Well what a weird weekend.

James is now crawling. Funny - when Joe started crawling we were so excited but with James I just thought "that's gonna make life a bit more tricky". I am a bad mother.

Joe threw his head back on Sat morning while I was tickling him and caught me right on the eyebrow bone. I have a cracking black eye. I have never had a black eye before and have been struck by how people look at you. I sang in church on Sunday and got some very funny looks but no-one mentioned it. Somehow that made it worse because I didn't get to explain how it had happened. I wonder what they were thinking?

Did the end of the month pub quiz last night and came second from last. We came second last month so it was a bit of a let down but there were rather a lot of teams using iphone technology this time which was a bit of a shame. Why would you go to a pub quiz and then cheat? It's beyond me. Anyway I drank far too much red wine with my sister-in-law and have a shocking hangover today. I am currently watching Cbeebies with Joe because I don't have the energy to do anything else!

Food Glorious Food...

We had a lovely meal last night - our last night together. So in true Ruth style but without the quality...

We had prawn cocktail to start - underrated I reckon and with a homemade sauce was flipping lovely.

Main course was a spiced chicken with subtle flavours of cinnamon, lemon and olives. This isn't a great picture but I can promise you it was lovely. Joe ate the leftovers for his dinner today and had two huge helpings - must be all that curry I ate when I was pregnant!

Pud was good old fashioned strawberries and cream. Yum Yum yum!

Good Grief.....

Considering there are only about 3 people who read my Blog I seem to have been given a lot of grief for not updating it!

Mum and dad have been here since Wed. They have been brilliant and done loads and loads of jobs like putting shelves up and sorting the washing line and gardening. My house looks like a new pin! The shelves were flipping hard going though. When they are full of books I will post a pic so you can see what our living room is like. It's all greens and creams and I love it because it's a peaceful room!

Took mum and dad into Exeter on Friday for a mooch. I had to go to Barclays and waited 35 minutes to be seen. Before I went to the bank I consumed a pint of some fruit/ice combo from a coffee shop - this may have been a mistake...

When I was finally called to see the banker I realised I needed a wee - by the time I had sat there talking to him for 10 minutes I realised I couldn't wait so I had to get up and leg it out of the bank leaving a very confused looking banker! I sprinted to Debenhams to use the loo and was almost crying by the time I got there - I have never come so close to wetting myself in my life.

Bizarrely he was still sat waiting for me by the time I got back with a queue of very disgruntled customers behind. I was too embarrassed to tell him where I had been so I just muttered something about my OAP parents being lost in Exeter. It was all very surreal.

Anyway....we are having a lovely time together here. Will post some more photos next week.

So as promised - Joe in his Easter Bonnet. It doesn't look any better on than it did off I'm afraid. "Shocking" was the word my sister-in-law used!!! Anyway although his face in this pic says different Joe loved it and was rather alarmingly very pleased that "I look like a lady".

Dom, on the other hand was rather mortified that it was him dropping the kids off this morning - not helped by the fact that I suddenly panicked that I might have misread the information and may have dreamt the fact that Joe needed an Easter bonnet at all.

I always knew this day would come!!

Ruth and my mum will find this equally hilarious - all I can say is one of you should live nearer!

Had to make Joe and Easter bonnet - for tomorrow. What a nightmare. Neither Dom nor I have an artistic bone in out body so this is the best we could come up with.

Will try and post a pic of Joe in it tomorrow if it survives which is unlikely. Do you think he'll win the prize for best bonnet??? I will eat the whole hat if he does!

I have now put links to my 15 fav songs so you can listen to them if you like! Some copyright thing that's going on with youtube at them moment means that most of them are live versions which is a bit disappointing but you get the idea!

A great weekend!!!

Met up with my mate Rach this weekend and Geraldine who I taught with in my first year of teaching in London.

Rach I see a lot but hadn't seen Gel for about 8 years and that was only briefly at Rach's wedding.

The weird thing was that really none of us had changed at all. Of course we had change physically - age and children have not gone unnoticed on our faces but essentially we were just the same people picking up from where we left off about 12 years ago. Magic.

Gel is nearly 40! that kind of thing makes you stop and think - how quickly life is zooming by - when we were last all together we had our whole lives and futures ahead of us. Rach and I were not with our future husbands and we had no idea how our lives would pan out.

I think we are all much more comfortable in our own skin these days. We all look older (I look the oldest which is unfair since I am actually the youngest!) but none of us are trying to be anything we're not. We were honest about how hard motherhood is and how much we love our husbands even though sometimes it's tough. We all admitted to our own faults and tendency towards high maintenance and there wasn't a shred of competition between us; each being happy for the others' achievements.

Meeting up with old friends you haven't seen for years can be nerve wracking - (ask Gels' stomach!) but definitely worth it. Hopefully we'll do it again soon.