"This Is My Moment...This Is My Kodak Moment"

It's the aftermath of my birthday.  And I feel bloated.  Clearly I overdid it on the booze front (fizz, sauvingnon blanc, crianza, lychee martini's...), the pizza front (have vague recollections of feeling like I might vomit but continuing to stuff great slabs of cheesy heaven into my gob regardless) and the cake front (loads of orange flavoured buttercream icing which seemed like such a good idea at the time).

I do feel spoiled though.  It was like my own personal Christmas as i got spoiled beyond belief with a lovely new glam handbag, a sexy pencil skirt, a leopard print bikini, a beautiful necklace, some wicked tights, leather leggings...etc.  I should point out however that all these super sexy cool gifts were from my mum and sisters (love you guys), whereas the males in my life were a touch more practical in their gift giving inspiration:  a 'fit bit' watch (previously mentioned), a top of the range bicycle light(!), a notebook, a pen, a Murakami tome, a bicycle rack and bag (yep, definitely a distinct theme emerging here)....

one 'glam' gift...

...followed by one a touch less so (my new top-of-the-range bicycle light)  

A 'Dumpie Special'

Do I care?  Heck no.  Mainly because I am the proud owner of a newly acquired powder pink folding Brompton bicycle, which I have discovered, is great fun to whizz up and down the streets on (even moreso after a few glasses of vino).  Though it is to my great embarrassment that I have yet to memorise the intricacies involved in folding and unfolding the bloody thing without the aid of either an eye-rolling husband or a trio of friendly male strangers outside a pizza restaurant channeling youtube....

A late night birthday 'nightcap' with my favourite pet :)

My gorgeous mum here for my first birthday in YEARS...(who spoiled me rotten!)

But I digress.  It was a wickedly fun birthday and as my head hit the pillow on the wrong side of 2am it dawned on me that the husband had neither made good on his promise to give me a birthday massage (it's the only time of year that he doesn't pull the old hand scratching, disinterested, rub-in-the-same-place 'massage' that feels so horrible that I make him stop and tell him not to bother) nor did I get my special wish of a nice (solo!) bubble bath, glass of wine and uninterrupted Grazia reading.

Oh well, only 364 days to wait....

Opening the last card...from my 'boys'...wondering what it's going to say inside....

....apparently nothing!  They only bloody forgot to sign the bloody thing :)

A cheesy, lo-light old skool 'Kodak Moment'...

...and another one.  just cuz :)

"Happy Birthday To Me"

Today is my birthday (never mind which one...I'm bloody 'old' okay?).  Anyway, because of this momentous occasion, I had the great fortune to be sitting in Gordon's Wine Bar last night with my mum and sisters sipping fine wine and nibbling cheeses, and not - like the poor husband - walking into our high-ceilinged bathroom last night during 'bath time' to find the boys chucking wads of wet toilet paper onto the ceiling.

Now, I am sitting in a pile of 'Palmier' crumbs on my bed (courtesy of an early morning mission by the husband to procure my favourite treat from Paul's Patisserie) trying to keep the baby from polishing off the last bite (he's already eaten the bulk of this morning's pastries and screamed bloody murder when his big brother's tried to wrestle a bite off of him).

The husband gave me a very funny/scary card this morning with an elderly naked couple riding tandem on a bike.  It made me laugh, but then I looked over to gauge his reaction and saw his eyes take on a wistful expression and realised that it probably is his wet dream.  God help me. Along with the card I also got this cool black bracelet that tracks your day's activity, informs you on the quality of your sleep (I could tell you for nothing it's permanently shite), and lets you know how active you are on any given day (is this the husband's way of confirming his deep suspicion that all I do each day while he's at work is sit and eat bon-bons with the fat baby whilst directing minions of elves in their laundry and scrubbing toilets chores??).

At any rate, I can't complain.  I'm a lucky girl with a day of babbling ahead of me (currently all the baby knows how to say is 'Happy Birthday to youuuuuuu...' so today of all days this is going to come in extremely handy), and later I intend to stuff myself so full of boozes and pizza (yep, it's still my favourite food) that I babble incoherently as I chuck myself in bed.

