NOW CLOSED: Win £200 of Dove Spa vouchers for sharing your stories about family adventures, dreams or reality of living in an unusual place for "We Bought A Zoo"

[AnnMumsnet]

We've been working with 20th Century Fox to help promote the UK release of "We Bought A Zoo".

The main themes of the film are about adventure, living somewhere different, bringing families together and facing extraordinary challenges.

You could win spa tickets for you and a friend (worth £100 each) by posting and ...

~ Sharing with the film makers your own inspiring stories - let us know your ideal family adventure or how you bring your family together? Have you ever moved your family to live somewhere completely different? How did it go?

~ If you've seen the film or read the book, let us know on this thread what you think.

~ If you are yet to see it then we'd love to know your own thoughts on how you think you and your family would manage if you had to live in an unusual place - or what sort of unexpected surprises have you encountered in a new home, what would be your worst nightmare surprise?

~ What animals would you love to have in your own zoo? And which would you run a mile from?

The film is described as "a funny, inspiring and true story about the magical power of family to persevere in the face of extraordinary challenges. This is acclaimed filmmaker Cameron Crowe's (Jerry Maguire) first motion picture for all audiences, and stars Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Thomas Haden Church. Damon portrays a single dad who, looking to give his family a much needed fresh start, moves to a home situated in the middle of a zoo, which he and his two children will attempt to bring back to its once glorious state. The film weaves together warmth, laughter and a spirit of optimism and is perfect to get together for"

Five lucky MN bloggers and their friends (and some lucky ladies from MNHQ) went to see an exclusive screening of "We Bought A Zoo" at the 20th Century Fox' offices in London.

You can read the blog review posts here:

Mummy+mimi, homemadekids, romanianmum, adventuresofafirsttimemum and judewharton

The film is on general release on Friday 16th March. You can see the and find out more about the movie here

TheOtherHelenMumsnet says "I was really surprised by this film - I was expecting a nice little film about a zoo but was completely unprepared for how emotional it is - I hadn't taken a single tissue with me but cried like a baby all the way through! (in a good way though!)"

You can be a part of the discussion on twitter too by using #WeBoughtAZoo.

Do post your ideas on the above below, add your review and/or let us know you've tweeted and you could win one of two pairs of tickets for a Detox Package at a Dove Spa (which has 23 UK locations). Each winner will get two tickets and each ticket is for a full Body Scrub, Detox Wrap and a Brightening Mini Facial and a £30 Travel Allowance (worth £100 per person)

Thanks and good luck, MNHQ

I cannot believe that Matt Damon has made that film

I enjoyed it and cried all the way through too. Kids aged 10 and 13 both liked it a lot. I was surprised when I then read the book and saw how much had been changed. Good to see that they held back on promoting a love interest between Matt's and Scarlett's characters.
To me it was a film about parenting kids through a trauma.

We would love to take the girls to where my and dh got married in the Caribbean, that would be one hell of an adventure
The best one we had so far was going for a drive and ending up at a hidden beach in Dorset. Dd1 was so excited to see the massive fossils in the ground, and her and dh spent ages finding fossils all day, some of which were small so we took them back to our camp and told stories about what they might have been.

We moved our family to a remote Scottish island about 4 years ago. We had been there before but only on holiday. The island has less than 200 people living there and is 3 hours on a ferry to the nearest mainland.
It was the most challenging adventure of our lives; fantastic in many ways (huge deserted beaches to play on whenever we wanted, a real sense of living in nature, days without seeing another person, no traffic, no pollution etc).
However, we soon realised that holidaying somewhere is not the same thing as actually living somewhere. Being able to drive from one end of the island to the other and not be able to get off created a huge sense of claustrophobia for me. Often the ferry came only 3 times a week so the options of getting off there were non existent for much of the time.
And the people.... Well we tried our best and did meet some lovely people, but there is a reason why some people choose to live so remotely... And we were not always made to feel welcome.
We missed our family and friends badly and knowing that it would take us a minimum of 8 hours to see any of them became an issue.
So, our life changing adventure became temporary. We moved back ( but not to where we lived before, to a more rural county) and it was definitely the right decision for us and our family.

No regrets, if we hasn't gone we would still be sat here wondering what it would be like to actually live there....now we know, and it's not for us.

