a few pics from the weekend...

Well, I'm nearly a year older; it's my 32nd birthday tomorrow :) So to celebrate, we had a family day out on Saturday. The weather was lovely so we took a picnic to Chatsworth House.

There were lots of new arrivals at the farm. Evie and I loved the piglets!



Evie then had lots of fun at the adventure playground (and so did Mummy!)




I made sure that there were some pictures of me with my kiddies...



And finally, a gratuitous cute baby picture...just because!


Looking forward to being spoilt tomorrow :)

xxx

learn something new...day six...

'Taking time to study you properly, looking at every 'new' part of you, makes me realise how lucky I am to have you in my life.'

learn something new...day eight...

Evie loves doing jigsaws. She seems to have a photographic memory and can remember which bits go where. We've had to buy her much more complex ones to give her a challenge. This one is her new 'Build a Town' puzzle with 50 pieces. She likes us to help her by looking at the box and answering her when she asks 'What we need?'

She doesn't give up and perseveres until the whole thing is finished. A great trait to have.

Me and my kiddies...

One thing I've been aware of recently is the lack of photos of me and me and my kiddies. I'm always behind the camera and my hubby isn't always spontaneous enough to grab the camera and just take a shot of us. So instead, I often have to make a conscious effort to ask for pictures to be taken.

Here are some of them from yesterday. And yes, I am posting some of me, without make up and with serious bed hair. You know what, it's actually one of my favourite photos of Evie and I. Just natural and having fun.

xxx

Birthday Girl

Three years old today...

Birthday celebrations part one...

Our little Evie is three tomorrow. Don't know how that happened!

Just had a lovely day out at Chester Zoo. The sun shined, Evie smiled and Oliver slept :)

Looking forward to presents and cake tomorrow... (and more importantly, lots of time with our family)

learn something new...day twelve...

Life is precious...make the most of it. Live every moment.


This made me very sad last night.

I can't begin to imagine what her family are going through.

A sad, sad loss of a lovely lady who always took time to make the most positive and supportive comments about your work.

My heart and prayers go out to her family.


Sometimes we get caught up in having the latest and greatest stash and gadgets. Committing those thoughts and memories to paper has to be more important.

xxx

learn something new...day seven...

Love this photo of Evie and Oliver holding hands. I can see how much Evie loves her little brother already...

learn something new...day five...

On Friday, Evie and I made Chocolate Cornflake cakes. Only trouble was, we didn't have enough chocolate. The cold house didn't help either and what chocolate we did have, set before we got the chance to properly coat the cornflakes!

It didn't stop them tasting yummy, but we definitely need more choclate next time and in Evie's words, we need 'loads' more!

Sorry about the rubbish scan - the scanner keeps turning things 'blue'. The strip down the right-hand side is a piece of 'Bazill Just the edge' which isn't particularly clear in this picture.

TFL xx

learn something new...day four...

On Thursday, we went into Manchester to see the 'Green Drops and Moonsquirters' exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. Evie had been looking forward to going for ages. She was convinced that we were going to visit 'Lola's house' and I played along with her. She had a whale of a time, dressing up as both Charlie and Lola, reading the books and her favourite thing, pretending to cook with the things in their fridge.


It was nice to give Evie some Mummy time (Oliver was a good boy and slept for the entire trip!). One thing I learnt was that I need to do things like this more often with the kiddies. More importantly, Evie has an amazing imagination that I need to encourage and appreciate. I still have a smile on my face and a warmth in my heart when I picture how happy she was.

learn something new...day three...

Today I learnt that it can't be much fun having a tummy ache when you are so little...


...it really wasn't much fun cleaning up afterwards either!

learn something new...day two...

Got a few days behind now but just managed to grab half an hour tonight to complete day two's page.

On Tuesday it was Evie's first day in the pre-school room at nursery. I was reminded of what a confident girl she is and how proud I am of her and just how independent she is.

I used the reverse side of the paper I used for day one as the background along with lots of other goodies from the August Studio Calico kit.

Off to watch the rest of the Big Brother final now...

learn something new...day one...

Today I learnt that...

I need to always remember to appreciate the small steps of progress. Today my heart melted when I saw your 1st smile.

learn something new...

Two years ago, I signed up to this class by Shimelle. It probably wasn't great timing for me as it coincided with me returning to school after a year's maternity leave, so I never got round to completing the album.

I've decided to play along again this year to give myself something to keep my brain active in between feeding and changing nappies. I am determined to finish it this time!!

To keep it simple, I'm just going to grab stash that I fancy using each day and not worry about it being uniform. I quite fancy the idea of using different sized pages too and then just binding it all together at the end. Maybe this will reflect the unpredictability of my life right now!

I really missed Evie last week. It's amazing how much they can change in the space of a few days; when we picked her up from my Mum and Dad's she had so many new words and so much to tell us! She seemed so grown up after I'd spent a week with a newborn for company.


What better to do on a 'rare' sunny day than go for a splash in the sea...

Oliver news ... we have smiling!