Home Education-Learning through life's lessons.

A quick catch up.

2010-02-08T07:11:00.002Z

Hello,
I thought that it was about time that I popped on to let everyone know how we've been.

Well, we have been fine :-)
The children are getting on really well. The pets are all great and life is good.

Liam is now 5. I have no idea where the time goes!!!!!
He has started reading now and can type certain words on the computer. I have at no point pushed him to start reading-he has just picked up certain words by himself and shows an interest in learning new ones.
That's the beauty of autonomy :-)

Emmie is fine too. She is still into her story writing and drawing. She has made so many little books with beautiful pictures.
It is what makes her happy. She has always been very artistic and creative. She has no real interest in maths or history or geography but English and art keep her going for hours every day.
She is also a whizz on the Etch-a-sketch. She draws some amazing pictures on it which astounds me as I could never even draw a decent looking house (and still can't) lol.

I am very happy with how they are doing and it's great watching them both do the things that interest them rather than have their skills and talents quashed in order to complete 'schoool' projects which they have no interest in.

I believe that it is important that they are given the opportunity to have a well balanced education and all subjects are made available to them-however I would rather see a child happy and fantastic at one subject rather than see an unfulfilled child struggling to be average at many subjects.

We are still unable to travel due to the travel sickness (Liam) so have spent most of the winter at home or at Nanny's house which suits us all :-) Don't really enjoy being freezing cold and we spend enough time outside in the garden with the pets so we haven't missed being out and about. lol

We are going to have a go at a train journey in the next couple of months or so as if we can get about by train-it will open a lot of doors for us.
I'm a bit tired of feeling stuck at home in the nice weather and want to be able to take them to places to experience new things.

So-that's us!! I hope that you are all fine too.

Happy days :-D

Jay xx

My website

2010-02-07T09:08:00.002Z

Hi all,
Sorry to pester you all again with my website but I thought you might like to see my special offers and competitions page.

You can enter a free prize draw to win a 24 hour session of distance reiki or you can purchase a 'lucky number' for just 50p and if you are the winner-you will receive a reiki charged clear quartz gemstone in a satin pouch. (Normally £3.10)

Here is the page Click

Thank you and good luck :-)

Jay xx

New ebay sellers account

2010-01-26T08:30:00.002Z

Changed my Ebay account so that I can have a separate sellers account so my Distance reiki on ebay can now be found Here

And there are now reiki gemstones and reiki candles on my website on the 'Items for Sale' page.

Link to my website Here

Love and Light

Jay xx

New Reiki Web Site

2010-01-07T11:32:00.002Z

Hi everyone :-)

Looks like I was wrong about popping back on to wish you all a lovely Christmas!! Well, I truly hope that you all did anyway and I would also like to wish you all a very happy new year :-)

I certainly don't get to keep this as up-to-date as I would like to but what with being a full time Mum home educating two children, having a house full of animals and concentrating on my reiki-I really just don't always find the time!! lol

I have a bit of sad news to share with you all. We lost Rose (Our oldest hen, 3 years) on 19th December 09.
She was unwell for a while and happily living in the house keeping nice and warm but sadly on the 19th-she died.
She is now buried in the back garden and we miss her terribly but at least she has now found peace.

While I'm here, I also wanted to tell you about a new web site that I have set up. It is VERY new and it still needs quite a bit of work done before I will be happy with it but it's half way there :-)

It is a web site about reiki healing and at the moment there is a free prize draw for a chance to win a free 24 hour session of distance reiki.
The web site can be found at www.reikifromjay.co.uk and the draw will be taking place on 21st January 2010 at 12pm.
If you decide to enter-I wish you good luck!! :-)

The children are fine-they had a great Christmas and as usual Father Christmas bought them lots of lovely toys :-)

I honestly will try to pop back soon but as you know-soon might be quite some time!! lol lol

Take care and please take a look at the web site ;-)
Love Jay xx

Special Offer On Distance Reiki Healing.

2009-12-08T14:18:00.001Z

Hi all :-)

All's been fine here. The children are excited for Christmas and yesterday they bought everyone in the family a Christmas present from each of them.

Not an easy task having to look for 20 seperate gifts within their budgets but we managed :-) lol

Anyway, I wanted to pop on and give you all the Ebay link to my distance Reiki which is on special offer until 13th December.

I also have 7-14 days of distance Reiki for £4.50 in my other items.

Here is the link..............http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320454623466&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

I will definitely make sure that I pop back to wish you all a merry Christmas in the next week or two :-)

Take care and thanks for looking.

Jay xx

Free Graze box to anyone who wants it :-)

2009-11-14T07:54:00.001Z

I have a code for people to receive a free Graze box, then the second one half price.
It's not a con or a dodgy website-I use them myself and they are fine :-)

http://www.graze.com/p/1D53G84

Enjoy :-)

xx

Tallulah is leaving home today

2009-10-29T06:46:00.001Z

Well, good news really.

I managed to contact the breeder yesterday and she has said that she will take Tallulah back and he will end up going to a poultry auction.

So-I am thrilled that it is sorted, happy that he will end up at an auction rather than on someone's plate, grateful that I managed to get hold of the breeder and she will take him back yet I cannot help still feeling gutted that he is going.

Yesterday morning he really went to town trying to crow. It was still not a full crow but boy it was loud. I know that the miserable people round here would not tolerate hearing him for long. I just wish I didn't live here then it wouldn't have been a problem and we could have kept our much loved pet.

Anyway-I am pleased that it is all sorted and no doubt a few tears will be shed this afternoon as I put him in a box and have to say goodbye. He has been a brilliant bird and will truly be very missed by us all.

I wish for him a long and happy life wherever he may end up and I pray that he brings as much joy to his new owners as he has bought to us.

Tallulah tried to crow :-(

2009-10-27T06:33:00.001Z

First of all- Hello Pat, Hello Dawniy I hope that you are both well. I will have to email you's as I have not been very good at staying in touch lately have I?

Anyway, Tallulah has now tried to crow. Sounded like someone blowing a party blower :-( This is very often how they sound before they find their voice.

I couldn't be any more upset to be honest. Not what I wanted to happen and I haven't won the lottery yet so I am in a rubbish position and he is gonna have to go.

I am unsure with Pearl and agree with you Dawniy that the darker days could very well be delaying her laying so providing she doesn't crow-maybe eggs in the spring :-)
Tallulah however is 100% a boy. I can't get hold of the lady I got her/him from and I'm hoping that she is not away for half term as I'm not convinced that I can manage for a whole week because at any point now he could start crowing at 4am.

The neighbours one side hate Kev and are not very happy with me despite the fact that I keep him in until 8am weekdays and 9am weekends. He hardly crows throughout the day but still they just have the right hump about it.

Shame really because other people around here have commented on how much they love to hear him.

Soooo-now waiting to hear back from the breeder. Have my fingers crossed that she will contact me today.

What a sad thing to happen. Why have the lottery people picked out the wrong balls yet again??

Had they got it right and picked my numbers-I wouldn't care less that she is a he to be honest. I would have a house with a nice bit of land and he would have his own run with his own flock of girls and could crow till his heart was content but alas, I'm stuck living here with neighbours in every direction. It's like living in a goldfish bowl.

If I haven't sorted anything out for him by Saturday-I just hope those Lotto people get it right and pick out my numbers for the sake of Tallulah. If notI'm gonna complain ;-) lol

Is Tallulah a cockerel?? :-(

2009-10-25T08:30:00.000Z

Well I am getting increasingly worried that Tallulah may in fact be a cockerel and I am also not too sure about Pearl neither.

Pearl is not looking particularly male like however she still hasn't laid an egg and a couple of weeks ago she found a tasty worm on the grass and done a little cockerel dance-just like Kev does when he finds something yummy. My heart sank to be honest. Pearl is Emmie's hen and she carries her around and Pearl sleeps on her lap. Em would be devastated if we couldn't keep her.

I have been concerned over Tallulah for quite some time now too. My gut instinct tells me that she is definitely a boy. I am just praying that my instincts are wrong.

She is huge, has very large spurs growing on her legs, her neck feathers are long and sweeping and her feathers on her back near her tail are also becoming long too.

Gutted!!!

I have asked a couple of farms if they would take her if she is a he but so far no luck. They are already over run with cockerels and have no room for more.

I really don't know what to do. I have spoken to them both (Tallulah especially) and asked them not to crow until I have won the lottery and then they can crow as much as they like as I will be living somewhere much more rural and they can have their own pens with their own flock of girls.

I am now pretty much waiting for a crow or an egg from both of them.

Kev is great and Rose has really perked up after her big moult so all's good on that front.

Jasmine is still as nasty as ever and she and Brandee pretty much live together and not with the others as so far Jas is showing no signs of improvement :-(

So-now waiting to see what happens with Tallulah and Pearl. I pray every day that they will lay an egg and put my mind at rest although I really don't hold out much hope for Tallulah.

I may even end up having to have her put down if she crows. How sad is that?? If I cannot rehome her I will have no choice will I?

I cannot keep her as she will inevitably fight with Kev and kill him and the neighbours one side hate Kev crowing so I could no way keep two :-(

I feel so upset at the thought of it all and just wish that I knew for sure one way or the other.

Oh well-feel batter now I have got that off of my chest. lol

I will of course keep you updated.

Groundhog day

2009-10-24T07:49:00.001+01:00

Ooops, been a long time AGAIN!!!! lol

Thought I'd pop on to say hi and to let you all know that everything's fine here with us.

Nothing interesting to report I'm afraid. Just the usual-looking after pets, kids, housework etc. It's like Groundhog day-that's why I forget to come on here. lol

Don't know what's worse, leaving the blog for months without posting or posting often but with nothing remotely interesting to say.

I did join Yoville on Facebook for a while but have since stopped playing it as I was pretty shocked at how many mentally disturbed people go on there. LOL

I think I live quite a sheltered life (through choice) as I have encountered some real oddballs. Not just a little odd-I'd say 100% completely weird some of them. Not my cup of tea!!

I enjoyed the decorating the apartment part and the kids both used to watch and enjoy it however in the last couple of days I have decided that it is just too much for my poor old nerves. lol lol

Anyway, that's about it really. I really ought to try doing something exciting so that I can tell you all about it :-)

Take care and who knows when I'll be back lol

Meet the new guys :-)

2009-08-22T06:42:00.003+01:00

Good morning :-)

Well, first of all Suggs seems fine. He is still drinking a fair bit but considering he has had the all clear from the vet, I will just have to assume he is extra thirsty and not panic too much unless he starts acting really unwell. I have my fingers crossed that he will be fine.

As for Rose, nothing I can do with her neither. I am positive that she is just getting old. She has stopped laying and her face and comb keep going pale but on the whole she's doing alright :-)

Had a little drama here the other day.

Em had an insect bite on her foot near her toes. It was red and itchy but that's to be expected.

On Sunday evening I glanced at her foot and noticed a red line coming from the bite and going up her foot.

When my Mum was little she had blood poisoning. My brother and sister have both at different times had this red line coming from an gnat bite and my Mum knew the warning sign that if left, it could lead to blood poisoning, so she got them antibiotics asap.
When I saw this on Em, I knew what it was and rang NHS direct to ask if she would need antibiotics straight away or if she could wait till morning. They said someone would ring me back in about 4 hours, maybe less.
It was half past 6 at this point and I thought 4 hours was a bit of a wait so rang the emergency doctor. They said we had to go there as soon as we could.
We got there just after 7 and the doctor wrote a prescription for antibiotics and piriton.

Charlie (other half) then had to drive to fetch the medicine, he didn't get back until after 9pm as the emergency chemist is miles away and there were tailbacks.

What a night!! lol There we were, decorating the bathroom when suddenly everything went crazy!! lol

Anyway, the line has pretty much gone now and apart from the medicine tasting foul and needing to be taken on an empty stomach 4 times aday-everything's fine :-)

Now on to the good news.

Tuesday we went to a lady's house just to have a look at her hens.
We had a long walk in the burning sun but it was worth it. The lady was really nice. The kids had a whale of a time and we picked out two new girls and a...................................................................................................................................................BOY :-)

I would like you to meet Pearl, Tallulah and Kevin the cockerel :-)

Pearl is tiny (about the size of a wood pigeon). She is almost pure white and her breed is Sumatra. She has black skin and black bones apparently . lol

Tallulah is a complete mongrel. She is white with some black and some brown feathers. She has feathers growing on her legs and a funny little comb called a pea comb.

Kev-well what can I say?? He is a handsome, chilled out little man.
The first morning he crowed at 5.30am. Made one neighbour very unhappy!! Since then he has been sleeping in the shed at night in a cat box. So far so good and even though he started crowing yesterday at 7am, it was pretty muffled and not too loud.
Fingers crossed I can keep him quite in the mornings as I don't want people getting the hump with him :-) Kev is a partridge booted bantam cockerel by the way.

The old girls are not totally impressed with the new arrivals. Jasmine especially is being a nasty girl.
Pearl manages to get out of Jasmines way but poor Tallulah lacks the necessary co-ordination to fly out of the way and ends up catching her comb on the wire of the run (making it bleed) and Jasmine pecks and pecks and pecks her. Poor baby.

They will get there in the end-it just takes time :-)

Kevin the cockerel is named after my Dad who passed away on May 20th 2007.

As a family we think it's funny and know that my Dad would have loved having the cockerel named after him. People may think we are mad and guess what? They'd be right!! lol
There are many similarities between Kev (my Dad) and Kev the cockerel.

I will keep you all updated.

Ttfn and have a great day :-)

Rose (chicken) and Suggs (cat) not well :-(

2009-08-09T07:31:00.001+01:00

Good morning.

Well first of all Suggs-

Suggs is 12 years old and has recently been loosing weight and drinking tons.
I took him to the vets and they done some blood tests and a urine sample (Costing me £147.00)!!!!!!! to see if he had a kidney problem or some other illness.
The vet rang me that night to say that his bloods and urine sample had come back 100% normal, in fact better than normal. By rights he should be a picture of health!

So, now there is nothing I can do. I have to take him back to the vets in 4 weeks to be weighed but that's about it.
Very worried as my Mum's cat Vinnie was recently put to sleep due to kidney failure. He too had normal blood test results (twice) but just kept going down hill. They couldn't find anything wrong with him until it got to the point that his kidneys packed up altogether. I am now worried that the same might happen to Suggsy too. Seems a bit weird how Vinnie was loosing weight but bloods were perfect and now the same is happening to Suggs. Whatever it is, it's definitely not contagious though because neither of my other cats have it and nor did my Mums other cats.

Can only keep my fingers crossed that he will be ok.

Now Rose.

Mmm, Rose is really not right now. Just old age though, I'm pretty certain. She is looking tired.

She doses off every couple of minutes, isn't eating much, isn't her usual happy self and has stopped laying.

On Thursday she had a soft shelled egg burst inside her and I had the delightful job of removing the empty soft shell from her vent. (Bum). Yummy!! lol

She does not seem in pain just very tired. I am making sure that she is comfortable and I'm separating her from the others at night just in case she died in the night and the others had a peck. I don't think I could cope very easily with waking up to her dead and pecked so she is sleeping in a cat box now at night.

Can't believe how upset I feel about it all. Poor poor Rose. If she shows any signs of pain or suffering I will of course get her put to sleep however right now I think she is happier in her home with her friends.

As for Suggs, he is acting fine at the mo so until he acts unwell, I can't do anything at all.

Pets-who'd have 'em???????? lol

Will keep you updated and will be keeping my fingers crossed that they are both fine :-)

Thanks for reading, have a good day.

Home made peck-a-block.

2009-07-31T07:48:00.001+01:00

Look what i made. It's a hard seed block for the chickens. I normally have to pay over £7 for one but I found a recipe on the omlet forum and ta-da. I have made it around a tent peg so that I can hang it up. The girls love it and it is rock hard so should last a while :) (I actually made 2) I know for a fact that I wont be buying any more now. Best mention that the children are fine. Lol. Don't want everyone thinking that I am so wrapped up with wildlife and pets that the kids are forgotten about. Lol They have been enjoying spending time with the pets and watching the nature in the garden. Liam loves it when the flying ants swarm. In fact he and Emmie had me rescuing some of the flying queen ants from spider webs. We know that the spiders have to eat though so we didn't rescue them all. Lol Not much else to report really. Most of our time is taken up with animals and stuff. Bit boring to most people no doubt but we are happy ;) Suppose we are just making the best of life considering that we can't travel because of Liam's travel sickness. I am slowing working on trying to get him to go to the doctors to see if there is anything we can do. So many places I want to take them, so many things we can see. I hate the fact that we are stuck here in limbo. Don't want my children missing out on exciting adventures. They don't go to school so we have all the time in the world yet we spend most of our time at home. Lol Never mind, we'll get it sorted eventually :)

Roses dodgy egg

2009-07-28T09:41:00.002+01:00

Just wanted to show you Roses egg.
Poor old Rose-seems she really is coming to the end of her laying life.

Her eggs are much bigger than they used to be but look at the state of it. lol lol

Jasmine's egg is all smooth and perfectly formed and Roses looks screwed up!! lol

That's Asda price :-o

2009-07-27T21:13:00.000+01:00

Wondered why my Asda home shopping order came to £45 more than it should have. Cor-talk about inflation! Lol lol Luckily i noticed and got the cost of the cakes refunded straight away. :)

Sent from mobile phone.

Collared dove.

2009-07-25T10:13:00.000+01:00

For the past few days we have been keeping our eye on a collared dove who comes into our garden. It has had a drooping wing and damaged feathers on it's back. Each day it has looked a little worse and spent most of the day in our garden perched on the fence or bird feeder. On thursday we noticed that other birds were pecking at it and it didn't move. :( So anyway, we were very worried that a cat was going to end up getting it because it was not moving-even when i touched it. The final straw was when one of our cats jumped on the fence next to the bird and it didn't budge. We prepared a cat box and i picked the dove up and popped it inside. It did not struggle in my hands. We gave it food and water and put the box in the playhouse away from predators. Sadly the dove passed away around 8pm. At least it was safe and dry and peaceful. Better than being ripped apart by a cat. We tried our best.

Sent from mobile phone.

Much happier with blog now :-)

2009-07-23T08:28:00.001+01:00

Since changing from the AOL blog to this one I haven't been too happy with it to be honest.

I hated the fact that I couldn't change my font to one I really liked, couldn't use smilies, found it a bit of a pain to upload photo's etc.
Now-after a considerable amount of time, I have realised that I can post on my blog through email

I can also post from my mobile phone.
I'm sure I will want to post more now and I'll even be able to post pics of the kids from wherever I am.
No doubt everyone else knew about this all along. lol lol

All I want to do now is personalise my blog rather than just using the templates. lol

Have a great day.

Ttfn xx

Swine flu ;-)

2009-07-23T06:52:00.003+01:00

Hello :-)

I hope that you are all well and that life is being kind to you.
We are all fine here.

We are over the panic of catching swine flu now. lol
I don't normally worry too much about things that are going around and just rely on positive thinking to keep us fit and well but I must admit I did feel a bit wobbly about swine flu for a while.

I didn't really want to go out of the house. I was quite happy to stay inside with our anti-bac hand gel and wait for the pandemic to pass but of course this is not practical.

I have now decided that positive thinking is the way to go-we cannot be prisoners in our home forever. lol So, we will not be catching swine flu or any other type of flu :-)
We are healthy and strong and our immune systems will be more than capable of fighting off any nasties before they get a hold.

Good news- at the end of August we should hopefully be getting another couple of hens to go with our three.
Poor Rose is getting on a bit now and I think due to the fact that she hardly ever has a day off of laying-she has worn herself out a bit prematurely. Bless her.
So we are pretty excited and can't wait to get the new girls.

The rest of the pets are doing great. Emmie and Liam are still in love with their guinea pigs and Emmie is absolutely fantastic with them.
She is always checking that they have enough food, water, hay. She covers their cage every night and uncovers them each morning. She has proven to be such a responsible pet owner-she should feel very proud of herself as I am.

Anyway, going to leave it short as I have some other bits to do.

Take care and stay happy.

Jay xx

Raising your spirited child

2009-05-26T07:02:00.003+01:00

Hi,
See, I didn't leave it as long this time. lol

Just wanted to pop on to tell you about a book that I have just read.
Raising your spirited child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka.
Excellent book filled with tips and advice.

I have read quite a few books over the past year or two and this one definitely decribes both of my children 100%.

We also have a book called 'What to do when you worry too much.' but haven't got round to reading it yet. I bought this book mainly for Emmie.
It gives you tools to help you worry less. I will report back when she has read it to let you know how she gets on.

Reading these type of books gives me confidence.
I wouldn't say that I parent from books, rather I get hints and tips and work with what feels right for us.

I feel that sometimes I lack the confidence and assertiveness to do what I want to do.
I have my own ideas and opinions but worry what others think or get scared that people are judging me.

The more books I read the more comfortable I feel doing things my way.
I no longer feel that I have to do things in a certain way to get the best results.
I feel confident that my children will grow up well balanced and be nice people to know.
I understand that how they behave now is no indication how they will behave in 10 years from now.
There is no right or wrong way. Many people bring children up in many different ways.
The results are mixed. All I know is that if I follow my heart-we'll be ok.

I no longer care if people judge me as being a bad Mum because my child has an outburst at not wanting to go somewhere or try something new and I don't 'crack down' on them or any of the other issues that we face on a daily basis.

People can judge all they like. My children are happy and that is what truly matters to me.
They know that I understand and I am there to help them.

Have a great day and take care.

Love
Jay xx

P.S- I have relisted the distance Reiki on Ebay, please take a look :-)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=320372158075

Any questions please send an email to - xscrunchee@aol.com

RE-not posting very often.

