Sol's New Look

Sol has been so excited this past week. She just couldn't contain herself over getting her new glasses. She said they are GEEK glasses and now is asking me how geeks act and look.

Of course I told her geeks are always reading and doing their lessons.

 

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Cuteness Overload

 

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Sun, Sand, And The Wetlands.

What a busy week it has been for me, for us all really. Last weekend the weather was pretty good and we spent a few days on the beach. Not sunbathing beachy stuff, but dog walking and playing in the sand weather. The puppy loves the beach too which is just as we'll considering we live a two minute walk from the sand.

Sadly on the way back from the beach last Monday Sol had a bit of an accident. We were almost home, maybe 30 yards from the house when she walked into a wall and hit her mouth. She badly broke one of her front teeth and hurt her mouth considerably that she couldn't stop crying for quite some time. Lucky for us the emergency dentist was on hand and we were able to get seen within about half an hour of the accident happening. They repaired Sol's tooth with white resin like material and she went back the following day for x-rays. It is left with this repair on it, which actually looks pretty good, and we have to watch for discolouration incase the tooth dies. Sol is fine about it now, but I am still a bit upset at the damage.

Yesterday we went to the wetlands, we've been before and it's not really advanced much since it was created three or four years ago. Still the wildlife must like it as we saw a few birds and came across a frog. The frog was just sitting in the water, we picked it up but didn't realise it was spawning till we got it out the water. Amazing though.

You will see in the photos that Sol is wearing a patch on her eye. The patching has been ongoing due to various eye problems that she has had since birth. She patches three hours a day now and it's an essential part of her treatment even though it isn't nice to look at. Sol is having surgery at the end of the month to help the cosmesis of her eyes, is going to be milestone for her and probably a traumatic time for me. It's taken many many years to get to this stage in her treatment.

 

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January Round Up

I need to take stock!

I have spent a fair amount of time sick in the last 12 months. There's been ups and downs, a few hospital trips and a lot of soul searching. I have neglected my friends, online and real life. I've not gone to my groups or meetings, avoided social situations too. It's been tough. I have been trying to get better I think I am almost there now, I think. Physically I still have a few issues, like but I'm feeling a lot better emotionally.

Since my last post on my blog there's heaps that's happened, oh and I forgot to mention we have a holiday abroad a few months ago too. I need to share photos, it was pretty good, I guess better late than never.

We had a heap of work done on our house too. My house is 100 years old and constructed with solid walls. Of course nice as that is the walls were cold and attracted condensation. This lead to dampness which was not fun to live with. We had the whole house dry walled! This is like an extra wall and cavity added to take away the cold walls. I have to say its made an amazing difference already, we turned the thermostat down too and I am looking forward to lower fuel bills. We swapped the kids bedrooms around while we had the rooms empty, I think we've made better use of the rooms.

Another big thing that happened is that Sol was ill. She was admitted to hospital with bleeding from her bowels. She had three weeks of being under the weather and suffering from tummy bug symptoms. Her diagnosis - camplyobacter! Where she got it from we have no idea, all we know she was sick and lucky for us we didn't catch it so I could stay with her.

Christmas was okay, we'll actually it was painfully ordinary and boring. The kids all got bicycles so they had a lot of fun, other than that nothing happened.

Okay I shall catch up with everything else when I can.  

Cupboard Love

I need to throw a few updates at this page, however this one couldn't wait.

In our house we have a spare room, we call it our 'wee room'.  Wee being a word that the people from Northern Ireland use in front of just about every object or person they are talking about.  Wee, is a term of affection or simply just just a word when no other words will do. ("Do you see that wee man walking down the road?" this does not mean do you see that little man walking down the road, it simply is a less formal way of calling the man a man.)


Anyway our 'wee room' as we call it is actually a laundry room as such.  I use it to store bed linen, ironing, spare towels, winter/summer clothing, holiday stuff, surplus food, cleaning supplies and small electrical appliances, DVDs and I loads more. Everything goes into our wee room and its many cupboards and spaces.

