Mild Peril

When you go, will you send back …

pfreeman — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:46:13 +0000

… a letter from Reading ?

In a plan that has fermented from Easter last year, we are uprooting our family and heading out of the country. Not too far (like one friend we have who emigrated to New Zealand and make us rather jealous) but only to the next country up, Scotland.

For reasons many and plenty, although anyone suggesting it is for sporting purposes is very much mistaken, we had an idea, formed a plan, sorted out the house, located a general area to move to (West Lothian, near Edinburgh) and put our house on the market.

Of course, this is possibly the worst time to be trying to sell a house and nothing much is happening. Still we have a Plan B and we aren’t worried about it.

It’s a bold move, but click on the image below to see some photos from a recent trip to the area.

Jeannie’s Mock Ballet Exam Result

pfreeman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:39:15 +0000

Here is the Mock exam result from last summer.

The real test is in November

At a wedding tomorrow

pfreeman — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:27:34 +0000

We’re at my cousins wedding tomorrow. Here is a route plan from Google of the mad route we’ll have to take through old London town. Of interest only to myself and my parents probably.

View Larger Map

Lateral Thinking

pfreeman — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:02:57 +0000

Jeannie has brought home her workbooks from school as it is the end of term.

In her Maths book she was set the following question by her teacher. Write down 10 lots of three number that add up to 18.

Jeannie put in the following answers

18 +0 + 0 = 18

17 + 1 + 0 = 18

16 + 2 + 0 = 18

15 + 3 + 0 = 18

14 + 4 + 0 = 18

13 + 5 + 0 = 18

12 + 6 + 0 = 18

11 + 7 + 0 = 18

10 + 8 + 0 = 18

The teacher’s comment was “These may be right but I did expect 10 + 5 + 3 = 18 9 + 6 + 3 = 18″

To me, that was good lateral thinking. I don’t see too much difference between using 0 and 3 (except it is easier to add up of course) and if she hadn’t wanted 0 to be used, she should have said.

Curry hangover

pfreeman — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:50:02 +0000

Gabby was back to her normal self on Friday, as if nothing had happened. Then the evening came and her temperature came back. She has been up and down ever since. The other two children are getting “end of term” syndrome and need the break I think. Petty arguments and fights break the peace on occasion.

Is it possible to get a curry hangover? We had a takeaway Friday night, a lovely Malaysian curry with just a single bottle of beer. Next morning, I felt like I’d had 5 bottles of beer. Mind you, I felt equally bad Monday morning as well, so maybe it is a bug.

We were going to go to Legoland on Saturday but a “fun day” put us off. It would have been packed and one of the “attractions” was Barney. I’d have gone if I been allowed to take Hiro’s sword and sort him out once and for all. Barney is not a Hero. Plenty more days this summer to go. We nearly went Sunday but the weather wasn’t very good. Instead we went on a bike ride after Jeannie had her Mock RAD exam. She did well and passed to go to the real exam in November. Again, I think Gina was more nervous than Jeannie. But, apparently she really knew her stuff on this one.

On the bike ride (well Ryan went on his scooter and Gabby was in the pushchair and I was pushing her and Gina walked so really Jeannie went on the bike ride on her own!) Ryan managed to find the nettles and sting himself again. If he had a hero power it would be the ability to find nettles when no one else can.

Hot

pfreeman — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:36:05 +0000

Gabby has come down with a temperature. When she woke last night at about midnight, we realised it was the first time she had woken up in the night since she had moved into her bedroom (and Gina had stopped breastfeeding). You forget sometimes when your children are doing well. It got me thinking. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to put Ryan on the naughty step. Yes, we are stereotypical middle class parents that use the naughty step. At least we don’t just shout at our children and then let them wander the street like our next door neighbours.

Jeannie got the results of her ballet lesson today. She got a commendation which means she’d done really well, but didn’t get the top mark, Special Commendation. Whilst we’re generally happy about that, one girl did get a special commendation and I saw that girl and she was just rubbish. Oops, middle class parent alert again!

p.s. special sports day edition coming at the weekend.

