Not quite a calendar month since my last entry but running a little late never the less! At least I can blame it on the time of year, 3 birthdays and Xmas makes a rather manic last couple of months of the year.

Life has been a bit strained lately, physically and emotionally draining and I'm hoping that the end of the year may bring some closure, whilst the new year will bring some clarity. I have a lot to think about between now and then for sure but I'm confident things will be easier then. At the moment I seem to have so much on my plate that sometime I just feel like doing nothing but hide away and this week is certainly one of those times.

Once again, the Navy interrupted Petes leave. We got a call telling him that he was to fly out and meet the boat. It's only a few weeks and they're currently on their way back home for Xmas (fingers crossed) but the timing is a bit shitty. It's the second time he's tried to get the hallway decorated and been called back early. Hopefully I'll get the painting done before he comes home but the wallpaper will have to wait....again! Such a shame because it's the first opportunity that he's had to take his untaken leave for four years and once again it's interrupted. Oh well, life in a blue suit eh? The other drawback though is missing Emilys birthday.

....my little Einstein is six today (or 'almost seven' if you listen to her). We have a little party planned for this evening with a few family members coming round but nothing too crazy. Luckily none of the little ones are home til 6 so i've got plenty of prep time for it. It's been a mad rush of it today as everything was put on hold for pay day and so today it's been sorting bills, getting presents, food, road tax and starting to switch my attention toward Christmas.

With money tight, the kids won't be getting much, although that doesn't worry them in the least but I'm hoping that this time next year we'll be in a much better position although we will have to get a new car next year as Billy Bongo is becoming more unreliable.

It also looks like Pete will be working Xmas day which means he will probably leave here at about 8 on xmas morning and won't be home til around 9ish on Boxing day. That is going to feel a bit strange. I'm in two minds as to whether to postpone everything by a day although I don't think the girls will let me get away with that one.

I started pulling my scrap stuff out last night. I made a few simple cards for Christmas just to ease myself back into things. I remember how it was a way of helping me unwind so I'm hoping to do a bit more over the coming weeks. I'll post some bits hopefully this week.

The girls all seem to be doing well though. I had my first brief meeting with Freyas form tutor at school which was just an informal five minute thing to see how they had settled and when I walked in he said 'Freya really stands out'. He could tell by the fiery look in my eyes that he then needed to add...'in a good way'! She's enjoying it (although not the amount of homework), has made great friends and is generally loving being at the comp. Her work has been excellent and she's got a bronze commendation for the amount of commendation slips she's received so far plus a postcard sent home from one teacher praising her work she's done in her lessons. I'm really proud of her as I set the rule before she went that during the week she gets her head down and keeps on top of things leaving the weekends mostly free and she's stuck to that.

She has been going out weeknights if she's up to date with her homework and has been darting between the two youth clubs, talking about boys constantly and explaining to me what's cool and what's not (although purely by me saying 'cool' is probably 'uncool'!) She certainly had a good weekend last week as I took her and a friend to watch Lily Allen in the Pavilions. Considering Ms Allen was suffering from laryngitis she gave a top notch performance. Then on Sunday she went with her friend to watch New Moon or whatever it's called.....I dunno, I haven't even watched Twilight!

A couple weekends ago we went to the China Fleet for a HMS Torbay family get together. My friend Kath was a star and took the girls in the swimming pool for me (bathing suits aren't something you'll see me in in the near future). Natasha managed half an hour before deciding she wanted out, Emily lasted a half hour after that which surprised me as she's a real water babe.

Whilst I got the little ones dried and changed, Kath made Freya swim lengths using only her legs and that seemed to push her somewhat....she'll do it again if I tell her it will give her buns of steel! After all that hard work it was a gorgeous carvery and the kids cleaned their plates. Then off to work off some more calories at the park and on the bouncy castles.

So off I go to get the food and decs ready for tonight...who knows, maybe even squeeze in a couple more cards?!

OMG!

You know the blog that I found the other day where I entered a photo of Emily in her Little Miss Sunshine outfit? Well I got placed 9th out of over 300 and among that are professional photographers too!

How pleased am I? I'm gonna grab myself one of the girls sticky stars and wear it all day! I even get a special blinkie to put on my blog! COOOOOOOOOL

The hangover...

not just from last night (and to be honest thats more to do with tiredness than alcohol as I behaved impecibly again) but from the whole half term. It's been a crazy one certainly.

There has been so much going on what with birthdays etc. Freya had Paige down to sleep the middle of the week for a couple nights. They both went to the local youth club...a different one from where Freya normally goes but they enjoyed themselves and seemed to have fun catching up. Watching them get all dolled up to go out was quite amusing too.

Shame they seemed to have a bit of a barny before she left though when they were coming out of swimming which I didn't find out until after I'd dropped Paige off. What is it with girls?

