Wednesday 30 January 2008

Girls day

Wednesday is girls day.
This involves me running around like a looney, all totally self imposed, to try and ensure that the kids have some kind of nice day with mummy at least once a week, whilst keeping them fit, healthy, and inspired too. Sounds like a recipe for madness eh?

dd2 attempted to get up at 4am, dh put her back to bed, and she came back in at 6am shouting, colour, colour (she has ss's old colour coded clock, so when it hits red she's getting up, we have yet to train her to wait for yellow...) so we got up and did the breakfast thing.

We picked up H, Meridians son and took him and dd1 to pre school, then dd2 and I popped to Sainsburys, where we wandered around picking up veg and bread for the remainder of the week. Dd2 sat on the floor reading a Dora magazine whilst I paid at the checkout. Got served by the towns Mayor, as his other job is Sainsburys checkout bod! That passed 20 minutes, time enough to be on our way to Tumble Tots.

Dd2 had lots of fun at Tumble Tots, learning to climb down ladders, jumping and balancing her way through the 45 minutes, then we headed home for early lunch. 11.45 saw us collect dd1 and H from pre school, dd1 dropped at shop with dad and H at his mums, then dd2 and I went back home again for half an hour, prior to her swim lesson at 13:00.

After swim, we grabbed dd1 from the shop, popped to the Library, had a quick coffee in Clarkes, then back to the pool for dd1's lesson. This was followed by a swift walk home, grabbing the car, and whisking dd1 to Ballet, which she is enjoying very much! hell don't say we don't pack my 'day off' with lots of fun things to do!!!

DD2 went into meltdown whilst dd1 did ballet, as it was all too much for her, and she'd not managed a long enough nap, sigh, another teacher placated her for a bit with an apple, as she did not want the biscuits I had, nor the breadsticks, raisens or apricots another mum had on offer either. So that was our rather busy mid week girls day out!

Tuesday 29 January 2008

Tuesday

Tuesday was mainly filled with Accounts and sorting Ascendancy www.ascendancylrp.co.uk Stat Sheets out since the last event for our players. I even managed to get the bookings upto date, hurrah!!

This evening I skipped collecting the kids from nursery and doing the bedtime battle, dh did the honours instead. I in the mean time attended the Ripley Town Council Forum, for us local businesses, www.chimeraccg.co.uk which I missed the conclusion on, as I had to leg it for Hula Aerobics.

The gist of the Forum tonight was, the church has purchased the old police station and will be demolishing it and building a new facility, the vicar looked very happy.

There will be grants available for those who own their shops to get new windows, doors, lights, heating, insulation and shop fronts soon, hurrah if the landlord can be persuaded.

More grants will be available to the council to bring the area back to life/keep it tidy, so long as they/we get a business plan sorted out.

There appears to be a lack of police presence, so they're going to be chased up.

Can we close Church Street/Oxford street for next years Friday lights switch on.

There will also be a recycling trial for business' paper and cardboard. Fine for those with room for a bin I pointed out, several of us however have no where to put a bin.......

We need to get a Ripley site going on facebook, this will be done at the next meeting too!! (turns out the church is technologically enabled)

There was also talk of a summer fete.....
oooh and there was a lady there with her partner, who is are opening a lovely new organic cosmetic shop by end of April on Oxford Street!

Anyway....I then legged it to Hula Aerobics or Hula jit Su, as Richard would have me call it :-)
I managed to not attack anyone tonight with my hoop, a sure sign things are getting better! and I can now walk in a circle with my hoop and spin around in it, although I'm struggling with lunges still.

So that my poor little neglected blog was my day today!

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Early Valentines

Have made some bits for the valentines window display tonight, whilst bbsitting for Meridians ds, so we now have three stuffed hearts to sit next to/ontop of product and a few strings on dangling hearts, in felt on ribbon, though I fear I may need to play with pipe cleaners to, thus ensuring there is no flop, on the top!
The window cleaner is due tomorrow morning at 10.30, as the inside of the windows needs cleaning too, we need to get it stripped out by then, so what better time to put in the Valentines display eh!
Now to find something for dh.....

Monday 21 January 2008

Huzzah!

