Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

  Lovely to now have the longer days, although it does mean that getting the kids back into their respective homes and towards bed is becoming a challenge. I came home this evening to find Abi, Izzy and Grace scooting around between their house and ours, soon to be joined by the twins, Lizzie and Jamie. Luckily the pod has become the place to be rather than indoors - result!  The girls and Grace are inseparable when they are all around. We headed to the Chase with them on Monday for a wet Easter Egg hunt and they spent half an hour jumping in streams before heading back, jumping in the shower and then disappearing next door again. What more could you want than a neighbour and best friend rolled into one? What's brilliant is as ever they seem to be accepted as a pair with minimal fuss. The same thing happened on Tuesday when Izzy was invited to a party Abi was going to at late notice. As one of the Mum's said - Izzy is such an integral part of year 4 we couldn't not have

It must be a bank holiday - it's been tipping down most of the weekend! To give the weather some credit, Friday was absolutely lovely - beautiful sunshine and the first signs of being able to throw open the doors and live a bit more freely. Before we could even begin to appreciate it though, the heavens opened and the rains came, and it's been torrential since. Much as the sunshine is great, and I'd far rather have it dry than not, I wouldn't swap Britain for anything. There's something about walking in the rain or just afterwards that's completely invigorating. Both yesterday and today I've taken the dogs out in bright sunshine glistening on still wet roads and paths with everything sparkling and clean - it's mornings like that that make me appreciate why being a morning person is so special. This evening Abi and I walked in a window of dry weather, with the clouds gathering darkly for another go round. Facing toward home was still bright but behind u

Sometimes I write to record stories, mostly it's just everyday life. I want the girls to know just how special they are to us, just how much the little things add up to so much. I hope they will look back and appreciate all the things we did on a day to day basis to help them grow up strong, independent, happy, good people who give as well as take. I hope they appreciate us in time in the way I appreciate all Mum and Dad did for me. I know we will go through times when they think we don't understand them, and no doubt there will be tears. On those days I can come and back and remember things like this letter, written by Abi before she went to sleep tonight. Maybe I can even use it as evidence that it wasn't always like this. If not I can use it to remind myself that it will pass and there will be love and laughter once more.

Busy few weeks! No blog last weekend as we were proudly supporting Kerrie running her first marathon - the one we almost all ran but in the end relied on Kerrie to run for us all and boy did she do us proud! Despite being pretty nervous beforehand she had a massive smile on her face all the way round and finished in a brilliant 4:31, bang on her target time. She suffered in the last few miles - I ran with her for a few hundred yards at mile 22 and she was willing it to be done, but she still made it over the line at a jog and even then was smiling - what a result. I can't believe how far she has come, both in her running and in her attitude - little would we have thought she could or would have achieved this even a few years ago. We headed out for a big meal to celebrate Kerrie's run and mine and Ashley's birthdays that evening and it's very clear she all grown up now. While Kerrie ran we ate and walked our way around Barcelona with a few glasses of Rose to see

We're not very good at things like Mothers Day in this house. It's not because we don't want to express how we feel, its just that quite frankly we can do it without all the fuss of card buying for the sake of it. We woke up this morning to a beautiful wintery scene of frost on the ground and the sun coming up over the trees. Yesterday I was hoodwinked into staying in bed by Izzy "Please Mummy, stay in bed for Izzy-cuddles, we don't get the chance to do this in the weekend days..." Given she so rarely comes into our room I couldn't pass up the chance, only for her to start wriggling almost immediately Glenn got up to walk the dogs. Within 5 minutes of Abi joining us they'd hatched a plan for us to have 'lovely shower together', which basically means I put the water on, barely get wet before I'm kicked out so they can use all the hot water - sign of things to come?! Remembering all of this I was quick to get out of bed and it was one of