Rainy days and Mondays

don't bother me that much.

I don't like rainy days in the summer, but in the autumn, well, you expect rain and I can live with it. It's rained in epic proportions for most of the afternoon and it's still coming down now.

My lovely sister-in-law, E, has just phoned to tell me that she and her boyfriend got engaged this weekend and will probably be getting married next September. We are absolutely thrilled for the pair of them and can't wait to celebrate with them. As luck would have it, we are headed up to them in a month's time to celebrate an important birthday for E (cough, 30, cough!) so no doubt we'll be breaking out the champagne then.

Before then, of course, I have two birthday boys of my own to contend with and one more shortly afterwards. I realised, as I paged through the calendar, that there are exactly five weeks between Dan and Jack's birthdays, with Luke's falling inbetween. Still, given that their due dates were all in the same week (Oct 25th, 28th and 31st) a five week spread of birthdays is pretty respectable! A friend had her third baby boy this weekend and looking at her photos took me straight back to Dan's early days.

I'll be back sooner than usual for a birthday blog for Daniel. :-)

Summer, summer sun shines bright

Except when it's tiddling down with rain! Yesterday's rain was of epic, biblical proportions. The water butt is now full and I can almost hear the apple trees sighing with relief.

Rain however is not much fun when it's the school hols. I can't take them swimming because of numbers, I can't face the cinema with all three of them, ditto soft play. Even walking in the woods seems like a lot of effort, especially as the car boot is stuck shut, which makes taking a pram anywhere a bit of an effort.

Still, we've had two weeks of holiday-away, so a quiet week this week won't have done them that much harm and next week looks a bit busier - we may even make it to the beach hut with Granny, if the rain, rain go(es) away!