Not quite a storm

It’s really dark outside, and I keep hearing those distant rumbles of thunder. I do wish the weather would get it’s act together and give us a proper storm! I love the drama of the lightning punctuated by the thunder rolling, not to mention the lashing of persistent rain.

Then that fabulous clean and fresh air, I love to stand outside and marvel at the calm after the storm. And hear the odd drip of rainwater from leaves on the trees…

But not right now, it’s just spotting! Aw c’mon!

Thinking about what really matters..

So at the moment we as a family have a lot on, not only are we busy with the usual hum drum of family life but all the fetes and BBQ’s, family members in hospital, running our own business, hospital appointments (two today, for different family members in different hospitals!) running a key group, kids parties, Church commitments, worry about income…..

I have to admit it has been all getting a bit much lately. But in the past few days I have been challenged to change my thinking.

I was hearing about someone who is having an affair, desperately trying to find the ‘right’ person – but of course not going to, at least not this time. And I was also told about a woman fighting a custody battle to keep her daughter safe.

All of a sudden I was able to look around me and just appreciate what I am blessed with. I have a happy marriage, that both my husband and I cherish and work hard at, I love him now more than ever and these trying times whilst they put real pressure on us, just highlight my devotion to him.

 I have two children, a boy and a girl, both beautiful and healthy (and Elias’s hearing got the all clear today – hooray!) Although the bank statements may conflict with this, I feel rich – in those precious things that really matter.

I’m sure that with all that we have on, I’ll still have days when life weighs heavily on me, but I hope I can hang on to this re-gained perspective, and fight on.

Favourite TV series

Maybe we’ve been growing up lately, it seems like we are much less likely to sit and skim through TV in order to find something watchable – instead we have really gotten into certain TV series, and do our best to record them or buy them.

24 of course is one of the biggest favourites of mine. I LOVE the real time drama, and the incredible pace it manages to maintain throughout the 24 episodes – I am almost desperate for the 4th series to come out to buy in the next few weeks, and even though we’re flat broke – I will be buying it! (As we have the first 3 series I have been re-visiting series one to fill the void) It has been the making of Kiefer Sutherland, who it had seemed was just going to disappear into oblivion after a real career dry spell.

‘House’ is a new one, with Hugh Laurie persisting with an American accent and an ex Neighbours cast member – odd mix. But this grumpy Doctor, who seems to have quite an aversion to patients is actually rather watchable (Channel 5, 10pm, Thursday’s)

Law & Order Criminal Intent is another, Vincent D’onofrio is fabulous as a ‘cop’ who uses psychology and body language (among other things) to track down criminals. His Partner, detective Eames,  also is a very strong character. Compelling, if a little grisly every now and then (not as bad as all the CSI’s though!)

Malcolm In The Middle is a must for a little light relief – especially for parents, no kids can be as bad as these are!!!!!!!!!!! I have however banned my kids from watching it, I figure they will learn how to be sneaky and naughty all by themselves – they don’t need ideas!!!!! The trouble with this show is that you can only buy the first season (which we have) and are lucky if you can catch it on TV, it’s always on at awkward times, or we find out it’s on when they stop showing it…. Gggrrr.

So, if you’re stuck for something to watch perhaps have a go with one (or more) of those. I will not be held responsible for 24 addiction though!

 

 

Having a smashing time..

After too long I picked up my mosaicing a couple of days ago. For some reason it has been many months since I last did any pieces – but Robin made me a frame from some MDF and wood offcuts we had lying around that was just begging to be used. In honour of the new bathroom, I decided on a fishy theme…although Joy rather like it and is insisting that it should not grace the walls in the bathrrom, but go in her room instead.

Here is how far I’ve got….. Elias is rather curious, as it’s still a little delicate at this stage I am having to keep his fingers away rather a lot! (as you can see below)

(I’m also rather proud of myself as I’ve just figured out to upload piccies from the video camera – and retrieve them via Blogjet in order to share with y’all!)

