Christmas cards

Every Christmas my parents like to send cards made with picture of their grandchildren. These were the pictures they took for this years cards.

About 5 seconds after taking this picture Cecily threw baby Jesus on the floor....

Yum

Friday night treat, Ben and Jerrys. Girls after my own heart... except for Alice who doesn't like chocolate icecream or even chocolate for that matter... she must have got her taste buds from someone else!

Update on Alice

This is where you will find Alice most hours of the day. On the rope swing. Singing Frozen songs on the top of her voice to the cows. Hope she makes the most of it as come September she'll be starting school, I'm sure the cows will miss her but maybe not as much as I will. On another note, she got glasses in May. She has an astigmatism in her left eye and is a bit long sighted. The orthoptist at the hospital says it is something that can be corrected, the glasses help the eyes to see the same so the brain recognises both eyes and doesn't leave the weaker one behind. Alice has been brilliant about it, no complaining. You've got to love this girl.

She's a star...

Back at the end of February this year we got a note from the school telling us that Esther had been chosen for the Rotary Caring Award. This award is given to one pupil in the school each term and the teachers chose who they feel deserve it. It was a secret from Esther and Ben and I were invited to be there for the award assembly. We got there and had to hide behind the curtain while all the different awards were given out - Eliza got one for thinking before she speaks! So when it came to the Rotary award each teacher said why they felt this person deserved the award. It was obviously great for us as parents to hear such wonderful things being said about our daughter, not only that but knowing they were true! One of the teacher said that she wasn't just a good role model, she was a perfect role model. When they said her name she was so shocked and then they pulled back the curtains and all eyes turned to us! I was just glad I didn't tear up! The guy from the Rotary club handed her the Caring Shield complete with her name engraved on it, a £10 voucher for Tesco of all places (being a good mum I swapped her the voucher for a tenner) and a Rotary Star badge (which she didn't take off for a good few weeks!). Then she got to come and hang out with us for 5 minutes before going back to class.

We couldn't be more proud!

Summer holidays part 2

On our first 'real' day of the holiday we decided to explore Rye and hit the nearby beach of Camber Sands having heard it was a lovely beach. The weather looked promising and so off we went. When we arrived at Rye Cecily had fallen asleep so the girls and I went to a fantastic park right next to the car park to play until she woke up. Rye itself was quaint but disappointing and in the end I kinda wish we hadn't bothered. The weather turned as bit chilly and windy after lunch as we went to the beach. You had to hike over a massive sand dune to get to the beach carrying all the beach gear and helping the girls over. I was tired out already! I was also unsure as to how the Eliza would take to the beach as last summer she refused to take her shoes off on the sand or go near the sea at all. I needn't have worried as ALL of the girls LOVED it! Cecily would have eaten more than her own body weight in sand if we'd have let her. The sea was really far out and even though we set up camp somewhere in the middle it was still miles away from the sea so one of us looked after Cecily and the other looked after the other 3 girls. We stayed a couple of hours but left knowing that another trip to the beach was on the agenda sometime in the holiday.

The next day we visited Bodiam Castle in East Sussex. This maybe isn't the best picture I took of these guys but I had to post it because of Esther's face...

Whilst we were there the girls took part in a Princess Academy, learning what it took to be a good princess in the hay day of the castle. Here they are doing a spot of archery (with the handsome prince)

Learning proper princess dancing (I know it looks like they were doing the hokey cokey but the really weren't).

Lining up for their certificates

Graduated!

The castle really was stunning and it was such a gorgeous day.

On the Wednesday we went to Canterbury, first stop park and maze.

We wanted to go in the Cathedral but it was going to cost £30 (!) so we didn't bother! Can it really look that much different to all the other Cathedrals we've already been in?

Thursday was rainy and cold so we went to Dover Castle. The castle was quite different in that some of the insides had been decorated in the style it would have been and King John was there in full character. The wartime tunnels under the castle were a big attraction for us and we chose to go on the shorter 25 minute tour of the top level of tunnels which was a hospital wing during WW2. They tried to make it as 'real' to life as possible with dipping lights, sounds of bombs going off (Dover was heavily bombed during the war) and I wondered how the girls would cope but they were fine. It was actually really fascinating.

Friday's weather was glorious so we hit the beach at Dymchurch. Sooooo much better than Camber Sands. For a start no dunes to hike - a civilised set of sets to get over the sea wall, beautiful sandy beach and the sea not too far. Much easier to let the girls run free and stay in sight. Again they loved it.

This time Daddy took charge of the sandcastle building.

The sea came in really quickly so the moat got filled up! And then the castle was destroyed.... We left to find some fish and chips for lunch, found a village green to eat them on.

We travelled back home on the Saturday stopping for a walk about at Audley End and then managed to get back the wrong way onto the motorway and hit some major traffic - accident after accident - before we could get off. By the time we got home everyone was sooooo sick of being in the car. All in all a great holiday!

