As twelfth night approaches, we’ve been clinging on to Christmas for as long as we could – and we’ve saved some real festive treats until last!

We’ve crammed in as many friends and family as possible, including a quick visit from Katharine and Emilia, and a trip to Woking to see Marie, Pete and Harry for a delicious pub lunch.  In between courses, Matt and Pete took the children out into the sunny pub garden for a spot of hide and seek to give us ladies time t catch up properly!  Alex and Harry searched hard in the bushes…

And Sophie just ran around like a wild thing looking thoroughly vibrant and gorgeous!

On Saturday morning we hosted an Agar brothers reunion at our place for a couple of hours for a bit more Christmas gift exchange and a lot of playing!  For the first time we managed to get all eight of the Agar cousins in one room together.  It was quite a sight seeing then cousins, aged from 1-13 years old playing together.  Our house suddenly felt very small (especially considering the two eldest are taller than me!)

Alex got on particularly well with his 7 year old cousin, Max.  Here they are in a rare moment of stillness together, Alex engrossed in Max’s game!

We made a vague attempt at a group picture, but the two littlest weren’t keen at all – but here’s the best we managed to get (Sophie wouldn’t go in the picture at all unless I was with her!).  Here’s Sophie, Oliver, Max, Jessica, Alex, Thomas, William and Edward Agar:

As soon as the Agars departed, my friend Jo arrived from Newcastle for the evening.  She was greeted by Dinosaur Sophie, who was modelling one of her favourite Christmas presents from her Auntie Margaret!

After a quiet afternoon of movies and naps, we headed out in the cold to our festive finale – Christmas at Kew Gardens.  I’ve been wanting to go to this for ages, and was so excited to finally make it – and I wasn’t disappointed.  The one-mile trail of lights and music through the gardens was wonderful.  The paths were lit by a range of gorgeous light installations, and at key points, beautiful light and music shows brought the buildings and unusual trees to life.

The children were completely dazzled by it!  They loved watching performers dance with fire!

And had a great time at the quaint Victorian funfair that marked the midway point:

Sophie particularly liked the lightshow on the massive greenhouse which was accompanied by ballet music, and I liked the chandeliers hanging from the great old trees!

It was such a wonderful way to end our Christmas holiday – we’ll definitely go again – and are inspired to visit Kew Gardens again in the daylight to see more.

After a quiet family Christmas, our final days of 2014 were packed full of celebrations, fun and and friends.

We headed up to Northamptonshire for a second Christmas celebration with my side of the family on Boxing Day.  It was lovely getting out of London for a couple of days, especially when the weather was so clear, cold and sunny – it’s a gorgeous part of the country. We enjoyed a trip into Towcester’s excellent leisure centre for a fun swimming trip.  The kids loved the big waves!

When we got back to my parents’ house, my brother and his family had arrived. We spent a relaxing afternoon catching up, exchanging gifts, eating vast quantities of food and playing with the children.

Grandma and Grandpa certainly enjoyed being surrounded by their brood!

Here’s Sophie having fun with baby Rose.  Sophie and Alex were both fascinated by their twin cousins – and haven’t stopped talking about them since!

They are growing up so fast – and keeping my brother and sister-in-law on their toes!

After a lazy Sunday morning, we headed back into London, stopping off for our first family trip ten pin bowling in Elephant and Castle.  Both children were enthusiastic to begin with, but I must admit it wasn’t hugely successful.  Alex enjoyed the first few games, but got bored pretty quickly! Sophie got distressed about losing her bowling ball with every go, and ended up with her bottom lip out for much of the time.  But she did look very glam in her new tutu!!
On Monday and Tuesday we had a couple of quiet days in London.  Christmas is one of my favourite times in the city as its so quiet.  We usually hit the museums and see some exhibitions while most people are out of town – and this year was no exception.  We decided to visit the newly refurbished Imperial War Museum together.  It was really impressive and I’ll definitely go back on my own to explore the exhibits properly, but the kid seemed to enjoy a whistle stop tour around the amazing space.  They loved the planes hanging from the ceiling.  Its a challenging museum for little ones though – pretty tough to explain some of the exhibits to a four year old.

