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...

Sunday evening and the weekend is all over bar the shouting... that is getting the kids into bed without a full scale debate / argument ensuing. We’ve had another busy but lovely few days, this time in Taunton, managing to fit in Mum and Dad, Amanda et al, Kerrie and Ryan and Liz - not bad for 36 hours! Glenn stayed at home to keep the dogs (or himself) happy and we went down on Friday at the insistence of Abi who is very concerned that the clock is ticking on time at the Mill. Of all of us I think she’s is the one who most appreciates its special charms. On Saturday Amanda and I rode, with me on an ever larger Dillon, now over 17 hands and enormous. He still doesn’t pick his feet up and so I spend half the time worried he’s going to fall flat on his face, and the other half conscious if he decides to take off with me I haven’t a hope of stopping him! Luckily he’s very sweet and neither happened. It’s loveky riding out together - reminiscent of old times and realising just how luck...

The weather has continued and this week / weekend has been hot, hot, hot. Just as the kids went back to school we have been blessed with an early taste of summer and it couldn't have been better timed for Izzy's party #2 - the spa gathering! Having looked at the weather I booked a bouncy castle at the last moment and despite both girls saying they were far to old for that, they all spent the whole day bouncing on and off it (with Bertie), everyone having great fun. We ended up with Izzy and Abi and 5 of Izzy's friends having Emily and Yesim do nails and make up while they took it in turns to choose music and make the most of the sunshine - it really couldn't have been better. Last night the weather broke for a while and we had an amazing storm - great big crashes of thunder and claps of lightening which lit up the whole garden. The rain lashed down and I think the whole county was up at 2:30am finding it impossible to sleep through all that noise. Amber and Effie had...

Woo hoo - we've had some sunshine and more is predicted for this week! After what feels like weeks of rain it was so nice yesterday to be able to throw open the doors in the kitchen and welcome the sun in. This weekend has been manic. We had friends round on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, I had a yoga morning yesterday and it was Izzy's birthday party #1 today. In between this I was trying to at least establish what's been happening in the garden under all that water, and Glenn was trying to do a few bits as well - we've basically not stopped. Izzy's party was  a chance for her and 3 of her friends (this time the 4-square crew) to go to Go Ape in Southampton. The forecast was for rain (again!) but in fact it held off literally until the moment they finished and then the heavens opened. We had lunch under a shelter and came home for a couple of hours of playing, Birthdays are definitely getting more civilised! Once again Abi found the course much more of a ...