I'm back :-)

I've been having a BUSY BUSY time and haven't had time to blog, apologies to all my friends who have been worrying and wondering where I am :-) Sorry to worry you all and each of you who emailed to ask if I was ok - thank you so much for caring and being so sweet :-)

I'm not going to do a day by day account of what we've been doing as it would take much too long, I'll just give you the edited highlights!!

We finally came to the decision to get a new builder in to finish our garden wall. It was a difficult decision to make as our original builder is the son of a very good friend and he has been quite ill and that was why he hadn't been working on our wall. However, this has been going on since before the Summer and we still only had a couple of courses of bricks laid. Our friend (mother of the builder) was a bit surprised and I think a bit upset that we had made this decision and I really wish we hadn't had to do it. But we are getting closer and closer to our new little one joining our family and we need to have the garden safe before she arrives. New Builder has been here every day for the last week or so, and has been working as hard as he can (between rain storms and fading light in the evenings) and TODAY is the day it is all going to be finished :-) The bricks we bought are fairly old looking, so the wall doesn't stand out like a sore thumb next to the house and it looks high enough and sturdy enough to withstand assaults by our small garden warrior aka Little Prince :-) Unfortunately the garden has been completely trashed, there is a worn, sandy path across the lawn and the nicely dug out bed in front of the wall is covered in sand and blobs of mixed and solidified concrete! It is going to take a LOT of hard work to get it back to a usable state, let alone looking nice!! Drama Teen and Little Prince did do a lot of work weeding and picking up rubbish and windblown apples over the weekend and have made a great start - well done you two :-)

Drama Teen has been suffering with a bad back for a while now, which as she is only 14 is quite worrying! We decided to order her a new mattress, which arrived last week and she seems to be slowly improving now :-)

LMS came home for a weekend visit so that me, her and Little Prince could go to see a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The show was fantastic, as always, and Little Prince who learnt the songs at school last term, was mesmerised by the whole thing. When the orchestra played the introduction and there was just a 'scenic' curtain covering the stage, he was quite perturbed and wondered if that was it? And pronounced it 'boring'! But as soon as the curtain rose and the performers appeared he was entranced. He sang along to all the songs and hardly moved or spoke during the whole performance - a HUGE achievement for him :-) We had gone to see the show with my friend Post Lady and her husband and two daughters (the youngest of which is Little Prince's on/off girlfriend lol) and after the show we all went to a Chinese Buffet restaurant for a meal together. The children didn't each much of the main courses, but loved the desserts - typical kids!!

While LMS was here she and I visited an exhibition devoted to baby stuff!! We spent a good few hours there, checking out all the yummy mummy changing bags and new fangled gadgets that didn't even exist when my lot were small!! But the main purpose of our visit was to check out the rearward facing buggies, I definitely want a rearward facing one as that promotes both attachment and language development, but they are few and far between (and mega expensive!) these days! I now think I have narrowed my choice down to one of two (or three lol) different models and just need to go to a large baby shop to have one last look before finalising my choice.

I have also started to sort out the Christmas shopping. Me and Post Lady have been on quite a few shopping trips and I am really pleased with how much I've already got organised :-) Me and Drama Teen were going to get on with some wrapping up when her school was unexpectedly shut due to maintenance problems, but the school managed to make provision for the Year 10s and 11s to attend and so she had to go back to school. I am determined to be a lot more organised this year and NOT to be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, so I had better get on with it!! I bought myself a proper office sellotape dispenser, which should make the job a whole lot easier than it usually is (cutting little bits of sellotape and sticking them to the edge of the table while wrapping!!).

Mr Messy has been very busy getting on with his long list of jobs from his photography training and seems to be slowly ploughing his way through it. He has also attended a couple more two day training sessions, and been "second shooter" at a couple of weddings. He took the photographs to the bride and she was in tears they were so good :-) Although she did then go through and ask if he could 'airbrush' loads of different things in each photo - he was warned she was a bit of a princess lol.

Little Prince has had another visit to the Paediatrician who has confirmed that nothing untoward showed up in the blood tests that Little Prince had. We hadn't expected anything to show up, but it is good to have that confirmed officially :-) The Paediatrician is going to chase up the appointment with the Speech and Language Therapist, but doesn't feel it will show up anything too significant, and said we shouldn't worry that it is taking so long to get the appointment through. He asked how Little Prince was coping in school, and how supportive school was being, and as they are being fantastic with Little Prince and he is making very good progress the Paediatrician doesn't think there is any need for any more interventions at this point in time. He has asked to see Little Prince again in 12 months time, to reassess how he is, as he says that as Little Prince grows older there will be different expectations of him and problems could emerge due to that. He did also mention that medication (Ritalin) could be warrented in the future, depending on how me and Mr Messy feel about that, and on how Little Prince is coping (or not) in school. Luckily he is not the sort of doctor who gives the medicine at the drop of a hat and sends you on your way, so I feel confident that we will be able to discuss this and decide if it is needed or not when the time comes.

We are also in the midst of planning a wedding!! A fake wedding!! My Baby Sis and her fiance have been persuaded to act as a Bride and Groom for a photo shoot Mr Messy wants to do for his portfolio. We have organised a wedding dress, shoes, veil (almost!), flowers and even a Chief Bridesmaid! Although the vintage wedding car isn't available as Mad Cat Lady's parents are away on the day of the 'wedding'! The dress arrived today and looks gorgeous and I'm sure Baby Sis will look stunning in it :-) It has been exciting organising this 'wedding' and I just wish they really were getting married - then I could totally go to town with it lol.

And if all that wasn't enough stuff to be getting on with, our Local Authority has finally sent our dossier to the DCSF. Which means I have had to get the last bits of paperwork together to send to our Notary ready for when the DCSF send him our dossier to Notarise. And there is one piece of important paperwork that I can't seem to get hold of no matter how hard I try! The Notary has now said send everything I already have, and forward the last piece as soon as I have it! I think the hardest part of getting the paperwork together (apart from the above missing bit!) has been to persuade everyone to pose for the photographs we need! Mr Messy and Drama Teen are very talented photographers, but persuading them to be in front of the camera has been quite the challenge!!

So that's it our "news in brief" I'll try not to go AWOL again, but with Christmas rapidly approaching I can't promise to blog every day!