After an all day breakfast in a great little cafe, we parted ways for a couple of hours.  I hired a Boris Bike and cycled along the river to do a spot of sale shopping (and cake shopping) while Matt took the kids home for naptime / movie time.  By amazing coincidence, they bumped into one of Alex’s best friends, Rosita, on the bus home.  She’s lived in the USA for 6 months and literally just arrived home in the country for good!  Their reunion was very very cute!

On Tuesday, we headed East to the Olympic Park. This time Matt had a break and went swimming in the Olympic Park while I took the children for a couple of hours.  We went to the brilliant Discover Story Centre.  We’ve been a few times, but this was the first time where Sophie could really experience it all – and she loved it.  The children ran around the story trail together exploring and climbing everywhere, Sophie hot on Alex’s heels wherever he went.  She’s like his shadow.

The centre always has an interactive experience in their basement, and this year, it features the beautiful books of author, Oliver Jeffers.   We read a lot of his books at bedtime, and the children weren’t disappointed with the immersive experience.  They tried to catch stars, sailed in a boat with a penguin, helped fix a spare rocket and dressed up as some of the characters.  It was such fun!

Once they were tired out, we met daddy for lunch before driving home to run errands around Dulwich to prepare for New Year’s Eve and get the kids into bed before our friends Caroline and Paul came over for a curry!

We had a very busy New Year’s Eve, starting early with a 40 minute queue in our local fishmonger for ingredients for our planned evening extravaganza!  The children were not impressed!

I made up for it with a playdate for them and their friend Anna, and then another reunion with old friends for lunch.  Our friends Catherine and Charlie have been living in Zurich for two years, and it’s been at least a year since we’ve all been together.  So it was a real treat to have a long, leisurely lunch with them all in Herne Hill.  It wasn’t long before Alex and Henry remembered they were firm friends and they were getting up to mischief in the restaurant:

And Sophie made a new friend in Phoebe, who is looking ridiculously grown up at nearly seven years old!

It was wonderful to have our brood together again – we must get to Zurich this year to visit.

When we finally got the children to say goodbye to each other, we had a busy couple of hours getting dinner prepped for New Year’s Eve.  We saw the new year in with friends Caroline and Dave, and their children Sam and Una.  Alex and Sam were very excited about sleeping in the same room, and after the craziness of bathtime with four little ones in the tub, I wasn’t sure we’d get them to sleep at all.  But they were all exhausted, and they all passed out quickly.  Phew!

That left us lots of time to enjoy a great evening of amazing food, wine and conversation – including Matt’s first homemade pasta.  Yum.

We watched the fireworks and then made a hasty retreat to bed.  Glad I did too, as Sophie chose the first day of the year to break her brilliant run of 8am wake-ups with a 6am rise 😦

I can’t quite believe it’s 2015 already – 2014 has flown by.  It is amazing to me that my little baby boy will be starting school this year.  How is that possible?!

Got lots of new year’s resolutions to break

• Less time on my phone – especially when the children are about
• More time with Matt – sort out a regular babysitter so we can go to the cinema again and get away from our laptops!
• Less time working – I don’t want every single evening to be dominated by my work inbox
• And of course the usual – taking better care of myself – less coca-cola and chocolate and much more exercise! We’ll see how that turns out (as I type this, I have both within arms reach!!)

Happy new year everyone!

x

After a somewhat stressful Christmas Eve, with two grumpy children being naughty all day, I was nervous about a Christmas Day with no visitors or plans. Just the four of us.

But turns out it was a thoroughly lovely experience. We’ve had a totally laid back, relaxed Christmas – no obligations or timetables, just us hanging out together. I’m still grinning (although that may be the cheese and fizz I’ve consumed this evening).

We even had a lie in – probably the last one I’ll have for a few years. We didn’t really get up till 8am when the children remembered they’d been expecting an overnight visitor.  And they weren’t disappointed to find two bulging stockings waiting for them. They were mostly focused on whether Santa had brought them chocolate coins – cue a breakfast of chocolate!

Once we’d prised the chocolate out of their hands, they properly explored their stockings finding stickers, mini light sabers, books, stamps and another bits and bobs.

We finally crept downstairs to see if Santa had helped himself to the goodies we’d left him on Christmas Eve.  Alex’s reaction was hilarious to the crumbs and empty cups – he was so shocked and excited!The children got some amazing gifts – thanks everyone – Alex loved his marble run and Sophie adored her toy cake.  We enjoyed a brilliant couple of hours where the children explored their toys and books slowly and quietly together.

