At the going down of the sun...

"They shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them."

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

We will remember them

Lazing on a sunny afternoon... in the summertime!

(Photo's taken in May 2009)

Prompt #4: Blogging the Mundane...

I'm loving Shimelle's class! Today's prompt is all about blogging mundane things. Things that we think are 'boring' that might actually be interesting to other people. So, life is not always a rollercoaster of highs and lows, sometimes its just nice and flat and uninteresting... so what? Perhaps nice, flat and uninteresting is good - because a rollercoaster life can make you sick! Shimelle was talking about blogging about things like

• going to the library
• doing the shopping
• the school run
• filling up at the petrol station ....

....oooh now there's one that would do me! I nipped there this morning to get some milk after I had dropped herself off at nursery. I filled up with petrol too at the same time... and then came home to find Shimelle's prompt sat in my inbox. It did get me thinking! I remember when I was a kid I used to sit in the car with my parents while the petrol was being filled up! Yup, my Mum and Dad sat in the car too! See I grew up in South Africa where illiteracy is high and lots of people don't have jobs. There is no dole, no benefits or handouts - so if you don't work, you don't eat. Consequently, there are a lot of things that people are 'employed' to do, that here in the UK we do for ourselves... and one of them is filling up at the petrol station. You drive onto the forecourt, open your window and hand a guy the keys. You tell him what type of fuel your car takes and then wait for him to fill up. I remember as a child thinking how it all sounded like a foreign language as my Mom would hand him the keys saying "fill up, 98, oil and tyres" Suddenly there would be three guys rushing around. One would be filling up, one would be checking the oil and another would be checking the tyres. A fourth man would approach the window and ask if she would like the windscreen cleaned. The petrol attendant would then tell my Mom how much it cost and she would give him the cash (before the days of credit cards!) he would take it to the kiosk and bring her the receipt and the change. She would then have to tip him and they would divide it between them. That is how they lived... on tips. I only found out years later that the garage didn't pay them a salary, they did all that in the hope of a tip... and quite a few people didn't give them even that much! The only time my parents would actually set foot anywhere near the kiosk was when us kids nagged them into getting us some crisps or a drink. Quite unlike living here in the UK... where we now have to get out the car (shock, horror!) and do it ourselves. So I filled up the car; watching the numbers whizz by until it clicks. Then I do this "thing", I rock the car - to get the air out of the petrol tank - and then continue to fill it up until it clicks again. Does anyone else do this? I'm not sure where I picked it up from? I think I must be the only person who does this. LOL. I collect my wallet from the car and then head into the shop. Of course it is a *shop* now - not just a little kiosk- petrol stations have now become mini-supermarkets. Our local one has a Marks & Spencers shop, so I often get stuff for tea from there too. I wander around the shop; even though I know I really only need milk -  and pick up a quiche, milk, bread, a snack selection, ham, cheese and sushi. Mmmmmm, yup Sushi. Its a M&S and their sushi is gorgeous. I'm addicted to it! I can happily walk right past the chocolates and crisps as long as I can get my hands on some sushi! I take my stuff to the till and pay.... £60 later I walk out of the shop with a full tank of petrol, the milk I originally wanted and nearly £20's worth of stuff that I had never intended to buy! And sushi. Yum!

I think that the old South African system was probably better, the temptation to buy additional stuff was easier to resist when it was someone else who was handling the money and doing all the work!

(Photo source)

Blog Prompt #3: 5 Favourite things!

So today Shimelle has us thinking about lists. Mostly lists of our favourite things, places or people. Favourite aspects of life, our kids, food, landscapes, tv programmes, clothes, colours, scrapbook pages, books, movies, CD's, concerts, plays, colours of nailpolish, pizza toppings...  Well as you can see the list of all the lists could be endless!  So thinking about my list of favourites, I started thinking about all the bits of life that are good right now. So 5 things that I love about life at the moment: 

1. I love our new house! OK, so its cost us a fair bit more than we had expected. We've had to do stuff that we didn't think needed doing. Like replacing the entire fuseboard because the vendors had tampered with it and it was unsafe as a result. Like having to replace the oven - which had looked perfectly ok, but wasn't. So the ensuite needs completely replacing because the previous people bodged it and the garden drainage needs sorting because a tiny bit of rain turns it into a quagmire. BUT! And here's the big BUT, I love it. The house feels more like home in the few weeks since we moved in, than our previous house did - even after all the work we did to it. We've all settled in well and most of the boxes are actually unpacked!




2. I'm loving how both the girls are playing so nicely on their own now! Both herself and the little one are enjoying taking themselves into their own corner and playing. No interference from me! Herself is currently dressed in a Stephanie costume (from LazyTown) and playing with her little sisters toys. The little one on the other hand has crawled between the bookshelves and sofa and is happily unpacking and re-packing her older sister's bag of Baby Annabel accessories. Both girls are happy playing with each others toys, and peace has ensued. Long may it last!

