21/07/2015

New House, Published Article and a Bitten Finger!

Well all has settled down now after the drama of our first few weeks in the new house, we are loving this fun new road and the lake view is so amazing it feels similar to being by the beach back at home in the UK....

Source: Stolen from husbands Facebook page!
In the latest edition of Global Living Magazine I am excited to say I have had my first article published in print as well as digital which was a very proud day for me. The article is entitled 'My First Year as an Expat' if you would like to read my article please visit my FB page or email me. To purchase a digital copy of the magazine, download the app Global Living Magazine or visit www.magcloud.com to purchase a printed copy.


Fourth of July - Independence Day has come round again and this time we were invited to a party hosted by some new neighbours, it was also their twins birthday so the place was filled with children and a huge inflatable water slide which kept everyone happy for hours. We always enjoy meeting new people so to be included in this fun group was priceless, they very much reminded us of our friends back home in the UK.

My summer holiday largely consists of keeping my two girls entertained and this week they decided to visit the Austin Aquarium http://www.austinaquarium.com.


All was going so well until my youngest got her finger bitten by an aging, half blind huge tortoise...when she was all cleaned up the free candy floss and ice cream which the staff gave her as an apology soon stopped the tears.










The offending tortoise!

10/07/2015

REVIEW Children's car games via insuremyrentalcar.com

Disclaimer: I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a sample for review purposes, the opinions are completely my own based on my experience.

A new thing for me this year has been the interest of some brands and companies wanting to link up to write and publish reviews and guest posts, I only choose to go ahead with those I think will be of interest to myself and my readers.

I was recently approached by a blogging brand company to see if I would be interested in linking with www.insuremyrentalcar.com and review their printable car games for children they helped this company to create. This appealed to me for two reasons, one we always travel with our children and two, all our UK visitors hire rental cars whilst they are here.

'Insure My Rental Car's mission is simple...we aim to make it easier for drivers to understand their insurance options and save them money. The new USA site, www.insuremyrentalcar.com, has been created specifically for US residents but also caters to Non-US residents traveling to the USA.' Source: www.insuremyrentalcar.com

The package arrived promptly and contained the following:
1) Print outs of the games
2) A pen
3) Coloured crayons
4) A clipboard
5) Disney singalong DVD


The clipboard is such an obvious idea I am kicking myself I had not thought to use one myself after all these years of traveling with children. My girls are 5 and 8 years old and luckily all the games provided are for multiple children to play but not all of the games would work to entertain a single child in my opinion. www.insuremyrentalcar.com/news-and-blogs/car-rental-blog/travel-games-to-play-in-the-car

The choices of car games to play were:
1) Number plate game
2) Consequence drawing game
3) Car bingo
4) Alphabet game
5) Traffic jam game
6) Car search

During our car trip the children also chose to listen to the CD of classic Disney sound tracks from films such as 102 Dalmatians, Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, Mary Poppins and so on, there were twenty songs to listen to and to be honest it made a refreshing change from the usual modern tunes which get played over and over on the radio plus there were no worries about inappropriate lyrics.

Overall this is a great pack for traveling with children, there were plenty of copies of each game so I can use this pack for another couple of trips, the Disney DVD I can leave in my car to use on any journey short or long and the crayons, pen and clipboard can be left in the car for use anytime too.

www.insuremyrentalcar.com