My family have little adventures. We have mad science projects (How can you drop raw eggs out of the upstairs window without breaking them) in the school holidays, and make cake, chutney etc. from fruit we have foraged locally or grown at home. We dig in the garden and clean up any archaeological finds we uncover. It might not be a massive adventure compared to some, but it makes my DCs more interesting people, and makes us stronger as a family.

We took our children on a once in a lifetime trip to Sri Lanka. We saved for ages and ended up touring in an ancient mini bus (windscreen wipers tied on with string) over potholed roads. They loved it. We had utter luxury in one hotel where our mixed up booking led to 2 nights in the "Royal Suite" which had a dining room table to seat 12. Our luggage was lost and they saw their Dad forced into local swimming trunks - the Sri Lankans are a small people and XXL was more a SM so a bit sore! We saw the after effects of the tsunami and the poverty of the tea picking Tamil population. The children - 5 and 7 at the time, coped wonderfully. They live in a virtually all-white world in our part of the UK and showed no signs of seeing any differences between us and the people we met. They saw everyone as a friend and loved the wildlife. They now consider themselves seasoned travellers and have been to India since - a much more challenging place - and revelled in everything - even eating curry for breakfast and staying with an Indian family.

I think our worst nightmare suprise move would be going to live in a large city tbh - although dh and I both lived in a large city for 10 years its really not our thing. We live in a very small town now, and love the rural lifestyle. When waiting for physio yesterday, the hot topic in the waiting room was the number of triplet lambs born this year

Well our biggest adventure has been surfing. We've always had to split the family for days out etc because ds1 is severely autistic - so taking him out along with ds2 and ds3 has always been incredibly difficult. Ds1's attention span is about 10 second usually. He can manage to concentrate on horse riding for about 10 minutes but that was it, until we discovered surfing. He will surf for an hour/hour and half/two hours - given the chance.

Now DS1 surfs it is something we can all do together. We drove from Devon to northern Ireland with our board last year - which was enough excitement to last a year or two (although ds1 does keep finding the N.Irish beaches on google maps and asking to go again). His middle brother isn't as keen on surfing although will do it, but his younger brother loves it. Dh and I have learned to surf as well and with our 9 foot foamie (that's a rubbish board for anyone who knows nothing about surfing) we can all go out together. For ds1's birthday treat the boys get some instructors and we all go out together. Several times a month a coach takes ds1 out and I surf at the same time (it's the first time we've ever been able to engage in any activity at the same time).

So yes surfing is our little adventure all year round.

Surfing here in August and

Ahem, may I kindly draw your attention to the thread title? Apparently MNHQ want adventures from usual places.

Therefore here is mine: we once lived in Preston in a 2 up and 2 down. We inherited a dog who had no teeth, was incontinent and its hair was falling out. We also had a parrot. It was all very usual. The dog died, the parrot was stolen.

The end. I win!

(big blush) therhubarb...busted. And changed!

Aw! I wanted to win!

We moved our family to live beyond the arctic circle where we did a self build. That was quite an adventure. My husband joined the local mountain rescue team. Our kids are now proficient skiers, doing both cross country and down hill skiing extremely well. We have spent countless weekend walking in the mountains, and done overnight mountain walks and wild camping. My husband has taken part in an off road cycling challenges of 75 km across the mountains, the Lavkarittet, twice and will go again this summer.
But, work has brought us back to London after 3 years.

My dream is to build an adventure holiday company, taking British families into the mountains of the far north of Norway, to show them the wildlife, northern lights, walking, fishing and mountain biking, and have quality time in tents and cabins with their family.

I didn't realise you were back in London Quint.

Make the trips friendly for severely autistic kids (which means giving us an overland route to get there!) and as soon as we have the cash I'll be there. We'd love to do that sort of trip with the kids. :)

Didn't know Dove had spas?! Can't wait to see this film, I would love to work with animals. We have plenty of pets but that's not quite the same. If I could take my family on our idyllic adventure, it would involve staying in some of my favourite places.....ones I visited pre-DC! So we would take a year off and visit the following....Kenya, to visit the cities, coastline, then the National Parks on safari. Then onto Madagascar, to live with the lemurs for some time. Next, the Seychelles, to island hop and see the giant tortoises and the coco de la mer. Next up, Thailand, to island hop on the East coast, swim with the dolphins, eat noodles and rambutans. Then a steadily paced tour of Australia, takinga trip round the entire country but especially fitting in Sydney, barrier reef snorkelling, ayres rock, kangaroo island and Tazmania. Onto NZ to stroke some sheep, then a quick whizz to Canada and Alaska to bear/whale/polar bear/wolf spot. A few days in New York would finish the trip quite nicely. Ahhhhhhh. ;)

Jimjams, we came back in September (Not seen you for ages!!).
Train do you? Or boat?

