Me and the Manning Men (well, 3 of them)

Earlier on last week, Seth mentioned that his brother Luke would be working in London on Friday and staying at their other brother's, Mark's on Friday night so we would be going over there to hang out. It's always nice being with family so after a fairly rubbish day at work, I was quite looking forward to it. When I found out our sister-in-law, Helen wasn't going to be in, I wasn't sure whether I should go or if I should just stay at home and let the brothers have their evening together. Being as though Luke had texted Laura earlier on in the week and said that he was looking forward to seeing "Big Kirsty" on Friday, I figured that it would be okay if I still went. Incidentally, I am very much hoping that Big Kirsty is in reference to me being pregnant and not my size in general! When we got there, Luke was a bit disappointed that I wasn't actually Big Kirsty and in fact, barely even that big. The boys had some Chinese and I enjoyed sitting there listening to them talking. I love seeing the brothers together (minus James of course, as he lives in California), it's not often that they're together that much.

When they suggested watching a film, I was completely gearing up for a man film, which I was fine with. My pregnant self is usually quite tired, so I thought that if it was that bad, I'd just fall alseep anyway :). I was more than a bit surprised when we ended up watching "The Help"! I wasn't even the one who chose it! Although I have to say I was really glad that we watched it as it's a film I had wanted to see for a while. It didn't disappoint - there were laugh out loud moments and also some sad moments. I must say, I did shed a tear or two towards the end. The boys were very good and didn't mock me for it!

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me and I don't have a recent photo of the boys together, so here they are (plus Chris, our brother-in-law and minus James), in all their loveliness!

Mum, Laura and Westfield

While Seth has been so busy studying for his exams, I have been at a bit of a loose end. So a couple of Saturdays, Mum, Laura and I all met up at Westfield Stratford for a girls day out! Laura came down from Liverpool and Mum came down from Norwich, so it wasn't exactly a central meeting point, as I only had to travel for about an hour! Still, we had a great day out. It was like old times with the three of us being together and it reminded me a lot of our holidays together. It was a last minute thing that Laura decided to come too, but Mum and I were thrilled, needless to say!


Remember how I said that I am more than just a bit addicted to pancakes? And no, nothing to do with being pregnant, this is just how I am! Well, I don't think we had been at Westfield for more than an hour before we stopped at a creperie for something to eat! Mum and I both had the pancakes with bananas, chocolate, whipped cream and walnuts. Laura opted for the waffle instead but tried quite a lot of Mum's, I think she had food envy! She made a bit of a mess at the same time :)

Can you spot Laura's face in the top left hand corner?

Laura's nicely decorated top :)

For those of you that don't know, Westfield is a huge shopping centre and it's pretty new. There are loads of shops, so we had a fun time looking around them! We went into Mothercare as I wanted to look at travel systems. We ended up leaving pretty quickly when the sales assistant tried to do the hard sale on us with a travel system that I didn't even like so our only option was to run away!

Lunch was lovely, we went to TGI Fridays and ate way too much food. Laura had us laughing loads as she was telling us stories of people that she plays tennis with in Liverpool. Even though we were still pretty full from lunch, a couple of hours later, we went to YooMoo for frozen yoghurt. I love that place! I had the devilmoo which is my favourite - chocolate frozen yoghurt with oreos and white chocolate chips. It's not quite an oreo overload from Coldstone Creamery but it's still pretty amazing! (Coldstone is where we have gone for ice cream on most of our holidays to the States and oreo overload is my chosen ice cream. I've really been craving it since being pregnant but alas, unless I take a stateside trip, there's not a great deal I can do about that!).

We went to the Nike store so that Laura could try on running shoes. It reminded me of our childhood and our teenage years - I recall spending a lot of time just sitting there as Laura tried on lots of trainers. Times don't change! I think the most amusing thing was when she was talking to the sales assistant about the NIke air hurache, an amazing pair of trainers that we both used to have, only to realise that the sales assistant was about four when they came out. We didn't feel old at all, ha ha! I may have pushed her over while she was trying the shoes on.


At the end of it all, we went our separate ways to get our trains. We walked Mum to her platform and saw her safely on the train then we went to get our tube. It was completely empty so Laura decided to pretend to be a ninja and was having a great time of it.


