A Matter of Choice

This year we celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.  We celebrated on the day (back in August!)  with a child free night out in Protaras.  It didn't go quite to plan, for Aaron anyway but it was a good night out nonetheless.  The plan was dinner and drinks,  I had not long started Slimming World again but decided to try and stick as much as possible to plan with food, avoid beer and cocktails but not worry about how many vodka and diet cokes I was having!  We wandered up and down the strip for a bit, stopped for a couple of pre-dinner drinks and eventually decided on a restaurant (that I now cannot remember the name of), the meals came (two steaks both medium rare)  but Aaron's was not cooked properly and got sent back, twice,  so by the time he actually received an edible meal I had finished mine.  He then had gone off the idea of eating and so we headed back to the pub! After listening to a bit of the duo entertaining wh...

Facebook drives me mad a lot of the time, not mad enough to not live on it constantly of course (It's not that I *want* too, I HAVE to because of my work, well that and I'm far too nosy not to!)  It's full of rubbish a lot of the time, but also lots of little gems, funny things and random links that are a major time suck but so addictive. Every now and again though it throws up a gem, or in this case inspiration for a blog post... Recently I saw a link to an 80's nostalgia website and this particular post was all about the 'Come and Praise' hymn book that surely every 80s kid held in their grubby little hands once upon a time. (I couldn't find the original post, so I'm making my own!) We used this book every morning in assembly throughout my primary school years. They were kept in a box and handed out at the door as we left the classroom to go to the 'Big Hall' for assembly.  There were many very battered copies in the box and a few b...

This time 8 years ago, I was still in England,  very heavily pregnant in fact I was almost 2 weeks past my due date.  I was impatient although I tried to appreciate the last few days before the baby's arrival like everyone kept telling me to.  It was a strange in-between time,  not yet dealing with a newborn, but not able to do much else in the meantime, too uncomfortable to drive, to sit still for long,  or to stand for too long.   Very tired  (or so I thought at the time!)  but unable to sleep well. At 35 weeks We were living with my parents in between selling our own house and moving to Cyprus,  so I was enjoying not having to do much around the house other than arrange myself between tons of cushions with snacks and a DVD box set,  yet also wanting to not live out of boxes and to settle in our own place.    It was a really strange, wanting to get on with so many things but also unable to quite imagine how everything ...

Last month my lovely Mum celebrated her 70th birthday in style with over a week of celebrations and well deserved birthday treats.  Starting off with a celebratory meal with friends, continuing with a 3 day break in Paphos with my Dad and then for birthday No.2 at home with us. Of course we couldn't miss the chance for a family celebration as we didn't see her on her actual birthday, so when they returned home we surprised her with a butterfly birthday tea! Apart from teddy bears (which was our party theme several years ago) butterflies are my Mum's favourite thing, so with the help of the boys we created decorations, food and a birthday cake all with a butterfly theme.  With a party tea, music, presents and board games we had a lovely afternoon. Among the presents was a slate ready for Mum to choose a photo to be printed on it, so an impromptu family photo shoot took place... Another of our presents was a voucher for afternoon tea, for Mum...

My Mum recently sent me these photos as she realised that she was the same age in these photos that I am now, and coincidentally Leo is about the same age I was.  They were taken in Son Bou, Minorca in 1984 on our family holiday.  My earliest memory of going abroad is probably this holiday,or the one after it as we we went to the same place.  I can remember several things from them although I guess many of the memories are due to the photos I have seen so many times over the years.   In the picture above I am holding a little toy monkey which was called Pepe for some reason. I don't remember how or where I got him but I know I carried him around the entire holiday. No idea what happened to him afterwards though as I don't remember having him at home.  It was also the holiday of the 'Whisky Cake' a story which has become a long running joke over the years. Mum had ordered whisky cake in a restaurant after having it a few days previously ...

2015 was not a good year for blogging as for the second year in a row I managed to write less posts than the year before, despite all good intentions to set aside time to focus on keeping it up! Since Louka was born in 2012, and I started the Famagusta Parents Network in 2014 and the start of our photo booth business last year the frequency of posts on this blog had sadly dwindled but I was optimistic I'd be able to set aside at least a few hours a week to keep up to date, especially with Louka being at school. A combination of too many websites, kids who no longer nap, and the distraction of multiple social media accounts was just too much! It could have been worse I guess, 60 posts in a year still averages to more than one a week, and only 7 less than 2014 when I wasn't working too! The main reason I continue to blog is the record it provides of stuff we've been up too, I love to look back over the early days and read about things I'd have forgotten about ot...

I first visited Cyprus in August 2007, just after we decided that it would be a good idea to move here! You can read Part One of our story here,  and Part Two here , if you missed them. I had the strangest feeling walking to the the old Larnaca airport for the first time. I can picture it now as clearly as if I was looking at a photo.  I strongly felt like I had been there before and had the feeling you get when you approach passport control off an inbound flight to Gatwick and I could clearly imagine 'coming home'  to it in the future.  We were met at the airport and driven to our accommodation with an apology about the standard of apartment we were to be staying in, along with an explanation that it was the only place left vacant on the biggest bank holiday of the summer.   We wondered if maybe they were not actually taking us seriously as potential buyers as it wasn't the best of first impressions.  As we opened the door to our dump of ...

