A night out!

Last weekend, Ben and I were invited to the wedding reception of Amy Jenkins and her Mexican fiance, Abiathar, at the Medway Hospital Social Club. They were married in Mexico about 3 weeks ago and flew back to England so that Amy's extended family and friends could join them for a wedding reception. The bride and groom wore their wedding clothes again and Amy looked lovely in her dress. 
I was very happy about the fact that Ben let me buy a new dress for the occasion ha!....

My friend, Denise, kindly did my hair, which took nearly two hours!!! 

The bride and groom turned up a little later than expected! Here is Amy coming in with her dad - 

The happy couple - 

Amy and her husband with her siblings - 

And with parents and Grandparents also- 

There were a few people there who we already knew. Here's one of the boys.....

I love this photo of me and my best friend, Cara... (the balloons you see in the background were done by my Mum-in-law).

And for your viewing pleasure, here are a couple of videos of Ben dancing to some of the world's cheesiest music.....Oh the shame.....! ;)

As lovely as our little Benjamin is, it was GREAT to have a night out without him in tow. I am very grateful to my friend Jackie for babysitting :) xxxx

23 months!

On Friday our handsome little boy will be 23 months old. Give it another month and he will be 2 so I really should start thinking about what to do for his birthday. He is changing so much at the moment so here is an update for you.....

- I can't be completely sure about this yet but Benjamin is showing signs of being left-handed! He holds a spoon and scribbles on paper with his left hand and he often kicks a ball with his left foot. Time will tell....
- As I mentioned above, Benjamin loves balls and has quite a good kick and throw on him already :)
- His speech has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few weeks. He has started saying 'peeees' (please) and 'ta' when he wants something or receives something. Sometimes I don't even have to prompt him in this. He says 'bye bye' now and 'hi'. He says 'no' but with a random northern accent ha! He is a big fan of the word 'no' and says it even when what he means is 'yes' haha. He also loves the word 'okay' and says it constantly! He has also said 'ball', 'cheetah', 'digger', 'tea', 'cake', 'door' and a few others this month which I can't remember :( Altogether I have heard him say somewhere between 15 and 20 words. I think it's so funny how he just woke up one day and decided that he wanted to talk some more!
- He is starting to understand more about families because whenever he sees a family in a book, he always points out the Dad and the Mum. We are working on the word 'baby'! Although, since I gave him praise for this, he now points at any man in a book or on TV and says 'dad' and 'mum' for any woman haha!
- The Mr Tumble obsession continues and now he is occasionally joining in with what's being said in 'Something Special'.
-He is very confident with his shape sorter now and is getting better with wooden puzzles.
- Benjamin has been to the library this month for the first time and we just sat and read books together. He loved the library and was well behaved considering he is usually a very LOUD child....

-His favourite, well known books are 'Goldilocks', 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and 'Vincent the Vain'.

- Benjamin is pretty good with a spoon and has started using a fork. He prefers using his fingers though :)

- He adores gardens and would stay out there all day if he could so we are working on improving ours ready for the warmer weather....if we get any!

- He recently got new shoes and he measures a 7G in Clarks, which is not particularly enormous, considering his height! He weighs 2 stone and 5lbs!

- He is really good at holding my hand when we walk along the street together. When it's time to leave the park, he NEVER wants to get back in the buggy to go back home ha! He is a true outdoor boy :)

- He laughs when he passes wind, especially when it happens in the bath!

- He has started blowing kisses at people, which is rather cute. He loves the echo in Tesco when we get the shopping and usually makes loud, high pitched noises all the way round the store. Most people laugh......

- He is proving to be extremely clumsy, particularly when he is getting tired. It wouldn't be normal if he wasn't sporting a bruise on every limb!

We may well be biased but we feel that he is the most beautiful child in the world....

Simon's Stags

On 1st June, Ben's sister will be marrying the awesome Simon Carr and Ben was invited to Simon's stag do at Chessington World of Adventures last Tuesday. Let me reassure you that I did not attend this event ha! Simon's best man, Viktor, kindly emailed these photos to me so that I could do a blog update. They stopped on their way to pick Ben up at 9:30am and I didn't see him again until about 9pm that night so they must have had a great day. The stags were.....Simon, (of course), Ben, Ben's dad - Kevin, Alan, Viktor and George - Phoebe's boyfriend (Phoebe is one of Ben's other sisters). When they arrived at our house, I did make them line up for a group photo. Unfortunately Viktor wasn't there as he was making his own way up to Chessington.....

Benjamin did not go to Chessington either ha! He was just clinging onto his Dad for as long as he could!

So the lads went for the manliest ride ever to start with......;)

That's more like it......

I didn't realise that Chessington isn't just a theme park, it also has a zoo....

Are you having a good time Simon....?

YES he is.....!!!

Apparently Alan needed some encouragement for this one.....

The men finished the day off with dinner at a restaurant. We hope Simon had a stag do to remember!xxx

Dover Transport Museum

On Ben's day off work this week, we decided to take Benjamin to the Dover Transport Museum. He is just crazy about trains and all vehicles really, so we knew this would be right up his street! Ben is also a big car fan and as for me....well i just like anything historical, being the nerd that I am, ha! So the first thing we looked at was this old gypsy wagon....

Ben's Dad had one of these Ford Populars a few years ago, which he sold later on. He called it his 'Pop'...

"Let me drive"!

I absolutely loved how they had imitated old shops...

Inside an old worker's sleep van....

Benjamin adored the model railway. he kept going back to that....

Ben and the old diesel engine...

We don't quite know what a mangle had to to do with old transport but I had to take this photo really for my Mum, who got her thumb caught in a mangle as a child and it hasn't been the same since!

An old fire engine - they put the lights on just for us!

Here is the lower deck of an old topless bus....

And here is the view from the upper deck!

Benjamin had fun pressing the buttons on the Thomas the Tank Engine electric train set...

So lucky not to have experienced what those poor people did in the war....

The museum wasn't huge but I am so glad we came. We loved taking Benjamin somewhere like this. Plus the ticket we bought allows us to come back repeatedly for a whole year!