Invest In Spending Quality Time With Family | Life Is Too Short

Living away from family members is hard! I have realised this more and more as I’m getting older and my relatives are getting older. It hit me hard a couple of months ago when I saw my grandfather who I haven’t seen for a while; I suddenly felt the shock hit me, my stomach sank! Once a larger bubbly man now a little old man not as bubbly as he once was. I don’t know if he saw, felt my shock!? I think my girls also felt the same. My mum is getting older, and she is not old at all which is a scary thing! It shows how poorly she is at the moment, and this reason has given me a wake-up call that LIFE IS TOO SHORT! The family members we all love will not be around, and we need to make the most of the time we do have together.

Lancashire – Family.

With this in mind, we have been travelling across to Skelmersdale once a month, and my parents have also visited us in-between depending on how well mum has been feeling. On our recent visit I took my girls to see my Nan who has never met my youngest Kayleigh who is about to turn 9 next week! The last time she saw the big girls they were possibly 3 and 4 years old, you’re probably wondering WHY!? I don’t want to go into too much detail; my Nan is my Dads mum. I don’t see my Dad, and I don’t intend to anytime soon. My step Dad is my Dad and has been since I was a very little girl! That aside, life is too short, and my Nan is getting old I want my girls to know her. It was lovely to see her, and she hasn’t changed, and her house is the same as I remember it being when I was little 🙂

We then headed on to my Mum & Dads.

My auntie Cathy was at my mums (dads sister), such a lovely surprise, and so lovely to see her I haven’t seen her for years! I didn’t know my little sister Kim was going to be joining us out for lunch to celebrate Chloe’s 14th Birthday! It has been 5 years since I saw her last! It is making me feel a little emotional as I bash the words out on my laptop! As soon as I saw her come through the door, I was overwhelmed by the of rush love. I saw the same in her face as she ran over and hugged me so tight and cried her eyes out, it set me off crying! So much emotion in one room, I think everyone felt it; it’s so long.

We all headed out to Southport to Hickory’s Smoke House for dinner what a fabulous place! It even has a cinema for the kids, and they give them bags of popcorn. There were balloons attached to a Happy Birthday plaque such a nice touch. The food and the service were perfect; they brought a birthday dessert platter with sparklers out for my daughter! We didn’t even know this was going to come out – when booking the table my sister said it was for a party of 9 and was for her niece’s birthday! Kayleigh chose toasted marshmallows for her desert – fantastic a little campfire was brought to the table and skewers for the marshmallow We had such a fantastic day, with so much love and emotion, we will be doing it again at the end of June – Kayleigh wants to go for her birthday too…

Scarborough -Family.

It has been such a long time since we have been to the east coast! We have not visited near enough since we moved 6 years ago. We were invited to go and celebrate Dan’s sister Christine’s 22nd Birthday, she was having a party! On the way, we stopped off at Grandma and Grandads allotments and what was the first thing Kayleigh spotted!? Strawberry’s big fat red juicy Strawberry’s I think she made her granddad pick for her she also made a request for a big basket of Grandads strawberry’s for her birthday ..lol!

I must say the allotments look great… so much hard work has gone into them! We headed on to Scarborough seafront where we both suddenly realised how much we missed living by the sea! I wasn’t feeling my best self on this visit due to being poorly earlier in the week. We left the house a little later too so did not spend as much time as we would have liked we to a lovely stroll down the pier and sat on a bench, watching the speedboats, people sea fishing and the children crabbing. We spotted the Regal Lady and the Pirate ship. We headed to a lovely quirky restaurant for Fish and chips, after all, you can’t visit the seaside and not have fish and chips! Followed by a great Harbour Bar Ice cream. Before heading to the rowing club to celebrate a beautiful girls birthday. It was even better to catch up with family! We didn’t get to see everyone, but we have realised we do need to make more of an effort to get over to Scarborough more often. We didn’t stay too long due to the drive home, and we got home at about 11 pm!