Now you are five {Leonidas}

Happy Birthday Leonida'mou

Today you are five years old!!!
Every year on your birthday I marvel at how the years have passed so quickly and how my little baby became the gorgeous boy you are today.

You are a lovely boy, kind and caring and a great big brother to Louka, even though he drives you crazy at times.  I love to see you playing together and he adores you, copying everything you do!  I'm so pleased that you love to teach him new things and it makes me happy to see how proud you are of him when he says a new word.

You are doing very well at school, learning a language which is not your native tongue and doing it much better than I am! Your teacher Kiryia Ioanna is pleased with you and on the whole you are a very good boy at school - as long as you remember not to play superheros in the classroom and 'spiderman roll across the headteachers office.

You enjoy school even though you think your Greek is not very good - compared to mine it is amazing and  I think you know a lot more than you think you do!

Generally you are a very nice and well behaved boy although you often 'forget' to be good and that you must listen to us but you are getting better slowly!

You are certainly growing up and many things are becoming more enjoyable now you can understand and appreciate them, we can enjoy playing board games or on the Wii together or dancing around having 'bubble discos'

I hope you have a great time at your 'LEGO party today and you enjoy being 5 years old.

'Love you everywhere - Mama  xxx

Third time lucky - Slimming World Target time

I always said I'd get there eventually and last week I finally got to my Slimming World target, and also got my 2 stone award.

Regular readers will know it's not the first time I've reached target - the first being in 2007 with a total loss of 4 stone.   I reached target again (although one 1/2 stone heavier than my pre-pregnancy one) as Leo reached his second birthday.  Now with Louka at 21 months old I'm finally back there once more.

I love Slimming World, and while the plan is easy to follow, it's not always easy to keep your head in gear which is why it's taken me almost 2 years each time to lose a couple of stone.   I'm not sure what the secret was the first time as losing the initial 4 stone seemed easier and certainly took less time!

But that's it now, I'm done with having babies, and while I don't imagine for one second that I won't stray out of target range I'll still be going to my weekly group and trying to keep it in check so I don't have to do it all over again.

The one where we actually left the house

It seems that for the longest time someone in our family has been ill lately, my plans for the Easter holidays pretty much went out the window when I was ill for a couple of days at the beginning which was immediately followed by almost everybody else coming down with a nasty stomach bug.

We had a couple of days in the middle of different people suffering where we got out, once just for a couple of hours leaving a poorly Louka with my Mum, and then last weekend we all got out together before the bug got Aaron and laid him up for days and Leo developed an ear infection.

Since moving to Cyprus, and especially since starting the Famagusta Parents Network website I've been itching to get out and explore new places, we're a bit rubbish at getting out and about with a list of varying reasons as long as your arm but am I'm loving the fact I 'have' to now its my new 'job'!

One of these places was the Agia Napa aqueduct, something that I thought would be interesting to find 'because it's there' but not something that I expected would be the worlds best day out.  There are many places locally which fall into that category for me which means it's taking forever to visit them!

But exploring we went, and found a lovely little walk, just off one of the main roads in the tourist town of Agia Napa. Down a footpath with just a small sign saying 'Aqueduct' that is easily missed as I've driven past it for over four years without realising where it was!

As ever in Cyprus, its not buggy friendly for very far so we abandoned it at the bottom of a huge flight of steps and slowly helped Louka negotiate them!


We walked along the path explaining to Leo what the aqueduct was for and how it would have worked and enjoyed the views of the coastline.

We then, to Leo's delight, discovered a cave and stopped to explore....

I really enjoyed getting to finally see a bit more of the area, we've seen shockingly little in four years but we're get there eventually!