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!

Back to work

I had my first two days back at the office this week, and it was okay.

Just okay.

Kit has decided that his already poor sleep patterns were not quite annoying enough, and has kept me up pretty much incessantly all week. I didn't want to leave him either really, he seems too little, but he was fine, and it is only two days a week.

The job has completely changed. It's horrible. All of the fun parts of the job are gone, my colleagues are still lovely, but the actual workload is awful, dull and unenjoyable. If I could take my coursework in and do that, I'd be happier. It's that desperate.

Speaking of coursework, I got a mark of 66% for the essay from hell, which is fine by me as I didn't even write my name on it(whoops), or add my references(duh!), and 40% is a pass, so I'm way over that.

Taylor is growing his hair at the moment, so I've just taken a photo to record the process. I've always had to shave it mega short as he has a cows lick at the front and a double crown which makes it stick up like a bog brush at the back, but just lately the texture(and colour!) has changed. It's gone brown, and got nice and silky, so he's growing it into a surfers shaggy hairstyle. It is already half way there, and so long compared to what he's used to;

Oh dear...

...I have been a bad blogger. *hangs head in shame*

I've just been rushed off my feet, and it's about to get worse as I'm back to work on Thursday. I can't believe that 9 months has gone that quickly. Thursday morning is going to be fun. I have to do my cleaning job, get the kids all off to school, and get the bus to work for 8.30am. Not looking forward to that much! I've also started my gardening thing at the school, I spent 3 hours there last Thursday and had children from each class come ut and spend a bit of time with me. I was quite worried about keeping them occupied, but they all loved it. We planted strawberry runners, garlic, pulled up some chickweed and collected leaves.

I can't believe I didn't even do a Halloween post. Here is Isobel the zombie at her school disco;


My course this year is going to be a pain in the backside, I can just tell. I read through the first coursework book, went to the tutorial in London, found that the tutor confused me more than helped me, and set about writing my first essay. When I tried to send it in for marking the online system crashed, so I ended up handing it in late, which means the tutor doesn't have to mark it. I sent frantic emails to my tutor begging her to mark it, and she took ten days to reply. Thankfully she is going to mark it, but I've been in limbo really, worrying I'd failed before I'd even started due to technical issues. Loads of people have left the course as it's so boring!

Lots of work to do on this school garden

I went to the garden for the first time today. The lady that has tended it for years retired last week, so now it's all down to me. *gulp* There is quite a lot there that I have no clue about growing. It has seven beds.

One and Two - An empty bed ready for some spuds next year and Runner Beans, Chard, Squash and Courgette;


Three and Four - Tomatoes and Chillis, and an awesome raspberry bush;


Five, Six and Seven - Wildflowers, more Beans, Pumpkin, Rhubarb(out of shot) and Strawberries;


I'm a bit scared of strawberries. They've never liked me much. They refuse to overwinter for me at home, instead deciding to die off. I have here a bed of very mature, wonderfully fruitful strawberry plants. Well at least they were until I got my hands on them. They were giving me the beady eye today, they're just waiting to die off, I just know it.

I started pulling up the strawberry runners, and have hundreds of the little bleeders. I bought a carrier bag home and still have literally billions. What the hell do I do now with a)the plants that are being left to overwinter, and b)the runners? Do the old plants in the ground need anything doing to them? I've just been taking out the old brown leaves and leaving the green ones, but is that right? The lady who left gave me a note to get me to remove the straw from between the plants, but I thought they needed that to protect them from the frosts? Does it need removing and replacing? Do the runners need to be in a cold frame/greenhouse, or can I plant them out too?

So many questions.

Seven Months

Kit is seven months old now. He can say "mama" and "baba", is almost crawling, and gives the best sloppy kisses when you ask him to. He's adorable.

I've just been comparing pictures of Isobel and Christian. I got my first digital camera when Isobel was seven months old, so there was a sudden photo explosion. I don't have many of her before that time.

It's funny, they look really alike, until you look closer. She has Pete's round eyes, and Kit has my slanted ones. Isobel's are a grey/green and his are bright blue. She has Pete's mouth and smile, and Kit has my mouth but still has managed to inherit Pete's smile somehow.






She definitely had more hair!

Gahhhh!

I just can't seem to get my coursework done tonight, everyone is distracting me.

My Mum bought a laptop from someone at work and it took me two hours to connect it to our wireless connection. For some bizarre reason, the anti-virus was stopping it from loading the page. Of course, it took me the two hours to figure this out, and I still don't know how I knew. We got the wireless connection sorted, but not the actual internet page. As soon as I uninstalled it, the internet came on, like magic. The baby has had me up and down like a yo-yo tonight too. As soon as I sit down he starts moaning. Little monkey.

Today has been an annoying day money-wise, as was yesterday. Pete was told on Thursday at our family dental check up that his dodgy tooth(he damaged it playing football 11 years ago), could be repaired for free. He went in to get the work done today, and they sneakily billed him £125 for the privilege. Of course, they waited until after the procedure to announce this fact. I had to put it on my credit card. I was not amused. Yesterday my work called, all chipper, to proudly announce that my course funding had come through, even though I've called them once a week for the last 6 weeks to frantically tell them that the very last day, that could not be extended any more, was the 10th of October. Idiots.

Lazy Sunday

My course started last weekend, so I'm trying to get used to working on it any spare moment. I loved having the summer off, but am now finding it hard to get stuck in again. Thank goodness I didn't have to take a year off, I would never have started it again. The content is much, much harder this year. Just glancing through it I can see that. I hope I can do it. I am back to work in six weeks too, which I'm dreading a bit now.

Michael, Taylor's Dad, finally called me. I sent him a begging email weeks and weeks ago, telling him that Taylor was missing him, and he 'hadn't seen it until now', apparently. He's supposed to be seeing him next weekend, so we shall see.







Kit goes up on his hands and knees now, trying to crawl, so I'm sure it won't be long before we are frantically childproofing and stair gating. I'm thinking of getting the playpen out today for him, but it involves massive furniture rearranging missions that I can't be bothered to do. Our living room just isn't big enough for all the furniture.



We are having a nice lazy Sunday today. I'm about to put a lamb joint in and my Mum is taking the kids to the park so I can do my weekly ironing session in peace.