Happy Birthday to Daddy

Barney lights the candle's for Daddy's 37th birthday cake. Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

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.

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

Happy 5th Birthday Barney!

Yesterday saw my baby boy turn 5 years old. And boy was he excited about it. (OK, well what little boy doesn't get extremely excited about a birthday?) We all woke up early so that he could open a few presents before school, and then he opened the rest when he got home. Presents included lots of power rangers toys, an ant farm, lush bath bombs, the Bee Movie DVD, stickers, sweets and a puzzle. I had to laugh when he opened a present from me containing a new set of clothes - jeans, t-shirts, new striped casual shirt and a jumper - and exclaimed "Mummy! Why on earth did you think I'd want clothes for my birthday?!?!" Ha ha. Poor kid.

I was feeling really migrainey so Dan dropped the kids off to school while I went back to sleep for a few hours. After school Nanny came to visit and gave Barney the present he'd been wishing for - a Power Rangers Megazord! Which is basically 5 power rangers which can be stuck together and transformed into a huge giant megezord. A bit like transformers. I had the joy of spending an hour last night working out how to stick the darn things together to make the longed for megazord, but I got there in the end. (Let's hope I can remember for next time!) Nanny and Daddy had almost as much fun playing Power Rangers as Barney did.

As an added bonus we have had my sisters dog Leila staying with us for 2 nights, which has delighted all 3 of the kids.

I'm sure Dan will be writing a blog post on his often neglected blog about his trip to England with the kids, sometime in the next few weeks. When he does I'll be sure to mention it here.

Happy Birthday Dan!

The old man is now even older! 36 to be exact. Ok, well not exactly, his birthday isn't until Thursday, but since the kids are going to my Mums for 2 days while we pack, and then we will be on a long flight and arriving in Florida on his birthday, we decided to celebrate it a few days early. So, for the purposes of convenience, Dan's birthday was today.

And after 14 years I finally got the whole present buying thing right, and bought him things he actually wanted! Ok, I'm a bit of a slow learner, but I get there in the end. And he still has the other half of his life to look forward to all the nice presents I can get him in future.

So what did we do? Well, Dan sneaked out of bed before me and took Annabelle to the local high school open day to look round. LOL. But when they got home Barney and I sang happy birthday and called Dan upstairs to the bedroom where an array of presents awaited him.

As is custom in our house, present opening always happens on our big King Size bed, as a family. (I wonder when the kids will grow out of that). This year we gave Dan stuff for the trip, including new clothes, a new windproof coat, an MP3 player, a portable hard drive, a torch, and chocolate. Oh how exciting. LOL.

After all that excitement we took a trip to PC world in Lisburn where Dan didn't actually buy anything in the end, and I went to Argos and bought some holdalls for our trip (and a camera for Jimmie, and a new MP3 player for Annabelle - yes, you'd think I was made of money. Sadly, I'm not). Then we took Dan to McDonald's (or did he take us? Yes, I think he did).

This evening once the kids were in bed we got a DVD from the video shop (something with Jodie Foster in it, the name has gone from my spongey brain) and watched it together in the living room, all cuddled up under a duvet. It was an odd kind of birthday really as we are so crazy organizing this trip. But I think he had a good day in the end.

Here are some photos from the day....

Pic 1) Barney wrapped up one of his colouring books for his Daddys birthday present, bless. 2) Daddy opening his presents with the kids (and sporting his new headphones & mic set!) 3) Dan looking mighty handsome in the new clothes I bought him 4) Annabelle and Jimmie in McDonalds 5) Barney & Dan in McDonalds, 6) Me, being my usually silly self (in public, as always)

Oh by the way, our mate Neil really wants to be mentioned in todays blog post. He has kind of a dull life and nothing much to look forward to so this will make his day. LOL. So hello Neil! (He's single by the way girls, and quite a catch in my opinion - if you like gingers, lol) My blog is turning into a lonely hearts ad site. LOL, "36 YO Male, Birmingham, SGSBM (sexy ginger slightly balding man), Athletic, likes walks in the rain and quiet nights in front of the fire, GSOH, own house and car, fully toilet trained...."

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.

Annabelles 11th Birthday

Poor Annabelle has had two bouts of sickness lately, but at least she had a happy birthday in between. She got a temperature and is being sick rather a lot. This happened two weeks ago, and now its back again, although no one else caught it.

Anyway, last week she celebrated her 11th birthday and had a lovely time. Daddy took her out for pizza and cinema. She had lots of presents which she had to open in Victorian costume as she was going on a school trip to The Argory that day. I think all in all she had a lovely day. Here are a few pics....