Kidnapped ;)

Last night Emily was "kidnapped" by her friends.  Saturday is Emily's birthday but she didn't know what she wanted to do for it so decided she would just have a quiet birthday this year.  Her friends had another idea!

I love that these girls wanted to do something for Emily and planned a surprise birthday sleepover without Emily knowing a thing. One of her friends contacted me in a private Facebook message to make sure it would be okay for them to go ahead with the plans and to ask me to pack a bag for Emily so she'd be ready to go when the arrived.  They got here at about 9pm (they had a half day at school yesterday and have today off too) and Emily couldn't take in what was going on. I think she was still in shock by the time she left ;o) The girls had brought a blindfold for her so she wouldn't know where she was going and one of the Mum's was ready to drive them to the friend's house. Such fun and I'm so glad she has such a great group of friends.

At this stage we're not sure what the moustaches & sideburns were for but I dare say we'll find out when she gets home.  I bet they'll have had a fantastic time!

xx

Thursday

 

Our Acer is getting it's Autumn colour. Love this time of year!

 

xx

CNBlue

On Saturday Emily and I were at The O2 in London to see CNBlue (A Korean pop/rock band) in concert.  

 

We'd never been to The O2 before but, after reassurances from a friend, I decided to drive rather than go by train and I'm glad I did because it was fairly straight forward.  After parking we had a short distance to walk to get to the venue.

 

 I didn't know they had cable cars next to the Dome.  I'm not sure what they're for or whether it's just for people to be able to go up and see the view?  Not something either Emily or I would enjoy so we didn't try and find out more.

 First view of what was The Millenium Dome and is now The O2 arena.

We were amazed by the number of restaurants we could choose to eat at but as it was only coming up to 5pm and neither of us was very hungry, we settled on TGI Fridays.

After dinner we lined up in our queue waiting for the doors to open at 6pm.  The band came on stage just after 7pm and played for two hours.  It'd been a long time since I'd been to a concert but it was fun and the girls were super excited - there was a fair amount of screaming, lots of light sticks being waved and everybody having a good time.  (I was, however, quite glad to see I wasn't the only Mum there ;) )  Photography was a bit of a challenge but by pushing my ISO to 6400 I did manage to get a couple of reasonable shots which Emily is happy about.  Here are some of the photos.

 

I know that's now been two posts in two days and although I am going to try and start posting more regularly again, I don't know that it'll be every day. However, I do still have the photos from our trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour which Emily and I did at the end of August. Emily did say she'd do a guest post for that one but I haven't edited the photos yet.  Something to look forward to (?).

xx

Dad's 83rd Birthday

My Dad turned 83 on Friday.  I'm sure he won't mind me saying that he never expected to reach this age. However, he's still active and walks into town to get the newspaper every day.  Truth be told, he's probably an awful lot fitter than I am! He's had a few hiccups over the years, health wise, but is still strong and, hopefully, will stay strong and still be here in ten years time to celebrate his 93rd birthday.

 Dad with his three youngest great grandchildren (Alice, Tyler & Alyssa)

Mum had thought they would just have a quiet day but I guess the rest of us thought otherwise. Claire, Alice and I went round in the afternoon to give him his presents, and to take a cake, and when we got there Kay (my sister) was already there and had brought a cake too. Emily came straight from school and Theresa (Kay's daughter) arrived with Tyler and Alyssa soon after.  There was plenty of cake to go round and we had to have the candles for the children Dad to blow out ;)

 Alice was taking it all in and got very excited when the candles were blown out.  Even after they'd been relit and blown out I don't know how many times!

 Dad, Alice & Tyler

 



 My first shot of Alice and her sister-to-be (Claire's bump ;) )

 

I think Alice was more than ready for a slice of cake :)

 

Iain (my brother) arrived later in the afternoon once he'd finished work but unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of him.  (Mind you, having just typed that I realise I didn't get any photos of any adults other than Dad :) ) 

 

Hope you enjoyed the rest of your birthday day, Dad. Love you lots xx