Birthdays!

I am amazed at how many of our family and friends have celebrated birthdays in the last five/six weeks. I am even more amazed at how many of these have been significant ones this year. 

18th Birthday cakes

One of my grandsons celebrated his 18th birthday at the end of March and his mum, my extremely talented daughter, made him a great birthday cake which was a copy of his old Landrover. Although she has made many cakes over the years, including her own wedding cake, I don't think any of her previous ones have incorporated lights that switched on and off using a remote controller. Thanks to her clever husband, this one did!

18th Birthday Cake - Landrover

18th Birthday Cake - Dr Who's Tardis

Only a few days later, the duo then produced a Tardis cake for their niece's 18th birthday, where the light on the top of the police box also lit up.  

70th birthday surprise

World Championship Snooker - Interviews in the Winter Gardens

Last week we helped one of our friends celebrate his 70th birthday. His surprise birthday present from his family was tickets to the World Snooker Championship, which is held at the Crucible here in Sheffield. Having dropped them off at the Crucible we returned home to closely scrutinise the coverage on the TV, hoping to see them in the audience. Amazingly we did manage to pick them out during the introduction to the evening session and as I had recorded it we were able to later replay it for them. Three generations experiencing 15 seconds (not minutes) of fame together!  By taking a photo of the screen I was really pleased to be able to provide them with a permanent record  of this they can look back on in the future. As I do not include photos of friends on this blog, I've had to settle for including a photo of Steve Davis and the TV crew that I managed to take that day in Sheffield Winter Gardens. 

Births

So it's been a busy few weeks celebrating family and friends birthdays but amazingly there have also been three births too. Two girls and a boy have been born in the last month. It's such an exciting time for all the grandparents and it brings back happy memories of the arrival of our own grandchildren. It has been lovely to shop for baby clothes again but it does seem a little surreal though, to think that several of our close friends, who are our age, have been celebrating the birth of grandchildren whilst we have been celebrating two of our grandchildren becoming adults. 

Valentine Flowers

Although my mum regularly buys herself cut flowers, I rarely do. So, unless I have ones I can bring in from the garden, I generally only have vases of flowers on display when I receive them as presents from family for my birthday and Mother's Day or occasionally from friends when they come to stay with us. This year, on Valentine's Day, I was most surprised and delighted to find that my husband had bought me 12 red roses. I think that, although he has bought me flowers in the past, this might be the first time in the 47 years we have been together he has bought me a dozen red roses. He did slightly spoil this romantic gesture, though, by proceeding to tell me just how cheap they had been at the well known supermarket where he had been buying bread and milk. So cheap that he couldn't walk past and not pick up a bunch! He then went on to remark on how cheaply a Valentine card and flowers can now be bought and that no-one nowadays really has an excuse for not buying a card and flowers for their loved one.  

This made me wonder at the time:

1. Are more flowers now given as presents for Valentine's Day than in the past? If so, is this mainly because cheap flowers can now be picked up along with the regular weekly shopping? 

2. How much florists have been affected by flowers being readily and cheaply available in supermarkets? 
3. Where are all the flowers grown and why a dozen red roses can be bought so cheaply at this time of year? 

Having watched a TV programme this week on how the Chinese New Year is celebrated in China and Hong Kong in which it featured a section on how millions of red roses were grown and auctioned in the run up to their celebrations, I can now make a guess at answering my third question. Somewhere there must have been huge poly-tunnels full of red roses growing in readiness for Valentine's Day. I doubt that this was in the UK though. But I could be wrong!  

  
  

Celebrations!

Well it has been a very busy few weeks since my last post. Christmas has come and gone and I don't seem to have yet got into the habit of posting regularly but perhaps that will come. 

Not only does December provide an opportunity for a big family get together but our celebrations continue into early January with our wedding anniversary, followed quite quickly by both mums' birthdays. 

Christmas

Last year, our Boxing Day party was spoilt by the arrival of a heavy fall of snow that came much earlier than expected. The journey home with elderly mums in the car was one of the most difficult and worrying of my life and I hate to think what would have happened if it hadn't been for the kind young men that were out on the roads helping push us along when we got stuck in the atrocious conditions.  This year's party at my daughter and son-in-law's was such a contrast.  The weather was much milder and it was so lovely that 4 generations of our family were there to celebrate together again. Our grandchildren have been so fortunate to have grown up knowing not only their grandparents but several great grandparents too. This is very different to my experience of growing up with only one granddad who died when I was 11. Luckily I was able to "adopt" three of my husband's grandparents, who lived well into their eighties. Thinking back, it is amazing to realise that we have been celebrating Christmas as a 4 generation family for 44 years and that in 1994 we only just missed out on there being one with 5 generations.  

January

As has become the habit in recent years, we celebrated New Year's Eve quietly at home. As usual the celebratory fireworks on the TV were fantastic and, living in a city, there were also plenty to see out of our lounge window. I didn't take any photos this year but perhaps next year I might but only if I've learnt how to manipulate the settings on my new camera to take good photos in lowlight conditions by then.   

We celebrated our wedding anniversary over a meal with friends and then again, the next evening, over another meal, with some of the family. 

Having a wedding anniversary at the beginning of January can be a little inconvenient, particularly with regards to buying anniversary cards. Its often impossible to find anything suitable in the shops just before Christmas and its not always easy to fit in card shopping just afterwards. My solution this year was to make my own, though doing this without my husband noticing was a little challenging at times. I was very pleased with the resulting card which was so much better than anything I had seen in the shops. It also meant that I sorted out the colour printer, which now prints perfectly!