26 Things That Made Me Happy...

Yesterday was a fantastic day, full of lots of happiness!!

1. Being woken up by this cute face:

2. And then getting to spend a little bit of time with my boys. Liam normally goes to work before we wake up in the mornings, but a certain 5 year-old's excitement meant we were up earlier than normal!! ;)

3. Learning that Liam had popped out super early to try to buy me flowers. The shop he walks past to the bus stop each morning always has flowers, but yesterday there were none to be found! Bless him, thought that counts! :)

4. Being able to walk after Body Pump on Monday night. Haha, the stiffness did get a little worse as the day wore on, but nowhere near as bad as it was when I first went to Body Pump however long ago it was. To be honest though, I'm hoping to have a little more pain next week - there were a few "first class" issues this week, such as not having enough small weights for everyone (which meant I did the same weight for all arm exercises, rather than being able to add 1s on to make some slightly heavier) and he had to skip one of the tracks because he ran out of time. Like I say though, it was the first time this gym had ever done Body Pump so there were bound to be a few issues...I'm still excited for next week! :)

5. Cake batter milkshake for a light (honest Mum!) breakfast! Well, no cake batter in sight really, but bananas, white chocolate spread, vanilla extract, milk, ice & sprinkles tastes really really good! As you'll see when you get to #10, I didn't really need breakfast - this was more for Izzy's sake...she was not happy about going to school and missing out on some of the fun yesterday!!

6. Sunshine! The weather has been really unpredictable here recently - sunny at the weekend but then miserable on Monday. I was glad to see it back to being nice (albeit a little windy/cold) yesterday!

7.  My new "jewellery box" that Izzy made for me at school on Monday, from an empty grape carton. Bless her, too cute! She'd also wrapped up one of her necklaces for me to put in it...although she still wants to share that!! ;)

8. Not having to walk to do the school run. I don't actually mind the walk in the mornings too much, especially when it's sunny, but I was glad to be getting a lift with Mum yesterday as after we dropped Izzy off we were...

9. Going to Exeter with Mum, Grandma and Toby for brunch.

10. Mum had suggested going to a restaurant that's recently opened in Exeter - Bill's - and had given me a menu last week. I knew immediately what I was going to have... Veggie cooked breakfast including guacamole and houmous, yes please!

Amazing! The homemade sundried tomato houmous especially was fabulous, and the eggs were perfectly poached :)

11. And a chocolate brownie milkshake...this was research really (!) - Mum wanted to know what it was like because she'd mentioned it to the manager of the cafe she works in, who was intrigued! To be honest, it was pretty much just like a whipped cream topped chocolate milkshake (Toby stole the flake!) but we all loved the brownie they brought with it to apologise for it taking a while to make. Yum!

12. Toby being really good all day. He was good as gold at brunch (he loves baked beans, yuck, one of my few food hates!!) and even when we were shopping afterwards he was good enough to impress my Grandma!!

13. After lunch...shopping! I'm not very good at clothes shopping for myself, but I can always find lots for the children! This time Izzy was desperately in need of new clothes - all her dresses from last year barely cover her knickers!! A quick trip to Primark and 4 dresses + 7 tops later = one very happy girl! :)

14. I (well, Mum) also managed to find some clothes for me - thanks Mum and Dad for buying them for me! :)

Navy linen trousers, blue cardi, 4 tops and turquoise exercise top to go with my new capris

I also bought a couple of sports bras which were bargainous. They hadn't had the ones I wanted in my size, and then I was just checking the sale section on the way out and they had 2 in my size, exactly the same as the full price ones I would've bought, reduced to £4 each, win! It does make me laugh that I mainly dress in blues, whereas Izzy is all about pink (and yellow, but that is more Primark's choice than Izzy) she loves being "girly" all the time!!

15. Of course, I never have problems shopping for food! I was very restrained yesterday - just buying custard tarts, veggie percy pigs and smoked paprika, chilli & dark chocolate popcorn (!) from M&S:

16. I managed to sneak an iced chai latte into our shopping trip too :) it did involve me power-walking to one end of the high street while everyone else strolled back the other way to the car, but it was worth it! We don't have a Starbucks in our town so I have to visit when I'm near(ish!) one:

17. Watching Enchanted with Izzy and Toby after school. This was one of the films we watched on Christmas Eve (well that's what I thought anyway, blog posts seem to suggest it was actually Tangled, so not sure when we first watched this!!), and Izzy had requested back then that we rent it again today. Luckily she reminded me last week so I could put it on my LoveFilm list!

18. My Grandparents, Sisters, Mum and Colin coming round to ours yesterday afternoon - so nice to spend some time with them...

19. ...and eat carrot cake! Thank you so much Mum for making it, absolutely divine! :)

As well as grated carrot, this was full of raisins, pineapple and walnuts, and then the topping is cream cheese and golden icing sugar...delicious!

20. How many people does it take to put a cake stand together?? Haha, this made me laugh! Neither Mum nor Colin had their glasses with them, so Olivia had to reluctantly help, and it still ended up being slightly wonky!!

21. The presents I was given yesterday afternoon were another thing that made me happy though - cupcake sign from Mum and Colin, necklace from Sarah and cake stand from Olivia...thank you all! I'm so excited to move into our blue kitchen!! :-D

22. After everyone else had left, my Grandparents stayed at ours for a bit longer and Izzy organised us into a "band". This involved us all swapping instruments regularly and making noise only when Izzy pointed at us, cute!

23. When Liam got home it was time for more present opening!

24. Two of which he chose himself!! I had also ordered a few things online for myself, but some of those haven't arrived yet so I will write about them another time. But the things that made me most happy were the surprises that Liam picked, he doesn't chose things very often so it means more! Good choices too - they will go really well in the main bedroom at the new house as it has purple curtains, pictures etc in it already :)

25. Lots of cards from family & friends - sparkles and cake seem to be the themes this year!

26. Dinner may not have been much (we were all so tired and ran out of time/energy to cook, so the children had porridge and then we had potato waffles with poached eggs!) but the peanut butter ice cream afterwards more than made up for it. So so good! This was peanut butter and chocolate ice creams, loaded with caramel sauce and chocolate covered peanuts...amazing!!

26 things that made me very happy on my 26th birthday!

What are your favourite things to do on your birthday? Any special traditions? Mum decided that we should make the birthday brunch a tradition, although by next year Toby will be pre-school (scary!) so it will be child-free! We always go out for lunch on Mum's birthday - Mum, my Grandma and my sisters; and for Colin's birthday having a BBQ seems to have become a tradition...food traditions are definitely the favourite in our family! ;)