Frustrated (by sarah)

I am sick 🙁 I got half way home on Wednesday and a stomach bug crashed down on me, I hadn't eaten breakfast as I felt sick, but that isn't that unusual. I had to deviate into the Morrisons and call Al to come and rescue me.

This is so so frustrating because today I should be at college, Al has taken time off work to look after Mary and I can't go. They are looking at puppets and games in science communication this week and I am not there 🙁 On top of that it turns out I've forgotten to sort some of the disability stuff out for college so the stress is on.

From about mid November things have been falling apart - the house due to weather and age of appliances and the kids and Al being ill etc... and I really wanted to be able to focus a bit more on my course.

Mary’s 3rd Birthday – postponed (by sarah)

So I am being a bad Mummy and being stressed - we have a broken home at the moment and budget wont stretch to a party outside the home so we decided to postpone Mary's birthday celebration - she is not old enough to know different.

But we did have a little picnic tea with her - Daddy made her special pizza she can eat and she opened the cards and presents that arrived in the post.

I also made cake pops in the afternoon with her.

She likes cake.

Father and Daughter Soldering (by sarah)

Jeany got an electronics kit for Christmas - her and Al had a great time building it. It was a little musical instrument which she now keeps making me play! I got a different musical thing which Al is going to help me with. I believe this is all his cunning plan to get us both good at soldering as there are now off the shelf units to do the kind of LED lighting I wanted to put in at The Bakery. We've been eyeing up our living room 😉

Plans are to give her a bit more formal programming training now too.

p.s she did do most of the soldering herself but this bit was tricky and she was helping hold things in place.

An Allotment At Last! (by sarah)

Today we went and signed for and paid for a plot of ground to grown things on - it is not an allotment as such but is on a farm - I would still like an allotment round the corner but have gotten hacked off with messages being ignored etc...

In the photo Jean is marking on corner and Al and Mary the other - I'm taking the photo from the apex.

Anyway - it is a large plot if an odd shape and comes with raspberry canes already in situ. They have of course died back now but there was shrivelled blackened fruit which I rubbed to get the smell and yep - raspberries.

Of course everything is water logged around here at the moment - Jean wasn't complaining though. She even got Daddy and Mary to join her 🙂

Tea Cups in the Garden (by sarah)

We've been busy building paths to the chicken run though Al keeps miss judging how much concrete we need so it has spanned out several weekends now! He's found an easier way of mixing the concrete though and that is by using a tarp 🙂

As you can probably see from the photograph the garden is a mess with the old rabbit run and soil that's been dug out to make the run area and the old oil drum that the people who lived here before left and which is full of stuff and bin bags of stuff that got damaged by leaking ceilings and so on. So I cheered myself up by putting up the nice teacup garden ornaments my friend Ulrike gave me and envisioning what it will look like after a few more weekends of hard graft.

I really love these and they will be the main feature of our garden food area. I may assess how easy the cats can get to them and put some bird food in or maybe a little pot plant - at the moment it is far too rainy for either option!