The children often make dens in the wee room, especially when the weather is bad.  the other day Sol and Seb decided to set up a boys play area in the room.  Sol has been going through a stage where she pretends to be a boy and plays with boy toys.  This elaborate game lasted for many hours and spilled into the evening.  Sol and Seb made makeshift beds on upturned storage crates with cushions on top to soften them.  This rolled on to a sleep over and the children had no trouble in going to sleep in their new comfortable (not) beds.

We left them to sleep but around midnight I started to have second thoughts about their comfort and safety  and we lifted the sleeping children into their own beds.  It was really funny in the morning when Sol woke up and she had no idea she was actually in her own bed, she was not impressed.

Round Up

The last couple of weeks have been a blur of going out every day for some reason or other. I'm not sure if I could recall it all and publish it here on my blog.

Easter was interesting, we spent almost every day that week out soaking up the sun. We spent a day in Kearney Village flying the kids kites and had a very tasty picnic. Two days on the beach and several other days just out and about, we hit the town of Portrush too. The children all have a little colour in their cheeks now and me a healthy glow.

Other things were GCSE exam papers, three of them to be exact and now a stack of revision work for the eldest child's next three papers. Once the 27th May is here that will be the last exam for a few months. I am wondering what subjects he will sit next - its a real toss up between doing three more GCSEs or a couple of AS/A levels. Mag also got the results of the six GCSE papers he did back in March, 3 of them he got 100% on, one was 98% and the other two were in the high 80s. Not bad for a 14 year old kid who doesn't go to school.

We have been busy planning out foreign trips, we have two weeks travel coming up and another couple of weeks in the pipeline including a possible trip to the USA on the cards.

Sol has had problems with her feet, well she always did. As a baby Sol had what was called Positional Talipes, in other words her feet were real bendy and curved inwards. This was caused because of her laying breech in my belly for the whole time she was in there, once she was born she has a real tendency to lay with her feet tucked under her. She had a little bit of physio and wore boots to try keep her ankles straight. The last few months I started to notice her feet turning in again. I called the hospital clinic where she was registered before and they wouldn't see her, they said it was acceptable that her feet turned in again despite her history. They suggested that Ryan Giggs the footballer has feet that turn in and because he does its okay for Sol to have that too. What the F***, Ryan Giggs has millions of pounds and a full medical team at his beck and call, and further research shows that he actually gets treated for his foot problem.
I wasn't going to accept this, after all we neither have a million pounds nor the skills of a footballer. We ended up going private and she has been diagnosed with pronation, in most cases pronation turns the feet outwards but in her case they went inward. This un-natural curve in her feet had her hips misaligned so she had to have them manipulated and is now having to do special excercises. A long time ago talipes was treated with ugly boots and frames - Sol is very lucky now to be able to have orthotics made to wear inside her shoes. They are sort of like insoles but actually have a heal and are moulded in a certain way so her feet are shaped properly. She has had them for a few days now and I can already see how straight her ankles are compared to before. 

Tropical Beaches

The weather here last week was glorious! We spent a few days on the beach just soaking up the sunshine. Who would know we would have a paradise beach here just a couple minutes from my house. Love it!

Babies are here!

The kits are here! they were born on May 14th much to the delight of the children. The children understand that all these rabbits are going to a new home in a few weeks but I am sure there will still be a few tears. There were eight babies in total, our very own octuplets! Sadly one kit died, we think the mum accidentally squashed him.

This one is called Lucky as he almost died twice. He fell out the nest and had got so cold we actually thought he was gone, just by chance we saw a little twitch as we were disposing of his body. I brought him in and warmed him on a hot water bottle, he survived! This happened again, same thing he was cold and appeared dead and once again we revived him.

Walk from Groomsport to Orlock

I love where I live. Its not until you are forced to make decisions which are life changing that you really appreciate what you have. My husband has been offered a job in England and it is, in theory, a step up for him. Originally we were to be off by the 1st of march but that didn't transpire. At the end of this month there will will be a further job offer, a different package and hopefully a better one at that. Then we have to go through the whole agonising decision making process again. It really is a toss up between the 'lifestyle' we have versus some extra money and the lifestyle that we don't know about yet. So the jury is still out, we are still living in limbo but it is no longer a closely guarded secret. Its days like this, meaning the other day when I took these photos, that you really realise what you have on your own doorstep.