Huzzah! I've gotten the chap at the upholsterers in Heage to do my chairs for less than the chap at Selston, so have given him the job :-) The Fabric is on order, world watch out, our household may well have dining room chairs soon. That'll shock people, I might start doing 'dinner parties' again too ;-)

Saturday 19 January 2008

Domestic Bliss

Well don't fall off your perches folks, but today I experienced a rare moment of domesticity!
Things started well, I woke up feeling awake, and that doesn't happen often let me tell you. Dd2 slept in till 7am, no waking at all during the night, yay!
So we all breakfasted, then I headed for the shop to open up, managed to do the stuff I needed to do work wise, plus grab 10 mins or so on the net catching up with friends :-) and drink a latte, all before dh turned up to handover the kids.

The weather stayed nice for a refreshing change, so I dragged the whole brood to the park for an hour, then back to shop, all ok, so onwards to the Latte Lounge for lunch. The place was quiet when we got there, so the two eldest sat in the window comfy chairs, whilst dd2 and I had a table, but it got busy, so Judith and Becks joined us when they popped by for their lunch, which dd1 got suddenly intrigued by and wanted to join us too.....we had a nice chat and catch up, before we left them in peace.

SS stayed at the shop to play 40k with Richard, Jock and an assortment of others, so the girls and I headed to Clarkes to pick up my sale bargain wool cardie, that had been fixed (the button holes were coming loose) we mooched home via coop, and then ate sultana and lemon pancakes whilst waiting for dd2 to wake up. We then headed to the fabric shop at Heage, which was a revelation in the home furnishing dept. I now have the fabric details for the stuff I want on our dining room chairs, now I have to see if the chap who I agreed a quote with will do the work with someone elses fabric, if he won't, he's not got the job! simple really :-) The fabric is lovely stuff, Gold on Gold flower pattern, contemporary, not ick at all :-) will post, should the chairs eventually get done (oh they will, they will!) I also got felt, ribbon and stuffing for the Valentines window display, those crafting blogs on Meridians blog are rubbing off on me!

Got home and broke out Auntie L's Xmas prezzie to dd1, cookie cutters, baking tray and cook book, and we all made basic sugar cookies and of course ate a lot of them afterwards too :-)
Homemade Pizza tonight too, I tell ya, Domestic Bliss.

Thursday 17 January 2008

the rest of the week

I've just been poddling along for the remainder of the week so far. Did Hula aerobics on Tuesday night, class has been cut from an hour to 45 mins, which is a bit gutting, as sure my lardy body could do with a bit more work, but there you go. Managed normal aerobics on the monday too, which was nice!
Babysat for Meridians ds yesterday, (I still owe her another two lots from before Xmas!), did tumble tots with dd2, then swim lessons with both the kids, and then, today its been work, work and more work! On a fab note though, the van passed its mot with no work needing doing, dh and I are both in shock at this fantastic revalation, as last year it needed virtually the whole chasis welding back together, so I can only assume they did a marvelous job! hurrah, at least something is going right :-)

Suicidal child

So dd2 decides to attempt hari kari on Monday morning, whilst I'm having a wash.....I think, after some pondering that she may not have tried to climb the chest of drawers, she merely opened them all up, thus causing an overbalance of said set, which then keeled over.......the 1st I heard of it, was when the tv hit the floor. Luckily I was in the en-suite. attempting to get washed and dressed, so I span round and grabbed the corner of the drawers that we're heading onto dd2.....still not sure how the tv missed her head to be honest? anway with the corner of the bed taking a lot of weight, and the bottom two drawers taking a bit more, along with myself, dd2 managed to leg it out of the way, whilst I managed to get the drawers upright and stable again. Que dd2 looking very innocent and moi? do that? on the far side of the room, whilst I looked at the unhappy tv and mangled drawers. Still could have been worse, at least dd2 survived without a scratch on her, phew. Believe it or not, the tv is ok after having a rest too!

Saturday 12 January 2008

Single Parent Weekend

Dh is off running one of our events in york www.ascendancylrp.co.uk so someone had to stay here and run the shop and look after the kids, oh what joyous fun!

The evening went well enough, the kids having only seen dh in the morning, so his presence wasn't missed too much. This morning however was entirely different. Dd2 woke me at 5am (having somehow crawled into bed with me at an earlier time? I don't know I was asleep, ahem...) with a pitiful wail of 'daddy, daddy, daddy' which carried on whilst she investigated her side of our double bed, the en-suite, the hall, her bedroom, dd2's bedroom (waking her up in the process) and the bathroom and ss's room. She ended back up resentfully at my side of the bed, still yelling daddy, a whole half hour later, during which dd2 and I had been saying from our respective beds, 'Daddys in York'. sigh, eventually after dd2 joined us in the bed, she got the idea that he wasn't coming back in a hurry......