2009-05-20T07:31:00.002+01:00

Well, it has been said that I do not post very much these days ;-)
I have no idea why really, lack of time? Nothing interesting to write about? lol Who knows.
However, I will try to pop on a little more often :-)

Take care and I hope to be back soon xx

2009-05-17T11:33:00.001+01:00

An award from my friend Pat. Thank you so much Pat :-)

More Reiki on Ebay

2009-04-15T16:51:00.002+01:00

Hi all.

A bit cheeky of me I know but thought that I'd pop on here to let you know that I have a couple of Reiki bits on Ebay now.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=320360525730

If you click on the view sellers other items link (top right) you will be able to see all of my offerings. lol

Well-that's all I popped on for so I'm off now.
I hope that you are all well and enjoying todays sunny weather. (Let's hope it lasts)! lol

Please take care.
Keep smiling :-D

Jay xx

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T07:59:00.004+01:00

Just a quick message to wish you all a very Happy Easter.
Emmie woke up at 2am because she was soo excited and it took her until around 4am to go back to sleep but she was still up at half 5 as she just couldn't wait any longer!!! lol lol Bless.

All's going well here. The children are fine-they were enjoying the nice warm weather although it was short lived. Spent lots of time in the garden playing and enjoying themselves.

The pets are all doing well. Little Nanna (tortoise) has grown 1 cm since we have had her. lol
We have a couple of new additions joining us soon too. Nadine's guinea pigs.
Now she is at college she feels that she doesn't have as much time for them as she would like and being that Emmie and Liam have been going on about wanting guinea pigs she thought that maybe if they are here she can still see them all of the time but without having to worry about giving them enough time and Emmie and Liam get to take care of them which will make them very happy. I will put some pics on when I can.

So now that's...............1 dog, 3 cats, 1 snake, 2 Giant African Land snails, 1 tropical fish tank, 1 fish pond, 3 hens, 1 tortoise and 2 guinea pigs!!! Mmmm, quite a few pets now. lol lol I love them all so much though so it may seem like sheer madness but I'm happy. Madness suits me quite well. lol

I have also put my Reiki on Ebay. 7 days of distance healing for £3.50 or there abouts (Negotiable dependant on individual circumstances). 30% of the money will go to Childline which is in my opinion a very worthy cause.
If you are interested please take a look..........................
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=320359141728

So, busy, busy, busy here.
Hope that you are all well.

Please take care and I'll try to come back soon.

Jay xx Be happy :-)

I done it again!!

2009-04-02T06:33:00.002+01:00

Hello peeps,

Well I've gone and done it again haven't I?? Ignored my blog for months that is!!
Oh dear.

Never mind. Not much I can do now. Just seems that time flies and there are always more important/interesting things going on and before I know what's what-months have passed.

Bit late to wish you all a happy new year being that we're in April. lol

Anyway, not much to report so I will just give a brief update.

We are all fine. The children are fine, my family are fine.
My sister Nadine is getting on really well with her child care college course, my brother Rick has had a second tatoo now (I will add some pics at some point), my brother Dave is fine doing his thing and my brother Gareth is still at the pub pulling pints :-)

I am continuing with my gentle discipline techniques with the children and they are getting on great. Life is very calm and enjoyable. Much more relaxed than before.

One great thing I have learned with my children is to validate their feelings.
I think that most parents have trouble validating a feeling and instead just dismiss it completely.

Validating is very easy after a little practice. It just means accepting and listening to the feeling in a supportive way.
It does not mean trying to cheer the child up, give in to their wishes, trying to 'fix' everything.
It simply means listening and acknowleding.

Eg- Child, 'I want to go home right now. I'm bored!'
Parent, 'You sound like you have had enough of being here now. I know how it feels to have to be somewhere when you just want to go home.'
Child, 'Can we go home now then? Pleeease?'
Parent, 'No, I'm sorry-we cannot leave just yet.'
Child, 'It's not fair, I just want to go home!!!! I hate it here!' (Starts to cry)
Parent, 'I know, I know. I can see that you feel very upset right now.'
Parent comforts child with a gentle hug while child sobs and cries. All the while the child is upset/angry just be there. Just listen and speak in a gentle tone.
Sometimes we just need our feelings recognised and once we are sure that someone understands exactly how we feel-we can move on.

I have used this with my children countless times now and with practice it feels quite natural and the children move on from the situation much quicker.

I don't try to fix everything, I don't ignore their pain or dismiss their feelings-I just listen and support them. They do stop being upset or angry and go off and play happily.

I know that if I told a friend that I was upset and they told me that there was nothing for me to be upset about-I would feel hurt. It would play on my mind and I would wonder why no-one understood me.
If I say that I am hungry-I am. If I say that I am hot, tired, bored, angry, cold....... I am. I would find it rude for someone to tell me that the feeling I am having is not real and they know how I feel better than I do.
But-adults would never be so rude to eachother.
A friend says that they are feeling upset, you would ask why and listen to them.
A child says that they are upset and we tell them that there is no point being upset and they should get over it and go and play!
No wonder children struggle to work the world out.

Anyway, I will carry on with what I am doing as it is working great for us. Of course-different things work for different people.

I am now using Reiki healing daily now too.
I am using crystals, Reiki and learning how to live a more peaceful life. I am enjoying the journey very much and my house is a nicer place to be-filled with positive, loving energy.

It's all good here :-) (Not bad being that I was quite the pessimist not so long ago) lol
Hope that everything is fine with all of you too.

Happy thoughts :-)

Take care and if you want to chat or have any questions-please email as who knows when I'll be back here!! ;-) lol

Jay xx

xscrunchee@aol.com

It's nearly christmas!!!! :-)

2008-12-02T07:04:00.005Z

Hello :-D

Well, the headache has pretty much stayed gone so I am very happy.

The kids are over the moon that Christmas is nearly here. Yesterday they got to open the first door on their advents so they know that the big guy will be here soon. lol

I have been busy lately which is why I haven't posted for a while. I have been getting xmas pressies on line. So much easier than the stress of going shopping. I am pleased that Father Christmas gets the children's bits as I have no idea how I would find the time to sort out their things too.

I have also set up a sellers account on Ebay just to help de-clutter our house.
So far we have only got a pair of shoes and 2 brass cats on there. OH got the cats from a charity shop because I have a passion for polishing brass but do not want to end up with a house full of brass bits so after I have had the enjoyment of polishing the things, I can stick them on Ebay and use any money I make to buy more!!! Yes-I know I'm sad!!!!! lol lol lol
I have tried to find relaxing things to do to help prevent my stress headaches and polishing brass is one of my relaxation techniques.

I have also come to the conclusion that I have been worrying too much about being a 'good' parent and I have read so many books telling me the best ways to be fun, kind, understanding etc that I have now finally realised that I am not a bad parent in the first place!! lol
I don't need to learn how to have fun as we have plenty of fun anyway, I don't need to stress about being 'not stressed' because I am pretty chilled anyway-especially when I am not trying too hard to be relaxed. So, I think I will carry on being me!! I think there is nothing wrong with developing and growing into better people but I feel that I read these books and started to doubt myself and tried to change who I am.
I have learnt that I am not so bad. I love my children, I spend every waking minute with them and we laugh and have fun every day, I home educate them and love watching them blossom.
I hear other Mums speaking to their children when we are out and about and think that maybe some of those Mum's could do with reading my books more than myself as they seem to shout, swear and feel hostile to their children-so what on earth do I worry about??? lol

I am still trying to keep up with my positive thinking though and it is paying off.
I was struggling to get Liam a body warmer (He won't wear his coat as it restricts his arms and stresses him out). I decided to keep thinking that I would find one and it would be perfect.
Guess what? The next day-found one. Ordered and paid for it and it's on it's way :-)

Also had to get both of the kids new shoes. This normally involves tears, tantrums and a whole heap of stress (and that's just from me-lol), anyway, it is normally hard work as both of them complain the whole time, nothing fits, they don't like the look of them etc. This time, for a few hours before we were due to leave I imagined walking into the shop, feeling calm, the kids choosing shoes, trying them on and being happy, paying for them and walking out.
Guess what? That is exactly what happened. Not a tear in sight. Both got new footwear, both were happy!! 100% stress free.

I am also doing something new which I saw on The One Show.
Every night I am writing down 3 positive things that happened that day. Doesn't matter what you write-just as long as it is positive.
Apparently after 1 week of doing this your stress levels decrease and you have more of a sense of wellbeing. The longer you do this for-the happier you start to feel in general.
Well-I have nothing to loose and have done this for 3 nights so far.
Will let you know how it goes.

Anyway-must stop waffling now.
Feel free to have a look at my Ebay items http://shop.ebay.co.uk/merchant/xscrunchee_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ

(Wow-long link lol)

Quick update on Gareths tooth-he ended up having the tooth extracted as the infection was so severe I think he would have ended up in hospital or worse!!!! Looked like the elephant man bless him! Also, in my last post I said something about £250 to get the root canal re-done but I was wrong. It was £190. lol
Not that it matters now anyway as the tooth has been pulled but I wanted to confess!! LOL

Also-a couple of pics for you.........................

Ricks finished tat :-) Looks good doesn't it?
A recent pic of the cheeky pair.

See you soon :-)
Take care and be happy.
xx

Dear, dear, dear.

2008-11-23T07:07:00.002Z

It seems that I jinxed myself yet again. My headache came back!!!!!! That's twice now that I posted on this blog how my headache had gone and both times I was wrong!! lol

Anyway, this time I have left it days before announcing that it has gone-and so far (touch wood) it has stayed gone for a few days.
I am now putting the headache down to stress. I started to notice that if something happened and I felt a little stressed-my head would really hurt. It would be all in my neck and the back of my head but felt more like pressure than actual pain. The pain only occurred if I bent down, tilted my head forward, coughed or sneezed.

I obviously don't handle stress as well as I think I do. lol I am not one to shout, scream, bang things etc. I just try to shrug it off.
I carry on and try to be cheerful even though things might be bothering me.
I suppose not letting things out only makes them show in other ways.

Only problem is, even if it would prevent these headaches-I cannot really change how I deal with things by starting to shout and explode. I wouldn't want to turn into a moany nutter just to stop a headache, plus it really wouldn't be fair on the children. It's bad enough that their Dad is hot headed and rants and raves without me starting to do the same!!! lol

I can not prevent things in life causing me stress so I just need to learn to accept things for what they are and find time to do things which I enjoy.
My Mum suggested turning the music up and having a sing and dance about with the kids every day.
I have been doing this and so far it seems to be helping. By the time we have finished messing about-my headache is pretty much gone. Laughter probably is the best medicine. lol
Will keep you updated anyway and soon I will be posting a picture of Ricks finished tatoo.

My brother Gareth has had problems recently.
Last year he had root canal treatment on a tooth and just recently it has got infected. Apparently the covering on the tooth is not good enough and it has allowed infection in and he has been in a lot of pain.
He went to the dentist who gave him antibiotics but after 3 days his face had swollen even more, he was in a lot of pain and was sweating so much in the night that he had to put towels in his bed.
Mum got him to ring NHS direct yesterday and they got an emergency dentist to phone him back. He was told where to go to see an emergency dentist straight away.
He is now on double strength antibiotics and also some other double strength antibiotics.
Already his swelling is starting to go down a little so thank goodness for that.
It will cost him £250 to get the tooth redone but worth every penny if it stops this happening again!!!

Healthy lot we are eh? lol

Anyway, will post soon with the tatoo pic.
Take care

xx

It hadn't gone :-( But it has now :-)

2008-11-17T07:28:00.003Z

Well, I thought the headache had gone for good but it hadn't.
Good news is that it has gone now though :-)

Strange really. Have never had a headache like it-nor one that lasted so long!!!! Never mind, I just hope that it will stay gone never to return! lol
If it does-I will have to see a doctor though I think.

Anyway, apart from the headache saga, everything is good here.
The pets are all doing fine.
The children are fine. Liam's behaviour has been left mainly unchecked for the past couple of weeks but that's only because of the stupid headache.

Now I'm back on track-I want to carry on with my positive parenting techniques. It's not easy to stay calm and happy when you are not feeling 100%.
I did notice that at times I was snapping and shouting at him, ignoring what he was doing or just moaning in general.
Everything just went out of the window because all I wanted to do was sleep. Children are not silly and Liam knew that I was not myself and pushed every boundary possible.
Poor Emmie ends up upset because Liam finds it funny to hurt her. He will chase her, hit her, grab hold of her, punch her, etc.

So- let's start again!!!

I am feeling well again now.
Today is a new day and I am going to throw myself into being with my children 100%.

Will post in a few days to let you know what's happening.
Take care

Jay xx

WOW-What a headache!!!!!

2008-11-12T06:10:00.002Z

I am just getting over a nightmare of a headache!
It started last Thursday, just felt like pressure in the back of my head if I bent down.
On Friday it was a bit worse so I took some tablets but they didn't touch it. Saturday it was feeling pretty bad and once again tablets done nothing. 2 Ibuprofen with 2 paracetamols didn't even take the edge off it.
By Sunday my family were starting to get a little concerned so I phoned NHS Direct. They said that it could be some sort of viral infection, tension or a migraine. I had a tiny bit of a fever but only very slightly.
They suggested that I took 2 paracetamols every 4 hours.
I done as I was told but again-the tablets didn't help at all.
By now the pain was all around the back of my head, in my neck and going behind my ears. Bending forward hurt so much that at some points I could have just cried. (Although I didn't, I was brave)! lol
Yesterday was day 6 of the headache and when it started hurting in the morning I decided that it was time for me to go to see a doctor.
I took 2 Ibuprofen and 1 paracetamol and guess what?
After about 45 minutes the pain eased off a fair bit. Can't say that it was gone but it was an improvement!!
So, all day yesterday I just made sure that I took the 2 ibuprofen with 1 paracetamol every 4 hours and I can honestly say that it helped so much. I still had a headache but it was definitely bearable all the time the pills were working.

It is now just gone quarter past 6 on Wednesday morning and so far I have not needed to take painkillers.
I can feel some pressure in my head but not as bad as it has been so I am now hoping that it is coming to an end. I will be keeping my fingers crossed!! lol

There's me trying my new happy parenting techniques and this happens and I feel like a zombie!! lol
Never mind, let's hope that I'm over the worst of it and I can get back into having fun with my children. lol

xx

Parenting

2008-11-03T06:56:00.003Z

Well, where to begin?? lol
Everyone knows that being a parent is hard work. I would also like to say that it is the best job in the whole world, but hard because there is no right or wrong. No rule book telling you what you have to do in each situation-so it's trial and error, but how scary is that? Trial and error at bringing up well balanced, happy children. Mmm, terrifying at times!!

Everyone has an opinion of what is right, what is wrong and how things should be. 100 people have 100 different opinions. Those 100 people all say that their way is best. So, how do you know what to do??

I have tried lot's of different techniques and ways with my children over the years. OH complains that I change the methods and should just stick to one way, but how can you stick to one way if you see or feel that that way isn't working or it just doesn't sit right with you?

Both of my children have been quite challenging. People notice things with Liam more because he is very loud and can be quite aggressive and defiant so his behaviour draws attention.
I find this hard because everytime he acts up you just know that people are judging you as a parent.
If you ignore the behaviour people think you should toughen up, smack, punish. If you do shout, smack, punish-it has little effect and only fuels the situation so then you are still left standing there looking like you have no control of your own child. Sadly-people judge. They always have and always will. The hardest lesson to learn is to go with what you want to do regardless of how other people view you.

Now, Liam is a kind, caring, loving, funny little boy. He makes me laugh everyday-truly.
He is great fun to be around and has a fantastic sense of humour. However, like I said before-his behaviour can be shockingly bad.
I blame it on the way he is being bought up!! lol lol ;-)

Bearing in mind that he is only 3 and a half years old so it's not really too terrible-but it can be hard when he is hurting Emmie or running about screaming for no reason other than to be heard or when he is rude or defiant to my family.
Strictness doesn't really work with him. It seems that the stricter I am-the more he will push.
When his Dad is at home I would say that his behaviour is 50 times worse but me and his Dad have completely different ideas on child rearing, what is considered bad behaviour, how to play with children, so it's not surprising that Liam gets confused.
He is very violent towards his Dad. He hits him repeatedly and finds it funny.
He doesn't do it out of temper-just for fun. It doesn't matter how angry his Dad gets-Liam will keep on and on unless I am the one to tell him to stop and find a distraction for him.

His Dad used to smack him on the leg for being violent but this would only make Liam hit harder or get so angry that he would shout at the top of his voice.
I have come to the conclusion that teaching a child to not be violent cannot always be taught with acting violently towards the child.
Makes sense really-hitting a child for hitting. Smacking them and saying that it is wrong to smack. Mixed messages!
Some children would learn to stop hitting through the fear of getting hit themselves, but I would much rather my own children learn to not hit because it is unkind.
Just my opinion anyway.

I have hated everytime I have ever smacked my children for any reason.
I read something the other day which rang very true. In society, children are the only people we can legally hit!!

I have read many books on parenting and different methods. I think that the main thing that I have learned is to go with what I think is right.
I am going to try not to beat myself up about the things I think I have done wrong and instead just concentrate on the here and now.
Changing the way I react to different situations. Stopping and thinking before shouting and moaning. Using distraction techniques instead of punishment. Showing constant love instead of anger and dissapointment.
I have been doing this for a very short while and can already see that there are tiny improvements. Although it is not easy to change the way you think and it is hard not to flare up or snap all of the time-but like anything, practice makes perfect.

Since his Dad has stopped smacking him for hitting-he hits a lot less. The more I am kind to him when he is raging with anger, the softer my voice, the more loving I am-the less his temper has been flaring and when it does, he calms quicker and is affectionate afterwards rather than verbally abusive and hostile.

We have also banned violent or aggressive TV programmes at home. Even shows such as Tom and Jerry cause him to copy. The more children are exposed to violence the more they become desensitised to it I believe.

It is certainly going to be a long journey but one filled with love and joy.
Both of the children are reacting positively from the more gentle discipline. Emmie has never taken harsh discipline very well. She can get upset very easily and always internalises things so even if she doesn't show much of a reaction at the time- 2 weeks later she might mention it and get upset which means that it has been on her mind, eating away at her the whole time.

Both children are highly sensitive-they just show it in different ways but they both react very strongly to harshness whether it is shown outwardly with bad behaviour or kept inside and causes worry and stress.

I will see how things work out and regardless of whether or not OH approves of me keep changing things-I will until I am happy that my children and myself are happy.

I will leave it here for now as this has turned out longer than I expected and I have had to skim over things just so that it doesn't get too long. I think I could go on about this and all the things I have read and learned for hours but I'll shut up now!! lol

Thanks for reading ;-)

xx

Halloween

2008-11-02T08:05:00.000Z

Thought I'd pop on and show you the childrens pumpkins.
Emmie really enjoyed carving her one but Liam found the inside of the pumpkin repulsive and didn't really want to touch it. lol

They wore a little halloween make up but didn't dress up or go trick or treating to Nanny's house.

We have done it a couple of times and we only ever knock next door at Elaines house, my Mums and my Grandads as I don't really agree with trick or treating but felt sort of like a miserable Mummy not letting the children do it when everyone else seems to think there is nothing wrong with it.

I have now decided that I feel more comfortable being a 'meany' than allowing something to happen which goes against my principles so we will now go back to not trick or treating!! lol

Both of my children are quite sensitive and do not really enjoy the whole scare factor of halloween anyway. They even gave their pumpkins nice names-we had Lovely and Lizzie.

They wanted them to have nice faces, not scarey or horrible. lol Bless them both.

I must admit, I don't really enjoy the feeling of being scared myself. Not exactly an adrenalin junkie me. I don't enjoy scarey films, I never go on scarey funfair rides-in fact I never go to funfairs full stop!! lol Don't find them fun! lol

Would much rather watch a comedy than a horror so I can hardly blame the children for not liking being frightened. No doubt people will think that I have made them 'too sensitive' or whatever but I disagree. I have not made them anything in particular, I have just not subjected them to things which they do not like in the hope of toughening them up!! ;-)

They are not desensitised to things and I am happy with that.

In a little while I will be putting a post on here briefly explaining my parenting journey which I have been taking recently.

The highs and lows, ups and downs.

The way it was and the way it is now. The mistakes I feel I have made and how I am going to be doing things differently from now on.

Chat soon

Ricks tattoo

2008-10-28T07:28:00.000Z

Hello all,

Well-my brother Rick has just had his first tattoo.

It looks fantastic..................

It is covered in clingfilm as it was only just done and I assume the clingfilm keeps it clean.

Not a little one to see how he got on-he went the whole hog and got a whopper. lol
Apparently he didn't flinch for a second-what a soldier!!

He has to go back for some more bits such as some shading and stuff so I will take a pic to show you all the final tattoo soon.

My Brother Gareth :-)

2008-10-23T21:57:00.000+01:00

Well, my Brother Gareth has moved out of Mum's house to live in the flat above the pub which he is now the manager of.

It is a lovely flat. In need of some TLC but the layout is fantastic. Not a bad first flat for definite!!
It has 4 bedrooms but some of those are going to be rented out to friends.
On Monday (the day he moved in), we all went there to help unpack and give it a clean.
I had to walk with the children due to the travel sickness problems, one of my other brothers-David walked with us.
It took nearly an hour to get there.
Unfortunately the previous tenants were not moved out by 12.30 as promised so we had to sit about for hours waiting for them to dither about slowly taking bits and bobs out of rooms.
Never mind though-they cleared off in the end and that's when the big clean up operation began!!! lol

By the time we had all finished it looked really nice.
We didn't get back until nearly 10pm Monday night. My youngest brother Ricky walked home with us. It was pouring down with rain and Liam ended up giving in and sitting in his buggy. lol
Lovely walking in the dark in the rain. Something quite relaxing about it I think.