Sophie had a tea party in their new rocket tent and tried out her new balance bike, we all enjoyed a family game of Pop-Up-Pirate, and Alex even sat quietly and worked through a Stick Man puzzle book!  It was heaven.  I even got to sit down with a drink and watch some of carols from King’s.

But we didn’t say indoors all day.  It was such a bright, sunny day, we headed down to Sunray Gardens to get some fresh air.  Sophie insisted on taking the balance bike – and did pretty well with it, although made Matt and I run with her all the way!

The children partook of a spot of tree climbing, Alex going scarily high as usual:

Before we headed home for lunch, we tried some comedy camera timer shots.  So here’s Family Agar on Christmas Day 2014.

Unfortunately Alex keeps shouting “Poo” when he sees a camera, so he looks a bit odd!

We had a lot of fun!

We headed home for a full English brunch and some Christmas cake, before a quiet afternoon of movies and napping.  We ended our family day with a roast dinner and the contents of a selection box!  Perfect.

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas xx

The next post in my blog catch up is a glimpse into our lives over the past few weeks – according to the camera on my iPhone! It’s been pretty quiet, with the days short, chilly and dark. But looking back at the photos, we’ve done lots of little things that make me smile to remember them.

We took a trip up to Cambridge to visit friends Helen and Rob, and their four year old son, Angus. Stopping in at the London Olympic Park to break the journey, we enjoyed a fantastic swim in the Olympic Pool together, before heading to Cambridge for the rest of the day. I was surprised at how close Cambridge was, and it was so lovely catching up with our friends, I hope we get back again soon.

We mostly stayed tucked up in the fab new house, but ventured out to their local playground so the children could burn off some energy running around and playing together:

We had a cultured Saturday a couple of weeks ago, dropping into Saville Row to get Matt measured for some new shirts (most expensive part of being 6’5″ and lanky!). Sophie loved all the Christmas decorations in the Burlington Arcade. They both loved the massive mirror in the tailors – I was terrified they were going to do damage to the beautiful building and showroom, so we quickly made our escape!

We wandered down to the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly where the children could explore more freely. They loved the submarine art installation!

On the train home, Sophie and Matt had fun together, Sophie mirroring everything her daddy did. These photos really do make me grin!

What else have we been up to? We’ve baked Christmas ginger biscuits with our friends Sam and Una – and made an enormous mess decorating them:

We’ve put the skills Matt learned on a recent Italian cookery course into practice, making foccacia bread (yum):

We’ve made good use of Sophie’s birthday easel, doing some painting together:

We’ve ventured away from the house to go to “Baby booters”, a local football class on weekend morning’s. Sophie loved it. Alex loved his American Football shirt (thanks Elaine – I think he has a few more years growth in that one!)

We’ve ignored the cold weather and tucked into ice cream in the best East Dulwich parlour:

We’ve gone to toddler gymnastics – Sophie heaven:

We’ve even tried our hands at playing the violin with Auntie Jo!

No wonder I’m exhausted

Hello folks!  I wonder if I’ll have any readers after failing to blog for over 6 weeks – sorry it’s been so quiet from me online.  I’m just coming out of some of the busiest weeks of my life with two massive work projects going live in the past fortnight and two crazy children occupying what free time I have!  But I think I’m through the worst, so the blog will get a bit of love again 🙂

But before I can move forward, I need to catch you up on the last few weeks so I don’t forget what we’ve been up to.  I think it’s going to take me a few posts to get right up to date, so I’d better get started.

With work being so crazy, we’re very behind with our Christmas preparations.  But we’re finally getting into the festive spirit – and the thing that really got me in the mood was our first ever school Christmas carol concert!  I know I’ll probably get tired of attending loads of school performances over the next two decades, but I was ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing Alex singing with his nursery friends.  He’d been practicing for ages and was so proud to have me watch the little show.

All the parents snuggled up in the corner of the playground and watched the three and four year olds sing a collection of Christmas songs, complete with well rehearsed actions.  It was so cute – and so very funny.

The highlight for me was Alex’s Elvis-esque hip swinging dance which was a dominant feature of Jingle Bells – several mums commented on it!

You’ll be delighted to hear I videoed a little bit of it – so we can embarrass Alex when he’s older.  Enjoy!

After the show, we gathered in the nursery classroom where the children received a special visitor:

Of course Alex wasn’t fooled, and announced to his hushed and excited class mates, “That’s not Santa!  That’s Mr Donnelly”!!  No surprising him!

