Hiya :-)
Well a blog post is obviously very overdue. I have managed to get to the computer but usually I go on Tribalwars to check our villages/send out troops/upgrade buildings. I do this first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Then if I go on Facebook I usually end up chatting with a friend. Or I change my status on Twitter. All these things are bitty and don't take up too much time but usually then there is a child queue waiting for their turn.
I am now grabbing my diary to blog what we have done in April!!
On the 1st April, A and D had a go on the cycling track at the Velodrome in Manchester. They were a bit nervous about it but after the hour were really happy and excited to have done it. Especially when I explained our gold medallist Chris Hoy had trained there and they had cycled on the same track! I hadn't booked M as her cycling is not up to that really. They don't do a lot of cycling mainly because I can't as Jude doesn't so M never really gets her bike out much!
On the 2nd J's beavers group were having a trip to a local fire station. As I had never been in one I decided to attend (and I took M). Can I point out my interest was purely educational and had nothing whatsoever to do with fire-men-rescues and pumps! It was fab and all the kids had a great time looking in the pumps and playing with the hose.

M has been to 2 fab birthday parties this month. She is friends with twins who had separate lovely parties so M has been to Tatton Park Farm and Stockley farm. Each time, when I collected her from the girls' house, I took J who then got invited in to play in their amazing garden that has a sunken trampoline and purpose built adventure playground at the bottom of it. We hung out there for many hours and I got numerous cups of tea made for me which was lovely as normally nobody here makes me a brew!

On Friday 3rd we went to a family fun event at our church which was great. We teamed up with another family and then competed in various different quizzes eg. guess the ebay buy it now price, label the UK counties, guess the celebrity face! We didn't win but had a really great time and got some chocolate eggs too!

Easter holidays were quite quiet for us so it is weird to be busy with all kids stuff again. I managed to get in making 200 paper pots and sowing approx 120 plants. I did lots of digging both here and at the allotment. I have now planted two big potato beds. M and J helped plant rows of red onions and today I did a bed of white ones. I still have one bed ready for carrots. I bought some fleece from the pound shop as I will NOT lose them to the carrot root fly this year! Seeds wise, in pots we have got sugar snap peas, broad beans, mangetout, beetroot, parsley, squash, sweet pea, wallflower. I can't remember what else off the top of my head lol. Productive growing month anyway!

M went away for a brownie pack holiday from Friday to Monday over Easter. I was worried she would be hungry as she is so fussy but she chose to go so I figured she'd either be hungry or eat lol. She had a great time though but looked exhausted when I collected her. She earned another badge for her sash :-)

April has been the month of hair! J had his long-ish hair cut really short which he loves and yesterday I got my roots done and a cut too. M is due to have hers done next week
Kids have been busy having fun. The latest craze here is making animations which I will post as soon as we have put them together.

The girls have their drama moderation on Friday for their arts award where they will find out if they pass - eeeek! Am sure they will though. Then we are heading into Manchester to see our friends who leave our country for Bulgaria (for ever, sob) in a few days time.
Things are always changing, it keeps one on ones toes for sure!

APRIL PICS:

We did Earth Hour- turn your lights off!:

the girls did another Live Radio show (with home-ed friends) and created a facebook page:

Was that enough of a round up then? :-)

A bit of light relief!

You know you live in 2009 when...

1. You go to a party, sit down and take MySpace pics.












2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.












3. The reason for not staying in touch with your friends is that they don't have AIM/LiveJournal/MySpace/Facebook.

4. You'd rather look all over the house for the remote instead of just pushing the button on the TV.












6. Your evening activity is sitting at the computer.













7. You read this list, and keep nodding and smiling.












8. You think about how stupid you are for reading this.












9. You were too busy to notice number five.












10. You actually scrolled back up to check if there was a number five.












11. And now you're laughing at your stupidity.












12. Put this in your profile if you fell for it.
You know you did =D

Hasn't the weather been nice the past couple of days. I hung some laundry outside which was a real novelty. Today seems bright but cloudy. I had been meaning to do some gardening on Sunday. I was planning on weeding my strawberry plot but for some reason I felt exhausted and spent 3 hours that afternoon in bed and still managed to go to sleep before midnight that night. I think being so busy catches up on me so I am trying to go to bed as early as I can. Ideally lol this would be at half 9 but before I know it, it is 11pm! Where does time go???

