I have never ever in 3 years been quite as dramatically late with my monthly Me and Mine post and it's a horrible feeling that has eaten away at me all week. The whole point of the Me and Mine posts is to nudge us all to capture a family moment and for us June has been full of them.  

This week we've given Ollie an early birthday to remember, a whole weekend with almost all the people he loves and time stopped for everything else. So I hope my co hosts, who I have spectacularly let down this month, will forgive me for being so dreadfully behind. 

It's like I have two worlds. One when I am in amongst the blogging community and then one I drive home from the station or from the motorway and weave my way down the country lanes and the world slows down. It's like having the best of everything, even if sometimes, like this month, blogging has meant more time with people than writing about people, if that makes any sense! I came home from a press day in London on Wednesday and felt giddy from seeing friendly faces, high from conversations that sparked a hundred ideas. 

I've had some incredible experiences in the last few months. A weekend at Sisterhood with the most inspiring group of women I have ever had the pleasure of sitting around a camp fire with, a day with one of my absolute favourites and her new tiny Lucy at Blogtacular and an evening celebrating the amazingly talented people who continue to make blogging a profession to be proud of and the most remarkable hobby which connects ordinary people together in an extraordinary way. I may not have come home with an award at the Brilliance in Blogging Awards but I wouldn't have missed hearing my name called out and cheering for every single one of the bloggers illuminated on the big screen.

Each of those times deserves to be written about so for my Me and Mine I wanted to share a special day from June, when our sleepy village became washed in red, white and blue.

There's a lot of love for the Royals in this village, especially for Her Majesty. We had commemorative mugs, bunting that's been stored in garages and lofts since the Royal wedding and the 80th Birthday celebrations. As you drove through you couldn't help but be washed in a wave of patriotism and absolute pride for the collective spirit of a community. Flowers grown in gardens for the small glass jars on the tables, china plates bursting with cup cakes and generous smears of clotted cream sandwiched between pastry and strawberries.

In cities, in schools, in churches, in sports centres and in streets there was this incredible sense of belonging and togetherness. The exact same feeling I have when I stand in a room of bloggers.

Here are mine. My two little kings who lap up everything life has to offer them. On Thursday they break up for the summer and as much as I imagined I would be dreading it, I actually can't wait for them to have a rest. Ollie is falling asleep in the car on the way home and although he's grown up so much since starting school, he's still so small when I look back at his nodding head and droopy mouth in the car seat, snoring away. I want them to have the carefree school holidays you read about in Enid Blyton books. To pack picnics, ride bikes, see friends, go to bed with grass stained feet. 

I feel like I don't see them. Everyday is a race against the clock, a battle to get dressed, frustrations over school socks that ruck up in their scuffed black shoes that are destined for the bin on Thursday evening! To give them later bedtimes, pj days and ice creams that melt down their wrists. Well, if we get any sun that is!

We have booked a special family holiday and leave on Saturday for a week in Rhodes with Mark Warner. We loved it so much last year, felt totally spoilt and honoured representing them as family ambassadors with a week in Kos at the Lakitira resort, that we booked to go this year in an unofficial capacity!

Time is the most precious thing we have. I listened to Lisa Congdon speak at Blogtacular and felt like she was talking just to me. She had this incredible way of resonating with the whole room and hearing how her success story had times of great stress on her relationships, her health made me realise that it's more important to keep in mind the reason we work and blog and take a moment to breathe when you need one. That you can get on and off this crazy ride, without a fear of slipping off a hamster wheel and not being able to get back on.

Take time to live well.

Happy July everyone, we are ready for the next adventure!

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Share your Me and Mine with Lucy, Katie, Jenny, Alex, Fritha and me. Pop over and see what their broods have all been up to last month.

There's so many reasons I adore Ollie, my smallest boy, but reason 47956398 has got to be the day he asked for a festival birthday party.

In his whole life he's only ever had one experience of a proper festival at Livestock in Longdon last year. Not quite the tiniest dancing around the hay bales but definitely one of the most enthusiastic! I'd always had in my mind that festivals would be difficult with children, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The scale of some of the huge events totally overwhelms me but our day up in Gloucestershire was the perfect introduction. 

Decked out in our brightest colourful clothes we headed north for a day of music, good food and entertainment for the boys. I'd read up online beforehand about the children's tents and was so impressed at how they had been so well thought of. A science demonstration, animals to pet and learn about and the highlight for Ollie - a circus skills area. His little determination trying to balance the diabolo under his chin made my heart melt.

We timed our day trip perfectly, heading up for the last day of the festival on the Sunday. The staff seemed relaxed, a mix of pride that the event had gone so well and relief that it was drawing to a close, there was banter at the bars and you could see they had worked their socks off for days. We found it far less busy than we expected which was a good thing as I know our boys would have been overwhelmed in a huge crowd. We whipped around every section of the kid's tents, barely keeping up with our excitable boys who were desperate to try it all!

Face painting, pottery, crafts, a science demonstration - you name it we did it! They LOVED the circus skills area as did Rich and I wandered off for 15 minutes to snap some photos and people watch. There was a complete mix of families, couples lying on picnic blankets with their heads resting on a hay bale, groups of younger music fans, retired seasoned festival goers and everything in between. It really made us smile seeing this eclectic group come together, dancing, cheering and clinking plastic cups full of cider. 

