

Woohoo!  After over 2 years with a brace, 3 teeth removed, whitening and two false bridges, I FINALLY have my perfect smile and permanent bridge fitted!!  I've had a billion appointments and now I think I just have one or two more in November for final adjustments.

New mortgage

We expected our new mortgage to go through in October, but we are still waiting!  I started the application in August, so it's taking forever!  Hopefully it will all be completed in November.

The Truth About Cancer

I spent 14 hours of my October watching a docu-series called The Truth About Cancer which I highly recommend watching.  It's available to purchase here: https://go2.thetruthaboutcancer.com/agq/silver/ but I watched it for free online.  Sometimes they show each episode for 24 hours only online which is how I watched it.  I had to commit to watching it for around 10 days as each episode was only available for 24 hours each.  It's full of so much amazing life-saving information and I learnt so much.  I'm hoping to buy the DVDs in the future so I can watch them all again as there is just so much information.

All Things Wild

We returned to All Things Wild with friends who had never been.  I really do love it there and it was our second visit this year.  There is so much for the children to see and do including dinosaurs which are a winner!

Read my previous review here to see how great it is for kids: All Things Wild Nature Centre Review

Vegan Pop Up Chippy

Veganism is definitely on the rise and I am so pleased with my decision to go plant-based almost one year ago now!  before this I was veggie for 5 years and had already started drinking plant based milk for the last two years of being veggie.  I had been thinking of going 100% plant based for a while and once I had increased my knowledge I knew it was the right decision for me and my health.  I only wish I'd had all this knowledge as a youngster and I would have made the decision so much sooner.

Though we are mainly stuffing our faces with fruits, vegetables, whole grains and home cooked meals, we do sometimes treat ourselves to naughty food - usually once per week!  on the way back from All Things Wild we popped to Cheltenham where there was a pop up vegan chippy!  It's so great there are so many more options now and I see vegan menus springing up all over the place.

Bongo trouble

Though we love our Bongo, I am worried we have bought a money pit!  It is 20 years old and we've only had it since June, but it's now been to the garage twice already!  The first was £400 to replace the turbo and now it's back in again with around £1000 of repairs, but it's not out yet and it's been there a week so who knows what else they are finding?!  I hope this is the last fix for a good while!  It's so upsetting to see all our savings we have worked so hard to save go on all these car repairs!  With my car having some issues this year too, we have spent £2000 on car repairs.  Arg!

Halloween

We don't go trick or treating.  The children don't really know about it as they are young, but I'm not too keen on it anyway.  I'm very anti sugary snacks like sweets so I would not encourage them to have any or go round asking people to give some to them!  I did read about someone who puts their collected sweets outdoors for the 'vegan witch' to change into vegan sweets overnight which is a sweet idea.  I avoid giving the kids sweets so it's not really for us.  They do get excited hearing about Halloween though and seeing all the costumes in the stores, so we took them to a local Halloween disco which had a spooky house with Halloween activities.  Maybe when they're older they'll want to go trick or treating and we'll just go to houses we can tell are taking part.  In our area you should light a pumpkin in a front window if you are expecting trick or treaters.