Fifteen Wonderful Years

Love is not a matter of counting the years,
But of making the years count...

Today is our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and I have now officially known Dan for more than half of my life! I have to say that the 15 years spent married to him have been the most content, exciting, fun, memorable and above all the happiest.

15 years ago we were both very young, very different people, still trying to work out who we were and where our place in the world was. But we have grown together and bonded in a way that is precious and, I think, unusual these days. Rather than growing apart we have knitted closer together. I couldn't imagine a life without Dan by my side, and I know he feels the same way. Some people believe in soul mates, and some don't, but I truly feel that I have found the person that I am destined to be with; that there is no one else for either of us, no one better suited, that we are just perfect with each other. After fifteen years we are no less in love than we were the day we married; in fact our love is stronger, more passionate and enduring.

Who would have thought that at the ages of 16 and 21 we would, by chance, meet the person we were destined to spend the rest of our lives with?

Fifteen years later, both a little wrinkly, a little grey, a bit fuzzy round the edges, we have some precious memories and some great stories to tell. We now have 4 adorable, precious children, each of whom are the light of our lives. After 15 years and 4 children we try to spend time doing things together, just the two of us. We have our own interests, and our joint interests.

This morning I woke up to discover a big plate of croissants, a cup of tea and Dan standing with 15 balloons in his hand! Each balloon has a little note inside it, and I am popping one each day for 15 days. Isn't he romantic?? He also made me a plate of 'fifteens' which are my favourite treats! Not just a plate of fifteens, but 15 fifteens! Plus he gave me an envelope full of vouchers, which I haven't opened yet.

I made Dan a book of Love and I was really pleased with how it turned out. Its basically a printed book of all the photos of us as a couple, with little love poems and quotes next to them. It is possibly the most romantic thing I've ever done, as quite honestly, I don't have a romantic bone in my body (yes, I know, it's so unfair that I am married to the most romantic man in Britain!) Dan said it was the best present he ever received, so that made me happy. He keeps reminding me that our anniversary isn't over yet, so I'm not quite sure what else he has got up his sleeve.

Dan,

You are the most amazing man. Every one who meets you thinks that you are an awesome husband and father, and its true. I love you with my whole heart, with everything that I have inside me. You are precious to me and I treasure every day that we spend together. Don't ever change. You are divine just the way you are. Here's hoping we spend another blissful 15 years together.

Love you forever,

Bree

25 random things...

I wrote this 25 random things post for facebook but thought I might as well stick it on here too....

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1) I believe that I am married to my soul mate. My husband is like an extension of me, and I couldn’t imagine life without him. We are best friends, and still desperately in love after 15 years of marriage.

2) I have a tattoo of a phoenix/eagle on my back which represents freedom, liberty and new life to me. I also have my tongue pierced.

3) I can not stand selfish people. I can cope with many other attitudes, but selfish, self centred people make my blood boil.

4) The most surreal moment in my life lately was sitting on death row, locked in a room with three convicted murderers, whilst they sang a song to me with the chorus “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

5) I am very against abortion.

6) If I won the lottery I’d spend the rest of my life opening and running orphanages where-ever they are needed most.

7) I have read dozens of books about inter-country adoption, and always wanted to adopt a child, but ended up getting pregnant with baby number 4 instead. I don’t know if I have the energy left to pursue that dream any more.

8) I have the biggest crush on Ville Valo, the lead singer of gothic/love metal band from Finland. Everyone knows it, even Steve. Lol.

9) I do not love easily. But if I do decide to love you, I will love you with every inch of my heart. If you then decide to stop loving me back, it will break my heart.

10) I spend most of my life in a mind controlling cult which I am truly happy to be rid of. There are people in my friends list who are still in this cult and will no doubt now delete me, or send me silly emails after reading this. But quite frankly, I don’t give a damn any more.

11) I collect photos. I am not a good photographer, but I photograph everything, probably to people’s annoyance. I love to treasure happy memories through photography.

12) I have been writing an online blog for three years now. Most of it is just blogging about daily family life but I have also blogged about the death sentence, the state of prisons in Zambia, adoption, Christianity and raw food lifestyles & sprouting. I love writing.

