Our lastest pics from January 07

I had a lot of photos to upload today and there were so many that I could put on the blog! Here are the best of the bunch...


Firstly, here is the photos of the fig and almond raw vegan tolls which I made. They were so simple. Basically whizz up a bunch of almonds and dried figs, add a tiny bit of water if needed and then roll them into some dessicated co-conut and chill in the fridge. They took seconds to make, the kids loved them, and they were so healthy I could let them eat as many as they wanted. Voila!



Last week I finally finished sorting through all the letters I have received from E in the last 2 years. They were kept in a paper bag, but it got ripped, and then Luke kindly opened every letter and separated them from their envelopes. There were 78 letters in total, 4 polaroid photos, loads of gift cards, a little angel and E's gold cross pendant which he gave me. He has had it since he was a child. Steve bought me a nice box to keep them all organised in, and I've numbered the back of them in case Luke ever gets hold of them again. So now they are in date order. It was amazing looking through them to see how much I had read and completely forgotten about. I received another letter from E this morning saying "there were only 78 letters? I thought I'd written nearer 2000!" He he.

Here is a photo of Jude making another one of her papier mache cats. This was taken yesterday.












As well as this one of Luke who was so proud of his playdoh tractor creation that he asked me to take a photo. This was simple to create as well. Take one 3 year old, 6 tubs of play-dough, one tractor trailer and a thomas the tank engine carriage. Bind all the ingredients together (not the 3 year old - he does the binding) and then you have a simple but effective master piece, worthy of a photo.





Before the Christmas holidays Jude did this little project as part of her home education. She has been reading a lot of history books lately so she decided to create this fold open history project. She basically created fold open flaps containing information about her favourite stories from history. The one in the photo is about The Battle of Hastings, and you can see king Harold made from pipe cleaners, tissue paper and a fluffy pink pom pom, at the side of the story. The other pages are about Hieroglyphics, The Two Margaret's, Anansi the Spider, and Leizu & the silkworm.


This afternoon Luke played with Sam's old collection of animals and dinosaurs, which he loves. I had wanted to sit and do something crafty with him, possibly a bit of painting or something. So we decided to make a little jungle scene for his animals to play in. I cut out a big box and stuck tissue paper for sky and grass onto it. Then Jude, Luke and myself set about turning it into a jungle. Luke stuck a few flowers on, a few fish in the pond, and made his own huge fluffy cloud before losing interest and asking us "is it ready yet? is it ready yet?" every 30 seconds. We may add bits and pieces to the finished scene at times. But it looks pretty good,

don't you think?

Jude wins gold

Oh yes, how could I forget to mention that on Wednesday evening Jude went to the Archery Christmas shoot. They have one at the end of every term, a huge shooting session where all the archers from all the different lessons compete together. It goes on all evening and there is always a huge turnout.
Well, at the end of the evening Jude won a gold medal! She was the top scorer for her age group in the girls section. That has completed her set now as she has two bronze medals, one silver, and now the gold. She was thrilled.

Visit to Santa, Sprucefield.

Today we took a drive to Sprucefield in Lisburn to visit Santa in his grotto. We were the first ones there for it's opening time of 2pm. Best of all, it was free, plus there was no queue. Luke was very excited, but shy once Santa sat him on his knee. They were given a chocolate Santa lolly and I got to take a few photos. Luke asked for some trains for Christmas (phew) and also asked if he was on the naughty or the nice list. Aww. Here are the pics...

More of Steves portraits

Ok, I couldn't resist putting some more on. They are all so adorable, especially because they are my kids, so I just had to post them.

Don't forget to click on them for a better view.

Steves Portraits

This evening I looked at some of the photos Steve took in the college photography studio last week, as part of his course. I just had to come and put some of them on my blog. These aren't necessarily the ones he is entering for his course, but a few of the ones I liked (there were hundreds - it was hard to pick!) I'm sure I'll be posting more over the coming days. The session was primarily shooting pictures of Jude but he took a few group ones of the kids too...

Are we going yet?

Yesterday evening we went to friends house for dinner. Luke had been waiting all week to go and was beside himself when the day actually came. The daughter of this family has a huge conservatory full of toys and Luke just couldn't wait to get stuck into playing with them, especially the Barbie Cars. Yesterday morning he was up at about 6am exclaiming "Horray! We are going to H & D's house today!" Happy days. From that point onwards he proceeded to ask me every 30 seconds on average "are we going yet?" I told him we weren't going until it was dark. At about 1.30pm he ran into the room screaming excitedly that he had looked out of the window and it was now dark!

He did manage to entertain himself throughout the day with little distractions. He decided that it was of utmost importance that he paint a picture for C. He got all the paints out and set himself up on his little desk. He painted a beautiful portrait of C, which we later added glitter to, much to Luke' delight. He told me about 30 times that C was going to be so pleased with the picture he had painted her.

Thankfully, the time to leave finally came and we drove the 35 minute drive to their house, with questions every 3 minutes asking "are we there yet?", "are we half way there yet?" Luckily for us some of the towns had their christmas lights on, and this delighted Luke and distracted him enough to keep us relatively sane.

Here is a photo of Luke looking so proud with his painting of C.

He managed to distract himself for a while with various toys whilst I got a little work done about the house.

As per usual, we were treated to the obligatory end of evening performance from our two older children and C. This time, much to mine and Luke's delight, was a performance of the Scissor Sisters 'I don't feel like dancing'. Don't they just look the part?

