10/18

There's been a few changes around here

Young family with two young boys wearing The Animals Observatory and Rylee and Cru whilst pumpkin picking at Millets Farm, Frilford, Oxfordshire

There has been a reason for my recent lack of blog posts including a huge redesign for Hello Archie. I've not only changed the overall look, but also the content and layout of my About and Design Services pages, so hopefully it's now much easier for you to find what you need from my blog. I'm pretty much finished with the big stuff (bar a few tweaks) and as there's also a lot going on offline, I thought I'd take this post to update you all and share a few recent pictures of our little unit that I love.

A few weeks ago, we lost my Nan, quite suddenly, and saw the birthday of my brother who passed away 8 years ago; it's been a tough month but in all the grief and loss I've discovered this newfound gratitude for my family, each day I feel so lucky that we have each other and I'm trying to banish the part of my brain that's so desperately aware that the days are passing so quickly. These are the days I want to live forever and I don't want them to slip through my fingers (also part of the reason I obsessively record everything here).

I've also been busy with design work and have collaborated with some great bloggers on creating their identities, most recently the lovely Donna of What the Redhead said (you'll see her new look blog in early December as I'll be customising her theme then too). It means I've been busier than normal but it's wonderful and I'm hoping it continues.

Autumn is my favourite of all the seasons and as Martin has had some time off, we've been doing all the generic Autumnal activities such as pumpkin picking and planning which fireworks display we're heading to this year as well as starting to plan for Christmas (Archie is a Christmas day baby so we have to be twice as prepared).

Archie is settling into school well (though he's that cheeky distracting member of class) and Jesse is clingier than ever; he doesn't start pre-school for another year but I'm already considering trying to defer him as he'll only be a few weeks past 4 and I feel he may be too young to emotionally deal with the changes. He's incredibly clever though, reciting his colours, starting to count and he has this incredible vocabulary at only 2; he's a sponge that soaks up and remembers everything he hears and sees around him.

We're about to embark upon the first school holidays since Archie started in September and as Martin's working for almost the entirety of it, I imagine someone will be scraping me off of the ceiling by the end of the week. If anything is going to be scary this Halloween, this is!