13) I fully intend to write a book someday. Possibly soon. But I may well never let anyone read it.

14) One of my favourite songs of all time is called ’Pussy Liquor’ by Rob Zombie. Lol. It has an awesome beat to it and I’d love to belly dance to it one day, despite the title. My other top tunes are ’No Leaf Clover’ by Metallica, ’Gone With The Sin’ by Him, ’I Don’t Care’ by Apocalyptica and ‘Riders on the Storm’ by The Doors.

15) I am a keen belly dancer, and love the belly dance shows. I particularly enjoy dancing to rock/metal tunes, instead of Egyptian music.

16) I have a bit of a fetish for dressing up (which probably encourages my love of belly dancing!) I am a bit of a closet goth and love any occasion to dress differently.

17) I have always been claustrophobic, but since having my head pinned into a metal casket in an MRI scan tube, and having the mother of all claustrophobic panic attacks - I am now extremely claustrophobic and find many normal situations very stressful. Travelling on public transport, planes, elevators are all very stressful for me. Or even queuing up in a crowd can start my heart racing and the beginning of a panic attack.

18) I have pulsatile tinnitus, the sound of my own blood whooshing past my ears, due to a kinked artery in my neck.

19) I have vitiligo and will one day be whiter than Michael Jackson! Lol. It’s true. Although I am extremely pale anyway, I have a disease that is slowly bleaching my skin free of any pigment. My hands, armpits, and the top of my legs are already white, but it’s spreading year by year.

20) I am very perceptive and generally know exactly what people are thinking or why they do things. Not much gets past me.

21) I am a very deep thinker and often think it would be much easier in life to be extremely shallow and dim.

22) I often dream about dying, or that moment of death and wake up in a panic thinking ‘this is it, I’m dying’. I have a fear of being in a coffin. Lol. I know, I will be dead and won’t know anything about it. But given the choice I’d rather be burned on a funeral pyre with no coffin, or dumped out at sea somewhere, or even just left to rot naturally in a forest!

23) I am almost completely unshockable and am the most open minded person that I know.

24) I have an insatiable desire to travel and to see as much of this planet as I can before I die. I recently took my family on a half year trip across America in an RV. I hope that this was the first of many journeys.

25) I believe there may well be life on other planets, and often wonder how other humans may have treated their ‘earths’. Space is such a huge place, who knows what lies further on than we have seen? I find it very hard to believe we are the only ones.

Rejection, thoughts from Radiohead.

I do find rejection hard. But being rejected by someone that is deeply cared for is not just hard, it's sad, frustrating, agonizing and just very difficult. I've been rejected by people many times throughout my life, for varying reasons - some my fault and others not. When we left the fellowship that I'd attended all my life I was shunned and rejected by the people that we left behind. But I was expecting that. They should know better, but they don't. I've been rejected at work many times, and by past friends and family. I'm not very good at putting up with people if I can see that they don't really like or respect me. I'd rather just let them be and get on with my own life.

The last few weeks I have been very down though. A very special friend who I cared for deeply decided to reject my friendship, and without any explanation as to why. I have been left very hurt and upset, and totally confused. I hate not knowing why things happen, it's so hard to have closure that way. I purposely kept away from blog writing for a few weeks because I knew that if I started to write about it, I'd get totally carried away and use it as a form of therapy that I might later regret.

I am getting over that sadness now, although it will never completely leave. After the sadness I was angry, so angry, and I literally did not eat for 2 weeks. It was almost as if someone had died in my life. I was in mourning: grieving. I have always been guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve: letting people too deeply into my thoughts and feelings, and sharing too much of my love. I always welcome people into our family home, show them hospitality, treat them as a member of the family. I expect people to be the same, to be honest, and not selfish. The older I get, and the more I journey through life, the more I see that people will always let you down. With each heartache, hurt or rejection, it becomes harder to let people into my life. I start to feel that I shouldn't let people get close to me and my precious family, in case they take advantage of us and cause more pain. My heart is getting hard and losing faith in people.

Today was Dan's birthday and he had asked for a certain Radiohead DVD. After all the discussions we have had about why our friend has shunned us in this way, he opened up the DVD cover and said 'darling, you should read this'.

