So here's that photo update I promised! Most of you will probably have seen a ton of pics already from Facebook but if not then here's the highlights of the last few months.

First of all, the girls. Now, I'm not one of those boring parents that talks about nothing but her children 24 hours a day. I am, however, constantly snapping away with my camera so here's a visual version of that!

Here are some pics from the last few months:



( More of the girls... )

Some pics from the Dorset trip:



( More under here... )

Oh, and then there was this sign which I almost took the wrong way...



And of course, I can't leave the furries out of this update...



( More guinea madness... )

Oh, and then there's this:



We don't know what on earth this is. Answers on a postcard, please.

And last, and certainly least - meeeeee!



I think that's everything! Phew!

Hello :)

In the time since I last posted I went back to work after maternity leave aaaaaaaand... finally got a chance to sit down, 4 months later.

OK, it's not been quite that bad, but not far off ;) It's been an insane few months. The passing of time is marked considerably by both the way my girls are growing and the fact that the year is eternally sectioned into terms. Somewhere between each term and milestone have been laughs and adventures and changes.

I know I've changed a lot in this last year. I hope those changes have been positive ones. I wouldn't say my confidence has improved particularly but my courage for overcoming my lack of it has. I force myself to look people in the eye instead of shying away. I raise my voice instead of whisper. I'm growing, in a way.

There's a lot of ground to cover, so by way of a recap, here's a list of some of the things that hae been going on in the last few months:

- I went back to work and remembered how much I adore my job ♥

- I went on an amazing field trip to Dorset and had my breath truly taken away by the most incredible views (expect a photo update soon!)

- I helped out at (and sang in) two concerts at work, the second of which during a bleed and therefore I was dosed up on brainkillers and can't remember very much. Hopefully I sang the right words to the right songs!

- I have forgiven and forgotten (as much as I can) a certain person from a previous job and took on a major redesign of their website, which I loved every minute of. I am actually even looking into having a meeting in the summer!

- I adored the Red Dwarf specials on Dave back in April. Chloe Annett, be still my beating heart!

- My little Whirly turned 2... No, she's not such a little Whirly any more!

- I had a rare moment of bravery in which I played fireman to put out a blaze in the kitchen!

- Steve and I celebrated our 9th anniversary! Nine years?! Unbelievable! I'm already working on a MAJOR surprise for our 10th next year :)

- I have become less adversed to Lol. However, I would still rather eat my own brain that look at a cat macro.

- Our favourite fish & chip shop has started opening on Sundays, therefore sunday afternoons now bring a new tradition!

- Series 2 of Ashes to Ashes came and went, and Keeley Hawes stole my heart again

- I bought myself an Acer netbook to carry to and from work with me. Only thing is, it's pink :p I am NOT a 'pink' kind of a girl (other than my hair, occasionally). But it was £50 cheaper than the blue, black and white ones. Yeah, I wonder why that could possibly be?!

- I learned some African drumming during activity week at work, then spent half term annoying everyone by tapping out rhythms on everything I could lay my hands on

- Natasha learned to crawl at a terrifying pace, stand up and walk along, holding furniture. She also has learned to steal food from Whirly!

- I've done endless exam invigilations which I've actually really enjoyed, especially the surreal exam which involved a giant John Simm head appearing on the wall behind me. No, I haven't gone insane, it was a media exam with a clip of Doctor Who on DVD. The same clip, 4 times. I've never watched an episoe, never even wanted to, but I now feel like a bloody expert. I want to seek out a Doctor Who fan to test out my knowledge! "Ooh, wasn;t that bit brilliant where..." etc etc!

- I ADORED the Eurovision Song Contest, and I even accepted Graham Norton as a replacement for Terry Wogan without much trouble at all. Oh, and of course I made notes! I no longer have the energy to type them up after the event, unfortunately, but believe me when I say there were pages of 'em!

- We've been enjoying a ton of tennis recently and are feverishly looking forward to Wimbledon. We're hoping to go for a day next year :)

- We also enjoyed the end of the football season, as did Whirly who learned the word 'football' a couple of months back. The only problem is that she's now obsessed with it and even shouts "Football!" if she sees someone wearing a strip somewhere.

- I've been doing a whole heap of DIY. I am the man! Oh yes!

- I've started calling people 'honey' a lot and putting a space between my kisses ---> x x x

- I've revisited my beliefs and my spiritual side thanks to an amazing board and an amazing group of ladies there. I've started doing angel card readings again and just exploring that part of me. I've learned so much about so many things and made some fantastic friends.

- I've been watching a lot of Nuzzle and Sscratch. Now that's a show wasted on kids!

- And above all, I've just been enjoying life with my wonderful family :)

I'll give a big picture update soon, including guinea pig goodness!

I hope everyone is doing well... Goodnight, all! x x

Well, what an interesting week and a half this has been!

First of all, you'll notice the return of the brainkiller icon. This be me having my first bleed for almost 16 glorious months. 16 months with no bloodstained sheets, no warped brain and no hunched over in seven shades of agony. True, nine of those months I was carrying a small person inside of me, but even afterwards I go away with half a year without it.

But of course, I was always going to bleed this week, wasn't I? Let's look at the evidence: It's my last week of maternity leave, I was going to spend the week swapping two rooms over so Whirly had the big room and Natasha moved out of ours, and it's my birthday on Friday. So I was always going to be ill this week!

