Today has been wonderful.  We got up relatively early and surprisingly lively after a really rough night with hardly any sleep.  I had made the night/early morning before a list of a few tasks that had to be done before we left but otherwise everything was ready. 

 

We waited until the last possible moment to get the girls into their dresses, they looked beautiful and I'm afraid the intial photographs do not do them justice!  Lauren was very, very excited in so much as she ran down the Church path and inside alone!  Everyone commented on how beautiful they looked which thrilled them both.   Our Vicar, Matthew had borrowed some staging from the school to allow the girls to stand at the font with ease.  They had a couple of minutes practice before the rest of the congregation came in.

 

The service was a regular Holy Communion with Baptism, and I was very happy to be singing the hymns we sang at our wedding five years ago, Amazing Grace and Jerusalem (we had another two in addition as well).  Just as Matthew was about to invite Lauren, Martha, Godparents, Peter and I to the front, Martha declared that she needed a wee-wee!!  I had to make very quick apologies and dart out of the Church after a sprinting Martha with Matthew for comedy affect running after us!  It was very funny indeed and the congregation took the slight delay in proceedings in very good humour!

 

After the commitments were made, we made our way to the font where the Godparents, Peter and I poured water to accompany the water already there which represented the congregations contribution.  As is customary with Matthew's baptisms, those gathered around the font are "reminded" of their own baptism by being splashed with water.  Lauren was very impatient to get to this part and as such, was both very accomodating and happy to make the process go as quickly and smoothly as possible!  She took her hair clasp out to allow Matthew to "wet her hair properly" and Martha, as always, was led by Lauren and both were lovely to watch hugging, comforting and generally egging each other on.  Thankfully Matthew pulled the plug before we were all too soaked!  The service was very well attended and we are touched at the number of people whom attended the 0930h service rather than their regular 1100h to watch the girls be baptised (by choice rather than invitation!).

 

Afterwards we all headed back to ours for a buffet reception which I'm pleased turned out to be possibly the smoothest and most relaxed one we've done!!  Unfortunately, I discovered about 40 minutes ago an entire platter of ham and cheese sandwiches that got "lost" in the refrigerator - there was so much food that I'm sure they weren't missed!

 

Thanks go to the Godparents for their continued and future support - they were vital contributions in making the day so very special.

The girls are being baptised on Sunday and as such, the house is a pig-sty, their faces are scratched (by each other!) yet I suddenly feel remarkably calm!

 

Yesterday morning I spent an hour or so with our Vicar going through the service and talking about how we'll handle the girls being that bit older.  I was nearly brought to tears when he told me he'd looked up our wedding service (we were married in the same Church, by the same Vicar), and hoped we didn't mind but had chosen two of the hymns used then to use at the Baptism.  I was so touched by his thoughfulness and it wasn't something I thought of doing yet the hymns are (obviously) my favourites, Amazing Grace (which is my Granda Jim's favourite too) and Jerusalem.

 

Last night I spent the evening icing fairy cakes and adorning them with decorations that mum had made for me.  It was really good fun.  I have a two tier stacked fruit/marzipan/icing cake to decorate too and was really struggling about what to do.  I rather bravely decided to make a couple of figures, hoping to emulate Lauren and Martha.  Well I've made the figures, whether they look like the girls is another thing, but I'm actually quite happy with my first attempt at figure modelling, I really enjoyed it! I'm going to upload photos into the January album.

 

I am now crossing my fingers that the colouring fades from my hands before Sunday - eek!!!

Thank you to wonderful timing and a fabulous friend, Peter and I now have not only a new bed to replace our broken one (the girls decided to trampoline on it one too many times!) but a kingsize one!  We picked it up on Saturday afternoon and have now had 2 very good sleeps in it.  It's amazing how much better we've slept with the extra space!

 

Everything here has thawed out and it is now a muddy mess everywhere, I dread getting the girls into the car as each of my four "parking spaces" are now muddy - I think the time has come where we need to get one of the areas concreted however I really don't fancy it as I'm sure it will just divert the water elsewhere and perhaps cause more problems.

 

I'm sending some positive thoughts to my sister Jan and hope things get sorted out as quickly and efficiently as possible xx        

Happy New Year!!

 

As per last year, I thought I'd dig out the resolutions I made for 2008 and report how I fared!!

