Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Warhammer mad..

is how to describe our house at the moment. Sunday we all went along to Games Workshop for a beginner session in Warhammer 40K. We thought it was ging to be some sort of lesson but instead Sam and M got to play against the other lads who were there. Sam was the youngest but a good couple of years but that didn't stop him. He was in the thick of things and had a blast. I enjoyed watching them and sneaking a read of HP7 at the same time. Sam was very good at thinking out his moves and trying his best to achieve the objective. His side lost in the end but he had fun and that was the main thing. They had so much fun that they went back today for a workshop on how to make scenery for your board. I think it turned out well but will need to wait a few days to pick it up as it is drying. Sam and I are planning on going back on Sunday for another gaming session, M has painted a few more pieces for him and Sam is very eager to try them out on the other players.

This last week has flown by in a blurr of typing, teaching and mystery jobs. I finished all my transcribing work and am now editing it. It was hard work but I enjoyed it and hope that there is more work to come. Schoolwise we have started our project on Norway-did you know it was ruled by Sweden for several hundred years? I didn't until today. We are going to look at glaciers and how they are formed as we hope to be climbing on one soon. I am really looking forward to the trip and just hope that everyone speaks english because my norwegian is terrible! I have also been driving hither and yon doing mystery jobs. I have to visit 14 mini dealerships with a 100 mile radius. The jobs themselves don't take long (20 minutes at most) but getting to them does! I have done 6 so far and hope to do most of them before we go away. The pay is very good and all that time in the car is giving sam and I a chance to listen to all his horrible histories cds. Yesterday we did the vikings, WWI and WWII-not bad for a few hours. The pups have been very good in the car and seem to enjoy the ride.

The rest of this week will be a race to finish the jobs and start thinking about packing for our trip. The weather will be about the same as it is here so at least that makes it easier to know what to bring.

Today we met up with S and her girls at Belvoir Castle. The castle was beautiful with lots of interesting things to see but sadly I think sam was more interested in having an ice cream and playing in the playground! We did get to see Holbien's painting of Henry VIII which sam said was cool so at least he took in something. It was lovely seeing S and the girls, my goddaughter G has grown so much and was chatting away. Hopefully we will get to see them again before the girls start back to school.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Tired fingers..

so please excuse tying mistakes!! I have just started doing a bit of transcribing work and my little fingers are numb. I have done it this evening for almost 2 hours and I am pooped! I still have 2 and a half audio tapes to get through ( about 100 minutes) by the end of the weekend. I know that I can do it, I am just not sure if I will have any fingers left! It pays really well and I can fit it in around everything else we do, so provided that she thinks I am up to standard I think I will continue to do it whenever she has work for me. It helps to keep the gray cells functioning and brings in a little money as well.

The most exciting news of the past week (and indeed probably the whole year) is that M has been offered a consultant post here in leicester. It is a locum post initally with a view to it being made permanent as soon as everything clicks into place. I am so proud and happy for him. He has worked so hard and is such a good doctor. All being well he will start the first week in sept. It gave sam and I great pleasure and happiness to be able to give him his consultant present-a very nice watch that he has wanted for a very long time and for which sam and I have been working and saving for quite a while.

Between anniversaries, M passing his exam and getting a consultant job rather a lot of champagne has been consumed over the last week-hope we get more good news next week, I could get used to this!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Reasons to celebrate..

This week has started well for us-monday M received news that he passed the exam he took recently so now he has a diploma in Intensive Care Medicine from the European Society of Intenstive Care Medicine. We are very proud of him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With any luck this may be the last professional exam that he has to take.

This coincided nicely with our 14th anniversary-giving us an excuse to have a bottle of bubbly two nights in a row. We had a nice anniversary dinner out at Mangals which is a fantasic turkish restaurant in the village. Even sam enjoyed it as they gave him a whole plate of turkish delight to round off his meal.

Today has been a very quiet, dvd kind of day as the little one came down with a tummy bug in the middle of the night. We are sure it wasn't the food as we all shared the same food and M and I are fine. We had a pretty sleepless night as sam was up being poorly. He is still a bit under the weather and has spent the day on the bed with the dogs and us watching dvds on the laptop. I even managed to find a dr. who dvd we hadn't seen at the local supermarket which cheered him up no end. Hopefully he will be back to himself tomorrow and hopefully he hasn't passed it on! He is so rarely sick that it is a bit of a shock to us all when he is.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

I think..

that I should be nominated for the bad blogger of the year award. Can't believe that I have let it go so long again. I have blogged tons this week, honest, but you won't be able to read it as it was all in my head. Haven't managed to put fingers to key board for a variety of reasons (thank you doctor who!) and am very behind on blogging and emails.

