The Mechevious Munchkin! (by sarah)

Jean is coming on in leaps and bounds!

Uhoh - means I'm dropping this object or I'm back on my bottom when I should be standing etc...

Babeee - means anything that you cuddle especially teddy bears and cats.

Shooosh - means shoes, socks and trousers, presumably becuase they all go on or over her feet!

Door - seems to mean any componenet of a building so doors, windows, walls and floors!

Ubbish - is the latest and appeares to mean rubbish and is also code word for I dont want this peice of yummy any more mummy.

Her walking is really good! And the nursery commented on it and apparently she hadnt been walking there at all - now she objects if shes not walking! Also she now had ideas about where she wants to go. If you try and steer her in another direction she just sits down!

Here are some cute pictures!

Jean has also discovered the whole blowing nose thing! If you start blowing you nose she wrinkles hers up and huffs, she will also insist on having a piece of tissue that she holds somewhere in the region of her mouth and nose and huffs on it - general just ending up eating half of it! But the really sweet thing (ok I'm her adoring perant ok) is that she will try and blow your nose for you by holding the tissue to your face.

This is a photo of her trying to blow Minnis nose, she also subjects the kittens and many of her toys to the same treatment!

She also regually sits and pretend to be eating or possibly cooking, she even puts imaginary things in the bowls and attempts stiring and if your really lucky she tries to feed it too you. This is infantly more tasty and pleasant than when she sttempts to feed you her fishermans pie etc... Or when she tries to share her beef cassorole with Al!

She is feeding herself really well too although I did come in to find she was weebabixing the cats with squeals of joy as they proceeded to eat it off of each others backs!

Kitten Presant (by sarah)

I was outside yesturday evening when the kittens came trotting over and placed this at my feet.

I am both happy that they consider me worthy of their presants but at the same time feel sad for the poor little rodent. Still it means they are definatly good mousers now - even though that isnt a mouse!

Cat bouyancy (by alaric)

Cats naturally tend towards the highest point they can get to. I presume this is to do with the ease of defending a high point and the ability to easily survey the most terrain, but either way, they seem to enjoy lounging in places they have to climb up to...

For ours, when they're indoors, the highest point they can reach is the top of a box, which is on top of a bookcase about two metres tall, in my office (which is upstairs to begin with). It's also a rather awkward place to extract them from when we put them out for the night, which I think they've realised too. But by climbing up on my desk, I can get them down anyway.

Anyway, as I came back to my desk after lunch, I realised that both of the black and white cats were curled up together up there, and made a cute picture (although I only had my mobile phone to hand, so sorry about the quality):

The sad demise of the Dishwasher and the Rise of something better (by sarah)

The dishwasher repair man was supposed to be coming yesturday to repair our dishwasher which has been sorely missed these last few months. He was supposed to arrive at some time between 8 am and 1 pm so there we were waiting by 7:30 - he turned up at 2 pm just as we had given up on him coming. But he had got lost and been delayed etc... so we forgave him.

We explained the issue - ie the RCD tripping everytime we put the thing on, he explains that its probably the heating element as that normally cuases this problem. He turned the machine upside and with a lot of screw driver work he got the bottom panel off. He had been jovially chatting away until this point, then his face fell and he started saying things like 'ah...' and 'ooo...'.

The reason?

The inside of our poor dishwasher was a thick red sludgy soup of red rust 🙁 There was so much water in it, it really was unbelievable! Everything was corroded 🙁 Here are some picks after a bit clearing up.

He apologised lots that he couldnt fix it and even if we did replace all the damaged components it would still probably trip the RCD as there would always be something else that we had missed 🙁 Also the cost of all those components including pumps and motors and what not would be more than the cost of a good new dishwasher.

So off he went after giving us a thing to get a discount from his shop as he had still had to charge us call out (he seemed really worried about this as if we would shout at him or something?).

Al had had a trip to IKEA sceduled for a birthday treat but we decided that my budget for that would have to go towards a new dishwasher, then we looked at the looming piles of washing up and I looked at my hands where the sores had just started healin. Al sighed and we checked the balance on the credit cards.