Mum went back to the flat the next day but there is no way on earth the kids legs could have walked that far the next day. Poor little souls. Aaaah, lol lol.
Mum cleaned the stairs and done some other bits so it's now pretty much done.

Gareth didn't sleep too well for the first couple of nights but what with everything being new-it takes a while to settle in. New bed, new quilt, new pillows, new room, smells, sounds etc.
I remember when I first moved into my flat, after the initial excitement of it all-I soon realised that I missed my home comforts too much. lol
After a little while I just got used to it and didn't think much of it.

I like the flat soooo much that I wouldn't mind renting a room myself so I could escape every now and again for a little peace ;-) lol lol

He already has some pets in his new home. He has a lovely tank which now homes his fish named 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. lol Nutter!!!! ;)

Will try to get some pics of the flat to put on here.

Jay xx

All's well :-)

2008-10-23T13:37:00.001+01:00

All's well here.
Emmie is over the moon because she has managed to save up £50.00 to buy a hand held games console thing called My Life. I have no idea what it is or what it does to be honest but she has spent about 5 months saving her money to get it. lol
She is really good like that-she always saves up for things she really wants and is very disciplined.
Liam is getting on fine. Still battling the same behaviour issues-and it really is a battle. lol
He is definitely being challenging!!!!
Have been reading a book called 'How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk'.
Think I am going to try to scrap everything so far and start a whole new approach with him.
The book is excellent and makes so much sense-but will have to wait and see how much of an effect it has. lol
The thing is I will have to stick to the new way and be consistent if I expect to see any results.
A couple of basic things I have tried so far do seem to work better than shouting or punishing but I think a good month or two will show whether or not these new methods work.
It is hard though-so easy to slip back into the old patterns of becoming angry and shouting, the old ways obviously do not work or else I wouldn't still have a problem so I really want to make a go of this new method.

Nanna is doing really well, bless her. I changed her cage around a couple of days ago and she has had fun exploring.

Anyway, got to clean out the chickens in a little while because it's bin day tomorrow so best to get the chicken rubbish taken away rather than having it hanging about all week.

Will let you know how the new behaviour training techniques go. lol
Back soon

Jay xx

Meet Nanna

2008-10-10T11:07:00.000+01:00

Right, about time I got back into updating my blog I think.

Not a great deal been going on here really. The children have sticker charts-mainly to help Liam behave himself :-)

Emmie has to do chores for her stickers. Nothing too hard only things like-put plate in dishwasher after dinner, help Mummy when asked, lock hens up in the evening etc.

She is doing really well and has not lost a sticker yet. Liam on the other hand has to be a good boy in order to earn his stickers!! lol Not easy for him but he is learning ;-)

If they get 6 small stickers in 1 day they earn a big sticker. When they collect 3 big stickers they get a magazine.

I have tried sticker charts with Liam in the past but I think he was a little too young to understand how they worked. He is now grasping it quite well so hopefully his behaviour will improve. (I have my fingers very tightly crossed)!! lol

Anyway, as I mentioned before we now have a baby Hermanns tortoise called Nanna.

She is 11 weeks old tomorrow. She is 4cm long and weighs 12g. Tiny little poppet.

Here she is..................................................................

She has been outside in the garden today making the most of the sunshine before the days get too cold and dark.

Anyway, I will be back on soon with another update :-D

Take care and have a great day.

Hehehe

2008-10-09T13:51:00.000+01:00

Ello.
Tis me, I didn't know that I could move my blog. lol

So, you haven't got rid of me after all. ;-)

Will post soon.

xx

Farewell :(

2008-10-03T05:31:00.000+01:00

Well, well, well-this will be my last entry as AOL have decided to close down the blogs!!!

This whole blog will dissapear on October 31st so if I want to save it I will have to print each page off. Gonna use a fair bit of paper and ink!!!!

Haven't been keeping it up to date lately anyway but still not very happy that it's going.
Final update-
We are getting a baby Hermanns tortoise. She is only coming up 10 weeks old and we are calling her Nanna. She is due to arrive this morning.

Emmie is now the proud owner of 2 Giant African land snails. She got them for her birthday.
They are actually really pretty snails. One of them has the shell colour of an ordinary GALS but a bright white body and the other one has a yellow shell, brown body and is a live bearer rather than an egg layer.

Liam is fine, growing and learning by the day. Just waiting for him to learn to stop throwing and kicking balls and stuff in the living room-but I have faith that one day he may actually stop doing it. lol

The animals are all great. Chickens are getting back into the swing of laying eggs after quite a long period of forgetting that they are supposed to lay eggs!!!!! Think the mad weather threw them off a bit.

So, there we go. Been doing this blog for a few years now and feel sad that it has to come to an end but hey ho.

Will leave you with a picture of our new addition, Nanna.
(The white blob on her shell is so that the breeder knew what one was ours)

Take care and feel free to email at any time :-) xscrunchee@aol.com

Here's NANNA!!!!!!!!!!! :-D

Jay xx

Next few days??

2008-07-13T08:38:00.000+01:00

Mmm, this is quite a bit longer than the next few days isn't it?? lol

Anyway, where to begin?
Well, we are all fine :-)
Brandee (hen) was unwell for a while and there was a time when I wondered whether she'd pull through or not. Very scary but I'm happy to say that she is now back to full health and laying like a trooper-bless her.
I have been learning about and doing Reiki healing. It is simply allowing the life force energy to flow through you and into the person/animal who needs it.
It is not harmful, unsafe, connected to a cult or anything else dodgy. It is simply to do with energy which all living things have. Sometimes our energy becomes weak or unbalanced and Reiki just re-balances it. Here is some more information for those who are interested.....http://www.absolutereiki.com/About%20Reiki.htm and.... http://reiki.7gen.com/ Anyway, I believe that the Reiki healing is what helped Brandee to get over her illness. If you had seen her at one point she would have bought tears to your eyes. She was hunched up, constantly shaking her head, hardly eating and just looking ill. She was indeed a very poorly chook. After a few Reiki sessions she started to perk right up. Now she is as fit as a fiddle. lol
One very interesting thing is, whilst ill Brandee stopped laying. She didn't lay for a few weeks. After the Reiki sessions, when she was better she laid GIGANTIC eggs. Double the size of the other girls. lol lol
It's been a while now and her eggs have returned to normal size. My family keep telling me to Reiki Jasmine to see if she lays big eggs. lol
I have also given Reiki to an ill frog (who got better and hopped off) and to my Mums cat Molly who hurt her foot and was limping about for days.
After the Reiki she was leaping about like a kitten :-)

I have been reading a lot of books about positive thinking and how negative thinking affects health etc. If positive thinking is something you are interested in I recommend the author Louise Hay. Absolutely brilliant and really does help you to look at things differently. I have a few of her books now. Mine are from Amazon.co.uk

Ooo-we have a car. Don't think I have mentioned that before??!
Anyway, it is a black escort-quite nice actually.
Sadly Liam is very, very travel sick. He needs a travel sick pill just to go on a very short journey so we don't really go out in the car very often because I don't like to give him pills all of the time.

Anyway, things that I could add on here keep popping into my head but I think this post is long enough for now. lol
I will add a couple of pics at the end and I will pop back on soon to update further. I won't bother saying that I'll be back within the next few days though as we all know that that may not be the case!! ;-) lol

Some snails which I bought for the pond. Red Ramshorns :-)

These 2 whoppers are called trapdoor snails. They have a hard cover over the opening of the shell-hense the name trapdoor. Also, they don't lay eggs. They give birth to live young once or twice a year with only 5-20 babies in each batch. Interesting little things :-)

This is a picture of a hedgehog which became entangled in the netting which goes across my garden to contain the chickens.
This picture shows him after I had spent 20 odd minutes cutting him free. I still had more to do but thought I'd leave him for a bit as he was curled up into a ball with the netting around his little feet.

I really didn't quite know what to do so I popped him into a cat box with dog food and water. I didn't want to release it straight away as it was very light outside when I discovered it so I thought it best to keep it somewhere safe and release it in the evening.

It gobbled down the dog food, had a drink, had a poo then slept like a baby all day :-)
The kids were fascinated.

The release went well. At least we think it went well. We couldn't see a thing!! We opened the box when it was getting dark and assumed he would come wandering out.
We waited..........and waited...........and waited. After a couple of hours he eventually came out but it was so dark we could hardly see. lol
Our neighbours were watching with us as they love nature and stuff too, so all of us were stood there watching. Really nice.

Of course the netting is now down-never to go back up again. In fact I am giving it to my brother to burn in his burner thing as I NEVER want to be responsible for putting an animal in danger again. I felt really guilty :-(
We are going to fence the garden off instead now :-)

Just a quick tip for you nature lovers-some things are really dangerous to wildlife. When you throw tin cans away-please squeeze the top of the can so that hedgehogs, fox cubs etc cannot get their heads stuck in the can. Also, the plastic can holder thingys (Y'know the plastic things which hold 4 beer cans together) well, animals get stuck in them too. If we find any on the floor whilst out, we pick them up and when we get home we snip the plastic so that it is no longer in rings.
String and netting from meat is also dangerous. Animals can small the meat, they eat the netting and it can become entangled inside them. Please take a few seconds to snip the string into bits, much safer that way :-)

One last thing. Hedgehogs apparently eat the red elastic bands which postman use to hold bundles of letters. They think that they are worms, eat them and the elasic band can cause problems inside their tummies.
We now pick up the elastic bands we see and the children are making a great big elastic band ball with their great Grandad. Saving the hedgehogs and making a ball :-) Maybe you could do the same??

Right, I'm off now.
Have a fabulous day and may the sun shine (for a change)! lol

Take care
Jay xx

Ooooppps

2008-06-17T10:32:00.000+01:00

Really have left it a long time since posting haven't I? lol

Got lot's of pics and things to add plus bits that we have been doing but haven't time right now so I will make sure that I pop back on within the next few days to catch up.

Anyway, must go and do some housework and bits I suppose. Got a terrible back ache today and can't be bothered to do anything but hey ho. lol
Haven't had much trouble with my back for a long time so can't complain really :-)

Will be back soon.

Smile :-D

Been a while!!! lol

2008-03-14T08:31:00.000Z

Ooops! I didn't realise that it had been so long since I last posted!! lol
Got a few pics to add :-)

For some reason the pic won't rotate but I love this pic of the moon-looks like the moon is laughing :-)
Came out like this because my hand wobbled as I took the pic! lol

Liam holding a stick insect-look how big they have got!!!

Emmie before going to Brownies to do her promise :-)

Slightly fuzzy pic of Em at Brownies on her promise day.

Still at Brownies.

Nice spring picture taken in my garden.

Pond full of frog spawn!!

Our new wormery :-)

A worm egg.

My hanging basket tree from a little shopping spree on Ebay. These were my Mother's day pressies :-)

Going to spray the bracket black :-) My tomato plants will be in these baskets :-)

Bird feeding station-I LOVE this soooo much :-D

Bit out of focus but this is a wood pigeon on the feeder.

3 tier planter. We have Alpine (wild) strawberries in the top basket, normal strawberries in the bottom and we will put something pretty in the middle one. Ebay again!!! lol

A lovely picture of our new 'Dog Loo' lol.
We are now being very careful about what we throw into the bin. The dog, hens and worms eat all of our food scraps, everything that can be recycled goes into the recycling bin and even the doggy doo's is being got rid of in a good way :-)

We normally have 3-4 black bags per week and this week we had 1 half full one!!!!!

Anyway, will go now but I will pop on soon to chat about the worms settling in etc.
Take care.

Jay xx

Pics of chard and bits

2008-02-17T12:01:00.000Z

Hello all,

Hope that you are well and feeling cheery with this sunny weather we have been having :-)
Although it has been sunny-it certainly has not been warm has it? lol
Anyway, the cacti seeds are doing well and we sowed the lithops seeds and they are all growing but are way too tiny to get a clear photo at the mo.

Here is a picture of 'chard' which I mentioned in my last entry..............

The stems are such beautiful colours and the leaves are very tasty. Will be sowing them outside after the last frosts.

Bought the kids a little gift the other day from Ebay. They are little pots which look like eggs. You soak them in water for 10 minutes, bash the tops off (like a boiled egg) and within a couple of weeks we should have some plants growing :-)
1 Busy Lizzie, 1 lavender and 1 bunny rabbit. Just thought it would be a nice idea and being that they look like eggs I just couldn't resist :-)

Also, here is the little net fence I made to stop the girls getting down the garden........

It works really well and not one of them have got through it so far :-D lol
You can already see the difference between the grass the girls can go on and the grass that they can't!! lol

Emmie went to Brownies again on Friday. Much more confident this time and we paid the £15 for her promise box so all we need to get now is her uniform which I will buy on Monday from the local school uniform shop. Next Friday she has to make her Brownie promise in front of all the leaders, Brownies and parents :-s
She is really nervous bless her!! She has to say it out loud as well as recite the Brownie law. I'm sure she will be fine but I really feel for her!
I'm hoping to either take pics or a little video of it so I will post them on here afterwards.

Well, it's a nice sunny day so I think I may pop into the garden and plant my thornless blackberry which arrived yesterday-another Ebay buy!! lol lol

Wishing you all well.
Enjoy your day :-)

3 hens laying, Brownies and cacti

2008-02-09T07:27:00.000Z

Just to let you know that Brandee has now started laying too, so we are back to 3 hens laying which is brilliant :-D

Our tiny cacti seedlings are now getting little spines, they are only tichy and look more like fine hairs but fascinating to see nonetheless.

Emmie had her first night at Brownies yesterday. She absolutely loved it!! :-)
The first session was free but from now on it will cost £2.50 per week which is not too bad. Next week I will be paying £15 for her promise box which has some books and things in it and the following week she will become an 'official' Brownie. I will have to get her uniform sorted by then but she is sure that she wants to go every week so that'll be fine.
Normally girls go for 4-6 weeks before needing the uniform but the Brown Owl thought it would be nice for Emmie to become part of the group in a couple of weeks as there is another little girl there who will be (I think it is called sworn in) at the same time so then Emmie will not be the only one who isn't 'official'. lol
We know the lady who runs it (brown owl) as her parents live up the road from us but we didn't know that she ran Brownies otherwise Emmie could have joined ages ago! lol

Emmie has already made some new friends and has met up with some of the girls which she used to go to school with so it's nice that she is amoung some familiar faces.
She is sooo excited to go again next Friday, bless her.
I will also be looking to get her into a dance class soon-probably in the summer. The lady next door knows the lady who runs it and apparently it is really nice there and the children really enjoy it. I think that is held on a Tuesday so our Friday and Tuesday nights will be a bit more hectic than we are used to. lol

The stick insects are doing well and at least two of them have shed their skins now.
I will take some pics soon and you can really see how much they have grown already.

My lithops seeds finally arrived so I will be sowing them quite soon and also I ordered some chard seeds which are a leafy vegetable. I will be planting them out in April. I will try to remember to put some pics of Chard on here next time I add an entry-they are really pretty with bright colourful stems ;-)

Will also be getting my grape vines within the next couple of weeks, one green, one black and they will be grown over the chicken run so any that dangle in will be able to be eaten by the girls.
Not sure if I mentioned in the last entry but I have sectioned off part of the garden now so that the hens are contained down this end-easier to watch them and also means that they cannot wreck the entire garden. lol
It's been less than a week and they have barely any grass left!!! lol lol

Will post again soon with pics :-)

Have a lovely day and enjoy it.

Update in pictures

2008-02-02T08:03:00.000Z

Thought I would add some of the pictures I have been meaning to add.

These are the finished stones after the final polish but you really cannot see how shiny they are in the pics so I haven't bothered showing all the photo's but they really are very shiny and sooo smooth. Very happy that the rock tumbler could be turned off after such a long time of it making a racket!! lol lol

A pic of Booka-our corn snake.

My Mum's cat Molly posing for a picture :-)

Jasmines 1st egg!!

Liam's 3rd birthday. Very happy because Emmie bought him a teddy bear which he fell in love with in Asda's. lol lol

The teddy :-)

Liam as Sportacus.

Em as Sportacus-the red eyes add to the effect ;-) lol

Liams birthday cake.

Pit stop Pete cake.

My Mum's living room-completely trashed!! lol

1st lot of cacti seeds.

Not easy to see but near the red part of the pen is a tiny cactus seedling :-) This is 1 week after sowing.

Much easier to see now-this is after two weeks :-)

Our stick insects new home. They need to live in a netting enclosure, not a tank as most people think.

Not easy to photograph but here you can see a tiny stick insect :-)

Here they are in the tub which they arrived in. There are 6 altogether, 4 for us and 2 for my Sister Nadine.

And you can see a couple here, one hanging on the leaves and one on the stem of the brambles.

Sorry that there are so many pictures but I hope that you enjoyed them :-)

Have a lovely day and take care :-)

Stick insects

2008-01-28T09:27:00.000Z

Hello all,

We are still waiting for one packet of cacti seeds and our lithop seeds to arrive. They are taking their time aren't they? Oh well, in any case we now have three baby cacti growing in our seed tray from the first lot of cacti seeds. They are tiny little things and I don't know how well they will photograph but I will give it a go!

Jasmine has now started laying-bless her. Her first egg was on Sunday 20th January.
I will also post a pic of that. My Mum and brother made some scotch eggs and one of Jasmines was a double yolker :-)

Also we are now adding to our ever-growing collection of pets. We are awaiting the arrival of 4 Thailand stick insects. We have also ordered a net cage for them to live in.
My sister is having 2 aswell.
We will have to spray them with water every day and make sure that we can find a reliable source of bramble leaves for them to eat.
Here is a pic of a full grown one...........

This picture is of a stick insect owned by a young man called Martin. His stick insects had babies and they are babies which we are getting :-)
Fascinating little creatures they are. They are predominately female and the females do not need a male to fertilize the eggs. (parthenogenetic) Interesting stuff eh?

So, we will have.........3 cats, 3 hens, 1 dog, 1 snake, tropical tank, fish pond, sea monkeys and 4 stick insects. The kids Dad thinks it's turning into a zoo!! lol
He has never really been one for having pets. The snake is his but as for the rest of them-he could take them or leave them I think! lol
Wonder what quirky little pet I could get next?? Mmmm, will give that some thought I think! ;-) lol
I know that the kids would love more giant African land snails so maybe at some point............lol

It is little Liams birthday tomorrow so I am off out today getting his cake and bits sorted out. No doubt I will have birthday pics to add too.

Have a great day and if anyone fancies a few stick insects-gis a shout and I'll ask Martin to send you some :-)

Byeeee and have a really good day. xx

Lithops

2008-01-16T07:24:00.000Z

Found this little video which shows loads of lithops. Enjoy :-)

Sea monkeys, Lithops, cacti and stuff!

2008-01-16T06:52:00.000Z

Well, we have some new little projects coming up.
First of all the rock tumbler is nearly finished (thank goodness), it is on it's final polish.
Here are the stones after the second grinding. They are much smoother than the rough stones we started with.
When it is all done I will show pics of each type of stone after each process side by side so we can see the difference clearly.

I have taken some pics and a little video of Emmie's sea monkeys. They are getting on really well and growing fast. Unfortunately they are not easy to photograph but you can sort of see them.........

We are hoping to go to Colchester zoo this spring, we are just praying that Liam is ok having travel sick pills so that we can get there. He is coming up three years old so I will be able to give him stronger travel sick pills soon. We will start off with some bus journeys and see how he goes.

The children and I are soon going to be growing some cacti from seed and also some lithops (living stones). We have done our homework and have ordered the special compost etc for them. Very excited. lol
Here are some photo's of lithops.....................
(Pics won't upload for some reason-wondering if I have too many pics in this entry, will post lithop pics under new entry)

They are very unusual and apparently a bit tricky to grow from seed but we fancy the challenge!! lol
So, the plan is that we will start them all off in seed trays and when they start growing we are going to make our own cacti garden, our own lithops garden and also we are going to pot some up to give to people as gifts.
Let's just hope they grow!!
From what I have read-cacti are brilliant for kids to grow as they start off looking like minute green balls and then as they grow they begin to develop their shapes. Sounds good-let's just see how we get on!! lol

Liam having a wash at his kitchen sink!! lol

My babies after their baths sitting with their glo babies :-)

Emmies home made goo/slime.

Emmie's dog tied up outside the chicken run!! lol
I was in the kitchen and Emmie was out in the run with the girls. I looked outside and saw Emmies dog tied up and it made me laugh-she obviously thought that it might go charging off around the garden while she was with the chickens.LOL

Have a fab day :-D

Wishing you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

2008-01-01T07:54:00.000Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL! :-)

Well, Let's hope that 2008 turns out to be a good one. 2007 turned out to be not so great for us so here's hoping that we have a better year this year.

The kids had a great Christmas and Father Christmas bought them tons of new toys.
Now we just have the problem of fitting them all into our tiny house. lol

The hens were pleased when the tree came down as I chopped all of the branches off of it and put the trunk into their run so that they can climb on it. I've also managed to get my Mum to convince my youngest brother to let me have their tree trunk for the girls, it was a bit of a job though as he wanted to chop it up and burn it in his chimney burning thingy wotsit. lol

The pics of the girls making use of their tree trunk are still on my camera at the mo so as soon as I put them on Photobucket I will post them on here.

Just before Christmas, my little Sister came to my house with a bunch of flowers for me. I was sooo surprised and actually got quite choked up when she gave them to me. What a little sweetie she is :-)

My new clock. My youngest brother bought this for me for Christmas. I really love it and when I paint that chimney wall dark red I think the clock will look fantastic!!

