family Archives - A Little Lyrical

15Apr 2018

Easter Holidays 2017 – Reflections of the family and Christening

Well I can’t quite believe the Easter holidays are already over! Part of me was dreading them to begin with. Three boys on my own for two weeks was always a daunting prospect. As it turned out we had the most fantastic time with friends and family. We made plans for each day and thankfully hubby managed to have some time off too.

Christening Time

It started on a high with Roo’s Christening which was on Easter Sunday at our family church. It was a beautiful day spent with family and friends. After the service we came back to our house for some food and drinks. By 6pm everyone was gone again and the house seemed early quiet after such a fantastic build up to a wonderful day. In some ways sad for me as it’s most likely my last baby and so in turn is the last Christening celebration we will hold.

Roo behaved beautifully and when the time came to have him Christened he didn’t cry and was lovely.

During the later part of the service I was grateful to his wonderful God mummy for taking him outside to settle him to sleep as he was getting tired and moany.

The main man himself wore a lovely outfit I bought 7 years ago for the boys Christening. The outfit has been worn by all of the boys for their special days and I’m not sure now the best way to display it. I need to do some research and see what inspiration I can get (all ideas welcome) as I don’t just want to put it in a box and leave it for years to come.

I wore a dress my mummy bought for for me from Monsoon and although I haven’t got back to my happy weight yet I felt good. My shoes I wa thankful to find in the recent Next sale and they went so well with the dress.

The dress wasn’t breast feeding friendly so in order to be abel to feed Roo before and after the service I wore a vest top under the outfit so that I could unzip the dress and lift the top to feed whilst keeping myself covered (for my own dignity as I don’t like to show my tummy etc)

The other two boys wore matching shirts form Next which I bought last year for a photo shoot with some dark jeans.

Back at the house I got to sip some wonderful champagne (keeping the cork for my collection) and was a bit tipsy by bedtime! I had even made his Christening cake, and for a complete novice like me I was quite proud of my work!

When bank holiday monday came I was a bit hung over so thankful for our house to hang around in and not get up to too much!

The Rest of the Holidays

Since the christening the rest of the holiday s have been a bit of a blur. I didn’t want to do a day by day list so will do some highlights.

During the first week hubby had to go away for work and so my mum came to stay with us. This worked out well as it was a day we’d been planning for a while anyway. We went out to a local country park with a great adventure play area. It did rain for a while which cleared the playground off but it didn’t dampen our spirits!

The following day mum took middle boy out with her early and I got to enjoy some time with the original boy (and Roo of course). I needed to pick up a package from a shop so we went together to the Trafford Centre. It was nice to just enjoy some time together. I treated him to a coffee (well not a coffee for him but you know what I mean!)

Easter eggs were abundant in out house despite us not buying many ourselves we are lucky to have such lovely family and friends who gave the boys eggs, my favourite was this chocolate chicken, sat on chocolate eggs with an edible basket! I’m pretty such it’s from Lidl.

There was time spent at St Annes pier and beach on a sunny day, and another afternoon at Blackpool Zoo.

Towards the end of the holiday my middle baby turned 4, how have 4 wonderful years passed so quickly?

He got what he’d asked for, a batman car and a Spiderman outfit! My little superhero loving dude. We spent the day at Cheshire Ice Cream Farm. Another wonderful day out if you’re ever in the area. Free to get in and you just pay for what you do.

And so we are at the end now, the last day. Back to normality tomorrow. Back to school and nursery. There are some exciting things coming up in the next few weeks. Thins to look forward to. I’m trying to enjoy every single day of maternity leave that I have left. Knowing it’s my last time. Here’s to the future and many more happy memories made. I am as always grateful for all that has passed, it has been amazing.

Thank you universe.

14Jan 2018

My Sunday Photo – Smiles

by Lyric ⋅ 4 Comments

This week I’ve chosen a photo that makes my heart happy.

At 5 and a half weeks old we’re getting smiles. What’s more I actually managed to capture the end of one on camera, with his oldest brother just in the background.

His brothers love him very much and are always wanting to kiss and hug him, no matter what he’s doing. Which is lovely, but when I’m trying to feed him it can get a bit difficult. His latch isn’t the greatest any way and so having them all over him can sometimes really hurt me!

07Jan 2018

My Sunday Photo – My World

by Lyric ⋅ 18 Comments

My Sunday Photo – January 7th 2017

This week I looked for a while for a photo, but the same one kept jumping out. I was torn though. Not many people want to see a photo of my family. It’s much more interesting to look at something else. But then I realised that these little guys are my world. As this is my blog and I write it for the boys, I realised it’s ok to have a photo of my world on it.

This photo isn’t the best, it’s grainy and taken in bad light. But it captures the moment. The moment in time we were all together. My whole world (minus the hubby) in one photo.

I love it! I love them more than they will ever know.

21May 2017

My Sunday Photo – Bad windy hair day!

by Lyric ⋅ 5 Comments

My Sunday Photo – May 21st 2017

This week I picked a photo of my youngest. We were all having a family day at a local attraction, an ice cream farm. We were playing mini golf and he sat down for a rest. He has such long hair because I love long hair on boys (plus he doesn’t like getting it cut!). The wind caught it at just the moment hubby went to take his picture. His face is funny fighting against the wind, with his hair flying everywhere. I love the boys so much.

