Star in the making

Wednesday 8th December 2010 was declared the 'best night of my life' by Esther. She was Mary in her school play. The play was about santa going on strike and each year did a different bit of the play ending with the nativity. She was really pleased to be Mary even if Joseph did pick his nose! (I stole this picture from my friends blog since we had been to the Monday afternoon dress rehersal as pre-school children weren't allowed to the evening performance and we had forgotten our camera.) Esther loved the evening so much because she got to play in the school while she was waiting to go on. It must have been fun because she was bouncing off the ceiling when I picked her up.I was a bit mad though as I had asked if there were any spare tickets and was told none were available but my friend told me there had been rows of unoccupied seats at the back. Annoying.

Eliza was an angel in her pre-school concert but guess what, I didn't take my camera to that either....

Today I ...

started packing! The whole house looks like a bomb has hit it - there is not one tidy room - but instead of tidying or finishing off the Christmas decorating I decided to add to the chaos by emptying some cupboards and filling some boxes. No, we don't have a moving date yet, probably the new year but I'm getting excited!

Now I'm sitting glued to the computer after another busy day but must get off and get on with something useful!

New home!

We have chosen our new home! It's about 600m (as the crow flies) from our current house. It's currently empty so we have no chain really, just our buyers and us which hopefully will make things less complicated. It's quite a significant jump in price and size but we wouldn't really ever have to move unless we really wanted to. It's strange to think that this could be the home we stay in forever. Apart from the house I grew up in (my parents have lived there ever since they were married...), I lived in 14 different houses between the age of 18-25 until we finally moved here. Even living here, although it has been our home and I love it, we always knew we would move on to something bigger in the not too distant future so it is hard to think that this could be it!

Finally I see light at the end of the tunnel when I say 'I'll do (insert blank) when we move to our new house'!

Result!

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm soooooooo pleased. We had 2 couples come and look last week on Wednesday and Thursday then the 2nd couple came back on Friday with parents in tow which is always a good sign. I could hear them saying things like 'oooh the dining area looks much more spacious than on the photos' so we were pretty hopeful. Then on Monday they made us a decent offer so we accepted! It was my birthday on Sunday -I was pretty spoilt - and what better present than this? They had looked at the house 2 doors down which was £18,000 more than ours, couldn't afford it, saw ours and snapped it up! No more tidying! Ok, I will tidy really... just not as perfectly... Ben has declared that he is never mowing the lawn again so I tried to declare that I was never washing the kitchen floor again but I'm not sure that is sensible or actually hygienic........

I got all emotional after I rang the estate agents to accept the offer and then when I told the neighbours. I'll probably be a snivelling wreck come moving day which brings me nicely onto our next problem - choosing which house to move to out of a limited number of options. Option 1:The cheaper 4 bedroom house which has smallish bedrooms and small weird shape garden but a decent amount of downstairs space but not alot of light. Option 2: pay quite a bit more for a much bigger garden, bigger bedrooms, bigger bathroom and alright size downstairs with good light but going to have houses built next to it and behind. Options: limited.

School Blues

Esther is having a bit of a hard time at the moment. She's been crying, more like sobbing actually, every night and every morning about going to school. She cries at school because she wants her mummy. When I pick her up she's fine but I don't really know what to do about it. I think it's really just the free time like lunch and play time that she starts to feel sad. I know exactly how she must be feeling because I can remember feeling exactly like that at infants school myself, don't that say that parents attributes are exacerbated in the kids? I can't remember how I got over it so I'm not really sure how to help her. She thinks it's not fair that Eliza gets to stay at home so I remind her that when she was 2 she stayed at home too. (Eliza started preschool a couple of weeks ago just for one morning a week and loves it, don't think I blogged about that one... second child syndrome)

After about 2 hours of crying about it this evening I said we had to make a plan. It's not that she doesn't like school, she just misses me and feels that when she gets home there is hardly any time to spend together. So this was our deal: Esther tries to stop crying and feeling sad and I or Ben will come and have lunch with her once every other week at school (the school encourages parents and even siblings to come for lunch sometimes with the children) and after school (this requires a bit more organisation on my part...) we'll have dinner asap so there is more time to relax and spend time together before bed.