Another year I'll do the 'elegant-dress-up-in-Jimmy-Choo's-and-dine-at-a-fine-restaurant' thing.

This year I'm gonna keep it strictly Honey Boo-Boo....but of the brown trash variety.

"Two Festivals, A Holiday to Sicily, A Wedding and No Funeral..."

What a crazy summer it has been.  I've never been so stressed out since I was in university and trying to cram for a whole terms worth of material in one heinous all-nighter, just so I could pass my exam with flying colours and justify the copious amount of partying I had done for weeks before.

But this summer has been a whirlwind of madness, punctuated by a month long visit from our dear friends from Oz right smack bang in the middle.  It has been so much fun - don't get me wrong - but very 'insane in da membrane'.  I finally know what it's like to be a crack head...frazzled, tense, not making sense, running around like a proverbial headless chicken, etc.

And today is the first day of school.  This is unfortunate, as last night whilst tucking the boys in I spotted their unwashed, stained uniforms I thought:  "I'm not ready for this."  Never mind.  The dirty clothes are currently whirling around in the dryer and will be sweet smelling (if a little damp) as the monsters make their way to school in just under an hour - their stomachs pumped full of homemade pancakes to assuage my mother guilt.

Last weekend was my little sister's wedding to one of our best friends.  It was glorious and brilliant in every way and I have only vague recollections of dancing to 'Pump Up The Jam' in a most un-motherly fashion whilst clutching my disgruntled 18-month old fat baby.  I hope no one was filming.

My sister (who looked like she should be gracing the cover of Vogue) and her new husband, are currently sunning their beautiful selves in Bali so I am both suitably happy for them and jealous in equal measure.  I think of them everyday when I step outside onto our terrace and maybe/maybe not step in a small neat pile of doggy doo-doo.  (Note to self: must remember to put contact lenses in immediately upon waking up).  We are puppy-sitting their very naughty 6 month old Yorkie for two weeks and my sister's last words to me were:  "Please don't let her die."  Sis, if you're reading this, I am trying my very best...WHEN i remember...and as of today, she is still alive.  Result!

Working backwards, the trip to Sicily was brilliant.  Grandpa rented a gorgeous beachfront villa and filled it with two daughters, three grandchildren and a son-in-law for good measure.  With long enough of a gap since childbirth I finally dared to don that two piece Abercrombie & Fitch bikini that's lain unworn and unloved, balled up in the corner of my sock drawer for two years.  It got some seriously good use as I spent more time swimming in the glorious bathtub-esque sea than I did doing anything else...save scoffing gelato.   The only hitch to the whole trip was getting thrown up on three times by a carsick baby en route to Stanstead Airport at 3am and having to fly smelling of dried sick.  And then of course there was the fact that my sister missed the flight and happened to be the one in possession of everyone's holiday Euro's.  Oopsie.  Still, it one of the best holidays I can ever remember having and besides furnishing me with what appears to be a permanent mahogany tan (soon to morph into old lady sunspots in the not-to-distant future I imagine), it did wonders to soothe my frazzled nerves and prepare me for the monumental task of getting together a playlist for my sisters wedding reception and writing a speech.  (Both of which I frantically scrambled together the morning of the wedding.  Don't ask.)

Slipping backwards into memory, this summer was punctuated by the arrival of our dearest friends from Sydney.  We only get to see each other once every 3-4 years so it was very special and amazing to spend such a great chunk of the summer with them.  They have two children, so sometimes things got a bit chaotic with the four of us adults being outnumbered by little people, but a plethora of evening cocktails and a handy supply of dvds did the trick.  Mostly :)

We went to not one but TWO(!) festivals this year.  First, the behemoth that was Glastonbury, followed by the somewhat posh but oh-so-easy-to-be-at Wilderness Festival, where I have to say the highlight was watching the daily 'crazy cricket' matches with non-stop brilliant banter and the occasional male and female streakers.  Hilarious.  Even better was the old-skool rave I found myself at in this hidden valley there late one night with a few sisters and friends.  Once I got used to dancing on an incline on a hill, squeezed into other, rather more nubile young bodies than my own, it was great fun and I danced like I was seventeen again (though possibly that was in my head and I was in fact dancing like a mental mother let loose on her one night out a year after too many vodka red bulls....but who knows).