Some spare Christmas tree branches which I had to trim off of the tree so that it could fit into the room better. The girls enjoyed scratching about in them looking for mixed corn. :-)

I made the hens a shelf using part of my old Eglu run. I attached it to the wire using the Eglu run clips and held it steady with a piece of chain. Sometimes the simplist of ideas are the best and the girls enjoy it :-)

Emmie got a rock tumbler for Christmas so here is a picture of the rough stones. I am going to photograph them after each stage of grinding and polishing so that we can see how they change step by step.
I will probably put those under seperate entries.
She also got Sea monkeys which have now hatched out but are way to small to take pics of at the moment.
I might try and get Emmie to keep a Sea monkey/rock tumbler diary on her own blog but failing that I will do it here. (Which will more than likely be the case I feel.) lol

Will post more pics soon when I upload them off of my camera :-D

Have a great day and Happy New Year to you all once again!!

(Edited due to typo)

Christmas tree, poem etc.

2007-12-15T07:27:00.000Z

Good morning all :-)

Well the tree's are whoppers. lol
They stand over 7 feet tall and come out about 5 foot or so at the bottom.

Beatiful though and I will definitely get another real tree next year although maybe just a tad smaller. lol

The other day I went into Emmies room and she had made this..................

It's a little girl but she has made it using different things from in her room. I thought that it looked really good and was very inventive. To make the dress she has used playing cards and she cut up some paint colour charts. Well done Em, very clever :-)

Got a little poem here that I am thinking about typing up and printing off to go on my hall wall in a frame.

Welcome.
'Scuse the mess and scattered toys,
Sticky marks and very loud noise.
Forgive the crumbs that coat the floors,
And scrapes and scratches on the doors.
Pardon the cups and plates in the sink,
Is it so bad? Do you really think?
Don't mind the dust it will not stay,
I'll wipe it off-just not today.
My children live here-they like to explore,
So I'll join them rather than clean the floor.
For I will not miss out on watching them laugh,
While I scrub the walls and clean the bath.
You're welcome to visit but please be kind,
And turn a blind eye to the mess that you find!!

Well, I'm off now. Not much else to report really.
Have a fantastic day and *smile* :-)

It's nearly Christmas!!!!!!

2007-12-10T07:19:00.000Z

Good news-the hens are all in together now.
On Saturday I let them all out together into the big run and kept an eye on them. Apart from Rose putting them in their place occassionally-it all went fine so on Saturday afternoon I took the Eglu run out of the big run, cleaned them out, hung cabbages and bits up for them and let them get on with it.
They are settling well. I have made sure that there are extra food and water bowls in the run so that Rose cannot stop the new girls eating and drinking.
I feel so happy to see them all have more space.
I was considering getting a couple more hens in the summer but have now decided that the three I have are not cramped in anyway at all and I like seeing them with plenty of room so I am sticking to three.
I will put some pics on next time as I didn't take any since taking the Eglu run out and it's a bit dark to do it now!! lol

So, not long till Christmas. Our tree's are coming today so I am very excited :-) Mum is too! Lovely to have a real tree in the room. It'll be a first for me since leaving home at 19.
The kids are getting so excited but Liam doesn't really understand the idea that the fairies are watching him now so he must try to be good or else they might tell Father Christmas and Father Christmas would not be very happy and if Liam was very, very naughty he might not want to give him so many toys. Liams answer is "I'll shoot those fairies!!"
Lovely boy!!!!! ;-) LOL LOL

I have still got to get a couple of little bits. A pressie for Olive, a little something for my neighbour Elaine who always buys the kids something, and a gift set for my cousin Sam. Not too bad though-more organised than normal. lol

I wrote my cards out last night so I will be popping them through doors later on today.

I do love Christmas although obviously it is going to be strange this year without my Dad. Feels pretty weird really but you have to keep it all nice, especially for the children.

Well, nearly time to let the chickens out and make a start on breakfast so I am going to go now.
I truly hope that you all have a lovely day.

Jay xx

I'm OK-You're OK.

2007-12-06T06:49:00.000Z

Hello all :-D

The hens are fine. Still not together all of the time but we are getting there slowly but surely. I am hoping that by the weekend I will be able to remove the Eglu run and have them all in together full time. Nerve wracking stuff though!! lol

I realised that the hen trouble has stopped me posting Emmie's answers to the 'smacking' topic. Now I can't even find the paper which the answers were written on!!!!!! Never mind. lol lol I have probably put them somewhere really 'safe'!!

I used to laugh at my Mum for being so disorganised. Her filing system was a big pile of papers down beside her chair and if ever she needed to look for something she would sift through the papers until she found it.
I have always been Miss Organised! I always hought that it was important to know where everything is and to be able to access it easily.
I have always had folders and files so that everything is where it should be.
2 children, 3 cats, 1 dog, some hens and everything else later I realise that I loose everything!!!!! I do not file anything away, instead it is poked into some drawer or cupboard never to be seen again!! I am sooo disorganised and have so many things filed in different places that when I need to look for something it could be anywhere in the house.
Just to think-I used to laugh at my Mum's big pile of papers and tell her that she needed to file things properly, but at least she always knew where to look and always found what she was looking for!! Mmm, shame on me!!! LOL LOL

I did feel really good about her answers though. She is a level headed little girl.
Bearing in mind that as Emmie has got older she rarely, if ever, even gets a smack.
She seems to understand that people who she knows hate smacking children. Her answers were so good it made me feel that I am not doing too bad afterall. lol
If (IF) I ever find the piece of paper I will put her answers on here but I would like to point out that the paper could possibly be somewhere so safe-it could take years!! ;-)

I have just read a fantastic book by the way. It is called 'I'm ok, you're ok!' and is written by a man called Thomas Harris. (Same name as the man who wrote Silence of the lambs, but is not the same man!)
What a good book! It is about human psychology which is a subject I find fascinating.
It explains how the brain records every single thing which happens to us in our lives. It then points out how every single thing makes us who we are. It talks about how every human has three parts to them. The Child, the Parent, the Adult. These words are used in reference to parts of us-not in the usual sense of the words.
Anyway, it is a great book to read if there are certain parts of your personality that you would like to change. Whether you feel you have an anger problem, a depression problem, a feeling of being weak etc. It shows you how to recognise different parts of your personality, to see which part of you (Parent, Adult, Child) causes this negative effect and then how to deal with it.
It is basically providing you with the tools you need to improve yourself and your own life. It also helps you to see other peoples different parts of their personality so that you can work out how to react to them and keep things harmonious without letting situations drag you down.
The Child part of us is everything we 'feel', the Parent part is everything we have been 'taught' and the Adult part is what we have 'learned'.
It really makes so much sense when you read it. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and after reading it you can start to see the different parts of people and how they switch between Parent, Child and Adult in a short space of time.
Here is a link explaining the whole thing better than I have been- http://www.businessballs.com/transactionalanalysis.htm

Right, that's about all for now.
Here are some pictures, I hope that you enjoy them :-)

Liam got the camera and thought he'd have a go at photography!! lol

The new girls.

Liam chatting on the phone to Nanny whilst wearing his 'Superman' glasses!! lol lol

Have a really great day :-D

Chicken update

2007-11-26T06:45:00.000Z

Well so far so good.

Rose is not exactly impressed at having new hens in her run but yesterday she was much more relaxed about it. Hardly any squarking at all. Thank God-I have already had to apologise to the neighbours about her racket!! lol

The new girls are settling in nicely and are getting bolder. I wish I could sit out there and hand feed them more and things but with Rose stomping about-I don't like opening their run door much in case she gets in. They wouldn't really have anywhere to go and she would be able to be evil and trap them in the corner, so I can only really chat to them through the bars.

Rose is healing slowly but surely. Cannot wait for her to be better so that she can start sleeping in the Eglu with them rather in the house.
Wouldn't want to risk putting her in with them yet though-just in case they hurt her.

I think in a few days I will get the new girls wings clipped and let them into the garden with Rose. I will be able to see if they peck at her. Just want these intro's out of the way to be honest so that things can get back to normal.

What a load of chaos. (Pics-not for the sqeamish)

2007-11-24T06:58:00.000Z

Right, where to start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The begining seems like a good place. Bear with me though, this is quite a long story so either get yourself sitting comfy or click to close the page now! lol

Here we go...........................................................................................

Wednesday I went out with Mum so that she could sort out her housing benefit. Before I go out I always check all of the animals. I went into the garden, topped up the hens water, had a chat to them and then me and the children left the house.
When we got home around 4 PM it was getting dark. I went into the garden to check on the girls and saw big drips of blood all over the roosting bars. (There was a fair amount!!)
I just froze-not really sure where to start. I grabbed Rose, looked at her knickers and OMG-she was bleeding quite badly.
I looked at Ria and she had blood all over her beak. It was awful.
I think I then switched on to auto pilot. I grabbed Ria, called Emmie, took Ria's anti peck ring out and swapped it for another Bumper Bit.
I then put her back outside, grabbed Rose and took her inside to assess the damage.
During this time-Emmie was in tears and didn't want to see Rose's injury.
Well-it didn't look too good. Blood was trickling out of her, she had hardly any feathers left on her bum-it was bad.
I couldn't see how bad because of the caked on blood so I then ran a sink of warm water with salt in it and bathed her gently with swabs of cotton wool. Poor little mite was as good as gold.
After she had been cleaned I could see that even though the injury was not nice-it wasn't too deep-thank goodness.
I then blow dried her (which she seemed to enjoy) and gave her some sweetcorn.

After all of them were roosting I popped Rose into the Eglu with the others as they are very quiet and placid at night but then I ended up getting her back out again as people on the forum were worried in case Ria decided to have another go so I then had to get the cat box from the shed, put straw in it, cover it with towels to keep it dark and I popped her in there for the night.
Anyway, I was asking the forum folk for advice and there were mixed opinions. Some thought I should have her put to sleep, some said that I should re-home her, others thought I should keep her by herself forever.
Tricky situation really. Hens are never happy living alone so I didn't think this was a fair option but had noidea what to do for the best.
Here are some pics or what Ria done to poor Rose.

Not nice eh? Poor little moo!!!!!!!!

On Thursday morning I phoned Omlet to ask about prices of reconditioned Eglus. While on the phone I explained to a lady what I had been going through for the past 6 months. Both Pepperpots needing bumper bits, anti peck rings, anti peck sprays bla bla bla.
She went and spoke to someone, came back and said that they would be happy to swap my Pepperpots for two Gingernut Rangers.
I said that I would ring her back as I needed time to chat with Emmie and give it a lot of thought.
In the end I decided that it was the better option. Omlet advised allowing Ria to live alone and my only other option would have been VETS!!!!!!!!!!!!
So-I rang them back to arrange it and the lady went to speak to her boss about price and stuff.

I was a bit gutted because she hadn't given me the impression that I had to pay. She gave the impression that they were helping me out considering I had bought then hens from them in the first place.
Well anyway, she rang me back and said that it would cost £45 including delivery. I told her to just leave it-I got off of the phone and just cried.
I had three hens, two of which were spiteful, I had a hen living in the kitchen full time as had I put her in with the others they would have attacked her as they peck at anything red. I loved all of my girls and just wanted a solution to my problem.
I didn't want to 'swap' them but I also didn't want them put to sleep. I just wanted harmony but everyone kept telling me that I had done everything I could and there was no real solution and I had to do what's best etc. People were surprised I had put up with it all this long.

Anyway, I was in a right old state. We didn't have £45. Omlet said that had I not left it soo long wouldn't have had to pay but as it's been 6 months etc. We didn't really have £45.
Mum ended up telling me to e-mail a lady who works for Omlet and explain to her that when these problems started my Dad had just passed away and I was just doing my best to cope with it all etc. So that's what I done.

She got back to me and said that she had explained it all to Omlet and they said I could just pay delivery of £25 and I could have my girls collect the next day.
I said that would be fine but I was gutted too. The lady from Omlet said that she would have them as her pets and would put them in her larger flock to see how they get on free ranging with more hens.
Emmie was crying, I was crying-it was just awful.
Anyway, at the end of the day what choice did I have. This problem was never going to end. If it was no better after 6 months I had no hope really.
The forum folk kept telling me that chicken keeping is supposed to be fun and with my girls I had not had much fun. They were all saying that Ria nd Bobbie needed to go for my own sanity.

Friday morning was chaotic. I had tons to do. I had to set up the Eglu run inside the walk in run to make the introductions easier. That way the new hens could be in the Eglu run with Rose on the outside so that she could see them without attacking them and also so that they didn't try pecking at her sore bits.

The Eglu run is a nightmare to put together-especially inside another run. It just about fitted.
I had to take Bobbie and Ria's bumper bits off. I had to still keep Rose in the kitchen.
I had to sort out dishes for food water etc as they wouldn't all be sharing! Busy time.

Anyway-that was that!! The man came with the new girls and Bobbie and Ria were taken away. It was so sad. Emmie and Liam were in tears, I was choked up and even my Mum was gutted but we all knew we had no choice at the end of the day!!
Anyway-meet the new girls, Brandee and Jasmine :-)

Brandee at the front-Jasmine at the back.

Brandee on the left, Jasmine on the right.

Will get better pics soon.
They are gorgeous hens. Brandee has feathers like silk and they have a lovely iridescent orange sheen around the neck.
Jasmine has more white and cream than Brandee but is not as light as Rose. They are both beautiful.

Had probs with Rose already.
Was expecting the squarking but didn't expect the new girls to stick their faces out through the bars-then Rose to grab hold of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!But it will all settle soon. I have faith.
Everyone says that Bobbie and Ria were bad-they were not the norm, so hopefully we will have a nice friendly little flock soon. (Fingers crossed) lol

Also-new fire came. Here it is..................................

Photo's have come out blurry, I will try to get clearer ones.
It looks lovely though and adds a much cosier feeling to the room.

Well done if you got this far. I know it was very long but lot's had happened!
If you thought reading it was a chore-you should have tried being here!!!!! LOL LOL ;-)

Enjoy your day :-)

Does smacking children work???

2007-11-21T06:53:00.000Z

I have been thinking about this for quite some time.
On and off for years to be honest and I keep swaying towards thinking that smacking children does not work. (When I say 'smack' I mean a tap on the hand/leg etc, I am not referring to child abuse-just a 'smack'!!)
If it was a good form of punishment and they did learn from it-why would they need to be smacked more than 1, 2 or even 3 times??

I am starting to think that smacking may not be the answer at all.
I know that I for one HATE smacking my children. It upsets me, it upsets them, it doesn't really stop them doing the undesirable behaviour and afterwards I feel riddled with guilt because I smacked out of temper.

So, as usual in typical Jay sytleeee, I have done some research. (Oh no!!! lol)
I have always known that some parents are anti-smacking and I have never really seen why they have this opinion until being a Mum myself.

First of all it is proven that children who have never been smacked do not smack people themselves as they get older.
As babies they may try lashing out but if the parent is firm and stops them from hitting by moving the babies arm-the baby stops doing the behaviour and more importantly does not grow into a 'hitter' when they are older.
Makes perfect sense I guess. If the baby is never hit-it looses the feeling of wanting to hit.
This is where I see myself going wrong-I have shown Liam that if I don't like what he is doing-I smack him. He then decides that it's ok to smack people himself yet when he does it I shout at him and tell him that he is not allowed to hit people. If he continues to 'smack' I then smack him and tell him that he must not smack people because it is not nice!! Mixed signals or what???????LOL LOL Classic case of 'Do as I say, not as I do!' Yet we all know that children learn most things by copying people.

There have also been studies carried out to see how different forms of punishment make the child feel and it's not pleasant really.
Questions were asked to children about being smacked by their parents and the results were:- (Quite long but also insightful)

RESEARCH AND CHILDREN: UK – Wales

Listen Up! Children talk about smacking

Save the Children carried out research into the views and experiences of 77 young children, aged 4-10 years, living in Wales. The full report (details below) includes children's accounts of what it feels like to be smacked and their ideas about how smacking might be prevented. This report includes the views of children that were consulted as part of the National Assembly of Wales contribution to the UK consultation on Protecting Children, Supporting Parents in 2000 and subsequently extended after the consultation.

Method

77 children (38 boys, 39 girls) participated in discussion groups in 3 after-school clubs and 3 primary schools. Using the cartoon character Splodge, children were asked: "who knows what a smack is?", "why do you think children get smacked?", "who usually smacks children?", "where do children usually get smacked?", "what does it feel like to be smacked?", "how do children act after being smacked?", "how do adults act after they have given a smack?", "adults smack children but why don't children smack adults?", "children smack each other but why don't adults smack each other?", "when you are big, do you think you will smack children?", "do you know anyone who doesn't like smacking?", "who thinks it's wrong to smack?", "how can we stop children being smacked?", "what can be done instead of smacking?" The children's responses were taped and written down.

What the children said

1. Who knows what a smack is?
Children said that a smack is a hit - often with some degree of force, and sometimes using some sort of implement such as a slipper. Children said that smacking hurts.

"It's when someone hits you really hard" (5 year old boy)
"It's a hit that hurts your bottom" (9 year old boy)
"Or they could hit you with something else like a slipper or a shoe" (7 year old girl)

2. Why do children usually get smacked?
Children said that adults smack children because they are naughty, for example not listening, being rude, running away, and lying, or because they are violent to other children.

"Because they're naughty, naughty, naughty" (9 year old girl)
"Cause they've done something wrong, that's why they get smacked 'cause they done something wrong" (7 year old girl)
"When someone runs away, and come back, then they get a smack bottom or a whip" (7 year old boy)
"If they don't do what they've been told first time" (8 year old girl)

3. Who usually smacks children?
All the children who answered this question mentioned parents and other relatives. Some children said male relatives were more likely to smack than mothers and grandmothers. Some also identified people who smack as "bad", "naughty" or "nasty" people generally, or bullies.

4. Where do children usually get smacked?
Children said smacking usually took place in the home. They felt embarrassed and humiliated if they were smacked in a public place, and they were clear that adults did not want to be seen hitting them.

"Somewhere were no-one can see - they know that it's bad" (9 year old girl)
"Maybe somewhere on their own. By the lake, by the shop, on their own by the railway station and they don't know and nobody's watching" (6 year old girl)
"At home I would rather - instead of getting showed up" (8 year old boy)

The most common place on the body for a smack was the child's bottom, though the leg, hand, face and other parts of the body were also mentioned.

5. What does it feel like to be smacked?
Children talked about the considerable physical hurt and emotional impact of being smacked. They did not view smacking as "trivial".

"It makes you feel sad" (8 year old girl)
"It hurts - where it hits" (8 year old boy)
"It feels like you've been stung like a bee" (6 year old girl)
"Feel ill" (6 year old boy)
"It gives you a big red mark and it stings a bit" (7 year old girl)
"It feels like you're going to cry 'cause it hurts you that much" (7 year old boy)
"Inside your body hurts" (6 year old girl)
"Upset" (7 year old boy)
"Angry" (7 year old boy)

6. How do children act after they have been smacked?
Children usually cry and become upset and go, or are sent, to spend time alone. Some thought a smack would make the child behave better, others thought it could worsen a child's behaviour.

"(Children) probably behave worse, because they'll go around doing it to other children in the playground" (9 year old boy)
"If you don't stop you'll have another smack" (5 year old boy)
"They start being good 'cause they don't want to get smacked again" (7 year old girl)
"Feel sad, then happy after saying sorry to Mam" (8 year old boy)

7. How do adults act after they have smacked children?
Children associated smacking with parents being angry. Some of the older children said that adults felt regret after they smacked a child.

"They get mad and look cross" (4 year old boy)
"They keep on swearing" (6 year old girl)
"They feel upset, bad" (8 year old girl)
"I think they don't want anyone to see. They know that it's bad but they still do it" (8 year old boy)
"Parents feel guilty" (6 year old girl)

8. Why don't children smack adults?
Children don't smack adults because they are scared and fear being smacked back. They understand that size and strength are important in who smacks who.

"Because grown ups are bigger and they slap you back even harder" (8 year old boy)
"They'll get a hiding" (6 year old girl)
"They'll be grounded for a week" (5 year old boy)
"If you smack them it won't be hard, but when they smack you it'll be even harder" (7 year old boy)
"Because adults are bigger and children are smaller" (6 year old girl)

9. Why don't adults smack each other?
The main responses were that adults know better than to smack each other. Children see adults as liking each other, as behaving well towards each other, and as not wanting to get involved in a "fight". They also felt it would be foolish or childish for adults to smack each other.

"Because they have manners" (5 year old girl)
"Because they don't want to hurt their friends" (9 year old boy)
"Because they would have to do it back and they don't want the other person to retaliate" (9 year old boy)
"Adults do hit other adults" (5 year old boy)
"Because if they smack each other they're not going to be very happy with themselves because they're adults now not children" (8 year old girl)

10. When you are big, will you smack children?
Two thirds of the children said they would not smack children when they were big.

"Because it hurts" (8 year old boy)
"We know what it feels like" (8 year old girl)
"No. It would be horrible to hit children" (6 year old girl)
"I won't smack my children. I don't think it's really that fair... And I wouldn't like it. Treat others how you want to be treated" (8 year old girl)
"By then it'll probably be the law and if someone found a rash on your child then they'd jail you for it" (8 year old boy)
"Because if you like smack them, it'll hurt them, their feelings and that" (7 year old boy)
"Because it hurts a lot and you could send them to their bedroom instead" (7 year old boy)

11. Do you know anybody who doesn't like smacking?
The children themselves didn't like smacking and most believed that their parents didn't like smacking, even if they did it.

12. Who thinks it's wrong to smack?
All but three children thought smacking was wrong.

"Well, if it was an adult smacking then they might think it's wrong to smack because they might hurt the child's heart, they might break the child's heart" (7 year old girl)

13. How can we stop children being smacked?
Children made several suggestions, including children improving their behaviour, adults using other ways of disciplining them, persuading adults through the media, and law reform.

