Eating out with food intolerances - The Cliffs Restaurant - Malta (plus a bit of sight seeing)

  I have literally just arrived home from our summer holidays, unpacked everything, put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and now I'm onto blog catch up...
I thought that I would post something from our respite break to Malta earlier in the year...It seems like forever since getting back from that trip... and I have finally got round to telling you a little bit about it! This is the first in a series of three from our break....
(Hopefully I won't take as long to write something about our most recent summer adventures!!)

During the middle of our week away we decided to take a rest from the pool and head out in the rental car to explore some more of the other side of the island.  We had heard that there was a beach called Golden Bay (one of the few sandy beaches in Malta) over to the north west of the country.  We  managed to navigate the notorious Maltese traffic and arrived at the beach in much need of a swim to cool down. The beach was nice.... but the sign for the "10 different types of jelly fish"  to watch out for put us off from taking a dip in the water..... and so we lounged around in the sun and took a  paranoid paddle or two instead!

Eating out with food intolerances - Ready made snack bags

A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast by Portland Roots media called  Stronger Everyday... the  podcast was a  "Summer survival guide"...  on how to survive the summer with happy children.  One of the hints and tips shared  on the cast that I really liked (and always have the intentions of doing but never get round to) was the suggestion  of being organised .... of planning and preparing and making snacks ahead of time so that there is always something healthy to grab on the way out the door.  I was motivated to have a go this year and so today I went shopping with daughter number two for some ingredients and we made up a bunch of snack bags together.

Birthday project - Heni's Hanging Teepee

As you read this post I will probably be mid air on my way to Italy for a respite break with daughter number two and won't be back until the end of next week.... while I'm away I will be computerless and so this will be my last post for a week.  
Today I  thought I would leave you with a post that tells you all about a project that we completed recently for Heni's 20th birthday.  

I had seen a really fun looking hanging teepee swing on Pinterest that I really liked and thought that Heni (and the other kids) might enjoy having one.... (another cool area to hang out in the summer other than her swing). However, I didn't want to pay the extortionate megabucks that they cost and knowing that the boys are always up for a project AND we had a whole week where we had Niamh around to provide some respite... we decided to have a go at making one ourselves.

Thank you!

We have just got back from a weekend away and become aware of the huge amount of birthday wishes that have been made on line after the post "Incompatible with life - Happy Birthday ... 20 today!" We are astounded and moved at the wonderful comments and thoughts from so many people around the world.... people like us who have had the blessing of being parents to their Trisomy angels no matter how brief...or others who have had the fortune of knowing these special ones. We have loved receiving  all the lovely feedback and birthday wishes to Heni and to us as a family. 
We have also had some comments posted here on the blog ...but Blogger doesn't seem to be allowing me to reply in the reply boxes... so I thought I would reply to all of you here...

Sanity space - Flower power R & R

This was written a few weeks back when we had some sunshine here in England! It's done nothing but rain for a while now... so I think a bit of flower cheer might be in order....

As I looked out of the kitchen window into the garden the other day I  noticed how long  the grass was and the weeds (that I had pulled only about a week previous) had regrown and were back in full force. It's amazing what a bit of rain and sunshine can do! Everywhere I looked had a label with "job" on it!

After my morning walk I decided to spend an hour outside and see if I could bend down and pull some of the weeds. However, with my amazingly sore muscles (after enrollment in to Regiment fitness just days previous),  I decided to leave the low weeding and concentrate on jobs waist high... one of which was pruning the rose arch as it had grown crazily wild too. 
As my mind still contemplated all the jobs that needed doing I somehow became side tracked by the roses. Instead of pruning (AKA...hacking everything to death)... as I normally do, I  found myself  carefully cutting some of the stems on the blooms that still looked good  to take indoors.....  and so a "sanity space" project began to emerge from nowhere. All of a sudden plain boring maintenance turned in to some sanity space fun. 

Book Review - The Element by Ken Robinson

You will never guess where I am?  OK, so I am in the sleeping bag.... on Heni's swing finishing up one of the books I picked up at the airport on my way to Malta  a while back. The first thing that grabbed my attention  about the book was the authors name....  strangely he has the same name as my dad! After that I was intrigued by the "how finding your passions changes everything" bit on the front cover. It struck me as something that a lot of us are in search of.  Therefore potentially, we could all benefit from reading the book! I had also listened to some of Ken's awesome TED talks online......  Thus It appealed to my curiosity and became one of my holiday reads. Here is the review.....

Incompatible with life?.........Happy Birthday.... 20 today!

Twenty years ago today we were waiting anxiously... wondering if we would ever get to meet our little Henibean....alive.... as we had been warned by doctors that trisomy 18 (Edwards Syndrome) was incompatible with life.

Today we  have been celebrating Heni's 20th birthday...

We never would have imagined  at the beginning of those 20 years that she would be here right now and that she would still be gracing our lives with her presence.
Today my post is a tribute and a birthday wish to our little Henibean....