We had a fantastic weekend in Wales with a lovely meal in The Gadlys Arms for family and friends on the Saturday and a relaxing day in Mumbles on the Sunday!
Thanks to Julie for suggesting chips in the park! The kids had a fabulous time splashing around in the open air pool.
It was a lovely way to spend time together on what may well be our last weekend in Wales before the move to Oz!
Possibly our last time to see the amazing Northampton Balloon Festival. It has been fantastic seeing it over the last 9 years. It has always fallen on my birthday weekend and so we have regularly had visitors stay with us that weekend.
We have such funny memories of Nessa + Niamh, Carrie, Julie, Huw, Kerry + Lou, Charles and Sue all joining us on different years! Here are this years snaps!
"Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to me...!!!"
Thank you everyone for all the lovely presents and cards.
Gareth has made the most of having our undivided attention while Sian and Rhiannon are away in Wales. He has "helped" me to rip open all the parcels and cards! He was particularly puzzled by one of my presents (a foil bag of soothing tea/dried flowers with a see-through panel that lets you see the contents) after staring at it for a while he looked up with a grin and said "Me know!...Its rabbit food!" All we need now is the rabbit!
Gareth and I went to see Noddy this weekend and he was mesmerised!
He wasn't too impressed when the 6 foot goblin tried to nick his lollypop!
Here's our current status:
We had a lovely birthday weekend for Mr B following a long (14 1/2hr!) drive back from Ireland.
We managed to squeeze a huge amount of candles onto a chocolate cake which set the smoke alarms off!
We had a great laugh especially as about half the candles were re-lighting ones! By the time they were all finally blown out the icing was melted and covered in ash! 
We had a lovely escape to Mum and Dads house in Duncannon in July.
Mum helped accompany me on the mammouth 14 hour journey from Northapton to Wexford(Thank God for the new portable DVD players we bought the week before!)
Byron took the sensible decision to fly over for a long weekend and avoid the horrible ferry crossing!
We had some great days on the beach and Sian and Granny even made it into the water for a swim! They were blue afterwards but happy! We had great picnics with flasks of coffee and scones from the local village shop. Rhiannon dropped one of Dads scones in his cup of coffee causing a big splash of scalding coffee to land on a rather delicate area- Good job they arent planning on any more kids! (I hope!)
We had a particularly amazing evening at the Hook lighthouse on Mums Birthday. There was an open air concert at the foot of the lighthouse, Bag pipes and a pipe band against a background of moody sky. It was very emotional as it was our last time to be there for the forseeable future. The composer of the concert was explaining the background to his music was influenced by the many people who had emigrated from the area in the past- a very fitting end to an amazing place that is full of memories for us as a family.
