Another Birthday and A Sticky Patch

Here we are two days past Toni's birthday, she is now ten years old.  True to form the birthdays in our family always have a little run of bad luck.  Toni shares her birthday with the anniversary of the death of my mother. It is sometimes hard to not forget about how my mum died on my daughters 5th birthday, I try my best to put it aside for Toni's sake.

The day was boringly uneventful.  Other half had an idea inspired by the latest series of The Apprentice, so in a bid to get some inspiration we visited a neighbouring town and its market.  In the years gone by my memories of the market are a buzzing lively event, but sadly on Saturday it was dull, small and lacking in pizazz.  Anyway we had a good morning looking around, Mag bought himself a winter hoody and the kids were more than happy looking at the toys on offer.

Toni had raised the point that she didn't like the icing on shop bought birthday cakes and requested that I would make her cake for her.  Better still she later asked for big swirly cupcakes which to me are easier to make than baking and icing a birthday cake.  I have done the kids cakes before but they are usually a two day event and I am never 100% happy with their outcome.

Earlier in the week I had taken the girls shopping to Belfast and got all of the kids pretty much kitted out for the winter.  We had a great day and are planning another trip later on this week to get some shoes for the boys as that was about the only thing I couldn't get.

The girls enjoying their shopping spree.

Oh, and something funny to add.   Sol has a huge sense of humour, she just makes everyone smile everywhere she goes.  As you will know from the blog posts I write she has to wear a patch on her eye for a number of hours every day.  These patches are sticky and pretty, Sol likes to stick them in memorable places as she hates to throw them away.  It is now a standing joke that everywhere we go she leaves a patch behind on a pillar or a fence.  At the shopping precinct in a nearby town she has a few patches dotted around.  She sticks them on the rear sides of the parking pillars usually and checks them each time we visit.  One particular patch was stuck on the pillar near a bank, it was stuck there for a couple of weeks and it looks as though someone found it. It was unpeeled and stuck onto the window of the bank much to our amusement.  Three weeks later the patch was still stuck onto the bank window!  This shows that the bank people do not clean their windows.  You can just about see in the photo, it is worn but still there.