A couple of weeks later we went to the Haddenham Steam Rally. We get free tickets because some of the land used for it is owned by AgReserves (Ben's employer). Last year we went - I was 39 weeks pregnant and it was boiling. We left after about 30 minutes because I probably would have exploded! This year we spent a lot more time there, got a good look around, the girls found all the free stuff they could get and we let them each choose a ride at the fun fair. Alice chose this merry-go-round car:

Eliza wanted to go in the space bouncer (giant covered bouncy castle). She was the only one in there and was in for ages. In the end we had to make her come out because the rest of us were getting bored waiting!

How adorable!

Esther chose the dodgems and loved going on with Ben. I meanwhile stood with the others who were both begging me to let them go on the dodgems too. Since we had only taken £10 and the rides cost a fortune we have learnt that next time we need to take more money!!

Here is a musical exhibit powered by steam engine. Cecily loved it!

At the end of the summer holidays, the 3 older girls took a swimming crash course e.g. a half hour lesson every day for 5 days. Alice had never been in a swimming pool in her life but was pretty confident. I was really pleased about the as I can't swim... Eliza was less confident but the teacher said she had a beautiful swimming action! Esther was in the class above and was really good at back stroke, she moved up a step too so is now on step 5. At the girls school they have a little outdoor pool that they have lessons in twice a week for the last 6/7 weeks of the school year, this year Esther hadn't had a great experience at school so I was glad she got her confidence back. They all want to have swimming lessons so some of their uncles and aunts are contributing for them to have lessons for their Christmas presents.

We also enjoyed time in our garden this summer. I need to post pictures, the views are gorgeous. One day we took a table and chairs out and had an art session drawing what we could see around us. We also started a cow register giving names to all the cows in the neighbouring field. There is only a barbed wire fence between them and us so we see them pretty close up. There is a bull who named William, Billy for short. (The cows were taken away for the winter 2 weeks ago, Cecily misses them!)

We made a lot of good memories this summer!

Summer holidays 2013

Our summer holidays started out differently than we had first expected. We hoped to move house right before the holiday began but as it happened we moved 2 weeks into the summer holidays. That was a fun first 2 weeks....not. It was really hot (for England), we were packing so the kids didn't have all their usual things, I was busy and as much as you can get them to help out it all takes 10 times longer so they were a long few weeks. But when moving day dawned we were completely ready. We took the children round to their various morning playdates thinking that by the time we collected them much of the moving would be done. When I got back to the house Ben said the movers had called and were going to be 30 minutes late - flat tyre. An hour and a half later we were getting very frustrated, no movers and no phone call.They did eventually call and ended up being 3 1/2 hours late by which point I had to collect the children. Thankfully there was nobody waiting to move into our house... By dinner time the move was still not over so I took the girls and my mum (my parents came to help) to eat and buy some groceries. The movers were still there when we got back. They did work pretty hard and even though I'd been so mad in the morning I felt sorry for them and my dad handed round some icecreams! We eventually got the kids in bed by 9pm and just about fell into bed ourselves.

After 2 more weeks to get things kinda unpacked, spent a lot of time outside on the rope swing, meeting our new neighbours (a field of cows, Cecily was instantly smitten) and generally enjoying all the space indoors and out we packed up to leave for our holiday to Kent. We were staying in a holiday cottage near Tenterden but the day before we travelled to the London Temple and met up with Ben's parents. The girls stayed with them while we went inside and in the afternoon we took a trip to Chartwell, home of Winston Churchill. We got there fairly late and it was cold and rainy it was a fairly quick trip but we really enjoyed it, the girls liked Marycot, the Churchill children's playhouse in the garden. We all had a terrible nights sleep and we vowed never to sleep in one room altogether ever till the children are much older! 

The next day we went to church in East Grinstead and bumped into a few old friends and my sis-in-law's sister and uncle. I love that wherever you go in the church you know someone or know a friend of a friend. After lunch we travelled to Kent and settled into our very peaceful holiday home. I forgot to mention that I had forgotten to take the address of the house with us...ooops....thank goodness for google!! Holiday part 2 to come....

It's been a whole year...

... since Cecily arrived! This year I think really has been the quickest of my life. Back in September Cecily turned one. We had a few presents for her to open and took her to the garden centre to see the animals. We did sing her happy birthday a few times which she loved though she didn't get a cake. Oh well.

She got into the unwrapping pretty quickly,

 even though her sisters were desperate to help

 and play with her new toy

 Here she is in her new birthday dress from Grandma and Grandpa

 I love this photo because it shows her doing what she loves to do - carry around socks. She has actually stopped doing it so much now but she used to carry socks everywhere she went, not just one but as many as she could get her hands on and would frequently get frustrated because she couldn't physically fit 10 socks in her hand at one time, she gave it a good go though!

Here are some facts about our little blondie:

- she loves to accessorise, hairbands, scarves, clips etc

- she loves breakfast

- she loves her dummy

- she loves animals especially cows (loves to look out the window for the cows in the field next to our house), dogs and cats and is pretty fearless around them 

- she can say all her sister's names and mama and dada, yum and amen, woof, moo and lots of other words that sound Chinese.

- she was our earliest walker, 11 months

- at the moment she likes to wake up at 4.30, not good news for her parents 

- she is a really good natured baby, very friendly

We all love her like crazy!!!!