Art, telly and gardening

Despite ongoing sicky-ness, we've packed a fair bit into the last couple of days. Yesterday was utterly gorgeous weather wise and April and I spent AGES hunting (quietly!) for in-progress birds nests in the garden. We stared for a long time at our resident pigeon flying backwards and fowards ALL morning with twigs in it's beak. We've also got blue tits in the bird box in between April's and Rosie's bedroom windows which is sweet :) The kids decided (eeek! a bit of homeschool stuff slipping in here!) to make maps of our garden and start plotting where birds are building nests - this is largely so that they can go back in the autumn and locate the now empty nests and investigate them!

Today (noooo! more homeschool mentioning!) Rosie was studying Picasso in art and she drew, in pastels, a Cubist portrait (hers will be on the homeschool blog if you want to look). This looked like a bit of fun so I had a go to - here is my (rather lame) effort *laughs* - the neck is too skinny and the yellow side of the face is far too "sloped" - I think there should be a gentler angle upwards and off the paper. Oh well, it's good to be creative sometimes even if it does turn out shabby :D

I started watching a new series on telly - The Wonders of the Universe (9pm BBC2, Sundays) - Empire of the Sun was the first episode and it was totally amazing! The bit with the total eclipse of the sun was incredible! If you want to watch it you can still catch the first episode on BBC iplayer for another month.

Due to the increasingly better weather (although today was a bit rubbish) and the leaf buds popping up everywhere and the crocuses on our lawn, I've gone all garden-minded :) So, today, we went to our local garden centre and came back with 2 bags of compost and a tub of plum tomato seeds. I've also got various flower seeds and herbs to plant so I think me and the kids will get started on those tomorrow or the next day.

Very sicky

Not been about (blog wise) for a few days - been nursing the sick pretty much - and spring cleaning.

Just as April was recovering from her hideous virus, Rosie came down with a slightly less severe version of it. Then, just as she was (is!) recovering from it Tim got ill. Actually, I didn't realise that Tim felt ill until yesterday morning because he never mentioned it to me. He left for work at the usual time 4.45 ish (am!), I got back into bed and fell asleep. Then, about an hour later i was woken up by a knocking and I lay in bed thinking "eh?" and not sure if I imagined it or not. Then there was another knocking and I started to panic because I wondered who the hell was knocking on my door at quarter to 6 in the morning! Then the phone rang and it was Tim and he said "hello, I'm outside would you let me in please?!" Oh. Ok then.

So in he came and told me that he felt really ill.

You want to know something really stupid? Before he told me that he felt ill, I had no idea and no idea why he was home again. Did I think "oh my god he's been sacked!"? No. Did I think "oh my god, the car broke down!"? No. Did I think "oh my god, he's ill!"? No.

The first thought that popped into my head was "oh my god, maybe the warehouse burnt down!". What?! Well, I was half asleep! *laughs*

So anyway, Tim got up, left the house at 4.45, went for a little drive to Christchurch, told the work people he felt crap, drove home again and went back to bed!

Today our landlord came to visit. He lives up north somewhere and all the years we've lived here we've never met him. He was down visiting his parents so he'd thought he'd pop in and whilst he was here he measured the kitchen because, apparently, he's thinking of having a new one put in sometime. Lovely! It's a really badly designed, hideously old kitchen so a new one would be very welcome - he also said he'd design it in such a way as to create space for our fridge/freezer which is currently in the dining area! Oooo!

So that was that. Tomorrow afternoon Tim and his sniffles are going off to the church because he has a rehersal for the Easter service - lucky them - hope they don't get his germs!

The great gnome races!

We have these little gnomes which have ball-bearings in so that when you put them on the top of a slope they tumble (head over heels) down to the bottom. To anyone with no sense of humour or fun this might sound rubbish but it really makes us laugh!

We've had the little gnomes for ages but today Rosie decided to try and make a really big one out of a toilet roll tube so we did and here he is next to his smaller brothers :)

Then, Rosie took a few bits of video, from different angles and put them together in one film (with some funny music!) and the result is everso funny *laughs*. Here you go:

Muddy walk

Gorgeous weather today (after a fair bit of rain recently) so we took our sickly (ok, not THAT sickly but a bit "coldy" still) children for a walk in Christchurch along the river. It was pretty flooded down by the quay and there were a lot of aggressive looking swans hanging about menacing everyone.