"Children being good" (5 year old boy)
"Well you have to tell them, please stop smacking your children" (7 year old boy)
"I think that we should make a law to stop adults from smacking children" (7 year old girl)
"Do something else what works best ... like losing my pocket money; getting smacked doesn't stop you doing it again" (8 year old boy)

14. What can be done instead of smacking?
A variety of other punishments and sanctions were suggested, most commonly being sent to your room, being grounded, and stopping pocket money.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am going to ask Emmie these exact questions and see what her answers are.
I have read lot's of information and think that children do not actually understand what smacking is all about. If I'm honest-nor do I. lol

It can ruin self asteem, make the child dislike themself for being 'bad', it can also make the child feel that the bond between themselves and the parent is not 100% because the parent 'hurt' them.

I was smacked when I was little and my Mum says that she hated doing it, she done it out of temper, she would feel guilty etc.
I don't feel like I was abused as a child in any way but at the same time I think research helps us to progress and move forward. Years ago there was no studies into it so everyone assumed that it was the best way to discipline.
Like everything else-new things are discovered and the information is made available, it is then up to us to decide if we carry on with our methods or find alternatives.

Considering that I don't think smacking really works I don't see the point in doing it anyway. I would like my children to be good through respect not fear. I think that loosing out on things (watching TV, a favourite toy etc) will be more effective in the long run without making them feel insecure. Plus I have already discovered that explaining things in a calm and gentle way helps the child to understand how to behave better than a quick smack on the leg does. It's just how I would prefer to do things, I am not saying that other people are wrong or anything like that.

I will ask Emmie the questions just out of interest and I will post her replies.

Have a good day y'all. ;-)

From 'Hippy' Jay.

Peace man!!!!!!!!! lol

Forgot to say.....................

2007-11-19T07:03:00.000Z

The fire came....................................and went!!
What a load of rubbish.
I was all excited about it coming but it was a big dissapointment to be honest!!

First of all the morning was a disaster!!
Liam was climbing on his potty to get a penguin out of the fridge. I was washing up at the time and he was not supposed to be climbing but I didn't notice him sneak the potty over to the fridge.
Next thing I know there was a crash and smash sound and I looked round to see Liam laying on the floor in a pool of milk and broken glass. He has pulled the bottom shelf off of the door and three glass pint bottles of milk had come crashing down.
He was just about to roll over onto a sharp smashed bottle but I shouted and luckily he stopped!!
Anyway-to cut a long story short-he was fine. A couple of very minor scratches which you couldn't even see after about 20 minutes, so they were very minor-thankfully!!

So, after brushing Liam off, mopping up glass and milk for what felt like an never ending amount of time-my fire arrived.

I opened the box feeling all excited..............

My first dissapointment came when I saw the actual fireplace. It was painted MDF but looked like plastic!! I assumed that it would look ok though once it was all up and against the chimney wall so I wasn't too too bothered.

I now realise that I should have just left it in the box and made a cup of coffee at this point as the next dissapointment was yet to come....................

So, I unpacked it all (not an easy job when you are on your own and have two small children and a dog trying to help). I moved all of the packaging out of the way, positioned the fire against the wall and then had to start arranging all of the 'pebbles' onto the 'fuel bed'!!
Now for the exciting bit..........................turning the new fire on and seeing the cosy flicker.

Not quite yet-could't fid the switch to turn the thing on!! The suspense was killing me!!
Anyway-found the switch. Had to lift up the firehood.

So-here we go.........................Me and the kids all sitting in front of it, curtains drawn to create that 'cosy' atmosphere, Mum on the phone waiting for the verdict!!!

Switch it on and...........................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................................

What a load of CRAP!! (excuse the language!!)
A flick of the switch turns on a white light bulb underneath the pebbles!! No red or orange-just a white light. No flicker-just a white light. No feeling of sitting by a fire-just.........yep you guessed it-A WHITE LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!! Gggrrrrrr!!

Looked awful. I wanted it to make the room look cosy-it just looked like a lamp in the shape of a fire!! Waste of time!

So, the fire was packed back into it's box and was collected a few days later!! Good!

Have now found a new fireplace with fire. It has realistic flames and looks gorgeous.
Mum has one very similar and hers looks so warm and cosy.

When I get it I will put some pics on.

Here is the fire/lamp which I sent back although I would like to add that the photo's make it look better than it actually was. The photo's don't look great so you can imagine how pants it looked in real life!! LOL

Don't be fooled thinking that the glow does look a bit 'orangey'. I was amazed when I looked at the pics-it has an orangey tinge to it which it really does not have in real life!!

Christmas is coming

2007-11-18T08:19:00.000Z

Well, it's nearly upon us again. Christmas :-)
Sooo, exciting. Soon be time to dec the halls etc.
Getting a real tree this year. First time we will have a real one. Can't wait.
Smells a lot better than a 5 year old plastic one I'm sure. (Unless you like the smell of old dust!!) ;-)
The hens are enjoying their new run still. I have now put their Eglu up on a plastic table so that they have more floor space and can go 'up' to roost.

The kids have been going through the Argos book and Emmie has been putting the letter 'E' on all of the things she would like. lol.

Pics are a bit fuzzy but I think you get the idea!! Most pages are 'Emmied' like this!! LOL LOL

And then Liam decided that he would look good with a beard.................................

I think he was right-he does look rather fetching!! ;-)

Not much else has really been happening. Same old-same old!! Better to be boring than unexpected surprises though!! lol

The kids have been doing their arty things, will soon be time to get them making some christmasy bits I think.

All I can say is thank goodness for vacuum cleaners!! LOL ;-)

Have a great day :-D

New chicken run is complete :-)

2007-11-11T07:36:00.000Z

Hi all,

Well the hens are now living a life of luxury in their newly built run!
It is gorgeous. The man was very nice and put it all together so it's safe, sturdy and beatiful.

Couldn't be happier with it and I think the girls are pretty chuffed too. So much more room I bet they can't believe their luck!! lol

Here are some pics.....

Some photo's are big, some are small-could be because I re-sized some of them to put them on the chicken forum. Oh well, not sure how to sort that out cos I can't re-size them back to their original size now!!

Anyway-run looks good doesn't it? :-)

While I'm here I might as well do a bit of advertising for him. lol

His name is Tony and his e-mail address is Aviaries4u@aol.com
He can build pretty much anything you want made out of wood from aviaries to climbing frames to playhouses. If you would like a quote for anything just e-mail him and he will get back to you.
The materials he uses are top quality so they will stand the test of time :-)

Have a great day.

Take care
Jay xx

Olive.

2007-11-09T07:54:00.000Z

Well, got all of my jobs done yesterday :-D

Olive was round until about 4.30 or so. She is ok but has an infection in her leg at the moment which seems to be making her a little uncomfortable. She is seeing the community nurse at some point today to get it looked at again.
Olive lives in a very lonely world. Not being able to hear what is going on around you and struggling to communicate cannot be easy. She was born deaf, it is caused by the nerves in her ears.
She wears hearing aids but they only give her very slight hearing of VERY loud noises. She lip reads and is able to speak quite clearly. The problem is that her eyesight is failing somewhat now due to cataracts so even lip reading is getting harder for her. She ends up almost on your lap!! LOL LOL
I think that it is good for the children to see that Olive has a hard life but she copes extremely well. She is always out and about walking somewhere and is very independant. She doesn't allow her problems to ruin her life.
It is also good for the chilren to see that we should all make time for people and put ourselves out for others sometimes. It is not ok to leave someone to be lonely when sometimes all that person needs is a friendly face and it gives them something to look forward to and live for.
Valuable lessons yet again from just living life!!!

Anyway, the hens are now on the grass which gave them a bit of a surprise this morning when I let them out!! Judging by their reactions-I think they had forgotten that they were on grass. They all stepped out and just stopped!! LOL LOL

The patio is all clean and gleaming now. Not a chicken poo in site! For now anyway!! LOL
The children are starting to look forward to Christmas now although Liam said he doesn't really want 'Christmas' in his house. (He means Father Christmas) He said that he wants him to come but he doesn't want to look at him as he is too scary!!!!! LOL LOL LOL

It's all go!!

2007-11-08T07:37:00.000Z

Hi all,

The new chicken run is coming on Saturday. I am soo excited!!
Will take pics when it's all up and occupied :-)

Also got my new fire and fireplace coming on Monday-will post photo's of that too.
Will be all nice and cosy for christmas. The hens will be happy in their new run and I will be happy in the living room with my new fire. lol

Not been doing very much lately. Been getting on ok with my SAD light though.
I have noticed how it lifts my mood and just makes me feel more 'normal'!! ;-)

Liam is being his usual self-a pain in the bum!! lol He is really pushing limits to the extreme. Bless!! ;-D

Emmie is being her lovely little self. We have minor hiccups along the way but never anything drastic and I'd say 95% of the time she's brilliantly behaved!
Let's hope that Liam follows in her footsteps and learns how to behave or else I think I will end up in some sort of institution!! LOL

Well, I suppose I should go really. Got a busy day getting ready for the run coming on Saturday. Want to get the girls all cleaned out so the dustmen can take it all away in the morning.
Then I want to put the run on the grass so that I can clean the patio off. I have also got my Tesco's coming today and have a lady called Olive popping in at 1.30pm.
I have been friends with Olive since I was 17. I met her when I was working in a shop and I ended up be-friending her because she is deaf and other staff in the shop couldn't be bothered to try speaking with her.
I felt sad because people have no time for older people-especially if they find it hard to communicate because of hearing difficulties or other problems. They would rather avoid them which is not nice.

Anyway, Olive is either in her late 70's or maybe even 80's. Her medical records say 80's (a lady who knows Olive told me) but Olive says she is 70 odd so no-one really knows!! LOL

So, best I go and start my day.
Have a lovely day yourself :-)

Love Jay xx

Prepare to be scared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-02T08:38:00.000Z

The kids dressed up for Halloween.

My angels went from this...........................................................

To this.......................................................................................................

Scarey little blighters aint they??????? LOL

Not sure how these photo's will come out on the blog because the photobucket site is down so I had to upload them differently.
Hope you liked the pics.

Enjoy your day :0)

Getting a new chicken run!!

2007-10-28T15:32:00.000Z

Well it's no good!!
The new improved bumper bit has only worked for a little while. Ria is plucking Roses bum again!!!!! Grrr

I'm not happy and have now decided that I think that they need more space. The Eglu is a fantastic invention but I feel that the run is too small for three hens. I could buy a meter extension but to be honest I haven't really got the room to expand a full meter in front.

So..............................I am now spending nearly £400 on a large walk in run which is 11 feet x 5 feet.
This way I will be able to put shelves and perches up for them and basically enrich their lives a lot more.
The man is making the run for me so that I get it exactly how I want it. There is a picture of one here.....http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/B-N-9ft-Bird-Aviary-Rabbit-Run-Pidgeons-L-K_W0QQitemZ300165505200QQihZ020QQcategoryZ46289QQtcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

But my one will be a different size, have a plastic roof and will have kick boards around the bottom to keep the Hemcore in.

It is quite a lot of money but the price includes delivery and the man is erecting it for me too.

I hope these chickens appreciate all this. They would have to lay a million eggs to make it work out that they are paying for themselves with eggs!!! lol

Can't wait though-I think it will be lovely and I am looking forward to the interior designing bit. lol

Do you suffer from SAD?

2007-10-22T06:49:00.000+01:00

For years and years my Mum and myself have suffered with S.A.D.

It's Seasonal Affective Disorder where you feel depressed, tired, achy, snappy, etc when the weather starts getting miserable and the mornings and evenings are darker.
15% of the population suffer from it and it can really get you down.
It's always worth typing SAD into your web browser and seeing what comes up.

Anyway, there is a light which you can buy which can help to relieve the symptoms.
We have known about these lights for years but have just never got around to buying one.
I think that the price put me off to be honest. They can work out quite expensive and I was worried that it could be a complete waste of money but this year, I felt those winter feelings creeping in and couldn't bear the thought of another depressing winter feeling low, tired, drained etc-so we went and bought one each!

We are now on day 4 and I feel fine. I have energy (not tons you understand-I never have tons, just my normal amount which is slightly better than none at all. lol) I am not so tired, I don't feel snappy I just feel like 'me'!
The light cost £80 with £10 P&P I think.
Mum is getting on great with hers too and can feel the massive difference between how she normally feels this time of year and how she feels with the lightbox.

If you, yourself suffer with SAD-I would highly recommend forking out the money to buy a light box providing that you can afford it because it really does make a big difference.
Why suffer for years and years when you can pay out just under £100 and feel great?

This also ties in nicely with home education-much nicer for the kids to have a Mum who is not sitting about eating all day feeling depressed!! lol

We got our lightboxes here....http://www.androv-medical.com/product/6/sad-10-000-lightbox

Enjoy your day and remember.....................................................................................

10 out of 10 people die so don't take life too seriously!! ;-)

Great big long post-hope I don't bore you :-S

2007-10-18T07:01:00.000+01:00

Well, the good news is that since modifying Ria's bumper bit-we seem to have resolved the problem!!
So far so good and Rose and Bobbies feathers are growing back nicely although Rose's white knickers are growing back ginger. lol

The kids have been fine, although Liam has been spending a fair amount of time in the 'thinking corner'. I have a 'thinking' corner rather than a 'naughty' corner as I feel that when placed there it is time to 'think' about the behaviour rather than to just be punished for being naughty. I could be completely wrong but I believe that words children hear can have an effect on them and to keep being told that you are 'naughty' and have to sit in the 'naughty corner/chair/stair' etc will end up making the child feel that they are 'naughty' and once someone has been told something often enough they will, in nine cases out of ten, end up believing that they are whatever you keep telling them they are resulting in a small child who has no incentive to be good as inside they feel that they are just naughty. Besides, I would really like my kids to be good because it is nice to be good instead of only being good for fear or a punishment!!
Yes-I know that that probably all sounds pretty crazy but in theory I think it sounds ideal-it's just putting it all into practice which is quite tricky!! lol

Liam is presently hitting Emmie, shouting, screaming, being deliberately defiant, lashing out, throwing things (at us-not just in the air), trying to hit me, climbing up on the kitchen sides constantly, telling people to 'Shut up' or 'Go away'!! Nightmare days really!! lol

I hate the way he is behaving and feel that if I am consistant with the thinking corner it might just work. (We can all dream)!! LOL LOL

Oooo, haven't I used a lot of ' ' little things? lol

Emmie has been going through one of her phases of asking lot's of questions. I love it when she does this-it shows me that her mind is active.
She has asked- who invented the motor bike, what was invented first-the bicycle or the tricycle, what does a Liger look like (Lion crossed with a tiger), who invented the toilet, and so many more. I thought I knew the toilet one, I thought that it was Thomas Crapper but it turns out that it wasn't and no-one really knows for sure who the first inventor was-so there you go!! lol

Anyway, if you managed to reach the end of this-well done, give yourself a gold star ;-)
Hope that you are all happy and healthy.
Have a great day :-D

Jay xx

Oven ready chooks

2007-10-02T20:29:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd stick some pictures on here of what naughty Ria has done to poor Rose and Bobbie!!

Rose with a bald bum!!

Bobbie with a half bald bum!

Rose's leg-looking like a chicken drummer!

An extreme close up of Roses poor leg!!

And here is the little madam!!!! lol
Rebelious Ria wearing her non affective bumper bit.

Good news though-I had an idea about modifying the bumper bit! I carried out my plan, modified it and put it back on her and...........................................................................
............so far so good!!

It is working so far and all I can do is keep my fingers crossed.
I am now hoping that the grooves which she wore into her beak do not get any deeper rendering this modified bumper bit useless too!
If this does happen I am in trouble again!! lol
Chickens are worse than kids I tell ya!! ;-)

Anyone fancy a chicken drumstick??

2007-09-30T08:14:00.000+01:00

Well, the plucking is still going on. Rose and Bobbie both still have bare bums and now one of Rose's legs is completely plucked-looks just like a ready to cook drumstick!!!!

I think I am going to take Ria's bumper bit off today and try to refit one and see if I can get it in a slightly different position in her beak. Failing that I think I will just give up and have a nervous breakdown. (Sounds like a good idea to me)! lol

I have no regrets getting the girls, I love them-we all do but this is a nightmare. It's not nice seeing your lovely little pets getting plucked.

Anyway, changing the subject cos it's doing my head in keep worrying about bald bummed chickens-we now have a dining table and chairs.
Not a big deal really but we have never had one before. Mainly due to the fact that we live in a small (Very small) 2 bedroomed mid terrace with barely enough room to swing a cat never mind anything else so we never really thought that a dining table would be an option but y'know what they say?? 'Where there's a will there's a way', so we now have a folding one.
The plan was to store it in the hallway and drag it into the kitchen every night but it is too big to set up in the kitchen and too heavy to drag from room to room so I have now put all of Liams toys in the hallway and the table is in the living room.
It doesn't look bad actually and it's nice for us to all be able to sit up a table.
It is folded away all day and we set it up each evening. The chairs are stored inside the table so they are all neat and tidy. I love it! lol (Yes- I am aware of the fact that I am a saddo)!! ;-)

The table!! Bet you wouldn't have known that!! ;-)

The kids eating breakfast but at night we pull it into the middle of the room.

Liams toys all now on the bottom stair.........................

which looks better than this!!! lol lol

The result of the kids playing! Mmm

Aaah, as if those little angels could have made that mess-look at them-my sweeties :-)

The kids with their Daddy.

This is my Brother Gareth looking very smart, dressed up for his friend's wedding where he was an usher.

It's official-Liam is a big boy now :-)

2007-09-26T22:15:00.000+01:00

Just wanted to say that little Liam is now completely clean day and night.

He has been mainly out of nappies since about March/April time during the day but I was still putting one on him at night.
Not quite sure why really though because for about 18 months or more he has woken up dry about 90% of the time but I still kept sticking a nappy on him. (Mmm)

This weekend he woke up when I was putting his bedtime nappy on and got quite stressed telling me that he 'didn't want it nappy'!!
So, that was that. He didn't want it on so I left it off and I haven't bothered putting one on him since. So far we have had no wet beds but I have bought some Pampers bed protector thingys just in case.

What a star eh? Bless him! lol

Chicken trouble cont......

2007-09-23T06:53:00.000+01:00

Well, not much luck on the forum really.

As usual I have an 'unusual' pet!!
Story of my life what with my wire chomping cats but what can you do eh? They have to be a little bit crazy to fit in here ;-)

I sprayed the other two girls with tea tree and so far, (fingers crossed) it doesn't seem to be getting any worse!
If only I had a massive garden-I would buy them a cube with full run extension.
http://www.omlet.co.uk/products_services/products_services.php?view=Eglu%20Cube

Think that the kids Dad would not be impressed at the price though!!
I could use the Eglu for ex battery hens and the cube for my three girls-plus I could get a load more. Mmmmm, doesn't hurt to dream! ;-)

Anyway, I will let you know how the pecking thing goes-hopefully she will stop now and let their feathers grow back before it gets too cold!!

Chicken troubles!!

2007-09-21T07:10:00.000+01:00

Oh dear!!
More chicken trouble I'm afraid.
Bobbie and Ria both have bumper bits fitted due to feather plucking.
The other day I noticed Ria chasing Rose and Bobbie about trying to pull their knicker feathers out. I pretty much ignored her assuming that she wouldn't be able to due to her wearing her bumper bit but guess what?..............................Wrong!!!
Yesterday I was cleaning the girls out when I noticed that Rose and Bobbie have both got almost bald bums.
Ria is some how still plucking them-little moo.

Not really sure what to do now. No idea why or how she is doing it.
I have now sprayed both Rose and Bobbie's bums with tea tree oil hoping that Ria won't like the taste but I really can't work out why her bumper bit is not working!!
Starting to feel quite frustrated now to be honest. It feels like it's one thing after another with them.
Saying that-I love them all to bits and have absolutely no regrets about getting them but I do wish they would leave eachother alone!!

I think that I am going to go and post about it on the Omlet forums and see what they say. Can't stand by and watch my girlies being plucked.

Anyway, I will let you all know what they say and what my next plan will be :-)

Another lesson learnt!!

2007-09-14T07:06:00.000+01:00

Well, another lesson has been learned!!
Never take your eyes off of your hand bag for any reason at all when you are out and about! I did and my purse got taken. Luckily it only had little over £30 in it but that's not the point!!

Don't be naive like I was-be aware, you really don't know who is looking over your shoulder just waiting for the right opportunity. The staff in Asdas were completely useless and quite honestly didn't seem too bothered at all. They never even announced the fact that there was a thief in the store over the tannoy, so who knows-perhaps other people got robbed that day too.

Just be aware and be carefull, also only take out with you what you actually need and don't keep your bank cards in your purse with your cash. Let's all make it harder for the theives and not give them everything in one swipe.
Also do not keep precious items, photo's, keepsakes etc in your purse because if someone does end up nicking it-you loose everything!!

I am now going to be keeping notes in a wallet, change and cash point card in a little purse in different compartments in my bag. That way if something gets taken-all is not lost!!
Just wanted to remind you all that theives are everywhere-I knew this before but was just too relaxed about it and I got caught out!!