Any one got any ideas?

Growing up

Esther came home from school yesterday with her first reading book with words in it. At her school they use the Oxford Reading Tree which starts with some books about a family - Mum, Dad, Chip, Biff, Kipper and Floppy the dog. The only words in the book were the character names and the word 'and' but she can read the whole thing and is very proud and excited to be starting to learn to read. She is also getting into the zac the rat books on starfall.com. It's good to see her enthusiastic about learning. She has also been asking for a couple of weeks now if she can learn the piano. I'm not sure how me teaching her will go and I think she may be a little young but we'll give it a go.

Best Buddy

At the end of the last school year the older children at the school started popping into the preschool every now and again to mix with and help the kids that were going to start school. The school has a buddy system where each child in reception class has a buddy from year 6. I can't remember if I've mentioned this whole set up previously so sorry if I'm repeating myself. Esther's buddie is called Cassie and she is just brilliant. Apart from the things that all buddies do she has completely gone the extra mile to befriend Esther and help her settle in. She waited by the gates for Esther to arrive just about every day, plays with her at lunch time, sent her an ecard for her birthday along with bringing a gift for her to school. She came to tell me she was worried because Esther would cry for me at lunch time and she was concerned because she didn't know what to do. Esther tells me about some of the fun things they do together and she laughs about them! I'm so thankful that Cassie takes such good care of Esther and couldn't ask for a better buddy for her!

Thank you so much Cassie - you have made a big difference to Esther's school experience!

Halloween

For Halloween this year I couldn't bring myself to buy some tacky dress-up from Tesco for £10 a pop for the girls so I talked them round to choosing something from their extensive collection of dressing up clothes and treated them to a new 50p wand each! I didn't get a good picture of Esther, she was a princess witch, yes there is such a thing! She had this dress on with a witches hat and wand. When I took the picture she had already been to a 'little spooks tea party' at our neighbours house and couldn't seem to keep the lollipop our of her mouth long enough for me to take a decent picture! Eliza dressed up as 'dinderella' of course! Her favourite and I think it suits her so well.

Alice wore an outfit picked out by the girls and amazingly kept the tiara on all night!

Love this little cutie!

On the Saturday before Halloween it was the church trunk or treat activity and Halloween Carnival. Ben was at his brother Sam's stag weekend so I took the girls, we got there late but made it through all the carnival activities and Eliza won the dress up for her age category - she was so pleased, Esther felt it was a win for the team and didn't mind not winning hers. The trunk or treat was a hit with the girls - who wouldn't enjoy collecting free sweets from the boot of 20 cars?! As soon as we had been round we jumped in the car and headed home as it was well past the girls bedtime.

Dissappointingly we didn't get our pumpkins carved out in time for Halloween and they are still sitting outside the front door uncarved (minus the one I used to make pumpkin soup for dinner today...) We are planning on carving them ready for my parents arriving at the weekend but I'm not sure if it really will happen... Our evenings are just so busy this week (and last week). Luckily the girls didn't think anything of not going out treak or treating on the Sunday since we had had the trunk or treat the night before. We went out to an open house on Sunday afternoon for someone from church who flew out today to be a missionary in Australia so by the time we got back we'd missed most of the trick or treaters - now we also have about 50 lollipops which must leave the house soon or I will eat them as I have no self control. We didn't even get any Halloween decorations out as we had a house viewing on the 30th. Turns out he put an offer in on the house 4 doors down who had just reduced its price and had no forward chain. Boo hoo. The good thing is our house has stayed pretty tidy and it's been 4 days since the viewing!