So that's all I really have to say on the matter.  I've got to dash now, and convince my baby not to chuck a blueberry yoghurt drink across the kitchen, convince Egg that as it's going to be 28 degrees today and his heavy winter fleece is not appropriate first day of school wear, and convince Dumpie that in fact we have to leave in 10 minutes and not two hours as he is want to believe.

I'm back in the land of the blogging folks.  Sorry it's been so long, but life has been too hectic to handle let alone write about.  I've missed it.

More tomorrow :)

The bride and I with Dad...

Bride and Monsters

Wedding Bound Baby

Crazy Cricket watching at Wilderness Festival 2013

Festival Bound with Friends :)

"Festival Family Glastonauts"

  

"You just haven't had your 'Glasto Moment' yet," the husband said last weekend as we trudged through crowds, the children whining (it was in all fairness the first day and they hadn't caught wind of the kid's field yet - just frolicking drunk people in crazy costumes meandering through mad fields with no apparent destination in mind - and I include the husband and I in this).

No indeed I hadn't.  But it wasn't long after until I did.  In fact I'm not even sure when it happened.  Perhaps it was hooking up with my sis and a load of our friends in a sunny field, sipping vodka-based cocktails and working on our tans whilst the boys gleefully zip-lined across the field and buggered off for sufficient enough time for the husband and I to put our new Cath Kidston picnic blanket to the test.

In the end, the four days we spent at the worlds biggest music festival passed in a delightfully surreal blur of music, laughter, adventure, panic, amusement and downright ridiculousness.  In fact the biggest downside wasn't even at the festival itself, but during the arduous four hour drive home wherein we discovered that our headlight deficient campervan rendered the road ahead utterly invisible and required the husband to keep his finger flexed at all times on the high beam lever just to catch the odd glimpse of tarmac.  Nightmare.

Bear in mind we'd both had next to no sleep and could barely keep our eyes open - so were not at all able to handle the relentless screaming of what was normally our smiley baby.  I had to contort my body around just to hold hands with him, and it wasn't until we stopped for some emergency petrol station coffee that we discovered the poor soul had been screaming not because he was an escaped minion from the depths of hell but rather because he was covered in his own vomit and likely had been for quite some time - clearly suffering from a profound bout of car sickness.  (Gulp).  Oops.

 Add to this the fact that I was openly snoring in what must have been a most attractive stance, head thrown back, mouth agape, drifting in and out of dreams - waking only to have the husband repeatedly ask me whether I'd know what to do if he had a heart attack right there and then whilst driving.  That sobered me up.  But only momentarily.

In the end it was my shitty little speaker hooked up to my iphone which saved the day.  I began playing a selection of tunes - some to wind the husband up and some to keep me in the land of the living.  It must have worked as we arrived alive.

At any rate, suffice it to say that a grand time was had by all.  I was let loose to do whatever I fancied on the Friday night and found that after a few hours of furtive guilt texting to the husband whilst watching The Horrors at The Park Stage (amazing) I soon forgot about anything but having fun, and learned that left to my own devices, much like a homing pigeon, I would eventually find my way back to the campervan and resume normal duty.  Albeit at breakfast the next day, but hey - as I told the husband - at least I came back.

The husband duly returned the favour by taking off to see geriatric rockers 'The Rolling Stones' the next night and not rolling in until 6am Sunday morning - a stunt which pretty much determined that the ride home for him later that day (headlights or no headlights) was going to be U.T.T.E.R. H.E.L.L.

So I'll let the pictures do the talking and bid you adieu now.  I went, I saw, I participated, and i had fun.  What more is there to say?

(Next year the husband and I go it alone)

:)

A friend helps herd the monsters around...

Ready for another day of silliness...

Future circus performer

Dumps and a mate checking out the talent

Mama checking out The Horrors

A near version of '127 Hours'.  But in a campervan.  With Mama sat outside unawares and kids freaking out inside.

