Happy 90th Birthday...

...to my wonderful Grandad! Still looks a good 20 years younger. Love you Handsome!

We Love Cornwall!

We've just been away for a week in Cornwall and had the best time. We've never been down there before and are now kicking ourselves that we've left it this long and will definately be going again.

The whole place is just so beautiful, especially the coastline:

 We spent so much time on the beaches, the kids especially loved playing in the sand:

 And, as we were staying in Newquay, of course that surf just had to be experienced. Emily turned out to be quite the natural body boarder:

 And there was so much fun to be had, with this probably being the highlight, a nice bit of Beach Sumo:

 I think these purchases summed it up, it's been years since I've had the urge to buy clothing with the name of the place I'm visiting emblazoned on it:

 As you can see, the Gillards had a great time on Cornwall!

Right, better get booked for next year!

Complaint

I'm afraid we've had a complaint here at the Garlics. Lady Tate of Tate Towers writes "why don't you try updating your blog once in a while?". Well obviously here at the Garlics we take complaints very seriously so I met with Lady Tate yesterday to address her complaints; she elaborated that she was '"sick of looking at that bloody bag!" (please see last post readers). Of course I owed Lady Tate an explanation and so she was told that "I've got 2 bloody jobs and 2 bloody kids you know!". Ever the professional editor!

So, what has been happening over here? Well, I've been a busy little bee that's what's been happening! Aside from the doubled up job situation and the doubled up kids going through end of school year stuff, I've been jet-setting around the country. First of all I had a date with this young man:

Courtesy of these 2 ladies:

 Yes after 60 years my mother fianlly decided to get some musical taste and booked some Bon Jovi tickets (really, it's been Barry Manilow and Cliff Richard up til now, I was starting to think I was adopted!). So weekend in London with no kids and wine and Jon Bon Jovi for company? I was there!

Then the weekend after I abandoned my children yet again (:o) for a weekend with these lovely ladies in Whitby:

 It was the annual Leeds Paper Dolls retreat and the weather was glorious and I got tonnes of scrapbooking done. Unfortunately it meant I missed the laying of Rob's Grandad's ashes that Sunday, but Rob and the kids went along and at the time of the service I took myself into Whitby and sat here to remember the lovely man:

Then since that I've been working at my new job, finishing my old one, making and buying presents for the multitude of teachers my kids seem to have, getting a little man ready for big school by meeting his teachers etc. Oh and I threw my back out in the middle of all that so seem to have lived at the doctors and the chemist!

However, it is now the school holidays (help me!) so I will hopefully be able to satisfy Lady Tate's internet time and update more often!

Creating

I came to a very sad realisation this morning.

Undoubtedly the Garlic's number 1 fan was Rob's Grandad. I'd often get emails from him thanking me for the blog. I think, as he lived 200 miles away, it was a good way for him to keep up-to-date with what was happening up here, especially with his much cherished great-grandchildren. Consequently there's been a few posts that I've posted with a 'Grandad would like that' tone about them. This morning I was out in the garden hanging out the washing and just thinking about how much I liked our house and where we lived. I had a quick thought 'oooh I keep meaning to blog about that, Grandad would love that'...and then the realisation hit. :( Grandad (and indeed Nana when she was alive) would say how much they loved the home we built. I thought a couple of weeks ago how nice it would be to blog about our house and how pleased Grandad would be that we agreed with his and Nana's thoughts.

End of an era.

However, in memory of our beloved Grandad/Great-Grandad we shall be carrying on with the posts today and one I think he might like as it features just how fab Emily is!

There seems to have been a lot of crafting round here lately. I was going to do this post about everything I'd been up to but I must start with how fabulous my darling daughter is getting at scrapbooking. She's scrapbooked for a good 2 or 3 years now but recently she has been producing some very grown up layouts. She's been coming up with these all on her own, matching her colours, balancing her LO etc etc and I think she's doing a great job!

Definately the makings of a professional scrapbooker in that girl!

I've done a couple of LOs lately too as my MIL bought me a scrapbooking book for my birthday so have taken inspiration from that. Firstly my Royal Wedding LO:

And a LO about the lily the kids planted for Grandad:

 Speaking of MIL, I've still got a big hankering for the sewing machine and spied a project I wanted to do. MIL is getting a much longed for new kitchen and as said project was for an oven glove (nope, no idea why I desperately had the need to make oven gloves either!) then I thought she'd be the perfect recipient. The original pattern was for a cupcake oven glove but it didn't seem MIL's type of thing but on another page of the same book I found some fab chickens, so a bit of pattern combining and voila!

 Er yes, did get carried away and had a 'need' to make a teapot cozy and apron aswell!

Oooh but I still needed to sew more and those chickens were calling to me. Hang on, chickens? Who do chickens remind me of? Maybe this woman who we just happened to be visiting last week. I feel a chook-related pressie coming on....

Chicken egg cozies! Love 'em!

And I did have every intention of putting the sewing machine away but it's still there with a new project sat on it, watch this space!

