20 Week Ultrasound

The time arrived for the 20 week ultrasound and we were very excited, but also concerned at what may be found.  I had had a nagging feeling that this baby was going to have some problems and as the 20 week scan drew near I almost expected them to find something wrong.

Despite these feelings Alex and I both felt at complete peace and were not worrying about what may be discovered.  We were ready to embrace whatever may be about to come our way.

Our appt. was about 30 mins late. Finally our time came and I excitedly hopped onto the bed.  And there was our baby!!  Happy and looking rather sleepy. S/he was all curled up - so sweet.  Slowly the sonographer worked through every body part and everything looked great!  No problems were detected and we so enjoyed our 20/30 minute look into the secret world of our unborn baby.


Here is a little clip I put together after our visit:

Pregnancy - 20 weeks

Half Way!

Yesterday marked 20 weeks into the pregnancy and to be honest I can't quite believe I'm here already.  The weeks since my last scan have gone by quickly.  
(An 11 day holiday probably helped with that! hah)

We are booked in for our next scan this Friday at 8:25pm and we are rather very excited to get another peek at our new little baby growing away.

I am feeling lots of movement now which is just amazing and such a comfort.  It doesn't seem to matter how many times I've been through this - feeling those kicks is just as amazing every time!  The miracle of new life!

Recent Cravings - dark chocolate & cakes (all the healthy stuff!)
Feeling - more tired than I have in previous pregnancies at this gestation. Hoping for relief soon, - won't hold my breath though... just enjoy the better days as and when they decide to offer me some relief. It seems that my old friend SPD is back to spend some time with me.  It is very minor at the moment - making the most of pain free walking while it lasts.  :O)
Belly Growth - 33.5" = 5.5" gain!

Graduating Year 3

After a challenging year of hard, hard work for our eldest, he achieved his completion of year 3 yesterday - Friday the 8th of June.

His reading and writing abilities have come on leaps and bounds!  He can happily sit back with a novel and chew his way through the whole thing.  He has just started learning cursive writing, which he absolutely loves to do... think it makes him feel very grown up to be doing joined up writing! :O) His Math abilities have developed really well too and his talents now include adding fractions, long addition, problem stories & estimation to name a few.  Next grade we get to tackle the times table (All prayers appreciated for me and my son!)

Caden is especially excited to have completed his 3rd year as his 4th years work will be done on the computer and our Mr Caden 'gets' computers and so loves to work on them.  I'm also rather pleased too as the clever program marks his work for me and automatically plans out his years work, allocating evenly for the whole year and adjusting accordingly when a challenging area takes him longer than estimated etc, etc... bliss.  :O)

We celebrated Caden's achievements today with a mini party.  The kids put on party hats and I cooked a cake, which had 3 candles to represent each year of education completed.  We presented Caden with his certificate of achievement and gave him a hearty round of applause.  

When it came time to blow out the candles, I told him to think of all those pages of Math, filled with sums, and blow them away!  :O)

We then presented him with a gift as a reward for his labours.

To say he is cuffed with his solitaire chess is an understatement.  He is sitting by my feet as I type working his way through the challenges and absolutely loving it!  :O)

A massive congratulations Caden!

You're a star!

The Little Dude Turns 5

On the 28th of May my ickle Quinny turned 5 yrs old!  Seems mad to me that my little boy is 5... that's not so little anymore!

We had a celebration for him while on holiday, as his actual birthday was during our trip to Ireland.  We then had his 'main' celebration once home again.  I was rather tired after our jouneys and the seemingly endless washing that appears after a holiday and so was planning to buy Quinn's birthday cake this year.  Was feeling a little guilty about it as it is my little tradition to make them a special little cake every year so I decided I would ask him... give him the choice of a fun shop bought cake or a mummy made one.  He looked at me with his big green eyes and said he wanted me to do it..... well I just couldn't refuse his cute little face!  I asked him what he wanted this year and he asked for a football pitch.  Rather pleased he picked something simple... I agreed.

I'm Back!

Well my goodness, it's been a good little while since I've felt up to blogging, but here I am again, feeling better and ready to do some catching up!  :O)



We returned home from a lovely holiday to Ireland last week.  We took the ferry from S. Wales across to Rosslare and rented a static caravan there for 3 nights.  We didn't really know how good the place we would be staying at would be as it seems the Irish are still learning to use the internet to it's full potential as their websites seem rather.. well.. basic. 
We were thrilled to find a lovely caravan though and an absolutely fantastic beach just a few minute walk down a country road - was so idyllic and to top it off we even had brilliant sunshine for our first day!!  Who would have guessed! hah! 