Squit decides he's had enough.  And is outta there.

Too many bands...too many girls...too many late nights

My motley crew of disgraces...thanks for a brilliant night well spent :)

Whilst Dada catches 40 winks, Squit uploads pic of his passed out Dada on twitter

Dada happy as a proverbial...  Nuff said.

"Umm...where to next?"

"Dude looks like a lady" (but was most certainly...a dude :)

'Glastonsquit'

There is a lot I could say, posting here from Glastonbury with les monsters adorable. 

But a) I'm trying to type on an iPhone  b) the pics say it better :)

"What To Do When Your Egg Just Keeps Ageing"

Egg's last day of being an 8 yr old...

 Yeah you heard right.  This is a belated birthday post dedicated to the newly minted nine year old, my firstborn son Egg, and NOT a moan about an ageing womb.

I simply can't believe this nine year old boy is mine.  He is getting so tall and broad shouldered (and so handsome!) that I sometimes have to stop and stare at this marvellous creature that somehow sprung from such two well-meaning but terribly flawed specimens :)

Having put on an Olympics-themed extravaganza for his 8th birthday party, we weren't sure how we could possibly outdo that this year.  Thankfully Egg was very forthcoming and begged for a sleepover. For nine boys.  In our three bed flat.  Night(bloody)mare.  But after much coercion we were able to whittle that list down to a more manageable five (plus Dumpie, made seven).

It was hardcore.  But very fun indeed.  Not for us mind, but for the uber-excited, sweet-gorging, pinata-whacking, pizza-chomping, watergun-toting, sundae-making, movie-watching, tennis-playing, pillow-fighting little guys.

At one point around midnight after trying to at least make a dent in the washing/clearing up downstairs, and having delivered great whacking bowls of popcorn upstairs to the boys room (only to be met with the sweetest and most polite smiles when I begged them to keep it down), I closed the door, counted to five and heard the predictable roar of chaos resume.

Upstairs, much to my horror and amusement, I found the husband passed out cold in bed, under the covers and in for the duration.

Uh-uh that was NOT going to happen.  So after a concerted effort of combined pleas, whimpering and shakage, he awoke with a start and stomped downstairs.  Apparently he didn't have much better luck calming things down as he returned a few minutes later for a brief respite - freaked out that a few of the boys appeared to be twitching spasmodically and mumbling incoherently due to excessive sugar intake (this apparently down to me and my over-the-top provisions).

I was too tired to argue, and as he stormed back downstairs a few minutes later, all I remember is climbing groggily into bed and...well, apparently passing out for the night.  Oops.

Anyway, alls well that ends well, and they eventually fell asleep (so I heard) sometime around 3am!  In what has now become a time honoured birthday party tradition, we rewarded ourselves for a job well done, with a lovely stroll and a restorative tipple at a lovely local pub at noon the next day - trying to ignore a miserable Egg who had yet to receive his big birthday present from us and was gutted to hear that it definitely WASN'T an ipod touch.  (FYI it was better.  So there Egg.)

Bless him, he awoke on his (real) birthday morning a few days ago, begging to unlock the terrace and run outside and see if his 'magic plant' had grown a treat for him.  (Every year since he was little i'd bury a treat in one of the giant plant pots and he'd honestly believe that it had magically grown (a la jack on the beanstalk) for him especially.

I suddenly realised that I had TOTALLY forgotten to do it this year, and made some stupid excuse about not being able to find the keys to let him out and he looked at me, with that sweet smile of his, totally sussed the situation and somewhat wistfully enquired whether I had forgotten.

I did what any parent would do it this situation.  I lied.  Badly.

And later that day after school he went outside and found his box of chocolates and I overheard him telling his friend, "My mum pretends that there is a magic tree but she almost forgot this year."

Any day now he's going to put Bacon the bear on a shelf for good and stop sleeping with him and taking him around the house.  Any day now.

...and I shall weep.

:)

Last sleep as an 8 yr old...

Presents rock (thanks Aunties/Uncles!)

Sharing 'Birthday Weekend' with Dada on 'Father's Day'