Playing Catch Up

pfreeman — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:59:35 +0000

On Sunday, Jeannie performed in her latest ballet medal test on Sunday. She was doing a traditional Swiss dance. Whilst she had been practicing each week, she didn’t seem as confident as in her previous medal tests and the mock dance was her least impressive one yet. However, I’m happy to say she did really, really well. She was full of confidence, smiling and didn’t put a foot wrong. Of the dances I saw, she was the best, but then again I did have to wait outside for a while with Gabby (who shouted “Jeannie” just as she came on, but was otherwise very well behaved).

On Wednesday, Jeannie lost her 2^nd tooth and we can see the big teeth coming up behind now. We tried to make fun of her speaking funny, but she seemed to speak normally again pretty soon.

On Friday, we got the school reports and both were very good. Jeannie was once again, excellent. I had more issues with the lack of detail in the report which didn’t have very much specific to her (copied out from the Level 1 specs Gina found out later). Ryan had made “fantastic progress” with his writing this term, despite still being slightly below average, but then he did come into the school later and is now doing really well, so should catch up.

On Saturday, Jeannie had her R.A.D. ballet lesson and as most of the group has gone up to the next year group, she was one of only two children in the class. And the other didn’t turn up, so she had a 1-1 with the teacher. She has her mock exam next Sunday. Ryan had his last music lesson. He hasn’t really enjoyed it this year, and probably won’t carry on next year. In fact, it will probably clash with the football group he is going to start at. I’ve agreed to help with the team as I know the organiser and it is quite exciting as he is currently doing his management badges - like proper managers do (except Gareth Southgate) and thinks I should do it too.

On Sunday, Ryan got his Level 1 badge for swimming which is a great achievement. He has done really well this year in swimming. In the afternoon, I took the kids to see Shrek The Third for doing really well in their reports. It isn’t as good as the first two. In fact, the biggest laugh came for the trailer for the Simpsons Movie “Spider-Pig! Spider-Pig!”

Tooth Fairy: First Pay Out

pfreeman — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:05:21 +0000

BREAKING NEWS: Jeannie just lost her first tooth. Wild excitement as it is overdue because most of her class have multiple gaps.

Rain stopped play

pfreeman — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:58:42 +0000

I’ve been so busy at work this week and so tired in the evening that there hasn’t been any time to write about the weekends events.

We have too much stuff. I think I’ve mentioned this before. When the extension was built it all got stuffed into the shed. It got so bad that I couldn’t actually get into the shed without climbing onto the huge mountain of boxes. Of course, having to find something just made things worse as the boxes that used to be in a mountainous neat pile turned into an erupted volcano type pile with things falling down everywhere.

Enough was enough and I took two days off work to sort out the shed. At the end of it, I had a small pile of boxes of stuff that I could sell on ebay, a small pile of boxes to keep (which I put back into the loft), a small pile of rubbish that went into the bin and a huge pile of boxes of stuff that I reckoned we could sell at a car boot sale. This was put in the new playroom.

My parents graciously agreed to help but finding a free Sunday for both of us took some work, but eventually this Sunday just passed we sorted it out. My parents stayed the night as you have to make an early start, I loaded up the car with boxes (and couldn’t get it all in the car) and the rain stayed off.

In the morning it wasn’t raining when we woke up, but about a minute later it was. As we left it really started raining and it didn’t stop all day. No car boot sales. The two different ones we drove to (as we had gone to such effort we weren’t to be put off by one) were closed for the day and looking at the weather it was a good job too.

I looked at the stuff in the car and realised I’ve have to take it all out again, store it back in the playroom and plan another day (not easy with three children) to do the sale. I realised this wasn’t going to be very easy and the main reason for doing it was to get the stuff out of the house, not to make some money. So Gina drove the car round to the school who are having their summer fate this Saturday and gifted the whole lot to them. They were a bit stunned at the amount.

Now, this weekends mission is not to buy half of it back when we go to the fate tomorrow

Gone to the dogs

pfreeman — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:51:36 +0000

Tuesday and a rare night out without the kids. We went to Reading Grayhounds with some friends who we first met on a midwife course before our eldest was born. We’ve been friends ever since.

We got a meal and drinks on a special deal but had to actually waste money to have a bet. I’m sad to say that neither myself won a single bet all night. I nearly did when I did a forecast bet on dogs 3 and 4. They were leading going round the final corner only for no 5 to race through and beat them both. Nearly £80 not won there. Mind you at only £1 a bet, a total loss of £12 is good value for a great night out.