A month ago I received an email for Vuelio informing me I’d made the shortlist for the Best UK Parenting Blog Award. Not a bad email to receive eh? The short list consisted of ourselves and three great bloggers; Sally Whittle’s Who’s the Mummy?, Simon form Man v’s Pink and Jo from Slummy Single Mummy. I was under no illusions that The Dad Network would be winning but it was a great compliment to make the short list.

The awards were held at the swanky Brewery near the Barbican, and it was a fantastic venue. As soon as we entered the building we were impressed by the entire organisation and flow or the event, and the atmosphere was superb. The evening started with champagne on arrival and we met some great bloggers and even made some amazing new friends, Chris from Beer, Bikes & Bistro and his wife Kat from Ladey Katabella.  After a few glasses of champagne we headed to the more formal dining hall. The hall was full of large round tables of ten or so and beautifully laid with huge iced buckets full of wine. As soon as we sat down we knew we were in for a great evening ahead. The food was delicious and as the other 8 people on my table didn’t turn up I was certainly full after gobbling up their starters as well as my own.

The awards began, hosted by Mark Dolan, who was as humorous as he is on TV. They rattled through the awards, asking for no speeches (a great idea in my view) with some fantastic bloggers picking up their awards (for a full list, click here) Then came the time for Best Parenting Blog 2015. I’m not gonna lie, I would have loved to have won, but it was Slummy Single Mummy who took home the title, and it was well deserved. Huge congratulations to her and the other nominees in our category.

Once the ceremony was out the way, we headed back to the drinks room. I could relax, and I enjoyed learning how to have a tequila sunrise! It was my first ever tequila shot and rather embarrassingly I managed to get the salt in my eye. We had a boogie and shake on the dance floor, met more great people and then made our way to the hotel.

Early last week, Mamas & Papas got in touch and told me about their latest campaign. They asked if I wanted to take my wife on a date, courtesy of Mamas & Papas. Obviously I did! There is nothing I love more than time with my wife and date nights are a sacred event in our household.  I knew that the Vuelio awards would be a great date night anyway, but thought it would be truly topped off by a romantic stay in a London hotel. Mamas & Papas came up trumps and found us a gorgeous room at the Hilton, Green Park to stay in after the award ceremony. It was beyond words wonderful to be able to go back to the hotel and spend even more quality time together. We talked our evening through, laughing at the memories we had made and promising to work even harder next year. It was great to know we would not be getting up at 6am and although we missed Ted terribly we really did make the most of our time together, getting up at midday! It was my first lie in since Ted was born 15 months ago and I’ll remember it for a long time to come.

Date nights are exceptionally important to us and it’s clear that Mamas & Papas think so too. Every parent does deserve a night off and this was ours. It goes without saying that we are incredibly thankful to Mamas & Papas for organising a wonderful stay in a stunning hotel so we could have some precious quality time together. We love being Mummy and Daddy, but we also think it’s so important to value our relationship as husband and wife too.

Take a look at our latest vlog to see what we got up to on our date in London. (Well, not quite ALL we got up to!)

If you want to find out more about the Mamas & Papas Baby Sitting Vouchers, take a look at their website here.