Swimming Update

Alex has been working hard with his swimming recently.


He looks like a little champion channel swimmer.

He loves going under the water and then staying there for a long time. Sometimes a little longer than the teacher likes!

Looking After

Steve woke this morning not feeling great.

He went to work, but after Alex had finished swimming, we went and collected him from work and all came home.

Alex asked why daddy was coming home, so I explained that he was not feeling well.

So Alex decided that daddy could sit on the couch, with him of course, and a blanket, pillow, drink and soft toys (Barney and Kung Fo Panda) and they could sit together snuggled under the blanket and watch a movie.

So that is where they are currently snuggled together.

Joke

A 75 yr old lady rings her local hospital and this conversation follows:

"Hello, I'd like some information on a patient, Mrs Tiptree. She was admitted last week with chest pains and I just want to know if her condition has deteriorated, stabilised or improved?"

"Do you know which ward she is in?"

"Yes, Medical Ward, room 5-1"

"I'll put you through to the Nurses Station"

"Hello, Medical Ward, how can I help you?"

"I would like some information on a patient, Mrs Tiptree. I was wondering if her condition had deteriorated, stabilised or improved?"

"I'll just check her notes for you.........I'm please to say that Mrs Tiptree's condition has improved. She has regained her appetite, her temperature has steadied and after some routine checks tonight, she should be well enough to go home tomorrow"

"Oh that is wonderful news, I'm so happy, thank you ever so much!"

"You seem very relieved? Are you a close friend or relative?"

"No, I'm Mrs Tiptree in room 5-1. Nobody tells you f*#k all in here!"

New Banner

Thanks to the wonders of those wonderful people over at The Cutest Blog On The Block I have a new banner (heading at top of blog).
They have so much on their site at present for novice computer designers like myself.
I can do most things on the blog now, but changing html code and such likes is a little beyond me at present.
But with the help of their 'how to' section and the joys of my darling husband, we were able to get the banner looking just right for the design I have from their website.

I love it.....

Sunday Prayer

Dear Lord,

Every single evening
As I'm lying here in bed,
This tiny little Prayer
Keeps running through my head:

God bless all my family
Wherever they may be,
Keep them warm
And safe from harm.

For they're so close to me.

And God, there is one more thing
I wish that you could do;
Hope you don't mind me asking,

Please bless my computer too.

Now I know that it's unusual
To Bless a motherboard,
But listen just a second
While I explain it to you, Lord.

You see, that little metal box
Holds more than odds and ends;
Inside those small compartments
Rest so many of my friends.

I know so much about them
By the kindness that they give,
And this little scrap of metal
Takes me in to where they live.

By faith is how I know them
Much the same as you.
We share in what life brings us
And from that our friendships grew.

Please take an extra minute
From your duties up above,
To bless those in my address book
That's filled with so much love.

Wherever else this prayer may reach
To each and every friend,
Bless each e-mail inbox
And each person who hits 'send'.

When you update your Heavenly list
On your own Great CD-ROM,
Bless everyone who says this prayer
Sent up to GOD.Com

Amen

Bath Time

As many of you may recall, we have been redoing our bathroom.

Ok it is not totally finished, in that it still needs painting! One day Steve will get round to it, although it has been a little too cold to paint. Damp and wet does not make for great ideal paint enviroments!

Anyway, we were actually brave when redoing the bathroom in that we took out the bath and have not replaced it!

We have just a shower in the house now.

We looked at how many times we used it and found it was about once every 6-8 weeks and even then it was just the boys jumping in for a splash around.

So the decision was made and the bath disappeared.

However, the other evening, Alex wanted a bath, he had had a rough day and you could tell it would calm him.

When the boys were little, we actually used a 50l fish box in the bath, saved us having to fill the huge bath with all that water for such a little person. It worked well, Ben used to love his deep bath.

So Steve came up with the wonderful idea of getting the bin out again, and so the boys had a shower bath instead.

Kept everyone happy, although I am going to have to make sure the bin disappears again soon, because they seem to want a bin bath more than a shower now!

Mad Morning

The other morning didn't go quite as planned I expected!
Ok mornings are like that, but this one just went!