3. I'm enjoying my little scrapping space! So himself finished building my new scrapping space inside the spare wardrobe, all the rails and flatpack have been assembled and the stash has been unpacked and sorted... and then re-sorted again! Now that its all accessible I am really enjoying my crafting again. I'm trying to make time every evening to sit and do a little bit of scrapbooking and also some altering. In fact, I'm in the process of completing a project that I bought the pieces for 2 years ago! I shall post piccies once I've given it to the recipient.


4. I love that the Christmas preparations are underway! I love the festive period every year. The days getting shorter, the air is getting that cold bite, the councils are putting up the christmas lights, we're drawing up pressie lists and making our purchases (slightly later this year!), menu's are being created, christmas cards crafted (or bought!), christmas cakes baked,  the decorations will soon be taken out of the loft and then christmas trees start appearing in every window on the street and soon we'll be sitting down to eat a meal and open presents with family and friends. I love it all... including the mulled wine!!


5. I'm loving the thought of setting up my own business! BUT, the reality of it is quite scary actually! There's so much to think about! Wholesalers, ebay, website, premises, funding, business plans, bank accounts... and then the elusive name for the whole lot! Definitely having problems with that one! Each time I think I've got a name that's suitable I discover that someone else has beaten me to it. Suggestions on a postcard please! 


Phew, that's enough for now I think! Thanks for reading!

I'm back!

Wow, doesn't time fly? Over a year ago I had a new babe in my arms, sleepless nights were in progress and we were just getting used to having a new member in our family. Now I find that we are finally more settled and I realise I haven't updated the blog at all in 14 months! Ouch. In fact, I had actually let my subscription go rather than keep paying for something I wasn't using. However, I'm back on my feet again... life is getting to be as normal as its ever going to be, and I feel the need to share it with you!

So, In order to get myself back into blogging mode, I've signed up for a class with  Shimelle (love her classes!) all about Blogging. Feel free to take part too, as its not too late yet to sign up! As part of this class we're being provided with 3 weeks worth of blogging prompts and technical know-how to make our blogs more reader friendly. I hope that you will come back and share this experience with me? I'm hoping to blog at least two or three times a week as a minimum. Hopefully, I'll be able to do more tho'... it just depends on how inspiring I find the daily prompts! 

Also, as part of my return to blogging, I'm going to be looking at the possibilities of moving the blog to an alternate site. This all depends on how much I can manage to do with this one as I would love to have a blog that looks a little more 'me' rather than having the bog standard template as provided by TypePad!

So, hopefully I'll see you over the next three weeks!

(image source)

Nearly 3 weeks ago.....

...we added another member to our family! Let sleepless nights commence!

I went into the hospital with contractions 4 minutes apart only to be told that I wasn't in labour. However, they decided not to send me home immediately as they wanted to monitor the baby. The monitoring revealed that the baby's heartrate wasn't doing what they wanted and that the foetal movements were down too. After several hours of them saying that they were going to send me home once the monitoring was done, they suddenly decided that they wanted to induce as they weren't happy with the monitoring results. Four hours after the drip was started a beautiful 8lb baby girl called Cecily Rowan was delivered. She had the cord wrapped around her neck twice, but other than that there were no other complications at birth. Our only concern was that she seemed a little sleepy and struggled to feed. This concern continued for another 2 days until they discovered that she was jaundiced. An extra two days in hospital gave them time to give her some photo therapy for the jaundice and got feeding a bit better established. Nearly 3 weeks later feeding seems well established and she is gaining weight well. I just wish we could say that she was still sleepy tho' as she has now decided to wake up and make her presence felt. 

Unfortunately most of her waking seems to be done at 5am and her sleeping is done during the day. Somehow we have to figure out how to turn that around so that her waking hours coincide with ours... but I rather think that's going to take some time!

Anyway, here's a few pictures of our newest bundle!

Approximately 5 weeks ago....

... we finally moved house! Having lived with my parents for nearly 10 weeks and with no sign of our house in Bradford selling we decided that our best option would be to rent a house. We managed to find ourselves a lovely house in Chryston near Glasgow at the beginning of August and moved in less that two weeks later. Unfortunately it has taken us nearly 5 weeks to get ourselves unpacked and sorted and reconnected to all the various means of communication that we've become accustomed to. Can you believe how long it takes BT to get broadband and TV sorted? Even now we're not fully connected as we're having to use himself's work laptop to connect to the internet wirelessly. This is due to our PC not being wireless enabled. My Little Bro tried to get it set up for wireless connection, but despite him being an IT whizzkid it has not proved to be the easiest of tasks. So, we've now got to figure out an alternative means of getting broadband connection from one side of the house to t'other. Hopefully it won't be much longer before I can actually sit at the PC and post updates on here that have photo's included!

Herself has started nursery during this time too and is thoroughly enjoying herself. It seems that she has made quite a few friends and is actually having a go at the 'Miss Popularity' contest too! I lose count of the number of knee-high people that rush up to her or shout "Hello" at her across the room when she arrives. Its lovely to see that she has settled in there so well already and that she is enthusiastic about going to school. I only hope it continues when she has to start 'big school'!

Anyway, I'm off now to go deal with her and get some more done on the unpacking and sorting out. It won't be too long before I post again! I promise!