Emma was fitted with her quadhelix part of her brace on Friday. She decided that she wanted Daddy to go with her, chiefly coz he and not I had a brace when he was younger. Fair enough! My only feelings were, was he going to get lost going there (it is a half hour drive and I've been there 4 times already with Emma) and how long could I wait to see how she was feeling! But we all survived! On the first day she needed the maximum dose of paracetamol. But she seemed to sleep ok, though she was very tired at bedtime and slept in, so I guess it was a disturbed night. The second say she only had one small dose of paracetamol, and declined at bedtime. Once again she was tired the next day and told me she'd woken every 3 hours. I'd say she's continued to sleep poorly as she's certainly more tired than usual. Today I wanted her to try to play the trumpet as her next lesson is booked for tomorrow and I didn't want her getting anxious before the lesson nor crying with pain/frustration during the lesson, and to be honest, I didn't want to lug the heavy thing into school if she couldn't play it! She wasn't keen. So I tried the old bribery route and she earned herself her favourite caramel bar when she not only managed a few notes but carried on and did a whole long practice session. She said it wasn't comfortable, but all the notes sounded fine, so hopefully her mouth will soon toughen up and she'll be ok. She ate a chunk of her choccy bar and then saved the rest for later, but didn't hide it. MISTAKE! I later heard shouting and came in to discover Sophie had helped herself to several chunks! I suggested Sophie should let Emma have some of her leftover Easter Egg as compensation, and while Emma said it wasn't the same, she ate what she was given. Moral of the story - don't leave chocolate unattended LOL!

Easter Saturday promised to be the best weather-wise of the holiday weekend, so we did our Easter Egg hunt with two packets of well-wrapped chocolate eggs - pink for Sophie to find and blue for Emma. They had so much fun, they immediately re-hid them!

We haven't seen a load of Alan since, as he's been working a way a lot - Jacksonville then Ware. Sophie came in tonight from Rainbows, and started shouting for Daddy to show him what she'd made. She was rather sad when I said he wasn't going to be in for a few more days. When he flew to Jacksonville, she was in tears once, but mostly they have been ok about it.

Last week I got a nasty cold. It started on Monday. Oh well, I thought, at least I will be better by the weekend. Sadly, it wasn't - every morning I woke up to find it worse. This was made more troubling by Alan working away on Friday leaving me as the sole driver to get us to my inlaws on Friday night. Usually I leave the long-distance driving up to Alan (mistake!) and I am sooo out of practice driving in the dark that it scares me now (big mistake). Never-the-less, by Friday I had to dose myself up and hit the road with two sleepy girls, and meet up with Alan at his Mum's. Happily we made it and in one piece.

I helped Sophie out of the car and found her stood by the front door, so I opened it so she could go in, and went back to help sleepy Emma locate her shoes in the dark. They dont usually sleep on car journeys but this time they had at least napped. I found out when I went indoors with Emma that the three adults in the house had noticed a little forlorn figure standing between the front door and inside glass door, and had let her in. She had then plodded straight upstairs to the bathroom, followed by Grandma, who realised that she was not awake enough to work out how to sit herself on the toilet, and helped her. She then had to do the same when they reached the bed! The only words she uttered were "I wanted a story" before falling straight off to sleep!

On Saturday we forced ourselves to get up and out of the house early for our usual visit to my parents. TO my relief I actually felt fractionally better. We found Dad in good form, managing to communicate without too much frustration, and completely over his gastric flu. He told us the flu which went through his Home had caried off two of it's residents, which must have been very sad for them all. In the afternoon we went with him to see Mum. She was very sleepy and kept nodding off. I managed to entice her to sit inthe garden, both as it was such a beautiful sunny day and because I worry that they must surely both be low in vitamin D! Unfortunately my ploy failed as she complained she was too cold, even after I wrapped her in a warm jumper! After about half an hour of trying she finally woke up and was a bit more animated. The thing which worked best was getting the girls to come indoors with their dolls. She likes interacting with them - the girls AND the dolls! Emma says the best thing about the weekend is seeing all her grandparents and the worst thing is all the boring travelling. We have a dvd player, DS, mp3 player, and we play hours of eye-spy. Still she gets bored! She gets travel-sick if she looks at her lap for long, so books are out. Any suggestions? We do this every 6 weeks and spend at least 7 hours in the car.

Saturday night was the one for changing the clocks, plus Sophie woke up sobbing half way through. I woke up on Sunday with the unwelcome addition of PMT. So as you can imagine, I didn't feel better than Saturday, for our journey home! Alan is away with work again today, and will hopefully be back tomorrow. Today my cold is improved but I feel completely washed out.

I suppose I ought to catch up on my sleep now!

Today Sophie asked Emma to paint her as a Queen Bee to match the picture she'd drawn. The eyes look more like Batgirl to me LOL! She had on her stripey jumper & black leggings, wings & deely boppers. What you can't see is the girls made a STINGER - a pouch on a string to hang behind her !!! Only Daddy got stung all day though .