Some more visitors

We had some more visitors on Esther's birthday and it's the last time we might see them for some time... boo hoo.... The Thiriots who have been family friends for 23 years or so are moving back to the US! They stopped by for a flying visit so we could say goodbye - they spent more time travelling to see us than they could stay but we certainly appreciated their effort. I didn't take any good pictures because it literally was a flying visit but we will miss them. I know some people who will be pleased to have them closer to home....unforunate for us but fortunate for them!

Birthday girl

I'm not sure how this happened but somehow 5 years has passed since we welcomed Esther into out family. In some ways I can't remember what it was like before she was here! The night before her birthday we travelled up to my parents house. In the morning Esther woke up to rooms full of balloons and waffles with lots of different topping for breakfast. Auntie Bex and Uncle Joel were there too. She opened her cards and presents- she had asked for a baby Annabell doll so that's what the big box is. In the afternoon Uncle Dan and Auntie Natalie came with their 2 year old niece. Then in the evening my Uncle Sid and Auntie Jean had a Caileidh for their 40th Wedding Anniversary. The girls LOVED the dancing and Esther and Eliza got to play with my cousins children plus everyone sang happy birthday to Esther so she thought it was a party for her! We had a birthday party for Esther today, it was only going to be a small affair - Esther invited 6 girls from school but it turned out smaller than planned as 2 didn't turn up! Esther didn't even seem to notice and had a great time anyway! Here is she with her friends having happy birthday sung to her!

Blowing out the candles:

The cake - Ben and I decorated it last night and I think it turned out pretty good!

Here's a bit about Esther:

She likes to colour and draw, loves playing out and riding her bike, especially since she can do it without stablisers. She is really good at making new friends but is also a mummy's girl. She is usually pretty good at sharing and loves to help out with Alice and play with her. She is trustworthy and super helpful plus alot of fun! She loves to wrestle too. Esther is a good example to her younger sisters and WE LOVE HER!

Too funny

The other day Esther was talking to my mum on the phone and was telling her how Alice can crawl and that she has teeth now. My mum asks how many teeth Alice has and Esther replies 'I think about 120.'!! I silently laughed my head off and thought no more of it until I was telling someone else about Alice's teeth and Esther inisits that I am wrong when I say she has only 2 teeth, she really has lots more, about 120. How many teeth does Esther think she has then if Alice has 120! She can count pretty well so it suprised me that this is logical to her. I'm really enjoying seeing her make judgements on time, number, age etc so funny the things she comes up with.

Eliza on the other hand is being pretty cute too. She asks me at random times during the tay 'Mummy did you miss me?' She asks me when I'm putting her in the car after we've been shopping or when we are playing in the house -I'm not sure she realises that mostly you miss someone when you haven't seen them for a period of time! Since we have to pass Esther's school to get to most places she always tells me we forgot to get Esther when we pass by, she misses her!

Playing in the Rock Pools

One of the days on our holiday we set off in search of a beach on the south coast of cornwall. We wanted somewhere not too far from where we were staying as we had a doctors appointment for Alice (she had an infected nappy rash poor thing). We decided to go to a little coastal town called Looe 13 miles away which in Corwall takes as long as 30 miles anywhere else, teeny, indirect roads.When we got there we were initially a bit dissappointed to find no sandy beach but a rock beach. Actually, a beach full of rock pool and seaweed makes pretty interesting discovery time for both kids and parents! We had some nets, buckets and spades and the kids had a great time investigating the contents of the rock pool finding crabs, shrimps, lots of limpets etc. They also got a few war wounds slipping on the rocks and seaweed. Unfortunately this type of beach is no good for a baby. It was the middle of the day and actually pretty hot, there was no way of getting the pushchair down to the beach and nowhere flat or slightly soft to lie a baby down or even change a nappy and there wasn't even really a comfortable place for anyone to sit! It'll be a great place to go when the girls are just that bit bigger.
Here's Alice and Daddy enjoying a comfy seat on the beach: Esther (wearing Eliza's sun hat!) with Looe island in the background:

Eliza looking good in her funky pink outfit:

That nice warm feeling during church

Usually the nice warm feeling I get during church is the Spirit confirming truth or testifying to me but a couple of weeks ago I got a different kind of warm feeling... on my leg... Huggies had failed me .... big time... Alice got away relatively unscathed but I decided it would be best for me to go home and change. Luckily I had a bar of Zote soap at hand to get that nasty stain out and my skirt has survived as good as new! That's the first time this had happened to me but I don't know if it started an unpleasant ball rolling because this week Eliza had an accident on me too (luckily not the same type as Alice!). I think I'm going to have to start taking around a spare change of clothes for me as well as the kids! Thanks girls!

