18/52 FRIENDS, FERRIS WHEELS & FORESTS

I am so thankful for having some lovely family time this week. 

 

It makes my heart sing to hear you play together in the garden during the evenings I have to work and, because of the continued pleasant weather, you have been able to do more of it this week.

We were then very blessed over the weekend to be able share with friends the dedication of their son to their Church and God.  We are not religious, but our friends have a strong faith and it was lovely to see the happiness it brought to them and the love and support that they have from the other members of their Church.

 

We made the most of the bank holiday and our season tickets to Drayton Manor with a cheeky trip their and then to top of our week I was invited to join our twins on their school trip to the Lickey Hills which we all really enjoyed.  Whilst there we shopped, enjoyed the park, had lunch and went on a lovely walk with the ranger, Penny who had done some pond dipping and showed us newts, we made nests using pegs as a bird would use their beaks, walked through an orchard and spotted fairy doors (to name just a few things).

 

How lucky we are to have had such fun in seven very short days.

I wanna be like you hoo hoo

Shirt & Tie

Sailing Away

Sweet Sleep

Dedicated

Scooter lessons from Daddy

Ferris Wheel

School Trip - Lickey Hills - Making Nests (D)

School Trip - Lickey Hills - Making Nests (A)

16/52 EASTER HOLIDAYS 2014

This week I have really enjoyed having you at home with me during the day and we have been so lucky to have spent lots of time in the sunshine with friends.  We went to Shirley Park, enjoyed African dancers and other fun activities at The Bridge with the Parfitts, saw the animals at Sheldon Country Park with the Edwards and took your scooters to Brueton Park and Malvern Park with Daddy.  I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.

 

Making Music

Anything you can do I can do better!

Tunnel Vision

Face Painting

Easter crafting with friends

Sheldon Country Park

Scaling new heights

Stuck up a tree

Riding your trike.

Sun, sand, but no sea.

Rope Climbing

I love you!

14/52



Celebration Assembly
(without Daddy, hence the sad face.)

Breastfeeding our Babies

Baker Boys

Sweets for my sweet, (icing) sugar for my honey.

Such concentration

Craziness by Daddy!

12/52 ISTANBUL

Twice I have spent hours writing an open letter to Julia, Ville, Ruskin, Matti, Anton and Neve to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks for their wonderful hospitality, love and friendship which allowed Teeny and I to visit them in Istanbul recently.  Unfortunately Blogger has decided that saving said blog post was not on its list of priorities and now, as hard as I try, the words will just not come as they did before and I know myself well enough to know that if I do not publish a post about our trip soon it will stay in my drafts folder forever.  So here is my very condensed down, but equally as thankful post on our wonderfully enriching trip to Istanbul. 

 

Julia, Ville, Ruskin, Matti, Anton and Neve please know that my lack of words in this post does not reflect a lack of appreciation, rather the opposite; I feel that today whatever I write could never reflect my gratitude or admiration for you all. 

 

Crazy Hands

With Matt-iii

With Ru-kin

A word from the wise

Topkapi Palace

Beautiful Neve

Sunset Fishing

Patisserie de Pera

With Du-li-a

A view from Galata Tower

Home for the week

(For anybody who would like to see much better photographs of our trip they can be found on Julia's very gorgeous Flickr page)

7/52 MAKING THE MOST OF YOU

There really is no running theme for this week's photographs.  I'm making the most of  being off work for half term as it means that we can slow down a little and I can enjoy some quality time with the children, particularly A&D who seem to be at school far too much for my liking.

 

This first photo is exactly what I saw when I walked into the living room on Thursday.  How did he learn to do this?  My heart was literally in my mouth while Teeny was just super impressed with himself. 

 

At the window!

We had A's dance class and two birthday parties this Saturday.  I'm not quite sure how or when it happened, but our weekends now seem to mostly revolve around our kids' social schedule.

Bubbles
At Freya's 2nd birthday party

 

In uniform
At Grace's 2nd birthday party

On Monday, as it was at half term, I finally got to take you to the new Library of Birmingham.  You went with Daddy one day when I was working not long after it opened, but I hadn't been lucky enough to go with you before now.  Today we decided to take Teeny to nursery for a few hours and then the three of us went into town on the train.  Our new library is such a lovely place to explore from top to bottom; to snuggle up on the story steps in the children's library downstairs right up  to being able see the view across the city from the top and then, of course, there all of the lovely vantage points and nooks and crannies in between to be examined.  It should also be mentioned that with all of the light being let through those floor to ceiling windows and all of the different shapes, angles and colours it is perfect for taking lots of lovely photographs especially when you remember to take the correct lens (which I did not.)

Holding Hands

Its a long way down.

Books, glorious books.

Pretty In Pink

Taking a break.

At the Top!

'Red' any good books lately.

Looking Up!

Twin Telepathy
(They chose the same books from different areas of the children's library,)