#MeAndMine - A Family Portrait (July)

I missed out on last months Me and Mine as we moved house and were without Internet for a while *weeps a little at the memory*. As it was, we didn't have time to take a family photo anyway as life was hectic - I would have had to use another Florida one taken at the beginning of June.

So, catching up on 2 months worth really. What have we been up to?

The holiday to Orlando was incredible. I finally got my first blog post about children's ages for Disney live the other day. 3 weeks after returning from holiday we moved house. We've been in a month now and...

...we love it here.

I'll be blogging about it at some point but the house is gorgeous. We love having so much room, the neighbourhood is lovely and we've made friends already - so has MC! We are perfectly happy here.

The kids seem to have settled into the new house brilliantly. They are growing up so fast. MC has finished nursery class and will be starting full time school in September. TC is starting to develop his speech more and is fast becoming a keen footballer already.

So, as I said, life has been full on. We don't get a huge amount of time together as a family of 4 anyway as every other weekend we have to see the inlaws (they live in Nottingham) so that always has to be considered when planning anything. This weekend just gone though, with the house pretty much sorted, we decided to have some much overdue family time.

With the weather warm and sunny we packed up a picnic and headed to Greenfield Valley Heritage Park.

I took so many photos of the kids enjoying the grass, the flowers, the abbey ruins and playing football. It was just so lovely to watch them having fun.

It was perfect.

So I decided to set up the timer on the camera to make sure I got a photo of all 4 of us.

It took it.

Then I checked the photo.

I immediately dissolved into a fit of the giggles.

In my rush to set up the photo with us all on the picnic mat I'd forgotten to move the cool bag from in front of TC*.

What appeared on the camera screen was hilarious. Matt and I couldn't stop laughing.

It so looks like TC is actually in the cool bag (he wasn't I must add, he was sat behind it)!

That was it... I'd got my Me and Mine photo instantly. I didn't bother taking another one.

There was no need.

To me, this is perfect and hilarious in equal measures.

*If I'd been even more picky I would've moved the pushchair too :)

Guest Post...Doing It All For Aleyna - Eats Shoots And Leaves

Alex is one in a million. She's one of the most warm-hearted (and hilarious) people I know.  I have followed her fab blog 'Doing It All For Aleyna' since I started blogging and her blog posts just have me in stitches plus her posts about her amazing little girl are gorgeous. I was lucky enough to meet her at CyberMummy in June and then amazingly (on my part - still don't know how I made it there!) we were both up for awards at the MAD blog awards in September.  I shared a room with her. Sadly I was a boring old fart being pregnant but Alex looked after me like a true friend and I'll always be grateful for that.

I'm thrilled to have one of her funnies on my blog. Although now I'm completely paranoid about my punctuation. I give you her guest post - Eats Shoots And Leaves...


I was so excited and honoured to have been asked by the beautiful, talented, hilarious and amazing Heather to do a guest post for her whilst she lives it large in Florida.  And then I wasn't.


Whatever am I going to write?  Then it came to me.  I am going to openly confess something over on another blog.  Yes.  Genius.


So here it goes....


I think I might be a grammar bully.


I am not alone.  One of my best friends is also a member of the "word police" and many years ago, I gave her the fabulous book, Eats shoots and leaves for Christmas.  A book for people who love punctuation and get upset about it. 


The author, Lynne Truss, through her passion for punctuation was able to inject some humour into the misuse, or even lack of use, of the comma. (Please let me have put all the commas in their correct places in that last sentence).  


An amphiboly (for that is the correct terminology, don't you know?), describes the ambiguity of a sentence whereby its meaning depends entirely on punctuation


I am always interested and even a little bit delighted to see a new amphiboly.


Here are a couple of my favourite examples.


An English professor wrote these words on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly:


"a woman without her man is nothing"


The males in the class wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing"


The females wrote:
"A woman: without her man, is nothing"

But it wasn't until I came across the following that I felt truly complete....

Stop clubbing, baby seals.

Lynn Truss has also designed a "save the comma" game through which you can test your punctuation skills.  


Having ashamedly got 9 out of 10, I hereby revoke my self-proclaimed title of grammar Nazi.  Oops!