Sapphire's baptism and recent events

This last Saturday, we were up with Seth's family as it was his niece, Sapphire's baptism that afternoon. The whole day was really lovely, we had a bit of a lay in (always much needed, especially because my 37 week pregnant self is finding it hard to sleep these days!) and when we got up and got ready, we were just hanging out with the family. Between all of the brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, nephews and nieces, there are so many of them that it's always really nice just chatting to everyone!

As everyone began to get changed for the baptism, Seth and I went up to our room to get changed and we noticed that my dress wasn't there. That would be because it was hanging on the wardrobe door at our house. Due to some miscommunication I had thought that he had packed it but alas it was not there. Usually it wouldn't have been a massive dilemma, I would have just borrowed something from one of my sisters in law, but my rather large stomach made that a but difficult! Luckily we managed to leave with enough time to swing by Mothercare, where I managed to find something to wear (I think Seth left my dress behind on purpose because he actually just wanted to buy me something new!) and we got to the church with about 5 minutes to spare.

The baptismal service was lovely, Sapphire was smiling throughout and looked so happy! Laura (her Mum - just in case you ever get confused reading this, Seth and I both have sisters called Laura - this Laura is Seth's sister) and April sang a lovely song. They were both really nervous and I have no idea why as they sang beautifully! When it had all finished, we headed back to the Mannings for food and to play. Well, the kids played, as there was a bouncy castle in the back garden. It was such a nice day and really lovely to be able to spend it with Seth's family. Sadly, even though I took my camera, I didn't take any photos of the weekend - sometimes, it's nicer just to soak it all up and enjoy it rather than take pictures of it all!

In other news......

Last week I had my grade 5 piano theory exam. I have no idea how I did, all I know is that it was a lot harder than any of the past papers that I had done when I was practising, so I am hoping that I have done enough to pass! I worked pretty hard in the run up to doing it and it was a bit of a "crash course" in piano theory - I only started to have theory lessons at Easter time, so I'm just glad that I even managed to take the exam! I know I've put in the work though so now I will just have to wait and see what happens. Apparently it takes around 6 weeks to get the results. My which time, this little one should be here:

This photo was taken at 36 weeks

Crazy thought! And in terms of baby news, all is going well. I am starting to feel quite heavy and walking is getting to be harder and harder. It's funny because before I was pregnant, I would see or hear certain things and promise myself never to be like that. I would see pregnant women waddle and I was determined that I wouldn't. Whilst I can still manage to walk without waddling, since the bump has dropped, it is getting increasingly hard to walk normally! I would also see pregnant women with their hands on their bumps quite a lot. I would sometimes wonder why they did that, as they know that the baby is there. I have become one such person on many an occasion and I have discovered that we do it for the following reasons.

1. It is fun to feel our babies moving around. It's pretty amazing to know that there is a little person growing inside you and why not make the most of it while it lasts?
2. The baby can feel it when you touch your stomach so it's nice to have that contact with them. Seth always tells me that this does not extend to poking them to get a reaction though. Or shining a torch on my stomach to see it reacting to light, but that's a whole different matter.
3. It stops you from hurting your stomach when you walk into things. Point 3 is a very important one. I can't tell you how many times I have overestimated how much space I have and underestimated how big I am, resulting in my banging my stomach on many an occasion and it hurts! It's not like it's an area that is used to being knocked!

We still have a few things to get done before the baby arrives, but I am starting to get restless now. I think the reason for that is probably because my friend Katie (3 weeks ahead of me), had her baby on Friday. She had a little girl, Vivienne Mae. We had been discussing our pregnancies so much the whole way along that now that she has her baby, I want ours to be here! I am so impatient, and I have a feeling that this baby is going to keep me waiting! Mum has decided to keep a chart of everyone in the family's guesses as to when the baby will be born, the sex and the weight. Any ideas, anyone?

my major mishap

I'm not a hugely clumsy person. When it comes to tripping up and stuff, yeah I do that a lot and probably even more so since being pregnant. Seth often reminds me to be careful because I'm balancing for two now. But in terms or general clumsiness, such as dropping things, I'm not too bad at that, or no worse than most people I suppose.

On Sunday evening, we had a dessert party at our house. So on Sunday afternoon when we got home from church, I set about making brownies. Seriously, don't be impressed, they were packet mix brownies. So really, there was not a great deal of making involved, just adding water, oil and an egg. Anyone who was at our wedding knows from all of the speeches that my culinary abilities are far from outstanding and sadly they haven't greatly improved in our almost three years of marriage. It's on my list of things to do.