Then of course it was all prep for the Halloween bash. Myself and Pete (well, mostly Pete) did our pumpkins on Friday afternoon and then Freya did another on Friday night. It's Petes first go at carving as he's missed the last few halloweens but I loved them all...hidden talent there I think.

Freya did the vampire biting the womans neck one, although you have to get your eyes to go lazy to see it...or at least I do. Cracking job though and I know she was really proud of it.

We stayed up on Friday night to get the playroom 'spookified' and did a great job. We had all sorts of nastiness hanging from the ceiling, cobwebs, spiders, spooky music, smoke machine, gravestones and stuff and went to bed happy knowing the kids were going to love it. I also covered the walls of the hallway in fake blood....luckily we're decorating it next week so it wasn't really an issue...just a moment of madness.

I did take plenty of photos but don't like to upload ones of the girls friends unless their parents are ok with it and as I haven't asked permission i'll err on the side of caution. But we had a fab time with Emily saying 'This is the best halloween party EVER' several hundred times during the course of the evening.

Myself and Pete were a zombie bride and Death. Pete did have a voice changer thing but it was absolute pants and we disposed of that pretty quickly. I even relented and had my photo taken......urrghhhhh!

The girls all looked great and I'm so pleased I got decent facepaint as it was so much easier to do. Not that I'm an artistic genius...far from it, but it certainly looked better than previous years efforts. Freya just wanted to look a bit dark, so we kind of did her make up like Pink in the 'Please Don't Leave Me' video where she goes all weird! She looked very dark but funky.

Emilys facepaint was probably the best though. I was really pleased with hers and she looked great.......at least until the apple bobbing where it all came off and she looked a bit streaky.

Natasha on the other hand had to be a 'beautiful witch' and refused to have green facepaint...it had to be pink, white and glittery! I just do as I'm told. She did look adorable though and the night has certainly taken it out of her as she's currently next to me zonked out and snoring on my bed.

We played hangmans donuts, dress the mummy, balls in a cup and apple bobbing. The kids all made their own toffee apples and decorated them to take home with them along with their goody bags of gruesomeness.


My sister, Sheree and her chap Jay turned up with the neice and nephew. Sheree looked a little too sexy to be scary and she lost her wig later in the night to Natasha.

As for Jay......I'm still trying to work out what his painted face reminds me of....i'm sure it's some character from a computer game...some kind of weird ghost ghoul thing! Mind you, he looks better here than he did first thing this morning!

Freyas friend Kate arrived and they took the younger ones trick or treating whilst we cleared up after the school friends had all gone home. When I say 'clear up' I mean that in the loosest possible way as I'm still dealing with the fallout now. They returned with stocked up goody bags and enough sweets to see them through at least til Xmas.

Come 7.30, it was just us, my sis, the cousins and Freya's mate. Sheree brought over a pinatta (not sure of the spelling but as this is something completely alien to Europeans I'll assume you'll let that one slip!) This was apparently going to be a sedate pinatta as you pull strings rather than bash the poor thing to bits with big sticks......

....however, that did not go to plan as as soon as the sweets started raining from the skies there was the inevitable scramble of kids on the floor, diving into them as if they hadn't seen a sweet in their life! Flailing arms, legs, bumped heads and tears later it was time to open the bottles and fire up the PS3 with the singstar.

The house today is eerily quiet. Everyone is knackered. The rest of the family have gone home and although most of the mess is gone, I'm sure to be finding Halloween confetti for the next week or so. Freya is finishing off some homework for the week and Pete is probably mentally preparing himself for the amount of decorating he has to do over the next few weeks. The headache is starting to kick in and so it's definately an early night here tonight.

So it's off to get the uniforms pressed for the morning and finish the last of the housework (at least downstairs anyway) and hide the mountain of sweets so that the kids don't try to eat them all in one go.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween. x

Happy Halloween from the Farrells......enjoy!

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Party number 1.....

...of this week is over. Natasha turned 4 yesterday and we had a lovely little tea party. Was only a small affair this year what with the big Halloween bash coming up on Saturday and another 2 birthdays in the next four weeks. Saying that, little Miss Mayhem (for that should be her new name) had a fantastic time, with some great presents, me butchering her with facepaint and the cake that she wanted (even if the mermaid WAS blonde).

She did a great job on the candles though and blew those out in a oner. Not the greatest photos I know, but I just love the expression on her face in the second one!

She seems to have taken a shine to the little Ponyz toys that she played with at her cousins house so she got some of those and a Barney DVD (what is it with that purple monstrosity that kids love so?). She also got a barage of gifts from the family......her toy Dyson being a favourite although I didn't manage to get a photo of that last night as it was a bit chaotic but will take some more later.