Fast forward to 6.15 dd2 snoring again, whilst dd1 is getting herself washed and dressed (unheard of any other day!) 8.30am see's me depositing the kids at Meridians for the day, who very thoughtfully fed me pancakes on my way past too! (thank you!)
I then made my way into work, for a whole day in the shop www.chimeraccg.co.uk by myself, which sees very odd these days, having gotten used to dh being there now!
Picked the little dahlings up at 5.30, Thankfully they'd behaved all day, mainly anway (phew, Meridian may well babysit again sometime!) Meridians dh kindly gave us a lift home. I then wrestled dd2 into bed (after half hour of cuddles and tv) and spent a further half hour putting her back into bed, till she got the message and fell asleep (22mth olds eh!) dd1 and I then watched Primeval, before I put her to bed, cooked myself some pasta and finally stopped doing things to goggle at Timewatch on the TV.

Same again tomorrow! this time with a change of babysitter, Grandma's turn!

Wednesday 9 January 2008

Catching Up

Managed to catch up with an old friend tonight over the phone, who I've not seen since July last year, such is the state of my social life at the moment......we had a good half hours chat, before promising each other that we'll try and physically see each other next week on Monday evening. It'd be good if we finally could catch up! it's amazing how much kids do impact on your life once you have more than one of them. Babysitters become like Golddust, you can spot the tumbleweed for miles when you decide to try and find one. You have to laugh, as initially your inundated with offers of help!

But on the subject of catching up, hopefully this year will be better for it, that's two people one on Xmas Day and the other tonight, who I've managed to re aquaint myself with so far, so one a months not bad eh?

There is promise of several girls weekends away too (well one weekend and one night in Birmingham) but what with the shop and Ascendancy events, that's all I can fit in anyway without abusing dh's goodwill I reckon.

Which reminds me, I need to phone S, as she mentioned popping by this Saturday night, when L was also possibly popping over. Not heard from L though, she's on work week from hell (nights for the NHS) so will probably get in touch on Friday when she finishes. A girls gotta arrange some sort of social life of an evening, when she's left in with the kids right? other than twittering on to my virtual friends on the internet.......its a sad day when you know more people online than in person eh!

Thursday 3 January 2008

New Year Ponderings

Happy New Year to all, before I blather on at you in my usual way!
Hope everyone had an enjoyable one.
Still debating if the west coast mainline debarcle was the result of our engineering friend going to Estonia over the festive period? the news keeps saying it was cause all the engineers buggered off, but they didn't specifically refer to him in person ;-)

I've spent most of this week glued to turbolister, as we're joyously re loading stock back onto ebay.....a mammouth task.....it will be even worse when we introduce a proper website! or will it, as I guess I'm doing the bulk of the work now? hmmmmmmm

SS is being a star and is keeping his little sisters in line when he sees them, as they've been at nursery all day today, whilst we put him to work, dusting the shop and stock, which he did with mainly good humour and a few wow breaks.

The car passed its MOT which is always a joyous occasion, when it doesn't cost lots more money. However we still have the dilema of how to get dh and 3 kids into the van, including kit and tents to get to events this year, as my dad has decided to object to his childcare involvements.......making us unhappy bunnies in the process.........so far I have cobbled together a saturdays worth of childcare in Jan from Meridian and my mum is helping out on the sunday (against dads wishes) I think this is some sort of stand against dh avoiding handing in his notice, but making lots of noises about not doing much more building work........dh is as usual being evasive and hoping the problem will resolve itself without him having to say or do anything (ringing bells anyone?) Anyway the point being he knows we have to keep the shop open and can't afford staff for it at the moment, so I have to stay and keep it open at least on the Saturdays.........so we've been debating selling the van and car and seeing if we can get a large van type thing with seats for 5 people in it, plus kit and the tent etc......as you may gather, this is not going to be easy........and the 2nd hand market isn't looking cheap either......in fact the aupair option is looking far better by the minute!! The other option is kids stay in the shop with me......trouble is dd2 is too young to do this safely.......oh the tangled web's eh? I suppose if we could get a cheap large van type thing, I could always get a cheap motorbike again and whizz to events on a bank holiday sunday/monday, surely we could close then?? ARGHHHHHHH I have no idea what will happen, but sure we'll resolve this somehow? (kids on the roofrack?)