Tesco in Abingdon (nr Oxford)

We were out his morning doing many errands, and found ourselves in Tesco’s over in Abingdon. I have to say I am a big fan of this store in particular as it sells such a huge range of things, all the groceries you’re likely to need plus a few other, perhaps more surprising things!

One range that I was not expecting was the camping gear – they do starter sets for under £50! Which include a tent, a couple of sleeping bags, sleeping mats and a carry bag – wow! Not bad I reckon. They also carry a large range of clothing at affordable prices (I’m a real fan of the ‘value’ clothes, especially for my rough and tough kids!) and home wares.

I guess the only downside I can see to having a shop like this, is that small independent shops simply can’t compete with the buying power that Tesco clearly has, and for that I am sad – local butchers seem to be a thing of the past around here.

But as a busy Mum, trying to seek out every available bargain I have to confess that Tesco has my vote…. at least for now.

Bone dry to soaking wet!

After many days of frankly rather gorgeous weather, the heavens have just opened and we are getting a real soaking! It’s so dark that I’ve got the lights on in the day for the first time in ages – feels weird!

Whilst I do miss the sun, I think this rain and the freshness it has brought with it will be welcome relief for some who have been wilting like the plants outside!

Elias does look funny, he’s a puddle lover and is currently dressed in a T-shirt, pants and wellies… NICE! He will have to wait a while though as the rain is too heavy.

All that said, I hope it’s sunny again soon.

Coolest view from a window...

Re-visiting the night in London in April…. This has got to be one of the coolest views! ( We stayed at the Marriott, County Hall… Oooh the luxury!)

Wooden trains

Oh, on the subject of wooden toys… Elias is a mad train lover, we have found Tesco’s to sell the cheapest train sets and accessories – plus they are compatible with ELC and Brio sets. (Ikea ones do fit, but snugly, which is not easy for little fingers)

We took him to Didcot railway centre recently, a must for any young train fan (or not so young!) Sadly, as I mentioned before, the sheer scale of real steam trains was a bit too much – he likes his safely tucked inside a TV or fist sized!

 

Disney store - the plastic place

I ventured into Oxford today – something I rarely do (traffic congestion, parking  – argh!) to return some library books. Unfortunately the entrance is opposite the Disney store and I was asked, very nicely (please and everything) if we could go in.

Wanting to reward my little guy for being perfectly behaved I was pretty happy to nip in, forgetting of course for that brief moment quite how much I loathe the place.

I won’t let Elias walk around in there by himself as the stands are so high and toys piled up everywhere, he’s lost in seconds flat. (normally rolling around in the mountain of soft toys at the back of store – but not always) Also there is little space between the stands for buggies – how ridiculous is that? Seeing as most of what they sell is aimed at small kids – who generally have at least one parent and a buggy in tow.

Another issue I have with it is the fact that most of what they sell is overpriced and very low quality plastic. When I do buy from there it is when they have their ‘rock bottom price final clearances’ where things are about 75% marked down – about the price I am willing to pay for a toy that is not made to last! We bought a Nemo soft toy recently, and the quality was so poor the stitching was coming undone within 2 weeks!

Little Wonders however is the polar opposite, and is a couple of minutes walk away from the Disney store. It is packed full of beautiful toys of very high quality. All kinds of wooden play sets, including the most beautiful Noah’s Ark I have ever seen. And oddly enough, not so dissimilar in price to Disney. We spent a good 45 minutes in there one Saturday morning with the kids, we were as happy to be there are they were! The sales assistants are genuinely enthusiastic about their products, and happy to help you out – plus they know all about the toys they sell. Although it is not as big as Disney they have so many more fabulous toys, games, puzzles, books, dolls….. and more. Any family in shopping in Oxford should seek it out, instead of that other inferior place!(oh, and this is a little controversial – ELC does not have a patch on Little wonders either – although I do like their art materials)

Too expensive to live here.

Robin and I have been increasingly concerned with the cost of living here in the south of England. We’ve had many ‘let’s move abroad’ conversations lately as we just keep having our living expenses rise and rise.