On the days I work, I get up before anyone else as I get the bus to work. So there I was sorting out the lunches and realised that with the boys raiding the pantry for sandwiches the evening before, we didn't have much bread!
Worked out what we had enough for and realised that I was not getting any bread for my breakfast. Now I am not a breakfast person, well I am not someone who will eat breakfast as soon as they get up. I like to wait an hour or so.
So I decided that if I left the house early enough I could sneak into McDonalds and treat myself to a Sausage and Egg McMuffin before the bus arrived.

Left the house at a suitable time and consequently watched one of the buses drive straight on past! So no McDonalds for me today as I was not sure when the next bus would arrive.

Got to work, sorted the stuff I needed and casually mentioned to my colleague that I was leaving sooner to get to the school as I was going through the McD's drive thru to get breakfast. Hang free she said, there is toast etc in the kitchen. So they pushed me that way and I ended up making breakfast for 3! It was nice too.
As we left the building, so my mobile rang. It was Steve to say he couldn't find his car keys and could I please help. So after a little shuffling around, I zoomed home in another work car and rescued my husband. He took Ben to school and I rushed Alex to Daycare.
I knew the Nurse we were working with was planning on getting morning tea, so I stopped via a shop and got a nice slice to share. Thought it would go down nice as I had messed a few people around that morning.
Knew the school I was going to, but didn't account for taking the wrong turning in the fog. Hamilton has some nice back country roads, when you don't have 100% of an idea as to where you are, in the fog!
I was driving imagining the conversation I would have with them when I called to say I was lost....

"Hi, thanks for letting me run home to rescue my husband, but now I am lost in fog! Where is the school again?"

I finally managed to find the school and the rest of the day actually went ok.
I called Steve at 11am to see if he had located his keys, he said not yet, but that he thought he knew where they were.
I know he was busy that day with a guy from Auckland, so I knew not to call him too often. But at 3pm I called once again just to check about the keys. He said he would be sorting it soon.

Left it at that.
When he got home, I didn't mention it, but then I suddenly remembered and he said yes he had found his keys.
With which he then walked to his jacket that was hanging at the bottom of the stairs, where it had actually been all day as he had decided not to wear it today, and then consequently took the keys out of the pocket!

Don't you just love husbands!

Last One for June!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Joshua
Happy Birthday to you…..

Have a super 12th Birthday. Don't eat too much cake and be nice to your sister.

Lottery

New Zealand had one of its biggest Lotto draws yesterday.

On offer was $35 million, money on a credit card, money towards travel, 2 cars, a boat and money towards a holiday home.

It went......!

A group of 4 people, in a syndicate, won the whole kitten caboodle lot! The total prize pool included.....

1. $34,453,401 NZD ($22,049,073 USD) in cash
2. 2 luxury cars - An Audi R8 and a Porsche Cayenne
3. $250,000 ($160,141 USD) on an American express Platinum Card
4. $250,000 towards luxury travel
5. A Four Winns V258 boat
6. $750,000 ($480,445 USD) towards a holiday house

The Lottery people said that 4.78 million tickets were sold last night, usually there are about 500,000 sold each week. It generated $28 million in sales.

Everyone dreamed of what they would do with the winnings, but of course it is only a dream.

4 Yr Old

Alex had the wonderful fate of having his 4yr old Immunisations yesterday.
Consequently he is not a great fan of the nurse at the surgery because according to him she 'put holes in my arms!'
He even went so far as to ask if he had to ever see the nurse again? Because he said he doesn't want any more holes in his arms!
The look on his face when she put the first injection in.......if looks could kill, she was way out of here!
That made getting the second one in more of a challenge, although he was actually a fabulous little boy with the nurse and I am very proud of him.

My son, sadly does not do pain, no way at all, so this of course left him very fragile for the rest of the evening.
He didn't want a shower because his arms would get wet!
All he wanted to do was snuggle with mummy because then he would be safe.
He didn't like Grandad, who is currently staying with us, decided that Grandad needed to go home!
Didn't even want daddy because daddy was the one who suggested a shower in the first place!

Alex is the type of person who will hurt himself, cry for a while over the sore arm, leg, hand etc. He will then be fine for a while, but then several hours later will see the wound and promptly start howling again, because he remembers that he has a sore wound!
He can even work himself into a frenzy several days later.
As I said, he does not do pain!

Invention

Ben came home from school the other day and had Steve carry in this......

Apparently they had been making them at After School Care!

But he was all in to this, explaining how it works and what it does.

This is a Macaroni Cheese Maker, which has blades and turning things inside.