Camera

I thought we had broken our camera and had been looking for the recipt to return it to the shop to make a complaint. It would turn on for 1/2 second then swich straight back offand had turned off with the lens out. Then I thought maybe I should try the helpline. I'm glad I didn't go to complain since then they would have known I was a dunce! Turns out there are 2 types of AA batteries (is it only me that doesn't know that??)- alkaline and zinc - as it happens, zinc AA batteries aren't powerful enough to run your camera! I told the guy the make of the batteries and he googled it to find out if they were zinc! What would we do without google?! So thank you google and thank you Mr Helpline - we should have more photo's soon!

Sunday in Corwall

On Sunday morning of our holiday we went to church in St Austell then went for a wander around Charlestown before heading home to make some food. Charlestown is quite a pretty little place and it had some old tall ships there along with some 'real life' pirates! The kids had fun hunting for rocks, their favourite past time!

Our little mermaid:

The tall ships:

Esther wanted a picture with the 'lady pirate', another pirate had 2 parrots - very impressive!

Oh

I forgot to mention that the viewer didn't want to buy our house. I think she must actually be crazy, there can be no other explanation.

Changes

Babies change sooooo quickly. The other day I thought I saw something white in Alice's gums then dismissed it, Ben told me he thought she had a tooth but I didn't believe him either but today I discovered he was right, she has her first tooth come through! Who would have guessed? Just popped out of nowhere without any warning. She can also commando crawl and push herslef along by getting up on her knees or mostly her toes! It's pretty exciting but I think I'm going to have to ban the polly pockets from the living room...and all the stones the girls keep collecting and leaving on the floor, and the barbie shoes... and the fuzzy felts.... the list goes on...
She's doing pretty well for 5 1/2months!

Joel and Jessica

Joel came back from his year in the states with a slightly different kind of souvenier... a fiancee! Joel met Jessica a few weeks before he was leaving Florida, the spent every free waking hour together, then after Joel's 6 week road trip they both flew in to the UK on the same day and got engaged less than a week later! Welcome Jessica, future Mrs Beevers!

Viewing

Yesterday we had our first house viewer!! It was very exciting since our house has been on the market 5 weeks and had no viewings yet! Luckily my mum and dad, Joel and Jessica stayed here the night before on their way back from Switzerland, so Joel and Jessica left in the morning as Joel had to be back in Leeds for Uni and mum and dad stayed to help me get it all ready. If only I can keep the house looking as nice as it looked then! The lady came round at 5.45pm so my parents took Esther and Eliza to the park and we to pick up some Chinese for us since none of us wanted to do any more tidying than was strictly neccesary (we had already done alot!). Let's hope she loved it and wants to buy it so I don't have to go through all that tidying again!

Tintagel castle

On the first full day of our holiday we went to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. The highlight was seeing the shark feeding in one of those rooms where the fish swim over your head etc. There were also stingrays in the same aquarium and part way through the presentation Esther come running gleefully over to tell me that they stingray was waving and smiling at her! Funnily enough when you see a stingray flying over your head it DOES look exactly like it is smiling at you and its outside bits ARE wavy!

