A matter of choice

Everyone has a Christmas traditions story to tell and I love hearing how they differ between families and yet are still all so similar,  always full of memories.

Santa or Father Christmas? 
Growing up he was only ever Father Christmas to me but somewhere over the years he became Santa!  I don't know if it's anything to do with the fact we live in Cyprus- what do people say in the UK these days?   I don't know if it was me that started saying Santa to the boys or if I got it from them, but they never say Father Christmas.   The children at school would either say Agios Vasilis or Santa so they were quite confused the first time someone asked them about Father Christmas.

Christmas Eve Traditions
What did you do on Christmas Eve?   Were you a church family going to Christingle or Midnight Mass,   or did you stay home and drive your Mum crazy as you were so impatient for the big day?
We sometimes went to the Christingle service at our local church, but apart from that we had no…

Earlier this year we visited the Cyprus Historic and Classic Motor Museum in Limassol. It's been on my 'to-do list' for several years now and I'm glad we finally got there!



The museum originally opened 2014, and moved to larger premises in 2015. Today it covers an area of 3000sq meters and more than 150 exhibits covering more than 130 years of motoring history.

Each of the vehicles had an information board, in both Greek and English although of course the boys were not patient enough to stop and read these without prompting.  However they enjoyed listening too Aaron tell them about the cars, especially when the stories were personal.

He was amazed to see three makes of cars that his Mum had owned,  the Talbot (Matra) Rancho, Range Rover and Fiat 500.   This brought the cars to life for the boys as he told them about days out he'd had as a child in cars like these.





My absolute highlight was the red double decker bus for several reasons,  as a child I'd always w…

I recently found Game of Life in my local thrift shop and was so excited I brought it straight away to go home and play with the boys and relive the childhood memories.   We had a fun time playing despite the fact it was much more complicated than I remembered and probably a bit too old for Louka.

After discovering that a friend of mine also loved the game as a child we decided we should have a Game of Life evening.   So a few days later accompanied by pizza and a couple of GOL newbies we set it up and played.   There was lots of joking about how it was a little misleading and our lives have not been quite so easy,  some debate over the compulsory marriage and house buying squares and lots of laughter.



It got me thinking about the other games I played as a child.

There were so many,  I think my present from my grandparents each Christmas was a board game, and over the years I acquired a massive selection. My parents spent ages playing different games with me, Mum for the 'kiddy&#…

We celebrated Louka's 7th birthday in our usual way this year with a pool party.  It's an obvious choice for a birthday in Cyprus at the end of August.


He was so excited in the lead up to the day,  it always seems to him that his birthdays take a long time to come round,  being that he is only 7 of course, and the fact it's later in the year than Leo's. 
This year, as the youngest of the group is now 6 it was much better knowing that they can all swim very well.   Still quite stressful keeping an eye on 6 crazy loud kids (plus a crazy adult!)  with a load of inflatables in the pool but between 5 adults in and out the pool too it was easily doable. 

We made water balloons for the first time which was a huge success,   they were surprisingly hard to break too. I'd always thought they broke so easily and took a long time to fill but that was before I'd discovered the packs with the attachment to go on a hose pipe!
The older kids took charge of the games with them…

Checking though an old laptop recently I came across a folder of old photos and decided to pick one for a flashback post. 
This one jumped out at me from 10 years ago and is perfect for the anniversary of our move to Cyprus.

2009 was a big year for us!

I started the year 4 months pregnant after a very strange quiet sober Christmas and New Year.   We had sold our house in 2008 and were living with my parents while we waited for our apartment to be completed in Cyprus.   So the first few months of the year were a bit weird,   I took early maternity leave to avoid someone having to take voluntary redundancy, as I wasn't planning on going back after anyway, and spent a couple of months twiddling my thumbs,  meeting friends during their lunch breaks,  wandering round shops and watching tons of tv - sounds amazing looking back!


It all changed of course with the arrival of Leo,  his due date was May 16th and naively I was convinced he would show up right on time.  Unfortunately he was y…

If you are a long term reader of my blog you will know that Flashback posts are one of my favourites. I used to join in with a link up every week sharing a photo on a theme and the story that went with it.  I even hosted the linky for a while!

Earlier this year I started to write a post with an 80s theme and when I fell into the Pinterest rabbit hole of childhood memories whilst looking for images to accompany my posts I found there were so many things I'd forgotten about and wanted to share that I had to break it down into several posts.

I blogged about my 80's toys and the Sindy and Barbie dolls of my childhood and board games I had or regularly played, but just like the kids of today I was always won over by a bit of tech.

It wasn't as impressive as today's tech that kids take for granted now, like ipads and Xboxes but it was awesome to us.

I played for hours with the following toys but I don't think they were as addictive as the tech of today,  I'm pretty …