Thankfully, he was more impressed with our Christmas tree.  Neither Sophie or Alex were particularly enthralled with heading out on a cold afternoon to our local garden shop to select a tree (although Alex was excited at having the tree on the car roof!), but they did enjoy getting the decorations out!

Here they are busy with the decorating:

Even a week after it’s been in the living room, they still walk in and are surprised by the tree.  We regularly do a big countdown to switch the lights on!  They are so excited about Christmas, and it’s fun this year with Sophie more aware of what’s going on.  Alex would like a light sabre for Christmas and Sophie would like a chocolate coin (!) – at least she’s easy to please!

It’s late, so I’ll carry on with the big catch up tomorrow, but for now, I’ll leave you with my pair at Alex’s school Christmas Fair:

Last weekend marked Sophie’s 2nd birthday – and I must admit I’m really struggling to believe my baby daughter is two years old already. Years are vanishing in the blink of an eye.

With Alex a massive fan of birthdays, the build up to Sophie’s special day had been lengthy and exciting – with regular practice renditions of “happy birthday” being sung by the pair of them.  Sophie knew to anticipate cake and presents!

When the big weekend finally arrived, we had a wonderful time.  The clocks changed on Sophie’s birthday morning, and miraculously – following a slightly later bedtime the night before and a trip to Pizza Express with their grandparents, both children slept an hour later, so we weren’t impacted by the clocks change at all.  The best gift Sophie could have bought me – an hour of sleep 🙂

We had a fun hour unwrapping presents.  Alex was keen to unwrap everything on Sophie’s behalf, but she did a great job by herself.  They loved Sophie’s new easel in particular.

After a quiet morning, it was party time!  At 3.30pm, our house was filled with 14 little ones – thank goodness it was warm and dry enough to play in the garden!  All Sophie’s friends from her childminder were there plus a few neighbours, and they all pottered around happily together:

Love these pic of siblings Sam and Una:

As it got dark, we served up dinner for the little ones – and they were all so well behaved at the table, quietly munching through pasta, crudites and lots of bread:

After the obligatory jelly and ice-cream, it was cake time.  There were so many children and grown-ups singing, that Sophie was a bit unsure, but she seemed happy to blow out her candles.  She certainly enjoyed the cake – she stuffed so much in so quickly she was a little bit sick – classy girl!

Here’s my beautiful birthday girl – turning into such an independent, feisty lady!

I’m so behind with the blog! I’ve been wrestling with the photo editing / collage software I normally use, and with so many photos to share from the past fortnight, it’s been a challenge. But I can finally share all the snaps from a fabulous weekend of parties earlier in October.

We’re in the middle of birthday party season for the children, with two of Alex’s NCT friends turning four at the start of October. We started our weekend at Arlo’s 4th party.  Alex loved playing musical statues and pass the parcel and had a brilliant time running around with all the other little ones.  Sophie enjoyed polishing off everyone’s jelly and ice cream while they weren’t looking…

After the party, we headed up to Northampton for a night with my parents ready for Freddie’s party in Oxfordshire the next morning.  We made the most of the glorious Autumn sunshine, stopping for a wander along the canals on the way to the party.  Sophie had selected a fabulous outfit of a bright yellow cardigan, pink shoes and thick, long purple wellie socks.  Classy lady.

Freddie’s party was absolute heaven for my four-year-old explorer.  Organised by Little Wild Things, it basically involved the gang of children running wild in a forest for a few hours, completing a range of brilliantly fun and messy challenges!

We searched for bugs under logs and dirt:

Made sticky mud pies:

We swung from the trees:

And built a woodland den:

We smiled all day:

And chased bubbles in a clearing:

Sophie adores bubbles – especially when super big ones pop on her face!

We hung around upside down and giggled non-stop:

And if that wasn’t brilliant enough, we ended the party with an open camp fire to toast marshmallows on!  The children were so well behaved sitting nicely until it was their turn to go up to the fire, although neither Sophie or Alex particularly enjoyed the marshmallows!

Even Sophie got a turn:

We were all exhausted after the party, but had a wonderful time.    I love getting my urban children out into the woods and all muddy!

