Bluebells

We had a nice day out yesterday with just the two youngest children as Ryan went to watch Southend United play. We went up to the bluebell woods in Langdon, where we always miss the bluebells, but thankfully managed to catch them in bloom this year.




















It felt so good to get out in the sunshine. As you can see, I took far too many photos. There was actually 100 of them, so you've all had a lucky escape with this small selection. We went to the beach for an ice cream afterwards, then went to the garden centre for my growbags. May is here, so it's tomato time!

I had a bit of a shock yesterday, and I'm grieving for a bit of my childhood really. My step mum Pauline grew up in a little village called Latchingdon, and until her Mum died in the early nineties I spent a lot of time there. Mary, her Mum, adored me as she had no grandchildren of her own, and I have really strong and fond memories of her smallholding. I think it shaped the way I am today more than they would have ever realised, almost everything I know about the countryside, and tending a garden, comes from my time spent there. They had an orchard, and vegetables, and beehives, and a maze of trimmed hedges with an old 1920's swimming pool hidden in the middle. It was like a secret garden, and so magical to me as a child. I've always been upset that my children couldn't have an experience of that wonderful place, as when Mary died her reclusive son stayed in the house and gave up tending the garden. Whenever I've asked if we could visit, Pauline has always told me that there is nothing left to see, it's so overgrown. Well, I had a look for it on Google maps yesterday and the house has been sold off and demolished as of last October, to be made into flats. I was gutted. :( I might get Pete to take me over there tomorrow to see what's left.

Stressed out

I don't want to bore you all with my whinging, but I've just had the most stressful week ever, today especially. That's probably why I haven't updated my blog much, I hate moaning here, and I haven't had much positive stuff to say. It's mainly Taylor's behaviour stressing me out, but today everything has just gone wrong at every turn. He's always been such a quiet, well behaved boy, a bit naive and excitable but he would never do anything wrong. That's normally Ryan's job!

It all started a week or so ago when I caught Taylor stealing some sweets from Asda, so we sold his brand new Wii as punishment. He's also had all playing out privileges removed, as we found out that his older friend Josh had been boasting about what he'd stolen(all made up of course, which we discovered when we confronted Josh about it) so Taylor was trying to impress him. That is the end of that friendship!
I then had a phone call from the school to say we owe £50 in dinner money, even though we send him with dinner money every day. The little bugger has been pocketing it for about 6 weeks! So as punishment for that he's paying me back. Then today I hear from the childminders sister that Taylor has taken the cigarette lighter in her car and burnt her dashboard with it, more than once so it wasn't just an accident. I feel like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. :(

I recently started working a second job, working 4 days instead of 2, and the boys have both been moaning about not getting enough attention, but I've thought all along that this is all about his real Dad Michael not seeing him enough. He is a complete loser when it comes to visitation, his girlfriend stops him from coming and he doesn't even try or care. It would be easier if he'd never bothered to have a relationship with him in the first place, then Taylor wouldn't miss him. He hasn't seen him since February, and if I don't bother calling him to arrange something it'll be at least two to three months before he would bother to call us here. He's a lovely guy, but he has no idea what he is doing to his son. The thing that really annoys me is his own Dad abandoned him as a child so he must have some empathy for Taylor, surely? I wouldn't mind if I'd made life difficult for him, but we've always got on, been amicable with each other, Mike & Pete get on fine, I get on with his girlfriend. There is no reason for all this.

Taylor broke down and admitted that this was the problem today, it's taken him long enough to admit it, he's quite a sensitive and private child. I'm at my wits end really, I've run out of punishments and it's up to Mike to step up now and help us with this.

Mammoth Catch Up

Blimey, this is going to be one hell of an update. I'll start at the beginning.

We took the kids down to Portsmouth last Saturday as the boys were staying with Pete's Mum & Dad while we were away. Pete had arranged to meet up with some old friends so we escaped for the evening.

Louisa, Fiona and Me


Pete and Mike


Me and Mike


Pete and Louisa


Then on Sunday we rushed back and did a packing session that lasted most of the day, then dropped off the Guinea Pigs at Sam's, and Isobel off at my Mums. At this point I started to think that although a weeks holiday sounded nice, was it really worth all this stress?
Monday morning we were both up bright and early to get all my members on their three coaches. The journey there was pretty uneventful, we stopped off for lunch in Lowestoft, then got to our holiday camp. Potters is really lovely, perfect for my crowd, but even us youngsters enjoyed it. At weekends it's geared towards a younger crowd, but even so the midweek break kept us entertained. We used the pool and gym most days, and did archery and mini golf. The food was to die for, in fact the whole day basically revolves around food there, and you just get over one meal and it's time for the next! Even lunch is a three course meal, it's unbelievable. On Thursday we were really lazy and literally went back to bed after every meal, and just dozed all day. The coastline here was lovely, we had great weather, although the sea was pretty choppy most days.





It was nice to get home though, and the garden has grown loads in a week. I have lettuce! And carrots!

We're off

I haven't got long to write a proper post, so I'll just have to say a quick goodbye now and write properly later. We are off on holiday with my work today, a week with 150 of our members, sounds terrifying doesn't it? Wish me luck!

All finished.

I put the new floor down and we finished painting the kitchen tonight, except for the ceiling and door/window frames, so here is the almost finished room. I love it so much, I can't stop cleaning it. :D

Confused?