The highlights of the week-let's see-home ed group, 4th of july, playdate with V & I and C & D, Doctor Who and diy round the house. I guess looking back it was a pretty busy week, we were out everyday either seeing friends or doing mystery jobs. We had a quiet 4th but did manage to speak to my dad and auntie C which was nice. We went over to V & I's with the intention of doing french as it has now finished for the summer but the three boys were having such fun playing that we couldn't tear them away. We marked it down as socialization and vowed to try again this week.

Have finally gotten all the holiday details sorted out and are looking forward to the trip. Sam and I will be starting our Norway project this week in preparation. I want to do a little bit about the history, geography and mythology. We have learned a few words but I doubt that frosk (frog) is going to get us very far. Just looked at the weather in Norway and it is even worse than here, hopefully it will improve in the next few weeks. It would be nice to have a little sun this summer.

The boys have now started with their Warhammer adventure. We played it last night as our monthly family games night. I use the term we loosely as sam did not need my help at all and I ended up doing emergency gingie surgery while lounging on the sofa. They are playing again now as I type this, sam seems very taken with the game. I think the boys are going to go to games workshop to one of their workshop afternoons to improve their playing skills.

Doctor Who also featured heavily in our week-having received the season finale in the post from grandad ( thank you!). We also had a doctor who dvd from the library and bought one that we were missing. All in all most evenings were devoted to Doctor. The season finale was really good but can't believe that martha is choosing medical school over travelling with the doctor-Rose would never have done that-bring back Rose!! For those who don't know about the doctor here is his webiste:www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho.


Not sure what the next week holds beyond more school a playdate with VI and CD. We are also hoping to go out for our anniversary-14 years on tuesday though we have been together for 19.

After a glorious weekend we now have a tremendous thunder storm, lets hope that we don't have any more of those this week. We are so soggy that the dogs now have gills.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Swimming in the rain....

no, not sam and I but the young rogue. Sam, S and I took the dogs to watermead between showers today and got rained on-what a shock!! Anyway as the park was empty I let rogue off his leash to go swimming. He had blast and looked so cute, all you could see were the tips of his ears,his little black eyes and a tail wagging like mad. I think he would have spent the rest of the afternoon in there had it not started raining and I decided to call a halt to his fun. Miko seems much more enthusiastic about the water now she has seen rogue go in and next time will take the retractable leash so she can go in if she wants to. I don't trust her off the leash because I am not convinced that she will come back.

We were supposed to be camping this weekend but that was cancelled due to the weather so sam and I had a quiet weekend just pottering. M is on long days so he hasn't been around to enjoy the lovely weather with us. Yesterday we cleaned, ironed an watched doctor who. Today was the last tennis until sept so made sure we were on time. After tennis a few errands then home to get things ready for home ed group tomorrow. The theme is transport again and this time we are doing things to do with air and water. We have lots of fun activities planned and sam has been very good about getting them ready and helping to plan them. If he had his way we would make robots from scratch and do very hard science experiments each session, regardless of what everyone else wanted to do!!

E posted a comment on my last post about sonlight and I thought that I would answer it here rather than in the comments section. Sonlight is a literature based curriculum that relies heavily on good children's fiction for all aspects of study, not just learning to read. In science for example, they use a lot of magic school bus books, which are about a class with a zany teacher who have great science adventures. One series they don't seem to have included yet is the magic tree house series about a brother and sister who journey through time in a tree house and have lots of fun adventures. We use it a great deal to back up history lessons. Core to the programme are the read alouds-fantastic books that parents read to their children and discuss with them. This year we have read Charlottes's, Web, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Understood Betsy and The Wheel on the School to name but a few. All of the books have been excellent and held both of our attention with gripping plots and likeable characters. They have also given us an insight into new lands and people-such as The Wheel on the School, which is about a group of school children in holland who bring the whole village together to attract migrating storks back to the town. The books are so good and so timeless that I can see us revisiting many of them again, especially when sam is more confident to 'read in his head" as he says. Sonlight is very Christian and not being a very religious family, nor creationists we tend to not use those books which deal with this topic in great detail. I am very happy with the curriculum and I think that both sam and I get a lot out of it, he loves the science experiements and the readers and is already pestering me to start on the read alouds that arrived last week.