Family BBQ

We had my parents, my wife's mother, one of my brothers and his family over for a barbeque. Here we are having a friendly tug-of-war.

Proud again.

As a family we often don't put a lot of emphasis on going out and doing sporty type stuff and consequently our eldest has not done things like swimming or bike riding as regularly as we would have liked. But fortunately she does pick things up quite quickly and after popping to the park twice this year she has started to get the hang of bike riding. Admittedly we still need to work on stopping and cycling uphill but she seems to have got the hang of going around in a curve:



She was a bit reticent at first but this may have been due to last year year I inadvertently misjudged the slopyness of the park and sent her on a death defying bike ride of doom.

If you look carefully you will see a brief cameo appearance by my wife and our youngest.

I love my husband

I love my Husband. I was really naughty today: I went off for the morning to see a friend. She lives in a town close by to us. It was so lovely and what I really needed after a week of tantrums and whiny children. I’ll get to the naughty bit in a minute. Any way, we had coffee and sat in her beautiful garden. It was so civilised. It was lovely to catch up with her. We then popped into town and that’s where I was naughty. I went to my favourite clothes shop: Fat Face. I love their stuff. I find them a bit unusual and quirky. Anyway I spent more than I should have done. Which is not hard in a place like that. I felt so guilty as I drove home. It’s not something I do regularly. I’m very careful with our money. When I got home I had my tail between my legs and grovelled to my other half. All he said was “How much?” I told him, he then said “Okay you can change our son’s nappy” What a relief! You’re the best Hubby in the world and I love you xxxxx

Fish and Chips

Last night we had the second planning meeting for the October half term fun club that our church runs. It went really well with lots of ideas, decisions and enthusiasm. We have definitely gone for a jungle/kind of Australian theme. This isn't quite sorted out yet as we seem to have gorillas and zebras mixed up in with didgeridoos and cork hats. We have also decided on a teaching theme of Bible Survivors. There are lots of these so the challenge will be narrowing the field down to just four or five. The other big changes are that we are going to do the club over four days and not five as in the past everyone has been worn out at the end and hopefully four days will enable more people to feel able to give their time and gifts and also are hoping to work with a couple of other local churches to assist them in putting on the same sort of thing. They will also be involved in the planning which will be great as they will bring fresh perspectives and talents. The meeting was great fun and we had fish and chips provided which made getting there on time much easier and also added to the team building aspect of the meeting. There were some great ideas - we might even be able to use some of them. These included a zebra entering x-factor, gorillas kidnapping people, a waterfall, a slide from the church balcony and a tunnel to enter the event that is full of surprises. I'll be interesting to see which ones survive.

Climbing Frame Completion

I have successfully extended the climbing frame and attached the monkey bars. Our eldest woke us up at 6:30 as she wanted us to get on with the assembly. It's quite high when you stand on it but my eldest was a bit disappointed that she could reach the bars from the ground and demanded that I dig a big hole under the frame to rectify the situation. I am, needless to say, not going to.

End of an era

We have reached the end of an era with our youngest. He has finally plucked up enough courage to fling himself out of the cot. He seems to do this by throwing a number of soft things out of the cot first to break his fall. He then levers himself out by lifting his leg over the side and heaving. I'm surprised he doesn't make a huge bang when he does it. Whether he is so light he bounces quietly or he is falling in quite a controlled manner I am not sure and he doesn't do it when we are watching, except that is when he is in a huge rage and then he doesn't seem to care about what he is doing and just does a general fling.

Climbing Frame

We are thinking of purchasing an extension kit for our eldest's climbing frame for our youngest's birthday. But getting it early so they get the benefit of it this summer. The thing is we are not sure which one to get. Do we get the one for age three and above which looks very high and will last years, or do we get the lower down one that will be a bit safer but might be boring by the end of the summer and will not enable us to buy the next accessory we would like - a scramble net.

Curry night.

Last night I went out for a curry with my wife, her sister, brother and brother in law. It was nice to get out and do something grown up. It was arranged as part of my birthday celebrations but had been rescheduled. It was strange walking to the restaurant with out the children - we don't go out very often due to financial and time constraints. It reminded us of before we had children and a car. We even saw a couple of hedgehogs - some we have not done for years. Hope on finds its way into our garden to eat all the slugs.

Working from home.

Today I was working from home as I had an appointment near where I live this morning. It wasn't the most productive day I have had. My youngest is going through a stage (at least I hope it's a stage) at the moment of rebelling against everything you ask him to do and being generally whiny. This is tied in with the saying sorry rigmarole the other day. He has also plucked up the courage to climb out of his cot. So all in all it was not a very peaceful environment in which to work. In addition to this my wife had some friends round with their children and although they played nicely on occasion, there were frequent disagreements between them on who was playing with what. In addition, William has turned a bit into a "Stingy" type character from Lazy Town and he keeps saying that everything is "mine" (well his in fact). This causes a few conflicts when he is a potential sharing situation and adds to the general mayhem.
Perhaps I'll work at the office tomorrow (and the coffee is free there).

