SUNDAY SNOW DAY!!

SUNDAY SNOW DAY!! Well after me saying about looking up for snow for ages we finally got some! Yippee! I awoke at 7:30am and saw it falling when I opened my eyes. Happy that it had finally delivered and also being the first to awake I closed my eyes to go back to sleep. No way i'm getting up yet! Well actually yes there is! I MUST have a video of it a piccie of the garden! So here they are! After padding to the back kitchen door this is what I got. Video a bit rubbish through the grubby kitchen door lol! https://youtu.be/qwwiLWO1WOw

After taking these I did indeed go back to bed and slept another hour or so. I woke when I heard hubby go to the bathroom and was greeted with "IT SNOWED" "IT SNOWED" from Jessica seconds later. This was so loud it woke the whole house and then Sophie was up. We all jumped straight out of bed and put on our clothes to go outside. I was dressed first so got everybody's coats, hats, scarves, gloves and wellies ready. Me and the girls went out first to the back garden. By this point - I dunno 845/9ish it had started sleeting so job 1 is making the snowman before it's all gone! Sophie was super excited as it hasn't snowed since she was 2 years old (current picture on my facebook profile) and she doesn't remember it. She wanted to take her gloves off and feel it as it is with bare hands for her "first ever snow". So cute! Here's some pics of the snowman making. Hubby was still indoors waking up with caffine and getting in the loft to find the all important sledge!

Mr Snowman - Who we inevitably called Frosty! - has 2 firework rocket plastic thingies for his arms. Jessica's idea! Stones for his tummy which Sophie found for his buttons. And I had to go and dig in the rock hard veggie patch to pull up a carrot for his nose!! J pulled out the scarf, hat and gloves too. 

Once we had finished Mr Frosty the snowman the man with the sledge was suitably attired for the weather so we decided to go out on our front drive way with it. We are lucky that our drive is on a hill so we can go speeding down it. Under normal circumstances this is a silly idea as you might get run over by cars as you go into the road! However - they have closed the road for roadworks at the end! So happy days it was all ours!

Jess decided to write NHS on the car in snow :-)

After this went over to the play park which is literally over the other side of the road. We took the sledge with us and mucked around over there. Sophie saw a school friend so her friend was chasing her on the sledge throwing snowballs at her as she went by. Here are some more pics and a couple of videos i've put on youtube. Here's some sledging action with daddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuN763LsUZ4

Doesn't nature look so nice with a coating of icing on it! All prettied up - All it needs is a bow of ribbon!

Sophie did a snow angel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9j16-LV8Nw

Someone else drew a big smiley face so couldn't resist taking it's picture! Doesn't it look good!

After all this we went back to the driveway for a bit more down hill sledging where mummy decided to get in on the action ... Disaster though as I went flying so fast I ran into the road sign!! *Crash* OOPS! So annoyed this wasn't on camera as it was hilarious! Any way here is another attempt caught on camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyRtiP6iNJE - This one is worth a look LOL!! Just to see an almost 40 year old woman on a sledge- i'll still be doing this when i'm 80 lol! I might not be able to get up after mind!!!!!

Mummy's track from the road sign crash!

Then Sophie had a go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS2S7w8UtMU

And then Jess with her railway track made spear LOL!! It has a plastic fork on the end - not quite sure why this was needed mind?! But here we go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF7-FRqLeCE

We ended with mummy and Sophie having a go together! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIAg0mQGhk8

Later in the afternoon it was mostly all gone as the temperature rose to about 5c!

The rest of the day was pretty lazy really. We went in after the rest of the sledging and had breakfast and caffine for the grown ups! Then it was mostly a screen day doing nothing. Think I had an afternoon nap too! The chilled life! In the evening I settled down to finish off my Christmas Chronicles book! And the girls decided that sledging in the snow wasn't enough and they were going to go at it down the stairs in sleeping bags! Just look at these videos!!! Sophie started it too! LOL. She had pillows in hers so it was a little softer going down!

Sophie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQaznrXYjOc

Jess here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1rDX9S1tgE

Right that's it from the snow day! Wonder if we will get any more before the winter is out? Only 4 weeks to go until the metrological start to Spring on the 1st March! That's officially the day I get out in the garden and start doing stuff so I better get garden planning this soon!! I'm feeling behind already! Soon this blog will be full of the garden stuff instead. Can't wait! I love the change of seasons! It's like a new start all over again. Love it! Right sleep well all. Lots of love from us girls - Keep looking up! Xx

I'm soooo behind!

