All about Esther

A couple of weeks ago Esther turned 6! In those 6 years I have learned just an incredible amount but anyway, more about Esther. She loves to be creative - she can literally spend hours working away on projects. She is enjoying school and has some nice friends. She tries to be a good example and is so helpful, even to the point of changing nappies! She is pretty athletic and loves to wrestle her dad - he says she's getting some good moves and is cunning with it! (I blame Ben's side of the family and their wrestling game 'blood river' where they had to sit on the couch and try and get the other off, whoever fell off fell into, you guessed it, the blood river! All the girls love that game whereas I did not come from a wrestling family!) She gets her sensitivity from me though!
Here's the birthday girls sporting some of her birthday presents - new dressing gown, slipper's and Hello Kitty watch.


As her birthday was on a Sunday she was more than usually excited to go to church because you get some birthday sweets and they primary children sing you happy birthday.

Esther requested chocolate cheesecake for her birthday, followed in Ben's footsteps as he had it for his birthday:The most devine food, my mouth is drooling and I could happily eat a big slice right now.

I had to postpone her birthday party because I got the dreaded lurgy that had been making the rounds but Esther didn't mind because she got to go to Build-a-bear with Auntie Bexie for her birthday treat. She came home with a pink bear with a wedding dress, veil, sparkly shoes, bouquet and.... garter!

When we finally did have her party my talented friend Mallory helped me or really I should say I helped her make these Hello Kitty cake pops which we a real hit. Time consuming to make but they looked absolutely adorable!

We took the girls bowling as per Esther's request and came home for icecream and pizza. She was extra pleased because her old school buddy, Cassie, who has now gone up to senior school came along too which was especially nice for me because she entertained the girls most of the time!
I love the change in the conversations we have now that she is just getting that bit older, she likes to talk to me and tell me how she feels, somethings that happened and the other day she was telling me about a girl in the Reception class so just a year younger than her and Esther announced,'Mummy, that girl just loves life!' Couldn't help but smile at her grown-up observation. She is a lovely, fun-loving, family-loving girl!

Summer Holiday 2011 Part 2

Day 4 we went to Cadbury's World. No pictures again. The good thing was I didn't come away feeling sick! It was actually pretty interesting. The Cadbury family were good people who wanted to do the best for their employees. There was a quote in the display that said something like- why would I want to spend money on expensive pictures to hang on my walls when there are people who are in need- they were Quakers and pretty ahead of their time in workers right, I was really impressed with what they did for their workers.

In the afternoon we went to Mary Arden's farm (Shakespeare's mum). This was a great place for the girls - they had quite a few activities for the children - we met some Shire horses, watched a falconry display and were taught how to weave tudor friendship bracelets. The house had loads of dress-ups, games to play and even an area to make up your own Shakespearean insults!

Esther the tudor
The girls by the birds. I was amazed to find out that the type of bird you owned was determined by your status in society with punishments for the those who owned a bird above their rank!

Eliza found a pig with the same colour hair as she has!
Eliza and her twin-hair coloured pig!
Alice looking at the goats
Eliza and her pig again

We went to all the other Shakespeare houses too and at one they are in the middle of a dig for anything from the period. They again had lots of things for the kids to do - we could have stayed for hours and hours.

Summer holiday 2011 Part 1

Conway Summer Holiday 2011 was 11 days at a friends holiday home in Stratford-upon-Avon. We had a fantastic time. Best part was that it was only an hour and a half from our house. Esther said that if we lived in Stratford we would just have fun all the time! The girls loved our holiday cottage in Shottery, 10 minutes walk from the town, 10 minutes walk from Mary Arden's farm, big park right behind the house too. We used our trusty Tesco vouchers to get entrance to most of the trips we wanted to take. We didn't do much on Day 1 except go food shopping, Day 2 we went to church in Warwick and happened to bump into a guy I knew from church when I was a teenager, small world. We took a little trip to the little Cotswold town of Broadway and up to Broadway Tower but didn't take a camera....
Day 3 we stayed local and went to the Stratford Butterfly farm. It would have been my mothers worst nightmare - she has a phobia about moths mostly but any flying insect really. Some of the moths/butterflies were massive. There was a caterpillar room too, they were also huge! Another room had beetles etc and Eliza was the first to want a go holding the millipiede - she was very brave. Esther decided she would too
So I thought I'd better not be outdone
Notice there is no picture of Ben holiday said millipiede....

Esther wanted to take a picture of the sparkly butterfly entrance:
Just a few of the huge butterflies:

We went on to the Shakespeare birthplace afterwards where I learnt that his dad used to make gloves and cure the leather with dog poop and human urine. Gross. Some noble man or woman used to then wear that leather as gloves. Yuk. That's about as much as I can remember from the tour. Alice was not interested in participating - too tired. Esther and Eliza's favourite bit thing at the house was the actor and actress who were in the garden taking requests for favourite bits of the play to act out. I think they did one each from Macbeth and Hamlet. Actually I do remember now they showed a short video about all the terms we use in our everyday language that are from Shakespeares plays. There are alot!

