Our Day by Design

Holden's 24th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 24 months old on the 2nd of February. I can't believe that my little boy is now 2 years old. The first part of January was fairly quiet but included a trip to zoo, a couple of visits to soft play and the leisure pool with friends and one of Holden's friends birthdays. Holden also got to spend a day with nana & grandpa since my parents were still away and also got a haircut and new shoes. My parents arrived back from Australia on the 11th then my sister, nephew and niece came a week later on the 18th. It was wonderful to see them all as it had been over a year since we last saw them, when we were in Australia in Oct 2012. The rest of the month was busy as we spent lots of time with my niece and nephew while my sister was away. We went swimming, to the soft play, lots of lunches, dinners and sleepovers at granny's too. There was also lots of planning for Holden's birthday party as ...

Holden's 23rd monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 23 months old on the 1st of January, New Year's Day. The first two weeks of December we were still on holiday in Florida with Graham's parents, sister and brother-in-law. I celebrated my 32nd birthday on the 3rd with a day in the sun by the pool then a lovely meal at night while we were staying down in Rotonda West. We moved up to Orlando on the 7th and spent the week enjoying the theme parks, the pool and fitting in some shopping. We went on the hot air balloon at Downtown Disney, had a day at Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios & Epcot, then went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom, all of which Holden loved. We also saw the 'snow' in Celebration, visited some of the resorts, and took Holden to see the Disney Santa. On our second last evening we had a gorgeous dinner at the Contemporary's California Grill to celebrate Graham's parents 60th birthdays...

Holden's 22nd monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 22 months old on the 1st of December while we were on holiday in Florida. In November we continued with things in the house, getting prepared for our holiday and also organising Christmas. My dad very kindly wallpapered out living room wall for us, we put some things up in the loft while Holden tried out climbing the ladder  and we finally got our Internet access. We had to do quite a lot of shopping this month to get organised for birthdays, Christmas and our holiday before we went. The start of the month was busy with two fireworks displays, one in the town Graham's parents live in and the other in our town, both of which Holden loved.  We spent a day up at the Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore to see the polar bears which was great, although it was freezing! We went to a fam ily birthday party for Holden's second cousin Amy, visited Holden's great granddad and met our NCT group at ...

Better late than never I wanted to do a quick recap of last year, just like I did for both 2010 & 2011 . If nothing else it reminds me of all the events I haven't written about yet! We had a fantastic 2012 with the arrival of our gorgeous son Holden. It's also been a busy year including Holden's first big trip!   January My niece Willow was born in Australia! I started my maternity leave . February Holden was born.     March Holden: One Month We celebrated my first Mothers Day. April Holden: Two Months We celebrated our 2nd Anniversary & Holden's 1st Easter. May Holden: Three Months My blog turned 3. June Holden: Four Months It was Grahams birthday on his first Fathers Day. I had a night away at Lucy's hen do, which started with laser quest! July Holden: Five Months My sister and family arrived for 6 weeks and we enjoyed lots of time together including a trip to the zoo. I was a Bridesmaid at Lucy...

Despite saying last year that I wasn't sure 2011 would come anywhere close to the fabulous 2010 we had, have as much excitement in it or that we would manage four holidays again, I think we did pretty well! January I carried on with my honeymoon recaps . February I met some of the blog girls and went to London for my br other-in-laws 30th. March I finally finished my recaps & all wedding related posts! We had lunch at La Potiniere . April We visited both Bratislava & Vienna .     While there, we celebrated our 1st   anniversary ! Followed by dinner at The Kitchin  when we returned home. I also went to a Hollywood Hen do! May We attended a weekend wedding celebration in Perthshire. We made a Travel Map with our paper anniversary gift. My blog turned 2 . We discovered I was pregnant just a few weeks after finding out my sister was too! June We went to Marrakech for a week where Gra ham tu...

In December last year we spent 8 nights in Orlando, Florida with Grahams family {his parents, his sister & her fiancé, his aunt & uncle and his cousin & his fiancée}, making 10 of us in total. The 8 of them had spent a week down the coast in Fort Myers first but due to our lack of holidays, we could only get 6 days off work. We met them all in Orlando on the Saturday. We set off on the Friday, my 29th birthday and as we landed in Orlando, we were just relieved that we had actually managed to get there, following a few issues to say the least. It started with the never ending snow which had closed Edinburgh airport and kept my sister & nephew up here since the weekend before. The week was full of helpful suggestions from everyone and there were even thoughts of driving down to Manchester for our Orlando flight; thankfully the airport reopened on the Friday morning! However there were still a few issues at check in {how an airline system can’t cope with people who ha...