Sam's second birthday.

I feel its time for another gratuitous 'proud parents' patch, and let you know about Sam's second birthday (7th January 2005!), which occurred on Sunday. We had a real party and Anna made a very popular 'Choo choo train' cake, mainly from chocolate swiss rolls, and with real railway tracks!

We had a get together of family and friends with a great crew of other children, apart from Sam there were cousins Holly and Mary, and Louis, Henry, James, Meg, Basil and Wilf.

Holly and Mary were the only two to take up Auntie Mary's beautiful face-painting; Holly's cat-look perfectly camouflaged her against the sitting-room curtains.

Thanks everyone for Sam's lovely presents, he has been spoilt rotten and after this 11 months without presents will take much getting used to!

Our final picture is possibly the ultimate piece of clothing - Yes Sam now has a JCB digger shirt!

This week we were also lucky to catch up with our great friends from New Zealand - Nina (Sam's Godmum) and Jason, their little daughter Gracie, and her father John and partner Kate. Jason has had to fly back to NZ at the weekend leaving Nina and Gracie here for a few more days, but it was great to catch up with them, and we hope we get visits from a few more NZ friends over the coming months.