Under the table!

Yesterday, the 11th November 2008 was a 'funny' day.

I had to do a few errands early on in the day, off to the chemist, newsagent for birthday cards and wrapping paper, and the like. I called in at the Co-Op for the usual food supplies with Seb our 5yo, he was looking at everything as usual. I left him playing at one of the promotional baskets, he was happy and occupied and I continued to stroll along that aisle. I heard him crying and turned to see him talking to a lady. She asked him what the matter was, Seb replied "I have lost my mummy", Well dear what does she look like?", much to my amazement he said "You will recognise her because she has hair extensions".

The woman came up to me and said "ARE you his mummy?" while she scrutinised my hair.

Later in the day we went off to a friend's house for a birthday party. Her son just turned 12, we did the usual birthday greetings, presents, food etc.

Afterwards Seb was rather quiet, this is where I found him...

Oh and he was eating Sol's piece of birthday cake.

FAWLTY TOWERS REVISITED

Do you remember Fawlty Towers? Well we were watching a re run of them on Sky TV the last couple weeks, the children were literally rolling on the floor with laughter. Who would have known that 'old fashioned' comedy would have amused them so much?
Since then they have been role playing Fawlty towers with some very amusing resuts. The characters of their game are Manuel, Basil, Polly, and Swivel (they mean Cybil). Its like watching a comedy show based on a comedy!

Funny photos

These are the last I am going to post from my holiday photos for the time being ...

I just thought they were too funny to leave hidden.

Seb was so tired he fell asleep standing up!

Our balcony was heaped up with inflatables ... it was really funny as each family left to go home they gave our children their pool toys - before we knew it we had quite a collection!

Popcorn hats - the childreb raided the popcorn machine!

Empty Fridge Syndrome

We have no perishable food in the house, none! Yesterday we were fed up with having nothing nice the children decided to 'bake'.



They made TOPHATS, which to the person who doesn't know how to make them simply melted chocolate poured into the base of a paper bun case, a marshmallow added and a little smartie or jelly tot stuck on the top with a little more melted choclate.



This is Hollie and Ellis showing off their buns!






On to the topic of why we have no food .... I haven't bought any!



We are going on holiday tomorrow, and I must say out of all the holidays we have ever been on this is the one I am most looking forward to. Like you couldn't tell we were looking forward to it, we have bored everyone with our talk of escaping.



Before I start I shall express my sympathies to anyone suffering severe weather like Hurricane Gustav, or any other extreme weather.



The weather here in Northern Ireland has been down right depressing. I am not talking about miserable, I am talking months and months of heavy rain. The dry days this summer can be counted on one hand, even during those dry days it did rain at some point. I myself suffer in the cold weather, I have health problems which make my joints sore and that alone is making me down. I am not one to complain, but I tend to hibernate in the winter but this year it feels as though I have been hibernating all year.

Just now I look out of my dining room window and the sky is grey, the grass is green through all the rain, and the driveway is pretty much one giant puddle. The children are fed up as they cannot go out side and play on their lovely new garden toys that they got this year.

The only saving grace for us is that we are leaving it all behind for a couple of weeks - and for that reason we are all entirely ecstatic.

We had made many plans to go out an about this summer; meet friends, do the garden, paint the house, go cycling ... well as you can imagine they all went out of the window because of the weather (or is that a lame excuse?). I feel guilty I hadn't made more of an effort but my other half assures me that no body minded too much and it seems that no body in the house is going to hold it against me. Just as well I reckon.









Funny quotes this week



The children were talking about dieing.

Seb says "I wont die as I dont go into the kitchen"

Toni replied "Awe Seb, everyone dies once in a while".

Sol Dressed Herself

Just had to share - Sol dressed herself this morning...



She was so proud of herself.









She is wearing pants from a dress, Toni's vest, Seb's socks and her own crocs.