ARGH I'm so behind on the blog! So sorry I have been in the pits and in a dark, dark place. Lockdown is driving me mad. That combined with hormones, school pressure and the miserable weather all combine together to just drag one down. Had some self care last night though by sitting in bed and just chilling. Put on the Radio Solent talk show - Paul Miller if anyone else listens. Also read some of my Cabin Porn book. Haha! Putting the word porn in here is totally going to get this post lots of views through google I bet lol! It's a book about different wooden cabins built in the woods in the USA and around the world. A nice little read but could do with the type a little bigger as it's a bit of a struggle to read. Other to that it is a nice size to hold and snuggle up in bed with as it is small. It has lots of pictures which is always a massive plus for me as I am very visual. All in all a nice relaxing read as it's easy to dip in and out of. It was a book that hubby got me for my birthday last year as a complete surprise. I'll pop some piccies below but if anyone fancies a look at it Amazon have it here: https://amzn.to/2YnTFmz

Any way besides this little book I also put some relaxing music on a log fire tv channel on You Tube after 1am. When I laid down to sleep I also did a 10 minute stint of a meditation on the Headspace app. It always seems to ground me and make me feel a little better even if not completely. 

Tomorrow is a inset day at school so my weekend starts here - Yippeee! So I plan to get this post up with content from last weekend as I never got round to updating on that and then another at some point covering this weeks home educating etc.

Right last Saturday saw me in Jessica's room again. My task was to pull out this mess and find floor and a desk so that I can move furniture around! Need to move the chest of drawers into her and the desk out. 

I took all the books off the bookshelf. I put into 2 plastic boxes the ones we were keeping to go back on the bookshelf. I then made 2 more piles - 1 for Jess to sort if she wants to keep and 1 to give to Sophie.

I found doing all this hard work as I was really low on energy again. I think the mental exhaustion is taking it's toll. I seem to notice the day after a rough day emotionally it manifests in physical exhaustion after. However it's the weekend, i'm free, and I need to be productive. So I work through it gradually.

This was after I had cleared the floor and the bookshelf.

This is how the desk looked after I had cleared loads of paperwork, pens, books and generic kid clutter!

I had to put the dolls house and the suitcase back in there for now for the room to function but these will have homes - somewhere - at some point!!

While I was sorting the desk we had a family zoom meeting going on as Sophie wanted to do play teacher over zoom (like her teacher of course!) so we made one and all 4 of us logged in - we later invited grandma. The 40 minutes ran out so we made another and invited Aunty Zoe and the girls 2 cousins - R and Z.

Sophie's highlight from the day was playing the titanic in a dolls bath with a see through ball being the iceburg and the doll on the sponge as the boat. They have been doing the titanic in English at school.

Right that's it for last Saturday. Sunday was a special day and will be picture heavy so warrants it's own posting! I will put it up tomorrow! Sleep well all! Or good morning/Good day where ever in the world you lovely people are! Keep looking up! Xx

A weekly roundup!

Sorry sorry! I am long over due a blog update! Especially when I had been posting daily. I've had a reaaally rough week mentally. A combination of waiting for my VERY late period and the current in events in the world that seem to last fooorever have all had me feeling very wobbly. No i'm not upduffed before you all start getting excited. There will be no more babies from the stale womb! I am convinced I am perimenopausal. I usually run around a 24 day cycle since about a year after having Sophie. But this month I maxed out at 33 days. I was a going a little mad as to where it had gone but emotions also made me know full well it was on the way! After digging around it would appear some family history is that we can start perimenopause around late 30's. I started having symptoms around 36. Mostly from super heavy periods that were so bad they made me highly anaemic. Thankfully that got started and I am still taking iron so the PMDD I was suffering is a lot more under control. I still have some mad months where I am a raging witch but to completely loose it is now rarely thankfully for all!!! However I am dry as a desert, still hormonally emotional, heavy periods, - that I take Tranexamic acid for - and night hot flushes! Now anyone that knows me knows that I am a tiny, petite, skinny thing! I am always cold - esp by day - by night I am a heater. Hubby doesn't like cuddling up to me much in bed as he burns himself on me LOL! The worst time is early morning so from 4/5am onwards. Could be because the heating comes on around then but that's only when the temperature has dropped to 19c! I tend to sleep under a very thin blanket or a empty duvet cover and in shorts and t-shirt. So when summer comes I might just die! Not like I can take my skin off is it? Very tmi some might say - Well in my view anything but! How many women have reached menopause starting age and know absolutely nothing about it or any symptoms??! We get taught about the starting of periods and the like in school but we know nothing about the stopping of periods! There is nothing taboo about any of this - It's just yet another body function that we all have to go through and deal with - unless of course you don't have a womb :-) I was going to say sorry for boring you men - but actually I'm not! The more you know the more you can understand your woman if and when you have one. Knowledge is power! Here is a helpful reading sheet for you men. Written by the amazing Diane Danzebrink who is a menopause expert and counsellor: https://menopausesupport.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Understanding-Menopause-for-Partners-resource.pdf

Any way enough about my desert and stale womb!!What else have we been up to? Well apart from hating the world and wishing it would change not a massive amount. I always seem to say this and yet am able to write lots lol! I'll try and go through day by day.

