Back To The Painting

 

After the usual school run with Teen One, I had about an hour to do a few chores before heading out to college for Teen Two's EHCP review meeting.

I can't say I ever look forward to these meetings, as I find often nothing very much is achieved, other than some very quick box ticking.

I was saddened to learn that staff seemed quite unaware of a big chunk of the strategies set out in the EHCP, something the Speech therapist had warned me she felt was the case....and despite my gentle drawing their attention to three mentions of specific intervention work, it was glossed over and we were whisked on to the next part of the agenda.

Having sat in many such meetings over the years, I now reluctantly accept help is not going to be forthcoming and get on with doing the best we can ourselves.

Statements/ECHP's all look very good on paper, but the executing of it in every day life for one reason or another just doesn't seem to happen down in this neck of the woods.

He is so near the end of his education life it just doesn't seem worth upsetting everyone and insisting certain things happen.

Oh well....moan over!

 

 

With that meeting thankfully over for another year, it was on to B&Q for some paint.

Whilst there I saw a clearance corner and of course couldn't resist a peek.

I bought three of these large containers of lawn care....for just £1!

Seeing as we have gone to the trouble of laying the new turfs we may as well try and look after it better than we did the last one...which rarely even got watered!

 

 

I spent the afternoon touching up the paintwork in the downstairs loo....the paint had started to crack, in between the cladding...

 

 

...hopefully this coat will be the final one.

 

Part way through the afternoon Hubby came home.

He had a tooth extraction ( pre cursor to an implant) and wasn't feeling too good.

After a lukewarm cuppa with plenty of sugar and a nap, he started to perk up a bit.

 

 

I went back to the painting, looking to change this sunshine yellow, which was on the conservatory doors when we moved in 23years ago...

 

 

 

...I wasn't sure what colour I wanted....other than it needed to be fairly neutral, and went for duck egg blue in the end.

I only intended doing a small patch of the door, but it went on so quickly and easily ( and no rubbing down either...naughty me!) I did as much as I could without getting too near the window.

I am hoping, with the white walls and black floor tiles it will add a gentle modern touch to the room.

I plan for a stay at home day tomorrow to hopefully crack on with some more painting.

 

Its been a lovely day, and I have really enjoyed wandering in and out of the garden to put washing out, get it in, water the turfs etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Feeling Frustrated To Feeling Humble

 

On my visit to my Monday Recycled Teenager today I had set myself a mission...a rather delicate mission!

Grandma from time to time visits our mutual friend, but hasn't been for some months, mainly because she needs to use the bathroom before leaving to return home, but the loo has been in dire need of a clean.

How does one approach such a subject?

Initially we hoped that one of the three daughters would notice and get it sorted, but when we learnt one stayed over recently and by the look of the loo it hadn't been dealt with, we assumed it wasn't something that they had noticed.

Not wanting to offend our dear friend, but knowing how much she has missed her visits from Grandma, I decided I needed to do something about it, tactfully!

So, armed with a collection of cleaning materials, on arrival I said that I was on a spring cleaning mission at home, so thought I would treat some of her house to the same treatment.

She wasn't a bit taken aback (phew) and after our usual chit chat, I braved the two bathrooms.

I have to say, I wasn't looking forward to it and the work was hampered somewhat by the disabled seat that has been attached.

Despite using copious amounts of limescale remover, bleach, scrubbing brushes, and toilet cleaner, sadly the limescale has grown so thick, it was impossible to remove and will need an industrial strength acid to make any difference.

Also, the bleach didn't make any difference to the staining.

However, the seating area is now spic and span and the pedestal, and it smells much fresher,

so I shall tell Grandma it is surface clean and the "dirt" is just staining.

I must say I did feel rather frustrated not to have made a better job of it.

 

 

Teen Two and I did our friends shopping with our own, dropped it back at her house, then back home for some lunch.

At the weekend I made the mistake of hosing down my car, whilst hosing down the front....when the car dried it was covered in dirty drip marks!

Wish I hadn't bothered, it looked better before the hosing down!

So after lunch Teen Two and I headed out to use Tesco's hand pressure washer.

Frustratingly it was closed off, so a wasted journey and still a dirty car!

 

 

Whilst there were frustrations today, there were some satisfying moments, like getting three loads of washing dry on the high line...

 

 

 

...creating a tasty meal from left overs for the Teens

(chicken, pepperoni, chick peas, spinach, mozzarella cheese, BBQ sauce, in a tortilla wrap...it got the thumbs up from them both!) ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...fitting in a bit of sock knitting whilst dinner was cooking...