So here are Radioheads thoughts on rejection. It's amazing how a rock band DVD has caused me to sit and think. Maybe it's not all my fault. Maybe I'm not a terrible person. I have to start trying to believe that, although my confidence and self esteem are shot to pieces, and I find it hard. I guess it will just take time.

"If you have been rejected many times in your life, then one more rejection isn't going to make much difference. If you're rejected, don't automatically assume it's your fault. The other person may have several reasons for not doing what you are asking them to do: none of it may have anything to do with you. Perhaps the person is busy, or not feeling well, or genuinely not interested in spending time with you. Rejections are part of everyday life. Don't let them bother you. Keep reaching out to others. Keep reaching out to others. When you begin to receive positive responses then you are on the right track. It's all a matter of numbers. Count the positive responses and forget about the rejections."

Christmas 2008

I am way behind with my blog posting. I am missing the Christmas post, my birthday post, and a post about 2008. I guess that happens with a newborn and three older kids in the house. So heres a brief account of the most amazing Christmas ever!

So Christmas Eve was our first with 4 stockings. Annabelle helped Emily hang up her stocking (not that Emily really knew anything about it) and Barney enthusiastically left out the mince pie, and carrot for Santa and Rudolf. It took Barney hours to get to sleep. He kept getting up to look out of the window, peeping for Santa. But the plus side of this was that he didn't wake up until 9am, so we had a nice lazy start to Christmas day.

Christmas Day itself was quite relaxing as we didn't have to make a dinner this year. Mum had invited the entire family round to hers, so we spent the morning lounging around in our PJ's whilst the kids opened their presents. (I spent much of the morning nursing Emiy too!)

The bigger kids both received a new mobile phone for Christmas along with various new clothes, hair accessories, sweets, chocolate and general teenage stuff. Annabelle enhanced her Nightwish collection with DVD of their music, patches to sew onto her jeans, and Nightwish stickers to decorate her room with. Jimmie received Lost series 2 and 3, and hasn't come out of his bedroom for days since as he is glued to the telly. Emily got a few little stocking fillers which Barney eagerly opened for her. Barneys most exciting present was a Gameboy, which has hardly left his hands since.

Christmas Dinner at Mums was divine! She cooked for 14 of us! The turkey was not just a turkey... it was a duck inside a turkey inside a goose... and it was mouth wateringly good. She spent something like 12 hours cooking it and was up to tend to it during the night, much like a newborn!

Dishing up time was a mammoth task and involved help from almost everybody. The adults all sat at the main table, the big kids sat up at the breakfast bar, and the little kids had a wee table of their own. Emily kindly slept through dinner time, just long enough for me to horse down my food before she needed nursing again. The food was just delicious (Thanks Mum!) and the company was the best.

Mum had a Christmas tree in her huge living room that was actually bigger than my house. It was massive. It doesn't look all that big in this photo because it's such a huge room. But it was a sight to behold. And underneath it were the most amazing hampers for each family that Mum must have spent weeks putting together. Our hamper was filled to overflowing with lots of different types of home made fudge, a huge box of home made truffles, home made spicy nuts and lots of other delights too. Dan was extremely taken with the big new saucepan that was included, and he hasn't come out of our kitchen since.


After every Christmas comes my birthday, and I am now another year older. This year we planned a quiet day, as I'm not yet recovered from my C-section, and am feeding Emily what seems every 5 minutes anyway.

Barney woke me up in the morning by bringing all my presents up to the bedroom. Traditionally we always open birthday presents on my big bed. Barney was even more excited than me and handed me each present, watching with enjoyment at every one I opened. They gave me a new HIM t-shirt, the new Dawn French book 'Dear Fatty', enough bath stuff to keep me clean for an eternity, and lots of other things too.

In the afternoon the midwife made her final visit to our house to discharge us from her care. At the end of her visit people started turning up at the house and I realised Dan had invited people round for my birthday, as a little surprise. He's so cute like that. So we had a nice lunch with family and friends and I got more prezzies! Barney helped me blow out the candles on my cake. Not quite sure why I had a big '2' candle on my cake though!

