A bit of catch up...

So I have completely lost my motivation on the blog front. I've been busy, yes, but I've been lazy. So here's an all singing, all dancing post for you to enjoy. Full of pictures and a bit of commentary, here's what we've been up to over the past month or so.



MOM'S VISIT

My mom came over from the states at the beginning of December for Liam's birthday. She stayed with us for 10 days and Liam loved spending loads of time with his Granny. We went on many adventures, exploring some bits of Belfast that I Mom hadn't seen before.
Here's Granny and Liam on the carousel at the Christmas Markets at City Hall. He liked it for the first few spins and then wanted to get off right and quick. We tried to get him to visit Santa in his Nordic looking log house, but he wasn't having any of it. Santa is 'bold' and he doesn't like him at all this year.
My mom and Liam in the glass dome at the Victoria Centre. The Victoria Centre is a new shopping mall. It's a covered mall, so it was freezing. The glass dome is a good 6 or 7 stories high and you can see much of Belfast.
Enjoying some whipped cream at Starbucks.
Again with the whipped cream...
Kind of a random shot, but I just thought he looked really cute with his wee backpack on. He wanted to show Granny how much of a big boy he was.
Here's the big 2 year old! Happy Birthday Liam!! I think he looks like such a proper wee boy in this photo. I couldn't resit the top and tie out of Next... he looks so preppy.
Here's my handsome little man. I really think he looks like me in this picture. Obviously he has my hair, but I think he has my lips, nose and chin too! Lucky boy.
Some posing for Mommy at Ikea. I'm having a little too much fun with my new camera.
"Lambs! Baby sheep!" shouted an excited Liam.
Excited at the prospect of petting a little chick.

That chick is kind of close Grandma Kerwin.
Liam and Ollie. I think I caught Liam mid sentence.. he was discussing what came first, the chicken or the egg.
CHRISTMAS

Blurry family Christmas photo.
Family Christmas photo.
Excited to open up another one of his presents on Christmas morning.
I think I see one in the back there Daddy.
Table all set for Christmas dinner. We had 7 this year in total because Susan was in San Francisco :( By the way those long tubes on the charger plates aren't napkins, they are Christmas crackers. They have a paper hat, joke and little present wrapped inside. You pull one end of the cracker and someone else pulls the other and it make a big pop and whomever has the bigger half gets to keep all of the goodies inside. It's a 'this side of the pond' thing.
My pretty centrepiece. The picture doesn't really do it much justice, but the flowers were lovely.
I did place cards for everyone. It was cute. It was!
Liam wanting to watch The Snowman again for the 20th time. He was all about the Christmas movies- The Snowman, Charlie Brown's Christmas (which Ollie ordered me from the US) and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas were some of his favourites.
His Granny Reynolds got him this cute puzzle which he put together in 30 seconds flat.
Wearing his cute spoongebob pjs.
THE BIG FREEZE

So we got hit with some rather wintry weather. It was freezing for a couple of weeks and the snow came down on 7 or 8 separate occasions. I don't think I saw snow in the first 5 or 6 years I lived here, so it was pretty remarkable. Since we're in a new part of our development and they are still in the process of building, the road services are not yet responsible for our roads. It was like an ice rink for a good week. They are NOT equipped for snow or icy weather here at the best of times. They don't do all weather or snow tired, I've never seen a snow plow and most people wouldn't own a snow shovel. It was pretty treacherous out there. Anyway, we did get a few enjoyable afternoons in the snow. Here's Liam all wrapped up.
Going to explore in the snow with Daddy.
PIZZA MAKING

I made my own pizza dough for the first time the other week. It's sticky and tricky business. I've been trying to get Liam involved in cooking and he seems to love it.
Homemade tomato sauce going on (the trick is to put some sugar in to take away the sharpness of the tomato).
Add some cheese...
And presto, here's your pizza.
Here's our pizza. I was a little disappointed in the pizza dough. It just didn't seem to cook very well. I know that pizza ovens are like 600F so maybe it just needs to be super hot in order to cook properly. It was more than edible, it was just a little off... I'm such a pizza snob!
PLAYDATE WITH ANYA

We babysat Anya for a few hours last weekend while Stevie and Cara finished moving into their new house. Anya is 17 months old, super cute and super smart. I'm happy with Liam's development- in fact I know he's above average. I had heard that boys develop earlier physically and girls develop early with speech and emotional intelligence, but she's something else. Any word you say she will try and repeat. She seems to know a few colours and numbers and remembers everyone's name. Cutie Anya.
Enjoying some lunch.
Hugs bye-bye.

CHRISTMAS DINNER IN JANUARY

To celebrate Auntie Susan's early return from San Francisco, we had another Christmas dinner. Here's Liam looking civilised on arrival.
Not sure if this was all of the food and sugar or the running around and entertaining (probably a combination of both) but Liam is a red and sweaty boy!
We're very excited at Susan's return... our babysitter is back! Woo-hoo!!

FUN AT THE PARK

We've lucked out with some nice weather after the cold spell. This past Saturday we hit the park for a bit of exercise... which seemed to have done the trick since we had to wake Liam up at 9:40 this morning. A full 14 hours of sleep!
Riding the lion...
Cheeky grin...
Enjoying the twirly wurly... I don't know if that's what this is called- I may have made that name up.

So that's a round up of the past few weeks. Promise to try and get pictures on here more regularly. I am taking about 100 photos a week anyway, so I can't say I don't have much to choose from!