The next day we headed out to Tintagel Castle. We were really looking forward to going to the legendary castle of King Arthur and we learned quite a bit about how the legend came about -it was basically made up by a monk! What we didn't know was that it was a looooong walk to the bottom of cliff - you could pay for a landrover ride down! It wasn't suitable for pushchairs which was unfortunateas we had left our baby carrier at the in-laws..... 3 hours is a long time to walk up and down cliff sides with a baby.... We hadn't eaten lunch either and didn't get back to the car until 3.30. This is what I looked like at the end of the trek back from the castle:

This is the beach right under the castle, it's got some great caves, a little waterfall and lots of rocks so the girls were happy -Eliza literally filled her pockets with white sparkly stones which he scoured the beach for!

I was practising being a mermaid sitting with Alice on a comfy rock whilst the girls played:

Once you had treked down to the path to the visitors centre(the white building on the right down there) you had to then climb a billion steps up the side of the cliffs,tricky when you had to pass people coming down whilst also trying not to freak out that your kids might just fall over the edge... At the top there was NOTHING to stop you from falling over the edge other than a hand sized sign saying 'Caution: cliffs'. Yeah, thanks for that.

There was quite a bit to see up there -lots of ruins of little houses and gardens on one cliff and then you have to walk back down and up another cliff to get to the actual castle. Only Ben and Esther attempted them both. Why anyone would have wanted to live in such a tricky place to get to I shall never know. Me and the girls in the ruins...

Because of it being so high up and literally on the edge of the cliff I was in a state of constant fear and tension with a catch phrase of 'come away from the edge'. Ben kept joking with me that I should try to enjoy myself or at least look as if I was! Maybe we should have saved this outing till the girls were older... So here is a shot of me 'looking as if I am enjoying myself'!

The girls having a rest right at the top - they decided this rock made a nice bed:

Gorgeous views!

It's nice to be able to say we've been there! I think it would be great to re-visit in about 10 years time and I'd enjoy it alot more!

Yurt-tastic

2 weeks ago we went for our family holiday to Cornwall. I've only been there once, probably about 18 years ago so thought it was high time we went back. Some friends of ours had stayed in a yurt and I thought it looked like fun too so I booked it. Only after booking it did all of the negatives creep out of the woodwork.... Ben remembered he was going to be in California until the day we were leaving for the holiday, it struck me how much Alice hates travelling in the car and screams, then I realised the practicalities of all 5 of us sleeping in one 18ft yurt. Hmmmm... suddenly all the excitement I had felt when booking the yurt suddenly slipped away....
In reality I needn't have worried. The girls and I stayed with Ben's parents in Surrey whilst Ben was away which cut down our journey to Corwall by 2 hours, we travelled the bigger drives at night when the kids slept and the kids loved being in the yurt and slept really well despite there beinga bit window thing and it being pretty light in there. It was in beautiful Cornish countryside with only 1 other yurt on the site. Our fellow Yurties for the week were Lynne and her 9 year old daughter Molly. Esther and Eliza loved to play with Molly and it was good to see them spending time doing different things than their usual routine. The only downside was that I was FREEZING at night! There is a woodburning stove in there which staves off the cold for a little and you have thick duvets and proper beds but it was still freezing. I had to have Alice in the bed with me because it was too cold to be in the travel cot so I couldn't snuggle down in the blankets as much as I might have. On night 3 of 7 I was in tears because I was so cold and also coming down with a cold. That was the worst night and the others were all fine because I wore a hoody - I was so happy when I woke after night 4 and wasn't too cold Alice and I left the others sleeping and took some pictures of our happy glamping. I have pictures of the inside of the yurt but they are on Ben's i-phone so I have to get them off.
This is our lovely yurt:
This is the Cow Shed Kitchen with our own private bathroom just behind and the fire pit on the gravel just infront. Needless to say it was the old cowshed converted into the kitchen:

Inside the Cow Shed - you had your own fridge, oven etc, there was a table football table and games too:

The view from the kitchen to our yurt:

I think we discovered that glamping is not really for us. It was fun for a week but that was enough. I was ready to come home to somewhere warmer! Good job we had nice weather - the week before was torrential rain and the weather changed literally the day our holiday began. Ben said he didn't realise how much he had needed the break - he has been under some pretty heavy pressure at work for the last 5 months. Despite being cold at night the weather couldn't have been better and it was just fantastic being away from any responsibility for a week. It was our first family holiday as our little family, we usually go with either my or Ben's parents which meant it was harder work for us but we played things our own way and to our own timescales which was nice. There was so much to see and do in Corwall we have to go back but next time I want to have 4 walls around me at night ....