Training

Today I went training customers in London. It went quite well. The software I was training stopped working every 5 minutes or so and I didn't feel as prepared as I might have been only having used the software myself for 2 days, but apart from that the recipients seemed to enjoy it. It's strange how sometimes you feel confident and other times you don't. Often it's to do with the audience. If the people you are performing in front of treat you as an expert you behave as one and if they treat you with cynicism and in a negative way you loose your confidence. So perhaps, in part, the training went well because the customers treated me as an expert.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word...

Being a parent is not the easiest thing as I am sure that those of you who have seen one in action will know. We have two children and with our first we worked out a series of boundaries and punishments that seemed to work. She would know how far she could go and we knew what was an appropriate punishment. Now with our second we have tried the same tactics but they don't work. If we raise our voice with him or are angry with him he doesn't take it well and reacts very badly becoming very stubborn and cross himself. So we have started a new technique of being very calm and reasonable with him, still firm but not raising our voice. He reacts fairly badly becoming stubborn and cross but at least we aren't adding to the problem.

Today he had a disagreement with his sister and ended up hitting her. So I decided that he should say sorry. I told him this in a calm way, put him on the stairs (he is in hysterics by this point) and kept letting him know that we want him to say sorry. We kept this up and eventually he calms down and says sorry to his sister - it only took an hour and a half. So it seems that this strategy might work but we will have no time for anything else.

Gardening

Today was a good day for gardening so after the fun club this morning I headed of to homebase to buy some plants and rocks to top up our rockery. We have a fairly large garden and when we concentrate on one bit another seems to go to pot and the rockery in our garden has been taken over by some weeds and some plants we don't like. So I have spent the day digging out the weeds relocating some plants and putting a few new plants around the new rocks. It definitely looks tidier but there is a lot to do yet. At the same time my wife was tidying up the patio at the end of our garden, my eldest was trying to make a secret garden in the bushes (thanks Frances Hodgson Burnett) and my youngest was busy transporting mud pebbles and water around the garden. Needless to say we all got muddy - in an inverse relationship to age.

Planning Cont...

Well the planning didn't go as well as expected and so at 7am this morning it was "Google to the rescue". I found a few games that fit the bill from the website Fun and Games. So we had 30 mins of team games involving fetching things from the middle of the room. It was more fun than it sounds.

Pearls of wisdom.

A blog I read most days is by a guy called Pip Wilson. We have a link to him from our blog. I first came across him about twenty years ago as a young teenager. He does the rolling magazine at Greenbelt. It was a difficult time in my life when my parents were splitting up. He has an amazing ministry with people of all ages and of all walks of life. I remember how encouraging he was to me at that difficult time. Any way twenty years on I stumbled across his blog just before Christmas. I could not stop reading it. He is still an inspiration now. He challenges me on a daily basis, to examine my life to be more outward. An interesting thing he said recently was “I will not be a reactor”, he talks about reacting to people’s rejections, put downs - anything negative really. How people react to us and how we respond. I am aware that I react a lot - for example if some one is continually stingy with me I find it really hard to be generous back to them. Although I like to think I am generous person. I react badly to moody people and find it hard to ignore their mood and just be myself. So my challenge at the moment is not to react to other people and their problems. I will still smile cheerfully at my neighbour who grunts hello at me. What a challenge!!! Check out Pip's pearls of wisdom for yourself. Just one more before I go

Comfort the disturbed
Disturb the comfortable. wow!

Loveitloveit. Oh no I now sound like him. I’ll shut up now and let you see for yourself.

Beautiful Human Person

p.s. another saying of the guru (only joking) "YOU ARE A BEAUTIFUL HUMAN PERSON."



This ones for you 2ndmason with lots of love xxxx

Planning

This Saturday it is time for the monthly children's fun club my wife and I help lead. We normally run an initial 30 minute section of fun and wacky activities to start things off and its about the time of the month when I start frantically thinking of ideas for fun stuff to do. Though I wonder if we need to plan anything at all as a group of children can normally amuse themselves if left to their own devices. But then again I like to think we can add something to their lives by planning something that will amuse and please them. And if it helps us to get to know each other as well then so much the better.
Any ideas for games or activities for 30-40 children aged from 5- 11 would be appreciated! If they are a bit messy, cheap and easy to organise then that would be ideal.