I bought proper facepaints for the first time last week in prep for Halloween but thought it would be a good chance to have a little play before the party. What was confirmed was my complete lack of artistic ability! A very wonky butterfly on poor Natashas face. Stupidly i'd done the outline first and then managed to smudge everything doing the rest. But I guess it'll take practice......and anyway, Natasha thought she looked great ..... possibly only because of the glitter.

Emily's wasn't as hard to do as she just wanted some trailing flowers so there was at least a little more room for error. Thank goodness that I don't have to be quite so precise with the Halloween face painting! Again though, kids are luckily easily pleased and Emily loved it.......in her eyes I am Michaelangelo!

So another birthday over, Robs in a fortnight, Emilys in 4 weeks and then Xmas! Credit card is about to take a hammering I think.

Half term has started and again it's no let up of activity. Today is a bit of a slow one although Em has a friends party to go to this afternoon. Tomorrow I'm picking up Paige who's coming to stay for a couple of days. It's been a while since she stayed, a couple years I think and now that Freya has a little more of an outside social life she can't wait to show Paige around and introduce her to some of her friends.

She wanted me to take some photos of her yesterday as she didn't like the profile pic she had on MSN so I took a couple shots and I adore this one. I'm definately going to get this one blown up and put on the wall. It's strange how she suddenly looks so much older than she is. Scary in some ways. All she has is a little mascara on and yet she looks about 16! Or is that just me panicking?

It's been a nice few days here. Pete and I managed to escape the kids on Sunday to go to the cinema to see the new Saw movie. It's been slated a bit although I still enjoyed it, then we went for a bite to eat in Old Orleans where my eyes were definately bigger than my stomach. Now that the girls are a little older, it's nice that babysitting isn't so hard to come by. The last few years have meant very little home time for Pete and we seem to be making the most of this 10 weeks home so far. I know it won't be too long til he's back at sea again......life in the armed forces eh?

Talking of which.......has everyone got their poppies yet?

A new challenge......

that I thought I would give a go. Can't even remember where I saw this blog but as it's portraiture photography that I'd like to learn, I thought this would prove a very helpful little website!

Well, the challenge for this week (week 42) is Halloween or some kind of dressing up photo where the emphasis is on the face. Well, as our Halloween bash isn't until Saturday, I thought about this photograph of Emily that I took for World Book Day last year. Seemed like a contradiction at the time....Em going as Little Miss Sunshine, however her little sister has taken over the title of 'Farrell Household Resident Misery Arse' so it's a little more apt now!

Anyway, today was Natasha's birthday so I will be back on tomorrow to add some photos taken today. Finally got the camera out which hasn't seen the light of day for the past few weeks!

X

Half Term madness begins....

...and there is so much to do! It's been so nice having Pete home though as this time of year is so hectic. Tomorrow is Natasha's birthday and the cake is bought. I'm running out of original cakes from Waitrose though unless I start buying the £50 ones which, let's face it...isn't going to happen. Not with 3 birthdays in the space of 4 weeks on top of hurtling towards Christmas.

So this year, Natasha has picked the mermaid one but when we went to pick it up yesterday, all hell broke lose because the mermaid was blonde....oh well, can't please them all. If I had a penny for everytime i've told her that her birthday this year will be cancelled in the last week i'd have at least 20p. OK so that's not a lot in monetary value....but you get my drift. She's just become such a whingebag over the past month or so that I'm glad she's still at nursery this week!

Tonight, I'm leaving the brady bunch in the hands of my sister as myself and Pete are off to watch Saw VI, which by all accounts has been slated by all that have watched it so far. However, as going out to watch it means having a bite to eat afterwards (and no doubt several cocktails) and being child free for at least four hours, I wouldn't care if I was watching a wall dry for two hours first.

We seem to have gotten everything ready for the big Halloween Party next weekend. It's the first time in three years that Petes been home so we've pushed the boat out a bit with it this year. Perfect that it's on a Saturday night so we've got the kids party til 7...then the adults take over. Not only drunken singstar...but drunken scary singstar courtesy of the voice changer that comes with Pete's costume.....should be an interesting night.

I've managed to do a little crafting, although all in the cause of Halloween. Got all the bits out to make the invitations and i've got a few other titbits to make before next weekend. I'm hoping it may give me the buzz again that's been missing for a while.

Of course, I'm also trying to get stuff planned for Xmas, and not being the kind of girl who likes trawling through Plymouth in the cold (am I female?) that means being cosy and warm, infront of a PC, placing orders with various establishments online (and smiling as I rack up the airmiles which someday I may get round to using!).

Freya's drama production was a massive hit and (biased or not) she certainly stole the show. A couple years ago she was a very shy and quiet girl and now she looks completely at home on the stage. During the interval everyone was talking about her performance....it's the second comedic role she's had and she was really funny. I can't wait now for the DVD to come out.