Hedgehogs and Fruit

TODAY - well where do I start ... this morning I was rudely awoken by the day break! Getting up I braved a lovely hot shower and a vitamin drink! After the couple small pleasures of the day it was time to tackle more laundry, putting away all the boys things and managing my own, hubby's and some of the girls' clothes I realised it was almost 10am. My cleaner arrived to help me with my housework, ooohhh I do love my cleaner friend. She is a friend too but her job is a cleaner and she does mine woohoo happy dance. Afterwards we do get to sit down to a cup of tea and a gossip.

This is my princess Sol, when she hears the presenters on the radio talking about "the summer".


My shopping arrived this morning as scheduled so I spent the remaining part of the morning sorting groceries out and making space in the freezer. Lunch time brought on a sudden urge to make hedge hog buns with Ellis.

RECIPE

Ingredients
24 fairy cakes chocolate or plain
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
hot water
125g margarine
250g icing sugar
chocolate sticks like match makers
silver ball decorations
chocolate sugar strands
jelly tots or something similar size eg smarties, cherries

Instructions
cream the margarine until pale
Mix the cocoa powder with half a tablespoon of hot water, adding more if need be to make it into a paste.
Mix cocoa powder mix with the margarine, then add the icing sugar. Beat until mixed.

turn the 24 fairy cakes upside down on a baking tray - make sure the paper cases are removed of course otherwise this wont work.

cover the fairy cakes in the chocolate frosting - I just dipped mine in, but if they are too fresh they might crumble.

dip or sprinkle each frosted fairy cake with chocolate strands.

add silver ball eyes, jelly tot nose and broken up chocolate sticks as spikes.

here is our efforts - despite how these look they are fun to make and delicious to eat.



I did offer to take my cleaner friend home later in the afternoon and discovered yet again the car would not start. As luck would have it I had parked the other car in front of it last night so we were able to jump start it. This happens a lot and its pretty annoying when you want to go somewhere and you have to jump start your car.... so off I went to the garage leaving Roy in charge of two children and one came with me (the other one is still at camp). The man at the garage tested the battery and it is fine. As the problem is intermittent there was nothing more he could do for me at that moment, I have to wait till it wont start and call him out to the house. This is the point where I am banging my head on the wall. As the only time I know it wont start is when I get in the car to go somewhere, and the only time I get in the car is when I AM going somewhere which means I will have to drop everything one day and wait for a mechanic. Similarly if Roy is using this car, which sometimes he does as its a 'bus' then he will have to drop all instead of working to wait for the mechanic to come and rescue him. Its a pain!


On a more fruity note - we were out in the garden this evening and noticed our fruit trees are bearing fruit. Last year we had 16 apples, and our neighbour's little girl came in and picked them all while they were still small so we did not get any fruit! This year she has been warned - and the trees are a little bigger. We have loads of apples on two of the trees, some plums on another, and the cherry tree well it is pathetic and has nothing at all so far. We also have raspberries by the dozen and one single solitary strawberry, well we had three strawberries but Toni ate two!

I faked it

My sun tan that is. I hate how that stuff smells so I always put in on an hour before I shower, that way I get the tan without the icky coconut smell. I love coconut but this stuff stinks. Sitting here smelling icky I thought I had better give you a quick update...

We had another busy week last week. The highlight if it had to have been a visit to a friend from our home education group. That's how I met her, but I think now we have become good friends which is nice. Anyways - she is pregnant, very pregnant with baby due in a couple months its pretty obvious. On arrival, Seb after doing his obligatory toilet inspection, decided to tell my friend that she was fat. Quite bold about it, and thank goodness she is pregnant otherwise I might have just had to turn and leave there and then LOL. The visit went well, although it was late when we left and I think everyone was exhausted. We had hot dogs on the way home and the kids fell into bed tired and happy.

The following day, or maybe day after Seb was thinking about my "fat friend" (sorry no offence meant D.), this was obviously playing on his mind. He went into playgroup and told everyone that I was having baby! They asked him "are you sure?", and yes he was so sure about that. My friend who runs the playgroup was explaining how I wasn't pregnant to Ellis as she knows I would have told her, but he kept on insisting. So it looks I am having a baby too - LOL I wish I had that excuse for my stomach.

