A Mother's Ramblings

I'm still pretty sure that every Craft blog post I start mentions how uncrafty I am. So, I apologise for once again starting like that again. With that in mind, I also need to apologise for having got really far behind with my Bostik Blogger Crafting. I think, it's because I'm not crafty that I fear using the craft items and so I leave them in a pile (after scrawling the month they are on the box) and eventually get round to them... So here's June. The theme for the month was Monsters, which didn't give me much to go on. However, Big Boy has been after a new book mark after deciding he really loves my Alligator/Crocodile book mark.

A few days ago, I asked my friends on Facebook if they were to read a blog post written by me, what would they like it to be about? This is one of the posts, based on those suggestions. Making School Based Activities Holiday Fun! If my children are anything like me, then by the time they go back to School in September they are going to have forgotten almost EVERYTHING they have ever learnt. I think this is why that for as long as I can remember, I've tried to incorporate the children's learning into everyday activities for the children to participate in. I figure that the if the children are being given little reminders on a daily basis that just maybe they won't forget what they are being taught! During the Summer we want to do things which are fun though, right? Getting our Children to practising their handwriting and Maths skills is probably the last thing on our mind and rightly so. Summer is a time to relax, a time to kick back and forget about School work... bu

I swear this last week has flown by, mainly because as well as all the normal activities the children and I have scheduled into our week, we've also had tonnes of other activities to attend too. I love the saying if you need something doing ask someone busy (or however it goes) because this week it has seemed a little like that for me and the children! The Fourth Week Of July The weekend was good, we were busy with playing with our new Tent, listening to the music coming from a local Fete and generally doing the things we do at the weekend, shopping, visiting my Mum, being together as a family. Top Ender even managed to squeeze in a birthday party for a classmate who will be going to a different School this coming September. We also managed to squeeze in a gala viewing of Inside Out, eat a lovely Roast dinner and I'm sure there was a walk along the way somewhere. Then the week started. Monday, the Children and I went about our day. The children went to School and

Technically for us, this is the first full week of the Summer Holidays, however this week coming Top Ender is going to Summer School. It's billed as a week for students to get used to the school, meet some new friends, have some taster lessons and generally allow the students a chance to build confidence. The end of the week finishes with a fun day at a local water sports centre (that's Top has been to recently with Guides!) and an awards ceremony. Then our Summer Holidays as a family can almost begin! Saturday - Loaded Hot Dogs Loaded Hot Dogs are a bug favourite of Daddy and I. The Children? Well, not so much, they like the Hot Dogs and some toppings but they don't like fried onions. I mean seriously, who doesn't like Onions on Hot Dogs?! I thought that what we could do for our Evening meal tonight is have some Hot Dogs, some Bacon wrapped Hot Dogs, some fried onions, grated Cheese and whatever else we can think of that would be nice on top of the Hot Dogs.

Top Ender is rather taken with Music Festivals. It's my own fault, of course. Had I not taken her to a couple when she was younger she wouldn't have any clue what she was missing out on and wouldn't spend hours working out the perfect Festival outfits in her bedroom and creating outfits on Pinterest and various other mood boards that are scattered across her bedroom. Luckily, because I'm a brilliant Mummy, when Hobbycraft asked if Top Ender would like to review a Daisy Headband Kit I knew it would go with her outfit and she'd love me forever! As I had worked out, I was indeed the hero of this story and Top Ender loved the Headband Kit. To the extent where she eagerly started making the kit as soon as she got home from School, ready to wear that evening to her Guides meeting. She gave up after five minutes and told me that if I wanted it I could have it. So I went out to the garden, and I sat there and I tried to work out how to make the Daisy Headband acco

In our home, we regularly have Trailer screenings. Basically, Daddy trawls the internet and finds trailers that he thinks the family will enjoy and then together we watch them. This does mean however, that sometimes we hear about movies years before they are due out, as was the case with Inside Out. As more and more teaser trailers have been released the Children and I have become more and more excited about the film and we we're guessing it was going to be a brilliant Summer blockbuster and one we were excited to see at some point during the holidays, so when Top Ender and Big Boy were told we were off to see it they were REALLY excited. The film is about 11 year old Riley, she and her family have just moved from Minnesota to San Francisco and she's not happy about it. In fact we know she's not happy about it because when we go inside her head, we meet the characters in charge of her emotions. Do you ever feel sure that someone else was in charge of your head and

