A Matter of Choice

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! ...

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 convi...

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'...

Last November I had an early morning text from my friend Sam,   I can't remember it word for word but it was short, to the point and something like " Can you come round straight from school this morning as I need you to help me with something?" I replied straight away saying yes I'd be there about 8am. In the mean time I wondered vaguely what she wanted but didn't think that much of it. I amused myself by thinking it was funny that I didn't even question what she might want! I arrived she put the kettle on, we chatted about random stuff and I still didn't question why I was there.   I assumed she wanted my help moving some stuff, or clearing out her shed as that had been talked about not long before and she was just putting it off a bit longer. It was quite warm and Sam was wearing a jumper, but I didn't really register that - she feels the cold and once we hit November she usually goes into winter wardrobe regardless of the temperature.  I d...

I realise it may seem a little late to be sharing summer highlights for my readers in the UK, but for those in Cyprus I'm sure you can understand. Apart from the fact that the sun still shines here and the days are warm (I say warm I mean around 25 to 27 degrees so jeans and duvet weather now)  the summer 'season' runs till the end of October so it's about now that we all take a breath and change gear for the winter.   This year was very different for us as a family, extra work  as I started a part time seasonal job in addition to our other commitments, and for the first time, the boys went to summer school.  I was a bit apprehensive about it and hoped they would enjoy it, although I didn't want to force them to go if they really didn't get on there for some reason.  Our school holidays are very long, almost 13 weeks, so the chance for summer school is good for everyone.  Luckily they really enjoyed it,  so from when school finish...

When you get a new piece of furniture what do you do with the box?  If you are 7 years old the answer is surely 'Get straight in it' Louka was overjoyed to see this big box on the balcony when he came home from school and he threw off his shoes and got straight in.  He lay around in it for a while and then got out for lunch.  I did suggest he could eat lunch in the box but apparently that would be silly.  The idea to paint the box however was much better received. I realise that I hovered over the boys way too much when they used to paint, worried about them getting paint everywhere (on marble floors which are easy to clean!)   or on themselves or who knows what, so I gave him paints, brushes and refused to have any more to do with it.   He asked me what to paint, I didn't give him any suggestions,    (other than 'the box'  as I'm just so easily amused)   He asked me about the colour...