We visited an 800 yr old lighthouse, which claims to be the oldest, still functioning lighthouse in the world, so that was pretty amazing to see.  We had a tour of the inside of the lighthouse and it was like a castle in there!  Definitely a trip worth doing if you ever happen to be in Wexford County.  :O)

For our next day in Rosslare we planned on going to see an historical village that had an old working windmill.  We drove down the road where it was supposed to be and there was no sign of it.  So we stopped at the nearest pub and asked about it.  We were promptly informed that the place had closed down 2 years ago!  (and yet the website is still up and running!)  :S

So we took a trip into the nearest main town instead.  We were surprised how few shops were about generally and also how big people's houses were when you were outside of a city.

After our short stay in Rosslare we drove right down to the bottom of Ireland and stayed with friends who live in Bandon (nr Cork).  It's a good job our friends gave us clear directions to their house because apparently they don't see the need for post codes (zip codes) over in Ireland.  So you might as well pack your sat nav away if you visit Ireland and pick up a good map instead. :) 

We had a super time down there.  We had a mini celebration for Quinn's 5th birthday and we experienced some offical Irish chocolate.  We took an amazing trip (THE trip of the holiday) to Killarney and saw some stunning sites up there and took a memorable trip on a horse and cart around the lake and sites.

All in all a fab time was had by all and we greatly enjoyed our Irish holiday.

Congratulations Quinn!

My little Mr Quinn has successfully completed and passed with flying colours his first year of school.

CONGRATULATIONS QUINN!

When our little students 'graduate' a school year we put on a mini celebration for them.  We do up a certificate to honour their achievement and give them a big round of applause.  We buy them a pressie to reward them for all their hard work.  We also have a yummy treat and the student who we are celebrating gets to have a 'stay up late' treat.

Here are my students excited about some raspberry cheese cake

Quinn opens his reward

and is very pleased!  :O)  

(displaying his very fake camera smile!! LOL)

Once the other two boys are in bed, we played each of Quinn's new games with him, which he really enjoyed.  It was a fun evening had by all.

Pregnancy - 12 weeks

Apologies for the lack of posts - I had intentions of an Easter post (took pics) and have a cookery Monday waiting to post but I've been extremely exhausted and some things had to give.. blog one of them.

So, we have made it to 12 weeks!  :O) 

We are all so thrilled that we have now heard baby's heartbeat several times.  Everything appears to be going really well and the children can't wait for my tummy to get huge!  :O)

I booked in a scan for next week on Friday the 27th.  It's a late evening appt. at 8:25

We're very excited - can't wait for those first pictures.

Pregnancy - 10 weeks - The Best News

10 weeks today!

Click play to listen to something very, very special!!

Thanks for walking with us through this pregnancy!  The last week has been a little bit emotional for me as I went through the time gestationally when Eman would have passed away.  I am filled with so much hope and am overflowing with joy to have heard my little baby's heartbeat (twice)!  The first listen in was before the time gestationally that Eman passed away and the 2nd time was today and still that wonderful strong heartbeat there!  Today we official enter the fetal stage of the pregnancy and leave the embryonic stage behind.

Keep growing little one!

Cravings this week - fresh home-made fruit scones!!
Felt this week - insanely tired, but nausea mild  :O)
Belly growth - 2 inches  (already!)  lol

Cookery Monday - Lentil & Pasta Soup

Mister Quinn has been begging me to do another pasta soup.  I had no recollection what recipe I had done before that he had loved so much so it was off to the internet in search of a pasta soup recipe.

I found a Jamie Oliver recipe that sounded good so off to work we went.

Ingredients at the ready

 Rosina thought the lentils looked rather fun to get stuck into.

 She also thought the parmesan cheese looked like it needed eating up!  lol

 First job was to chop up some celery and onion to add to the

lentils while they cooked to add flavour. The celery and onion will 

later be disregarded.  We chopped a little too small considering we

would need to pick them out after the lentils were cooked.  Lesson learned.

 Lentils ready to cook away with celery, onion, salt and 1 bay leaf.

 Next we measured out the pasta - Rosina thought that look tasty too!

Here's our lentils after they'd finished cooking.  We proceed to

drain all the water away and take out the extra ingredients.

 Now we were ready to start the soup.

 Caramelize an onion

Add a can of tomatoes

Stir in our lentils

And add 1 litre of water and let simmer

Next we cooked the pasta, which we added to our soup

after it had simmered away for about 10 minutes

 And here we are ready to eat, with a grating of parmesan cheese on top.

 As simple as that!

AND that all important verdict???

We made a few adaptations to the original (eg. we used red lentils and I think he used green, we used orzo pasta and he used normal sized pasta, he added chilli and we didn't) and our soup looks VERY different to Jamie's  -  he's a link to the original recipe - CLICK HERE