red mum

Taken as our train left Limerick Junction on the way back to Dublin.

This is a pal’s niece, Emily Rose, singing her own song Wide Eyes and Butterflies. Her dad apparently decided that he would send the demo to Radio Ulster and they played it.  She has an amazing voice and this is well worth taking two minutes to check out. (Apologies  if you already saw this on my twitter or facebook.)

I meant to post before now about a very important auction happening now with some Pixie photo buddies. Ronan and a couple of others, horrified by the earthquake in Haiti and the devastation in its wake, have decided to auction off some of their images to raise money for Haiti.

You can find out more from Ronan on his blog where he explains how the auction will work. The auction will conclude on Jan 31st, so you don’t have much time to get bidding.

You can see all the pics up for auction on Pixie.

(Alternatively you can donate money to the charity directly.  The account details for the Gena Heraty Haiti Fund at AIB Westport are:

A/C Number: 11108008

Sort code 93-71-69

We had quite a weekend, one from which we are still recovering. It all began with the Young Wan’s 18th birthday party which had to be moved from over Christmas as people said they couldn’t make it, to last weekend, when we experienced the worst snow bound and icy weather in Dublin for an age. But cancellations (of which there were many) aside, we had a blast.

The Young Wan, (will I have to change her name here to Auld Wan?) declared it the best night of her life and we partied on until 6-7am. My brother and his gorgeous family made it down from Derry, others came from Belfast, while another pal got stranded on her way to Manchester Airport and wasn’t able to make it over in the end.

There are photographs, bad photographs, well they are more like snapshots that get messier as the evening went on so I won’t be posting any of those here. And thats that, herself is now 18, I can’t believe it. Oh yeah and the 18th birthday book went down an absolute treat (thanks again to Tom and Neil for the loan of their expertise and computers enabling me to finish it).

Firstly Happy New Year everyone. Its back to work time but more importantly the Young Wan turned 18 in the last couple of days, can you believe it?

So this is a year, where I not only turn 40 (at the end of the year thank you very much), but where she begins college. I cannot believe that. In the last few months I have realised there’s a major upside to not having the money to send her away to college, that means she will be at home and I couldn’t be happier. I am not ready to be one of those empty nesters.

Its funny for me to think now that this is the same person who’s mad teenage eejitry prompted me to set this blog up in the first place. I half thought about posting the first pic I have of her, which was included in the book, (that incidentally went down more than well) and is of my nine-week scan, but then I figured there would be people like me who speed read and think I have some monumental news to share, so I won’t post the scan just in case.

Over that five years of this blog things have evolved into God knows what, but its still a space I love having and one of my resolutions is to make more time for my blogging this year where possible.

While I say that I am currently stumped as my laptop has still to go to the doctors, I also have hundreds of pics on the camera, dating back to the start of December (something I never do), but not having had the chance to process the pics since the laptop’s illness and the hours and hours I put into her birthday book, they will have to wait.

So for now Happy New Year everyone, wishing you wonderful things for 2010, well it has to be better than 2009 (fingers crossed anyway) and thanks for your continued support