Some Photos From Jude's New Camera

Some photos that Jude has taken this week on her new camera.

Steve at work, in his CD shop, with Luke's winter hat on?!?!?

This is me making Jude's legwarmers in her room, on her birthday.

Playing in the snow before school.

Birthdays, feet and snow...

I'm making time for a little catch up post. So much has been going on but I haven't had time really to sit and write about it. Time goes past, and more stuff happens, and then I never get around to blogging about the things I was going to blog about.


On Tuesday Luke finally got the specially made orthopedic insoles. Remember he had his feet cast for them on 1st October? The children's hospital told me that they needed to be cast, made and fitted within two weeks so that he would be able to wear them before his feet grew too big. 6 weeks later, after hearing nothing about getting the insoles fitted, I phoned the hospital and was told their next free appointment was on 20th December! When I pointed out that his feet probably would not fit the insoles by then, they agreed, and arranged for me to visit the private clinic where they had been made, and were sitting in storage. So, that's what we did, and the private clinic have agreed to see Luke from now on, at no cost to us, on behalf of the Children's Hospital. The insoles are very strange looking, not at all what I was expecting. So I took a photo (of course!)





The good thing is that the orthotist told us only to buy Luke cheep shoes from now on. He says that the insoles will do the job, and expensive Clarke's shoes will get in the way, so we are to go for cheepy Dunnes shoes instead. Woo hoo. I was tempted to ask him to kit the whole family out with them! LOL.

Anyway, today is was snowing! Yes! Snowing! Never has a little boy been so excited, as little Luke was when he woke up at 7am this morning and discovered the roof windows were covered in snow! Sam and his friend had a snowball fight in their school uniforms, before school this morning. And Luke donned his welly boots for a walk through the snowy lawn. Steve went out to the back garden to take some snowy shots for his photography course, and slipped, fell flat on his back, soaking through three layers of clothes and breaking his camera (its muddy, wet and might work properly when it's dried out).


Our back garden this morning...

Jude's birthday was a lovely day. In the morning she opened her presents before Sam went to school. Her main present was her own digital camera. She also got a knitting set (make your own leg warmers), a beano comic writing set, a box of chocolates, Nanny McPhee DVD, amongst other things.

Luke helped me wrap up the presents the night before. He was also emptying my handbag at the time, and unknown to us had taken a £5 note from my purse and wrapped it up with with some new clothes that I'd bought Jude! We didn't discover it until she opened them, and of course she was delighted with the money and the clothes.

Luke helped Jude unwrap all the presents, and she was very good to let him. He was more excited than her I think! We bought her a big chocolate cake, and Luke had to put the 10 candles on himself. He couldn't wait to eat it.

In the evening Jude and I went out for a girlie evening together. We drove to Lisburn and watched Click at the cinema. It was a good film, and Jude enjoyed it as much as me. It was much sadder than we had expected, and really could have done with more comedy at the start before getting sad. It's a story about a man whose life is really busy, with work and family commitments. He becomes the owner of a Universal Remote Control, which controls his universe. He can skip scenes, fast forward, pause, etc through his life.

After the film I let Jude choose from any of the restaurants in the area. She chose pizza hut. By now it was 9.30pm so we both felt really grown up having a meal so late at night (and on a school night too!) We had pizza, garlic bread, deserts, we were totally stuffed and took plenty home for Daddy's midnight feast. When we got home we discovered that Steve had started painting the hallway (Shock!)

I asked Jude how she enjoyed her birthday. She said "it was cool, but the best bit was talking to you in the restaurant". Isn't that cute? She really enjoyed some quality time without her brothers.

Jude's 10th Birthday is today!

It doesn't seem ten years since this happy day of Jude's birth. On 15th November at approx 3pm Jude was born weighing 8 lb 2 oz. The same size at birth as both her parents were. Being the reliable, rule abiding person that she has turned out to be, she arrived on the day she was due, after a damn hard delivery.

She was in a lot of pain, badly bruised, after the birth, and she cried for three solid days. The only way to stop her crying was to sit with her in my arms, perfectly still, and to sing "Hey Jude". I sat in that hospital singing Hey Jude for hours, since that was the song she recognised from her time in the womb.
I couldn't believe that we were blessed with a daughter, as well as our 17 month old son. Sam was delighted with his little sister and soon became her protector and friend. She seemed so tiny next to him, but he still wasn't even walking alone at this point. She was a gorgeous little thing, and turned into a gorgeous girl.

There have been a lot of smiles, a lot of laughs, and a lot of tears since that happy day. Jude has brought happiness and sunshine to our lives and every day I thank God for her. She has become a very sensitive caring young lady, not to mention beautiful.

She has always been our baby girl, but never did she imagine that one day she would be a BIG sister! The birth of Luke was an exciting time for young Jude. She became like a second mother to him. She was quietly pleased that he was a boy, and she could remain our special girl. Now he bosses her around, nags and moans at her. But she has taught him how to count, recognise shapes and colours etc. She is a natural teacher to him.

These days Jude enjoys reading and writing letters. She loves writing to her penpals, and is addicted to Beano comics at the moment. She plays the piano, and has won medals in archery. Every day she brings light to our lives with her constant jokes, funny stories, and little comic songs which she makes up and dances too.

She is excellent with a camera, which is what we bought her for her birthday today - her own digital camera. Now she can snap away to her hearts content, without having to use Daddy's massive, expensive camera.

Have a happy birthday Jude. May you be blessed with 10 more happy years at home with us. Please stop growing up so fast. It's just not on you know!