05Feb 2017

My Sunday Photo – Catching the Cold

by Lyric ⋅ 11 Comments

I love the changing of the seasons, my favourite season is most defiantly summer. But each season has it’s own unique beauty and winter is undoubtedly the frost kissed grass and sunny mornings. In winter it’s easy to catch the sunrise as it’s so late. It’s not so easy always to take a minute to appreciate its sheer beauty. This weeks photo was capture on my iPhone from a moving vehicle (I wasn’t the driver!) I was so impressed at how well it came out. I really love how cold it feels.

03Feb 2017

Walt Disney World – Trip Report

by Lyric ⋅ 2 Comments

As some people might already know we are a family of Disney lovers and we are very lucky to also be DVC owners (if you don’t know what this means in simple terms its a property investment in Disney thats very flexible and suits our family) We love to visit Walt Disney World in Florida and are very lucky to have been quite a few times.

Memories in our Special Place

Walt Disney World hold very many special memories for us as a couple. It was our first holiday together back in 2005 (although I had been before) The place hubby almost proposed……..almost……

We took our honeymoon in Walt Disney World.

Thomas’s first holiday abroad holiday was there.

Felix’s first holiday was there too.

We’ve been with friends and family, although I’d still love to be able to take my mum, maybe one day!

Trip Report Introduction

Last year we were lucky enough to be able to spend 3 sun, fun and family filled weeks in the beautiful Walt Disney World resort making incredible memories. Although it was last August it’s taken me this long to start writing about it. We stayed one week at Coronado Springs Resort followed by 2 weeks at our DVC home resort Bay Lake Tower. We flew Thomas Cook airline (another first as we have always flown Virgin Atlantic in the past) something I was nervous about as I’d read mixed reviews. I will go into detail about the flight later.

I am going to break up the trip report into parts or it would be too long for one post!

Despite having been to Walt Disney World many times, there were as always lots of ‘firsts’ on this trip, which I want to write down for the boys. Also lots of familiar things which we have very much missed having not been since 2013.

It’s quite hard to explain when you haven’t been to Walt Disney World just how magical the place is. The staff (or cast members as they are known) go the extra mile to make you feel welcome. Nothing is too much trouble, they make you feel welcome everywhere you go. The whole resort is clean, and not just clean, spotlessly so (or so I have always found). It’s welcoming to everyone, young, old, those with and without children with them. There usually sunshine at some point each day and it’s generally warm (I did have to once buy joggers and a blanket, not this trip though!)

So the first part of the report will be travel day. I look forward to sharing our trip with the blog!

23Oct 2016

My Sunday Photo – Simply Saturdays

by Lyric ⋅ 8 Comments

This week I’ve chosen a photograph that means a lot to us. During the past year its been tough but we’ve always focused on what we do have and not what we don’t and been grateful. With a massive house move, one we hoped and dreamed of for so long hanging on a knife edge then eventually happening (thank you universe) followed by a longer than expected period of redundancy its fair to say we’ve been though some quite stressful events. Before we moved one of our aims was to have a place in our new home to have a special Saturday breakfast together. The rest of the week we spend rushing around not eating as a family at breakfast because of work and other commitments. Yesterday we shared pastries (I know they are not very slimming world friendly but it was a treat!) and drank lovely coffee and had a simple family breakfast. It was bliss and I’m very grateful for the memory.

17Oct 2016

Googly Eyes Board Game by University Games- Boys Test Toys!

by Lyric ⋅ Leave a Comment

Googly Eyes – Game Review

Thanks to University Games for sending us a sample of their latest release Googly Eyes to test out this week! Here’s what we thought it –

The game is called Googly Eyes by University Games. Its a team game for 4 to 16 players who form up to four separate teams. As we had 4 players (2 adults and 2 children) we made two teams with a grown up on each.

The aim of the Googly Eyes game is to be the first team to get to the finish on the board, but the fun you have on the way is hilarious!

Each turn involves one person on the team having to draw something and the team members guessing what it is correctly before the time is up. However its not a simple as drawing, you have to wear funny glasses with differing levels of hilarious distorting lenses according to difficulty. The harder the lenses is to see through the more time you have to draw the picture and the team to guess.

There are three different lenses to pop in the Googly eyes frames , easy, medium and hard.

Game Summary

Things we loved about the game:

It was funny to play, and we did laugh…a lot!

I can see it being a hit in the Christmas season if you get a group of adults together who are enjoying the Christmas spirit (and a little mulled wine!)

It brought the teams together

There are lots and lots of different cards for variety so it’s unlikely in the course of a game or two you’ll ever get the same thing to draw again

It’s an easy game to understand you don’t have to keep referring back to the rules

The game says ages 7 and above but the 5 year olds had no trouble (if they like drawing that is) even if they can’t read the game card words (which ours could) then an adult could help them with that part

In trying to write a balanced review the only thing I could think might be a slight negative is you have to keep changing the lenses in the glasses which can sometimes be tricky if they don’t click in first time then can fall out when you draw, once you’ve got the knack of it though its not so bad. Also sometimes the timer is incredibly short (15 seconds) so when we were playing with the young ones we allowed a little more time for them!

16Oct 2016

My Sunday Photo – Blackpool Lights

by Lyric ⋅ 5 Comments

On Friday during the day hubby and I decided the weather was lovely so why not make it the day to make our annual trip to Blackpool lights. We live about an hour away. Each year since th boy was born we’ve been to see them. We usually only go the the Bispham end of Blackpool where they have some tableau style displays that you can walk along. We always get fish and chips to eat before the walk and the boys love it. Pretty much year on year they are the same with a few little differences but still we love it. Its a family tradition!