Coffee morning and a clear out

This morning we went to a 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning' in the Anglican church hall. Good but very squashed and a bit tricky with the wheelchair - someone clobbered me with her baby's car seat, assume she didn't realise.

Stocked up on Christmas cards and wrapping paper. Bought a couple of cup cakes which were very pretty but both J and I who are seasoned sugar eaters couldn't finish them tonight. There was a layer of thick fondant icing then buttercream underneath and in the middle of the cake a splodge of apricot jam - a bit on the sickly side.

I don't know if I've said before but occasionally we go to a church house group for families. We went a couple of weeks ago and it was great but 25 people packed into quite a small house was a bit of a squash. When we were deciding where to have the next one it turned out only two of us had a large enough house and the other family were hosting the one after that. So we felt we had to offer to have it here. 25 people in our house!

This has prompted us to have a major clear up and finally sort out our furniture so we can seat more than four people in our living room. When we were in the caravan we used our futon mattress to sleep on and it became so damp and mouldy it was no longer usable. Yesterday we finally got around to getting a new mattress. I'm also determined to finish the cushions I started making 2 years ago. We need to clear out the study in order to move the keyboard in there so we have room for the futon. No mean feat but P now having an incentive and a target is getting down to it and he collected a pile of stuff to take to the tip today. We seem to have so much stuff though.
 
Also had a nice chat with a school friend - nice to talk to you,will continue it another day.

J has now got a sixth former mentoring him for Maths, he had first session today and enjoyed it.  

 

Shylock, pizza and Open Evening

I am struggling to write this a bit as my fingers are hurting. Why they're hurting I don't know.

Anyway, J went back to school yesterday which is good. His English teacher phoned on Friday and said she was concerned that he'd been off for so long and she hoped he wasn't going to fall behind the rest of the class and what was wrong with him? I felt a bit like saying 'Oh well, as it's the start of his GCSE courses and he's got controlled assessments coming up I thought it would be a good time for him to have a few days lazing around at home watching Youtube videos.' He's ill that's what's wrong with him. Tonsillitis. Anyway I said we would look up the 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Merchant of Venice' passages he's meant to be studying and she told me that they're studying the father-daughter relationships including that between Shylock and his daughter and J would know who Shylock is. (Actually I know who Shylock is). Anyway she is going to go through it with him over a couple of lunch times which is really nice of her.

Year 10 isn't an easy year at the best of times but it's definitely got off to a shaky start for us. J has been quite unsettled by all the changes - dropped some subjects, new teachers, different pupils in his classes, Maths BORING, which we have sorted out with the teacher, hopefully. Misses doing History and Geography, hates English and RE but thankfully Art, Graphics, Science and German going ok. Then he got ill as well. Just praying that things get better.

Tonight he was helping at Open Evening, playing the steel pans in the Music Department while P and I hung out in Costa. Because of Open Evening he finished school at lunchtime and we went to Pizza Express, having got a special offer - starter, main (limited choice ie pizza) and drink for £10 each. Not bad. I had a Quatro Formaggio pizza which was a mixture of four cheeses but it was a bit too cheesy for me really. Tried a bit of P's 'La Reine Pizza' which was nicer. I hate it when that happens.

Then we took back J's new school trousers which were too short and went to Waterstones to look for  GCSE German book which we couldn't find, then went to WH Smith's and still couldn't find it and J got in a hump because he said we wouldn't get home any earlier than normal which we didn't and he had to spend the time until Open Evening doing piano practice and Chemistry when really he wanted to be playing computer games. (Have I mentioned that piano is going a lot lot better with new teacher? In fact his playing is transformed.)

There's lots more I could write about (and in fact there is something big happening in our lives but I can't blog about it yet) but my fingers are aching and I need to go to bed.

J not well

Today I should have been going to Norfolk on a business trip with P. But I am at home with a sick J. Poor thing has a very sore throat and swollen tonsils. I hate it when he misses school.

Stargazers versus slugs

The mixed annuals struggle into bloom.

I planted some Stargazer lilies this year but they suffered a major attack of the SLUGS. This was the only one to survive - beautiful!

A pretty pansy

 

It hasn't been an easy year in the garden.

I'm back

Ok bad bad blogger, haven't blogged for ages, couldn't even remember password.

Since P has stopped work we seem to be going out all the time and when he and J are at home they hog the computer which means that although I have been meaning to put some photos on my blog for ages I haven't.

So, what we did over the summer was go to York as I've mentioned, then soon after we went to Faith Camp which was awesome as usual, then at the end of August we went to Ireland where we shared a cottage with my brother and family plus his mother in law and my niece's friend. We flew with his mother in law and the rest of them went by ferry. We had a nice easy journey, the only problem being that we had two people using wheelchairs in our party and the airline hadn't put us in the right seats. This was ok, they just put us in different seats but forgot to mention it to the people who were originally in those seats. Several confused people milling around in the confined environment of an aeroplane was interesting.

Our cottage was nice and big and comfortable. The only downside was a dog who yapped at night. I was the only one who was excessively bothered by this so my suggestions that we should turn him into stew were not followed up.

I'm going to put my photos on facebook when P has finished perfecting them. Being married to a photographic perfectionist can have both advantages and frustrations.

On the Sunday we had a big family gathering, having lunch in a hotel which was nice. It was a carvery and as I sat in the queue in the wheelchair the man in front said 'Why don't you stay at the table and let your husband get your food?' 'Because I like to choose what I eat,' I replied. He looked at me like I was weird. 

On the Tuesday night we had a 'Murder Mystery Evening' organised by J which went very well.

On the Thursday some of our group went for a walk up a mountain organised by my cousin's partner which they all enjoyed. Then they came back to the cottage for a meal and some games of cards.

We were out and about a lot of the time as well, looking round castles etc

All in all very enjoyable but exhausting.