~~ The children call this the giant chess piece, and it does look like a rook.

None of these are ours, our boat is teeny in comparison.

This one was after we had trekked along many little sandy coves - 'enough is enough mom'.

Shells - my five year old is fascinated by them. I guess last year she didn't really appreciate them the same as she does now.

We found this old boat on the sand at Orlock, the children had a lot of fun playing in it.

I love this shot these two are just like man and wife.

Funny Faces

Thing about Sol is that she likes to pull a funny face now and again! Lately she has been doing it each time I have my camera out, I have some amusing photos which I sure she will be awfully embarrassed about when she grows up.


Look carefully at this photo, I didn't notice while I was taking it that summer was laying under the stone pulling faces.

Exams, Freefall, Bump & A Birdhouse. How can they all be in the same blog post?

Well a week has gone by and every single day I had planned on writing a few lines to update everyone. So here it is all those few lines condensed into one post.

Monday the 1st of March was pretty much a study day for Mag. The nerves were increasing and I could see that he was starting to worry about the exams the following day. There came a point where I had to tell him to put his books away, enough was enough. I have no doubts at all in Mag's ability but seeing him get anxious like this makes me wonder how children cope with doing ten exams all at once. Well I guess they do, as I did it myself when I was a teenager, but looking at it from a parents perspective is a different issue.

Tuesday, exam day! I took Mag to the school where he was sitting his exams for doors opening and was greeted by the exam officer who showed him where he would be sitting both his exams that day. The morning exam started at 9:30 and he seemed pretty relaxed about it all. Mag was home for lunch then back in again for the next exam at 1:30, after that I had an informative chat with the exam officer to discuss what is next. It was an interesting day to say the least, its been almost three years since Mag had been at a school and I guess it would have been strange for him.

Wednesday was a 'down' day! I had to laugh because what I call a down day is when you do nothing of major importance; rest, watch TV, just hanging out around the house. I posted on Face book that this is what we were doing and everyone sent HUGS. I didn't have the heart to say that I didn't need the hugs, just thanked everyone instead.

Thursday morning I met up with a couple of home educating friends and their children at Indiana Land in Dundonald. Between us we had ten children and the whole place to ourselves which was good. Unfortunately for Mag he is too big to play there but he did get a couple of sneaky goes on the free fall slide. As for the girls, there was three seven year olds lined up along the top of the free fall with the colly wobbles was an amusing site. The mums all stood at the bottom shouting encouragement and each one stepping to the edge then jumping back. I am not sure if I would have done the free fall slide, but they all did it in the end.
At lunch time I had arranged to go have lunch with my friend Lorraine, which we did and had a great afternoon. I didn't want to leave to come home and I think the two of us could have chatted very easily for another couple of hours.



Friday was our day at the science museum, W5. We needed to get out the house again, we have spend a lot of time studying and doing 'school' that this last while so it was well deserved. The day was good except the fact Seb ran into some perspex in the afternoon and ended up going to the children's hospital. He was okay in the end, but left with a nasty bump on his head.



Oh and I almost forgot ... Ashley made a bird box, what do you think?

One Door closes ...

One door closes and another opens ...

This is not the case for Seb, my poor little boy who has a sore head now thanks to a well known supermarket's front doors. The supermarket is on Main Street, Bangor, otherwise known as ASDA!

I will start by saying I have no issues with ASDA and I am very happy with the way in which this was taken care of.

We went into the town yesterday morning, mainly with a bank errand - needed money, had to pay money in to the bank accounts. The funny thing is you cant live without money in the bank to buy food and pay the mortgage! Anyway I also needed to get some of Roy's natural alternative cholesterol tablets, those are the ones with plant esterols in instead prescribed statins which give him some undesirable symptoms along with helping his cholesterol levels.

