Hooray for a week off!

Half-term holidays have started so no pre-school for a week! We have quite a few visitors over the next week which has been kick started today with the arrival of my dad for the weekend. I am sitting here enjoying the peace and quiet as he has taken the girls firstly to the gun shop (what a treat!) and then for a quick trip to the park. I have leisurely washed the floors and should be hanging out my washing now before making a start on dinner but it's such a novetly to have time to myself at this time of day that I couldn't help but indulge in 15mins of internet time! Bex is coming for dinner tonight before tomorrow jetting off to Texas to see our cousin. On Monday Uncle Matt and Auntie Kerri arrive - Esther has asked most mornings if they are here yet! Friday night Uncle Dan and Auntie Natalie arrive so it is going to be one packed house - 6 adults and 2 kids in a 2 bedroomed house! Luckily we all like each other so squashing in won't be too bad. Maybe we'll have to get the tent out for Dan and Matt - I'm sure they'll be the gents and let their wives sleep indoors! Should all be fun so let the party commence!

Camera found.... again...

The camera was on my bedroom floor of course... Perfect place to stash it for safety.... not. I'll put more pics of the cake I'm so proud of later as I need to do a shop online now so it will come tomorrow and we can eat!

Esther's long-awaited birthday party!

I like 4 year olds's birthday parties. The kids are old enough to understand how to play the games, like to have fun and don't need their parents to stay with them!!! I don't know who was more excited about the party, Esther or Eliza. Eliza just kept running around saying 'party yay party'! As you can see from the pictures it became a kinda princess theme. We played your staple musical statues, musical bumps and pass the parcel and had pin the crown on the princess too. Dress up of course was a strict requirement, Eliza was dressed up too. When Ben asked if he could come to the party Esther said no because it would be too girlie but he could make the food!! As it happens he actually did do most of the food! After the first games we then make tiara's and wands from a fantastic kit I bought at Tesco for £2.50 and the girls seemed to really enjoy it. We then kept them sitting at the table and brought over the food. Everyone was very well behaved and I can't believe how quick the tidy up was - they didn't seem to make any mess!
So here are the beautiful bunch: Esther, Tamsin, Isabel, Sophie and Maddie (minus Georgiana as they were a bit late...) Esther is wearing the reversable Sleeping Beauty/Belle dress she got for her birthday (it's a bit snug as someone gave us it and it's age 3-4 but she loves it): The tiara and wand making:

An action shot of some of the dancing:

The Barbie cake!!!! I have got better pictures of this that I took on my camera but guess what, after taking the pictures of the finished cake in all it's glory last night, I put my camera somewhere really 'safe' and no not in the camera box, somewhere locked away in my brain along with Eliza's toothbrush which I have mislocated also so she is using a full on adult size toothbrush we had spare and luckily my neighbours let me borrow their camera last minute so I could have some picture so the party.....But anyway, please be suitably impressed with the cake from a distance!!

So all in all I'm glad it is done and dusted for a year but it was actually stress and hassle free and I'd even say pretty enjoyable! 7 kids (including my 2) for an hour and a half? Piece of cake!

The thing I wish I knew last Friday..

... is that if there is anything wrong with you during the night when you are pregnant you should always ring the delivery suite no matter how pregnant you are and they will send a midwife to see you. I didn't know this. So I rang the Doctor who said I couldn't go to the local hospital and would have to go to the hospital 50 mins away - all this at 4.30am. Ouch! So I hung on for a bit and at 6am decided we would have to go. SO we got the kids up and bundled in the car (it was Esther's birthday too so not the best start to her special day) then were told we could go to a hospital 30mins away. We were seen pretty quickly and they were good but didn't do things the simple way which meant I had to endure a weekend of uncomfortableness and come back early from our trip to my parents so I could see a District Nurse who then sorted me out and everything is back to normal. But today I went for my midwife appointment (heard the baby's heartbeat which was 142) and she told me if I had called delivery suite then a midwife would have come to see me and things would have been sorted on that one visit! It makes me so mad that the doctor didn't give me this advice and so the whole thing dragged out for 3 days!! Aaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Anyway, good thing is that everything is ok and just incase you were wondering, it wasn't actually anything to do with the baby!

Today we had another trip to the doctors in a hurry after Eliza got a mega lump on the back of her head from falling backwards after pushing her kitchen table chair backwards and landing on the floor. She is ok too luckily!

Hopefully we won't be needing any more medical visits till we have our baby scan in 4 weeks! I think I need another holiday.

Itchy Feet

Some friends of ours have just moved to Italy. I want to move there!!!! Whenever I hear of anyone moving exciting places it always gives me itchy feet, I'll have to start looking up jobs for Ben in Italy....

New skills

I've kind of an ambitious project for Esther's birthday cake... My mother-in-law bought a Barbie cake tin a while ago for 50p or something ridiculous and passed it our way. So I've decided to use it for Esther's birthday cake, the only problem is the decorating... I've never used an icing bag before so I experimented today with some mini cupcakes - I discovered the nozzle I was trying to use was waaaaaaaaaay to big for the size of the cake so have to give us and just smooth the icing on and throw on some edible glitter. They look ok enough for Esther to take to her pre-school tomorrow anyway! It's not made me super confident about the real birthday cake so I'll do it the day before her party and if it looks naff then no-one need ever see it! I'll just hurry down to the Bury Cake shop! Wish me luck!

Bit the bullet

So I took my friend JaNae's advice and plumped for some pop n swap polly pockets that cost about double what I was looking to spend but I figured since I only spent £5 on her birthday presents last year I could splash out this year. So she has some great presents lined up - I can't wait to see her face!

Why are Polly Pockets so expensive???

Esther has asked for some Polly Pockets for her birthday, a pretty resonable request but everywhere I look they are just super expensive for hardly any quantity!! Even on ebay people pay a fortune and I've been outbid at super high prices! Hmmmm....her birthday is on Friday.....time is running out....maybe she will forget what she asked for? Not likely! Isn't it funny that nearly 4 year olds can remember exactly everything they want to remember? Oh well, maybe I'll just need to buy something full price for a change... so hard when you are a bargain hunter!