Night out in London

A couple of weeks ago, Laura and Mum were down visiting me for a couple of days. I love having them down with me, especially at the moment as Seth's exams are coming up and he is spending every moment that he is not at work studying for them. Which is pretty rubbish for me and Caleb as we don't really get to see him. However it's also good because Mum and Lau come to keep us company!

On the Saturday, we went shopping at the designer outlet in Ashford (purchases may have been made!). Mum then left on Saturday evening and Laura and I went into London to meet up with a couple of friends, Lorraine and Hedylamar. Laura had served an 18 month mission for our church at Temple Square in Salt Lake City almost ten years ago with both girls. Hedylamar was over visiting from Spain. Laura hadn't seen her since the mission and it was the first time I met her. She is the nicest girl, it was lovely getting to know her. Even though Laura was on her mission with Lorraine, I met her when we were both counsellors for a youth conference and we have been friends since. It was a lovely evening to be in London as it was sunny and as always, bustling. I have been to London so many times and I never grow tired of it, I love it (as you can probably tell from any of my posts that talk about London but I think it's a great city!) We walked through Trafalgar Square to Leicester Square and Picadilly, then went for dinner in a lovely Mexican restaurant close to Covent Garden. As far as I am concerned, it ranks highly as they serve gorgeous non-alcoholic pina coladas - always a plus! Afterwards, we walked through Covent Garden to see the Royal Opera House (I really want to go to see the ballet there one day!) and then headed back to Leicester Square. They have a Haagen Dazs restaurant there, and being as though it's there, it would have been rude of us not to go there for dessert! If you haven't been there before, I highly recommend it! Their menu is a book of all of the different desserts they do. I think I could have quite happily had all of them but thought better of it! I opted for the brownie explosion, which was divine.

I hadn't planned on going out with the girls that night, I pretty much gatecrashed but I am so glad I did as we had so much fun. As much as I love my boys, it was lovely having an evening with the girls!

Me and my shadow

My little Caleb is now 10 and a half months old. Up until a few weeks ago, he still wasn't crawling. Whenever is came up in conversation with people, they said that I should be glad that he's not crawling because once he's on the move, there will be no stopping him. To be honest I wasn't sure if he would ever crawl or if he would be one of these babies that just start to walk. But, a few weeks ago, he leaned forward to reach for a toy (on one foot and one knee, as he does) and just started to crawl in that position. He did it so confidently that it made me wonder if he had actually done it before and I had completely missed it! I thought that the whole reaching for a toy thing may be the motivation he needed to start crawling, as I would often find him crying in frustration with a circle of toys around him from where he had thrown them all out of reach, but with no way to get to them.

I, perhaps somewhat naively thought, that once he started crawling, it would take him a while to get used to it and being able to move around. Apparently not. He is all over the place! It's so much fun seeing him moving around. The cutest thing is that he now follows me around the house. I will leave him in the living room watching cbeebies while I go to my bedroom to put on my make up. The next thing I know, he's peering around the bedroom door and will then crawl over to start rummaging through my make up bag! Then yesterday, I was washing up in the kitchen and when I turned around, he was sitting on the floor behind me, just watching. Again, he had been in the living room before. I love seeing how curious he is, he loves exploring and discovering new things. If I hold my arms out to him and he is on the other side of the room, he will smile, crawl over to me and hold onto my hands as he pulls himself up.

 

We found him trying to climb out of his cot. Needless to say, we lowered it. Then, when I thought he was in the living room, I found him in the hallway, playing with my Toms!

 



 

 

 

In some ways, I miss having a newborn baby to cuddle, but I have so much fun with Caleb now as he's learning more every day.

Wedding

My nephew, Jamie got married at the end of May. I have been meaning to blog about it since it happened but I was kind of putting it off because it was such a great day and there was so much to write about that I didn't know where to start but I thought I should probably finally do it! I'm using my journal to help me write this but I shall definitely be condensing as I wrote 10 pages about the day! So this is a bit more of a summary :).