Everything was going well and going to plan. We had a bit of time before our friends arrived so all was well. I put the brownies in the oven and then as I reached up into the cupboard to put the vegetable oil away, it slipped out of my hand, hit the work surface and the bottle exploded. Everywhere. I called out for Seth to come and help me and when he saw it, he laughed more than somewhat but then helped me to clean up. We were both laughing about it, although I couldn't believe that I had dropped it. Now, when I say it had exploded, the bottle was still intact but the lid had come off. You really wouldn't think it could cause that much mess, would you? Anyone who has been to our house knows that our kitchen is tiny so it wouldn't take much for it to be covered, but it was quite literally covered in oil. The work surfaces (including the one on the other side of the kitchen), the dish rack, the sink, the walls, the fridge, the cupboards, the windows, our orchid, the floors, the washing machine. So pretty mucy everything in the kitchen that could have been covered in oil was. Seth started to clean the floor and then walked into the lounge to do something, which resulted in oily footprints going from our kitchen to the lounge so I was down on my hands and knees with the cleaner, trying to sort it out. Every time we thought that we had finished cleaning, we would look and just see more oil! And it's really not the easiest of things to clean up either. I laughed at how ironic it was that even though I was making packet mix brownies, I still managed to make a huge mess! I think that really it was some sort of punishment because I was taking shortcuts and not making something from scratch. The culinary Gods must be trying to tell me something. Since it happened, Seth will be eating something and he'll say, "this doesn't taste quite right, I think it has oil on it". He thinks it's hilarious, cheeky monkey. Any time I see a spot of water somewhere in the kitchen, I touch it to make sure it's not some of the oil that I had missed. Luckily we had actually managed to clean it all up though!

Despite my mishap, we still had a lovely evening and the brownies tasted quite good too. Thank you Betty Crocker.

SURPRISE!

You thought I'd had the baby already didn't you? Just to put your minds at ease, I've not had it yet but am due in less than 4 weeks now! I know that in reality it will probably be late so I'm trying not to dwell on the whole due date thing too much! Although I say that now, you just watch me getting impatient when the baby takes its own sweet time to make its grand entrance into the world!

On Saturday night, my friend Katie and I headed over to our friend Naomi's house for a girl's night with her and one of our other friends, Emma. When we got there, Katie walked into the lounge first and I heard a huge chorus of "SURPRISE!". They then realised that I hadn't come around into the lounge at quite the same time so they did it again when I walked in which was pretty funny. We thought we were just there for a girls night but it turns out that it was our baby shower! Neither of us had any idea at all. It was such a fun evening with lovely food, great people and fun games. We played a game where we had a little plastic baby in a big block of ice and we had to see whose baby would be "born" first, ie. who could melt their ice the fastest. We also had three clothes pegs each and we weren't allowed to say the names "Kirsty" or "Katie" or to say the word baby and if we did, the person who noticed could steal one of our pegs. Katie was amazing at that game and I think she wound up with around 9 pegs by the end of the evening. People also wrote on baby vest shaped pieces of paper to guess the dates our baby would be born, whether it would be a boy or a girl and how much they would weigh. According to that, my baby is going to be late, it's going to be a boy and will be about 8 and a half pounds. Time will tell I suppose! Katie got mostly girl guesses. She is due 3 weeks before me, so she is 38 weeks pregnant now and I guess due any time really!

I have no photos of the evening sadly as I didn't have my camera with me, but I took a picture of one of the cupcakes:

The eyes are slightly smudged due to me not transporting it home very well! Actually, there was another cupcake on top of that one which is why it is smudged and the icing went a bit funny but I ate that one before I had a chance to take a picture of both of them together, they were really tasty!

People were very generous and got us both some lovely gifts, I feel very spoiled on behalf of our baby! It was such a lovely, unexpected evening and so kind of Naomi to organise it all for us.

Jubilee weekend

Did we all have a good Jubille Weekend? Ours was great, we spent it in Liverpool with Laura and April and Chris. We really wanted to head up to Liverpool again before the baby is born so the Bank Holiday weekend was a great chance to do it.

When we pulled up to Laura's apartment she came out to meet us, the first thing I noticed was her t-shirt.
How cool is that? For those of you who don't know, Laura has called our baby Megatron since she found out that we were having a baby and it seems to have stuck. So now, people in both of our families as well as some of our friends have taken to calling our baby Megatron. As funny and amusing as it is now, I'm hoping it won't stick once the baby is born!

We stayed in the apartment for a few minutes, long enough for Laura to give Seth his Birthday present (the Ocean's films - love them!) and she also bought me a present - a beautiful turquoise bracelet from Fossil. I love Fossil, most of my watches are from there ( yes, I have more than one watch. I think I have 8 actually, 6 of which are Fossil) and I have a Fossil handbag as well. I should work there I think, I would very much appreciate the staff discount. But anyway, how lovely is she for getting me a present too? The reason for it was because it had been really hot and I am pregnant and was finding it difficult. I love that she bought me a present for that, she is so generous!