No more monkeys jumping on the bed!

How cute is he?!?!

Liam's 2nd Birthday Party

Liam's turning 2 on Tuesday so we threw a big party on Sunday to celebrate. We rented out the Mount Eagles Community Centre since the kids are so active an need a nice big space to run around in. We decorated with tons of balloons and an 'In the Night Garden' theme. Before everyone arrived...
The birthday boy arrives...
The birthday cake.... this sucker took me ages to make (all from scratch), but it looked really well on the day. I got loads of compliments from the parents and the kids all loved it!
And the cupcakes (again from scratch)...
We had Jo Jingles come by for entertainment. All the kids really enjoyed playing the games and singing along with the songs.
With Oliver (left) and Matthew (right). It's hard to get the kids to sit together for a picture!
Happy Birthday! Liam tries to blow out the candle.
The tons of presents for the birthday boy. Also shows my Friday night project - the party boxes. I spent almost 2 hours sticking foam stickers on each of the boxes, personalising with names and and fun treats for the kids.
Liam helping clean up after the big party...
Here's Liam opening up some of his presents. His rosy cheeks are an indication of how exhausted he was... he slept a full 14 hours!!
Thank you to all of his little friends for coming along and making his party so fun. A special thank you to Liam's Great Aunt Linda and Grandma for sending over so many presents... and so many gadgets for helping me create such a special day for Liam.

Halloween

Liam dressed up as a skeleton for Halloween. He wouldn't sit still for any face painting and there was no chance of him wearing a hat, but he still looked pretty cute.

Here's little Anya as a kitty enjoying a biscuit...Liam and Anya together- they are really cute together... future couple perhaps?

Our friends Ruth and Sean had a kids party at their house (some of the adults dressed up too). There was loads of food (Liam tried everything) and bobbing for apples. Liam got straight in there and splashed the water all around the kitchen. He was soaked.

Fireworks, for some reason, are traditional at Halloween in Northern Ireland. ?? So there were loads of fireworks going off and Liam got to try out a little sparkler (under supervision of course).
At the end of the night... he stayed up until 8:30- way past his normal bedtime. Still up pretty early the next morning though :(

GeoTrax

Yesterday we got the stickers out and totally covered ourselves with them. For Christmas last year we bought Liam a GeoTrax. He was a bit too young to enjoy it back then (plus there are a bunch of tiny pieces that would go straight in the mouth), but we thought he was ready for a go (plus Ollie wanted to try it out). I put it all together while Ollie made dinner (bit of role reversal there). Liam placing some of the people in the train.

Choo-choo!
He really enjoyed it and I'm sure we'll be playing it loads over the coming weeks (until new presents arrive for his birthday and Christmas!)

Food

Some pictures of my latest creations:

Cupcakes for our friend's halloween party


Cupcakes for Liam's Halloween party at daycare
Homemade Macaroni and Cheese- even Ollie and Liam loved it!
Low fat fish pie- this was super tasty, but I forgot to put in the salmon so it was a little light on the fish
Chicken and veg pie- I made a little error of cutting the sides of the pastry first which meant they shrinked away from the edges. But, according to Ollie, it still tasted great.

Food, food and more food

How bad am I at getting things on this blog? I have no excuses- our computer and broadband is fully functional, I've had loads of things going on, still taking pictures... just lazy I suppose. I have been rather busy, but not THAT busy.

Afraid this post will just be text - I don't have my camera at work with me today.

Ollie and I (well I) hosted a dinner party at the end of September. I went all out- house looked beautiful and spotless, I got a new dress and wore killer heals, my hair was done, nails done, makeup... I tried a bunch of new recipes and really challenged myself. Instead of starters, I did loads of posh canapés: smoked salmon, creme fraiche and chives on wheaten crackers; parma ham wrapped puff pastry sticks; baked brie with apricot jam and wheaten crackers all with sparkling wine on arrival. Main course was Fillet of Pork stuffed with homemade sage and onion stuffing, pommes fondant (mashed potatoes baked with cream and breadcrumbs), roasted carrot and parsnips and homemade apple sauce (I had baked seabass). And I made my first ever apple pie with shortcrust pastry (I didn't realise how easy pastry is to make!) Wine was flowing and we had tasty baileys and irish coffees to end the night.

We all watch this programme Come Dine with Me where 4 or 5 strangers host dinner parties and they each rate each other (scale of 1 to 10) with the highest scorer winning £1,000. Anyway, we got a bunch of texts from our dinner guests (Colin, Maire, Thomas and Nuala) saying I would have scored a 10! Everything was pretty tasty and I was completely exhausted at the end of the night.

I decided, following the dinner, that I would try to make something new each week. So far I've made Chicken & Vegetable Pie (with homemade shortcrust pastry), Steak and Onion Pie (again with the pastry), meringues, low fat apple strudel muffins (these were so tasty), banana muffins (these were beautiful), homemade macaroni & cheese (sorry Kraft Mac & Cheese, but our relationship is officially over) and Vanilla Buttercream cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I can't believe I used to do the whole Betty Crocker 'out of a box' thing... such a cheat (and the proper homemade stuff is a million times tastier)!

I'm going to continue with my experiments and each week try out new recipes and maybe invent my own! Can't wait to bake Liam's birthday cake.

Watch this space for pictures of some of my creations!