Happy 5th Birthday Ollie

Today was Ollie 5th birthday and he had an at home party. He had invited about 15 school friends and relatives and they all had a great time playing party games and eating party food.

Amy had fun doing girlie stuff with Jasmine...
















...whilst Ben enjoyed moving the goal posts (literally) for the football game - here he is fleeing the scene of the crime!.
















Sadly, Molly was feeling a little bit off colour but she rallied her spirits towards the end of the day.













After the official party was over Ollie's relations stayed on for a little while longer and then the presents were unwrapped.

Here's Ollie in his Power Ranger outfit which we brought him.

Zoo Trip

Had a great day yesterday. Went to Colchester Zoo with Kirstie & a couple of her friends. In all there were 9 children and 4 adults.

When we got there I couldn't believe the amount of cars - we had to park in the alternative, alternative car park and I nearly gave up on the whole thing and came back home again. Kirstie talked me out of it and in the end we had a lovely time.

Ben saw loads of tigers - everything he saw he shouted tiger at; elephants, monkeys, zebras (i was willing to let him have that one) and Amy did lots of running about! They were both shattered at the end of it and so was I.

Amy then went back to Kirstie's for a sleepover. Rather heart-warmingly she seemed a bit put out that Ben wasn't joining her and seemed confused that it was just her. It seems that in her head there was never a time when Ben wasn't in her life which is really nice.

Was a bit weird at bed time though because I usually check in on her before I turn in and she wasn't there.

Hoppy Easter 2007

We've had a lovely Easter Bank Holiday weekend....

Good Friday
On Good Friday we went to visit Granny and Grandad at their caravan which they had parked near Framlingham. The kids had a lovely time charging about in the field.


In the afternoon we visited Framlingham Castle which Amy especially enjoyed - who says history is boring!












Later that evening, just as we'd changed Ben into his P.J's for the trip home he crawled into Granny's bed and snuggled down - it was really sweet!










Saturday
On Saturday we spent the day together as a family doing nothing much in particular. We dropped round at my Mum & Dad's on the off-chance that we might be able to help them with putting up their new shed and our timing couldn't have been more perfect as they were struggling to get it together.



Easter Sunday
On Sunday we went over to my Mum & Dad's for the day and had a lovely time out in the garden. Both the kids managed to catch the sun on their faces and we had a wonderful buffet-style lunch.










Easter Monday
Then today Paula, Gavin, Evie & Morgan came over to visit and the four kids had a great time in the back garden. The place looked a little bit like a branch of the Early Learning Centre with all the toys scattered about but they did enjoy themselves.

It's been a lovely bank holiday weekend and against all traditions the weather has been completely lovely the whole time.

The Tiger & The Shamrock

Well the first Tuesday of the Easter holidays has passed and we all had great fun.

Ben had his face painted for the first time and I did him as a Tiger. Amy wanted to be done with an Irish theme (she'd been into Irish dancing the whole day) so I tried to do her a couple of shamrocks.

Later that afternoon I tried (and failed miserably) to put up the trampoline netting. After nearly 2 hours struggling with it I finally conceded defeat and packed it all away again. I guess Ben is just gonna have to learn how to stay in the middle!

In other news, Amy has been enjoying an extra hour before bedtime as it is the school holidays. She has taken to helping us with the chores and rather likes washing up.

Also in other news Amy has started to earn pocket money for keeping her room tidy. She has really taken to the idea and has done really well the first week. I'll guess we'll have to see if the novelty wears off!

It seems like ages...

It seems like ages since I've posted on here but I've been out of action for a few weeks with the flu. I still feel quite under the weather - this one has been really hard to shift but let me recap on what's been going on since I last posted.

We have two new fish - Centre Parcs & St Tropez are their names. Sadly Mum-Fish & Ish turned out to be a bit dodgy and didn't even last 2 weeks!

On Monday 26th Ben had an appointment at Great Ormond Street to see the eye people and they are reasonably happy with his progress - they do want us to try and get the patch over his eye for 1 hour a day but at the moment Ben is not quite ready to co-operate!

Then today the whole family went to Venture for a photo shoot to use Nanna's birthday voucher. We have warned her that she might have to part with a few pennies if they come back as stunning as our ones.

We were wondering how they would manage to get a good shot of the whole group of us whose ages range from 93 at the oldest to 2 at the youngest but they seemed confident that it wouldn't be a problem.

We'll go and see the results in 2 weeks time.

Oh yes and in other news I passed my ITIL Release Management exam - ooooh I hear you say but it's good news for me because now it means that I am officially qualified to my job which will leave me in a much better position if I ever get made redundant.