Snip! Snip! Snip!

Yep the boys got neutered this week - doesn't he look happy?
Snip!

Snip!

Snippity snip - first hair cut!

Snowed out

Emily's first tattoo

Emily and her icicle lolly

Emily wearing her hat and gloves (thanks Aunty LoLo)

me and the gals spent about an hour this morning just sledging up and down the drive. Thoroughly exhausted but it was fun.

Vid's

Piccies and stuff

Emily took this photo of my feet and at the top left you can see Phoebe's new spotty socks

Em's and her Dad

This is a picture of the super present that didn't arrive in time :(

Erm...

Do I look like I'm excited?

Well I could be if I could get the box open

Stocking filler

Silly big sis

Hahahhahaha

ok the blog looks a bit odd at the moment - once I get some spare time and don't feel like falling asleep because I've eaten too much, I'll get round to sorting out the margins of the columns.

In with the new

time to update the look of the blog i think

Cowabunga! Now that's snow...

The Dam (cold)

The Dam (frozen)

The hills

Exactly where is it though?

Smile!

Erm...

The view of the drive

Icicles

Santa wont be parking his backside here for sure.

Getting Ready for Christmas

I booked afternoon tea with Santa at Frosts Garden Centre last week. It's a really nice early evening event for the kids to have some dinner, be entertained by a clown and then quickly see Santa and get a present. Thoroughly recommend it - next time I'm going to try to get tickets for Breakfast with Santa to see if it's any different. But here are some piccies to show.

Emily and her (2nd) present from Santa
(she didn't like the first one of the toy baby deer)

This was the only shot I got of Emily and Santa

Emily and her afternoon tea

Phoebe not so sure she could she could eat the huge cream and jam scone

Partially eaten but you get the picture how huge it was!

Saying goodbye

I flew up Edinburgh last Wednesday to attend my grandmothers funeral. She passed away peacefully the Wednesday before. She was a beautiful person, heart and soul, and will be missed by all of us.

A strange thing happened though - the nursing home had lost my Grandmothers wedding ring, they all thought it had gotten mixed up with laundry and had probably perished in one of the industrial washing machines. My father and aunt were pretty upset by this, but 2 days after they were clearing out my Grandmothers room and lo-and-behold they found her ring under a cupboard. My dad presented the ring to me before the funeral and I had to fight back the tears as I was over whelmed. It's beautiful thin gold band and fits perfectly on my index finger. What is strange that when I take it off for any length of time I get a weird feeling of pressure in my index finger - like it's telling me to put it back on. :) I'd like to think that's my Grandmother telling me not to lose it!

Just a Quickie today

Hit the gym at 9am this morning - my work out was pretty sluggish. Did I say I'd joined the gym? oh dear I am a bit behind on things aren't I? I joined a gym at the beginning of November (now those that know me know that I'm not a gym fan - to me the world is your gym all you need is some good running shoes!) But after some thought, dark nights and a good chat to a physiotherapist about my back and foot problems I decided to take up a very cheap student offer from Harpers Gyms. Turns out my core muscles are shot after having Emily - no I really mean SHOT. Hamstring it tight, no muscle in the glutes, no anything in my abs!! I needed to get an expert to check and she found my problem all right. Now I have a huge list of core strengthening exercises that take about an hour every day to do (sheesh). Hence why I joined a gym - I need to get my ahem 6-pack back (well I can dream about it). What has worrying was when I was being poked, prodded and pushed by Purdie (physio) she pushed down on the base of my spine and it all went "crunch" - she did as if it had done that before :) Sadly it hadn't but it made me realise just how knackered this old bod is getting.

So I went to the gym this morning and managed to pop up to the allotment to see what kind of state it was in, and I wasn't looking forward to it either as I had rather neglected it over the last 4 weeks. I do apologise for that. But it wasn't looking too bad. I decided to stay and do some work on it. I removed the now rotten aftermath of the squash patch - I only managed to save 3 small squashes. But the sprouts have grown and I picked some today for our dinner tonight. The runner bean canes I removed, along with the decaying courgette plant and I started to dig out some proper borders this time. Managed to get two thirds of the way down one side and about a third down the other before I called it time. I could have easily spent the rest of the day digging out the rest but I really needed to get home and do family time.

