Well I seem to get on Facebook more than here and yet we are doing lots in life.
Today I slept in.... which I enjoyed but also lost time, which frustrates me. I had woken at 6.30 after a horrible dream of A having piercings done and screaming in pain and me crying. Gah!!!! She doesn't want piercings so not sure what that was about but it disturbed me. After dozing off, M ran in saying there was buzzing in her room so I checked for bees but couldn't find any. I dozed off again then til 9.30!!!!
I had requested some screen free time today so other things were done including trying out some drawing techniques, Ki-nex, Quizzmo, reading. The older 2 made a start at the Silver Arts award looking at reviews. They then navigated back to bloomin You Tube til they did some Maths from a WH Smith book. J did some reading to A. Not sure what I did, other than try and keep the peace.
I had planned a lot of gardening but am hampered by the weather which saw torrential down=pours here.
I need to start de-cluttering the back room but have to try and do one shelf at a time or I will not achieve anything.

Yesterday we had a big gathering here. Various teens hung out and went to the field to play girl v boy rounders, the girls won lol. I went into Manchester to return some stuff for A. While I was there we popped into a Christian bookshop which was just lovely and had a big ground floor with cafe. We shall definitely be going back. The price for a cup of tea was £1.10 which for the city is VERY cheap!!!!!
2 weeks ago M had her 10th birthday. The week before that I had run a joint games party for her and J (who is now 7). We had 24 kids of all ages playing games on our local playing field then we came back here for a brew. It was busy but lovely. Unfortunately our beloved guinea pig died on M's birthday which we all sobbed over as she was a much loved member of our family. We buried her that evening :-(
On a plus side we received a precious gift of 3 baby guinea pigs a few days later who are called Lilo and Scruffy. They are gorgeous and now live in M and J's room as it is the only room with a door the cats can't get through. In there we also have the 2 hamsters lol so it is like a private zoo. We have animal handling each day to make sure they all get some attention!

On Sunday my children were dedicated at our church and A and I had full submersion baptisms which were just AWESOME! I will post the video when I finally get them up-loaded off D's phone.

I am nearing the end of my accounts and book-keeping level 1 course. I have the exam in 2 weeks but haven't studied yet. It isn't really hard though so I reckon I will be okay.
There are lots of changes going on here and life always seem to go in the direction you least expect it but at least it keeps you on your toes!!!

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