For Sam

Today is Sam's birthday! Here is his great grandad wishing him happy 12th birthday!

We're so proud of Annabelle!

Annabelle is about to finish her first term back at school. I wasn't sure how she would settle in. She tells me that she enjoys the company of her friends but preferred home education for the work. This week she brought home her first school report. Well, I was blown away by it. Not only did she get a fantastic report, but she also received her first gold credit card. They run a scheme i the school where you receive a gold card for every 10 good points that you earn. Your gold card is presented to you in assembly. Most of the children in Annabelle's class are receiving their 3rd gold card, after 6 years of schooling. Annabelle has won her first card after just 1 term. The Principal had her up in assembly an announced that they had never had anyone get a gold card so quickly and they all made a huge fuss of her. I think it did her self confidence the world of good and I felt very proud of her!

Belfast Dance in the Park, Crescent Arts Centre, 23rd June 2007

Edit - the correct link for viewing all the dance photos is here.

Most of you are aware that we had our dance in the park belly dance performance yesterday in Belfast. You've just gotta love belly dancing. When else can a girl get dolled up to the eyeballs in sequins, shells, glitter, bindi, false eyelashes and eye gems??? There's no better excuse for a woman to take up belly dancing.

The day went reasonably well, despite the sound men messing up the music for our sagats dance. Which meant we had to dance that one without music, just with the tabla drum and the sound of our sagats. It was a shame, but these things happen in show buiness. LOL. Next Saturday we have our big Golden Camel Awards show (see post below this one) so we will get to do the sagats dance with sound (hopefully).

Here are a few photos for you to enjoy. You can see the other by clicking here.

Golden Camel Awards

A press release for the Golden Camel Awards that we are dancing in on Saturday. Erm, I'm a bit freaked out now after reading this. (Thanks to Julz who's Bebo site I stole this from).

More Belly Dancing Photos

I do appologise to anyone who received my last blog email 56 times. It seems that some peope received it just once, whilst others received it 56 times. I have no idea how that happened. Just a glitch in the system or something I think.

My new saidi dress arrived today and I was more than a little over excited about the purchase of my first proper belly dance costume. I also received some photos from one of the other dancers so Im putting them onto the blog, along with some pics of my new fabulous costume (for the sagats dance).

We are dancing this Saturday at the Belfast Dance in the park Festival. Anyone who is around Belfast on Saturday and wants a free day of entertainment, email me and I will give you the details. Our dances are on at about 2pm I think. Hopefully it will have stopped raining by then!

So here I am posing (rehearsing!) in my new costume. You can click on the photos to see larger versions. The sagats are small finger cymbals.

This is our group of gypsy dancers. Im the one in purple there with the purple fan. We had a dress rehearsal last week when these photos were taken.

And this was a photo taken at our sagats class rehearsal last week.

Belly dancing photos

Well, as some of you know we have two big belly dancing performances coming up. Somehow I got roped into 3 dances instead of 1 so I'm practicing like crazy to get them right. Last night we took some photos and I thought I'd post them on here (although I haven't got the ones of us all in full costume for the fan dance yet).

The answer we've been waiting for..

Yesterday the principal from Jimmie's school phoned to tell me whether or not they would keep Jimmies place open for him if we took him out of school from January to August next year for our big trip. It was good news! It took him almost one month to get back to me, but he had to find out whether they would still receive funding for Jimmie whilst he was gone. And they will, because he will be registering in the September, so its all cool. He also told me that it was not a legal requirement for children to be in school, as long as they are provided with an education. Well, having home educated our children, I already knew this, but was happy to hear a principal that is still willing to say it, since all the controversy recently about de-registering in this country. He said that nearer the time I should go into the school to see him and they would give me all the topics that Jimmie would be covering and talk about what he needs to keep up with etc. He seemed very helpful, and completely positive about the educational benefits of taking such a trip. So its all go, we can officially start to plan!

My boy

Dan took some photos of wee Barney playing on the trampoline. He has had a hair cut and looks so grown up. I just love looking at these pics. There were a lot more than this, and they all show the many sides of Barneys personality. He's just so adorable, I could eat him.