Marley helping with the washing (again)

I found some time to finish off a blanket with the Cath Kidston material I bought :) Any buyers?

One of the squash's from the allotment

And some of our crop of brussels :)

Winter Blues already

Feeling a bit blue this morning I thought I'd try to get into the Christmas spirit of things and watch a couple of films - so I firstly popped on Santa Buddies and yes it was an OK film but to be honest not something I would actually go and buy unless the kiddles requested it. I guess the blessing was that this was quite a short film so I didn't watch it for long but I kinda got fed up of seeing static looking puppies with animated mouths. This might entertain really young kids, but did nothing for older kids or parents.
http://www2.disney.co.uk/DisneyDVDs/DVDs/santa_buddies.jsp

What was great was G-Force - you know the one with the guinea pigs? Yep it was much much better, more entertaining and I much prefer the very well animated guinea pigs to stiff looking puppies, in fact at some points during the film I was really sure they had filmed real ones!

http://www2.disney.co.uk/DisneyDVDs/DVDs/g_force.jsp

For my Grandmother

1913-2009

Happy 13th Birthday!

Hand over the wonga

Today is Children in Need day - so what have you done to raise some money ?

I baked 2 pumpkin pies and made £24, plus got my work to match that, so a grand total of £48!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey/

Give, give and then give some more.
Thanks for reading

We're all sick!

I feel the need to mark my front door with an X to say stay away. Phoebe was very ill last week with a very bad cold/flu symptoms. She's now bouncing around with excitement for her birthday party this weekend - sadly I'm not as I have some awful viral infection in my chest that is making me nauseous 27/7 - so I feel like a large bag of horse manure. I dread to cough because it hurts so much and the phlegm is so god-damn awful tasting it makes me wanna hurl even more. Emily has a cough and is a but under the weather, the dude still has his cough (that's been hanging around for at least 4 months now!).

And back to Marvin, he smells like cat poo! I thought it was just because maybe he had accidentally slipped in the cat litter tray - well it's not. He had is visit to the vet (third this week) to see how he was reacting to his antibiotics - and well ok his temperature is normal, but his mouth was covered in ulcers. Queue guilty feeling owner for not checking. But he's been eating and drinking, though not as much as normal and he still looks very peaky. The vet and I had a chat and he may have some viral infection akin to cat flu. So the plan of action is firstly to change his antibiotics to treat possible viral thingy, and tomorrow she's going to organise a swab for analysis. Which I was surprised to learn has to be sent to Glasgow to be analysed!

Anyway he's in good hands, though Marvin may not be too sure as every time he gets to the vets he now tucks his tail between his legs, and now I (well dude and I) have to wrap the little furrball up in a towel and shove 2 pills down his gullet followed by water -to prevent pills sticking. As if we don't have enough to deal with we can't let the pills gets stuck to his throat because that would be horrid horrid horrid. Remember that feeling of getting paracetamol or an antibiotic stuck in the back of your throat?

It's all a bit worrying as the vet said that this viral infection could be the type that may come back, a bit like the Herpes virus. :( I'm really glad our pet insurance covers him for any illness for the rest of his life :) Pet Plan - I'd recommend them to anyone.

It's not who let the cat out of the bag

it's why he's in there in the first place!




Marvin was very ill last week. On Friday morning I noticed he wasn't his usual self so he took a trip to the vet and got some much needed antibiotics and anti-inflammatory shots. Thankfully he perked up 2 hours later and ate some food and had a good long drink. Today he almost seemed his usual self but still not perky. He had a prior appointment for a checkup with the vet and thankfully his temperature had gone down by one degree - but it was still high. He had another smaller shot of antibiotics and I got a stash of pills to give him over the next five days before he goes for another checkup. I've now got to keep and eye on both of the boys to make sure Marley hasn't caught it and that Marvin is getting better.

The boys have also been infested with flees and no matter how much spot-on I've given them I had to douse them in the most foul smelling spray last night - it stunk real bad. I had to do it in the bathroom as it was the only room where I could open a window without the risk of either of the cats escaping. The boys hated it. I hated it. I'm sure anyone else doing this would have hated it. As it turns out I gave the boys a good combing today and any flea that I found was well and truly DEAD! hurrah I hope I've gotten rid of the little blighters.

Some huggage from his bro'
"yeah like I'm REALLY enjoying it"