Eggs, birthdays-it's all go!! lol

2007-09-11T08:02:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

Well where to begin?? First of all I want to show you an egg which was laid by our hen Rose on September 1st, which just happens to be my birthday. I'd like to say that it was nice of her to lay such an unusual egg but if I'm honest-I think she was being a bit stingey!! ;-) lol

See what I mean??? LOL LOL

It was Emmie's 8th birthday on the following Saturday. She had a lovely day.
We took her to McDonalds and Kids Kingdom in the afternoon and had a little family party in the evening.
I can't believe that she is 8 already. Only feels like 5 minutes ago since she was born!! lol

The little girl in the photo with Emmie is just someone who she played with while she was there ;-)

Liam going for a drive with his mate Pat!! lol

The only thing that sort of ruined the time there was some man shouting and swearing at the top of his voice at his son. I will say that his son was a complete nightmare and ended up making other children cry as well as the constant bullying of his younger brother but at the same time surely it would have been nicer for all concerned if he just took his delightful son home rather than yelling and swearing so loud that it caused distress to other children, Emmie was very upset by it! It wouldn't have been so bad but the child still continued to be a nasty little brat and the Dad done nothing.
I know that brothers fight and stuff but this was different. The older one was constantly pulling his youger brothers pants down, jumping on his head, hurting him and stuff. If my kids behaved like that I wouldn't take them to places where they would come into contact with other children!! To be truthful though, if I acted like the Father I wouldn't let myself go out in public neither!!
Never mind, no harm done-we still had a nice time anyway :-)
It takes all sorts to make the world-just a shame that the all sorts inflict themselves onto the rest of us but- hey ho!! lol

Emmie posing in her new birthday clothes :-)

My brother at the back on the left is Gareth and the little girl in front of him is my cousin Evvie.

Over the weekend I decided to make a gate to go across the upstairs floor of the playhouse to make it safer for Liam.
He can either be locked up there while he's playing or the gate can be locked to stop him from going up there.
I was quite impressed with my gate-might not be perfect but it does the job. Cheers Grandad for the wood ;-)

I think that even Bob the builder would be proud :-) lol

Will try to add an entry soon. It seems to be taking me ages to get around to adding new ones but I will try :-)

Jay xx

Got a new laptop-Hooray!!!!!!! :-D

2007-08-26T07:11:00.000+01:00

Well, I didn't manage to add the photo's in the end. I must have tried at least 4 times but on every single occassion the damn laptop would just turn itself off-usually just when I was about to click 'save'!! In the end I just gave up or else I think I would have launched the laptop across the room ;-) lol

Anyway, I now have a new laptop (Cheers Mum ;-) ) so I can add my pics without giving myself a nervous breakdown!!
The old laptop is now in Emie's room. She cannot access the internet on it because I took the card thingy out but she can use it for story writing, games etc. If she wants to use it to go on the internet she brings it downstairs and I pop the card back in for her. I really don't like the thought of her using it for the internet when she's in her room. Afterall, she's only coming up 8 years old and I like to be able to see that what she's looking at is appropriate. There are too many weirdo's out there for me to not worry! Saying that, Emmie is a very sensible young girl and knows what is ok and what is not so I have no doubt that she would let me know if something wasn't ok but still better to be safe than sorry.

Haven't heard from Brownies yet, really hoping that they contact us soon as Em is desperate to join.
The hens are doing great, laying regularly, eating like pigs and destroying my garden whenever they can!! lol
Anyway, I think I'm going to add the photo's now so I will add another entry soon.
Take care and have a fantastic day :-)

This picture is actually of the moon and Venus. I only took the photo because I thought it was a bright star next to the moon and I thought it looked lovely but I found out afterwards that it is in fact Venus and she is only visable every so many years so I'm well pleased that I took it now!

Liam on the new slide that Nanny bought for them :-)

And Emmie's turn.

The terrible two!! lol

A rainbow! I really am that sad that I took a picture of a rainbow that I could see from the front room window. The reason that I took it was because the colours were so bright and vivid but the photo doesn't really show how beautiful it was.

Not sure what was going on here-looks a bit like they are dancing!! lol
Doesn't Liam look fetching in his Sisters nighty and flip flops???????? LOL
The reason he had the nighty on was only because he came running out with no clothes on and it was a bit chilly, I was busy trying to do something and he wanted some clothes on so Emmies nighty was the only thing I could grab in a hurry! The flip flops are also Emmies but Liam wears them because he finds them easy to slip on and off and I can't seem to get little boys ones in his size-only the velcro sandal type things which he has but prefers the flip flops. lol

And here is Liam............getting in the tumble drier!!! Still can't believe he done it!! lol lol
The kitchen floor is stained-not filthy just in case you wondered!! ;-)

Lovely and spacious!!!!! Plenty of room to move about!
Pic is a bit blurred but they may be due to the fact that I was almost wetting myself laughing and couldn't keep the camera still!! LOL LOL

Cheeky little wotsit aint he? LOL Pic still blurred-still jiggling about laughing!! lol

So, there you have it. At last I managed to get the pics on here.
Took a while but I got there in the end. ;-)

Ttfn xx

4th time lucky!!!!!!!

2007-08-10T16:22:00.000+01:00

I have been trying to add a new entry for about a week now but keep giving up because just as I get near to finishing the laptop switches itself off and I loose what I was doing and it's just about getting on my nerves!!!!!!!!!

What I have been trying to do is add a little bit of typing and some photo's underneath which takes quite a while because I have to get the link for the picture from photobucket but they always come out so big that I have to make each one smaller bit by bit so when the laptop switches off just as I'm nearly done it makes me want to scream!! lol

Anyway, we are all fine. The kids are fine, the hens are fine and so are the cats, dog, snake and fish. Nothing interesting to talk about really (wow-what a surprise!!)lol
but I have just found out something which made me chuckle. When I tell Liam that I am starting to loose my temper he has always asked 'where it is your temper?' or he says 'When you find it your temper?'
Today he was moaning over a scratch on his knee so I climbed up on the side so that I could look in the top of the cupboard for a plaster when all of a sudden he said- 'There it is Mum your temper, it in cupboard-see.' He saw the thermometer which it seems he calls a temperature! (temper) LOL Bless him. Next time I tell him that I will loose my temper I wonder if he will remember where the thermometer is and tell me that my temper is in the cupboard!! lol

I have been spending quite a bit of my computer time on Facebook which is quite interesting. Here is the link............ https://register.facebook.com/r.php Once you have joined you can type Jay Wiles into the search bar and find me :-)
I think you then have to send a request to be my friend. My avatar is a black and gold Yin Yang. (Just so that you know it is me)

I would also like to say thank you to a lady called Lynn who left a message at the bottom of my last entry. After reading her comment I felt quite good that in some sort of way I helped to make someone feel that they are doing the right thing.
Saying that-maybe anyone reading this blog might think to themselves "OMG I can do a better job of home educating than that!!"
In which case it's still all good-home education is the right way to go in my opinion. You only have to have a look at the schools to have that confirmed!

Well, I'm off now although I am going to add a second entry in a min which will just be some photo's that I have been trying to add but I daren't try adding them to this entry in case it all goes again!! LOL

Hope that you all have a lovely weekend.
Smile :-D

Jay xx

Broody no more :-)

2007-07-26T11:01:00.000+01:00

Hi ya's,

Well, I'm pleased to say that Bobbie is no longer broody and we have had 2 eggs from her in the past 3 days.
Yesterday the hens were out free ranging for a good few hours and spent almost half of that time in the kitchen. lol

Emmie has now learnt to hold the girls. She's not quite ready to pick them up off of the ground but if I pass them to her she will happily stand there holding them.
Liam has tried but his arms are too short and he can't manage but he does give them a big hug when I am holding them, not sure how the hens feel about this but he doesn't really give them an option!! lol

Not really been doing a great deal lately and there is a part of me that always feel guilty about not doing enough!
I sometimes worry that I am not putting enough effort in to providing an 'education' and then Emmie comes out with something like.........."That was a rhetorical question Mum!"
I begin to explain what the word rhetorical means and Emmie interupts by saying...."I know, I know. A rhetorical question is one that doesn't have an answer-there is no right or wrong way to answer it!"
So, what the heck am I worrying for?? lol
My Grandad told me the other day that he didn't even know what a rhetorcal question was and he's 76 years old.
I'd say that Emmie is picking up quite enough knowledge.;-)
She is getting better at telling the time, working out her money, spellings, grammer etc.
She's only 7 years old and has a lot of her childhood ahead of her. What's the rush? She doesn't need to know everything to get her through the rest of her life right now and GCSE's (If she chooses to take them) are years away.
She is having fun being little and picking up so many things on the way-I think we should just carry on how we are!
Liam is doing great too. His speech is excellent, he can hold a full conversation and his use of words is extraordinary too.
He uses brilliant words to describe things and can communicate to most adults and they have no problem understanding the majority of what he is saying.
His behaviour leaves a lot to be desired if I'm honest but he is only two years old.
The main things which are driving me insane right now are the constant throwing (toys, books, shoes, dummies) the hitting, punching, kicking and spitting, high pitch screaming and looking for 'naughty' things to do. Sounds like a typical two year old really doesn't he? LOL LOL
So, there you go. Nothing interesting really.
I set up a blog about our home educating life and I never have a great deal to say about educational things. Maybe because life IS education.
I should have had this as a general blog because I go on about our hens, our pets, etc and the kids education only gets a brief mention every now and again!! lol
Hardly makes good reading and gets people thinking...."Wow what a great life they lead, I think we should home educate too!" But never mind, we are happy-maybe a little boring but happy nonetheless! lol

Hope that you all have a great day.
Smile :-D

Jay xx

Good morning

2007-07-18T07:23:00.000+01:00

Hello all,

Hope that you are all well.
It appears that our hen, Bobbie has gone broody! That means that she has decided that she needs to sit on an egg and wait for it to hatch. Of course you know and I know that however long she sits on it there aint gonna be no hatching. Bert is nice but I don't think he's quite up to the job of fertilizing eggs for obvious reasons......................he's stuck on top of the shed for a start! ;-)

Anyway, when hens go broody it's a hormonal thing. Their body temperature raises and they have an over whelming desire to sit on an egg/eggs and wait. They will go without much food and drink and can in fact become quite thin and unwell.
I am going to go out shortly and get her off of the nest. I can't do it yet as it's too early-she makes such a racket she will have the whole street out of bed!! lol

I am hoping that if I keep chucking her off of the nest she will give up but if not I am going to have to put her in some cool water a few times a day to bring her body temperature down. Not freezing water-just a bit cold. If I dunk her every few hours-hopefully that will put an end to it. Fingers crossed anyway. I will keep you updated. Little madam she is!! lol

I have applied to Brownies for Emmie. Just waiting to hear from them now.
Hopefully they won't take too long and I'm also hoping that the waiting list isn't too long as Em is very excited and wants to join ASAP. lol

Meet Bert-the cockerel :-)

2007-07-08T12:13:00.000+01:00

We now have a cockerel. His name is Bert and he's jet black and he's lovely.
He doesn't crow or even make a sound-he just sort of stands about watching the world go by.

Here he is.................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

BERT :-)

Handsome devil aint he?
And at least the neighbours can't complain!! ;-)

It was my sister, Nadines 15th birthday yesterday so we all went to Mums and had an Indian takeaway which was gorgeous. (Happy birthday Nads).

Anyway, I'll leave it short for now-just wanted to introduce Bert.

Have a nice day :-)

Rain and stuck in Dagenham!!

2007-07-03T06:55:00.000+01:00

Hi all,
On Saturday my Mum and Grandad went and picked me up some Hemcore which is a hemp based product usually used as flooring in stables. I have heard great things about it in the chicken forum that I belong to and thought that it would be a good idea to use it in the girls run as it is ultra absorbant, stops smells and has citronella oil in it to deter flies.
http://www.hemcore.co.uk/bedding.html

So far so good!! With all of this rain we have been having it is coping pretty well.
The girls LOVE scratching about in it and it does seem to dry out quite quickly, unlike straw and sawdust.
I was using straw/sawdust since the girls have been on the patio and found it to go very clumpy if it got wet, smelly after a few days and it needed changing once a week at the very least.
The Hemcore cost £6.95 per bale and one bale should last quite a while. Straw was costing £2.00 per bag and needed changing weekly so in the long run after 3-4 weeks the Hemcore will have saved me money as it doesn't need changing weekly, most people change it every 4 weeks+. (Do love a bargain!!)

Anyway, the weather really has been harsh. I don't mind rain at all but this is something else!! It's hard to let the kids play out as much and we haven't spent as much time with the girls as we would like to.
I am hoping the the rain slows down but I don't want it replaced with boiling hot sun. Just somewhere in between would be nice!
It's driving me mad that we can't go anywhere because of Liams travel sickness. Feeling pretty tied at the mo. I think we take certain things for granted sometimes like jumping on a bus or train to go somewhere. We are stuck here and can only go as far as we can walk. I am so hoping that he grows out of it soon.
The fact that I home educate the kids means that it would be nice if we could go places to see/do things. There is only so much you can do around here and once you've done it-what then?

I am ringing up Brownies today for Emmie. She would like to join and I need to ring to get put onto the waiting list apparently! We are also looking into a thing called the Saturday club which is held in a sports hall once a week and the kids just play and stuff.
It will be nice for her to meet some new people and have something to look forward to every week. Plus we can walk there so that's a bonus!! :-)

Pimp my run!! ;-)

2007-06-26T07:57:00.000+01:00

What the heck is going on with this weather eh?
Hardly what you would expect in June is it? Gale force winds and heavy rains!
Still, I prefer it to blazing hot sun and soaring temperatures but I doubt many would agree with me ;-)

On 20th June we went to see the Chinese State Circus featuring the Shaolin Wu-Shu warriors. ( http://www.chinesestatecircus.com/show/index.htm )

All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!! It was fantastic and well worth seeing.
Emmie felt nervous before we went in thinking that she wouldn't really like it but after a short time of sitting there she discovered that she LOVED it, we all did! Even Liam was entertained throughout the two hours and he only got fidgety a couple of times which is not bad for a two year old!!
Proper good family entertainment :-)
There was me, Charlie, Emmie, Liam, my Mum, my Grandad, my brother Ricky, my sister Nadine and my sisters friend Leanne. Every one of us enjoyed it.
If ever you get the chance to go and see it-please do, you won't regret it!

The hens are doing fine. I have now put kick-boards around the bottom of the run to try to contain some of their flooring or else they kick it all out through the wire and it looks a complete state. They seem pretty happy on the patio as opposed to the grass and on Saturday I am getting them a different type of flooring called Hemcore, which is a hemp based product originally used for horses as a stable flooring. It is ultra absorbant and has citronella oil in it which deters flies. So many people swear by it that I just had to give it a go. It should only need cleaning out monthly which will be great because at the moment I am having to clean the run weekly.
On Saturday I put a new cover on the run. It's a clear polythene cover which I have attached with bulldog clips. It lets the light in but not the rain and it protects them from the harsh winds which we seem to be having at the moment.
The Omlet cover (green one) seems to be better for creating shade rather than keeping them dry. It doesn't cover all of the run and their floor ends up soggy and slushy which can't be too good for their little feet, so now they have a nice clear cover which is keeping them luffly and dry.
I have also bought them a little wire cage thing for putting treats in. It is supposed to be used for wild birds-I think you can put suet/fat balls in it and the birds peck the food out, but I stuff our one full of celery, greens, apples and other goodies and hang it up in the run. The girls then peck at it getting all the treats out. They also still have the hay rack which I stuff with bits too.
It just keeps them entertained and means that they have to work at getting their treats rather than just eating them off of the floor.
I have also hung up a lump of polysterene as I was told that they love to peck the little balls off and it keeps them busy but my girls have so far ignored it completely!! lol

Anyway, thought you might like to see some piccies. Enjoy :-)

The Eglu and run with kick-boards and rain cover!

The girls in their run with their treats hanging up.

All three girls in the dustbath. lol

Bobbie with her 'muzzle' on.

My babies :-)

Silly Jodie!! Emmie decided that she might like to have some kittens :-) LOL

Back to chicken chat!

2007-06-15T07:38:00.000+01:00

After my last post I feel that I would like to lighten the feel of the blog a little by talking about the kids, the hens etc.
As a family we are trying to deal with what has happened and we will get through it all together so now for some chicken news............................

Our hens are now laying eggs.
In fact the first ever egg was laid by Ria on the Sunday that my Dad passed away.
She laid that day and then didn't lay for a while after so we say that she laid that egg for him.
He had already laid claim on the first egg but I was telling him that he wasn't having it-he would have to wait for there to be a couple and then he could try one!! (He was a bit of a cheeky man lol)
Anyway-after that egg was laid-we decided that it could be hard boiled and put with him. That way no-one would ever have the first egg, it was His!! lol

So, now all three girls are laying every day. They are getting on really well and their eggs are luffly!!
Ria has laid quite a few double yolkers too which is a bonus-clever girl!

We did have a problem however, Bobbie decided that it was a good idea to pull the feathers out of Rose and Ria's backs. She done it to such an extent that both of them have bald areas and at one point Ria was bleeding.
Problem is solved now though :-)
There is a small plastic clip thing called a 'bumper bit' which goes onto the hens beak to stop her being able to pull feathers out. It does not prevent her from eating, drinking, preening etc. All it does is stops the tips of her beaking meeting properly therefore making it impossible for her to get a tight grip on a feather to pull it out!
So, thanks to a lovely lady from the chicken forum (she sent me one out for Bobbie even though she only had two spare for her own hens) my hens are now happy and not getting plucked!
I have ordered a few of them now so that if ever anyone is in a panic situation like I was-I will be able to help them by sending a couple out.
I will post some pics soon but I need to upload them onto the laptop first when I get time.
The kids are getting on great. Liam can now count to 10 with ease. Not bad for a two year old considering when Emmie was in school, her class were learning numbers 1-10 and they were 4 and 5 years old!
Emmie is still story writing, drawing etc.
She has drawn some lovely pics recently, rather than just people, fairies etc-she has had a go at still life art. She has sketchedour shed, bird bath etc. They actually look pretty good-I will put pics of her pics on too :-)

My kids are learning so much each day. It shows in their speech, drawing, writing, games etc. They are gaining all of this from daily living. They really are very wise for their ages.
Everything they need to know is out there-my job is purely to help them look for what they need. No text books, no timetable-just life.
There are many lessons to be learnt and these are the things which stay with you and help you get to wherever you need to be. It's great if people want their kids to learn about areas of a triangle and stuff like that, I would be happy for my two to learn these things providing that they 'wanted' to know but what my children are really learning is far more valuable.

Don't let the little things in life get you down-one of my Dads favourite sayings was,
"Life is short!" Or words to that effect, lol.
I now see how true this is-enjoy it and have fun. This is the real thing-not a practice run so chill out and make the most of it.
Have a great day and take care of yourselves :-)

Terrible times.

2007-06-10T07:30:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

I'm going to leave this short as I really don't feel in the mood to write a big essay and I'm only really adding this post as it would feel wrong not to!

Three weeks ago on the 20th May on a Sunday my Mum went downstairs in her house at 5.10am to find my Dad had died on the settee.
He was only 46 years old and an autopsy revealed that he had died of a type of heart disease which caused a massive heart attack.
Things have been really weird ever since and none of us know if it will ever stop feeling weird!!
This was completely out of the blue and something that none of us would have expected.
A total shock and somehow just not fair.
Anyway, I'm pleased that I got this entry out of the way-I would have felt wrong to not mention it but at the same time it is not something I particually want to talk about so there you go!!

Hope that you are all well.

Love Jay xx

Digital cameras!!!

2007-05-19T06:50:00.000+01:00

I wanted to put some more photo's on here of the kids and then hens but my digital camera goes through batteries like nothing on earth!
We need to get some re-chargables but even then I am going to have to swap them every 15 minutes-it's a joke.
I took a little film of the kids and hens in the garden, the film was about 2-3 minutes long and I took some pics (maybe 5 or so) and they wiped out 2 new Duracell AA batteries which means I can't even put my pics on the computer untill I get new batteries as the camera still needs battery power to load things onto the PC.
Working out more expensive than paying for a camera film to be developed!!
I'm going to email Vivitar and complain.

Anyway, enough of my grumbling ;-)
The Essex girls are great. They have got fantastic little personalities and have become a great addition to the madhouse.
They go crazy for sweetcorn and will peck at anything yellow in the hope that it might be sweetcorn, they love mashed up cooked potatoe skins, cheese, mushrooms, spring greens, lettuce, cuecumber, grapes, long spaghetti (it's so funny watching them eat it!!),
corn on the cob, white cabbage, worms, slugs, woodlice and one of their new favs is MAGGOTS!!! Ria goes mad for them. We got half a pint for them yesterday and I would say that they love them as much as sweetcorn!! lol
Liam loves the hens and has taken on the important job of 'poo spotter'! He walks about and when he spots a poo he gets the scooper so that I can clean it up!! lol
Emmie, as usual is brilliant!! She watches the girls if I am busy, chats with them, looks up their Eglu at night, checks for eggs (Of which we have none yet) and generally takes proper care of them in any way she can.

Emmie's uncle Gareth is thinking about getting some hermit crabs and has told Emmie that she can have one of her own in his tank.
She has read up on them, knows how to sex them, knows what they eat, knows what sounds they make and lots of other crabby bits of information.
Emmie is wanting to decorate a shell for her crab using a kits which you can get from Pets At Home. I think Gareth wanted them to have a natural look but Em is dreaming of pink gems and pretty patterns! LOL

The weather has been awful recently, we have only had one dry day since getting the hens last Tuesday. Yesterday was nice so I am hoping we have another sunny day today. Fingers crossed eh? lol

By the way, the cats and hens get on fine.
The cats are in fact terrified of the hens and pretty much stay out of their way. If one of the cats gets a little too close, the hens will make a noise and the cat legs it!! LOL
Marleen (the dog) has not been allowed to get too close to the girls but did get down the garden yesterday when the hens were in their run. Marleen was slightly excited and done several laps around the outside of the run with me running behind her like an idiot.
I know the run is fox proof but I somehow doubt very much that it is Staffordshire bull terrier proof (is anything??), so I was slightly worried-managed to catch up with the dog and take her back in the house!
A little while later, Liam let the dog out again and I shouted (quite loud!!) and Marleen immediately stopped, layed down and just stared into the run. The chickens did flap about a bit but at least I contolled the situation this time rather than just chasing the dog around and around!! lol
I think I am going to start taking Marleen to see the hens everyday but have her on her lead. I know that I will never be able to let the girls out of their run while Marleen is out but I would like her to learn to ignore them when they are in their run-it's no good for my heart watching my dog charging towards my hens not knowing if she is going to rip the run apart and eat them!!!