On that note, I must go, as Emily is awakening for yet another feed.

The birth of Emily Rose...

My baby girl was born on Friday 12th December by planned C-section.
We arrived at the hospital at 8am ready for our section but had to wait 8 hours before being finally taken to theatre as there were so many emergencies coming in. The waiting was torture.
Finally I Was taken into theatre and give a spinal block to numb my body ready for the c section. Unfortunately the spinal didnt work and as they cut into my belly I could feel it! Within seconds they had put me to sleep, which was a shame as it meant I missed the birth and also that my husband couldnt stay with me.
Baby Emily Rose was born whilst I slept, at 4.27pm, weighing 7lb 8oz and was given to her Daddy who was left to take care of her for an hour until I woke up. The first thing I remember was my husband telilng me "she's so beautiful", and then I thought "Oh gosh, I was having a baby!" and tried to wake up. I took a brief glimpse at her and then drifted back to sleep. Ten minutes later I woke up calling out "wheres my baby? I want to see my baby?" so Steve brought her over and I had a hundred dozy questions about whether she was healthy, and what she weighed.

I was sad to have missed the birth but delighted that she was safe and well. My three older children came to visit on the labour ward and all had a little cuddle before we went up to the maternity ward.

Having a baby... tomorrow!

If you're reading this on Thursday then I'm having a baby tomorrow (if you're reading it after Thursday then I've already had it!)

Yes, today is my last day of pregnancy and I don't know what to do with myself to pass the time away. I went out for breakfast this morning with a friend, and will be up at the hospital this evening for a pre Caesarean check-up. In between I guess I shall finish packing my hospital bag, re-check things I may have forgotten to pack, tidy the house a little, take a bath.

This whole 'knowing what day the baby will be born on' malarkey is a new experience for me. After 3 natural births I am finding this experience rather odd. I haven't been waiting to go into labour, just waiting for the 12th to arrive. I'm not at all nervous about the operation, or the hospital stay. I'm just impatient and bored. I am slightly more anxious about life with another child, whether I will be able to cope with four kids, and no sleep!

Anyway, next time I write on this blog it will hopefully be with photos of little baby Emily. I can't wait to meet her, to see what she looks like. I wonder whether she has a full head of dark hair like Annabelle did, or gingery whispy hair like Barney, or whether shes a blond baldish baby like Jimmie. Dan is more nervous than me at the thought of watching his wife be cut open and his baby taken out. He's hoping not to pass out, poor guy.

Just a quick update blog really, as I don't have all that much to say today. We have about 31 days (who's counting?) till our little girl is due to be delivered by C Section. I can't believe it's all happened so fast, although at time's it seems like it will never be over.

Barney is more excited than ever about the arrival of his new baby sister. It used to be that every morning he would run into our bedroom shouting "its your boy!", he'd leap onto the bed, wrap his arms around me and give me big kisses whilst telling me how much he loves me. But this week, every morning, he has run in and flung his arms around my belly, kissing randomly and shouting "I love you Emily! I can't wait to see you!" He prods at my tummy asking "where are her leg? where are her lips? where are her arms?" and has many questions about whether she can hear him, whether she can see what going on in there. He quite often sits and has a wee chat with her, telling her who he is and how life will be for her. It's quite the cutest thing.

We have a birthday in the house this week. On Saturday our Annabelle will be 12 years old. As expected she's very excited, although I have no idea what we've bought her as presents, because I got all organised and wrapped them up weeks ago! I am still trying to get all the christmas presents sorted out before the baby's birth and really must get that sorted this week.

Birmigham

I've just returned from a relaxing weekend away in Birmingham, thanks to my darling husband Dan and my friend 'Shanksy' who organised for some flights for me. Dan was adamant that I had a bit of a break before the baby arrives so we found some extremely cheap flights and off I went.