Train or boat. Well we've never long distance trained with ds1 but I think it would be alright. DH is a bit and about it, but I think it would work.

Both will take you there, in a combination It might take you a while! The Hurtigruten coastal express is your best bet, from Trondheim and up to the North Cape. Takes a few weeks, with beautiful scenery and gorgeous stop overs on the way.
Lovely to hear about your sons surfing skills! He can even do it up there, but will need a dry suit rather than a wet suit.

We moved four years ago to live in a small village in Moldova with our DCs who were then 2.5 and 7 months (we've since had DC3 who is now 2). It's not exotic but we've certainly had many challenges. Not least that for the last 6 weeks we've had no running water due to frozen pipes. Hauling water from the well gives you arms better than Jillian Michaels ever did! I don't even feel like I can really complain because most people here never have running water .

We've had to learn a new language with varying degrees of success (if anyone can teach me how to roll my Rs I'd be very grateful) and had many challenges to work through, but hopefully we've made a difference to some people here (we run community development and youth projects). We're coming back to the UK in the summer for a few months and will see what happens after that.

tip of your tongue up behind your front teeth, roll slightly backwards, push air out and feel your tongue vibrate, make a deep sound from your throat, and try sound like a motorbike.

Howz that?

still can't do it . Maybe I'm defective?? Will probably now spend all evening trying though

i took my son, when he was 2, to live in the sinai, egypt for the winter. i'd lived there when i was younger and still had friends there. the idea of spending a whole winter stuck indoors with an active little toddler who should be outside and learning and exploring the world was utterly depressing so i booked tickets, arranged to stay with a friend initially on arrival and off we went.

it was great. i didn't want to come home! he had a bedouin childminder i took him to sometimes so i could go out who taught him how to herd goats - he was impressively good at it he saw the desert and rode camels, he saw the sea, he made friends with loads of locals who spoiled him rotten, he was running around with a level of freedom he could never have had here at that stage and it boosted his confidence no end. he was speaking far more fluent arabic than i'd ever managed and understood everything by the time we left. we saw old friends and made new ones and had a really lovely time.

it was a break in the humdrum of small child years of isolation and house orientated living and i felt alive and 'connected' again. it also meant that since then i'm confident about taking ds anywhere on whatever method of transport etc and knowing i'll cope - and so will he.

i'd really recommend similar to others for one of those winters of the early days.

the next adventure i fancy when ds is a bit older is just going walking - literally take a backpack with a tent and the dog and walk, camp, walk, stop at a b&b etc and stay away as long as feels right. i reckon i'll pick an area of the country and get a train to a starting destination and have in mind main places that are along the way and dog friendly b&bs but mostly just go with it! sounds like bliss but i'd want ds old enough to carry some stuff!

I live very near a zoo, at night you can hear a fox yip, or a pregnant cow mooing (obviously live rurally) and the Tigers and lions go utterly MENTAL!! The other night, I have no idea what set them off but I think every animal that could make a noise was doing so at 2.30am.

We have some escaped small cats living rough at the mo, and a few years ago, a totally not indigenous to the UK creature was on my roof!! It jumped off into a tree never to be seen again.

I love going for a walk to take dd to dance or guides, wandering past a field with Bison, Zebra etc . . . . It's just like having our own personal zoo

SwallowedAFly that sounds amazing

I hate flying with a passion so our family adventures are all closer to home. We moved a year ago from London to Norfolk so that was an adventure in itself, our lifestyle here is completely different. Much more open space, much slower pace of life, less busy and easier to get around. I bought Ordnance Survey maps of the Broads and the north Norfolk coast and love to spread them out and plan new places to go. Sometimes when I've dropped DS1 at school, DS2 (2yo) and I go off to the beach or for a wander around the countryside followed by a nice lunch out, it feels like being on holiday.

My worst nightmare surprise in a new home would be noisy neighbours. Or spiders.

I lived on a smallholding when I was growing up and saw the giant quantity of shit that requires shovelling when you have livestock. I never want to see a steaming wheelbarrow again. If dh abs the kids wanted a zoo they would be on their own.
Ds loves dinosaurs, he would like to live on Jurrasic Park. We are going to Dinosnores at the NHM at easter.