You apparently put everything in the Easy Mac Cheese box, it then gets pushed through, by blades, to the KFC box, which in turn mixes it all together before pushing it through to the Weetbix box and then it flows through all the other boxes to the end, where you are meant to place a bowl ready to catch the cooked Mac Cheese.

Simple as that, according to Ben.

This is not the first time he has come home from school with an invention, ok they are not all usually this large! He has also tried to use boxes etc to invent machines in the garage as well.

The Waikato Museum has a display on at the moment about 'The Da Vinci Inventions', so I thought we would take Ben along to it today seeing as he is so into inventing things at the moment.

Sour Note

As I was doing the shopping this morning, I decided to treat myself to the local weekend paper. Not sure when I will get time to read it, but if it is there then you never know.
Well after all the cooking I have done and the fact that dinner is taken care of, I thought I would give myself 5 minutes now.

The front page headline was "Swine Flu at School But Doors Stay Open"

So far no worries, till I read the first sentence of the article.........

"XYZ Primary School is set to remain open - despite one of its boys yesterday becoming one of the latest cases of swine flu."

Oh %&#*! really glad I got the paper this weekend because that is actually my sons school.

So a quick yell to Ben to see if he has any notes from school for us?
No he says, but then you never can quite trust a 51/2 yr old.
So a quick search of his bag and low and behold, there is a note from the local Public Health Dept informing us of the situation.

I am not altogether that worried, I know that there is nothing to jump up and down about. They have the case under control.
They have informed us on the day they discovered the results, which was yesterday (Friday) and it is obvious that the boy is not in Ben's class because it mentions that we would have received further notice if he was in the actual class.

But, hey, am I glad I bought the weekend paper today!

Productive

Today has been very productive for me.
I did the weekly shop first thing this morning, whilst all the boys in the house got their hair cut.
Unfortunately the weekly shop came to way more than I expected, so I won't be doing that again in a hurry, although I am still not sure what I exactly brought that was so expensive sent it up so high!
Once home, I have managed to do 2 loads of laundry and get it blowing on the line in the winter sunshine.
Make up dinner for tonight in the slow cooker. Man I love the slow cooker, the feeling I get at about 3pm when I realise that dinner is sorted and I don't have to start worrying about "what shall we have for dinner tonight?"
Make up a huge batch of chilli, that eventually portioned down into 5 servings, that can go in the freezer for future use when I need something to get out for dinner and I don't know what to have!
Used up the old bananas, by making a wonderful banana cake, which the recipe actually ends up making 2 loaf tin size cakes, so will share one with the neighbours.

And even managed to solve my Mum's computer problem.

So all in all a great day. Maybe tomorrow I will sit around all day in my pyjamas reading the newspaper and my book!

And Another One!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Janet
Happy Birthday to you…..

Hapy Birthday Aunty Janet, hope you have a fun day and maybe even get to play some golf.

Computers

My 2 are getting quite adapt to the computer.

We can sometimes realise that we don't actually know where Alex is and then we find him surfing the web for his game site that they like to play.

It is so cute to watch him, he knows exactly what to do and how to do it, but he also likes to test out buttons!

Sometimes you will find something has happened to the computer and we have no idea as to how he got it to happen!

I love the little feet resting on the hard drive!

Such concentration

We are actually beginning to realise that one day we will actually have to have more than 1 computer in the house!

Birthday

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Sarah
Happy Birthday to you…..

Have a great day niece, hope it is fun.

Swine Flu

As we are all fully aware now, Swine Flu is out there in the world.

Unfortunately I sometimes feel it has been taken a little too far!

People die from Influenza every year, or at least they die from complications due to Influenza.
Influenza is catching, you can get the flu from someone who has it, yes, if at work someone is coughing and sneezing, you can catch it, they may have the flu, and bingo, so could you have it a few days later.
This is how it has been for many years now. Medical professions are aware of this and that is one reason why they try so hard to have an active Flu Injection available each year. Because they know that Flu can kill. Or at least people who develope the flu are susceptable to further compications.
If next year everyone who had the flu was to report it to the Ministry of Health, there would be a major out cry, but we no longer really keep a tally on the amount of people who die each year from the flu.

Suddenly we have people panicking over Swine Flu, when at present it is showing no more symptoms in people than the ordinary everyday flu. And the other funny thing about it....it is exactly like the flu.

