Happy Birthday Annabelle!

Yay! Annabelle is 12 years old! And to top it off she had the best birthday ever. This year she received only surprises for her birthday as she didn't have anything specific that she wanted. And as I knew baby number 4 would be well on its way by now, I did all my shopping in advance. Dan wrapped Annabelle's presents up weeks ago and we had all totally forgotten what we had bought her! Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the big hairy spider that crawled out of her present pile and frightened the living daylights out of us all. I think that was due to the prezzies being stashed in the garage for weeks. Poor little fella.

Being a bit of a Nightwish fanatic, I made the extra effort to get Annabelle a few Nightwish prezzies - including a door sized poster, a hat, a nightwish necklace, and a calendar. She was so pleased with them, but to top it all off her best friend bought her a Nightwish T-shirt. I think she's now officially the coolest 12 year old in her class. Ah when I think back about how uncool I was at that age! I also bought her some new clothes, which she desperately needed, including some skinny fit jeans, and a pair of black patent boots which she totally loves. All in all she was totally spoilt.

The morning was made extra special by a surprise organised by her best friend. She told us to make sure we were watching the kids saturday morning show TMI on BBC2. Well what a shock it was when an email from 'Annabelle and K from Banbridge' was read out, and a photo shown of them both covered in chocolate cake mixture (see below fora screen shot of the program). They then announced that it was Annabelle's 12th birthday and the presenters sang happy birthday to her! I can't tell you how shocked she looked! If you want to see it you can watch it on the BBC website by clicking here and going forward to 1 hr 14 mins in the program. (Don't watch the full 1.5 hours!)


In the evening she had four school friends over for a sleepover. We converted the living room into a sleepover room and I have to say it looked rather lovely before they all turned up. We had balloons up, a table full of food and drinks, and two mattresses on the floor with the two sofas converted to beds. I covered the sofas with bright coloured sheets and made the place look very funky (see photo below). But by this morning the room looked like a warzone! Who knew girls could make even more mess than boys! The room was literally swimming in popcorn and chili doritos, and had a nasty smell to match. So Dan and I spent a good hour cleaning, vacuuming, washing and taking things out. Not much sleep was had before the hours of 4am, and Dan caught the girls practicing somersaults on the sofas at 3am! I'm sure there will be some moods to cope with tonight!
We joked that Annabelle looked like Ville Valo in her new clothes, which she didn't like, until I said that many people think Ville looks like a girl, and she piped up with "and he's supposed to be gorgeous too!"

Now her birthday is over and done, we have the big event of baby's birth to look forward to in just 27 days time. It will be so strange to have two daughters, instead of having boys ruling the roost. It's scary to think that when baby is celebrating her 12th birthday, Annabelle will be 24 already!

Happy birthday Annabelle, my beautiful little girl. xx