Monday -  A school day. Hard to get the kids going but we managed in the end. Can't remember much else about it other than we got all the work done. I was much harder on Sophie so she had to get on with it lol. Here's some pics:

I made a new weekly sheet I can print off to save writing things up. Only I forgot to write out the day and the childs name for each list - oops! Will amend tomorrow for the new week. Carried over is things I can use weekly to make sure they get on X every week then cross it off and get them on something else. EG- Reading eggs, Times tables rockstar etc.

I set Jess some suffixes instead of comprehension for English for a change. And gave her some school Maths from one of the zoom meetings - Symmetry.

Then we moved on to Times tables and Spellings. I have been writing TT's out for her but found a login sheet in the folder for Times tables rockstar. So plan to get her back on this too! I also gave her some number sentence work

I then put her on the Oak Academy for some more Symmetry - this is the government made online learning but she found it too boring and left it. We ended by letting her have a little go on some games. www.blockly.games. She had to match an animal to its name and to it's features - eg feathers, 2 feet etc. Bit basic but want some variety to our days!

Ok Sophie did 1 side of sentence ordering. Then onto Maths and numbers 11&12. 

After this she did some keywords and spelling. She now knows these key words just fine so I need to work out from an email her teacher sent what her new ones are. It really wasn't clear at all and her current list doesn't even look what he sent! So once again i'm making it up ...

Sophie later in the day decided to draw her hands on some tissue paper and get me to cut it out. The plan was to string them up but this never happened. Instead they had to decorate the floor ...

I did some tidying as the house was a bombsite. Including finding a bedroom and making the bed!

Tuesday:  A zoom meeting day. So we had these which start at 9 now and were done by 11:45. I got back in bed got up a couple of hours later after a nap. When I got up I had some SA mail! I got some free stickers from Big Jet TV. Asked for 1 and he sent me 2. Top lad that Jerry! So I put one on my laptop, 1 on my phone and I managed to peel the little authentication sticker off the back of the envelope to also put on my laptop lol! 

Got on with some housework again whilst Sophie made a little stand for her candle light out of beads in a paint tray. Quite creative! Her bedroom is a bombsite so only so a little at a time. 

Wednesday:  Can't remember much about this! A non-zoom day so we did stuff I made up. I can't remember what and didn't take any pictures of it so must have gone ok! lol!

I woke up to see my greenhouse a little worse for wear after recent rain and wind over the past few weeks though! A couple of the joiners are broken so this is not a surprise. The junk inside it is hold it up lol! Will need to enter very precariously in 5 weeks time though!

My coffee mug for today! Isn't it cool??! All teachers have cool coffee mugs right!

Did a bit more tidying on Sophie's floor. Almost there ...

Sophie decided to protect her friends from Coronavirus and also came down for tea wearing her mask holding them all lol! I think they need a lesson in correct wearing of PPE mind!

Today we have candles on with our tea. This is becoming quite a nice winter tradition in our house!

Thursday: Another zoom day. However Sophie was up at 4am for a while with sore legs (growing pains!) so I had to give her some ibruprofen and a hot water bottle then settle her back down after a snuggle up. So I decided as we were up in the night we would miss the zooms and do them Friday instead. So when I got up late morning I had to whip some work together pronto! Gave Jess some workbook for English from lockdown last year that was year 3&4 level and some zoom stuff I printed off of purple mash for them both. And Sophie did some Phonics worksheet also from last year. This is all in addition to the usual spellings, keywords and Timestables that I set daily as core work. They ended the day by watching a tales of the river bank video on You Tube about a hamster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIhbAkwVT_A&t=88s

Friday:  The only thing of note today is Jessica's ipad not charging as she has broken her charging cable. Surprised it's lasted this long tbh!! Other to that we had zoom meetings and didn't do any other work. Got a head start on the weekend!

Right that's it for a quick round up. I'll do this weekends up date as a separate one as it's been a busy one so far! Enjoy your weekend and keep looking up! Especially tomorrow - after all my raving on it is meant to snow after all - Yippeee! Watch this space!! Take Care All!! Xx