A big big big thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all who sent Sam, I and the girls well wish messages, cards and gifts.  We were overwhelmed by your generosity.  A number of the garments were hand knitted and we know the effort that has been put into them – thank you so much!

All the outfits are beautiful and over time you will see them appear on our blog as they grow into them. The girls are already building up an enviable show collection.

Thank you again.

We are visiting Sam’s family in the UK for Christmas so we need to get the girls their passports and thus needed to take some passport photos.  Ordinarily this wouldn’t be much of a problem but it turned out to be a far bigger task than we had anticipated – it took a few attempts.  The rules governing a child’s passport photo are the same as for an adult: eyes open, no smiling, certain size, centered etc. etc.

We were surprised that our local photo shop and pharmacy do not take infant passport photos.  They said it was too time consuming to take a photo within the guidelines.  They suggested we take the photos ourselves and they print them.

We never laughed as much trying to take the photos.  You will see from the selection below the number we had to take. The harder part was getting them to keep their eyes open.  In the end it took three attempts on two separate days.

We are now waiting on their PPS numbers to come through so we can submit their applications.  We are hoping that the express service will have them here in time for our flights on the 22nd December.

This week we had a visit from Nanny and Granpy (Sam’s Dad Keith and Step-mum Debbie) for four days, Saturday to Tuesday. They just loved their grandchildren and spent many hour cuddling and looking after them.  Rosie and Lily are their second and third grandchildren.

It was great to see them and we had a great four days of it.  Everyday we went out for a walk of sorts, went Christmas shopping, managed to fit in a few drinks in bar in town and a meal later in Temple Bar.  Sam and her dad share the same birthday so it was lovely to have a joint celebration over the weekend.

It was a short visit but we will be staying with them again over Christmas.  Below are a selection of photos taken over the weekend.

This weekend I promised I’d take some time out to sit down and write a couple of updates given that we’ve had a fairly busy couple of weeks and I go back to work on Tuesday.

Last weekend we took a visit to Roscommon (my home town) to visit Granny and Grandad and a large number of friends and relatives.  Mum and dad were due to visit us here in Dublin but Dad was taken ill and admitted to hospital so we made the journey down instead.  Thankfully, Dad has since recovered well and is at home home with his feet up.

It was great getting away for the weekend even if the girls were only two weeks old, we needed to get out and they had no choice :). It was scary seeing how much baby gear we had to bring – and how long it took to pack – and we thought we were traveling light.  We were pretty tired when we returned but recovered after a day or so on the couch with the girls.

It was great to catch up with everybody and I’m sure we’ll be down again before the Christmas.  Sorry it was not possible to get photos of everybody – we though we had a larger selection.