After just writing about the dog seeing the hens I realised that it may sound like I haven't let my dog out since getting the girls. We actually have a concrete yard which is fenced off from the grass-this is where Marleen goes. She can't get into the garden where the hens are as there is a gate which is 'normally' shut.
Just wanted to clarify before people started thinking that my poor dog had been trapped in the house for over a week!! LOL

Essex girl update.

2007-05-13T08:07:00.000+01:00

They are getting on really well.
On Thursday we let them out of their run to free-range around the garden.
They are so funny. Rose helps with any digging that you do, Ria moans if you touch her and Bobbie is just chilled.
I had a little bit of a tiff with Rose though, she was trying to eat a piece of plastic and I was trying to get it off of her. She was making funny noises, grabbing it and trying to run. I was making a grab for it everytime she dropped it but she was faster than me!! lol
While this was happening, Ria decided to knock over a pot with an ornamental grass in it and start scratching it everywhere. In the end I had to get their sweetcorn and they all came running giving me a chance to grab the piece of plastic and move the pot of grass! It was so funny! :-D

Ria and Rose are getting on much better now too. Still have their scraps but nothing too serious, thank God!
So far we have spent all day every day out in the garden. When the hens were in the run and it rained, me and the kids would take shelter in the playhouse. Now the hens come out of the run and if it rains, they all pile in the playhouse with us!! Yesterday there was Emmie, Liam, Nadine, Mum, me and 3 hens all sitting in the playhouse waiting for the rain to stop. It's hysterical how they all come running in and get themselves all comfy!! Bobbie and Ria even decided that my Mums legs made a good place to roost!! LOL LOL

We have discovered that the girls LOVE tinned sweetcorn so much that if you throw some into their run, you have no probs getting them to go back in.
They also quite enjoy slugs, worms, ants, flies, any bug/grub they can find, grapes, cheese, spring greens, tomatoes, oregano, ornamental grass (which they are not supposed to like) and other bits and bobs.
Got some more pics here of the girls in the playhouse and their first couple of times out of their run :-)
Today I want to let the girls out with the cats. Only going to have one cat at a time out with them and see how it goes. Everyone says that hens hold their own with cats and will 'see them off'-let's hope so!!! Bit worried but I'll let you know how it goes.
The kids are enjoying the hens so much and it gives us all an excuse to be out in the fresh air every day. Better than sitting indoors playing on the Nintendo DS eh Em? lol

The Essex girls are here!

2007-05-10T08:06:00.000+01:00

Sorry I haven't been keeping everyone up to date but I've been very busy chicken watching!! lol

The girls arrived as planned on Tuesday and they are LOVELY!!!!!!!!!!!
We was supposed to be getting 2 Gingernut rangers and a Miss Pepperpot but due to Omlet running out of the Gingernuts, they bought 1 Gingernut and 2 Miss Pepperpots.
I am in love, honestly. They all look so different to eachother and guess what? They really do have completely different personalities. lol (Really Pat) ;-)

We had a bit of settling trouble at first because Ria kept pecking and chasing poor Rose, but thankfully that all seems to be calming down now.
The girls put themselves to bed at night when it starts getting dark, they all trundle off into the Eglu. Usually Rose is first to bed, closely followed by Bobbie and then Ria makes her way in a bit later. (Dirty stop out) lol

They have had us in stiches with their antics, they are always up to something and Rose keeps making a dash for the run door. (I think she's already planned out what plants she's going to destroy when she is let out!)
They all seem to be settled now which is great and the kids absolutely love them. Liam calls them his pigeons!! LOL
Anyway, I'm going back out to watch them for a bit. I've added a few pics to you can put faces to the names.

Ria looking gorgeous. (Nads hen)

Bobbie girl-Liam's pigeon!!

Rose venturing out. (Emmie's hen)

Liam in the run. Emmie loves Rose's frilly knickers! lol

Em trying to give Ria a fuss.

Close up of Emmie and Rose.

One more day to go!!

2007-05-07T07:37:00.000+01:00

Well, the hens will be arriving tomorrow!! Yay!!

They already have names-Emmie's hen is Rose, Nadine's hen is Ria and Liam's hen is Bobbie.
So, we are all ready and only have to wait one more day.
The kids are excited but I'm thinking that I'm even more excited than them. hehehe

Yesterday our cat Suggs, caught and killed a starling :-(
He was at the back door with it hanging out of his mouth. I managed to get it off of him and I placed a flower pot over it just in case it was playing dead and needed a little time to recover.
Next thing I knew was Suggs was batting the flower pot around on the path trying to get the starling back out!! I then put my laundry basket over the top of the flower pot so it had double protection. I could already see at this point that the little bird was not recovering as it's foot was poking out from under the pot and there was no movement, but being ever hopefull I thought I would give it more time.
I was just about to go indoors when I saw Suggs shoving the laundry basket about and sticking his paws through the side of it so that he could wack the flowerpot. By this time I was getting a bit sick of him being so persisitent so I decided to get the kids slide and put that ontop of the laundry basket. Huh-that'd stop him!!! Or maybe not! I was in the kitchen a few minutes later and saw something black and hairy inside the laundry basket. Yep-it was that damn cat. He had pushed the slide and somehow got under the laundry basket, lifted the flowerpot and was happily munching on the dead bird! Yummy!!
We got it off of him once again and this time there was no question whether it was dead or not! It had to go into the bin :-(
An hour or so later I looked out and saw Suggs eating something awful looking. This time he had stolen some raw chicken breast from somewhere!! lol
We don't know if he took someone's uncooked dinner or stole it from a bin but we had to take it away from him anyway-just in case some idiot had poisoned the meat and left it out on purpose. You can never tell around here!
Anyway, he had already eaten his breakfast but was obviously in a hunting mood and after loosing his tasty starling snack decided to hunt down something else.
Cats-what a nightmare!!!!! That poor starling, I know cats do this but it never gets any nicer! I have tried so many things to stop him. One summer he had two very loud bells on his collar but that didn't stop him neither!

Chooks are coming next Tuesday!!!!!! :-D

2007-05-01T07:12:00.000+01:00

The hens will be with us next Tuesday 8th May!!! Cannot wait!

Getting some trellis today to make sure there are no little gaps which they will squeeze through like behind the shed. (Thanks for thinking of it Mum)! lol
Ended up chatting to the Omlet man and he advised getting all three hens from Omlet so there is no fighting or scrapping. He is thinking that it wouldn't be nice to see because we haven't had chickens before so it might be best to start off with hens that all know eachother. So now Emmie and Nadine will have a Gingernut ranger each and little Liam will have the Pepperpot.
We have been told that Em won't get mixed up between the two gingers as they look slightly different and have very different personalities to eachother.

Roll on next Tuesday!!!!!!!! Yippeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!! LOL
(I know I'm a sad cow but I don't care) !!!!! LOL ;-)

The waiting game!!

2007-04-29T08:02:00.000+01:00

The Eglu is ordered now we wait!! It can take up to 4 weeks which seems a very long while but no doubt worth the wait! lol
I have not stopped reading about hens! Hen health, hen food, hen eggs, hen houses, hen behaviour, peoples hens, hens with dogs, hens with cats bla bla bla!!!

I so cannot wait, I feel like a kid. I know for a fact that I am driving everyone mad by keep going on about chickens. LOL LOL ;-) (sorry family) lol

So, now all I have to do is find somewhere that will either deliver me a Sussex star POL for a reasonable price or somewhere quite local so my Grandad can pick her up for me.
The Sussex star is going to be Emmie's hen, Liam will have the Miss Pepperpot and Nadine will be the proud owner of a Gingernut ranger.
I have actually found a farmer who will sell me a Sussex star for £12. He is getting them in next week and he is in Ongar in Essex. After chatting to him on the phone yesterday for what felt like an hour but was in fact only 15 minutes, I feel that if I can get a hen elsewhere I would rather but it'll be ok if I can't get one anywhere else! Not saying that the man was horrible or anything-just arrogant and annoying. lol

I reckon my blog will end up turning into a hen diary instead of a home education one for a while but it IS all home education really isn't it?

I wonder how long before my girls arrive? I hope it's not too long-the suspence is killing me!!
I was going to search the web for photos of what then hens will look like but I will do that later on I think.

Made a decision

2007-04-26T06:56:00.000+01:00

After lots of reading and thinking and talking to family members I have made a decision!

I am going to start off with the hens which come with the Eglu (2) plus one more for my little sister Nadine. So we will have three hens, hopefully healthy! I want to gain some experience and confidence taking care of hens before getting some ex bats.

After about 6 months or so I am going to try to get hold of a second hand Eglu and three ex battery hens to go in it! Other half has no idea about this plan and he never reads my blog because he says I write too much and he can't be bothered (Nice! lol), so I will leave him thinking that we will just have the three, then I will *surprise* him after a few months by getting some more!! LOL

I was going to get a second Eglu when the original girls were old and not really laying-then get some ex battery hens to put in that and then always have an Eglu of laying hens and an Eglu of 'old girls' but I guess it all depends on how 'into' chickens I get. Most chicken owners say that they start off with 3-4 and get so addicted they end up getting more and more but we'll see. My garden is not huge so I have to have limits. lol
Anyway, like my Mum pointed out-even if I don't start off with ex battery hens, I am still doing something positive to help them -by not buying battery eggs! True I guess.

Underneath is a picture of an Eglu. I can't say that I love the look of it but it is safe and very practical.

Getting chickens. Pictures may offend :-(

2007-04-24T14:02:00.000+01:00

Before you scroll down the page I would like to let you know that there are some pictures on this entry of battery hens being kept in poor conditions.

After some careful thought and LOT'S of research I have decided that we are going to get some hens! LOL

I actually started thinking about it last year but the price of the coop I want is nearly £400 so I ended up leaving it. That price includes to laying hens so without the hens it is a little cheaper.
Anyway, I have spent all morning reading up on everything to do with hens from health to egg laying and found out that battery hens are slaughtered at around 18 months-2 years old because their lay rate slows down.
Emmie and I have been discussing this and are now seriously considering getting some ex-battery hens. Emmie understands that when they first come home they don't always look too good. They have spent their whole lives living in a cage which is about the same size as an A4 piece of paper. They have never stretched their wings, seen the sky or even walked and pecked about.
I have read that at first the hens can be very shy and may have bruises and bald patches all over them but with time they will get nice and strong with lovely feathers. Another problem is the life expectancy, because of the conditions which they have been kept in they can suffer from premature death.
Again I discussed this with Em and she thinks that it is still better to rescue a battery hen and have it live for a few months in a nice coop with grass and worms to eat rather than let it be slaughtered because it might lay 20 less eggs than they year before.
So-we could go for a few nice healthy hens which would be in their prime egg laying years or we could look after and love some badly treated, abused, unloved hen which will still make great pets, will still lay lot's of eggs and will get to know what it's like being a 'hen' for the first time in it's life!

I cannot say for 100% that we will get the battery hens, I want to look into it more first. I want to find out if I can obtain them from somewhere local etc. Although Emmie is now dead keen on rescuing them :-)

All I have to do now is tell my other half, he wasn't keen on the idea when I mentioned it last year but he'll come around (LOL), and I have got to save up for the coop.
I have worked out that if I try and save £50 per month I should have enough money by October/November time but it will be too cold to get them then so we won't be able to have them untill next spring :-(
The coop I want houses 2-3 hens but now I'm thinking if I save all through the winter too I might end up with enough money to get the coop which houses 10!!!!!! LOL

Me and Em are so excited but we have got to wait such a long time. It will be worth it though :-D

Hen pictures below

Can you now see why we think that these hens deserve to be given a chance at happiness?
How utterly disgusting. There is NO WAY that these birds should be treated this way!
I have now decided that untill we get our hens we are going to get free range or barn eggs. Yes they cost more but these poor girls shouldn't have to live like this and then get killed when they are not good enough!
Soon we'll have our own fresh, healthy eggs.

In this world everything is about money isn't it????????

Up and coming projects.

2007-04-24T07:36:00.000+01:00

Well, it looks as though not much is happening with the Florence Nightingale project that I have been so eager to get started! lol
I had it all planned out, what we were going to do, things Emmie could draw etc.
We did sit down and read about her but that's as far as it went. Emmie did absorb the information and remembers most of what we discused.
It was her interest that made us look it up and find out more, then I got carried away and thought that we could turn it into a big project with worksheets etc in a folder.
This obviously excited me more than it did Em. LOL
I think she has learned what she needed to know and that's that! So, I think it has to stay as it is. The project idea was more for me than her. I thought it would be a good way of 'showing' that we have done something and a good example of 'evidence' in case the LEA ever get on my case but being autonomous I have to learn to let Em take it as far as she likes, not as far as I like.
If she done a few worksheets and a couple of pictures it doesn't mean that she learnt more does it? She has learnt about Florence and feels happy with what she now knows.

That's the beauty of home ed, your child gets to learn what they want to know and stop when they feel they know enough. As she gets older she may want to look into Florence Nightingale again, she may want to do written work on her, there again-maybe not.
It's a classic case of my 'school programmed' brain thinking that we need to write stuff, do worksheets, etc in order to show that we are learning, but when people say that they have learned more since leaving school than they ever did at school-I doubt very much that they wrote things down and kept them in a folder! If we find things interesting enough we remember them, if not we forget-simple! lol

So, the next thing we want to have a go at is dying pieces of muslin with natural dyes.
We are going to use beetroot, onion skins and whatever else Em feels like having a go with. I assume that we won't be writing anything about it or recording it on some sort of schooly chart. Could take some pics-that would be nice and still autonomous ;-)

Also, hoping to do some planting in the garden soon-think I'll photograph that too! Perhaps I need to start taking pics of everything the kids do and make my own picture diary, that way I have 'proof' and it's not interferring too much with the autonomy side of things.
Every now and then I just have to chill out and let things be rather than worrying pointlessly! lol

A recent picture of the terrible two. lol

This picture is of Emmie and Liam with my little sister Nadine.
Liam is sitting there filthy dirty, naked and with the hump up to his eyeballs! Just a normal day :-) LOL

Emmies tooth came out!!

2007-04-22T08:14:00.000+01:00

Emmie's tooth finally came out. It's been a long time coming so we were all thrilled when it actually fell out. Poor little moo has spent so long wobbling it and getting frustrated because it wasn't budging, after it came out I could see why she had such trouble with it.
The part of the tooth that was in her gum was the same length as the part of tooth which is visable because the root hadn't been worn away by the adult tooth.
The main thing is that it is out now and hopefully the adult tooth will now start to make it's way to the correct place :-)

On Friday we had some garden bits delivered for the kids.
They already have a swing, a two storey playhouse, bikes, cars and a slide which we recently bought home from Nanny's house (Due to Nanny now having two massive ponds which take up most of the garden. lol) and now they have got a sand and water table, a small trampoline (the one with the handle to hold on to), a wheelbarrow and bits like that.

The playhouse.

These pics were taken quite a while ago. The playhouse now has net curtains up the windows, flower boxes and even framed pictures on the walls inside. Very posh eh? ;-) lol
__________________________________________________________________

Last weekend we cleaned out the garden pond. Mmm, what a lovely aroama-fish poo!! lol
Our pond is only small and contains a few fish but it's main purpose is to attract the wildlife, although we haven't had very much frog spawn this year and no toad spawn that I have seen which is very odd as every year since having the pond we have had tons and tons of spawn! In the autumn we are going to replace the pond liner as the cats and foxes have ripped it and also the sides need re-levelling.
I really want newts to come to the garden but so far have never seen one. I don't think there is a way of attracting them, they either come or they don't. Looks like they don't!
lol

Could ramble on for ages longer but for everyone's sake I will shut up now! ;-) lol

Jay xx

Life with a 7 year old daughter, a nintendo DS and a new game!

2007-04-06T07:19:00.000+01:00

Hi there,

Well, Emmie has saved up £30 of her own money to buy herself a new game (Animal crossing) for her Nintendo DS.
She has been saving up for quite a while, putting odd 50p's and £1's into her money box. She was thrilled when she discovered that she had enough money to buy the game she has waited so long to get.
Since having the game (a couple of days), I have hardly been able to get two words out of her. I go into her room in the morning thinking she is sleeping and I find her on her bed hunched over the blimin' Nintendo. LOL
I know that the novelty will wear off soon, give it another day or so and she will be putting it down occassionally! (I hope) lol
I think that kids are like that, they get something new and can't leave it alone, us adults can be a bit like that too I think.

I took the kids to the dentist on Wednesday after waiting nearly a month for the appointment.
When we got there I was told that there had been a mix up because neither of their names were down and that that practice only takes referrals so no-one could understand why I was given an appointment in the first place!! GREAT STUFF!!!!!!!
They ended up seeing Emmie because she has a wobbly tooth that doesn't want to come out and she has had a bad experience with a dentist before so they said that they would fit her in but I need to find another dentist for Liam. What a nightmare!!
Never mind, it's all done now. Emmie is due to go back in May and meanwhile I need to hunt down a dentist for Liam but I am going to look into what dentist as I want him to have a nice friendly one who will make him feel comfortable, it seems that lots of dentists have no care or regard for how the child is feeling or what affect their unpleasant attitude has on the child long term!!!!
Anyway, we have finally got a new PC up and running. That means I won't have to share my laptop quite as much, although I think Emmie prefers sitting down here with the laptop rather than using the PC upstairs so I may still have to fight for my turn! LOL

Hoping that Emmie Starts to ease off of the Nintendo soon, I'm looking forward to our Florence Nightingale project but all the time she's on animal crossing I haven't got a hope! lol

Might be some time before my next entry as I may not have much to report, depends on when Emmie returns to the real world ;-) LOL

Long time!

2007-04-01T08:13:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

Long time since my last post!! I have kept meaning to pop on and add some entries but just haven't found the time. Didn't realise it had been this long though to be honest.

Well, what have we been doing?????? Erm..........................not sure really. lol
Time flies but I have no idea where it goes.
We have all been getting on with our day to day bits and bobs. I have been spending quite a bit of time doing things with the tropical fish tank. Buying plants, replacing the lights etc. We've bought a few new fish, mainly guppies, catfish and platies.
We have little guppy and platy babies swiming about and so far-avoiding being eaten by the bigger fish. lol

The antworld ant farm is no longer! We decided to release the ants outside when it was a nice warm day last week. We feel that the colony wasn't growing and the ants just did not seem happy. (I could tell by their little faces!!) LOL
So, they are now building a nice little home in our herb garden, hopefully.
I think it all came down to the design of the ant farm. The ants seemed to stay in the main chamber and rarely came out to eat. The numbers were very low considering the amount of time we have had them. The tank ant farm seems to be thriving. When we put food in, we get loads of ants running about and eating so we will still be keeping that one.

Emmie has taken an interest in learning about Florenece Nightingale, Henry VIII and Tutankhamun. She has read tiny little bits about them in her National Geographic Kids magazine and has asked if she can find out more about them.
Yesterday we started to read up on Florence Nightingale which has also lead to learing some basic information on the Crimean war and Mary Seacole. I'm finding it interesting myself!
Today Emmie is going to draw some pictures of Florence Nightingale, I think.
If she does I will put some of them on here. We are hoping to take a trip to the Florence Nightingale museum in London, but Liam is suffering from travel sickness at the moment so we are very limited with our travelling distances.
Emmie has also been learning Roman Numerals which is down to Henry VIII.
(VIII = 8)

So, that's about it really. I cannot remember every little thing we have done in the past month-my memory is not that good, which is why I originally started this blog but now I'm even forgetting to add entries!! lol

Just a couple of things.

2007-02-27T22:42:00.000Z

First of all I would like to let you know that my Mum has set up a chat board/forum to chat about tropical fish. You can find the link on the right hand side of this blog.
Feel free to join if you have a tropical aquarium, if you are considering getting one in the future or even if you're just plain nosey and want to have a look! lol http://tropicalfish.freeforumhost.net/index.php?act=idx

As you may know, Emmie has her own blog (link on right again) and commented the other day that people can't be finding hers very interesting as not many people read it and leave comments apart from me and Nanny, so.............if you get a chance I know that she would love it if she had a few regular readers who wouldn't mind leaving her the occassional comment. She doesn't do great big long entries like me (so don't panic-lol)
and she doesn't really post that often so it would only be once a week or fortnight thing.
Thanking you all in advance (if you wouldn't mind popping on). Here's the link-
http://journals.aol.co.uk/xminimex4/about-me/

Also sending out positive thoughts and good vibes to a friend of mine who is being taken to court by our 'lovely' LEA. She was in court yesterday, today and possibly for a few days more yet! So hoping that it all goes well and in her favour, she has a good case so I'm sure that it will . (GOOD LUCK;-) !!!

Aaah, just noticed that Em has put wobblymoo's blog link on her blog, bless her. lol
(I haven't even done that myself, ooops, sorry Denise, lol adding it right now)!!! LOL

Cryogenics, fish breeding, snakes and more.