I had a lovely weekend and was thoroughly spoilt and looked after. It was great to see my friend 'Darwi' before she moves away to California in a few weeks time. We took a wander around Birmingham City Centre (an extremely slow 8 months pregnant speed wander - in which I almost fell over at one point!) where I met the 'floozy in the jacuzzi', walked along the canals and saw the barges trying to turn. We sat in a pub along the canal where we drank tea and chatted for hours, and where I discovered that Darwi has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of everything. I loved learning about her job and the study of the sun and outer space. It was intriguing. Especially as at the moment I have a severe case of pregnancy brain and can't remember facts at all.

Neil took me on a drive around Warwick and Stratford-Upon-Avon. I really miss the English countryside and started to feel quite home sick for the country that I grew up in. We stopped to see Warwick Castle from the outside and then walked around Stratford visiting some of the Shakespearean sites. We saw the house that Shakespeare grew up in (theres a photo of me standing in front of it below) and stopped for a well earned cuppa and a cheese toastie.

I ate a lot of bad food over the weekend, and nearly died when I weighed myself for the first time in this pregnancy. That probably wasn't a good idea. I almost died of shock. All in all it was a lovely weekend away and I was glad of the break before the madness of having a new baby in the house unfolds. Thanks Dan and Neil for organising it, and thanks to Neil for feeding and driving me all over the place. I never realised that Birmingham was such a nice place. Well, I've never been there, but it was far more like the England I grew up in than I had expected.

31 weeks

31 week baby bump...

Metallica, Dublin 2008

It was on our travels in America that we heard that Metallica would be playing in Dublin this summer. I was so excited but really didn't think of booking tickets as I'd just found out that I was pregnant, and had no idea if I would be feeling well enough to go to the gig or not. But that didn't put Dan off. He secretly bought two Metallica tickets for us, while we were somewhere in a desert, somewhere in America (the wonders of the internet, eh?)

So this week saw us trekking down to Dublin for the gig of the year. I spent about 5 days building up to it. Some days I feel fine, but other days I feel so rough that I can barely get out of bed, and I didn't want to be like that at the gig! So I spent a few days getting early nights (I slept for 20 hours on Monday!), eating lots of alfalfa and broccoli sprouts, and generally taking care of myself. And it worked!

Our mate D was also going to the gig so we all drove down in the car together. What should have been an hour & a half drive turned out to be a four hour drive, due to the concert congesting the roads, and lane closures. It took us 3 hours to drive 17 miles at one point. Which meant we missed the supporting bands, and arrived just in time for the last song by Tenacious D. I was a bit gutted at missing them as I thought Jack Black would be very entertaining on stage, but at least we were in time for Metallica.

There must have been at least 20,000 people at the gig. That's a LOT of people, in a big muddy field, mostly filled to capacity with alcohol. Dan was very protective of me in my condition and kept me near the back where I had lots of room to myself. Every time anyone came near me he put a protective arm across my bump, which I found very sweet. Perhaps I should have bubble wrapped myself. D went off to the front of the crowd and got lost in the mosh pit. He met us at the end of the gig (minus his treasured hat which he was proud to say died and was lost forever in the Metallica mosh pit, LOL) looking a bit the worse for wear.

And what about Metallica? Well, I have to say that they were absolutely fantastic live. Seriously amazing. I think I enjoyed the intimacy of the Apocalyptica gig more, but for such a huge audience Metallica certainly rocked the place. They played one of the songs, Cyanide, from their new album 'Death Magnetik', plus a set including tons of my favourites including Enter Sandman, Whiskey In The Jar, One, Ride The Lightning, The Memory Remains, Master of Puppets, and ending with Seek And Destroy. I found the whole thing totally shattering, but was just getting past the pain barrier of standing for so long during pregnancy when the show came to an end. They had a display of fireworks during Enter Sandman, and during the song 'One' an amazing pyrotechnic display of mushroom bombs! Which was very impressive.

All in all it was a great gig, and I'm glad that I was able to stand long enough to enjoy it.

Setlling back in

It's taken a little while to get used to being back at home. Especially as things are so different now. Neither of us are working at the moment, we don't have a car, or any money left, and we have the excitement of a new baby on the way. I've found it hard to settle back into home life. Firstly because we spent 5 glorious months traveling every day. Just waking up and deciding where to go and what to do. No ties and no boredom what so ever. Now, back at home I can't go anywhere as we don't have a car and I'm not well enough to get about the place. Secondly, life is not what it was before we left as we no longer have the business. Dan is at home, and taking over all the household chores, a) because I'm not well enough, and b) because he likes to keep busy. So, I'm a bit restless and redundant, although I cant complain as we've just had the best year ever.

