Tagged

I've stolen this from Dan over at 0ddness. The rules state to make a collage image, which I can't do, so I've just done them individually. Enter each of your answers into a Google Image Search, and use the first one that comes up as the picture in the collage.



1. What is your first name?
Claire - What this picture has to do with Claire, I don't know!













2. What is your favourite food?
Italian













3. What high school/University did you go to?
St Nicholas













4. What is your favourite colour?
Green










5. Who is your celebrity crush?
Vince Vaughn










6. What is your favourite drink?
Apple Juice











7. What is your dream vacation?
Egypt










8. What is your favourite dessert?
Homemade apple pie and Cornish icecream













9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
A Smallholder





10. What do you love most in life?
My family










11. What is one word that describes you?
Talkative













12. What is your blog name?
My Crazy Family

Strawberries

So, my new friend came over after school yesterday with her four children, she walked into my garden and made a beeline for my fruit and vegetables. I had one ripe strawberry, my first one ever, and she just picked it and ate it in about 0.5 seconds flat. I would've been angry, but she was so enthusiastic about it all, had a little taste of everything and was asking me loads of questions. Hopefully, if we are still in contact next spring, I'll help her grow a few bits in her garden. I'm quite tempted to grow her some rocket, tomatoes and lettuce in grow bags and just turn up on her doorstep with them. Thankfully, some more strawberries have gone red today, but I'm under strict instructions to save them to make jam. Pete won't eat them unless they are boiled with lots of sugar. :)

Lazybones

Goodness, I really need to get motivated and get off this computer. I have a new friend coming over after school today with her children, and the house is a mess! She seems really lovely, hasn't lived here long and two of her children are in Isobel's and Taylor's classes. I'm dreading it a little bit, I wouldn't call it nerves as I don't really get them, but I find her quite hard to talk to because of her accent. Sounds terrible doesn't it? It isn't even because of where she comes from(she is from Africa), it's just me. I get like it with the Scottish, Mancunian, Welsh and Pakistani accents too. I was even like it in Jamaica. I stopped going to the bar after a few days and sent Pete instead because the staff were so friendly and would start talking to me and I wouldn't be able to understand them. It's so embarrassing. I'm sure we'll have a nice time today anyway. Not sure what's going on with the weather, the forecast says clear skies and 24 degrees, yet it's cloudy here. I wanted to get the paddling pool out.

We go on holiday in seven weeks, and it can't come quick enough. I still need to sort out our malaria medication and new passports for me and Taylor, so I'd better get cracking with that. We are starting to get excited now we are into single figures with the weekly countdown, we've been looking at photos of our resort in the Dominican Republic and checking out information on the country.

Ryan has had trouble at school again this week, honestly, he is just like his mother and he loves the drama. You'd think he'd learn to make better friends when he started there, ones that could be trusted. But no, he has to gravitate towards the popular crowd who end up kicking him while he's down. He just isn't cool enough for them, I wish he'd realise that and stop being such a try hard. *sigh*

We are all off to Legoland with my work on Saturday, a cheap day out with the kids as it would've cost well over a hundred pounds for us all normally. Isobel is counting down the days, she is so excited. The good news for her is she is just tall enough with her shoes on to get into the big kids rides. She is 110cm with her shoes on. Being a bit of a daredevil, she is desperate to go on the water rides and roller coasters, so I hope we can get her on.

I'll leave you with a few pictures I took this week over at the old school field. They are putting houses on this soon, work starts in the next few months, so I thought I'd make the most of the green space while I can.

Won the battle.

I waged war against the digging, pooping cat, ran out of ideas, and finally settled on a plan:





It's damn ugly, and inconvenient, but no more cat poo.

My strawberries and potatoes are coming along nicely, we just need some SUNSHINE!



My last two rockery plants are flowering now, this Pink Almeria, and the Sedum below.




At least my eco-lawnmowers Elvis & Fergal are enjoying the lush green grass we've got from all this rain.

Half term

We had a great time out clubbing for my birthday last Saturday, one of the best birthdays I've ever had. I smiled all night. I still feel completely wiped out though, I don't like the getting older part much.

I didn't take my camera, it's too big, but I just pinched these off the website.





It has been half term here this week, which is lovely when it doesn't rain incessantly all day, every day. We've all been bored. We had to give the airshow a miss on Monday because it rained. Then, we went to an indoor play centre on Tuesday, and ironically the sun shone that day. I'm hoping to do something with the children this weekend. Ryan is surgically attached to his Xbox live, the new love of his life, and is lucky if he sees daylight at the moment. I got in from work today at 4pm, cleaned the whole house, cooked dinner and the rest of us ate. Then I spoke to my friend on the phone for 45 minutes, put Isobel to bed, and Ryan finally realised I was home at 8.30pm and asked me where his dinner was. Teenagers!




