Dad home from hospital! Great after almost 8 weeks of having at least one parent in the Ulster Hospital – but very thankful for all the care they both received there.

We are settling in for the evening by the fire, planning to see in the New Year with our older two kids and a neighbour. We’ll watch a DVD then probably watch Big Ben in London strike midnight on TV. We don’t tend to go out on New Years Eve, and earlier today I was…

My latest iPhone photo shared on Instagram

Unlike the christmals carol, we in fact saw over 20 tall ships, and not on Christmas Day but in August in Belfast harbour, where amongst other things, they built the Titanic! Yesterday was the day we chose to visit the Tall Ships Maritime Festival in Belfast, along with 100,000 other visitors. One of the many…

It is lovely to be back at the cottage after almost 2 months of the daily hectic-ness that is every day life. Here there are “lie-ins” – well, later than 6.50am, so that counts! There are no school uniforms, packed lunches and school runs. There is NO HOMEWORK! (HoweverMiddle Daughter is continuing to work hard…

Sometime before 6am – our 5 year old will arrive and announce it is morning – usually he can be persuaded to return to his own bed for a while longer 6.50am – alarm goes off – but always awake before then (see above) 7am – make kids sandwiches for their packed lunches – 2…