Some of you know that we can’t afford to buy our own house, in a place I have lived nearly all my life (I can see where I was born from the front window of our rented house) I find that ridiculous, but also pretty insulting, that students take priority in this city over families trying to work hard for their future. Supposed low cost housing schemes offer insultingly small shares to part buy poky flats (not ideal for a family anyway) that are over-priced in the first place!

Our council tax is ridiculous, fuel costs a bomb, all of our utility bills have risen recently and we’re finding ourselves further removed from buying a place of our own.

I’ve been really enjoying the new bathroom, I’m glad our landlords finally saw that the old suite was disgusting, shabby and barely functioning, and the carpet unsanitary. I am fed up though with having things fixed or replaced when they feel it it’s necessary. I’m also fed up with living on a year by year basis, our housing has felt temporary for the past 5 years we’ve been here – which is wearing. So some of you will say, well why not fix stuff yourself? Do you have any idea how little motivation I have to fix up a home that is not ours? to spend money on keeping another person’s house in a good state (when they’re not too bothered)? When I have painted rooms it has been because their shabby textured wallpaper has just become too much of an eyesore to bear any longer!

I hate to say it but I do feel like leaving Oxford, even though it is where our family and friends all are, where the kids are happily settled in schools and pre-school – where our Church is, where our life is. Because I’m sick of struggling to live here.

 

Sale - now on

Purely for information… Argos sale started today. I gather Homebase sale starts tomorrow. If you want to bag a bargain … go there!

If you are looking for a cheap tent I found this for 4 people and this is even cheaper!

I also found a pile of other stuff – none of which we can afford! I really am more of a browser than a buyer!

School Summer Fete (& BBQ)

It’s that time of year again – the annual summer school BBQ. This year it is on 24th June (this Friday) from 5:30–8pm at New marston Primary School, Oxford. You’re all welcome to come! (adults 50p kids free to get in) We are fundraising for some of these amazing new electronic whiteboards for each of the classes and this is one of the money spinners of the year for the PSA.

Attractions include….

Bouncy castle, cake stall, raffle, welly wanging, pony rides, plant stall, BBQ, jewelry stall, refreshments, toys & games……. and many more.

Might see you there.

Driving me crazy

The so called ‘Crazy frog’ – what’s that all about? Naff music, naff animation – oh yeah, sure fire hit. Sorry, forgot there are a whole section of the population who apparently have no taste!!!!!!

(oooh, that was quite a rant! I must be a real blogger now)

Feeling hot hot hot!

Oooh this weather is great! I would like it less muggy in an ideal world but otherwise I am enjoying waking every morning to glorious sunshine!

Keeping the kids cool is proving interesting…. we mostly favour the paddling pool, cold drinks, little clothing… you know, like everyone else! Oh, and a one inch layer of suncream for my two pale skin beauties! (my goodness, we are going through this fast just now!) Let me know any cool tips you have – share the knowledge!

To look at me though, you’d never know it’s been so nice – I remain glo-white, I do envy all of you (that’s most everyone else in my family) who have a healthy  bronze glow about now. I’m toying with the fake tan idea, then I can be streaky glo-white and dirty orange… Hmmm. Maybe not.

I have about a half hour free right now, and although there are piles of things I should be doing, I’m going to go out and enjoy the sun. Where did I put those sunglasses……

Blogging is catching!

A couple of months ago when I started blogging I had no idea the response I’d get, or the personal satisfaction it has given me. I have been genuinely surprised at just how many people have asked me about blogging, and then sought out my blog – but then amazed to find my friends and family starting their own as well!

This is my sister and brother in laws, looks great – and it is so fun to read what they are thinking about/doing.

Plus I’ve been visiting Tophers blog (please update this!!!!) my father in law's, Wendy’s and of course Blogdog among others – they are all so different, but it’s really fascinating to me reading their views, news and thoughts on business etc.

It strikes me we all have different reasons for blogging, and very different ‘voices’ – blogging is great!

 

Longest day

We found Joy awake this morning a few minutes after 5am. She’s also finding it pretty hard to get to sleep at night as it’s so light (even with blackout linings on her curtains!) These lovely days are fab – but they’re proving to all be pretty long for poor Joy!