I sent an email to a lady I used to work with in another Council department today, about setting up a community garden. It's something I've been planning and talking about for a while and never really moving forward with. Not sure whether it will go ahead as we've also both applied for a few jobs that involve relocation. We'll just see how it pans out. I'm not really into planning our futures too heavily. I'll be very excited if my old colleague does come up with some ideas. She works in the Community Regeneration department, where I started my Council pen-pusher career seven years ago, and I bump into her quite a lot and we stop for a chat, so if anyone can help me it'll be her.

iPod!

I'm 28 today, and I got an iPod! :D

I'm off out clubbing tonight, so I'll be back tomorrow with incriminating evidence in the form of photos.

Birthday Girl

Here is Isobel enjoying her 4th birthday party yesterday. The dressing up box went down a storm. :)






Here's my strange daughter blowing out the candle on her Dr Who birthday cake.

Yes, she actually asked for that cake.

She got 6 tropical fish for her birthday too, all named after Dr Who characters!

Dressing up box

It's Isobel's 4th birthday tomorrow, and her present from me is a decorated dressing up box. I asked her what she wanted painted on it, and she had to choose the one thing I can't paint. Fairies! Any kind of humanoid shape is a complete mystery to my artistic hand. Horses, wild animals, even fish would've been fine, just not anything with hands, feet or faces. It's taken me all week to finish, but I've glazed it tonight and it's now ready to fill with her clothes and be wrapped up. She has a Tinkerbell costume, a pirate, a ballerina, Stephanie from Lazytown, and finally a doctors outfit.

FA Cup winners

Portsmouth FC won the FA Cup on Saturday, so we took an unplanned, spur of the moment trek down to Portsmouth on Sunday as we wanted to watch the winners parade. We took a picnic, the weather was lovely down there too(it always is!), and something like 200,000 other people had the same idea. It was madness! I love crowd events, it doesn't matter what the occasion is. I like the feeling of that tribe mentality, thousands of people feeling the same emotion. I think that's why I love clubbing so much, everyone dancing in unison, makes me feel all weird.













Isobel soon got bored and demanded that we go home.


After a very long drive home, we finally got in at about 10.30pm.

Cats in the garden

Our cat keeps digging up my seedlings, I've tried everything to stop her. It's the lettuces that are suffering the most as they just get uprooted so easily. I've tried pellets, my next plan of attack is orange peel(I've heard they don't like the smell) and cocktail sticks stuck in the soil at regular intervals. I don't really know what else to do. I put a chicken wire fence up to keep our old cat Isla off, but Malley just jumps over it.
Here are the newest set of pictures of my little vegetable garden. April and May are my favourite months out in the garden, I like the way everything noticeably grows and looks different every day.
Here are my dwarf french beans, red onions, lettuce, and somewhere in there are carrot and spring onion seedlings, which don't stand a chance against the paws of Malley.


I have some distinctly strawberry shaped lumps.


My tomatoes are out and alive(I murdered the first lot in the greenhouse. I hang my head in shame).

Sunshine

Well, we have no kittens yet, but I'm pretty sure they are imminent as she is HUGE. She looks like a big fat sausage. I thought I felt something wiggle in there the other day, but apart from that we are just guessing she is pregnant by the size of her. It's that, or she's eaten too many pies. She is spending a lot of time lazing about in the sunshine.

We drove to Latchingdon to see the house, sadly I was too late and it's gone. They are building a bloody great footballers style mansion. It was the garden I wanted to see really, which has been flattened too. I'll have top ask Pauline if she has any photos.

All that was left was the old double garage. My Dad renovated his boat in there. I guess they'll knock that down too. :(
If the fences hadn't have been locked I would've been in there looking at the garden.


This week we've spent a lot of time outside and the garden is coming along nicely. I'll take some pictures today when everything is finished for the week. Ryan did his year 9 SAT tests last week, which went by pretty uneventfully with no stress, which is what I wanted. He can be a bit of a worrier, and getting yourself in a state needlessly before a test is not the best way to pass it, so I'm glad he stayed calm. Now we just have to wait and see how he did.

Fat Cat

We've had tom cats sniffing around the back door every night for a few weeks now, but as we were adopted by Malley without knowing her history, we just presumed she'd been spayed and ignored the toms. Wrong!

I present to you one very rotund cat...


If she isn't pregnant I'll eat my hat.



I'd better get her a bed ready as she must only have 4 weeks or so left.