The weather has been awful since we got home... rain, rain and more rain. I'm desperate to get back out into my vegetable garden. The only bit of home life Dan won't want to take over, lol. I've made it out briefly, twice, in between rain showers. What was once a beautiful healthy vegetable, fruit and herb garden (see here for the before photo) is now a jungle of 4ft tall weeds! Oh, the heartache!


I've cleared a few of them away, but I really only manage about 20 minutes of gentle weeding before my blood pressure goes up again and I have to lie down in a dark room. I'd really love to be able to get some lettuces planted, if nothing else. I do find it so therapeutic. This is me in my weed garden sporting some lovely pink welly boots and a 16 week baby bump.

The kids are settling in quite well. For the first week we barely saw them. Barney still keeps discovering toys he'd forgotten about. And the bigger kids have been inundated with offers for sleep overs, trips out with their friends etc. Barney says he misses the RV and misses America. He likes to sit and chat about all the things we saw and experienced out there. The bigger two kids are using the summer to catch up on school work they missed. Annabelle only needs to catch up on some maths, but Jimmie has two hours of school work each morning, which covers French, Science, Maths and English. They don't seem to mind doing it. I think they realise they got a pretty good deal with the trip.

Home at last

Thanks to everyone who has sent concerned emails the last few weeks. I have just read them all this morning. Yes we are home, alive and well. I've spent most of three weeks in bed, watching Dan do most of the housework. The journey home finished me off and I thought I was going to sleep for the rest of the pregnancy. Its taken till today to get our internet switched back on, and so I've had no way of posting since we left America.

Three weeks after our big trip across the US, it all almost seems like a dream now. I have found it hard to settle back into home life. Going from driving to new destinations every day, to being housebound, unwell and with no car has been a bit tough. Not to mention the worry about our baby and whether it was ok or not.

But I'm happy to report that yesterday we had our first baby scan and little bundle of joy number four is alive, well and kicking. My blood pressure is still very high, although not as bad as it was in America. The doctors are keeping an eye on it. In 8 weeks time they will carefully scan the placenta to make sure that its ok. High blood pressure can cause clots to form in the placenta from around that time, so they are going to keep a check on it. The scan was amazing. Junior lifted his/her head right up as if looking into the scanner and started blowing kisses at us!

I will post more in a day or so when there isn' a queue of family members waiting to check their emails.

Another year older...

As always, at the end of every year, I get another year older. This year I turned 31. Of course, I'm totally in denial about how old I am. But hey, what can you do about it? You can't fight it.






My family were totally lovely to me all day. I think it was possibly the nicest birthday so far. This year Dan made an extra effort to buy me presents that I'd actually like (rather than shower gels and things that I could buy in Tesco myself any day of the week). I knew my presents were going to be good, as Dan and the kids kept telling me. However, Dan had paid for me to go to England to see HIM in concert (for my birthday) so it really should have been a quiet day.

On Saturday morning I was awoken in bed by an extremely excited Barney. Of course he helped me open everything, and got more pleasure out of it than you could think possible.


Dan had really made an effort to buy fabulous gifts, and I was totally delighted. Amoungst other things I was given:





This book about HIM (Ville Valo) with hundreds of sexy photos of the man himself (a bit of bedtime reading! hehe).





An encyclopeadia of Heavy Metal Music (this is a dream gift for me - I know others may not appreciate it).





An MP3 player, new perfume, the new biography about Anthony Keidis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers entitled Scar Tissue ( I can't wait to get stuck into this), a book called 'What is Goth?' which is truly hilarious and informative (my new goth name is Marquesa Demona Enchantress of the Innocents & Dans is Master Vlad Defiler of the Virgins!!!!) a new handbag sized good camera, Nigella Lawsons cookbook for good quality fast family food, and lots lots more. My Mum gave me a beautiful red dress too. After a serious amount of present opening Dan and the kids took me to the new Ed's Diner thats opened up nearby and we stuffed ourselves silly.

