Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

What a week - no one can quite explain how emotional it is to see your child walk down the aisle and on Thursday we watched Kerrie do that with an enormous sense of pride and happiness. For me it was an absolute pleasure to see the two of them so ecstatically happy together and to be there on their special day. I am so proud of her - to have turned into such a beautiful bride - inside and out - and to see her day come to fruition after all her hard work and planning. More so to see just how much they love each other - nothing else mattered for a few hours. For Glenn it was more emotional than he could possibly have imagined (although how he ever thought he wouldn't cry was beyond me!). Seeing Kerrie in her dress for the first time, walking her down the aisle, giving her away and then making a speech afterwards - he swung from having the biggest smile on his face to balling his eyes out throughout the day, as did Ryan - every time Glenn welled up so did he - clearly ...

 My babies are growing up so fast - if only we could hit the pause button! Abi is now nearly as tall as me, and developing fast, and even Izzy is getting taller by the day. If the physical changes aren't enough (and the emotional ones), we can also see the mental developments. This one (for the most part) I can deal with more easily. Listening to them today playing together they are better equipped to enjoy time together and know when they've had enough and its time to go off and do something else. They were playing a computer game together this afternoon and while I would prefer them not to be on a screen, at least girls aren't generally killing or wrecking things while gaming. This was Sims4, which seems to focus on getting 2 people together, dressing and feeding them until they are ready to have a baby, then have said baby and then start the whole cycle again.  Feels a bit too close to life - why would you want to play that on a lovely sunny day?!? We have b...

Oh the excitement is building... only 11 days to go and the girls are quite literally counting down the minutes to Kerrie's wedding. Glenn, as father of the bride and the one who has to give a speech, is less excited. In fact, unlike the rest of the family, he doesn't even know what he is wearing! Abi and Izzy on the other hand are desperate to wear their new shoes / dresses / necklaces etc. and have spent much of the weekend trying to convince me that fake nails (for them not me) is clearly the way forward. While I would never normally condone this at their age, it's not every day that your sister gets married so what the heck - caution has been thrown to the wind and we are looking at the options as Izzy is ecstatically demonstrating in the picture. There is some method to my madness - they've been trying to persuade me to book them appointments at the nail salon which for all 3 of us would require a small mortgage and (as we discovered yesterday), at least a mont...

Still a big kid at heart! May day bank holiday and it's been wall to wall scorchio, so much so that we've hardly known what to do with ourselves. Add to that the fact that I have to keep up with both children and their varying / changing diaries and I've had a relaxing but not exactly purposeful weekend. Abi announced early in the week that she wanted to go to Angie's this weekend. Can't say I blame her - a perfect weather forecast, a long weekend and lovely horses and horse-riding on tap - what's not to like for her?! This meant Glenn taking her off straight from school on Friday with a massive grin on her face and promises to text us later. The weekend definitely lived up to it's promise and she's home feeling very happy, not least as she has graduated to riding Flur who is a beautiful ex-racehorse, This is a good step up for her as this one requires much more riding than May and is therefore stretching her skills and experience. We've also...