The Birthday Boy

Just wanted to add some pictures of the birthday boy.

Opening his presents





Wasn't impressed with the cake(well, who would be if they knew they were too sick to eat it?)


In bed this morning


Feeling glum


Watching Daddy play PC games

Happy First Birthday!

Well, the boy is one today. He was born at 2.47am, so we would've been all snuggled up in hospital now this time a year ago.





He's been ill with a sicky virus this week, so is miserable as sin and not really up for celebrating at all. Poor thing.

Almost one

Christian is one on Saturday. I can't believe it. He is still very quiet, uber cute, and very much a typical boy. He loves footballs, playing fetch, wrestling his sister...typical boy stuff really.



How much like Isobel is he in this one?



I didn't get either of the jobs I applied for, and Pete isn't getting any interviews either, so we are stuck here in this tiny little house going crazy. I think we are going to have to stay here and do the building work that we need to do to make the house bigger.

I went to a tutorial for my course and my tutor was stroppy with me because I'd moaned via email about her marking. She put me on the spot, asking me what my problems were in front of everyone thinking I would back down, so I told her that her marking doesn't make sense and her comments aren't understandable. Her written English is unintelligible, and that isn't fair. This is MY future she is messing about with. She then proceeded to go through the marking strategy being really patronising, and I told her that I'd filled all the set criteria she'd just been through and she is still marking me down. She just smirked and shrugged. She's a bitch and I can't wait to be shot of her. During the group work we were split into two teams and no matter what my group talked about she shot it down in flames(even though I made sure I did none of the talking, because I knew she'd be a pain and it wasn't fair on the rest of my group), and the other group, who talked nonsense and stuttered their way through it, were heaped with praise. If this next essay isn't marked appropriately I will be asking to be moved to another tutor group. :(

School Report

Taylor has just brought home an excellent school report, I think it's the best one we've ever seen from any of the children. We normally give them £5 for a good report, but he can have a tenner for this one! He got above the expected standard in reading and writing, and is on target for maths and science, and he got A's and B's for effort.
His teacher says:

"Teaching Taylor this year has truly been absolute pleasure. He is a kind and hardworking young man. He approaches all tasks, inside and outside of the classroom, with determination and a keenness to please. He has a witty sense of humour and he is a popular, well-respected class member. I have no doubt he will achieve great things in the future. He has grown into a polite young man with a positive outlook and attitude towards learning - keep it up Taylor, and you'll go far! I wish him all the best in the future."

His headteacher put:

"Taylor this is a delightful report. You can be really proud of this. Your attitude to work, combined with your obvious abilities have resulted in you making such pleasing progress. You are clearly a great asset to your class, and a delight to teach. Keep up this hard work and you will go from strength to strength, and have a superb foundation upon which to build your year 7 work."

Change

It's a big week for us this week. Change is afoot(hopefully).

Firstly, Monday the 1st of March was the day we found out about Taylor's senior school place. After months of stressing about it, there I was at 12.10am on Sunday night logging in to the Essex Schools website. I couldn't believe he got the school we wanted! Still can't believe it really. It's second best in the area, and when you consider how bad a lot of the schools here are, this is a big deal. We've been very lucky.

I'm next on the list for big change. I'm leaving in thirty minutes for an interview. Then I have another interview tomorrow. Then, hopefully, I'll have another one in a few weeks time. Not sure what I'll do if I get more than one offer. Got to get the interviews out of the way first I guess.

Half term - bit late!

Running a bit late posting this, but whats new! I'm not known for my time keeping.


We went to Wat Tyler on the Monday with Sam & Harvey, made birdhouses and let the kids run riot in the park. Spring has definitely sprung here now, it's been lovely to see a bit of sunshine and get washing dry outside.



On the Tuesday Taylor had some money from his birthday from his Dad, so he got to do his one true love - Karting! He was actually really bloody good. Shame we aren't rich and unable to afford his own kart, we could have the next Lewis Hamilton on our hands.




The rest of the week the kids ran wild, beating each other up, being messy - the usual.



Serious baby!




Ryan and Taylor both went to stay with various family members for a few days at the tail end of the week, so our food shopping bill was instantly halved. Which was nice.

Birthday Meal

We took the whole tribe out for a Chinese for Taylor's birthday yesterday. His actual 11th birthday isn't until Monday though.









Isobel in a party dress and biker boots. Stylish!


We haven't been able to all go out for about a year, because there wasn't room in the car! Now that Ryan has his bike, he just follows us there. It's excellent.

This course is going to be the death of me

Having a bit of a wobble over my course this week. My last two essays have had clear passes, so the actual grade isn't the problem(though higher would be nice of course, I was used to getting 80% last year!), but it seems as though my tutor is marking someone elses essays. Her comments don't correspond at all, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

On essay 2, I had to investigate three websites for barriers such as structural, environmental and attitudnal, and I decided to look at the three sites under each heading so they could be compared to each other, rather than just investigating each website seperately. She just couldn't see it at all, even though the question asked us to analyse them and compare them to each other, she seemed to think I hadn't set it out properly. The worst one was the last one, essay 3, where she has commented on my use of a case study that I haven't even alluded to. I'm sure she isn't even reading them. :(

I'm pretty sure asking for a re-mark will be a bad thing, because then the tutor will be annoyed with me, and probably give me worse marks anyway. Should I just be happy with my passes? Don't know what to dooooooo.

The next essay is awful, just awful, and I think I'm going to ask to substitute it. The question is;
Drawing on evidence from online government statistics and at least one other online resource, outline current trends in the provision of home care and discuss the implications of these trends for the ways in which people obtain care and support for themselves.

I'm already a week behind on the coursewwork as it is!