Since it wasn't possible to fit 31 candles into a cake, I was presented by Annabelle with towering inferno of flames on a cheese cake. (see top photo) How novel!





My Mum kindly agreed to take the kids overnight on Saturday night so we were able to go into Belfast and meet up with some friends. My sister Maddi & her partner Tom came too, as well as some of the lovely belly dancing girls I've made friends with recently. It's so hard to get people at this time of year as everyone is so busy, so we decided to go out rather than have a party or anything.



























First pic is of me all dressed up and ready to go out. Second pic is me wearing the cool hat and gloves that Maddi bought me!




Two of my lovely belly dancing friends with me, Jools on the left, and Aleksandra on the right.





This is me on the left and my sister Maddi on the right. She fell in love with the hat and gloves she gave me and I rather thought I wasn't going to get them back!

Tom and Dan, two of the luckiest men in the world, in my opinion!

So, all in all I had a fabulous day. We had a great laugh in Laverys with friends, and a bit of a boogie too. Dan and I went back to Jools house for a kebab, which I horsed down as if I'd not eaten in a month!

Thanks to Dan for making it such a nice day, and to everyone for the lovely presents, and for the people who came out with me and made it such a nice night.

Apocalyptica, Live in Dublin - best live band in the world!?

It's Monday morning and instead of getting on with the mountains of housework, or wrapping up of Christmas presents, I'm sitting at my computer listening to Apocalyptica, and writing a blog post about the most amazing weekend we had.

Dan and I travelled down to Dublin on Friday, for Saturday nights Apocalyptica gig. Unfortunately I'd developed a violent cold and was sneezing all the way down on the bus, with two lovely big purple eyes. Apocalyptica are one of my favourite bands (I have many though). They are a cello band from Finland, and consist of 4 cellists, and now a drummer (although he is a relatively new addition). They became famous for their heavy metal covers, particularly their cello versions of Metallica songs. But now days they are as well known for their own music, with the new album 'Worlds Collide' having guest singers from various bands including Slipknot, Lacuna Coil and Rammstein. We knew that this show would be good, different and unique, but we were both totally blown away with the whole evening.

The supporting act were Lacrimus Profundere. The singer from Lacrimus came out at the very end of the evening when there were just a few stragglers from the audience left. We met him and had a brief chat about his band. I think he was looking for groupies (he didn't have any trouble finding them) but I wasn't gonna throw myself at any guy just cos he's the singer on a not yet very famous band, so he soon got bored talking to me. Haha.

The Dublin show was the last gig of Apocalyptica's 2007 European tour and right from the second they appeared on stage we could tell it would be a good night. They looked exhilarated and excited about their last gig of the year and the audience picked up on this straight away. The vibe in the audience was just hiving. The band had a look of almost disbelief as they performed and experienced for the first time the appreciation of an Irish crowd (I've always found Irish audiences, north or south, to be amazing enthusiastic audiences compared to the brits). They promised they'd be back to Ireland.

They played an almost 2 hour set, and their performances totally blew my mind! I've never experienced such a high from live music before. I think they are the best live band I've ever seen, they even blew my cold away! Their performance was energetic, passionate, lively, and totally out of this world. The drummer was obviously from another planet - the amount of energy and movement he put into drum playing was phenomenal. There are four professional cellists who manage to show that heavy metal music is just as valid an art form as any other type of music. There were no singers in the show, purely instrumental, and it lacked nothing.

The band were called back with 3 standing ovations. The Dublin crowd refused to let them leave and chanted "we want more". The first time they came back and performed another 3 songs. Then left and the crowd still wanted more. So they came back and played another 2 songs, with a look of disbelief on their faces. But that wasn't enough and we called them back for one more song and made them play until they all looked like they would faint from exhaustion! The crowd clapped and cheered for the longest I've ever seen anyone clap a band, and Apocalyptica left the stage looking totally exhilarated and mind blown themselves!

When they come back to Ireland I am going to drag everyone I know to their gig so that they can experience this band live for themselves. As amazing as their albums are, they do no justice to the buzz of the live gig.