Alex's daycare has just sent a message home about Swine Flu. Seems that they will turn people away who have any flu like symptoms.
Such as:

1. fever
2. cough
3. sore throat
4. runny nose
5. stuffy nose
6. headache

Alex is home today as it is not a day he goes to daycare, he has a snuffy nose. A typical childhood cold that he no doubt caught from one of the other little kids at daycare, or even from his brother, who caught it from school. I have a snuffly nose too, have had for about 2 weeks now, again typical thing I have in the winter months.

So does this mean that suddenly we should stay home till the symptoms disappear? So far I would have been off work for 2 weeks.

Yes we need to stop this spreading, but how do you stop a cold spreading?

There has been, apparently, 1 death in England. But what they don't tell you, is that even though the person was H1N1 positive, they haven't actually said that that is what they died of! They may have died from Pnuemonia, which could have been a complication of having the flu, but because they were positive then it must make the media.

As you may be able to tell, this bugs me a little. I don't want anyone to die from Swine Flu, yes I will do all I can to assist in it not spreading, but to start telling people that if you have a cold to stay home until the symptoms have disappeared, well then New Zealand may as well shut up shop for 7 days, everyone stay home, do not socialise with family and friends, do not pass go, do not get $200 and don't dream of breathing!

A vaccine is required, and yes I know they are working on one. There will be pandomonia when it is released. They had better have enough because I think the uptake on it will be huge and it will not go down well to have the medical company come forward and say 'sorry, we just don't have enough!' People will want it when it is available, so lets hope there is enough.

Day Off

Ben has had his first official day off school.

Alex woke this morning not feeling 100% so I made the simplest decision in that Steve could take the car, as I was staying home all day and wouldn't require the car. As it was Wednesday, it was a usual day for us to stay home anyway.

Ben however got himself all in a fluster this morning and was really not 100% himself! So after a big hug I asked if he wanted to stay home and he said 'yes'.

Now this is quite a surprise as he is the child that loves school. He often gets annoyed because he can't go to school on a Saturday!

So suddenly I realised I was at home for the whole day with 2 children who were not 100% and generally just wanted a quiet day at home.

So they got dressed, snuggled under a blanket and watched kids tv for a few hours.

Perfect way to spend a day when feeling under the weather, which by the way has been beautiful today and so I got all the washing done!

Dummy Update

We are now on the start of night 3 and you would think dummy's had never exsisted!

The first night was a little rough. Alex was restless before he fell asleep, he was so use to having his dummy to switch off with.
So he was very clingy and wanted me to stay with him. Once he was a sleep there were no problems. He didn't even ask for it the next morning when he woke, all he asked for was juice!

Last night, he went to bed and never even mentioned it, almost as if he had totally forgotten that they ever exsisited. He got his juice from the kitchen counter and just hopped up into bed for a story with never a word mentioned.
Tonight was exactly the same....!

We are now a dummy free house! Man that was too easy!

Parents Centre

As many of you know, I am involved with a Not for Profit Organisation in New Zealand called Parents Centre.

They are an organisation who provide Antenatal Classes and Parenting Education Classes for new Mums.

I have been involved with them since 2003, when we did our own Antenatal Classes with them.

When Ben was 5 weeks old, I joined the committee of my local centre and now 6 years later I am still involved!

I have held several positions on the committee since joining and have enjoyed them all.

When we moved to Hamilton I transferred to the local centre here, and walked straight into the President role.

After 19 months in charge I have sadly handed over the reins.

My family no longer uses anything that the centre has to offer, not that that matters, as I was not involved because of them.

I was involved for me, for something that I wanted to do, something that I could give back with.

Sadly my interests have changed slightly, I am still passionate about what Parents Centre does, but I found that as my family have grown, then I had less time for them and was not giving the same amount of time and committment that they deserved.

So last week I handed over the role of President at the Annual General Meeting.

I thought it would be a piece of cake to hand over, as I was quite happy to see it go, but, it was more emotional than I imagined. I got choked on my Annual Report and actually realised what I was saying goodbye to!

I have not walked away totally.....I am still involved with the centre but I now only look after the website, which is one area, not 6 like I was doing before.

I have made some awesome friends through volunteering and I am eternally grateful for that.

I am not going to stop volunteering, I just need to take some time with my family and the maybe find something else to move in to that fits with my growing family at the time that I need it.