In sickness and in health

Ben and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last week. Unfortunately poor Esther started the day off with a tummy bug... luckily we'd planned on celebrating the following week-good job too since Ben wasn't home till after 10.30pm! Alice got the bug on Sunday but was ok by Monday so Ben and I left the girls in the care of my parents and headed of to Cambridge for dinner (Gormet Burger Kitchen, pretty tasty) and the 'Cirque de Ciel' (look them up on youtube) at the Corn Exchange. It was great to have a night out together, date is a very rare word in this house! It was really boiling hot though, even more so in the Corn Exchange and after the interval some people had already left, we considered it! It was a fun night.
Unfortunately I caught the bug yesterday... I was supposed to be singing in a concert conducted by a member of 'The Sixteen' but an now instead at home updating my blog. Oh well... at least I feel better! Fingers crossed nobody else gets it.
One of the few pictures of Ben and I together,Bex took it at Adam's wedding nearly 2 years ago (that's why I'm 6 months pregnant in the picture!), I love this picture.

The Wedding

July 23rd was the long awaited wedding of the year. Jess walked herself down the isle (her dad couldn't make the long trip to England) in style after the cutest bridesmaids (guess who!) and Joel of course couldn't take his eyes off her!


Let's go back to the beginning of the wedding weekend story.... so Ben got back from the states Friday afternoon, we had dinner, gave the kids a bath and packed up the car ready to leave at around bedtime so the girls could get some sleep on our 3hour drive. Turns out the 3 hour drive was actually 4 due to traffic and also turns out that Alice didn't feel the need to sleep and kept her sisters awake with her! Finally at around 10.30pm when we arrived at our destination Alice decided to zonk out. Phew. I think she must have been excited for the wedding otherwise there is no excuse for still waking up at 6am and then waking up the other girls. Hmmmm.... at least we didn't have any trouble getting ready on time. We were staying with some family friends who looked after us so well. We were treated to Micky Mouse waffles for breakfast - no regular waffle iron will live up to that in the girls eyes. They were eager to put on their pretty bridesmaid dresses and shoes so we ended up being ready really early so just headed over to the chapel. Thankfully Alice fell asleep on the 5 minute journey and managed to get in a half hour nap before the wedding.

Here's some pics of the girls before the wedding:



The service was beautiful (I gave the opening prayer and managed not to cry, I always get emotional no matter who the bride is walking down the isle), gorgeous music, one fantastic (if a bit long) talk, didn't need the 2nd speaker since the first one did such a great job but he went on nonetheless! Ben had to take Alice out (not fun for a 1 year old), Eliza kept picking at her flowers and lying under the pew and Esther was a bit grumpy and was generally bored. I guess I should have taken them something to do but I hadn't anticipated it being soooooooo long!
After the service Joel and Jess had some pictures taken at a nearby National Trust property.

This is what happened in our car on the way to the photo's....

The poor girls we just exhausted. Luckily they woke up in time for some picture though they did NOT want to have any taken.

One of Alice and I before the wedding. After the service in the car I took my fascinator out and forgot to put it back in so I think this is it's only photo!
They had the reception at a 3rd venue. My Uncle and Aunt prepared the food so of course it was a feast of deliciousness. The best man's speech was funny, mum and dad managed to keep their remarks to a minimum (!) and Jessica's mum Loneta talked about how happy she was the her baby (her 15th baby!) had married Joel. These 2 are perfect for each other, truly. I loved getting to know Jess's mum, sister and niece and would love to see them again and I think Loneta felt happy seeing that Jess was going to be loved by not just Joel but his whole family now she is 1000's of miles from home.
After the reception was the 2 hour drive to the Preston Temple. Ben's parents (who came to the wedding) came to look after the children so Ben and I and Adam and Alexa could go into the Temple and see Joel and Jessica be sealed for time and all eternity. I'm so grateful to know that it isn't 'till death do you part' and that families will really be together after this life. There is special significance there for us too because Ben and I were sealed in the Preston Temple 8 years ago. This is one of my fav's of them at the Temple:


We waved them goodbye after a small trauma with the hotel. The hotel had messed up and didn't have a room for them so my dad politely told them that the hotel needed to sort out alternative accommodation at for them and quick and at no cost to Joel and Jess. Needless to say they ended up with a far nicer hotel than the one they'd booked in the first place!

Bedtime was crazy again - we stayed at the accommodation at the temple and nobody was alseep before 11pm, Esther was feeling sick and kept shaking. It was just lack of sleep and proper food I'm sure but she didn't get into a relaxed sleep till around 1am, I know because I laid on the top bunk with her! Then Eliza woke up at 4 with a bad dream or something, I think I'm going to have to check Ben's hearing because I had to sort her out too! Luckily Alice went back to sleep till 7 after having woken at 6am...By that point I decided we should just go to church and drive home instead of waiting till bedtime. I'm so glad we decided that. It was great to be with family and friends but it was great to get home too! Everyone was exhausted.

Congrats Joel and Jess!

Couldn't not put in this picture of the little miss, gotta love the cheeky tongue!