New School Uniform

We have bought our eldest's new school uniform. It is lovely, if slightly big due to growing room. It cost loads but it seems good quality and looks very smart.

It feels like a new start in many ways and so it seems appropriate to have new clothes. Though I suspect that we may well get secondhand ones from benevolent friends in the future. Just new shoes to get now...

End of Term

Tomorrow is my eldest's last day at her current school. She is sad to leave her friends but I think she is looking forward to her new school. It does help that her current teacher is leaving the school and the supply teacher she has had for much of this term is going to be teaching at her new school. I suppose I'll have to decide whether to stay on as a parent governor or not. I want to but I'm not sure if I will have enough time and also I wouldn't want to take a place that a genuine parent might want. I suppose I've got the summer to think about that.

Product Review - Mamas and Papas Pulse Buggy

We have had a Mamas & Papas umbrella fold "Pulse" buggy since last summer. I have to say that I have not been very impressed with it. Though having said that it is definitely one of the lightest and easiest buggies to push we have ever used.
At first it was nice and looked very comfortable but after a few months the raincover split and the seat began to fray and now, after less than a year, it is practically unusable.
As you can see from the picture below it is an attractive looking buggy, but unfortunately not very robust.

Here you can see the aluminium supports which have worn through the stitching on the seat.

Even the wheels have not lasted long - here you can see that the tyre is half worn through.

So in summary I would say that this is a nice looking buggy. If you value lightness and ease of pushing over robustness a good choice. Ok for light use but if you want it to last, get a different one.
Fortunately my brother and sister in law have kindly given us their Maclaren buggy that their child has grown out of so we can still get around with out causing harm to our youngest.

Actually...

Actually a few things did happen.

• My wife did the talk at Alpha, she was very good. It was on God's Guidance. And there was pizza.
• I made a pirate costume for my eldest for her "dress up like a pirate sports day".
• My youngest fell over at nursery and gave himself a huge fat lip.
• There was a really weird rain storm where is was very very sunny and absolutely pouring it down - our youngest still keeps going to the window to see if he can see another rainbow.
• I bought my eldest two new raincoats so she could choose which one to keep.
• I went to work.
• My wife worked an extra day at the nursery.

We are off now to spend the money she earned.

Nothing much happened

This week nothing much has happened.

Cake Sale Extortion

We went to a fete at the school our eldest will be starting at in September. It was really nice to see the large number of people supporting the school by attending as well as to see how many people we knew. Our youngest had a nice time and sampled some of the wares on the cakes stall, leaving sticky finger marks all over the top of a rather nice chocolate cake. We were forced to then purchase this chocolate cake at an exorbitant rate by the proprietor of the stall. At least it goes to a good cause and we got the tin thrown in.

Our eldest's new school with the cake stall in the foreground. (You can see the proprietor arranging his cakes to snare another unwary family.)

Another view of the school with a tug-of-war in preparation.

Defecting

We have defected from Tesco.com to ASDA home shopping. In order to save money and also to try out the new ASDA delivery service which has recently started in our area. On the face of it the two services seem similar. However there seem to be better safeguards in the ASDA version. When you get a different product substitute for the one you ordered you only pay up to the value of the thing you ordered, with tesco you can get charged more if your chosen product is unavailable. We'll let you know how we get on.

Duggie dug dug

We went to a church service led by Doug Horley. It was very good. Our two children loved it, as did we. It was a really good mix of action songs, puppets, teaching and fun. It was especially nice as we got to see some people who we don't get to see that often who were also attending the event. So if you are a church looking for something special to do for a Sunday morning (or any other time) I would recommend booking Doug Horley and his team.

Playing nicely

Our youngest playing with our eldest's doll's house.
She was a skater girl...