We went out for a bit of a wander around - Liverpool is a nice city just to wander around and people watch. We then went for dinner and ate ourselves silly - the food there is so good! When we came back to Laura's, we just vegged out and chatted. And amused ourselves by taking lots of photos. Seth put up the air mattress and didn't really move from there for the rest of the evening. Laura decided to torture him by playing a song on youtube that he hates, so he decided to build a fort using the air mattress to block us both out, it was really funny.

As Laura and I were chatting away, Seth was watching a film on TV. We must have bored him because he fell asleep, so like any mean wife would do, I took a picture of him. Then Laura decided to recreate it!

We found it pretty amusing. We're weird like that.

On Sunday we went to church in Liverpool, then we went back to Seth's sister April and her husband Chris's for lunch and to spend the afternoon and evening. It was really lovely to all be there together. April made a lovely roast dinner and she made the most amazing chocolate cake for dessert, it was so delicious! After dinner, we played an epic game of Trivial Pursuit. It was a version I'd never played before, where you could bet on whether or not you thought the person would get the question right, it was really fun. I say it was an epic game as we were playing for about 4 hours!

It was a lot of fun though. Seth won, he was pretty pleased!

On Monday, Laura, Seth and I went for a walk around Albert Dock. I would be lying if I said that we didn't go there just to go to the sweet shop there! They have so much and it's always really busy, I think it must be every child's dream.


Laura bought us all jelly belly beans, I love them. I was craving them earlier on in my pregnancy and she sent me some. I am no longer craving them, I just wanted them, so we all got some. It had to be done.

Once we left there we went up to Liverpool One where they had a "Proms in the Park" outdoor concert. There were a lot of people there and deck chairs were set out for everyone to sit and enjoy the music, so we did just that!

Laura pointing to where she lives, only her apartment is on the other side. 

The music was fantastic, it was really nice to just sit in the sun, chat and take in everything going on around us. Various orchestral groups played during the time that we were there but we found one group particularly amusing. Well, the conductor at least. It seems that her rear was taking on a life of its own while she was conducting, we found it pretty entertaining!

The photo doesn't do justice to just how much Seth was laughing!

We eventally left there to go and get something to eat, then we went back to Laura's to pack up and headed home. It was such a fun weekend and so lovely to get to spend time with Laura, April and Chris. The next few weekends I think are probably going to be spent a little closer to home. I know that the chances of me going into labour early are remote, but just in case it does happen, I would rather not be 5 hours away from home.

Well, that is all for now! I'll keep you posted with any more goings on!

Our weekend with Lin and Steve

A couple of weeks ago, Lin and Steve came down to spend the weekend with us. We had said for ages that it would be really nice for the four of us to have a weekend together and that we would have to arrange something but between Rachel's wedding and Seth's exams, it had been put on the back burner. We were really pleased when we finally managed to arrange it and it was lovely to have them with us!

I say that we wanted the four of us to have a weekend together but it didn't exactly work out that way! Seth and Steve decided to go to the other side of London to a batting cage. I don't think that there are many of them in the country and both of them were quite keen so they did that, while Lin and I went to Lakeside and Ikea. A few years ago we went there together and it became our tradition for a couple of years. Then Sam and Caitlin were born and it kind of stopped, so it was really nice to be able to do it again and just to have some nice girlie time (which also consisted of blended shakes and krispy kreme donuts. sometimes these things just have to be done!). Both of us were actually quite disciplined and we didn't go crazy with our spending! I bought a few pregnancy / maternity bits which were more needful things than fun things, but I still found it exciting. There are times when I still can't quite get my head around the fact that we are having a baby pretty soon!

Being in Ikea was a lot of fun, I love it there and always plan exactly how I would want our (okay, my) dream house to look. They have a way of laying things out there that I just want to buy everything in there. Hats off to the visual merchandising team, they do a good job!

We met up with the boys for dinner. It was hearing about their day and their experience of the baseball batting cage, both of them had slight sunburn and blisters on their hands! (it was a scorching weekend and that was also why I was glad to be in Lakeside and Ikea - normally I love the sun and the heat but being 30+ weeks pregnant, I am finding it a little more uncomfortable than I would usually!) They both really enjoyed it though. I love seeing the two of them together, they get on so well, which of course, both Lins and I are thrilled about.


On Sunday we went to church together then they came back here for lunch and then they left to go home. The weekend went by so quickly but I am so glad that we finally managed to have them down to stay with us.