I think we managed to eat everything on offer that day, mooching from the pulled pork stand to the Mexican burritos and stopping to pick up a pizza for the boys which they balanced on their knees, pausing every 3 minutes to run and jump around to the band. There was plenty of choice and everything was really reasonable, and by the end of the day you could feel that sense of real achievement around the field. 

We sauntered back to the car park, passed the circus entertainers leap frogging each other and the bouncy castles who were getting ready to head home. It was a wonderful whirlwind of a day and we couldn't have asked for sunnier skies. 

A perfect start to a new love.

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The only slight downside with festival weekends is it's like the weather just knows you want it to be dry and sends you all the rain it has stored up in the clouds for winter. I'm hoping that we get a gorgeous day like our visit to Livestock last year!

We've managed to sort a disco dome bouncy castle, I've found a DJ who isn't afraid of setting up under the pergola and I've briefed all the mums and dads on the colour run finale! Now you see why we need sunshine! I love the rainbow colour theme and now need to think just how much bunting I need to make and buy to bring a multi colour extravaganza to the garden! 

I'm thinking hot dogs and burgers, a make shift cheeky bar for the grown ups and party bags stuffed with temporary tattoos and wristbands. I think I love the planning as much as the party itself! Come and follow my Pinterest board to see what crazy ideas I have in mind...

If you are local to Gloucestershire and are looking for a great day out as a family or a group of friends wanting to camp at a festival over the weekend then check out the ticket details for this year's Livestock. This year it's like a blast from my pre teen past. Jason Donovan and Chesney Hawkes are playing! I guarantee the whole of Tewkesbury will be able to hear the crowd singing "I am the one and only!"

We were given tickets to Livestock 2015 and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 

The end of May is one of my favourite times of the year for our family. Birthday fun for Sammy, a party weekend and lots of family and friends at the house. I love it when all I can see through the windows as I walk through the house, is people in the garden, some on the patio chatting over a drink, some chasing the kids through the long grass that has suddenly sprung up from nowhere and the haze of colours with all the flowers coming back to life after a long winter.

I love the noise, the balloons, the build up and ironically most of all the after party, as I like to think of it. Where we all sit around with left over party food, plastic boxes filled with drinks that have been lugged from boot to boot, no picture perfect set ups just happy faces surrounded by post party chaos. 

Sammy starts getting excited for his birthday almost 364 days in advance. Our boy who has the most enthusiasm for a party theme in the world lives and breathes it for weeks beforehand, like the absolute highlight of his young year. For the first time since starting school his birthday fell on a weekday and not in half term, and begrudgingly he went to school in a birthday badge, willing the day to end until his best pals came back for a party tea and it was finally the weekend. His teacher actually commented that it was like his head was spinning off with excitement and as we’ve only been at this school since last September I had to warn her that this was classic Sammy and worryingly we have 2 more years until we get to wake up and say happy birthday on a Saturday!

I have so much I want to share about his party celebrations but today I want to share our Sunday. The most colourful Sunday we’ve ever had.

Colour Runs are quite frankly amazing. It brings an enormous amount of people together, people who are there because they’ve lost or are losing someone they love and people who want to do something extraordinary on an ordinary Sunday, raising lots of money for an incredible local charity.

We took part in the Somerset Colour Run for St Margaret's Hospice last year and loved it, the atmosphere, the energy and the positive force that carried you over the finish line and into a rainbow cloud of powder paint. And this year the boys were old enough to take part. We left Yasmin and Logan in the arms of their very capable Granny and headed off in our tutus and neon glasses to join 1200 other runners in the 5k Colour Run 2016.

We laughed, we carried boys on shoulders and we walked/jogged and ran around the course in the hot bank holiday weekend heat along with lots of others who took the chance to take in the incredible views of the Somerset countryside. 

I was so proud cheering on Ollie as he sprinted under the inflatable arch at the end of the course, his little legs so determined to finish the race. 

The trouble is when you have a sweet 3 year old cousin at home, waiting with ice lollies, you want to share the experience with and she's too little to run, you have to find a way to bring the colour run to her. 

So we did. Warm up and all. 

I wish we had bought enough paints to have made their mini run through the buttercups and cow parsley have lasted an hour. They couldn't have loved it more, racing through the paths Rich has mown up and down through the fruit trees. 

And the best thing of all is that every penny we spent at the colour run, at the powder paint stand all went to St Margaret's Hospice. If you get the chance to take part in one near you sign up as quick as you can. 

Come and join in with us and share your family photo. It doesn't have to be a perfect capture, it just needs to be you and yours.

We love seeing your family photos, seeing your babies grow and change. Pop over and see what Lucy, Fritha, Alex, Katie and Jenny have been up to with their broods this month. And if you join in on Instagram remember to tag your photos with #meandmineproject.

I've got this cheeky chops staying for a couple of extra nights, I can't tell you how much I adore that my sister and brother in law trust us to have her but also that she feels completely at home with us.

She totally feels like one of mine.