Celebrating Life

There is no getting away from the fact that death has featured heavily over the last week. Both in our personal lives with the recent death of hubs’ Grandpa, and in the wider world with the hideous and terrifying acts of terrorism in Paris, Baghdad and Beirut. The consequence of this can be to make things seem rather grey and sad, let alone scary, but instead I am choosing to celebrate life.

I have seen some wonderful things from media across the world this week that remind me that we cannot let the terrorists win by living in fear, hiding away and mistrusting each other. This wonderful daddy had a fantastic lesson for his little boy, and I love this advice from an Australian reporter. Both remind me that focussing on the good is even more important at times like this, so my word of the week, is celebrate. Here is a snapshot of our week, celebrating the little things and the ordinary moments amongst the sadness and usual everyday challenges.

Saturday with the Paris atrocities looming large Hubs and I headed to Cambridge to do our Christmas shopping. We had prearranged for my parents to look after the kids for the day and we very much enjoyed a day spending time just the two of us and getting excited about celebrating Christmas in just over a month! I was also celebrating at the end of the day as apart from a few bits for each other we are basically finished wth Christmas shopping! Hooray, I have never been this prepared before!!

The big event of our week though was the funeral for Hubs’ Grandpa on wednesday and the wake which we hosted at our house. Grandpa Bill was 93 and had a wonderful long life so the line with have given to Monkey is very much that we were celebrating his life, rather than focussing on the fact that he is no longer here. I am not sure how much he understands but I think Monkey just about gets that Grandpa isn’t here anymore. He had been declining for the past year so Monkey hasn’t seen him for a quite a while as we didn’t want him to remember his great Grandpa like that but we know Grandpa was so so proud to have lived to see 2 of his Great Grandchildren.

All went as well as can be for a funeral, obviously with tears and sadness but there was smiles too remembering some of his adventures. Funerals are funny things as they are so sad but they do bring people together too and it was lovely to see some family friends we haven’t seen since our wedding and relatives who live a bit far away to be seen very regularly. The wake was nice though filling the house with people can definitely make it feel a bit small!

I had spent much of the week prior to the wake cleaning and making the house probably cleaner and tidier than it has been in a long while, evidenced by the fact that my Mum almost fainted with shock at the sight of it, and my step-dad asked if we had got a JCB in to do the cleaning – cheek! hehe It was nice seeing it so clean and tidy but there is no way it will last as it took so much effort and I much prefer to spend my time having fun with the kiddies as much as possible!! (I may just be a bit lazy too but the kids are a much better reason not to be tidy all the time than admitting that!)

Other than that it has been a pretty normal week. I am having a bit of a saga with Ikea over the purchase of a new kitchen cupboard but I won’t bore you with any of the details here. The kids and I have had some truly lovely moments and I would like to share some of those with you just to celebrate the happy ordinariness of our week.

Monkey snuggling up in his bed under just about every soft and cuddly toy or blanket he could find! 20151115_090640

LM enjoying playing in the tunnel for the first time. She has shied away from going in any tunnel before but had a whale of a time with her big brother this week.tunnel fun

Mummy and Monkey time while LM was out with my parents fro rhyme time on Tuesday. Lots of painting and chatting and laughter, especially when he decided he must paint my nose! Cheeky thing 🙂20151117_094522

Monkey copying his sister. She randomly enjoys lying on the floor kicking her legs and this week Monkey decided to join her. It was so cute watching them play together chuckling away doing such a daft thing!20151117_122808

Monkey beng a superhero…. I have adored this, what a cutie.superhero monkey

Monkey taking a break from being a superhero to have snuggles with his Mummy and sister… though LM was less cooperative!snuggles1

LM looking adorable in her dressing gown after bathy. Rubbish quality photos as I have been using an old phone but you get the idea.dressing gown

Other celebrations this week are that my phone is back from being repaired and has a new screen, hurrah, so nice to have good camera back again, and we have a new car. A new second hand car at any rate. Hubs’ car cost us £1500 2 1/2 yrs ago and has done really well for an old banger but lately is more reminiscent of a tractor than a car, making the house shake whenever the engine is on. The radio is falling off and basically it is a heap so it was time to get hubs an upgraded car. His new car is not much newer but an updated model with lots of boys toys and gadgets and we haven’t spet a lot again but it is a nice car and hasn’t done too many miles, so hopefully it will last as well as the previous one.

So there we have it, despite the sadness that threatened to overwhelm the week, there has been lots of things to celebrate too.

What have you celebrated this week?

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A lovely ordinary Sunday

February was a bit of a month. It was very busy for all of us and sadly, full of germs too! Illness aside there was lots going on including the big build up to the wedding of one of my best friends on the 28th. As a result it has felt very hectic and hubs and I have been a bit shattered and run down as a result. The day after the wedding, the 1st March, the sun was shining and we decided to get our lives in order a bit.

We do love our lists so we sat and worked out what jobs we wanted achieve this spring, and also what nice days out we hoped to have. Monkey loves lists too so of course he helped :). This was also when we decided to take control of LM’s routine so our day very much revolved around that.

In one of her awake times we decided to get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine. With all the poorliness lately we have spent a lot of time indoors and we just wanted to get out and get some fresh air. We are very lucky that we are walking distance to a steam engine railway line, so after checking the timetable we popped LM in the carrier and wandered off there to see a train. We hope to take Monkey on a train ride at some point, but after his fears of seeing the trains at the National Railway Museum, we thought it would be a good idea to get him used to the scale and noise of the train first!

Although it was lovely and sunny it was really windy, which Monkey wasn’t at all keen on and there was a real chill in the air waiting on the station to see the train so he and Daddy had a lovely snuggle.

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Soon enough the train arrived and Monkey was so excited to wave to the train and all of the people on board. He cracked me up when the train was leaving by shouting “Follow that train!” over and over again! Bless him I had to explain that it was a little too fast for us to catch!

trains

It was then time to head home and have some lovely lunch. Just a short outing, and hubs was shattered from pushing Monkey on his trike (it is so heavy and unwieldy but with Monkey just getting over being ill we didn’t want to push him too hard or make him walk – good job as little did we know he was actually coming down with Chicken Pox too!) and I was shattered as it is probably the longest I have had LM in the carrier for some time and she is getting heavy!

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Hubs and I had soup for lunch but Monkey wanted bread and cheese. As we sat down to eat he exclaimed “This cheese is significant!” lol not sure what that meant, he has obviously heard the word and decided to try it out! As toddlers do! He did the same later, sometimes hubs and I call the kids darling, often when they are being grumpy. After lunch when I was changing LM’s nappy, Monkey came over and said to me “Darling… what you doing?” hehe hearing “darling” come out of his little mouth was so cute. He then wandered off saying darling to himself over and over. So adorable, he has called both hubs and I babe before too as we occasionally say that to each other. Thankfully Mummy & Daddy always return to favour though.

After lunch Monkey helped Daddy sweep out the car port (one of the jobs on our list) then both kids had lovely long naps in the afternoon which meant hubs and I got to have a bit of a rest as we were shattered. It wasn’t a massively exciting day or anything to write home about but just one of those lovely, ordinary days having fun with a toddler (and a baby of course) and sorting a few jobs out. After a busy month with a mix of socialising and illness it was lovely to just have one of these ordinary days, and I hope we get to have a few more of them this Spring.

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Little Hearts, Big Love
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