A has a busy week this week as it is her last week at the Royal Exchange with 3 performances for the paying public on Friday and Saturday. Link for her play here. So she will be there every night now from 5-9pm. She is looking forward to it but it will feel like the end of an era for her. She has finally quit the Garrick - her Saturday drama as she was not enjoying it nor making any friends there. She has met a few people from the Royal Exchange. She went to see one boy who lives a short train ride away, on Saturday. His Mum drove her back home and came in to chat. She home-edded one of her sons for 2 years and was full of praise for it even though they are both in school now. It was refreshing!

I am taking D to have her hair cut today. I was A's turn last week. It shall be my turn next month after we have got through the expensive dentist trip due next week! Haven't quite worked out how to pay for it yet but am seriously looking into dental insurance.

The kids Dad has no job at the moment so is offered no help whatsoever. not that we get much when he is but I occasionally manage to squeeze some money out for the dentist. He has started seeing his ex again who lives in Hereford. He would like to live there I think so I am gently encouraging. The kids can have trips there whenever they choose. He is planning to go there on Sunday but so far only M is possibly going but she isn't too keen. Gah! Sometimes it was so much easier when he couldn't be bothered with them. Now he turns up when he feels like it and I never know when that will be. If he is in Hereford he couldn't do that... I think!!

Last night I stumbled on this conference I would LOVE to go to. It is in July so I wil see if anyone I know is up for going. I think the teens would love it too though not sure of the younger ones.

Please click on the light switch in the top right hand corner. I think it's pretty groovy :-)

Yippeeee! We are finally in March and spring is springing. The shops of full of seeds and gardening supplies. I managed to get to the allotment and do an hours weeding. I love it when no-one is there and I can just kneel and weed. Such bloomin good therapy! The weeds were not too bad but my poor kale has been happily munched by slugs. Oh well, not much I can do about that!

There has been lots of gaming going on here both on screen and off. We seem to be playing lots of Uno and Go Fish. It's great fun as we all join in. The latest screen craze is this one:


which Jude found and I started playing to help him out. It can be quite advanced as you have to attack villages and work out strategy and how many men to send in. Looks fun but I spend all my time building up my defensive wall and reserves. Probably says something about my life lol.

I am off to college later today. The girls are doing their live radio broadcast at 2pm. Click here to listen. I have asked a friend to come round with her kids to mind M and J (as the girls normally do it) which has worked out well for both of us.
Off to rouse kids who need to practice for their radio show now!

Photo time!

The Twins!

The Girls

The Boys

I don't know about you but the blooming review seems to have taken up all my spare time. I didn't want to respond until I had read enough other responses. But yesterday was my deadline and I sat there filling it in. I finished by midday and was response number 1315. Funny to be given a number. Reminds me of the fact we are all numbers in a system!

Anyhow, I am back to near full health now. I have had a problem with my arm but I think it is nerve related and it seems to be getting better. Was worried I was going to have to miss the yoga/pilates/ju-jitsu I was doing but I think I will be okay! Phew! Of course having 4 children in the house, at least 2 of them are now a bit ill with minor colds although A has been displaying signs of man flu - yes it crosses genders!!!!

It has been half term week so a few activities have not been on. My sister came to stay for a few days so that was fab. I would not let her leave til someone had taken a nice photo of us together as we are rarely in the photo at the same time but we have succeeded! Hurrah! I shall post them in another post.
Squash has been on daily so we have been trying to get there. If you walk from our house it is approx 1.5-2 miles (at a guess). When my sis was here, my b-i-l took the small kids and we cycled there. Yesterday we walked but D cycled. On a bike it is so quick yet on foot it took me, M and J about 30 mins. Today I have the use of a car so it should be okay. I do encourage them (and not in the way the DSS encourages!!) to go to things like squash as it is good fun and involves lots of running around. I want my kids to be aware of exercise and it's health benefits and also because when you have done it it does make you feel good. Why do you think I do 3 classes a week lol.

Today's plans include re-bounding, a paper-round, sending off a bank account form for Trailblazers, some accounts home-work and some shopping. I think that is enough to be going on with don't you!!