Abandoned Blogs, Holidays and Birthdays!

Well hello my long neglected blog!  School holidays are always crazy but this year was even more crazy than usual so I just decided to take a break from the scrappy world and enjoy it and not stress and rush about blogs etc.  We went away twice over the holidays as well as had family come and stay with us, the kids did two sailing courses then there was Bikeability courses, birthday parties, sleepovers, carnivals, beaches etc.. etc...  I really felt like I needed a holiday by the time the holiday ended and then we finished it with a bang by all getting the worst flu we have had in years!  We were all totally out of it and the kids even missed the first couple of days back at school, what a start to the school year!

A big event over the holiday was this young man becoming an 'official' teenager (of course he has thought of himself and acted like a teenager for ages! ;) )  For his actual birthday he just wanted to sit around all day, play on his new games on his xbox with his friends and have Pizza for supper so that is what he did, as you can see from the photos he didn't even bother to brush his hair the whole day!

He has wanted to go to Alton Towers for ages and we have never gone because it was just sooo expensive but he put it down on his birthday list and said that was all he wanted, he didn't even need any other presents. So of course now that we have moved to the other side of the country from it instead of being 40 minutes away we decided to take him, but... of course we did still get him a few presents :)

These are a few photos from the day but have you ever tried taking photos of people on rides these days!  They all go so fast and I kept taking photos of other people.... but I did get quite a few in the end although I won't bore you with all of them!  This is the Nemisis and turned out to be one of his favourite rides, how I don't know because OMGosh does it go fast and it goes really close to the edges, just crazy!  We then went on the Nemisis Sub Terra and wow that was scary!  I laughed the whole time whilst screaming my head off and trying not to pee my pants :D  The worst part is they are all secretive about it so you have no idea what to expect but it was a pretty scary experience that wreaks havoc on the senses lol.

 Another big favourite was Air but I didn't manage any photos of that one! This was Blade which is pretty standard but still fun!

The Ripsaw looked quite tame but actually turned out to do way more than it looked like it would do and was quite scary in the end and he had no interest in going on it a second time lol.  He had quite big eyes for a while after that one but loved some of the other rides that were way scarier!

I just love this picture, I really had to resort to bribery and corruption to get them to agree to go and stand with Sid and pose for a photo!  They had every excuse under the sun, the main one being that they were waaaaay to old but I just ignored them and shoved them at the stranger dressed up like a giant sloth and said 'smile!'.

Speaking of birthdays, it was also my wonderful Daddy's birthday recently and this is the quick card I made him using Bo Bunny Surprise!

I haven't done much crafting but that was one item and I did a couple of other small items with/for friends that I will share in a couple of days.   I have a busy day tomorrow and my parents are arriving for a month's visit from South Africa (yay!) but I will also get around to some blog hopping tomorrow night which I have not gotten around to very often recently either!