Alex is entering his fourth week at nursery (or “school” as he likes to say – he’s convinced he’s started school properly!) and he’s taken to it like a duck to water!  He’s going five mornings a week to Bessemer Grange – the school we hope he’ll go to from next year.

Here he is with his morning nursery classmates – can you spot him?!

The nursery post pictures occasionally which is wonderful as sometimes it can be hard to get Alex to tell us what he gets up to!   Here’s clearly been doing some exploring and bug hunting:

And building forts for dinosaurs!

But occasionally, we do get a bit of an insight into what he’s learning and doing every day – mostly in the form of new songs!  I’m loving hearing him burst into new songs, including:

• A phonics song to the tune of “Who let the dogs out?”
• A days of the week song to the “Adams Family” theme song
• A brilliant alphabet song about letters coming to tea and “Z doing all the dishes”

He’s regularly coming home with reward stickers, which generally seem to be given to him for helping with tidying up and occasionally for good counting.

On the downside, his white polo shirts are taking the brunt of the creative element of his nursery activities – coming home covered in mud and paint.  I’m losing on average one polo shirt a week – need to get some better stain remover!

More formal phonics learning is getting underway, and I have to go to a class this Friday on how to keep Alex’s “home learning diary” and some tips on guided reading.  Matt and I both glowed with pride at Alex’s very first written school feedback in his reading diary – “Alex has great letter recognition and letters/sound correspondence”.  Yay for Alex!

They’ve just started doing a sound a week, so we spent the weekend carefully selecting something for him to take in that starts with an “S”.  He settled on a photograph of his sister Sophie (after we persuaded him that he couldn’t actually take his sister to nursery) and a selection of stones!

So far he seems to be behaving himself – fingers crossed that continues!  I think Jacqui gets a slightly hyper Alex for the afternoon when she picks him up – I guess he uses up his good behaviour quota for the day in the classroom!

Yesterday was the day Alex has been anticipating for weeks – his fourth birthday! He was so excited the night before, having counted down the sleeps for the past week, that I was worried that he couldn’t sleep. But he was good as gold, and stayed in his room until 7am.

He came running into our room and immediately spotted the big pile of presents (although frustratingly completely ignored his main present –  a lovely new red bike!).  So while Sophie attempted to climb all over the bike and pull off all the ribbons I’d decorated it with,  Alex focused on the wrapped presents.  He was delighted to find some new train track and a diesel train, some DVDs, books and a maze puzzle book.

After a special birthday breakfast of croissants, Alex turned his attention to his new bike and realised it was actually quite cool, particularly when decorated with bright “spokey dokeys” (thanks Uncle David and Auntie Sarah!).  He was so keen to have a go, that he decided to ride it to nursery.  Here’s the gorgeous birthday boy in his nursery uniform raring to go:

Quite soon after this, he discovered that not only does his new bike go significantly faster than his old one, but it has substantially better brakes….  It was slightly traumatic watching him go straight over his handle bars within minutes of setting off – but an enormous relief to see how well his helmet functions!  Straight back on it, we managed to get to nursery with no further mishaps.  Phew!

I think he had a fun birthday at nursery (where he got another good behaviour sticker!) and at Jacqui’s (where he shared a birthday cake with his little friends).  He was certainly on a sugar high at bedtime!

Today, we carried on the celebrations with his birthday party.  We held it in the sports hall at a local school who brilliantly offer bouncy castle parties for little ones.  And best of all, they set everything up for you and even tidy up afterwards!

So Alex, Sophie and 20 of their friends had a complete blast running around for an hour in the big space:

The bouncy castle was a huge hit with everyone:

And the bouncy slide made it even better!

Here are just a few of our guests getting stuck in!

After an hour, we called the very hot and tired children over for lunch and silence descended as they all tucked in:

Alex’s favourite moment came right at the end – as we brought out the cakes.  Not entirely sure why, but I decided to bake them myself this year.  It took a day off work, but I just about managed to make Octonauts cake with recognisable characters on it!

Alex’s face was a picture as everyone sang to him and he blew his candles out.

Safe to say, Alex had an amazing time –  he got so hot and sweaty running around, I was worried he was going to make himself sick, but thankfully not!

After the party, we headed home to celebrate the past four years (and our wedding anniversary!) with some wine in the garden with friends and family.  All in all, a thoroughly lovely day resulting in two very tired but happy children.

I can’t believe Alex is four – here he is on all his birthdays.  I’m such a proud mum!