Katie Ellison - A multi award winning family travel and lifestyle blog capturing our ordinary moments, adventures and everything in-between.

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A FAMILY TRIP TO LONDON AND A COUPLES TRIP TO LEEDS WITH JURYS INN AND LEONARDO HOTELS AD

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Travel 4 NIGHTS IN PORTLAND, OREGON (PORTLAND TRAVEL GUIDE WITH KIDS) PACIFIC NORTH WEST ROAD TRIP

It's been a while but I am back writing our PNW road trip posts. It's probably been our greatest adventure yet- a road trip around parts of the Pacific Northwest in the US. We started off in Vancouver Canada, headed down to Seattle, then Portland, then Lake Tahoe, lastly finishing off in San Francisco for a few hours before...

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Life IS THE CITROEN C5 AIRCROSS SUV A GOOD FAMILY CAR? (AD)

I wanted to add a note at the start of this post to say I actually wrote it back in March before the start of lockdown due to the COVID 19 pandemic. I then decided alongside Citroen that it wouldn't be an appropriate time to post, so I decided to wait until now. I appreciate Citroen being flexible and...

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Family A VISIT TO THE PUMPKIN PATCH

Maybe I have been living under a rock (or perhaps a pumpkin), but I didn't really know pumpkin patches were a thing in the UK. Having seen them on American films and indeed when we visited the US during October one year, I thought perhaps they were just something that was popular over there. However over the last few...

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I had such a fun day yesterday. Hardly took any photos but did take a good old mirror selfie before I went out (spot my pal waiting for me on the stairs 🥰🐶), and then this one in the sunshine while I was waiting for my friends to arrive.
We went into London to watch Pretty Woman The Musical. It had been booked for ages and it didn’t disappoint, it was literally incredible. The cast were amazing, the whole production was just fantastic. I’ve loved the film for so long but the show didn’t disappoint at all. I got a bit emotional at the end seeing them all bowing, it was just such a treat to be back watching a live show after so long, and I can only imagine what it means to everyone involved. So good! Hugely recommend if you haven’t seen it.
We then went for some dinner at a nice restaurant on Granary Square before getting the train home. Such a nice day with my oldest friends around where I live (I call them my baby friends cause we all met when our firsts were babies).
Now back to the usual Sunday routine of football and family. It’s a late kick off today though so just cuddling in bed with Wren. 🥰 What are you up to today?

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ad As a family we love a fajita night, in fact if you ask my children what their favourite meal is I am pretty sure all three of them would say fajitas. For a while now we have been using the @oldelpaso fajita pockets for the kids, as they are so easy to stuff full of your favourite fillings, and as they have a sealed bottom there is a lot less mess than normal fajita wraps.
We try to mix up our fillings every now and again, a firm favourite of ours is halloumi, but we decided to try meat free mince this time too and it was delicious. The pockets are also vegan too. We also always fill them with lots of different salad and veggies, including onions, avocado, shredded lettuce, carrots, cherry tomatoes and peppers. It really is the tastiest, quick and easy meal. Perfect for Fajita Friday (although ssssh don’t tell anyone, we often have ours on a Tuesday 🤣!)
Do you like fajitas? What are your favourite fillings to go inside? If you don’t I am not sure we can be friends haha.
#OldElPaso #FajitaFriday #MeatFreeMexican #TortillaPockets

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I’ve had such a nice day with Jon today (a belated anniversary treat, my mum picked the kids off from school for us). We headed to Norfolk for the day and had a little whistle stop tour. We started off our day at @urbanjungleuk_ (photo 4), which is a great garden centre with a huge indoor house plant section and a cafe (🐶friendly too). I’ve been wanting to go for ages. I bought a tiny little cactus for my collection. 🌵
Then we headed into Norwich for lunch, I found a dog friendly pub by googling on route called the @tenbellsnr2 and we shared some picky food (dirty fries my favourite 🥰- that’s photo 5). Then we had a little wander around Norwich, saw some pretty houses (Photo 3), before heading to our favourite beach in Norfolk, Wells-Next-The-Sea. It’s been the most bizarre weather in Norfolk today, one minute dark, rainy and grey and the next a tiny bit sunny. We walked along the beach for ages, Rolo had the time of his life, and I’ve never been so cold as it was rainy and windy.😆 We managed to see a pretty good stormy sunset, not an epic one, but better than I thought considering how rainy it’s been. It took 40 minutes for my fingers to warm up after.
Such a nice day together. 🤍