Esther's big day!

So after much anticipation the day finally arrived for Esther to start school. I can't believe it has come round but hey it's good thing to see your children grow and develop and become even bigger and even better. Luckily I wasn't feeling emotional which is super suprising since I cry over the silliest things. She had a good time, she knew nearly all the kids anyway from pre-school and the first day was only 2 hours anyway, she's not full time for another week and a half. After we dropped her off the 3 of us came home and took a nap! Luckily I set my alarm or who knows what time we would have woken up to pick her up! Here are some photos of my grown-up school girl: Going a bit crazy waiting to leave:

She was very particular about how she wanted her hair!

Can we leave now?

We're going to miss her at home during the day but here's hoping she'll love school!

Some things we have been up to recently...

Eliza falling asleep .... just can't take that no naps thing some days... she'll sleep where she can! One day all was quiet in the kitchen and we go in to find Eliza having eaten all this butter - it was a full pack. When we went in she said - 'Mmmmm, it tastes yummy!' Couldn't help but laugh (and feel slightly queasy at the same time). You can eve see the finger marks!

My Aunt and Uncle bought me a National Trust membership for my birthday so we've been taking trips to local places. Last weekend we went to Anglesey Abbey and Lode Mill. Here are the girls 'hiding' amongst the Silver Birch trees.

And now climbing trees...

With it being the summer holidays Esther has been playing out alot - either with friends in the street or at the neighbours houses. Eliza is a bit little to be out without supervision so we've been having some time together. I got the paints out which I hadn't done in ages and Eliza loved it. I'll have to make the effort more often!

Other than that, we took the stablisers off Esther's bike the other day thinking we had time to help her learn to ride without them. She hoped right on the bike and was off! Didn't need any tuition, she was good to go! She was soooooooooo proud of herself and we even went on a 1 mile bike ride not long after with no problems. We've just got to wait for Eliza's legs to get a bit longer so we can get her riding her bike!

On the move...

I think we have slighty outgrown our 2 bedroomed house even with its lovely new kitchen. 2 kids, 3 parents, 2 bedrooms doesn't work out too well for long! We are doing the finishing touches to our house over the next few days to get it on the market next week. Actually, all we are going to do is paint the hallway/stairs and the living room and tidy up the garden a bit. Though it's exciting and necessary I've been feeling pretty sentimental about leaving this house. This is longest I've lived in any house except my parents, it's our first bought house, we have 5 years here, welcomed 3 baby girls into our family and made many, many happy memories. The location is great, quiet and safe for the girls to play out, plenty of children to play with, easy distance to school/playgroup and you don't feel like you are living on top of your neighbours. As much as I am looking forward to moving I'm so sad to leave. There are a few houses on the market we are interested in so watch this space!!!

Interesting reading

Just read a really interesting article in the Financial Times entitled 'The rise in a new generations of Mormons' - you should check it out. I think you have to register (for free) to read it but it takes about 30 seconds to register and is well worth it. Here is the link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/938ff454-8a32-11df-bd30-00144feab49a.html

Sports Day

It was sports day today at Esther's preschool so Alice, Eliza and I went to cheer her on. She missed sports day last year so I wasn't sure how Esther would fare. I was amazed - she won all her races - granted there were only 5 kids in the race and she was probably the oldest one in her race but still she did a great job - I was impressed! I wonder if she has my competitive streak... Here is her winning the bean bag/hula hoop race: The beginning of the race:

Eliza (quite bored by now but still willing to flash me a smile):

There was a mum's race too but fortunately I was holding a sleeping Alice - it was pretty competitive!

Here is Esther in her just running race coming from behind to clinch the win! Go Esther!