Oh well, seeing as today is the longest day, they’ll begin to get shorter from now on.

It is done

Phase one of the bathroom transformation is complete. We have a lovely new sink, bath, and toilet, plus some new tiling. It’s so fresh and new – shows up how tatty the rest of the house is!

The floor is in need of some vinyl, and the walls need a lick of paint. Otherwise, it’s pretty perfect.

The two flush loo is proving entertaining…………….

 

A work in progress (Still!)

Well, we are on day 4 of the bathroom transformation. That is to say, the fourth day with the guy actually here. We spent the weekend being SO thankful that the new bath and shower were in and useable – but missing the sink rather a bit (not the same brushing teeth using bath tap!)

It is slowly transforming our bathroom from a place you didn’t really want to go, to a gleaming place to maybe even enjoy a  long soak in the tub. One noticeable difference is that it is so much brighter in there, the bathroom is pretty small and certainly needs all the light it can get!

I have just been informed I can now use the new loo! (ooh how wierd I can be so very excited about this!) I mught just do that while M..J.Cox (Malcolm) take a lunch break!

Just need to paint it, oh, and get some flooring put in….

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll (Elias's first post!)

/////uh/utfuffffffffff   (??!!)       

Not sure exactly what Elias is trying to say, but he selected the picture of himself

Mosaics

I am sure that most friends and family reading this will already know that I have taken up doing mosaics in the last 18 months. I find it very therapeutic smashing and cutting tiles and arranging them….. Not to mention very satisfying seeing the end result (and giving away ‘pieces’ to lots of you!)

The only problem I have is that many people, myself included, are favouring white tiles just now – and there are few coloured ones knocking around any more. This is just a cheeky request, if you have any coloured tiles, even if it’s only one or two, I’d love to have them. I have a mountain of white ones, enough to last me a very long time, but few coloured. What jogged my memory is that the blue tile are being taken off in the bathroom and I’ll gain a few blue ones in the next few days. Any odd craft mosaic tiles would be handy too. (thank you so much Heidi for the ones you gave me, I’ve had such fun with them!)

Also, if any of you have the odd bit of MDF (preferably fairly thin) I’d welcome that too!

When I can find them, I’ll post a few pictures of things I’ve done, house numbers, pots and so on.

 

Blue suite on the way out...

In the past few minutes the blue bathroom suite has begun to leave the house – the noises from upstairs are so encouraging. We’ll soon have a lovely new WHITE bathroom suite fitted.

Oh happy day!

Hannah gives us a hard stare...

We took this pic of Hannah Green when we saw her a couple of months ago – funny thing is we caught her on one of the very few occasions she was not smiling!

I understand she’s rather dotty just now with the chicken pox, poor sweetie.Get well soon.

Robin is a fountain...

Silly pic of Robin outside Somerset house in London….

New Bathroom

Tomorrow morning the builder comes and we are getting a new bathroom suite put in – WOW! We’ve been putting up with the grotty and dated blue bathroom suite for the past 5 years (not to mention the frankly rather disgusting ancient floral blue carpet) so it’ll be a welcome change, if a little disruptive for a few days!We’re going white – aah how lovely, all neutral and clean-looking. I’ve no doubt I’ll soon be wielding a paint brush to remedy the off white walls in there too. (last week the clash of bright yellow walls and blue toilet became too much and I painted the toilet walls)

I keep wishing that there might be some unavoidable accident and the wall separating the toilet and bathroom might also be removed – thus creating a good sized family bathroom instead of a poky toilet and claustrophobic bathroom. But as this place is not ours we are only able to do as our landlord’s wish. Oh how desperate I am for a place of our own!

Robin 's video blogs!

OOh, something new on Robin’s sites rjjm.net and Blogdog – Video blogging a la Robin! Take a look, I reckon everyone will want to have a go!

Diggerland!

I saw this on my friend Wendy’s site today – what a cool place to take kids!(especially boys)

Cool pool

Ferry Sports Centre recently re-opened up in Summertown, I’m not sure if many people know as yet. I have been swimming there and am certainly going to take the kids as it’s great. There are new changing facilities and the pool has had a total re-vamp. Everywhere is clean and fresh looking.