Hope the WiFi works up there Grandad! ;)

Creating Ways To Remember

One of the hard things when you lose someone close is how to break the news to your children. Their pain can be worse to witness than what you're feeling yourself. However, we're open and honest with our children and so we've sat them down and explained about Great Grandad.

Emily's old enough to be devastated and was very upset on Friday. We also made the decision to let her decide if she'd like to go to the funeral. We've explained exactly what a funeral involves and she's been so grown up in making her decision to go. In fact, I couldn't be more proud of how Emily's handled this whole situation, she's shown a level of maturity and compassion way beyond her years. What a girl she is!

Xander's been fairly good. We weren't going to tell him, an autistic 4-year-old doesn't necessarily have the right thought processes to understand death. However, we decided to be honest with him as not being could cause more confusion for him. Do you know, he's done great with it. His fish died a couple of weeks ago so we've told him Grandad's up in the sky taking care of Ferb, and that seems to be working for him!

Anyway, I decided that as well as us looking through pictures of Grandad, it'd be good to get the kids involved in something to remember him by. With it coming up to summer we'll (hopefully) be spending a lot of time in the garden, and Grandad always loved sitting looking out at his garden, so that was the route we took. We went out and bought a lily plant. When we came home I enlisted Xander to collect stones to provide drainage for our pot:

Which he did in his wheelbarrow then placed them carefully in the pot:

Then both kids got to filling the pot with compost:

 I put the lily in the pot and the kids patted soil around to make sure it was safely tucked up in there:

And voila, a beautiful lily plant for us to remember Grandad this summer while we're out in the garden:

Hope you like it Grandad! x

New Family Members!

Been a while since we added to our brood and, even though last time we gained a family member it was the one-woman crackers machine known as Cindy, 4 years on we felt mad enough to do it again!

Last week, Ally and Steve gave us their old fish tank. We needed to quiten the kids on the whole 'can we have a dog' thing or even worse from Em 'can we have a horse'! Always fancied some fish so we took the opportunity of a free tank and let the kids get one each.

So, may I introduce the latest Gillards, PHINEAS & FERB:

Cute aren't they? Must say we're already a little attached to them. And for anyone wondering where the names come from and who don't have munchkins and their tv in the house, here's the original P&F:

Pomp!

What a fabulous day it's been to be British. I'm giddy as a kipper about pomp and ceremony and have been waiting 30 years to relive that moment when my 7-year-old self watched Lady Di become Princess of Wales. It was so magical and so when William and Kate announced their wedding date, I was beyond excitement about today!

I was so excited I couldn't sleep last night and was up at 6am watching all those nutters camping out (and secretly regretting I hadn't gone down!). My mum came over and me, her and Em sat in our special t-shirts and tiaras:

 With patriotic nails:

 Drinking tea from my late Nan's china tea cups:

 And watched a bit of history in the making. It was a beautiful ceremony, even Xander watched her walk down the aisle with a smile on his face. Once they were man and wife we cracked open the bubbly:

And Xander celebrated with the Queen:

 Before my children toasted the happy couple:

I just love that my children got to see this. Like I say, I remember Charles and Di's wedding so vividly and it was so magical at that age. OK, so Em got bored half way through and went off to play and when they were pronounced man and wife Xander shouted 'Bogey' at the tv! But, they saw it live and I'm so happy they did.

So, now sat watching the re-run, sad I know but it's not often we get to see a big historic happy event so I'm going to lap it up. Next one, Em's got her sights set on Harry, god help him!

We Love Center Parcs!

We've just got back from a week at Center Parcs and had the best time. We absolutely love it there and this week we had the added bonus of glorious weather. Here's our week in a nutshell:

Lovely scenery:

 Bowling tournaments (mummy lost!):

 Creepy crawlie hunts:

 Rope climbing:

 Learning how to be a premiership football player (let's face it, he has the temperament already!):

 Bike riding:

 Dorito-loving squirrels:

 Dare devil waterslides:

 Hours and hours in the pool:

 Chilling by the pool:

 And most importantly, lots and lots of fun:

Can we go back now please?!

Come On, Follow My Nose!

We decided that this weekend called for a family walk and a bit of fresh air. I'd noticed a few crocuses out at work so we decided to head for flowers. We could have gone to my work but I doubt that would have been too interesting so we headed for Kirkstall Abbey as they always have carpets and carpets of flowers:

 Very pretty eh? Unfortunately the temperature doesn't match the view and it was blooming Arctic out there!

I do like the fact that we live near such an old monument like this:

 It's lovely to look around it and imagine what used to happen there. This time we didn't go in though, that cold air whistling through the ruins didn't quite appeal!

The kids had fun:

 And Xander took us all exploring on a bug hunt with his exploring kit. "Come on everyone, follow my nose!":

 Xander even made notes on what he'd found and drew pictures!

And collected, er, the stones the bugs lived on! Well I supposed it is more humane locking a stone in a tin than a living insect!

So, first 'spring' walk of the year. Hopefully they will start getting a tad warmer from now on, couldn't feel my hands when we got back in the car! We had fun though.