Hi

Yes a small and short blog but I'm busy and on holiday - HA! This week has seen us have our lovely friends Adrianna and Sarah visit (sadly just for 1 whole day and 2 nights) so we tried to pack in as much as possible with a day trip to London. Boy that was a physically demanding day - lugging a buggy around the central tube stations in London was no fun, and with my shoulder in a bad way I was a pretty grumpy pants by Sunday morning as I've not had a decent nights sleep for over 3 months. What also didn't help in a round about kinda way was the physio I had on Friday afternoon was pretty hard core and I REALLY did suffer. She had a go at my stiff jaw too - I was almost in tears it was that bad. But no pain to gain - hmmm? I succummed and decided to try out my stash of cocodamol for some mega pain relief, so one hour after taking it on Sunday evening I was pretty high! Went to bed and slept right through with rolling around in pain once! I enjoyed it so much I took it again last night, but I didn't get quite the same effect :( but maybe that was due to Drew occupying the bed too!
Sunday also saw us transport Elvis back to his folks - I met up with Steve at Scotch Corner for a quick cuppa and exchange. Elvis was an angel during his journey and didn't complain (or make a dirty protest). I got a text about 8 pm that night to say he had arrived safely. So far he's settled in pretty well, hiding under Amanda and Steve's bed and taking to exploring the house when he is feeling braver. I know he will be ok as he's started kissing his mom - I wont be missing his drooling that's for sure, though today I did feel a little unsettled as I thought I heard him meowing, and usually when I go to the summer house to work out he follows me down and sits while I row. So I did miss him a little tonight. But we have some plans in the pipeline to adopt a couple of larger kitties (google Maine Coons!) . I've been wanting one of these cats for years (YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS) and I've been speaking to someone who is looking to re-home 2 females (aged 4 and 5) . I'll update you later in November.

Birthday Bonus

Thanks to everyone who has wished me a happy birthday! I've had a nice weekend, had dinner with some friends and some drinks. And a easy (though still early awakening) morning in bed where Phoebe made me scrambled eggs on toast with a cuppa. We lounged around (as much as Emily would allow) whilst watching Nemo on the laptop. I received a lovely bunch of flowers on Saturday morning, some dosh and a lovely chocolate champagne bottle. Thank you lovely Lisa for my punky-ducky, he's taken one dip in the bath (yes Emily threw him in!), and I havent touched my chocolate bar yet, which is a miracle!

Hurrah M255 exam over

3 hours of pure hard work (for once!) Exam paper not too bad - though there were some tricky questions that haven't been asked in previous papers! And some sneaky wording - ha! But I think I did ok considering. Roll on Decemeber when I should get my results. For now I'm taking a couple of days off work and will be socialising with some friends and other mums and kids. I've also seriously missed exercising for the last 2 weeks so I should be getting my backside back to rowing, running and cycling this week. Along with some celebrations on Saturday night.

Happy Birthday my Happy Smiley Cherub!

More photos can be found here http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/chenderson99/emily%202nd%20birthday/

Oh my is that a Firefighter?

Lisa I saw this fabric and thought of you!!!

Some Photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisadurbin

Crazy kids

Can't stop

busy finishing last TMA of my course and preparing for a 3 hour exam. Normal service will resume in 5 weeks. Of course Birthday Party photos will be posted on the 21st Sept.

love you all

That's all, you can go now.

no honestly go! I'm too busy!!
:)

sleepy blues

Back from holiday, had a 4 our lecture today and I'm still tired.
Brief Summary - holiday good, lots of alcohol, lots of food, less sleep than normal, wet. Met chickens and pigs, visited a wildlife park, saw a pengiun poop. Laughed, walked, shopped.

Photos here!

Ah yes and the silliest thing we heard was at the wildlife park. In a thick manchester accent "I wonder if there are any vegetarian tigers."

And on the 7th day God (She) made Cakes

and they were good!

Oh and yeah God (he aka the Dude) laid a lawn and we had grass

Someone stole my grass

Friday saw my garden being rotovated. I came home after a nice but damp day out with Tosha and the kids at the Milton Maize Maze to find my garden was now brown.

Some random naughtiness
Phone in one hand and mobile in the other,
More blue butterfly cakes
and a Victoria Sponge

Ice Cream Heaven

Yes it tasted good - but very creamy so I may try to make it again but with alot less cream. Though Phoebe though it was great!

Today Phoebe and I went to the cinema to see Wall-E . Wall-E (short for Waste Allocation Lift Loader, Earth-Class) is the only one of his kind of robot left on earth after a botched attempt at trying to clean the earth that has been overrun with garbage.

Ok get the message of the film? Then why the hell do idiots still litter the cinema with their popcorn, sweet wrappers and coke cups? feh sometimes the human race I despair of you.

Pressies!

At long last I am now the proud owner of a food processor! I spent my much long saved for Nectar points and just decided last week to spend them on a food processor. A much needed piece of equipment for my itsy bitsy kitchen. Yep I know the dude moaned "where are you going to put it" but I've made space in the tiniest room in the house (aka The Kitchen) and it now sits under the worktop next to the pots and pans - which I also need more of!