Then we walked along the footpath at the side of the river, up to the ruined castle, climbed the steps, admired the view and came back down again (sliding about in the mud). We'd brought some bread so we fed the ducks and one VERY friendly swan who virtually ate from our hands. He was all by himself so we came to the conclusion that he'd been ousted by the other swans for being too wimpy *laughs*.

Rosie collected a lot of swan feathers and when we got back the kids stuck them in their nature books.

Nice day :)

Butterflies for Spring

This is a little post to show (one) reason why I couldn't have short hair - I just LOVE doing cute stuff with it :)

Today, in honour of the fact that it's a) sunny and b) not freezing cold, I've gone all springtimey and done a messy bun decorated with little sparkly butterflies (there are 2 - one each side). You can't see that they sparkle but they do :)

I do love messy buns - takes a lot of work to get my hair into a "neat" bun simply because there's so much of it - I had to twist it round several times just to get it this contained! Messy buns are more doable ..... and cuter.

Photo by Rosie (who is still coughing madly)

Oh, and here's an "April-thing" for you. Today I was doing some work with her on rhyming words and she had a little poem in her workbook that she had to complete by thinking of a rhyming word. The poem had the lines:

"My favourite foods are cheesy bake

And treacle tart and chocolate ........."

When asked to come up with a word that was suitable and rhyming, she said STEAK! Chocolate steak?! Mmmm, yum.

Going now ... lunchtime - not chocolate steak though - Coronation Chicken :)

Multiple choice quizette

Here's a little quiz for you lovely readers. Ready? Ok.

Q. Which of these things has given me a LOAD of hassle today?

a. Trojan horse viruses

b. Yahoo email

c. Chrome web browser

d. The Leaning Tower of Pisa

e. None of the above

A. Actually, that was a bit mean because they ALL have! Well, not d and e obviously ... that was just being silly.

What a bloody day!

Started off by opening my Chrome browser this morning (which observant readers will remember I mentioned a while ago as giving me grief). It was running MEGA, MEGA slow. Oh god, *yawn*, here we go again. I finally, got to my Yahoo mail page and tried to sign in at which point I was given some rubbishy message that due to some security "issue" I was being locked out for 24 hours! What?! Erm...

At that point, Chrome decided to give up the ghost altogether and completely jammed up taking the rest of my computer with it. Ok. Fine.

Restart. Restart. Restart.

I could NOT open Chrome again but (and this is a feast of weirdness for you!), on one occasion after restarting the computer but BEFORE I went online I checked the task manager and there, strangely, I found Chrome still apparently running!

Anyway, to cut a very long story very short, the computer just kept jamming up so in the end I decided to uninstall Chrome. This in itself took several attempts because everything was jamming before I could even get into my add/remove programmes list. Bloody hell!

Finally got it removed and decided to do a scan "just in case". It was part way through this when it found .... the Trojan Horse virus. Oh lovely. Super. Then, about half way through the scan, the computer jammed AGAIN. Aaaaargh!

Restart. Restart. Restart.

Got the scan going again .... from scratch and this time it didn't pick up any virus and the computer is running quicker and not jamming so I'm guessing AVG sealed away the problems. Weird thing is, trojan horses are supposed to run quietly in the background stealing all your stuff NOT make your computer wade through treacle and get stuck!

Weird no?

Anyhow, tried Yahoo again - no silly message this time so that's cleared up whatever it was *shrugs*. Computer is now running fine (fingers crossed!). Just leaves the question as to where the hell the virus came from! I'm very, very careful about sites I visit and never open anything dodgy in my emails or anything so I'm at a loss to know.

Gone boggle eyed from staring at the screen all day and sorting out the problems. Be glad to go to bed tonight!

Night, night honeys.

