It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to

It's my birthday.
A pretty normal day all 'round. This year is just another number. Next year is the big one and I will need a party!
I got 3 cards, 2 bunches of roses (both from Graham, or maybe one was from Alex) and chocolate.
Saturday the in-laws came over with a cake. Caught me in the middle of painting the laundry, literally up a ladder, so I was not dressed for this and less than impressed at having my photo taken. But it was nice to have my cake and eat it :)
They gave me some money, $1 for each year, a chocolate Christmas bell and a really cool card that plays music when you open it (which Alex loves) and inside are animals with cameras and the cameras flash (which Alex also loves but I do too).
I got also got a card from my Godmother in England and one from Alex and Graham. Alex signed it all over. It looks like he is already trying to copy Grahams signature.
Graham brought me home a bunch of roses at lunch time and again at dinner time. Which either means he is having an affair (joke) or he had no idea what to get me for my birthday. He also brought home take-away from my favourite little local Italian place. We could have eaten out but it's not really relaxing with Alex.
Here's the dreaded shot from Saturday with the cake my MIL made.

and here's my roses and the 'cake' Graham served tonight :)

and here's some recent shots.
I had to wash Teddy again last week (Alex was sick on him). Every time I have to wash Teddy I worry that he wont survive. He is stuffed with some sort of lavender scented filling. Alex has had him since he was a baby and sleeps with him every night. Lately he has become quite clingy to Teddy, wanting to play with him, not just sleep with him. So when I had to wash him I had to be careful to sneak Teddy off to the wash without Alex seeing and then hang him out on the line without him seeing. He asked for Teddy often during the day but I managed to distract him until he spotted Teddy on the line. Then we had a bit of a tantrum but Teddy was wet so had to stay on the line.
Finally at the end of the day Teddy was judged to be dry enough and Alex was so happy to have him back, even with the pegs still on.

He then took Teddy for a ride in a box.


This is what we have all over the house the last few days.
At least they are soft to tread on. Alex is having fun with them which is what counts. He knows most of the letters even though these are lower case and the fridge magnet letters he is used to are upper case.
He surprised me today. I was in the kitchen making his breakfast and the milk bottle was out on the other counter behind me. I wasn't watching him so I was surprised to hear 'm mama eye el kay'. Yep he was reading the label and had just read M i l k. I knew he knew M and K but didn't realise he could recognise the lower case i and l. He then fetched the big rubber K from his floor mats and held it over the k on the label and said 'same' and then fetched the M off the fridge and said 'M mama same'.
I was sooooo impressed.

This is what Graham looked like after removing tiles in the laundry.
The laundry is almost finished so I'll get some photos of it soon. One side of the room is done and the washing machine and dryer are back in. The other side needs a 3rd coat of paint and that's it. I could have finished it today when Alex had his nap but I decided to celebrate my birthday by having a nap myself :)

Some Alex photos, he was watching his newest home movie on TV. I made a DVD of home movies and photos to included in the Christmas parcel to Elin and Jim. Alex has his own copy which he frequently demands to watch.

and here he is having fun with water.

and a digital scrapbook page I made the other day inspired by photos Jim emailed us.
This is using the Winterfrosting kit by Andrea Gold provided to the first round entrants in the GDS supreme team contest.