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18 years of knowing him and he’ll still awkwardly sit in on a wet, cold beach and pose for a photo if I ask him too. 🤣🥰 I found these on my camera roll from when we went to the beach to see my dad for the day a couple of weeks ago and I really like them.
I still find it surreal we’ve known each other all that time, although at the same time I can’t imagine a time when I didn’t know Jon, or even a time when we didn’t have the kids. What did we do with our free time before them? 🤣
If you’ve got a partner, I’d love to know a fact about your relationship? Where did you meet? Or how long have you been together/known each other for? Jon and I met when I asked for a job application for a bar he managed in Leeds. It took us a while to get together, we were friends first. We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in December but have been together for nearly 16 years.
I’d love to know about yours. And if you haven’t got a partner, or don’t want to share that then something about yourself instead. 🥰

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I ticked off a little goal of mine and went for a cold water dip in the sea yesterday morning. I’ve been wild swimming a few times before, but never in winter, and I’ve been meaning to try it for ages. We decided we were going to go to watch the sunrise on the beach so I thought I’d give it a go.
I absolutely loved it, i was only in for about 5 minutes but it gave me the biggest high. I’d heard people say it does, but honestly as cheesy as it sounds, I felt so alive. 🤣🙃 I genuinely felt so good for a good couple of hours afterwards. I’m definitely going to do it again, if you read up on the benefits of cold water therapy it’s really interesting.
I’m trying to do little things to make me feel good this year (we’ll see how long that will last 🤣). I really do feel like I have made myself feel so sluggish over the last year and a half, not taking care of myself as much as I could do. I’m not necessarily talking exercise, it’s little things like having a nice hot bath and pampering myself a bit, or going to bed early and reading a book instead of scrolling on Instagram. Or going on much longer solo walks with a podcast or audiobook (I walk quite a bit but I want to try and walk for longer if I can or find new routes instead of sticking to the same old ones just for convenience) . Or just immersing myself in nature more and being outside, which seriously is my favourite thing and always makes me feel great. When I make the effort to do them I feel so much better and I want to try and do that a bit more this year. I absolutely loved yesterday, watching the sunrise and feeling the cold water.
Do you have any random little goals for this year? I don’t always keep them but I do love the feeling of resetting in a way, even though I am aware I could start these things at any other point in the calendar. 🤣

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Yesterday we went for a long walk in a forest with my sister and her boyfriend. I took my camera with me (it’s a little goal of mine to take it out more this year), and took some photos as we were walking round (I also took some nice ones of the two of them too 🥰). The weather was so mild we didn’t need coats, although Wren wanting to just wear a t-shirt was a slightly extreme, they were running around loads to be fair. 🤣
Here’s to spending as much time outdoors in 2022. Never happier than when we are outside exploring. It just makes me feel happy being in the fresh air.🍃🌲🌿🌱
PS I love the first photo, we obviously don’t usually walk in a line like that 😉, but we thought we’d take one like it. If we ever release an album that can be the cover 😂 (This is Thetford Forest by the way, it’s great for a walk, if you park at High Lodge there’s loads of things to do, amazing playgrounds for the kids, bike trails, cafe, go ape etc too).

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A few random photo memories of our Christmas period, including this first one of my handsome boy in a bow tie. 🥰 I love it as it’s rare he keeps still long enough for a photo with him nowadays, let alone with him looking so fancy 🤣 (that’s the third year in a row he’s worn that shirt, I bought it very big 😉). Other memories are of the important task of blowing out 11 candles on a Christmas Eve birthday cake, the present hit of three giant squishmallows 😅, and the fact our neighbour left a surprise Santa suit gift on the doorstep for Rolo on Christmas Day. Plus some other random photos.❤️

I hope you have all had a great few days, even if it wasn’t what you were expecting. I also hope it was as kind to you as it could be if you are going through a tough time.
Ours has been low key but nice. It’s never perfect when you throw families, over tired kids, and general chaos into the mix, but we made some lovely memories and the children had the best time which is the main thing. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last few days of eating far too much food, doing jigsaws (we never do jigsaws any other time bar Christmas but I always bloody love a jigsaw🤣), not knowing what day it is ( I’m still not sure to be honest), and just generally ‘relaxing’ (as much as you can relax with 3 kids and a dog).
The decorations are still up here and I’m still fully embracing ‘this random time between Christmas and New Year’ mode. How has your festive period been? 🤍

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