In other news, there have been wet socks aplenty around here as one of the pipes under the kitchen sink sprung a leak. I created a number of ingenius ways to try to stop the water from invading our personal space. Unfortunately most of them were rubbish... Still, all is well and dry now (or drying in the case of the kitchen floor) even though we're left with confusion as we try to work out who the plumber looked like as we are in dispute about whether he looked like a comedian or a cricketer.

Much of the week has been spent watching Whirly watching Cbeebies. I'm finding myself increasingly charmed by the beautiful new presenter (and I seem to be the only parent in the country who DIDN'T like Chris and Pui and have no qualms about them being replaced) but I am scared by how many times I wake up with the blasted songs from Me Too stuck in my head. Plus, I can't do anything quickly any more without singing the race-against-time music.

I'm going back to work on Monday and I'm really torn about it. On the one hand I am dreading the thought of being away from my family. I've spent the last six months with my girls, Steve and a gaggle of guinea pigs (no, I'm not sure what the correct term for a number of guinea pigs is but 'gaggle' sounded funny) and it's going to be a real wrench to be away from them. On the other hand, I spend yesterday morning sorting out my new timetable and now I'm actually getting really excited about it. Plus I can't wait to rejoin the choir. The only oportunites I've had to sing recently have been joining in with the Balamory theme tune!

On the subject of kids' TV, I thoroughly enjoyed Da Dick & Dom Dairies - oh, it brought it all back! I'd forgotten just how much I loved Da Bungalow. I could kill the Sky + box for how many it missed though. It's a total hunk of junk and left me to catch most of them online, except for one that it oddly recorded by itself. Of course, now the series has finished the stupid Sky + is working fine and dandy again. It has it in for me, I swear it!

I will abandon my brainkiller ramblings and see if Gmail is working yet, and if not I may have to kick some Gmail butt!

Ack! Wet kitchen floor! Bust pipe! Kitchen sink evil! Soggy socks! Death by HTML! Moving GIFs of doom! Wisdom teeth attack!

Not the best monday! :-D

Whirly is now big enough to Reach Guinea Pigs Inside Cage.

This is very cute. It's also very scary.

Sunday afternoon has so far been spent with her standing beside the cage, one hand dipping in every so often, with screams of "Ambuuuuuuuuuuh!" followed by "Woh-woh!" every time Amber escapes her and she turns her attention to Rolo instead.

Natasha is whacking me with Angelica's beaker every so often, as well as clonking it together with a plastic turtle and squealing in surprise.

I need to do a proper update on what's been happening soon but I wouldn't really know where to begin! I will think on that while I ponder why Rolo appears to be trying to eat Amber's fur. Hmm, an interesting sunday evening snack and no mistake.

I can't believe I forgot it was Friday 13th yesterday! I *love* Friday the 13th. Damnit :(

Happy Valentine's day everyone!

Wanna be my valentine? *puppy dog eyes*

Something I've been loving lately is that 80s-inspired Virgin Atlantic advert, and not just for the highly-attractive air hostesses.

If I could go and live in that advert I'd be a happy lady!

80s fashion... 80s music... Wimpy... Ahh, all my favourite things!

The only thing I'm not so hot on is that the flame-haired lady on the side of the plane at the end (who incidentally looks a bit like Fergie) freaks me out when she turns and winks.

That's one plane I could have definitely nightmares about :-/

One of the most interesting things for me about reading back through my whole LJ was the fact that some things have gone full circle.

Back at the start of my journal, I was only working a few hours a week so I spent much of my time finding seemingly pointless ways to fill my time. One of my escapes was watching kids' TV. Dick & Dom every weekend, hours of preschool nonsense during the week. It used to give me something to rant and dribble about when I wrote online and to keep my mind busy when I wasn't doing so well.

Six years have passed and here I am, watching Dick & Dom, and following it up with Balamory and the Tweenies, except now I'm watching it as a passive observer with two small but very strong-minded girls. (Well, the pre-school bits I am... Dick & Dom I still watch for my own amusement!)

I am 6 years older and I have experienced a whole wealth of changes in the years in between.

And yet I still have an overwhelming urge to sing rude words to the PC Plum song.

Older, maybe. But no wiser!

One of the unfortunate things (for you!) about my return to LiveJournal is that I will finally be writing myriad kids TV rants which have been brewing since Angelica discovered the joys of Mister Maker et al last year.

She's currently watching Me Too, a poor man's Balamory which includes a song where a man says hello to a plank and sings about how much he loves his train. The men in white coats will be along any minute.

Still, it keeps Whirly amused for a while so I'd better now complain too much.

Now, if only she'd let me watch Nuzzle and Scratch...

That was quite a journey...

Over the last few days (five, to be precise) I've been working my way through reading my whole livejournal. I'm really serious about getting back into writing here but it's been so long that I had kind of forgotten how.

I began with some housekeeping, trimming away communities that I wasn't really that interested in any more. Then I looked at my profile and thought how little still applied and took it away to reword when I can get some quiet time to think about it. Finally I read everything. I've been too tired for a lot of typing so reading fitted the bill perfectly.

It was hard, actually. My LiveJournal covers such a large period of my life, so many ups and downs. It was a culture shock to see where I began and see how much I've grown.

Not grown *up* though :)

*

I kind of need a reintroduction to all of this, is that makes sense. I'm going to try to write every day, even if it's just a sentence or two, to get myself writing again. I'm planning to give my LJ a makeover and possibly a name change too. I'm toying with a couple of possibilities but I've not decided yet ;-)

I'd also like to know...

1. Who's still here?

2. Did I know you under this LJ name before or have you changed it over the last 2 years?

3. How are you?

4. What's been going on in your life?

Update me please! :D