Birthday parties and adventures to Peppa World.

Apologies once again for missing the blog last week - (mainly to my Auntie Jean to whom I said I would try to not miss another week - only to do so the very next week)

Let's get started though - it's been a busy couple of weeks.....

First of all we can start with Sophie's dinosaur egg that she got for her birthday - all she had to do was leave it in water and over the course of a couple of days - when she went away on holiday (more of that later) I kept a close eye and sent through progress photos every day - and when Sophie got home the dinosaur popped out. The name?? Mr. Dinosaur.

 

Sophie continues to be hugely entertaining and very funny - always wanting to make us laugh - I don't think she meant to make Mum laugh so much however when she got stuck in a box. she certainly wasn't impressed that Mum's reaction was to take a photo!

Ok - so let's get to the holiday - Sophie, Lauchlan and Mum left on the Thursday to catch a plane down to see Noan and David - and of course, a visit to Peppa Pig. They left Dad at home (more of that later) and had a wonderful time full of laughs and giggles. Good times - Thanks to Noan and David for making the trip so much fun for them all.

The picture above is Sophie looking very confident before her very first roller coaster ride - let's just say that she wasn't smiling all the way round - a lesson learned that sometimes being scared is supposed to be fun. More practice required I think.

 

On the way home to see Daddy

Meanwhile, whilst everyone was having fun, Daddy had been very busy indeed - Mummy and Daddy had wanted to get the front room painted now that there was a fireplace to be proud of.  

Now, unless you have done some painting and decorating in your time you probably don't realise that preparing the room, filling and sanding holes etc is by far the most time consuming part - closely followed by tidying up. After two nights of sanding and filling - and demolishing part of the built in Unit in the living room Daddy was ready to paint. By 11.30am on Saturday Daddy was considering quitting his job and becoming a painter/decorator. By 2.30pm Daddy was considering throwing the paint out the window. by 4.30pm on Sunday Daddy was considering never painting anything ever again. Here are some progress shots for you.

 

Lauchlan continues to amaze us by how much he eats and how much of a mess he makes -he loves every minute of it though - and so do we.

 

 

Lauchlan is also getting ready to ditch crawling and start walking - this could spell trouble. He turns 10 months next week.

 

 

 

It is the season of birthdays as I mentioned earlier - one of the simultaneously great and terrible things about keeping in touch with all the babies born at the same time -is that all the birthdays happens within a crazy two or three week period -  the terriblet part is "cake overload" which also happens to be the greatest bit for Sophie.

The photos that follow are all from this weekends birthday celebrations - there are some other really good ones that I am getting sent through so I will hopefully put them all into another post this week (optimisitic I know!)

More to follow soon I hope - with some explanations of the birthdays.....

The curious tale of The Birthday Bug.

Excitement was building this week - it was birthday week - yippee! We had the Birthday Bug big time!

First off we had Mum's birthday out at a local restaurant - apart from Lauchlan being overtired and having to be driven about for half an hour before him and Daddy went in everything went very well indeed - a lovely meal for everyone, some mocktails for Mum and Sophie and some birthday cake - a very pleasant evening (or as pleasant as a fast and furious diner with two tired kids gets)

And then it was Daddy's Birthday - a day filled with Fish and Chips - mega excitement and fun - Grandad on the trampoline and some cups of tea outside on a lovely evening......

and then............Daddy was sick - really sick.........and then........so was everyone else (apart from Mummy of course although she felt unwell). A really bad kind of Birthday Bug had arrived.....

So Thursday Daddy took off work and just as well because Sophie was really sick all day and Lauchlan was a bit sick - either way it was a very very bad day. And as it turns out Gran and Grandad got the birthday bug as well - not the good kind - the definitely bad kind.

So Dad was off work again on the Friday and just as well because everyone still felt a bit yeucch. But we were still hoping to have some sort of good birthday weekend for Sophie.

The plans changed and instead of going to the zoo with our friends on Sunday we decided to go ourselves on the Saturday then if everyone had recovered we could maybe just have friends around to the house on Sunday. Hopefully we absolutely would be better and not infectious by then - hopefully!

When the big day came we all were feeling quite a bit better but not perfect - we battled through though to have lots of fun and open all our presents. Many thanks to everyone who bought presents - Sophie was delighted with them all.

Sophie's main present last year you may remember was her Playhouse that was delivered late - had a big broken, another bit missing and then took me all summer to assemble and paint. This year was a bit more straightforward although assembling the bike came with no instructions surprisingly.

Anyway, the first question Sophie asked is "where are the pedals?" Daddy hadn't forgotten to assemble them - this is a balance bike. A relatively new thing I think where kids get to learn scooting about and using a brake without the hassle of worrying about pedals cracking off shins - not a bad idea and there is a lot of science to back up the usefulness of these bikes (no doubt funded by the Balance bike companies themselves, kindly)

So after we did all the present stuff we packed ourselves together and headed to 5 Sisters Zoo - where we were delighted to find out the joys of having a daughter who has just turned 3. Her entry was going to cost £10! We considered telling a wee white lie but when Sophie got wind of this idea she said "I'm 3, I'm 3" We couldn't face the embarrassment of her blurting that out at the checkout so we went for the more casual heartfelt approach - "two adults please and one child - she actually turns 3 today - we are here for her birthday" The stony faced cold hearted medusa behind the till didn't care and took our money. Fair enough - rules are rules ;o)

 Sophie and Lauchlan had a great time seeing all the animals but the highlight was Auntie Karen and Great Auntie Jean showing up - they really brightened up our day when we would all have been a bit flat having been unwell. Thanks to them it felt like a real birthday party day out - thanks xxx And thanks for all the pressies too xxx

Great Auntie Jean didn't want to be in the photo
I promised I would time it right!

Great Aunt Jean
 was kind of forced into this one. 

So we thought we would print
two versions.

What cracking day, we saw bears, lions, sheep (!?), monkeys - a great day out and without sounding like marketing material - I would highly recommend it for anyone who fancies a nice wee day out as what can be described as " What Calderpark (Glasgow) Zoo should have been". By that I mean somewhere where the animals actually looked happy to be alive.

When we got home Uncle David popped in with some presents for us from Gran, Aunt Isobel and David, Melanie and baby David (who has a bug as well ;o(  )

After Uncle David left we had dinner and then went out for an ice cream cone - it was aaaamazing - so we were late to bed.

Sunday arrived and it was party day - cue a quick trip to the shops early morning to pick up some provisions and then it was tidy the house, cut the grass and prepare the barbecue.

It was a brilliantly quiet wee party and Sophie was thoroughly excited especially by her long anticipated Frozen Cake (the movie not the temperature)

She may not look thrilled but she was.

Lorna, Iain and William were in town

The Usual Suspects

Who wants cake?

Ok you can all have some. 

 A brilliant day - a really bonkers week - another sunny birthday for Sophie in the garden - I believe that's 3 in a row.

She is sleeping soundly for now - but she knows she still has her nursery birthday party on Tuesday  and then next time she sees Gran she will be having another party!

Good times - and an amazing wee 3 year old. We love her to bits.

I was going to make a really bad Frozen joke at some point during this post but now I am at the end I think I will just Let it Go.

All the best everyone and thank Great Auntie Jean for making sure you got a post on a Sunday night this week ;o) x