In fact I just need a bigger kitchen - NOW!



So here it is... ok it's not the much loved Magimix I was after but it was free and it's also got a juicer and some other extra attachments which means Phoebe can make her own smoothies.

At the moment we are testing out our abilities to make some chocolate cookie and vanilla ice cream - let you know if 3 hours if it tastes nice!

x

Odd Dreams

I had an odd dream last night that I had a miscarriage that looked like a runny egg. Sadly as it turned out this morning it looks like I actually did have a miscarriage. For those of you not in the know I found out I was pregnant last Thursday. Today I woke up and found some blood and in the proceeding hours I had some cramping, not unlike one of those nasty periods I rarely get. So I did another pregnancy test only to find the positive line so much fainter than the first one.

It looks like my little "poppy" aint staying.

Yep I'm bummed but I also know that my body is doing what it needs to do right now for what ever reason it has to. People who know me know I have been through far far worse and so this is just a little set back in our plans to create another beautiful child to cherish and love.

I've already spoken to lots of people today about it and I'm fine really - though I do appreciate peoples concern I think I'm done talking about it.

Some highlights for the week though - I managed to get a staggering 97% for my last TMA - yee haw! I'm amazed - though I think my tutor marked it too high :) I'm such a swot!

Just randomness today

I've been in a better mood today.
Moodiness levels reached an all time low yesterday. It was Wednesday and I was
pissed off severely.
Really didn't want to be in the office at all - nope not one bit!
Everything was just peeing me off big time, only thing that cheered me up was a
giant burger which Chris and I popped out and down the road for.
Now it's not often I get a hankering for something but boy the burger, salad
and relish really hit the spot.
Nice nice nice very nice indeed.
Tehehehehe xxx

ooh Cakes Glorious Cakes

I was told about this fantasic baking accessory shop in St Neots, called Sugar Daddy's, and I think I've discovered heaven! I went in last week and spent a small fortune buying some quality regal icing in red, blue, pink and green, along with some powdery stuff that I had to work into the icing to make it more pliable to mould into shapes. A butterfly cutter and some professional food colouring.

Tonight I used a Nigella fairy cake recipe and I had a go at making some butterfly shapes and wow I'm impressed at how nice these look. But I will be making several other attempts before Emily's birthday as I'd like to use butter icing and some of the food colouring just to see what they could look like.


So yummy looking !

Mighty Mouse Hunter!

Now Elvis I suspected for some time had been keeping the level of mouse activity in our garden to a minimum over the last 2 years, but he surprised us yesterday by appearing through the cat flap with a freshly caught (and thankfully dead or sleepy as Emily liked to call the mouse). I know this was a present and I rewarded him with lots of cuddles and much praising, but I did have to take the poor sleepy mouse outside so Elvis could erm play with it somemore and hopefully dispose of it without us having to watch him.

Pen washes off doesn't it?

Emily in the park having some juice whilst feeding the ducks

For my Children

I had 3 silver rings made to celebrate my children.

Top Kid Top Marks

Phoebe came home with her sats report this week. I still can't get my head around what all the numbers mean but apparantly most kids are at level 4 and she's at level5 (thinks she could be at level 6 but they dont teach that far at the school). So I'm pretty chuffed that she's come out at the top grading. I'm hoping her move to Longsands will give her the educational stimulation I think she really needs. I'm happy the existing classes will be split and I look forward to Phoebe making new friends and flourishing in a different environment.

Other things we are (or not as the case may be) is that I'm going to put a hold on Tae Kwon Do lessons. I feel bad about giving it up but for just now my studies are taking a lot of my free time and I really can't devote what time I really need to dedicate to the sport that it really deserves. I don't give up things easily and I tend not to do things in short measures either, if I want do do something I want to do it well! So this will be our last month. As for the studying (and I know some people are going to scream "Geek" at the top of their voices), but well I am enjoying learning about Object Oriented Programming with Java. Ok I do find it tough and once every 6 weeks I have to complete the dreaded TMA (Tutor Marked Assignment) but I do feel pretty chuffed when my code works and I can either make the damned frogs dance or split Maps into Sets. I can just hear those words slipping from your lips "Nerd!" - I say Ha!

It's been pushing the limits of my patience but it's also been stretching my brain which is a good thing a I haven't done this in a while. And I'm really focussed on getting an Open Degree, I can later attempt more coures to get a named Degree, and then if I feel like pushing that boundary some more then maybe a post-grad course.

What else is new - well about £106 pounds worth of school uniform for one! Yep I popped up to Longsands and spent what seems to be more money in one sitting than I probably spend on clothes for myself in one year. Phoebe now has 5 lovely Longsands polo shorts, 2 fleeces, some shorts, 2 sets of lovely red socks, and 2 red polo shirts. Oh darn and now I've realised that come the end of the summer hols I will have to take her shopping for school trousers, shoes, stationary and pens/pencils along with a calculator and some maths equipment - yikes!

Right I'm going to get back to my TMA and try to figure out how to return the values of a Map depending on the top value in the set.

Ciao