Then we ended up in the shop checking out the dishwashers, we already knew that we wanted a full sized one now we have Jean - effiency and water consumption where important as was price! The January sales were for once at the right time to benifiet us as the one we wanted (durability being important) was a Boshe it cost us just over £200, as always I got grumpy when it came to handing over the money but within an hour we where heading home with a dishwasher.

Our friend Mike had been supposed to visit but had got serverlly deleyed and arrived just after we got home with the machine. He took us out for Pizza Hut as a birthday treat for me - yummy!!! 🙂 Thankyou Mike 🙂

Once back from that the poor sod then ended up helping us to take the old dishwasher out to the van and bring the new one in. He then helped Al set it up with me growing more impatient to use it by the second! The house was in complete dissaray with furniture move hither and thither to let things pass. There was also the obligatory polestrene thought it said it was CFC free and the wooden strutts where untreated wood from stastanable woods etc.... Plus I have uses for the white stuff I've always dispised before!

Here are the photos of Al working out how to install it and make it work.

After a lot of faffing he appeared to have hit on an idea and got down to work.

He then had an eureka moment and looked scarily excited. He promised me he knew how to make it work!

His solution?

To rebuild the polestirene packaging around himself and to pretend to be a dishwasher - this mainly involved miming the actions of washing up and going brrrrrrrr!

Mean while Mike had got hold of the safty travel device in the washing machine - otherwise known as a big yellow foam arrow!

As you can tell the boys where focused and completely mature about all of this! Even Minni jioned in though I think it was more a case of being in the wronge place at the wronge time though she did purr and was happy to pose!

Eventually the Dishwasher was installed! We loaded it and set it going - its so quiet!

Today we dismantled the old dishwasher as a) I wanted photos and b) Al was convinced there had to be some salvagable components that he could keep for future projects!

Part of me wonders what he is planning to make!

Boxing Day Madness (by sarah)

This morning Al couldnt open his eyes, not suprising as they where gummed last night. Jeans had conjuntavitis for the last few days and Al knew he was coming down with it but we where hoping - it appears that they both have a slight avertion to the soot that the smokeless coal makes 🙁

Anyway I spent a good half an hour cleaning his eyes out with salt water this morning - Poor babe has a phobia about things touching his eyes which dint help! Once he could see again we found the duty phramacist and headed out. In boots whilst he looked at things I pushed Jean in her pushchair - this was my fatal mistake - the cold and effort stuck and bam! My pelvis seized in a very painful way. Still Al got a special eye ointment and we lurked to the nearest coffee/place I could sit down. Fortunatly the place was warm enough to take coats etc... off - this helped muchly with the pain and stiffness though it did mean we missed the shops to buy certian supplies like - orange juice and parsnips 🙁

Back at home I had to attempt to put the ointment in Als eye! This was near impossible and had him physically fighting me at some points. It was worse when I did his bad eye than when I put the gunk in the good eye. The other problem was that I started doing my 'mothering' voice which had him cracking up with laughter. in the end I had to get him singing rude versions of christmas carols whist I did a fast in and squirt jobby!

Of course he then couldnt see so I wrapped him up warm on the setee and cats came and saw him!

Unfortunatly one of the kittens descided that they would climb the christmas tree that we've put on the window seal (the window sills in this house being like half a meter deep etc...) Becuase it had to fit in a short space we had to not use the bottom teir which ment we couldnt use the stand - so it was standing in a Farleys Follow on Milk tin, full of marbles - this had worked really well but the kittens weight was too much.

I saw it start to go and shouted NO! Ran too it and caught it but not before the marbles had tipped - of course poor Al could only hear what was going on and was calling 'Sarah Sarah are you all right?' I was trying to answer whilst wrestling a tress and having a coughing fit. Still I sorted it out but then my hands wouldnt work proberlly and my pelvis decided to kick in - so we still havent had our lunch - bar Jean who we fed before doing the eye treatment!

Still it all turned out ok in the end - Al is currently sleeping underrnieth two cats! Jean is sleeping too - I'm going to reheat left overs including Leopard Pie! as soon as Al wakes up. We have Christmas music playing and well there are 12 days of Christmas so....

The cats at least are getting inot the spirit!

And I had a pyro moment when I found our candy cains where a bit demented! Burn, burn, MELT - evil Genius laugh.