A while back, Top Ender and Big Boy were sent some snacks to try. They were called Fruit Heroes and were fruit bars, that were a mix of Raisins and another fruit (or two in the case of the Apple and Raspberry  and Strawberry flavour!) and I figured would be a good way to mix it up when the children wanted a treat, but I didn't want them to have sweets or if it came to it when I was craving something sweet but didn't want chocolate. As it happened, one day the fruit I'd organised for the Children to have in their lunchboxes wasn't looking too appetising in the morning and so I was stuck with what to give the Children. I figured that the Fruit Heroes would be a good last minute substitute and so threw it into the lunchbox. That night, as I emptied out the rubbish from the lunchboxes I found that both children had eaten all the Fruit Heroes bars that I'd put into their lunch boxes that morning. This is good news. The press release says that each 20g fruit s

The one thing that I KNEW I wanted to do for the start of this Summer, was the crepe paper streamers over the front door again. The Children and I loved this last year, and it's just one of those things that's going to be a tradition until the Children are too old for it. I figure that'll be a lot sooner than I think, but for now it's a tradition! Big Boy did give me one piece of advice. He said to me "Please make sure there are more streamers than there was last year". And it's true last year it was a bit sparse, but I think that's because I didn't plan that far ahead!  I may have gone a little overboard this year. The children were so kind, after they had burst through the door, they told me to have a go, bursting through the top part of the doorway, which they had been too short to reach. Top Ender offered to film me doing it, but I filmed me running through the streamers. It's so much fun! So Summer has started offic

A few days ago, I asked my friends on Facebook if they were to read a blog post written by me, what would they like it to be about? This is one of the posts, based on those suggestions. Summer Holiday Survival Guide Every Summer, Parents all across the world are faced with a dilemma. Now, that the children aren't at School for several hours a day, what shall we do together? For me it's pretty obvious what to do. After breakfast and a few chores, we then have to do a little bit of Mummy Home School. I personally think that a little bit of daily reading, Maths practice and handwriting practice is a good thing. It's not for long, only twenty minutes of them each, but enough to keep them in habit and the handwriting practice is also a chance for the children to keep a record of what they have been up to during the Summer.

With Top Ender going to a new School this September and Big Boys school changing their School Uniform, we need some new name labels for lunchboxes, bags, pencil cases, jumpers, jackets, shoes, trainers, umbrellas, water bottles... basically everything a child might at one point or another take to School and need to know which particular one of a hundred identical things is theirs. Just as I was starting to think about labels, Bright Star asked if I'd like to do a review which seemed to be a genius move of timing! Normally, I just pick labels that I think are suitable or are plain, but when I saw the sheer number of icons that were available at Bright Star I had to ask the Children what labels they would like. The Children loved the variety of the icons and eventually picked an icon they liked, a colour and a font. It's a good job they did, because I would have picked entirely the wrong colour for Big Boy and the wrong icon for Top Ender. The labels arrived quickly a

The other day I bumped into some friends. We exchanged our normal pleasantries and caught up with each other (mostly remembering things that we'd seen on Facebook) and then just as I was about to go, one of the friends suddenly remembered something she wanted to ask me. How do you get time in the morning to cook breakfast?! I didn't know what she meant to start with, then I realised. For the last few weeks I've been posting pictures of the breakfasts the children and I are eating each morning and occasionally I've made a cooked breakfast. Time has nothing to do with it however. I mean, if you get up early enough you can have all the time you want before School. It did start me thinking however about Breakfast, and how the children and I have recently changed the way in which we've been viewing Breakfast. Up until recently, breakfast was almost an after thought, some form of fuel to get us through the day but that was it. And then when we got the new sofa, I

Is it just me or is July flying by? I think it's because I don't want the Children to be on Summer break just yet, because I don't want Top Ender to grow up and not be at lower School any more! Still, it's fine. I know it is, because I'm sure that every parent goes through this and there is nothing we can do to stop time marching on. The Third Week Of July The start of the third week of July had BB and I at Beavers camp. I've already written about it, twice in fact, if you want to go and catch up and find out more about what happened then you can find out but the main highlights are BB got to use an airgun and was really very happy about it. I love that he loves to shoot, as I do too. Sunday, we were at Church which was lovely. I must write up a post about being at Church as I think I talk so much about it, but I hardly ever really explain what is happening. Monday was a rainy day, but I managed to get a lot of work done, get the children to Sch