Silliness

Ahh, dear .... I've gone from being very good to very bad. I did lots yesteday but today found all kinds of reasons not to doing anything important. Bad me. I played with maps with April (we put Dora the Explorer fridge magnets on our magnetic map of Europe and moved them around from country to country "Dora is in Italy, Swiper is in France ...." ..... does that count as educational? Hmmm?) We also coloured pictures, played on the computer and other stuff I can't remember. Poor old Rosie was stuck in bed because SHE now has the virus :(

Tim got home and told me that he was unloading some stuff at work and a homeless person came up and started talking to him. Apparently, the guy said he always talked to men with long hair! I was a bit cruel at this point (to the homeless person) by suggesting that perhaps it was because he felt comfortable talking to Tim who usually goes around looking somewhat vagrant-like himself what with his scruffy clothes and TOO LONG hair! There, I said it. Wish he'd get it cut *grumble grumble* Anyway, that was mean of me ... poor homeless person :( Tim gave the guy some money although he thinks he was actually after some stuff that he had in the van! Noooo! Don't give away the deliveries! Richard-the-boss would be most annoyed!

Finally, I've just been on my facebook page and, as usual, they were recommending a load of people that I could "be friends" with. Firstly, I had NO idea who any of them were and secondly one of them was called Steve Hamburger. Steve Hamburger!!! *laughs out loud*.

Sorry, I'm clearly in the mood to find the silliest things funny today ..... but really ..... *goes off giggling*

This is for Tim ..... sowwy baby ;)

Aaaa-tishooo!

I did good today :) After trying for a while to get my spring cleaning done, I finally got started today with the living room/dining room. Actually, Tim got started for me yesterday by pulling out some really heavy stuff (like the computer desk) and cleaning behind that. Then, today I did the rest and ... my god .. the dust! When you start pulling out shelves that have been backed against a wall for ages you get the sneezes!

Anyway, I took the opportunity to rearrange things a little and clean all the little itty-bitty bits (candlesticks and photo frames) and wash rugs and so now the room looks gorgeous :)

Another thing I've been doing very well with is the eating/exercise. I have been sticking to this and starting to notice a difference already. My body is a funny old thing (actually not SO old!) but if I let go I get out of shape very quickly BUT if I make a little effort I get back into shape very quickly too :) I'm beginning to feel sooo much better and, it's true what they say, it does become habit after a while (the first few days are a killer).

What a good girly I am :)

Loved up pigeons

We have this pair of pigeons in our garden that have been, for the last few days flying backwards and forwards in the garden with bits of twig and (presumably!) building a nest in one of our trees. I do like this time of the year when you can see the birds getting busy for a spot of ....ahem.. reproduction ;) It's fascinating watching them with building their nests and then (ooo! so cute!) when you get to spy a bunch of newly fledged chicks!!

Anyway, this morning I saw our pigeons snuggled up in a lovey way on the branch of the tree near where they are nest building and (feeling ever so slightly voyeuristic I have to say!!) I grabbed a picture of them.

I did laugh when I got this off the camera - can just imagine what they'd be saying if they could talk! Perhaps it's:

Pigeon on right: My darling! Your feathers are so soft, your beak so pointy - you are QUITE the most beautiful pigeon I've ever seen!

Pigeon on left: *blushing* oh .... *giggles* ... you're too kind!

Or, maybe right-pigeon is taking a more roundabout route to seduction:

Pigeon on right: fancy a popping in my place for some worms?

Pigeon on left: *thinking* ... "I know what he flipping well means by that!"

Or, MAYBE (gasp! horror!), they are adulterous lovers!!:

Pigeon on right: Look, it's like this, my pigeony-wife doesn't understand me .....

Pigeon on left: that's what they all say ........ (*thinks*, but GOD! he's gorgeous!) ... oh go on then! (you can't fight those primeval urges can you?)

Ok, ok, I'm getting COMPLETELY silly now! *laughs*

Dentist

We all had our 6 monthly check up with Dr. Yilmaz today. Oh how we do look forward to that (not). I'm a bit scared of the dentist, not because of pain or anything but, as someone on my Facebook wall said, the stuff they do always seems to end up being worse than the problem you had in the first place *laughs*. Anyway, we all apparently have spendid teeth and, in fact, Tim and I have been told we only have to go yearly for a check up now because he (dentist) never finds anything wrong with our teeth! Super :) The kids still have to go every 6 months though because, I guess, they've still got baby teeth that need watching (a mouthful in April's case and a couple in Rosie's).

We got home, pulled in the drive and a house alarm went off over the road from us and then proceeded to beep loudly for the next half an hour or so. Nearly drove us bats.

April is definately on the mend from the virus now - she actually managed some homeschool work today. In fact, she managed more than Rosie who isn't ill. Ahem.