Anyway enough of the rambling, we needed to get a birthday present for on of the neighbours children so decided to pop into ASDA to see if they had anything nice. As we were about to walk in the door we were approached by a charity box shaker man and I felt obligated to stop and go rummaging in my pockets for change. As I did Seb skipped on towards the doors, they are the automatic doors that open and close when they 'know' you are there. A lady went on ahead of Seb and triggered the doors, he stopped as he went through and turned to see if I was behind him - as he did the doors closed on his head. Once they hit him they bounced back open but the damage was already done. Within seconds a nasty looking red bump appeared and Seb was very upset. I marched straight over to the customer services desk to complain. They brought the store manager down who took all our details and arranged to look at the security camera footage. Don't get me wrong here, this was not about getting somebody into trouble, Seb will live but the worry would be that it could happen again with more serious injury to another child. They took photographs of Seb's head and then took us up to view the footage from the camera. Initially the camera guy said Seb walked into the doors, but on watching the footage you can see this was not the case. Turns out when he stopped in the middle the sensor did not detect he was there, it skimmed just over the top of his head so the doors automatically started closing. The footage showed him turning around and the door closing against his head, them him bouncing back in fright as the doors opened again.

The manager is reporting this to their head office and they have also called the door service engineers out to look at how this could happen. I suspect I will hear from them soon of their findings. Meanwhile Seb has an egg on his head.

PHOTOS - TRIP TO THE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND

Just photos of our day out to the Adventure Playground at Stormont.

This One Went Wrong

I am sitting here listening to my eldest three children fighting over the placement of the sofa cushions! You would think it would be a pointless thing to fight over but according to them its not. The talk we had earlier about being nice to each other appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

We have had a week off from school this week, well everyone is pretty much up to speed on everything they need to so we came to a family decision to loaf around.

Monday was pretty much uneventful - we took a trip to the library which was cut short for various reasons. One of the cars was in for an MOT test, which it failed on a brake light being out. That meant another £17 for a retest. The evening was spent pretty much doing running about for the children's various clubs.

We have been stripping the wallpaper of our hall so the house was in real need of dusting, and tidying so I must admit I have been really good this week and managed to keep everything at a tolerable level of containment.

Tuesday we had to go to the supermarket I had not planned that trip but little did I realise that we had no night time nappies. Discovered that at 11pm Monday night when we lifted Seb to put him on the loo, the moment after his old pants were ripped off and placed in the bin! We had to improvise ... just lucky we had got a free sample of lady incontinence pants in the post - I never got round to wearing them! I covered them up with two layers of towelling pants. Seb's Pyjamas ware surprisingly dry in the morning which was a first. The rest of the day was taken up by mundane stuff like washing curtains and things you know how it goes. Oh and the car - we got it retested and it passed! The Rainbow's drop off on Tuesday evening was not significant except I couldn't help but notice in the twilight the people hurrying into the village with their beloved daughters, the cars pulling in fighting for parking spaces - and our local shop lit up like a beacon on the dull street. If was a funny moment I had, sort of people watching, maybe I am a little crazy after all.

This morning was nothing more than an exploratory run to the DIY store. I must say I was disappointed by the lack of variety of styles of paper they had for our hallway. Seems there is a fashion just now for big whirly leaf like designs which I just don't want in my hallway - I don't want brown or silver wallpaper either nor do I want a teal blue. HUMPH. The paint - well I decided to go for paint after the lack of inspiration in the paper department. I haven't settled on a colour or shad yet, nor have I decided whether I will have light reflective paint by dulux, durable stuff, dead flat matt by crown, silk, vinyl, suede effect, washable or something else I cannot remember to mention. The colour charts only confuse the issue further - so it looks like I am going to go for cream!

I want to share these videos of the children, we were just mucking around!




And this one went wrong!

The Boy is Home

Mag is home at last. I want to thank all of my friends on line and in real life for the messages of kindness given to us during this week.

Mag, as you have read earlier in the week, had his appendix removed last Sunday. Mag then suffered post op complications with a kinked bowel and some infection in his wound. Anyway after a few hard days he turned the corner and yeserday he was allowed to come home.