I went to ride the horse on Saturday, and she tried to throw me off when she got spooked by a car backfiring, then she galloped off with me and dumped me on the floor. I got straight back on, as you do, but she wouldn't settle after that. I'm now in a bit of a quandary because she is not suitable for the kids at all, which was half the reason for having her a few days a week. I'm thinking I'm going to have to say no. :( I feel quite strongly that I'm walking down a path that isn't right at the moment, can't explain it really, but now isn't the time for me to be spending two days a week at the stables with a horse that the kids can't enjoy. Bugger.

On a brighter note, look, I have things growing. :D

Strawberry buds


Potato shoots


Onions peeking through


The kitchen is all finished, I'm just painting it now and the flooring arrives tomorrow. Our fridge freezer has picked the worst possible moment to die. The freezer won't freeze, and the fridge won't fridgerate(it freezes instead). Maybe I could put the frozen food in the fridge and the fresh food in the freezer?

So...

...what else have we been up to this week, apart from the all encompassing kitchen remodel? On Saturday I tried out a lovely horse called Jasmine, who I was going to share two days a week. Things have possibly changed slightly since then, for the better, but more on that tomorrow as I'm back at the stables at 10am tomorrow to sort things out. I'm very excited!

On Monday I went to London with work to the Royal Academy, to see the Russian and French Masters paintings. It was very good, I really enjoyed it and got to see work by some of my favourite artists, and found new admiration for some I'd never paid much attention to before, namely Gauguin. There were a handful of his paintings of Tahiti, which were lovely. My favourite of all of them was Philip Maliavin's painting Dancing Peasant Women. It just looked like a mass of flowers, until you spotted the hidden face at the very top;


Guess who I got to bump into at the gallery? Only Ewan McGregor! He was behind me in the queue, and I recognised his voice and turned round. I didn't speak to him as he was with his children, but he smiled at me when he saw me staring...hehehe!

I've been off work the last two days as I've hurt my ankle, but hopefully I'll be able to walk a bit more on it tomorrow. Isobel has been very sweet the last few days, fussing over me loads. I took these pictures of her just now. She doesn't sit still for long so I have to pick my moments wisely.





The kitchen is done for the weekend now, we are just waiting for him to tile on Monday and lay the flooring on Tuesday and we are finished. I keep going out there and just staring at it. The patch of heathery-grey paint near the window is the colour it will be when it's finished.

Am I boring you yet?

I am actually in love with my kitchen.

Getting there

This was the progress yesterday when I got in from work. I couldn't believe how much he'd done. There were some really attractive samples of wallpaper from the 70's and 80's under there.







There has been more work done today, I now have a real cooker for the first time ever and a sink. Yay! Here are today's pictures.





Apparently, the council made a complete bodgejob of the previous kitchen, and our gas pipes weren't soldered and safe, and the electrics in the kitchen weren't earthed either, so we could've been killed at any minute. Nice.

Whew!

Getting this kitchen cleared and ready to pull out has taken up all my time this week. I'm seriously ready for this to be over with now.

Work started today, so here are the before shots. Our kitchen is scary, I can't wait for the new one. As you can see, over the course of the last few months things started randomly falling off of the cupboards. Once we knew a new one was on the horizon we just stopped bothering to fix things.

Planting

Back to work tomorrow, boo! I've had a nice week off, but haven't got as much done as I would've liked. I did manage to get out into the garden and finally plant my potatoes, and some onions. I've also planted my strawberries into my planter which Pete's Mum & Dad bought for me. I've never had any luck with strawberries at all, so hopefully this will help them along a bit and I'll have homegrown berries in a few months.



I'm trying potatoes in a variety of containers this year. I have some Valour maincrop potatoes in the ground on the other side of the garden, and in the bags and buckets are the Belle De Fontenay and Catriona which are smaller, salad type potatoes.


As you can see the mini greenhouse is doing it's thing and the lettuce seedlings are on their way.



It gets deceptively warm in there! I would never have thought it, it's just plastic. I suppose I am south facing, lucky me, so we get the sun all day.

Sorry

I apologise for being so slack at updating my blog this week. I've been off work all week, we both have, and have been clearing the kitchen ready for the work to start. The friend who is doing it for us is being a stereotypical builder and being very hard to pin down. He's doing some work for his daughter that is taking longer than expected, so the work could start this week, but more than likely it'll be next week. It's so frustrating, I want it finished now!

So what have we been up to? We took the kids to Coalhouse Fort last weekend for some fresh air, minus Taylor as he'd been naughty. All we wanted him to do was wash up and he caused such a fuss, slamming plates into the sink in a huff, that we sent him to my Mum's in disgrace as punishment. We went for a walk in the woods afterwards too, then promptly fell asleep when we got home after all that exercise.



Isobel collected some sticks...


...then traded up to a bigger stick.


On Wednesday I finally got round to getting my hair cut and coloured. It took two hours to do the colour, but I suppose I do have a lot of hair! It is very bright, but I love it!


We've also been out for dinner, to the cinema, and out clubbing this week, so it's been a pretty social week all in all. No wonder I've not had time to update! We took the kids to an indoor playcentre yesterday, then Sam & Harvey came back here for a cuppa. The kids had fun making a mess with water and a playmat, but that's what kids do.

Egg Hunt

Isobel was sent home from school on Monday with a temperature of 104, and Taylor was already off with tonsillitis, which I then caught. Pete then caught whatever we had, and it promptly mutated into ManFlu.

As we've all had the lurgy this week, I wasn't sure we'd be up to our annual egg hunt in the woods, but thankfully we'd all recovered by today.
Sam & Harvey came over and we went out for a bite to eat, then it was time for the Easter Bunny AKA me, to scatter the goodies.











We had a go on the little train at the park too.









Isobel and I fell asleep when we got in, must have been all that fresh air.