HENS: celebrating my little sister

The end of August saw a group of wonderful ladies gather in Cheltenham to celebrate my sister, Dora, ahead of her wedding.

The other bridesmaids and I spent a long time arranging a weekend that would reflect Dora, and how much we all love her. We settled on the (rather inspired!) theme of Land Girls, and alongside dressing up for a night out on the town, we supplied all the 'hens' with ration books, decorated with Land Girl WW2 posters and had a bag of black market goodies for everyone to win.

It really was the most wonderful weekend; filled with so much laughter. Such a brilliant group - lots of good food, fun games, dancing, singing, swimming and just a little bit of drinking.

Perhaps we could make it an annual thing?!!

HOLIDAY: st ives [part three]

The girls and I started everyday with a early morning stroll along the beach. And while 6am starts may not be what holidays used to be made of, I have to say that our half an hour on the beach each morning was one of my favourite parts of the holiday. Nothing but us, a few dog walkers and the rising sun. Happy in the knowledge that Ben was enjoying a bit of a lie-in - one of his favourite things!

Plus a few funny stories that will go down in St Ives holiday legend. Both of which when my Nan joined us (I'm pretty sure she jinxed me!)

One morning we spotted two seals in the harbour - so close to us. They just played and watched us and it was amazing. We stood transfixed. Even Coralie pointed at them with glee (woofing the whole time!) It was brilliant. Then, as I went to save Coralie from falling in to the sea, I stood backwards without realising Josephine had followed me, tripped and fell on top of her, plummeting all three of us into the freezing water. Pretty sure my Nan stood and laughed for a minute before coming to rescue us. And who could blame her!

Then later on in the week, as the tides had changed and were much further out, we headed down towards the pier. We stood and looked out at sea until, by pure luck, I turned around and realised we were stood on a sandbank and without us realising the tide was coming in and cutting us off from the beach. My nan and I grabbed the girls and had to wade back. If we'd been a few minutes later, I'm pretty sure we'd have been swimming - or the lifeboat would be rescuing us!

Good times :)

HOLIDAY: st ives [part two]

Our second day; just as sunny and just as fun. Matching beach attire at the ready :)

HOLIDAY: st ives 2015 [part one]

Ah, summer holiday - how long ago you already seem. Warm summer days frolicking on the beach seem a million miles away from the cold and rain and apparent early onset of Autumn.

As always, our week in St Ives was happy and blissful and none of us wanted to come home. It really is our home from home (I've been going every year since I was teeny) and I'll admit that I've spent many an hour since we got home looking at estate agent sites and dreaming of one day owning a holiday house there. A girl's gotta dream...

Last year Coralie turned two months when we were on holiday, and in all honesty it wasn't the most relaxing time. I felt that I spent a lot of the time sat feeding Coralie and watching Ben and Josephine have fun from afar. Don't get me wrong, those newborn days are so wonderful and fleeting (oh! So fleeting! Sob!) but we were all looking forward to Coralie wandering the beach with us and joining in the fun and games.

I took quite a few photos (but managed to strike the balance between picture taking and just enjoying the moment) so expect a slew of holiday posts!

We arrived on a sunny Saturday and spent the day on the beach. Just look at Josephine's face! My sister and I took her down to the sea (the tide was waaaay out) and I snapped these as she frolicked and splashed and grinned the biggest grins.  I know there are 50million of practically the same photo, but I need all these in this little journal of ours. I think this girl would happily live by the sea.