If I only had the time and money I think I’d be rather tempted to sign up with the gym – all new and looks great. Maybe in September when Elias goes to pre-school for 5 mornings!

There you are, a little local info.

By jove I think he's got it!

To add to the potty comments of a couple of days ago…. I think Elias has cracked the toilet training thing – Yeah!

He is now pooing in all the right places and taking himself off to wee as well (I keep finding full potties around the place!!) Hmm, if you’re not a parent that may just sound yukky – visualise if you will puddles on the floor vs. a full potty. There you go, I’ll bet you can understand that is what I prefer!

I am proud of my little man.

 

Junk Email

Am I the only one who is really excited every time I pick up my emails… only to find of course that nearly all are junk???? I recently picked up close to 100 and I think something like 8 were anything I’d consider reading. Crazy!

With our landline we signed up for TPS to stop nuisance calls, it’s worked pretty well, cutting the cold calls by 90% at least – wish I could do the same for my email!

Sucking thumb/fingers

Elias is a finger sucker, funnily enough I used to do the same. Joy favoured the dummy, and it took ages to wean her off it.

My boy is so cute when he gets a bit tired, he’ll find a soft toy with a label (Squirt  from Nemo in this case) and twiddle the label whilst sucking his fingers… I fear though that it’s going to be a whole lot harder to get him to stop finger sucking. Ah well, he’s only three.

No more nappies!(diapers to American buddies!)

I should imagine many reading this are aware that my youngest, Elias, has recently reached the big three. I look at him and he’s so grown up with his own little character (lovely most of the time!) We have dispensed with cot, bottles, and many of the other baby things are long gone from our house. The only remaining things are the buggy and one lone stairgate…. and the nappies.

Well, apart from a few pull ups for night time we are actually virtually nappy free – Hooray! It is weird to think that I’ve been changing bottoms for almost 7 years. I was happy to finally dispense with the changing box, to stop buying piles of wipes and chuck the well used changing mat.

Elias is proud of his big boy pants, he’s reliably dry now – although I fear that it may be a while before he gets the hang of poos in the potty… there you go, I’ll leave you with that thought!

(I intend to hang on to the buggy for a while longer – not sure how I’ll get by with out it!!)

Bitten by the bug

On Tuesday last week I decided to vac out my car while Elias had a sleep and Joy was playing happily. At one point I was climbing over the back seat reaching a really awkward spot when I felt something on my right ankle, thinking nothing of it I swiped it and promptly carried on with what I was doing.

A little later I noticed an odd looking bite.

By Wednesday morning the bite was looking pretty angry, but I took an anti histamine and rubbed in a bit of bite cream and got on with my day. Thankfully I had a great friend down from Manchester for the day and we had some good sofa sitting time – I was noticing my ankle was beginning to ache.

That night we had our keygroup over and I found my ankle hurting now, and feeling a bit swollen. By bedtime I was relieved to be off it.

Thursday morning my ankle was huge, the angry red was spreading out from the area and was very noticeable and it was painful just walking on it. I finally realised that perhaps it was time to get checked out (d’uh!) Thankfully the nurse agreed that is was pretty bad and I was put straight on anti biotics to help clear it up – it still got worse before the meds kicked in.

What bad timing to have a bad bite, on half term – certainly not a good time for hobbling around! And how frustrating to not even have had the pleasure of squishing the culprit! I’m pleased now though to be wearing proper shoes again as the swelling is almost gone now, and I easily managed a walk on Shotover this morning, all the while giving bugs a wide berth!

I've been blog deprived!

Our ADSL was down for over 24 hours at the beginning of the week – Oh, how awful that was. Of course it always happens when you are most needing to collect your emails and find out info online! (We were researching buying a new laptop)

It’s funny, our home computer was left gathering dust, and I realised just how much we have come to rely on using the internet for email, information, blogging etc etc. Just a few years ago who’d have known how hooked we’d become!

So, what with a busy weekend, and then no access to the internet – it’s been one of my longest ‘blog-free’ gaps so far!