The story of our move to Cyprus is like many things in our lives, fairly random, and it's taken me five years to get round to writing it down. I thought it was about time considering this was the reason I started a blog in the first place! You can read part one here - Let's Move to Cyprus The idea of moving was talked about more and more and it was starting to feel like was actually something we could do, although we were still yet to ever have set foot in the country. It does seem ridiculous, especially as I knew nothing about Cyprus and could only imagine it to be somewhere between Greece and Turkey (in appearance, not just geographically!)  Which makes it more strange as I'd been to Turkey and didn't much like it, and I'd been to Greece (Corfu) and stayed in a cheap and nasty apartment on a teenage drinking holiday  so my idea of a combination of the two countries didn't fill me with confidence! My Mum and Dad however had been to Cyprus many times a...

Happy New Year! I'm really excited about 2015 but before we get too far I'm taking the chance to look back over Christmas and the festivities leading up to it.  We had a great time and there was so much going on this year, a big difference from when we first arrived in 2009. I didn't have my 'blogging head' on this month so have fewer photos than previous years but I enjoyed it all in person without seeing it all through the camera. The festivities started early this year with Leo's school fete in the park opposite his school which was the last weekend in November. It's the third time we've attended now and as ever was a really enjoyable afternoon.  Like previous years our highlight was the trip on the Red Bus with a present from Santa, but Leo also enjoyed the craft tables and the games which were set up all around the park. There were also pony rides and a few small fairground rides but he wasn't interested in any of them! As it got dark ev...

2014 has been an interesting year, full of change for us and new beginnings. January was a quiet month for us, same old stuff and no real hint of the things to come. Looking back to remind myself of anything interesting I may have forgotten I see that I only took a handful of photos and wrote very few blog posts, something that continued all year unfortunatly. Creating with Daddy. February saw the launch of my website - the Famagusta Parents Network and I threw myself into launching the site and all that goes with it. It's been a lot of work but I've enjoyed it so much (and still am!) and I've been really pleased with the support and contributions I've received from the community. March was carnival time and we got to join our friends on the Performers Academy float in the parade which was great. Blogging was sparse again as I was spending all my free time working on the FPN site and planning the first Family Fun Day which was brilliant fun but somewh...

This month we will have lived in Cyprus 5 years, it's not that long in the scheme of things but it feels like a lifetime ago now that I was living in England and would have once dismissed the whole idea of moving here as just a ridiculous dream. I've been blogging only slightly longer than the time I've lived here, having started the blog with the idea of recording the move. Back in the early days I posted short posts and I've often regretted not elaborating on how it all came about.  I'd only written 2 posts before we actually left the UK and then was left without internet for 3 months while CYTA attempted to locate our apartment on the map. I'd never been to Cyprus before we thought about moving here, and I suppose that makes it a slightly strange thing to do. I touched on how it all came about in my very first blog post but I didn't consider myself a 'blogger' then and I don't feel like I really captured the story, so I thought I'd pl...

Once upon a time I dreamed that I might have my own swimming pool, it seemed like the ultimate luxury and something I'd only have if I won the lottery. Whenever I went on holiday the pool was where you would find me, well, there or the bar! Five years here and still the novelty has yet to wear off of having our own (communal for the apartment complex) pool. It was top of my wish list when looking for our apartment after all those years of dreaming of being able to swim whenever I wished. It's the place we visited most this summer, the only way to cool down briefly in the middle of summer, and so convenient being just downstairs. At the start of every year Leo would take a while to get back his confidence but with each year that passes it takes a lot less time.  Back in May, when I was being a big girlie wuss and refusing to get in the pool because it was cold,  I insisted he wore his armbands when I wasn't in with him, it quickly changed to him being allowed to take ...

Books and reading have always been a big part of my life, some of my earliest memories are sitting on my Mum's lap reading books together. As a pre-schooler I would insist on Mum reading the same books to me again and again, much like my boys to do me (and her!) now.  Often after I had dragged her out of bed at sunrise and run her ragged all day she would be struggling to stay awake once snuggled up reading books to me, her eyes would droop and I'd complain that she was reading my well loved stories wrong! My Dad is also an avid reader too, and our house was always full of books. I also loved our frequent library trips which continued until I could drive when I would go by myself after work. I can picture the library as well as I can my childhood bedroom and I have fond memories of how we would split up as soon as we entered and find each other later on at the desk with an armful of books each.  There was one book Mum and I regularly read, I can't remember the name...

After promising to get back to blogging basics what better timing to join in with the Gallery for the first time in goodness knows how long, with the perfect prompt for the moment 'A younger me' Last week I had the surprise of my life when Aaron came home late Sunday night with my friend of 33 years!  I last saw her on my very short trip to England in February 2013 and the other time I went to the UK in August 2010. I constantly badger her to stay in contact via skype but hadn't thought for a second she would be able to actually come and visit, with family, work and voluntary commitments, plus the cost of flights, and the fact that she'd never traveled before, I always thought it was a far off possibility. Let me share with you, the younger 'us' From pre-school, to primary, secondary and then (briefly) college we did it all together. Five children between us, with her eldest and my youngest having almost a 17 year old age gap, makes no difference, a ...