Happy birthday Abi!

Happy birthday to our beautiful baby girl - now 9, wow!  She's definitely no longer a baby, although after a very tiring weekend she certainly slept like one last night. As I said goodnight to her she asked for a last cuddle, when I said I would just put the sheets on our bed and then come back as I often do her response was:"Now Mummy, I'm going to be asleep in less than a minute!" and so she was!

We were supposed to be going off to Angie's so Izzy could meet the horses and Abi could ride, but true to recent form the wind blew and the rain came in (as did the first drops of snow of the year!) and so we abandoned in favour of something a bit more civilised. We decided that instead we would head for pottery with a friend each, then Bill's for a birthday tea, then home for sleep over.... best laid plans. So all went well with pottery - cue more china tat in the house, as did the meal, particularly given Glenn got a golden pass and I took them on my own. We made it home in reasonable time and that's where it started to go wrong. Abi's friend Mia was staying over for the first time, primarily as her parents were at a Christmas work event. All seemed ok until about 9.30 when, still not asleep, everyone started to get over-tired and the wobbles began. Given she couldn't go home, this made it worse and to cut a long story short at 10.45pm Abi went in with Glenn, and I went in with Mia. Hmm, I don't ever remember saying I wanted a sleepover! It would have been ok if she hadn't been a duvet fiend and I spent much of the night trying to hold on to my part of the duvet. Not good!

So after a broken night's sleep we then had a date with Tom and Rachel for lunch so it was a very tired family that made it home just as it got dark, only for me to have to walk the dogs quickly and then get on the treadmill and run for an hour and 20 mins per my training plan. Funnily enough I was heading for bed at 9.30 with a similar plan to Abi!

At the moment we are all watching Scooby with a careful eye, worried that his back leg is getting worse and he's in more pain than we'd like to admit. He turned sharply and fell on Sunday morning, yelping as he went down and then struggled to get up and put weight on his leg. I don't think we need to do anything yet, not that there is much we can do, but it feels like a ticking clock and none of us like it. We can't take him to the vet without causing a load more stress for him (and us), so for now its a watching brief with the hope that if we are careful and make sure he doesn't over do it then he will be ok. Just tell that to Bertie who still wants him to roar around all of the time. Kids.