Monday

Yet another Monday. Our new boss had all us workers into his office for 'drinks' today. I suppose it was ok. He says that he wants to change the culture of the company, that he feels that we are all a bit miserable. He said that when he visited one of our offices he "felt like slitting his wrists"! (This is the office they announced they are now closing and relocating all their jobs to my office).
The strange thing is that the office can quite often be a lively place - just not when the management are around. Perhaps if we felt more secure in our jobs and valued as employees we would feel freer in our happiness!

Easter Hols

This Easter holiday has been ace. From friends round to play to going to our favorite places: the zoo and the waffle house being but a few. Here are some photos taken over the past two weeks.We have been busy! It has been lovely to catch up with close friends and family, celebrating Easter and Birthdays. We are looking forward to the summer ahead to seeing more of our friends and being together as a family. xxx

The Weekend

Well it's the weekend. It's supposedly going to be a hot day today so probably a good day to tidy up the garden. There is also a lot of tidying to be done in the loft - now we can get up there easily there is far more scope for storing and sorting out the rubbish we have previously shoved up there but there is still some more flooring to do - a lot more really, but there is a section that needs doing as it is right in the way of everything and couldn't be done before because of where the pipes to the boiler were going to go.

I am quite looking forward to tidying the garden as I got a cast iron chimnea from my mother and brother in law and I can't wait to burn stuff in it. I had a little go the other day but there is far more scope there for pyromanic fun.

Nothing much happening

After all the excitement of the boiler and my birthday there is not a lot happening. The company meeting at work was to announce that the other of two offices that my company works from will be closing and the staff will be relocating to the office I work at. This has left some very disgruntled people at the other office, but apart from scrunching up to make room has no great bearing on me. They are also, at the same time, reorganising the structure of the department I work for so this will affect me but its not clear in what way yet.

Well Done!

I forgot to mention - all that hard work going to the British Museum paid off. Our eldest came second with her Egyptian school project. To see her face when I collected her from school that day was a prize in itself for me. She won a lovely book about Egypt, not to mention the £5 she received from grandad and the day out treat my Mum is treating her too. I hope all this encourages her. It definitely paid off. Well done. I’m so proud of you!

Happy Birthday!

Today is Your Birthday. I just want you to know how much we love you

Have a wonderful day!!

Love your Mrs xxxx

100 hundred posts and number 1!

This is my one hundredth post and I am coming first in a google search for "a normal bloke". Not bad for a birthday treat. Other birthday treats include two nice shirts, a Jamie Oliver cookbook, two other books, breakfast in bed, a gilet, two dvds and more to come...

Happy Birthday To Me

It's my Birthday!

Places I Have Been

Google now lets you create maps of place markers very easily. Here is a map of places that I have been to.

Back at the office.

Back at work in the office after a week working from home. In some ways it's nice to be back but the drive was as long as ever - though not as bad a usual as the schools are still off for Easter. I miss my home comforts and enjoyed being home as soon as I had stopped. We are having another company meeting this week - so who knows what will be happening. It seems likely that there will be some redundancies as well organizational changes. Hopefully they will be positive things but I'll just have to wait and see...

Dare Devil Boy

My youngest is a boy and seems to know no fear. Well he knows a few but going down the slide head first isn't one of them...

Easter on the Beach

On Easter day we went to the beach with my parents and our children. It was very sunny and very nice.

He is Risen!

Happy Easter.

Fireplace

Now we have removed the fireplace in our back room we can see our 1950's tiled fireplace. I am not sure if I like it or not - it has a certain elegance and does complement the decor. It is definitely a vast improvement over the gas fire that sat in front of it. Perhaps we could even have a fire in it - that would be fun.

20 degrees

We have heating and hot water. It's lovely. I'm going to have a bath and everything. We can just turn on a tap and steamy hot water comes out. Gone are the electric heaters. The wild flashing of the electricity meter has ceased from the units used. Thanks to everyone who helped us survive - for fan heaters, electric radiators, for showers and baths and even a whole house! We couldn't have done it without you.

We've also been brought into the 20th century with a thermostat and separate hot water and heating circuits. Though our last central heating system seems to have been at least 20 years old if not many more and so it has done well. Here's to this one lasting well into this century.

Plumber Ahoy!

For those who were worried about our lack of a plumber - fear ye not. He has arrived and the boiler is in place. Ok so there a lot of pipes and stuff that still need connecting up but all seems to be going well so far. Best case scenario is hot water tomorrow night.

Here's praying for that!

Still waiting for the plumber

We are still waiting for our new boiler - the plumber was called away to an emergency. If us not having a boiler is not an emergency then I don't know what is but perhaps there is an old people's home full of frail old people who need a plumber more than we do. I don't like to ask.
All being well the plumber will be here tomorrow - my breath is bated at the ready.

Butterfly

Whilst we are on the subject of bugs - I found this butterfly on the living room floor:

Bugs

My children love bugs. Woodlice, snails, ladybirds. You name it they are fascinated by them.