Talking DVD's, the new Pink concert comes out in the next couple of weeks so thats on pre-order for Freya for Xmas although I may have to check it out first....obviously only as a responsible parent! I've also ordered her some living dead dolls although one won't be available til after Xmas so I'll put that back for her birthday. It was a must buy though as she played the Mad Hatter in her production

......Living Dead Dolls eh? Think my daughter is turning Emo! I blame my creepy sister. Mind you saying that, she went to her youth club on wednesday in fishnet three quarter length tights, black shorts and a neon green tutu......I thought i'd fallen asleep and woken back up in the mid 80's staring at myself....she even had lacy fingerless gloves and loads of bangles....all she needed was a fake mole and blonde hair ala Madonna circa 'Get Into The Groove'.

So not too photo heavy today. Although I will leave you with a little collage done by the talented photographer that was Emily. Packed with her dads old instant, she had to photograph her journey to school for Walk To School Week and then submit it for a competition...shame the email address for the competition didn't work but I was really proud of her efforts so am thinking of letting her have the old camera anyway. Believe me when I say that every photo turned out better than Freya's efforts when she took the same camera to her Isles Of Scilly Trip and not one photo was comprehensible!

Life getting hectic.....

....but then again at this time of year I suppose it's to be expected. But if I didn't have my diary (or several of them if truth be told) then I wouldn't be able to tell you whether or not I was coming or going. Hopefully my auntie Susan will wrestle with her technophobic demons and get on here to see some of the photos from her daughters wedding last weekend so excuse me for having a photo overload but it's just incase she gets to see them here and tell me if she wants any emailed up to her to print off.
























Emily also had a first last weekend (guess it was a weekend of big firsts!). She lost her first tooth. As it was quite late on the Saturday and I had little change left I told her to keep it safe until the following night when we'd leave it out for the tooth fairy. Well, that night never came as Emily (and I'm sure it is ONLY Em that could do this)......swallowed it! Yup, she decided she'd try to put it back in and swallowed it instead. Well, I couldn't imagine the tooth fairy would want to go anywhere near it if it did make an appearance (and I decided not to wait for the appearance either) so she has been warned that swallowing her teeth will not make her wealthy and has promised not to try the same trick again.



I did mention that it was my birthday last week and I had a lush chocolate cake from the girls in the morning (yup chocolate cake at 7am......good eh?) and a new bead for my troll bracelet along with slabs of chocolate everywhere I looked.



Later in the day I also had a nice delivery from Interflora of some gorgeous flowers and yet more chocolate (needless to say there hasn't been much weight loss in the last couple of weeks).

Sunday was a bit of a blur, with getting all ready for Pete's homecoming. He came home late Monday afternoon and was surrounded by girls demanding hugs and kisses. The jet lag certainly kicked in though and he was a gonner til gone midday on Tuesday. Strange to think that he's literally home now for about 10 weeks but having been given a 'to do' list as long as his arm it'll keep him out of mischief (and the beer fridge).

So we celebrated his first weekend home with a lush meal at Yukisan and pushed the boat out with some oysters thrown in. I realy should take my camera next time I go as the way they present the food is gorgeous. I've always resisted the authentic Japanese sit down tables though as I'd never get up again. I do love this place and it's so special. We're blessed to have two Japanese restaurants now in Plymouth and I've eaten at both. Koishii is really good too and the food was delicious but the menu is less extensive. I will however say that the staff at Koishii were so friendly when we went.

This weekend we also had the sponsored Pom Pom walk to raise money for Devonstar Twirlers. Despite it being a bit on the windy and chilly side, the girls did themselves proud and the rain only first appeared after we'd finished and ended up in the park. Can't wait to see how much we raised.

We had our first training session since moving to the new hall in Ernesettle and what a difference. We now have a great hall with loads of space and plenty of height. I took advantage a little too enthusiastically and have only now begun to be able to walk properly again but each week I do hurt a little less. I'm going to take the camera along with me this week and get some more shots of the girls for the web page. I also got my troupe tracksuit which looks great and I've bought one to put back for Emilys birthday next month.

The onslaught of birthdays began last month and now we have Natashas, Robs and Emilys all before Xmas.........me thinks it's going to be an expensive couple of months. Especially as I'm now saving madly for course fees.

Freya is up to her eyeballs at the moment with drama rehearsals. She has a full dress rehearsal infront of a couple local schools today and then the big performances are tomorrow and Thursday night. So I'm off to see her tomorrow and to be honest I can't wait for it to be over and done with as this has taken a hell of a lot of time in rehearsals.....I'm beginning to think of Freya as some strange ghost type figure who occasionally occupies the front bedroom...we hear her but never see her!