She stopped once other people got on the train.We were also discussing people who try to look flirtatious in photos and said that this is something that we've never actually tried because we don't see the point and we don't know how to look flirtatious! Laura's comment was to lick your lips and bat your eyelashes. And then I tried to pout. Epic fail on both counts!
Our journey wasn't that long but I was literally crying we were laughing so much. A couple of men sat opposite us on the train and a few minutes later, Laura leaned over and whispered to me, "if we had to marry the men sitting opposite us, I win!" I had an old man who was a little bit scary and creepy sitting opposite me and Laura has a young, goodlooking chap opposite her, needless to say. She then started to look at the tube adverts. One of them said, "the woman of your dreams could be sitting under this ad". Laura commented that it was a shame that we hadn't thought to take pictures sitting underneath that one while the train was empty. We then looked above us to see which ad she was sitting under. It was one for bladder weakness and incontinence. Needless to say, that made us laugh more than somewhat! I think it was the most entertaining tube journey I have had. I think everyone around us thought we were drunk. Reading back on this, it's making me smile as I can remember it all happening but you're probably wondering why on earth we found it so amusing. Again, that's often one of the random things that happens with Lau and I - we find things that really aren't that funny absolutely hilarious! It must be a sister thing or something.

Laura walked me right up to my platform and saw me onto my train before going to get her own, even though she had a lot further to travel. It was such a lovely day out with Mum and Lau, and I love that although the three of us no longer live together or indeed, anywhere near each other, we still manage to see each other and always have a great time.

ik wil pannekoeken!

I know that I am late in writing about this, but I think that pancakes always deserve a post, so, be late I shall!

The title of this post is "I want pancakes" in Dutch. Seth served a two year mission for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Netherlands and he learnt to speak Dutch pretty well in that time. This is pretty much the only Dutch he has taught me. Well, he also taught me how to say "I am a beautiful woman", but when is that ever going to come in handy?! Now, we're not one of those couples who only have pancakes on Pancake Day. Fair enough, we've not had them for a good few months, but we (Seth) would quite often make them on a Sunday evening (usually at my request. Don't judge) and then we would gorge ourselves silly. They are just too tasty! In fact, I have just realised that all of our trips abroad have included pancakes for me. On our honeymoon, I remember having a nutella and banana pancake. I also had a banana and nutella pancake in Amsterdam. And when we went to Paris for my Birthday, I had a nutella and coconut pancake, which incidentally was so sickly sweet that I didn't even end up finishing it.

 I know, shock horror. It goes to show how full up I was. But anyway, I digress.....

Seth and I were both going to be busy on Shrove Tuesday so we decided to bring our Pancake Day forward and have them on the Sunday evening. I just sat taking photos while Seth did all the hard work. He makes really good pancakes! I can actually make them myself (which is in fact a skill that I acquired a few months ago - they used to be awful and just end up in a gloopy mess but now I think they are okay!) but I just let Seth be the masterchef. He does such a good job, after all. We had quite a few pancakes each, I must say! And despite me always having them with nutella whenever I have had them anywhere other than at home, when we have them at home, I'll all about the lemon and sugar. It's the best way to have homemade pancakes.

Seth was hard at work making the pancakes

While I was hard at work, taking pictures of myself..

In case you're wondering, I can actually make pancakes, Seth just makes them better!

And the delicious end result!

20 weeks down, 20 (ish) weeks to go!

Little update for you, for those who are interested. For those of you who aren't, why are you still reading?! :)

Last week Seth and I went for my 20 week scan. I was pretty excited in the run up to the scan as I was really looking forward to seeing our baby again, especially because it had seemed like ages ago since the 12 week scan. My appointment was at 10.45am and I was told in my appointment letter to drink 3 cups of water an hour before the appointment. So I obediently did this as I was getting ready that morning. As we left the house, I had a bottle of water with me and I asked Seth if he thought I should drink any more water, as I didn't really feel like I was that full just yet. Seth laughed and told me that I didn't want to end up wetting myself because I'd had too much to drink. Quite true!

We arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes before my appointment. As we were in the waiting room, a woman and her husband / boyfriend arrived. When she sat down, she was fidgeting a lot and was perched right on the edge of her chair. She hit her husband / boyfriend on the arm when he started to make water sounds. I think she too followed the instructions in the letter. 35 minutes later, my name was called. By this point, I needed the toilet quite a lot and when I had to lay down on the bed for the scan, I had to actually get Seth to help me, for fear that I would over-exert myself (because obviously laying down on a bed takes just that much effort) and wet myself. I am so glad I had been practising my pelvic floor exercises because they were very much needed. The sonographer then left the room for what felt like an hour but in reality was only 5 minutes. And then the scan began.


It was so exciting to see our baby again. I had to kind of shift around a bit so that I could see as the sonographer's arm was blocking my view but after that, all was well! He explained everything that he was looking at and we both found it fascinating! We saw the baby's brain, it's spine, stomach, kidneys, arms and legs, little hands and feet (it really did look like it was waving to us at one point. I think it knew what was happening and it really did wave to us to say hello. It's a very friendly baby), it's brain and it's heart. It was incredible how we could actually see the four chambers of the heart. About half way through the scan I remembered to tell the sonographer that we didn't want to know the sex of the baby. I had been so determined that we wouldn't find out (Seth wanted to know, but luckily he knew better than to insist!), I couldn't believe that I had nearly forgotten to tell him! I think that had we wanted to know, he would have been able to tell us quite easily. Our baby isn't very modest.

I know a lot of people don't like being pregnant but I must say, I am rather enjoying the whole thing! Maybe it's because I haven't really been ill with it. I have had bad headaches and a cold that has pretty much lasted since November, but other than that I think I've been one of the fortunate ones. I found that the first 12 weeks went by pretty slowly - after the initial excitement of finding out that we were having a baby, I wanted to tell people and so it killed me keeping it quiet! I was pretty happy when we could share the news. 12 to around 17 weeks also went by fairly slowly - people now knew I was pregnant and whilst I was still very excited by it all (I may have the baby centre pregnancy app on my phone. Don't judge) I was waiting for something more to happen. Like a growing stomach, or being able to feel the baby move. 17 weeks up to this point have been brilliant - from feeling the first tiny wriggling movements of the baby to feeling stronger movements and kicks and being able to feel it with my hand as well - have been really exciting for me. I'm glad that Seth has been able to feel the baby move as now he can share some more of that excitement too. Not that he's not excited, he really is, but I think it's very different for the husbands as they don't have the baby growing inside of them, so it now feels like he can share it all a bit more. He often laughs at me as he'll walk into the lounge and see me sitting there with my hand on my stomach, feeling the baby move. But he laughs in a nice way, as he will then say how much he loves seeing me feeling the baby move and he will tell me what an amazing mother I will be. He's a good husband!

So, that's my pregnancy news so far. The bump is slowly getting bigger, although a lot of people I know and see regularly are still only just finding out I'm pregnant, so I guess either I don't look that pregnant at all, or I just look fat. All in good time, I suppose! The looking pregnant part, hopefully not the looking fat part. Although I have been craving sweet things a lot more. Like marshmallows, popcorn and coconut flavoured jelly belly beans and Cold Stone Creamery oreo overload. The first two I could do something about, but sadly, unless I go to the States, I can't really do much about the third.

That really is all of my news now. I am a happy pregnant person! Not to sound cheesy or anything, but I must say, I feel pretty blessed. When I know that there are so many people in the world who are unable to have children and who want them desperately, I feel so fortunate to be pregnant. I have occasional aches and pains but I always say to Seth that I will really try not to moan about it because I am lucky to be pregnant and I really don't want to take that foregranted. I just want to enjoy it all.

Photos from Saturday with the family

I had mentioned that when we were at Lin's practising the song for Rach's wedding, some photos had been taken on Lin's camera - evidence of how hard we had been practising. Here is said evidence:

Cait and Lau posing for the camera

We were taking it very seriously. Honestly.

See? Look at how hard we were practising!

Lins and I are clearly completely unaware of what is going on with Laura and Cait here!

Yes, we are weird.

Us posing for Mum, "turn away from me girls, then look at me" (this happened on holiday ALL the time :))

Lots of singing, lots of laughing and being silly. Situation normal!