Mag now is still pretty sore, he is tired and not on full strength but this is all to be expected.

He has had some surprising restrictions put on him, he is not allowed to do contact sports or anything strenuous for six months. He is allowed to resume 'gentle' sports after three months so at least he wont be curtailed for too long. The weather is too cold for him to be out cycling or trampolining anyway. He is also disappointed that he has had to cancel his climbing wall course and not go swimming with the other children but I guess it is a small price to pay compared to what would have happened had he not got the surgery.

We have been overwhelmed with the kindness shown to him by virtually everyone we know. The cards and calls have flooded in from his various clubs and activities, even people who we had not told directly got to find out about him being laid up. It just shows what a popular boy he is, and I would imagine if the same happened to me I would struggle to have the same following.

Mag is ill! Appendicitis

Mag has not been well. He was sick unexpectedly during last week and then he was 'ok'. On Saturday he was quite poorly, had a sore belly and was sick so we all assumed he had a tummy bug. The scary thing is on Saturday night I had a dream that Mag died - my instinct was screaming at me to get him seen to. Sunday morning Roy left very early to get a flight to Scotland - so leaving me alone with 4 children including one with a suspected tummy bug. I wanted to lie in but could not settle for worrying about Mag. So I got up early that morning to check on him and discovered a very ill Mag. He just looked awful and his tummy was hard. Long story short I got the three kids farmed out to the neighbours ...and we went off to the local hospital (all before 9am!).

I 'knew' by then what was wrong. The doctor examined him and looked at me, I said "is it what I think it is?" He nodded and gave us a referral letter for the Ulster Hospital.

Got to the Ulster hospital and did all the booking in palaver which takes forever especially when you are sick. First off the triage nurse was saying "has he got sickness?", "has anyone in your family got a tummy bug?" *sigh* I was just wanting him seen but you still have to do all that elimination. Eventually they came to the same diagnosis. They said they could not deal with him as he was sick and that they did not have an ambulance so I reluctantly agreed to take him in the car to the Royal. I got Mag stood up and promptly collapsed - he got his ambulance! I was glad when I saw the ramp and steps up to the other hospital entrance, there would have been no way he could have walked up himself.

I followed the ambulance, got to the hospital and we did all the signing in rigmarole again.
He was getting iller (if there is a word) by the minute and they couldn't even give him any pain relief. In the end he got onto the surgical ward and eventually after 20 million consent forms etc he got into theatre. He was so ill by then they had to slide him on the bed with one of those roller blanket things like they have on the TV. I stayed with him until he was unconscious from the anaesthetic. Mag had a hole in his appendix, the operation took two hours. He was very lucky boy another few hours and he would have been dead.

His recovery has not been as smooth as we would have liked, he is still a very sick boy. Ashley's bowel has kinked and he has had to have further treatment including an unpleasant procedure involving putting a tube into his tummy. He is still hooked up to the morphine, IV antibiotics and fluids as well as having his stomach drained.

I shall update on his progress as I am able.

Here he is ...

Baking day - Saturday 24th

I am back dating blogging LOL. Today is actually Wednesday not Saturday but I wanted to post these photos before I share this weeks events.

Baking biscuits - Toni got an Angelina Ballerina cook book for Christmas so she decided to give one of the recipes a whirl.

The biscuits looked 'ok' but they did not taste so good.

So we made another batch and they turned out delicious.

The tooth fairy came to our house last week too!

POST-IT NOTES and starfish

Nothing much to report today, well I am sure there is loads but quite frankly I am too tired this evening to write about it all. We went to W5 today, well three of the children went one stayed at home with daddy. My three year old wasn't too hot so I thought it best she stick close to home, I was so tied between her and going to W5 but I guess I did not want to spoil the day for everyone else.

We watched a couple of the demonstrations as well as looking at all the exhibits. Here is Toni enjoying part of the show.


I do have to share something else funny...
On our way back we stopped at Tesco, we found this car in the car park which had the windows covered in post-it notes. I wonder why they were put there, I wonder how long they took to stick on, and I wonder what will happen when the owner finds the car decorated like this.