2007-02-26T23:16:00.000Z

Well, here goes.
A couple of days ago I sat here and wrote a rather long entry inspired by Emmie having a day of asking sooo many interesting questions. I was happily typing away and at just gone 11pm I had finally finished. I decided to add a couple of photos to the entry and that's when it all went wrong. I lost the lot!! The whole damn entry dissapeared. Mmm, I was not to impressed. It was too late to start over so I just left it and thought that I would do it the following day, but in the end couldn't really be bothered as I think I was still sulking that I had messed up. It has taken me this long to get motivated to do it all again and if it dissapears this time then I will give up and this entry will never be read!! ('Let's hope!' I hear you cry) lol

Anyway, the other day Emmie was watching Sponge Bob (just for a change lol) and one of the characters got trapped inside a freezer for years and years and when he was finally defrosted he noticed that everything had changed but he was still the same age etc as when he was originally frozen. This got Emmie thinking about cryogenics and she wanted to know if you can freeze people, if anyone has tried it, if they would still look the same when they were defrosted as they did before being frozen etc etc etc.
I knew the very basics but needed some help from Nanny to fill in the bits I was unsure of, so Emmie now understands the basics of cryogenics.

Next thing which happened was while at Nanny's house, her gouramis (type of tropical fish- see photo) started breeding. May not sound too exciting but it actually was fascinating. The male makes a little bubble nest on the surface of the water and then him and the female perform this little act where he basically folds himself in half around the female, she releases her eggs and he fertilises them. The eggs go floating off all over the place and the little male swims about and appears to be eating the eggs. It turns out that what he is actually doing is collecting the eggs and putting them into the bubble nest. Aaaah, bless him!! He will then try to 'see off' any other fish which come close to his nest. It really was a great thing to watch. Emmie found it amazing and considering myself nor Nanny had ever seen this before ourselves, it was pretty great!!

A photo of a honey gourami. Gorgeous init?

When we got home Emmie wrote a really lovely story about two flowers. The pictures were excellent too. At a later date I will type her story up and add it to the blog with a couple of photo's of her drawings. Emmie says that it is one of her best stories ever!! ;-)

At bedtime Daddy fed the snake, Booka. Emmie has watched Booka eat thousands of times yet still wanted to watch him eat his mouse. She stood there watching and giving me a running commentary. 'He's looking at the side of the mouse Mum, now he's going round to the back, now he's in front of it.' lol
On this particular day Emmie decided to ask if Booka was in the wild and had to catch a live mouse, would he poison the mouse to kill it? So, we had a lesson on venomous snakes and constrictors and the different ways in which each of them killed their prey. We also had to discuss how Booka stretched his mouth so wide, the fact that he doesn't chew his food and how his muscles pull the food further and further down into his tummy.

Here is a pic of Booka. Not a very clear photo but I will try to get a better one soon. Booka is a corn snake.

So, all in all quite a busy brain day. Not that the LEA would be impressed by any of this as none of it is written, it isn't part of the NC and they are so anti Home Education in this area that the fact that a 7 year old girl is so inquisitive, happy and bright is neither here nor there. But d'you know what? Tough titty!! Emmie asks so many complex questions and actually understands and remembers the answers you give her.
Who gives a stuff about similes, the area of a triangle and Pythagoras' therom? lol
Living is the biggest lesson of all.

We done our hands up for home ed over the weekend. We are hoping to see them on the site soon. Aunty Nadine joined in too and Liam very kindly 'helped' her to colour hers in!! LOL

Yet another long entry but I tried to break it up a bit with some photo's so I hope it wasn't tooooo bad to read, (lol) but if it was, all I can say is...........................................................................................................................
Tough!! No-one said that you had to read all of it! If it was so boring how come you are still reading? Eh? ;-) lol lol lol

Jay xx
hehehe hahaha

P.S- I've added the photo's, now I just have to click 'save' so here's hoping it don't go and vanish on me!! lol

Pancake day today.

2007-02-20T07:12:00.000Z

It's pancake day today. Not that I can be bothered to stand in the kitchen making pancakes but the kids love them and Em likes to help so I don't think I have much choice. (Well I have but I'd feel mean lol)

Tomorrow I have a load of new plant coming which needs to go in my fish tank. We have a tropical aquarium in the living room, it's a lovely tank (240 litres) and it is in desperate need of new plants. Mum found a website which sells the plants at really good prices so we ordered a load of them and are aiming to have our tanks full of foliage. (Mum has the same tank at her house). Yesterday I bought some nice fine gravel which is really good for the plants roots to grow in, so today I am going to have to wash it all before it can go in the tank. It starts off so dusty and dirty, it needs loads and loads of rinsing before it can go into the aquarium.

Emmies fish are doing really well, they are swimming about quite happily and she still loves them so the novelty hasn't worn off yet! lol

An update on the ants-
They tank ants are doing well, yesterday they had a nice juicy dead fly!! (Yummy)
Quite a few of them came out to investigate when I put the fly in, then they all start pulling it in different directions, trying to get it down the entrance hole. lol
As for the ants in the antworld ant farm, they still do not seem to be doing a great deal.
They rarely come to the food pot to eat and even though the queen is still laying eggs, it seems that perhaps she is eating some of the eggs or even some worker ants because compared to the tank ants-there are hardly any ants in there. I wonder if she eats dead workers when they startve to death because they are not bothering to get enough food. Weird really because they can get to the food-I've seen them in the pot albeit not very often.
Maybe it is just a bad environment to keep ants in. We'll see how it goes but come the warmer weather I may just release them outside and keep the tank ants as I would not want to keep them imprisoned in a torture chamber and if they are not happy, nor am I!!

Liam is still doing great with using his potty but it seems that the pants thing is a little confusing for him. lol
Every time I put pants on him-he pees them. Then, a while later he will ask for pants on because he wants to do a wee!! LOL bless. He'll get there.
He has also proven to me that he knows most of his colours even though he likes me to think that he doesn't!! The other day he was showing me blue, red, green and yellow toys. If he said the wrong colour I didn't correct him and after a couple of minutes he would correct himself and tell me the right colour.
Last night when I gave him and Emmie their Yakult drinks, one bottle had a green straw, the other a pink one. Liam told me, 'No green one Mummy, want pink one!'
Goes to show how much they learn even if you don't sit spoon feeding it to them!

Em is coming on in leaps and bounds, she can add 10 onto pretty much any number and know what the answer is, she can count her money in her money box and add it all up. (5p's, 10p's, 20p's. 50p's, £1 and £2 coins.) She can count a pile of £10 notes easily, she is getting to grips with analogue clocks and her reading/writing continues to improve.
Later today (I think) our next door neighbour is popping in with some worksheets for Emmie to do. I'm against tests and things but these sheets are simply part of our neighbours college work as she is training to be a teacher and is currently doing some work on Home Education and has put some worksheets together for Em to do.
I have explained to Emmie that they are not tests and she doesn't have to do well or try hard or anything, just have fun. Emmie is actually excited to do them and can't wait because she says she loves worksheets. lol
I wonder how college is going to portray HE?? I doubt they are going to praise or encourage it, after all they are training people to become teachers, they are not likely to paint HE in a good light are they? Tut tut!!

I have loads of stuff that I could waffle on about, things the kids have said and done, what's been going on in general etc but looking at how much I have written so far, I fear that if I continue to bore you all, I may be responsible for putting you into a coma through boredom so I am going to shut up now!!
Before I go though, I would like to put a link here about a brilliant site 'Hands up for home ed'
If you click on the link you will see what it is all about, please join in as the more people that take part-the better.
There is loads going on at the moment regarding He and the law but I haven't mentioned much about it so far in this blog. I feel that there are plenty of people doing great things to try to make a difference, lots of people talking about it and stuff, and I don't think I know or understand enough to write about itall, besides I doubt very much that I have enough people reading this blog to make any difference and those who do read it already know what's going on no doubt .
Anyway, here's the link- http://handsup4homeed.blogspot.com/
Cheers for reading my ramblings everyone.
Jay xx

Valence house workshop.

2007-02-18T07:50:00.000Z

Hi everyone,

Well, on Thursday we went to the half term workshop at Valence house museum.
Emmie really enjoyed it. The project was making bird feeders and the session lasted two hours. Emmie made a fat ball, a seed feeder and also a book mark, painting by numbers card thing and a picture decorated with feathers and sequins etc. I will have to photograph them. Anyway, the workshop cost £2.50 and there were about 14 children there. Emmie would really like to go to other workshops in the future so I will have to keep my eye on what's coming up.

We nearly didn't get there though as we had a bit of a disaster indoors!!!!
I was rushing about trying to get the kids ready, the housework/washing etc done as well as cook chicken and rice for the evening meal (as I was having my hair cut in the evening and wouldn't have had much time to cook dinner when I got home so I was trying to be 'organised').
To cut a long story short, while I was in the kitchen Emmie called to ask if Liam was supposed to have 'that'!! I went into the front room to see what 'that' was. It was nail varnish!!! Little Liam had found a bottle of it in the fish tank cupboard (I didn't even know it was in there) and the little poppit had poured half a bottle of the stuff all over the black leather setee!!!!!
First thing I done was grab the pack of baby wipes and started trying to clean it off of his hands then the setee.
Too late, it dried almost instantly and it was not wiping off of the furniture!!!
I then ran upstairs and grabbed a bottle of nail varnish remover and carefully started trying to dab the stain off of the setee. Mmmm, that didn't seem to work neither, but the black from the leather was coming off onto the cloth.
I had a quick look on line to see if I could find some help. I read that the best thing to use is nail varnish remover or hair spray so I thought I'd give hair spray a try. BIG MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!
The hairspray did not remove any of the nail varnish but quite successfully removed a thin layer of leather and left a faded patch!
In the end I decided that I would have to stick with the nail varnish remover working on tiny areas at a time. This, in the end, did work! However it took a very long time and did not remove every bit. Afterwards I had to put leather moisuriser onto the setee and pray that the leather was not to ruined.
What a nightmare eh? lol
At least it was only on the setee though and not in his eyes or something. It was my own fault, even though I didn't know it was in there-I should have been more careful I guess.

Anyway, after we got back from Valence I went to Mums, the hairdresser came and cut my hair and my sisters (Nadine) and we got home around 7 I think.
The kids wanted tomato soup for dinner so that's what they had.
Everything was going fine until I tried to dish myself up some chicken and rice.
Suddenly Emmie called out to the kitchen sounding very worried. I came rushing in to find that her whole cup of tomato soup had fallen over on the tray and ran all down the armchair, down the side of the seat cushion, all over the other cushion and onto her brand new grey trousers.
I began cleaning up and got Em to take her bottoms off, she then trod on the cushion and covered her socks in soup!! LOL LOL
As I was cleaning up I was laughing, all I could think was 'What a day!' LOL
Later that evening Emmie was chatting to me in the kitchen while I was putting stain remover on her trousers ready to go in the wash. She was happily chatting away and dancing about in the kitchen when she accidently danced into the dogs water bowl and tipped the whole thing over. Water everywhere, it ran under the bin, the chest freezer-all over the place so I had to mop it up and use towels to soak up as much as I could.

What a day indeed!!!!! LOL LOL

Roxie is home and more snow!

2007-02-09T07:31:00.000Z

Emmie was thrilled this morning because flat Roxie is home!
She arrived with lot's of photo's and booklets and bits 'n' bobs from Disney land etc.
I'm just relieved that she managed to get back. Poor Em would have been heartbroken if both flats went missing! So, Emmie has spent hours today reading all about Stockton in California, places of interest there, Roxie's journal, leaflets from Disney land and other bits like that. She now wants to look on her globe to see how much bigger California is compared to UK. I think I am going to buy her a large map to put up on the wall in her room so that she can mark different places that the flats visit.
I have never had any interest in geography whereas Emmie has always finds it fascinating. She loves looking at her globe and seeing how far away countries are, how big/small they are, etc.

And yes, we have had more snow only this time it was really thick. It always looks so beautiful and clean when it is fresh.
One of my brothers (Gareth, 23 years) came round with my Sister so that they could all play in the back garden with Emmie, Liam and Charlie (the kids Daddy).
So, I wrapped the kids up warm-2 pairs of trousers each, 2 pairs of socks, T-shirts under jumpers, gloves etc.
Emmie was not happy at this point as she finds certain things uncomfortable and wearing layers drives her made! Her trousers were annoying, her socks were annoying etc. She is a very sensitive little girl, not only with clothing-just in general really. She cries if you get angry or upset with her, she cannot cope with annoying clothing labels or wonky sock seams, lot's of things irritate her. If people are unkind to her she gets really upset, more than average I'd say. There is actually a website for highly sensitive people/children. People look as sensitivity as a negative thing, whereas I now see it as very positive and try to embrace it rather than put her down or try to 'toughen her up'.
I have always been highly sensitive myself (often described as over sensitive, too sensitive, shy, etc) and it is now looking like little Liam may be the same, he gets stressed over his socks not feeling ok, his label in his T-shirt, etc. Charlie (kids Dad) is the odd one out in our house, he hasn't got a sensitive bone in his body and really struggles to understand how such small things affect us. He does see the funny side though and says that in the end he is going to be frightened to speak just in case he upsets one of us and makes us cry!!! LOL
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/child.htm
and http://www.sensitiveperson.com/

Anyway, back to the snow! lol
So, eventually the kids were ready to go and play. This is the first time that Liam has been able to actually play in the snow.
They had a great time! I don't know who had more fun, Gareth and Charlie or the kids!! ;-)
So, they played outside for over an hour. In the end I had to call them in as their hair was wet, their trousers were soaked, their gloves were sopping wet, etc.
Neither of them wanted to stop playing, in fact they both ended up crying because they had to come in! Bless-lol.

Like I said in a previous post, I don't care much for snow myself but it is lovely to see the kids enjoying it soooo much.

Yippee! I have been trying to figure out for ages how to have the pics with the writing instead of at the side. LOL

Books, books, books.

2007-02-07T07:36:00.000Z

Yesterday we went to the local library. It's been quite a while since we last went so Emmie was very excited to be going there.

Liam was a bit of a handful, he liked their 'puters' (computers) and seemed to be under the impression that it was 'his turn' to have a go on them. He spent most of the time we were there climbing up onto the computer chairs trying to press the buttons on the keyboard! He was not impressed when I kept getting him down and showing him all the different books. It was a bit of a battle but I won ;-) (just about) lol

While I was chasing Liam, Emmie was happily choosing books for herself. She got slightly carried away and ended up with 12 books. She says that where we haven't been for a while she wants to gets loads to keep her busy! lol
The books she has are all quite thick paper backs and I would guess that they are for much older children. Some of the words in the books are pretty hard, such as enthusiastically, peninsula, semitolerable, gourmet, nonchalantly etc.
She has no problem actually reading most of the words, (of course there are a few she really struggles with but I have to read them twice myself! lol) it's the meanings she asks for. She just HAS to know what the word means in order to enjoy the story.
The librarian was supprised at the books Emmie had chosen and asked her who would be reading them all to her. Emmie proudly replied that she would be reading them herself and the librarian smiled and made a sort of snorting sound as if to say-Mmmm, I doubt that!
But there you go, they say ignorance is bliss and he looked pretty happy! lol
I don't feel the need to talk to people and convince them that Emmie is more than capable of doing certain things, if they wish to doubt her abilities, that's fine. Emmie knows what she can and can't do and I see no reason why we should have to justify or prove things to people. Emmie is confident and that's all that matters.
I have a feeling that 3 weeks is not going to be quite long enough for Em to get through soooo many books but I can always re-new them on line if she does need more time.
She has always been an avid reader and has read all of the books in her room, many of them over and over again. I think it's about time I had a look on ebay for some new ones ;-)

Happy birthday Liam.

2007-01-31T10:01:00.000Z

On Monday (29th) it was Liam's 2nd birthday.
We all went to Kids Kingdom. (Me, Nanny, Aunty Nadine, Emmie and of course Liam)
The kids had a great time running about and climbing. Emmie surprises me sometimes, she is so fearless and full of adventure, she will give anything a go-whereas I always think everything looks a bit too risky and dangerous! lol
Liam started off a little cautious of some of the things but after a little while he was climbing about and having a great time too.
We had some lunch there and the kids played for a little while longer before our hour and a half was up and it was time to leave.
Emmie wasn't happy when it was time to go, she wanted to stay longer but surprisingly Liam got his coat and shoes on and sat in the buggy without putting up a fight at all. I think he was worn out. lol
We then went back to Nannies, Liam had some cards and pressies there and a train cake which Nanny made. It had chocolate butter icing on it and was decorated with sweeties, it looked lovely although Nanny seemed to think that it didn't look like a train-but we were impressed! lol
For Liam's birthday dinner we had take away from the chip shop and afterwards we sang Happy Birthday and he blew out his candles. We did take photo's, my Sister Nadine is going to send me the ones she took with her phone so that I can put them on here. (Done)!
All in all it was a nice day. I can't believe he is two years old already-only feels like the other month he was born. lol

Flat Suzy has gone and it's been snowing!!!!!

2007-01-24T09:46:00.000Z

Well, we got up this morning to snow!!!!
Looks very pretty but that's as far as my love for it goes!! Cold wet and slippery, can't stand the stuff. lol The kids were really excited to see it and little Liam finds it fascinating as he doesn't remember seeing it before.
Thankfully it already looks like it's melting, but the roads are covered in black ice which is really dangerous! It wasn't the nice thick, crunchy snow, it's more wet, mushy and slippery! Emmie has just popped out into the garden because she is worried that it is melting so fast that she won't get a chance to play in it! lol

As for flat Suzy, what a nightmare. My other half took it to the post office for me this morning, but what we didn't realise is that everything in the package had to be listed or else customs and excise will rip it open. He didn't have a clue what was even in the package so only listed the flat and the journal.
I rang the post office and they kindly let me list the contents over the phone. It cost £3 odd to post it and the last thing I wanted was for it to get torn open because they didn't know what was inside! Besides, it wouldn't be nice for the little girl to never receive her flat back. So, that's that all done now. I'm going to be worrying about it until I get an email from the family to say that it has arrived home safe and sound.
Let's hope that flat Roxie reaches us ok. Perhaps that might explain why flat Ariel never returned. Mmmm, fingers crossed it will all go smoothly.

OMG- worrying about flat travellers, like there's not enough to worry about in this world!! LOL
Snow and flats...............................how do I cope with such stresses?????????? LOL

Birthday party.

2007-01-24T08:22:00.000Z

Yesterday the children went to a friends birthday party at Kids Kingdom.
Liam fell asleep on the bus on the way there-typical. lol After a while I had to wake him up as I had been telling him that we were going to a party and thought to myself.........If he stays aleep the whole time he's gonna think parties are pretty naff, as he'd probably wake up on the bus on the way home-not being aware that we had just spent 2 hours at the party!! LOL

Emmie absolutely loved it. Right little action girl she is. lol Climbing all over the place and basically just having a great time.
Liam just started warming up and exploring, when it was time to go to the party room to sing happy birthday to the birthday boy. This did not please Liam much!! lol
After the birthday song, the kids were allowed to go and have another little play before it was time to eat. Emmie rushed straight off and was back to climbing about, going on the big slide etc, but Liam was still showing off because his fun had been disturbed. lol
After a little while he started to get back into the swing of things and decided to join Nanny, Emmie and myself in the ball pool. He really liked it, diving about, throwing the balls etc, when suddenly there was a voice telling everyone to go to the party room.
I knew this wasn't going to sit well with Liam!! LOL

I was right, he was not impressed. He then spent the next 15 minutes sitting with the hump because he wanted to play. He did eventually cheer up a little. lol I think that he is a bit young to understand all this party stuff. lol

So, the kids really enjoyed themselves. I am taking them back there one day next week because they enjoyed it so much.
I might even start to take them once a fortnight/month. It's good fun, they get plenty of exercise and it's good for learning things like co-ordination and balance.

Flats update.

2007-01-21T07:23:00.000Z

I got an email yesterday from flat Roxies host family. She will be posted back to us on Tuesday, so we have got to get flat Suzie prepared and packed.
As you know, our PC went wrong so now I cannot print off the photo's of Suzie to send back with her. Very annoying!!!!
Also we were typing the journal entries on the PC, we were going to type it, print it and stick it into the journal, but alas no!!!!!!! So, best I hurry up and get writing I suppose, my memory is not great and we've had the flat for ages so I'll have to try to remember what we done and when. (Didn't do much so that shouldn't take long)! lol

As for flat Ariel, well I mentioned in earlier posts that the host family sent 3 flats to us, yet not one of them reached us, it now seems that flat Ariel is missing too.
The family sent her back weeks ago apparently, but we have not recieved her!
Nightmare, Emmie was really looking forward to seeing what she had been up to and stuff!
Think we might give flat travellers a break for a while. What with them going missing, the PC going wrong and loosing my photo's, us not making the effort to keep the journal up to date properly, it seems a little pointless. We don't really remember to take the flat with us when we go anywhere so I think we'll just give it a miss!! lol
Never mind, maybe we'll fancy it again some other time. :-)

All's well and Emmie has her new fish.

2007-01-20T15:57:00.000Z

Well, I'm pleased to say that the kids are so much better now. Liam seems to be almost back to normal now-thank goodness!
Nanny and Nadine took Emmie out today to get her new fish for her fish tank. She has got three guppies. A male called Rainbow, a female called Amber and another female called Sally. They seem to have settled in nicely and she has been watching them for a good couple of hours now. lol
The PC has gone wrong and needs replacing so I cannot put pics of the fish on here right now as I normally send photo's to the PC via bluetooth, then email them to myself so that I can store them on the laptop. If I can be bothered at some point I will set up the bluetooth on here-might be easier!! lol

The kids have really lost their appetites since their illness. Both of them have gone off of things which they normally love. Emmie (who's a big time chocoholic) says that chocolate even tastes different! WOW! lol
Hopefully they will be back to their normal eating habits soon.

I'm hoping that the weather improves a little soon. It has been so wet and windy, would just like a few dry days so that I feel like going out, when the weather is bad I could quite easily hibernate and not leave the house until the spring. What with internet shopping and things-soon there'll be no reason to go out. LOL
Hoping you are all well.

Jay xx