A few weeks ago, when Daddy and the Children and I had some time off work and School we went to the Millennium Country Park in Marston Vale. We're lucky that we live on the same train line as the Park/Lakes and so we hopped on to a train.  Of course we took a train selfie! We've been to the Park before and we enjoyed our walk round so much that we knew we had to go back. The other great thing about the park is that there are several Geocache sites hidden around the the walk and as we had a good idea about the terrain and the areas where we could get some shade we were really looking forward to the family day out. The most important thing was working out how to get to the Visitor Centre, where there is an Ice Cream stand and on this rather warm day we really needed the cool down! We walked round the entire lake, it was peaceful, it was fun and the children, Daddy and I really had a great time just enjoying the scenery and the sounds of nature. The smel

I really love making my meal plans and I'm so glad that Leoni-Fay asked me to start publishing them again. It's so much easier for me to see what we're having for our evening meal when we're out and about and I don't have to worry about adding the meals to my calendar to help me to remember! So the start of this week is the last few days of School for Top Ender and Big Boy and I'm starting to get really upset because it's the start of a new chapter for Top Ender and I'm not ready for this one to close! Saturday - Baked Sloppy Joes Top Ender and Big Boy LOVE baked sloppy joes, so much so that every time I ask what they fancy they ask if they can have baked sloppy joes. It got so bad the other day that Daddy requested that we have baked sloppy joes too. Apparently Daddy loves making the sloppy joes too and so that's what we're having tonight. I am making one change to the normal sloppy joes however and I'm asking Daddy to make twice as muc

I'm a normal Mum. No, seriously I am. Stop laughing. Okay, so yes I understand that there is nothing "normal" about me, but then again as I frequently tell Top Ender and Big Boy being called different or weird is a compliment not an insult. Anyway. As I was saying. I'm a normal Mum. Sure, I wake up every two hours or so in the night when my husband or I check that my Sons blood sugars haven't dropped or risen to a level that is dangerous. I'm a normal Mum. Oh and yes, I'm aware that I actively encourage my children to read, practice their spellings, their number bonds and times tables, their handwriting and of course their Violin. I'm a normal Mum. I'm a volunteer parent governor at the School both my children currently attend. I'm a normal Mum. I go to Church and I'm lucky enough to have a calling (it's an assignment so I have a "job" at Church) and each week the Children and I read Scriptures, d

A few days ago, I asked my friends on Facebook if they were to read a blog post written by me, what would they like it to be about? This is one of the posts, based on those suggestions. Clearing Out Despite what you might think, this isn't a post about evacuating your bowels. It's actually about how Daddy and I clear out the junk in our house. Which, is actually less often than we probably should, but is more often than plenty of people actually do if some popular TV shows are anything to go by. Anyhoo. I'm quite good about clearing out, when I get going. I normally adopt a three pile system of Keep, Rubbish and Donate. I learnt this years ago from Flylady and if you are stuck with keeping the house clean and tidy then the system she teaches you is brilliant. At least I think so. When Daddy and I decided to clear out the loft the other day, the plan was to bring everything out of the loft (apart from the few things we knew we were keeping like Christmas decorati

A few weeks back, Top Ender and Big Boy received a parcel and within that parcel was a blanket, a Snuggle Up, for each of them from Heat Holders . You know the company right? They're the ones that we rave about because we love the socks that they do. Anyway, back to the blankets. When we had originally got them the idea was that they would be great for picnics. The children however grabbed a blanket each, threw them into their bedrooms and I thought they were destined never to be seen again. A few days later I asked the children to bring them with them when we went for a picnic. With one thing and another we forgot the blankets in the car and so the other night when BB was Beavers and it was a bit chilly sitting in the shade, Tops grabbed one of them and wrapped herself up. She was quite happy, even if Daddy and I did think she was crazy as it wasn't chilly enough for a blanket in our opinion. The blanket somehow got forgotten in the car again, despite my req