FAMILY WEEKLY UPDATE: 10TH - 16TH AUGUST 2026 | DEAR ZOO, BOWLING, PIKMIN, UNO & A VERY SMASHED DELIVERY!
Family Weekly Update
This week's family weekly update covers 10th–16th August 2026, and it was a mixture of family days out and some much quieter days at home.
We started the week with a trip to the Trafford Centre for bowling and shopping, then headed to The Lowry on Tuesday to see Dear Zoo Live. The rest of the week was much more relaxed, with lots of drawing, Pikmin and what felt like endless games of UNO!
There was also a slightly disastrous delivery involving 12 sublimation mugs that didn't actually make it as far as our front door in one piece.
Here's what we got up to this week.
🎳 Monday – Bowling At The Trafford Centre
On Monday, we got the bus to the Trafford Centre for a family day out.
We started by having a look around Kenji, where we found some really cute cuddly toys for just £5 each. Alice chose a penguin and Leo picked a lobster.
After that, we headed to King Pins for a game of bowling. I'd booked in advance because they had an offer on where children could bowl for free, which was really good value during the school holidays.
Of course, I also needed a slush because apparently I have my own bowling tradition now! Whenever we go bowling, I always get a blue slush, except they didn't have blue this time.
I had to settle for red instead!
It was really busy inside King Pins because of the school holidays and the offer, so it was quite loud for Leo. We'd brought his ear defenders with us though, and once he had those on he was absolutely fine.
Somehow, I actually won the bowling!
Leo and Lawrence came joint second.
After bowling, we headed to the food court for lunch. Alice and Leo chose McDonald's Happy Meals, while Lawrence and I had KFC.
We'd also saved up enough points on the Krispy Kreme app to get a free Choose Your Own Dozen, so obviously we couldn't leave without collecting those!
Before heading home, we had a look around Selfridges, including the Disney section, the Jellycat shop and the toys.
It ended up being a really nice family day out.
🦁 Tuesday – Dear Zoo Live At The Lowry
Tuesday was a theatre day as we'd been invited to the 11am press performance of Dear Zoo Live at The Lowry.
Alice and Leo have both loved Dear Zoo over the years. They're probably a little older than the main preschool audience now, but they were still really excited to see all the animals they knew from Rod Campbell's book brought to life on stage.
We caught the tram at around 9.50am and changed at Cornbrook for MediaCity, arriving at around 10.10am.
As we were early, we popped into the Lowry Outlet Mall and bought some chocolate from the Cadbury shop before heading across to The Lowry.
When we arrived at the Lowry Alice and Leo were given Dear Zoo activity sheets and crayons. We also had a look at the merchandise, where Leo chose an "I've Seen Dear Zoo" badge and Alice picked one featuring the puppy.
We were sitting in Stalls Row G, Seats 13–16 in the Quays Theatre and had a really good view.
The show itself was lovely. There was lots for the children to join in with, including roaring like lions, jumping like frogs, stretching like giraffes and, of course, shouting "I sent him back!"
Leo particularly loved the frog and monkey, while Alice liked the snake and puppy puppets.
The performance lasted around 50 minutes with no interval, which I thought was just right for the younger children it is aimed at.
Afterwards, we headed over to the Quayside Beefeater for some lunch before going back to The Lowry for another look around the Wild Things exhibition.
Dear Zoo is actually one of the children's books featured in the exhibition, so it worked really nicely seeing the story on stage and then finding it again inside Wild Things.
👉 You can read my Dear Zoo Live family review for more about our theatre trip, or head over to All About Theatre for my full theatre-focused review of the production.
🎨 Wednesday – A Quiet Drawing Day At Home
After two days out, Wednesday was a much quieter day at home.
I spent most of the day drawing on my iPad, while Alice and Leo did some drawing of their own.
They then spent the rest of the day playing with their toys and had a few hours on their tablets, so there really wasn't a huge amount to report from Wednesday!
Sometimes a quiet day at home is exactly what we need though, especially after a couple of busy days.
🌱 Thursday – Speech Therapy & Inventing Our Own Pikmin
Alice had speech therapy at around 11.30am on Thursday.
While she was there, Leo went to my parents' house for a little while because he really wanted to go round and play UNO with them.
After Alice's speech therapy, we'd originally planned to head to The Lowry for their Relaxed Day, but Alice had worked really hard during her session and was tired afterwards. She didn't want to go back out again, so we decided not to go.
Leo was a little upset because he'd really wanted to go, but the Relaxed Day finished at 3pm and by the time we'd travelled over there it would probably have been around 2pm anyway.
Instead, I played UNO with him for a while, which soon cheered him up.