Ryan took his bike test just over a week ago and passed easily, but then his brand new moped wouldn't start! We tried all sorts to get it going, and in the end my uncle came over for dinner on Sunday and tried a few tricks. Eventually it started, we still aren't sure what it was, but we think there must've been an airlock in the fuel pipe. The damp weather doesn't help, so we've had the wonderful inconvenience of it sitting in our hallway every evening, but at least it starts first time now. He fell off it and smashed his wing mirror too this week. Nothing too serious. I'm sure it won't be the last time he comes off. Thank goodness it started working as he started a new job, and its really out of the way with no public transport. He's loving the freedom, being able to nip round to his mates, or down town, plus it only takes him about 5 minutes to get to school now. Now that he's the cool kid with the bike, interested girls seem to be coming out of the woodwork too. I love seeing him grow up.

Not sure where we are on the moving house front. I haven't applied for any jobs in other towns just yet, we need to wait for Ryan to be nearer to sitting his exams first. It's all about the timing! Annoyingly, the rents seem to have gone up hugely in the last two months, which has kind of scuppered our plans a little. I've just applied for a job here, so obviously if I get that and I love it we will be staying local. It's all so frustrating. We really want to foster, and can't until we move, but the moving part is sooo hard.

I'm so glad that it's Sunday today, we took Taylor and Isobel to see Avatar 3d last night and I swear I could've curled up in the cinema and had a snooze. Kit was really grumpy on Wednesday, then when I was at work on Thursday he cried all day for Pete, so we drove miles away to see an emergency doctor that evening, who barely even looked at him and declared it a virus. Good old mothers intuition told me that wasn't right, he was really hot and kept pulling at his ears like he had an ear infection, then he was in bed with us all night with a really high temp screaming his head off. We had zero sleep, I was so knackered at work on Friday morning. I got him an appointment at our surgery on Friday(a miracle, appointments are like gold dust), Pete took him and straight away he spotted that he had tonsillitis and gave him anti biotics. I was ever so slightly annoyed that the emergency doctor hadn't picked up on it the night before, as the poor little mite had suffered all night for nothing. Twelve hours after taking his first dose he was better, though he's been grumpy again this morning.

I probably won't be on here much this month, I'm already a week behind on my coursework, and I have a pig of an essay due at the end of February. Wish me luck!

Almost walking

Kit only started crawling a month ago, and look at him already!

Butlins

Just after Christmas we had the crazy task of packing for a family of six to go to Butlins for four days. We filled pretty much every suitcase we have, mainly with baby stuff, and squeezed ourselves into the car for the journey.







The kids had a great time, I loved getting away from the cooking and cleaning and studying for the week, but it was bloody hard work! Both me and Kit had nasty chesty coughs which meant we couldn't go swimming, and he was a misery guts the whole time.
This photo sums up his mood for the week quite nicely:


Pete and I took it in turns to put him to bed, so one of us was tucked up in bed by 8pm each night. Yes, even on New Years Eve. Pete and I celebrated the new year by eating cheese and crackers and drinking Baileys in our room. Rock and roll!

Taylor and his one true love


Starting them gambling early


Traditional New Years Day swim. And no, we did NOT join them!

Ryan was sixteen on New Years Eve, so we all ate together and he opened a few presents, and he got to stay out late causing mischief with the two other teenagers that had come away with us.

Blimey, sixteen! He'll be leaving school in about 5 months and off to college. Makes me feel old, so it must make Pete feel even older.

Try again...

...after the disappearing blog post debacle the other day I am a little wary. It was a seriously huge, photo filled affair which took me at least thirty minutes to upload, only for it to vanish into thin air. Annoyed was an understatement. It's taken me three days to get over the upset.

So, in December we went to the London Eye with my work;





Proof that I do actually have to do some work while I'm out on my jaunts...here I am shepherding some of my charges.



I'd probably lost the other 44 at this point. Wouldn't be the first time.


Then of course we had the mania that is known as Christmas Day. The children opened their sacks in the morning, then the rest of the family came over for dinner.




The food all cooked as well as can be expected, given the ongoing battle I have with my oven(the turkey took seven hours), although I did forget to cook the pigs in blankets. We opened our main presents after the dinner, and Ryan got to have a ride on his moped.



We are still waiting for his license to arrive so he still can't ride it freely on the road just yet. Good news for all members of the public.

So here we are, 2010.

I just typed up a huge catch up blog post with loads of pictures, it saved it as a draft at least 8 times, and now it's gone...grrrr! I'll try again tomorrow. >:(

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has an enjoyable day surrounded by the people they love.

White Christmas...

...do you think we might get one? It would be nice to actually have a Christmas Day that matched the pictures on the cards we send out. We had a lovely heavy snow storm, complete with thundersnow(my favourite!) last night, which meant I had a day off work as the kids school was closed. They were dressed and out in it by 8am. If only they could get ready for school that quickly and keenly?



Almost ready for the big, manic day here, even if we have left everything to the last minute. I only started shopping this week, and I had an essay due in, and we had Pete's birthday, so it's been pretty crazy. In the next few days I still have to go food shopping, visit my Dad, take Pete out for his birthday treat, take the kids to the indoor playcentre, collect Ryan's moped(though that'll be Pete rather than me, but I've organised it!), do a trip with work to the London Eye, get the turkey, AND I'm four dining chairs down for the Christmas dinner. Anyone got any spare?

We have a crawler

This was us after getting soaked in torrential rain this morning. Look at the state of my hair!

After weeks of perfecting his skills, Kit has finally struck out and started crawling on his hands and knees today. He's been rocking for about a month, then he started doing a little inchworm shuffle last week, and he figured it out properly today at 8 months and one week old. The camera came out in celebration!




He's been terrorising the cats all day. Look how happy he is to be mobile!