The weekend brought another further incident regarding our windows *sigh* one of those weeks, we discovered one of the 8ft double glazed windows in the TV room had broken, huge cracks running all over it. Total loss as to how it happened, so now we need to get that seen to. KERCHING KERCHING I can see this will cost a few pounds.

The window escapades over we had three parties to go to, come Sunday night the kids had so many e-numbers and junk food they were high as kites ... at least they had fun, and a week of detoxing is underway.

19th April 2008

I have to share something funny -

My husband and I would often take a glass of squash to bed with us - you know just to sip during the night if we get thirsty. Every morning Sol would come into our room and always drink what is left of Roy's squash. Never mine for some reason, always Roy's.

This week Roy went off to Scotland on business for a few days. On the second day of him being away when Sol woke up she came into the bedroom to see me. Not worried at all about Roy being absent, didn't even concern herself enough to ask where he was .....

Instead she simply said "Where's daddy's juice?"

Nice to know you are missed Roy!

15th February 2008

My two girls are a hoot, and everyday they come out with something new especially baby Sol who isn't really a baby anymore. Sol's speech seems to have suddenly exploded the last while, she repeats virtually everything you say to her and I am pleased as its a far cry from how she was just a couple months back.

Sol's Quote for the day ... She was playing on the floor and I was sat with her, she lifter her toy box up and trumped (farted, passed wind if you are polite), usually she says "me trump". So I said to her "Sol, what was that?" and she said back to me in the huskiest voice she could find "dirty girl!". It was so funny and I have no idea where she learned it from.

Toni's Quote for the day ... We were doing out table work this morning, we call it table work as it isn't school work! Sat reading some three letter words which contain vowels and correspond to certain pictures. there was a picture of a man with his wig blowing away in the wind. Hollie had never seen a wig before and thought it was quite funny, I had to explain to her that some people who don't have enough hair would wear wigs. "Daddy used to have a wig mummy, now he doesn't wear it anymore" Of course realising DH is receding she assumed his previous hair was a wig!

Well here I am after 11pm, and the day is almost over.
Awoke early this morning to the chorus of hungry children lamenting about how they will die if they don't eat. As if!
My step father stayed with us last night as my husband was away on business so he was good in helping get the children organised today. Seb went off to playgroup as usual at 9.15 and our school day stayed at home.
Mag is learning about the Ancient Egyptions just now, and boy has he done that topic to death ...but he likes it so what can I say. We did some fractions for maths and some connectives too. i was looking on amazon for a good song or music book for the little ones also, I think I have found what I am looking for so I might go back on tomorrow to buy it. Toni was good today, she did heaps. Her reading is brilliant now, she is only 5 and I am amazed at how quickly she picks things up. She did some very simple multiplication or should I say 'sets of' 2 and 3. Its funny how much maths little children know, much more than we give them credit for. Ask them about if siblings have so many sweets and they know exactly how many more or less they need to even it out! Try it and see for yourself.

We have had some strange discussions of late too. My mother passed away just a few weeks ago and the little ones were fairly accepting of this. but just this week we had got some new cold water fish, we have tropical ones too but we just started a cold water tank. Anyways - we popped four gold fish in the tank last week and straight away we noticed one was sick. So I treated the water, stupid me for not lifting the fish out as we ended up losing all four fish. We cleaned the tank all out and started again, this time with two black moors. That's by the by, the children asked where the fish went. I told them that they went to fishy heaven in the sky hhmmmmm to a five your old this is a great puzzle. So how did the fish get there? They swam?
So how come grandma is in heaven but you buried her in the ground - DOH I walked right into that one. The explanation we gave was that a person's body is buried and their 'feelings' go to heaven, it was the best I could do when put on the spot like that. So all day we have had lengthy discussions about peoples feelings.

So when talking to a five year old ... be careful what you say or tell them as you never know where it might lead.