Back and ready to share some holiday goss...

Helloooo my lovelies, we are finally home after a glorious few weeks away. I hope you all enjoyed a bountiful Easter in the company of loved ones. We arrived home late Tuesday and to be honest this week has been a little surreal. It seems that a big part of my heart is still in South Africa, but I am equally embracing the comforts of our own home and spending time with our creatures whom are beyond happy that we are home. Today I just wanted to quickly share our pit stop in Amsterdam on our way to South Africa.

 

We didn't have a great deal of time, but we hoped to at least manage a visit to the house of Anne Frank and the Rijksmuseum. Sadly the cue to get into Ann Frank's house was beyond anything we could have endured with two small children and as it turned out the Rijksmuseum closed too early for a proper visit, hey ho, it certainly didn't stop us from enjoying our afternoon in Amsterdam.

 

 

We enjoyed a lovely trip along the canal and when we finally got off at the Rijksmuseum, the kids ran straight through to the park at the back of the museum and that is where we spent our last hour of the afternoon. It took the kids no time at all to get themselves pretty wet and the water fun didn't stop there! They also found this amazing fountain where they could dance in the middle without getting a great deal wetter and the most fun was had trying to synchronise their running with the water, lets just say there were quite a few excited screams. It certainly provided good entertainment for everyone around.

 

 

I could have spent hours in this pretty park, which seemed like the perfect place to soak up the ambiance whilst enjoying a good book, and maybe even a glass of bubbly, now one can but dream. Our brief visit to Amsterdam seemed like the perfect way to begin our holiday and definitely made the journey a little more tolerable.

 

 

 

 

I have spent the last couple of days starting to work through our jungle of a garden, I honestly couldn't believe how much things have grown in the time we were away. We also celebrated little Es's fifth birthday yesterday and I still have to pinch myself that my baby has turned five, where has the time gone???!! It really only feels like yesterday when I held her small body in my arms and looked at her beautiful face with complete love and adoration and how that love has grown, wow!

 

This of course means a birthday party to prepare for next Saturday. Now any of my friends will tell you that I am a girl who likes a good kiddies party and if I am honest I generally tend to get a little carried away with the whole affair, but hey who says we can't! I am however usually soooo organised by this point, but this year it seems that my more laid back approach and my 'no-lists' motto might be landing me in a pot of hot boiling water, or not, time will tell. Not that I am too bothered about it seems as I spent a few hours this morning cutting fabric (not for the party I will add), which is pretty constructive right?!

 

It seems I have hundreds of photos to work through from our holiday in SA and I promise to share a few posts about our trip. In the meantime though, I need to make a start on this mandala for the Monthly Mand-a-long project, for any of you who missed this post you can catch up here and for all of you lovely people who already joined in THANK YOU!!! you are amazing and I look forward to spending some time over the next week visiting all your blogs and catching up on these gorgeous mandala's you have created!

 

For now though

I have piles of washing awaiting a hot iron, parcels to post, letters to write, emails to deal with, not to mention blogs to read. I suspect that I will struggle to catch up with all your news from the last three+ weeks, but I promise to do my best to at least get to the most recent ones.

 

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend, lets hope this rain goes away for us folk here in the UK.

 

Warm Wishes

Hannapat

xoxoxo