Another Birthday Girl...

Time seems to be passing too fast. Already we are in March and it's a few weeks since I blogged. In no time at all it will be Easter and Spring will have properly arrived ~ although it's pretty chilly still just now. 

At the end of February daughter #2 became a year older: Phoebe ~ aka Princess #2 ~ turned 14.

Her day was filled with opening presents and cards in the morning and the painting of the girls' bedroom in the afternoon. The redecoration was a belated Christmas present to all three girls, and Paul had booked this week off to get it done. It was a fun way to spend a birthday. 

   

   

  

    

There was also a bit of haircut (which ended up with me giving all three girls a trim/chop) and at some point I think we might get round to re-henna-ing her hair too, but that didn't fit into this one day. 

Of course there was also a birthday tea, with all the usual banter ;D

  

  

A bit about Phoebe:

• Funny ~ quirky funny! 
• Shy ~ but not! She's slow to warm to situations and people, but once she's comfortable, there's no stopping her - She is a crazy cat!
• Sister ~ the middle of three. She has always had a strong bond with Abbie, her older sister, but increasingly I see the three of them coming together more, and a stronger bond growing between her and Lilo too. 
• Feisty ~ still my fiesty one. She certainly holds her own in this family, with a strong sense of her own identity. She is not easily carried on others' opinions and, whilst she may not always voice her own, she certainly has them! 
• Animal lover ~ all her life she has loved animals. That love is showing no signs of fading any time soon and from it she has gained a sense of direction for her life.
• Artist ~ she loves to draw. She may not be the worlds best, but what she loves it, throws immense amounts of determination into 'getting it right', and has produced some lovely pieces of work recently :D
• Beautiful inside and out ~ Paul used to call her his English Rose. She has that kind of soft beauty: pale skin, small features, generous eyes, a seriousness & sensitive nature that shows her sullen at times and shining with wonder at others.

Past posts tell me how much, and how little she has changed over the years. I love looking back...
8th birthday (with pictures from 0-8)
10th birthday (the BIG one)
11th birthday (with a good description of who she was then, and still is a bit now)

And some pictures from 9-13...

   

   

To read her take on her day, read HERE.

I hope you enjoyed your birthday beautiful! I certainly did ;-)

PS : ~ here's a couple of before and afters of the girls' room...

Abbie's 15th Birthday & A Late Winter Walk

As promised ~ a birthday blog for my beautiful 15 year old!

Her birthday itself was set to be a bit busy with all the usual Wednesday evening things, plus the addition of her and myself going to a Lent Bible study in the middle of the day. But she requested to open her cards and presents in the morning and then go out for a walk, and as it was a lovely bright, crisp winter's morning that's what we did ~ and then rushed back to cook lunch and be ready for us to go out for 1pm. I'm glad we went though ~ we all felt it was great to get some fresh air in our lungs. We'd have walked around The Moss if it hadn't been so wet lately, but we knew we'd be up to our knees in mud, so instead we stuck to the concrete this time. It was still lovely though, and the children all enjoyed stroking the local horses :D

  

 

  

  

On Thursday evening we had pizza and watched Cinderella (the newest one) together (Abbie is a huge Disney fan!) ~ and had cake!!



Happy Birthday my eldest princess ~ I hope you enjoyed this one!

Fun & Games

So the last week or so the chids have been a bit full of cold to push for full-on concentration, so I let them have a games week. There's so much to be learnt from playing great games ~ not least co-operation ;-)

Also I got a phone upgrade, so it was a great chance to try it out with photos :D
So here are some shots from last week...

Stratego

 ( this game was mine as a child. I never loved it, but my boys really do)

Enchanted Forest ~ a great memory stretcher, and a favourite of mine since my nursing days.

Scotland Yard



Ticket to Ride



Take Two (like mini-Scrabble) 




and full onScrabble at one point too with no photos.



And one point they decided to revive Just Dance (1) and had a giggle with that one afternoon...

 


A fair amount of tablet gaming (solo and together),  and plenty of reading, drawing and colouring.

 

We also got three more new windows last week ~ including the girls room (meaning we can now get on with the re-vamp the week after half term) and the front of the living room - meaning we can now SEE the view outside :D

 

At the weekend Abbie & Lilo had their dance school's Bi-annual show. It was wonderful ~ I thoroughly enjoyed watching them and I know they loved the whole thing. They are just sad that it's over so soon - and I remember that feeling from my school-play days.

 

This week we are back at it for the week, before we take a proper week off for half term next week. The colds have mostly cleared up and everyone has the holiday in sight!

But today was Pancake Day. The children love pancake day and hoped it would be fine enough to do some races outside - which happily it was. 

So I cooked nutritious (& yummy) savoury fillings to fill their crepes with and then supplied sugary goodness to pour over the sweet American style ones. All happiness :D

Then we went outside to play...

 

It was COLD outside, but we had some fun...

 

 

So, that's us up to speed. Tomorrow Lent begins. This year Paul, the two older girls and myself are giving up meat for Lent. It's years since I gave something up for Lent, but this year it serves a two-fold purpose; to bring some self-discipline back into my life can never be a good thing and focusing that around a time to focus on my faith will be wonderful, plus it will allow me room to think more carefully about what I am feeding this body of mine. Coupled with the meat-fast we as a family are going to be doing a Bible-study once a week, based around the Narnia films and Shadowlands ~ "Not a Tame Lion." In addition to this I am going to be attending a Lent study at church, starting tomorrow, based on The Theory Of Everything (film) ~ "The Mystery of Everything." I am thoroughly looking forward to both studies - and actually looking forward to a meat-free few weeks too :D

And ... tomorrow my beautiful Boo turns 15!! Where did the years go? Birthday blog will be next, but meanwhile feast your eyes on this just-born beautiful baby girl...