Then Alice decided that she wanted to invent her own Pikmin.
If you've never come across Pikmin before, they're little plant-like creatures from the Nintendo game series. There are different types with their own colours and abilities, and Alice is very interested in them at the moment.
So we all sat around the table and decided to create our own.
Alice invented an orange Pikmin that was resistant to lasers, Leo created a root Pikmin that looked like the root of a plant, and I made a rainbow Pikmin.
The children were very proud of their new Pikmin designs and decided that I needed to send their drawings to Nintendo so they could make them for the next Pikmin game!
I'm not quite sure Nintendo takes requests for new Pikmin from Alice and Leo, but they were completely convinced that their creations needed to be included.
It was such a simple thing to do together, but we had lots of fun coming up with our different ideas.
At the moment, our house seems to be divided into two very definite interests: Pikmin for Alice and UNO for Leo!
🎮 Friday – A Very Exciting Surprise
On Friday, my parents came round with a surprise for Alice and Leo as a treat for doing really well at school.
For Alice, they'd bought Pikmin 4 for the Nintendo Switch.
She has wanted Pikmin 4 for ages and had actually asked for it for her birthday, but her birthday isn't until December. She doesn't really understand how far away December is yet, so she's been asking us almost every day whether it's her birthday and whether she's getting Pikmin 4!
You can probably imagine how excited she was when my parents gave it to her early.
For Leo, they'd bought UNO Flip Extreme and UNO Super Mario, which couldn't really have been more perfect for him at the moment.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of Friday involved a lot of Pikmin and a lot of UNO.
📦 Saturday – Pikmin, UNO & The Case Of The Smashed Mugs
Saturday was another fairly quiet day at home.
Alice and Leo spent lots of time playing Pikmin 4 on the Switch, we played some more UNO and I managed to get some more drawing done on my iPad.
I also had an Amazon delivery arrive with some things I'd ordered for sublimation.
I'd bought some mug wraps, sublimation pens and frosted tumblers, as I've been experimenting with ideas for things I could potentially make.
I'd also ordered a box of 12 sublimation mugs for £12, which I thought was a really good price.
Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed when I ordered them that they weren't actually being delivered by Amazon.
They were coming with Evri.
When the delivery driver handed me the parcel, I could immediately hear what sounded like lots of broken pieces moving around inside.
I told him, "These are completely smashed. They're supposed to be mugs!"
He took the parcel back and told me he'd mark it as undelivered because it was damaged.
That sounded simple enough... until I checked Amazon and discovered that the parcel had been marked as delivered.
The driver had taken the box away with him, so I didn't even have the broken mugs to photograph as proof that they'd arrived damaged.
I then had to go through Amazon's online customer service and work out how to get past the automated responses and actually speak to a person.
When I finally managed to speak to someone, they initially asked me to provide photographs of the damaged mugs.
Which was slightly difficult considering I didn't have the mugs!
I explained what had happened and that the driver had taken the parcel away. Thankfully, because I've been a Prime customer for a long time and order quite a lot through Amazon, they agreed to refund me rather than making me go through the third-party seller.
So at least it was eventually sorted.
I've now ordered some replacement sublimation mugs and made absolutely sure that this time they're being delivered by Amazon. I've had mugs delivered by Amazon before without any problems, so hopefully the second attempt will arrive with all the mugs still looking like mugs!
👨👩👧👦 Sunday – A Family Day At My Parents' House
On Sunday, we spent the day at my parents' house because my grandparents were visiting from North Wales.
We didn't really do anything particularly exciting. We just spent the day chatting and catching up while Alice and Leo played, which was lovely.
My grandparents also gave the children some money.
Lawrence is off on Monday, so I think the plan is to take Alice and Leo to the shops and let them choose what they'd like to spend it on.
I'm sure they'll have absolutely no trouble deciding!
Final Thoughts
That was our week!
We had a couple of lovely days out at the beginning of the week with bowling at the Trafford Centre and Dear Zoo Live at The Lowry, followed by a much quieter few days at home.
Pikmin and UNO have definitely taken over our house at the moment, and I have a feeling we'll be playing plenty more of both over the next few weeks.
I've also been doing lots more drawing on my iPad and slowly collecting some sublimation supplies – although hopefully my next box of mugs will actually arrive in one piece!
It was a nice mixture of days out and quieter family days at home, which is pretty much what the summer holidays have looked like for us this year.
🎥 Watch Weekly Vlog #464
You can see everything we got up to in this week's weekly vlog, including our Trafford Centre day out, bowling at King Pins & our trip to see Dear Zoo Live at The Lowry.
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