...then receiving two emails from retired friends we only see rarely,

both for some reason paid the Teens lovely compliments  (which I haven't as yet shared with them)

when referring to Teen One, one friend said "she is like a quiet stream that you can sit near and relax breathing the scented air. Her company is delightful. You have two special children!!! "

The other friend said how well Teen Two was maturing, and what a sweet girl Teen One was.

I apologise for the "proud mummy moment" and feel very humbled if the truth be told, that such lovely things should be said.

We never knows how others perceive our children do we, so it was lovely to read those almost poetic lines and certainly banished those earlier feelings of frustration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Double Blessings

 

 

It was lovely to wake to bird song and sunshine this morning...and here we are gone 8pm and we still have sunshine and birdsong, I love these long summer evenings.

In between has been a peaceful, usual kind of Sunday.

Church first thing...

 

 

 

 

...followed by roast chicken, with some pretty spectacular Yorkshires, the kind where no two were alike, but they sure did rise and joy of joys, just lifted out of the tin like puffs of air!

Sometimes they have to be prised out with a knife and more stays in the tin than comes out!1

 

 

The afternoon was our usual games fest.

In the week we had received Teen Two's annual report from his Speech and Language therapist,

a couple of highlights below were very encouraging and we couldn't help thinking were as a direct result of him having played word games with us every weekend for well over a year now...

Understanding of Language

 "Teen Two's result on this language assessment demonstrates significant improvement in his understanding of vocabulary – his score shows improvement beyond what would be typically expected in the timeframe. His difficulties in this area would now be classed as moderate, rather than moderate- severe"
                                                            Use of Language
"Teen Two's score on this subtest indicated skills within the average range (Scaled Score: 11) and showed an improvement on his previous performance beyond what would be expected."

                                                            Playing these word games introduces words that are not in every day use and give us an opportunity to explain the meaning of words ( no point knowing the word without its meaning!) So whilst these sessions started off to fill a void in Grandma's life, it has had the unexpected bonus of benefitting Teen Two.

                Double blessings!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family Fun Day At Work

 

Today was Family Fun Day at Hubby's workplace.

All kinds of free activities were laid on,

Teen Two enjoyed the inflatable assault course...

 

 

 

...and Hubby enjoyed showing us some of the projects he has worked on

(not allowed to show actual items sadly)

 

 

 

Another activity was to make a paper plane, attach a small motor and whoever got their plane to fly a given distance, won their own motor...

 

 

 

...only a few days before learning of this activity I had found this pack in our bookcase, so we made a plane before going....

 

 

...on his maiden flight...

 

 

..he flew further than any other flight all day!

We will have a lot of fun with this little motor I can tell!

 

 

Teen One sadly didn't have the same success!

 

 

A free BBQ was part of the day, so imagine my excitement when we went to join the queue and saw the sign of the caterers van...

 

 

 

...but sadly it was just a burger....a pretty good burger I must admit, but I am not a huge burger fan so was a tad disappointed as pork is one of my favourite meats!

We also had a free bottle of pepsi!

 

 

Next up was a tour of the factory, with yet more enthusiastic explanations of what each part did, and Hubby's involvement in it.

 

 

Back out in the sunshine, the Teens got to hold Bilbo the kestrel...

 

 

 

...he really was a beauty.

 

 

 

Water has always been one of Teen Two's loves, so playing fireman was right up his street!

 

 

 

As was this supersoaker!

 

 

Whilst Teen One amused herself making a daisy chain

 

 

 

just like when she was a little girl.

 

 

 

 

A Tug Of War had been planned for the afternoon, and the Engineers had been hoping to hold on to their crown, but sadly not enough turned up on the day so it was cancelled...shame as we had looked forward to cheering Hubby on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mid afternoon Hubby and Teen Two headed up to Guildford to watch Robot Wars Live Show,

Teen One and I took a wander round nearby Dunelm Mill and then found a little country lane behind the stores to explore.

 

 

Walking through we saw a teeny tiny bird...hopping around the bark of the tree, my first thought was it must be a tree creeper, and having checked out the RSPB website I think I was right.

Its so tiny you can barely see it just below middle of the shot.

Such a cute little thing.

 

 

 

Back home it was time for a cuppa and one of those naughty caramel waffles

a bit of knitting and generally chilling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bitter Sweet Bargain!

 

 

This morning started with the usual early morning school run for Teen One, then onto Lidl's.

They had some lovely plants out today, so I bought one pot, which had two well established plants in, which have fitted perfectly into the new fence baskets, for just £2...

 

 

 

...plus another hanging basket, again for a fiver...it has around five different plants in it, so should look really pretty when they all come out.

 

 

As a few of our turfs from last week were not terribly healthy, I suggested to Hubby he pick up another one on the way home, to replace the dodgy bits with.