Jamie is my oldest nephew and I am only three years older than him. Even though I am the youngest of all my sisters, in some ways it doesn't really feel like it because some of my nephews and nieces are so close to me in age and so they seem more like younger siblings. I remember when Laura and I took Jamie to his football game when  he was younger and the coach told him to stop chatting with his girlfriends and to go and play.When Jamie told him we were his aunties, he made him run laps for being cheeky as he thought Jamie was lying. Jamie and I have a relationship that seems to consist of pretty much always ripping on each other. Not in a nasty way though, we both have fun with it and whenever we are together, it's always constant jibing. I was pretty excited when he phoned me in the New Year to tell me that he had just gotten engaged to his lovely girlfriend, Lauren. I had only met Lauren a couple of times (due to me not living in Norwich anymore and conflicting schedules we seem to all find it a lot harder to get together these days!) but she is a great girl, and they are a great couple.

The wedding was held at Dragon Hall in Norwich. It's a medieval merchants hall and it was a beautiful setting for their day. Seth, Caleb and I arrived about 40 minutes early and we saw Jamie as soon as we came in, looking very dapper in his top hat and cane in hand! He was pretty excited, although you could tell he was fairly nervous too (the deep breaths every few seconds were a bit of a giveaway!). We went upstairs to where the ceremony would be taking place, and where Laura was in position at the piano, playing the prelude music. I love that Jamie chose the music, I think in amongst it was music from Harry Potter, the Rocky theme tune and Superman, to name a few. I'm not sure how many of the other guests noticed but it amused us! As you can see, Laura was amused as she was playing. And no, she wasn't playing Pride and Prejudice music at the time, the other music is in front of the book, for anyone who is paying close attention.
The wedding ceremony was lovely. I was watching Jamie's face as Lauren walked down the aisle and he was so overjoyed. Lauren was every bit the beautiful bride, she looked amazing. The ceremony was very personal to them as they had written vows for each other. I don't think I've ever been to a wedding where the bride and groom had done that but it was so beautiful.

My niece Tor (the blonde one) rocking her bridesmaid dress.

Jamie seeing his bride for the first time. 

It's official!

One of the best men, My nephew Ben with Tor

After the ceremony, we all went outside for photos. There's nothing like a family wedding to get lots of pictures of everyone together!

Sisters!

My lovely Mum, known to the grandkids as Grams, Moo, G-Ma and The Don 

Jamie with his Aunties

The reception was fun and in my opinion, I was at the best table in the room - Seth, Caleb and I, Mum, Laura, Deb and her partner Paul, Lin and Steve. It was lovely to be with them all again. You know when you go to weddings and the speeches can sometimes go on and on and on? This wasn't one of those weddings! Lauren's Dad gave a beautiful speech and in it he said how he had started to think about the speech as soon as Lauren was born, so it was 25 years in the making. My nephew, Ben's best man speech was one of the best  have heard, there were no embarrassing stories, which I'm sure Jamie was glad about because I am sure Ben had ample ammunition! He spoke about Jamie and Lauren being there for and supporting one another, it was very sweet. Jamie's speech was beautiful, he, of course said some lovely things about his bride but he also said some wonderful things about Deb and what an amazing Mum she is. Deb was crying and had her face turned away from him and he made a joke that she could at least look at him when he was talking to her. He seemed so grown up, I can't believe that he is now a married man!

Jamie and Lauren came over to our table and had a play with Caleb, which he loved! Lauren held him and the whole time I was chanting in my head, "don't be sick on her dress, don't be sick on her dress!" Luckily he wasn't, and Lauren is so lovely anyway that she wouldn't have made a big fuss even if he had been! Still, I was relieved!
There was a lot of dancing and I am proud to say that, even in my six inch heels, I managed to dance the night away. It was so great to be with my family and get my groove on, ha ha! It has been a while! I was amazed at how easy Lauren made dancing in a wedding dress look, she was dancing away with everyone. It really was such a perfect wedding and it was lovely to see Jamie and my new niece so happy.