The big F – or forty, fit, feestjes, friends and food

It seems that my life is revolving around the letter F at the moment – and because of this I have been very busy. Being busy is a great thing although my blog has suffered and I do miss having time to write. It doesn’t help that Richard is having a spate of prolific blog writing at the moment -however I can’t see myself sitting writing at 4am which is when he’s usually tapping away!

Turning forty was my first big f. Not content with one party, I threw a second one here in Antwerp. As my birthday fell on a Saturday evening it was a perfect excuse for a bit of a do.

The official 40 portrait. Saturday 4th of February, 2012.

I had a great night surrounded by new friends from all over the world – the complete opposite of my birthday last year. It was a good time to look back and reflect how far I’d come since that gloomy Friday last year when I sat, very glum in front of the telly, scoffing the birthday tart the girls had picked out for me at the local bakery.

I made my own cake this year - Nigella's pomegranate jewel cake - lekker!

The wine flowed, the conversation flowed, Richard made a beautiful speech, I gave a pretty good rebuttal (!) and I managed to kick on till nearly 2am. (Those of you who know me very well will recognise what a feat this is. I am, after all, the woman who suggested an end time of 9:30pm for my hen’s night!)

Doing a bit of speech making.

Birthday parties or feestjes have been an almost weekly occurrence since we got back to Antwerp. This does mean that I am practically on first name terms with the staff at In den Olifant (gorgeous Antwerp toy store), but mostly it demonstrates just how many great friendships that we, as a family, are making.

The Mega Mindy twins with birthday girl Milla.

Mask making at Charles' birthday.

Even Mum and Dad got in on the act.

Making friends with Natacha, Charles' precious baby sister.

The big 4 year old.

In addition to all our new friendships we were lucky last week to have time with an old friend who lives on this side of the world. I’ve known Davina since my early teaching days – nearly 20 years ago eek –  and she’s now based in London with her partner and baby. Davina and Jenson came and spent a few days with us and we had lots of fun taking them to our favourite places. It was really nice also to watch Olive and Edie with a young baby. Olive in particular was so interested and helpful – quite the mother hen.

Having fun at Aquatopia.

We also made sure Jenson's visit was very educational. Here O and E are instructing him in the all important art of iPad usage. J is for Jenson!

Olive in Mummy mode 🙂

So now to fit and food…and really what they are all about is yet another f word – focus. Our life in Belgium affords me a very great gift – time – and this year my goal is to put that time to good use. Two goals I want to achieve are getting fit and working towards improving our family diet. I’m running and getting back into weight training with the aim of doing the 5k race that is part of the Antwerp 10 mile event in April. With a friend I’ve made here, I’m doing an online course focussed on whole food. You might remember my earlier post where I revealed my vegetable deficient past! I’m hoping this course will be a good way to get some more plant based food onto our table – it’ll be just like the picture below!!

I suspect members of my family are engaging in some serious laughter and choking on their respective hot beverages right about now!

And f….inally – the other thing I’ve done is join the PTA – I’ve actually wound up as co-chair in fact. I was struggling with an f association for this – best I can come up with is there are f…ive of us on the committee!

Take care everyone. xxx