When he went to pay for the turf...it was a pound!!

Imagine how cheaply we could have turfed the lawn for had we waited a week!!

However, there is no guarantee they would have had any turf left had we waited ( and had we known of course) plus, tomorrow there will not be time to buy and lay the turfs anyway...but I still cant help feeling bittersweet over today's bargain!

 

 

 

When Teen Two came home from college, he helped me drag all the soil we had dug out of the garden last week, from the back of the garage, round to the front of the house...

 

 

... and transfer it all into a skip bag.

I had looked into getting a hippo bag, which costs on average £10, then to have it taken away is £119!

I found a local firm who give you the bag for free and then take it away for £45!

 

 

I decided to tackle the front room ( or room of doom!) just to make some paths to walk through if nothing else ( yes its been THAT bad!!)

In my sorting, I came across this wind spinner, which my cousin in Australia gave me on our recent visit.

I will think of her, and the lovely beach BBQ we had when she gave it to me.

 

 

A couple of days ago FQ2FF blogged about buying some essential oils, which inspired me to buy some too...not least because I had just received an Amazon voucher for a piece of Market Research I had taken part in ( testing cans of cola...and yes I got paid for it!)

If you order 4 you get one free, and that worked out to be just about the value of the voucher and postage was free too!

I chose Rose, Lemon, Watermelon, Gingerbread, Fresh linen.

I let Teen One smell each one "blind" and other than thinking watermelon was apple, she got the all correct!

Fresh linen she said smelt like washing....can't top that aye!

I have put a few drops of rose on my plug in air freshner, which was pretty much dried out and can already smell the rose.

I will save the gingerbread for Christmas time and I think the Fresh Linen I will use in the conservatory.

The others will be good for ringing the changes.

 

 

 

 

At Friday Club we used the left over butterflies from yesterday, but letting the kids paint it completely.

 

Back home with a cuppa I have just been watching Gogglesprogs, I really love those kids!

I particularly loved their reaction to "Grease" having seen it many times as a teenager and owned the album, I was always secretly disappointed at the changes Sandy made...but as a teenager I didn't like to admit to my friends I preferred her in her lemon skirt and cardi to the black leather outfit she ended up in.

As an adult I have voiced that thought many times and aside from the great tunes in the film, don't care much for the morals or lyrics.

I was so pleasantly surprised when all the kids tonight  felt it was a sad ending because she had changed....and didn't like the morals of it either.....how mature of them!

Great one gogglesprogs, I am your number one fan!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now This Sounds Like My Kind Of Challenge!

 

Today at Parent and Toddlers it was my turn to do the activity.

We made butterflies as you can see, folding half of the card over, so only one side is painted, then folding back the clean side and opening up to see a perfectly symmetrical butterfly appear!

Easy peasy of course, but to little ones its almost magical.

Depending on the age and understanding of the little one there are various opportunities for turning this into a really simple learning activity.

Talk about the colours they are painting with, that a butterfly starts off as a caterpillar, has the same pattern on each side etc.

 

 

Back home it was time to catch up with some ironing and various other chores...

 

 

 

 

...then time for some "me time."

Several days  (and evenings) have gone by without me picking up my knitting needles, not that the sock novelty has work off...I have just been too busy or too tired!

So this afternoon I took an hour out to put my feet up and cast on the stitches for sock number two, using West Yorkshire Spinners Passion Fruit Cooler shade.

The first few rows are always fiddly so I am glad they are out of the way.

Whilst looking down the channels for something to watch at the same time, I came across the Springwatch Red Button Channel.

We all love Springwatch, although have missed a fair bit of this series sadly, but the Red Button Channel is just live shots of cameras set up around the  reserve.

I am sure some may find it rather boring, but with my cuppa and knitting needles in hand, it was like sitting in the countryside, hearing the bird song in the back ground and secretly watching the birds in their nests, all from the comfort of my armchair!

I may have lived in a city all my life, but there is little doubt I am a country girl at heart.

 

 

With Grandma and Grandad now living in Lincolnshire, our familiar family visits to Devon are now a thing of the past, and we are looking forward to making new memories in pastures new.

From time to time this week I have been googling "things to do in Grimsby."

I was surprised when suggestions for places to visit were over 30miles away!

Something I thought might be a bit nearer to home was going out for tea/coffee...always popular in this family!

I had started to compile a list ( only two on it at the moment!) and was going to run them by the family already living there to see if they were worth visiting....but reading FQ2FF tonight it seems Grandma and Grandad have already been set a challenge  to try out 12 new tea shops in 12 months!

Sounds like a fab idea and we look forward to road testing them too!