Me, my siblings, a zebra suit and a trampoline...

...And we're good to go with plenty of laughs!

I'm one of five siblings. I'm the one bang smack in the middle. I see my siblings every couple of months. I see all of them in one place a couple of times a year - it's not enough, but we're working on it. We have the biggest laughs together now but we used to have epic fights a decade ago when we all lived together...crikey.

The most common word in our house a decade ago? "MUUUUUUUUUUUM"

Here's MuM...A.K.A. the mothership, or MOFO:

My siblings and I are massive camera whores, it's fair to say. Here's evidence:

We're spelling out 'loves' here, not sure why, I think it was the only 5 letter word we could think of...

I'm obsessed with my zebra onesie suit, and took it home for a family airing where we took turns wearing it on the trampoline...

Scores on the doors please?

AmsterdamN Good Times!

Settling back in to life back home is overrated I've decided!

So having been back in England for two weeks, it was time to get back on a plane...this time to Amsterdam for a teeny tiny weekend away, good times!
It didn't help that I went out the night before the 7am flight, so I didn't feel the greatest that I've ever felt getting on that flight...beautiful sunrise though, I could appreciate it...

Made it through the one hour flight without reaching for the paper bag, teeny bit of turbulence but nothing we Baxters can't handle. It's crazy that you can get to Holland on a plane from Leeds in the time it takes to drive to Sheffield...

We soaked up the culture in the McDonalds in the arrivals at the airport - normally I wouldn't go anywhere near but I didn't think I was going to pull out of my hangover without Ronald's assistance...Magic McMuffins.

Found our hotel without much drama, just walked fifteen minutes in the wrong direction so we stopped for our first drink of many that weekend:

Amsterdam is beautiful; it's a strange place, during the day you wander along the most beautiful streets and canals and sit in cafes eating delicious apple pies...

But then darkness falls in Amsterdam, and there's change in the air...Amsterdam takes on a sort of seedy buzz, an almost anything goes attitude, but that attitude comes from the tourists, the locals really are the same around the clock; unfased. They just kind of tolerate the tourism, rather than participate.

Something happens... you go to the smallest pub in Amsterdam and get talking to an American guy called Zack at the bar who is on his own in Amsterdam on business...

He seems nice enough, even if he claims he is 26, he must be the oldest 26yr old I've ever met :) then you get talking to a group of guys from somewhere around Hull who seems nice enough also...then...

BRUISED AND CONFUSED!

Anyway, we made our excuses and left with Josh telling me off for talking to strangers, drank some more, got some chips, got stupidly lost (all the roads look the same and have crazy names!) luckily Josh is now an iPhone bore and got us out of the pickle with his m-AP. Stopped off at an African club where I threw a few shapes before being dragged out of there at 3am. Tsk.

Next day it rained the WHOLE day, relentless.

Still we made the most of it posing for arty pictures in the rain...

Whatever the weather, I LOVE Amsterdam and would love to go back one day and hire a bike to see more of it. And eat more stropwafels and drink more Chocomel...and Heineken for Josh.