 

1. Show my family respect each and every day (I would love to be able to say 100% "yes!" to this one, however I think it would be honest to say I achieve this 6.75/7 days!)
2. Take the girls out (and encourage Peter to join us if he can) thanks to Jan, Nigel and the girls for making this even easier to do this year! (Hurrah!!  This is definately a big YES!!  We have enjoyed a number of outings this year primarily to Fountains Abbey and Brimham Rocks thanks to the wonderful gift membership I recieved - this was so good, I renewed for this year!)
3. Get more involved in my local community (Another YES, I continue in my second term on the Playgroup Committee, am now involved in the Church cleaning rota (1/month), and am part of another committee organising a parish picnic/fundraiser for the Summer 2009)
4. Continue not to put energy into negative people/projects (Hmmm, I think I must be doing this as I don't remember anything too negative, the couple of people who did impact my life negatively are no longer in it and I'm learning what people I should associate with and those I should attempt to avoid!)
5. Definately lose weight and increase activity level (Whoops!  Is this still on here?!?  Well I have walked a lot with the girls, not only to the main road and back, but have started taking the swimming and even purchased the Natalie Cassidy fitness DVD (ahem, still to be played!)

 To be honest I don't think I will need to change a lot for this year, apart from placing more emphasis on 5.  The main events of 2009 are Lauren starting school in September, the court case re crash in June, hopefully going to Center Parcs at least once out of school holidays whilst it remains an option and likewise travelling to Scotland (and elsewhere if he'll take us!) with Peter for his work.

 

New Years' Eve itself was a great event.  Our friends Heidi and Patrick kindly invited us down to their house, where our other friends also were attending.  Martha had a great nap in preparation whereas Lauren did the die-hard and didn't sleep at all!  I cooked a duck and took it down with some plum sauce, cucumber, spring onions and pancakes to join the wonderful feast that was there!  We played games, chatted, laughed, ate, drank and generally had a lovely, relaxed evening.  The children all behaved wonderfully and everyone of the lasted right through.  We arrived back home, the girls in bed asleep at 0055.

 

I wish everyone a truly wonderful, happy, healthy 2009.

Merry Christmas!!!

 

I know it's seems a long time ago now, but I have only just managed to wind down enough to blog about it!!

 

We had a lovely day which started at a very respectable 0715 with us getting woken by Lauren and Martha with their arms laden with goodies - we decided this year (and only this year!) to place their stockings in their bedroom as opposed to normal outside of their bedroom door.  They had eaten a few chocolate coins, wore headbands, half eaten an apple and satsuma and tooted their way to us with a plastic flute/recorder!

 

We all crept into the living room to see if Santa had been (it was a bit touch and go this year and the girls had really played up the fortnight leading up).  Thankfully he had and the girls were thrilled to see all the presents.

 

We are so grateful to everyone for the wonderful presents.  The girls loved everything they received and we're still enjoying getting new stuff out as I had to "park" a lot of things so as not to overwhelm them after opening.  I was lucky enough to get a lot of everything I love, pampering sets, cookery/baking books, budget living book, twinkling LED tealights (these are truly fantastic and are such a safe, authentic replacement), Hotel Chocolat dipping set, underwear, envelope making template and instructions, Mamma Mia! DVD, Manners from Heaven, blank certificates, business cards (I might use these for good behaviour vouchers or "day off" ones for me! - I wonder who would accept them?!), wrist angel, and the word that we will have a staircase in the new year!!

 

I took the girls down to Church for the Christmas Day service which was, as always, very enjoyable for all.  The girls didn't behave particulary well, but hey ho, Christmas excitement and all that!

 

Thankfully I spent Christmas Eve preparing all the vegetables etc for dinner so it was straightforward.  My dad brought some lovely stuffings to accompany our massive farm turkey, massive array of vegetables, pigs in blankets and yummy gravy.  We borrowed MIL's hostess trolley and it was such a benefit keeping stuff nice and warm and out of the kitchen!  After dinner the planned desserts of Christmas pudding, cheeseboard and Christmas cake had to be postponed and in the case of the pudding called off entirely due to eating too much! 

 

After lunch, we took a walk around the gardens and ventured as far as the main road which must have burnt off at least some of the dinner!  We were so cold we returned home to hot chocolate and Christmas cake, thank you to mum for a lovely cake!