Dare 52

An Olympic inspired dare to boot!  My own little superstar.

Excuse the brightness - it was overcast when I took the photo but when I turned the flash off the colours looked so washed out.

I must get my scanner fixed or look for a new one - I’m just not great at taking photos of my pages :o)

 

Drama Queen

Jess joined Junior Repertory this year.  She has been wanting to do this for some time but had to wait to turn 8 and then for a new group to start.  20 weeks later and they had a show to put on.  Last week was a very busy week with rehearsals and then 3 shows.  The play was called Go West and was about a Hollywood team making a western movie.  Jess loved the entire process, she loved dressing up, the stage makeup, learning lines, learning moves and the business of backstage.  Being a junior junior she had a small part but we got such a kick out of watching her.  She wasn’t nervous and displayed the most beautiful confidence on stage, her voice was clear and she delivered her lines perfectly and got the huge round of laughter from the audience for this

Jess ” I was a human cannonball.”

Sheriff “What happened?  Did you quit?”

Jess “No, I was fired.”

She was also lucky enough to get picked for a photo to go in the paper - now isnt this cool?

Now she cant wait for next year! :o)

 

Layouts from the last few weeks

I know I have been a terrible blogger the last few weeks and in my defense - ummmm - I don’t really have one lol - sick, tired and sick and tired I guess.  Over winter.  Need sunshine!!  Which is here today - beuatiful blue skies and what difference it makes to a mindset.

So layouts galore from the last few weeks - I had Jess home sick a couple of weeks ago and was able to scrap up a wee storm while been housebound as she was far to ill to be taken anywhere.  So I completed a number of challenges for SBO, SketchBook, NZDares, ScrapnPatch and even a Jack which I didn’t get time to upload, but I’m happy I did it.  Unfortunately things are back to chaos at the moment and scrapping is a dream.  Roll on a time when things settle down.  Or maybe just a time when 24 hours really feels like 24 hours and not 12!!

Okay he isn’t a layout but he is my favourite man in the kitchen - I watch the F Word on a semi regular basis and really enjoy his menus.  I think they are usable.  So many chefs have recipes that look fab but in Invers getting some ingredients is next to impossible.  And I don’t want to spend a fortune buying ingredients.  I like fresh produce and eatable food - Gordon has heaps of recipes that are appealing and easy to make.  Im told he swears a lot - but they don’t put that in the subtitles so my gain lol.

A little sad news for me last week - Josef has been referred to the hospital.  Our GP suspects Josef is high functioning Autistic - namely Aspergers Syndrome.  Josef has always had tremendous difficulty in social situations but after a visit to the doctor on an unrelated matter we got to talking about my worries for Josef as he approaches the Teen years.   After he tried speaking to Josef, he understood a little better - Josef dislikes eye contact if he doesnt know you well, he always looked to me to answer for him and would answer if I told him it was ok - with one or two words answers.  He will completely tune people out - which he did during the visit - but when the doctor asked Josef about his Tamagotchi, Josef came alive and went into great detail about it, even interrupting us to mention something new about it.   Josef doesnt understand so many of the social ‘rules’ and ‘norms’  and to be honest I worry what life is going to do to him as he grows up.  He is extremely intelligent and when he wants to do well he excels!   His last school report had Achieved with Merits and Achieved with Excellences - we are so thrilled he is doing so well academically.  But have a boy in his class say hello to him and he ignores them.  I know this because I seen him do it and I asked if he didnt hear so and so - he said he did hear but he just doesnt know what to say.  If he doesn’t see the point he tunes out.  The hospital wrote to us last week and said they had discussed Josefs case and felt he would greatly benefit from a firm diagnosis and then therapy.  Its so hard to label your kid, but in the same breath its a relief to know he is not a ‘naughty’ kid - he just doesnt get why he should have to do things in a certain way.  And now its a relief to know its the way his brain works, and that maybe with a bit of help he will be able to sort things out for himself.

 

New Name

for me… Brooke is getting confused.  She has Nana - my mother and her fathers mother insists on being called Nana as well.  Throw in the Nan and the poor kid doesn’t know who is who.  So I’m thinking of a name I want my grandkids to call me.  Gran?  Gram?  Grammy?  Leo suggested Old Duck - he loves me Im sure ;o)  What did you call your grandparents?  I only had a grandfather I remember calling Grandpop.  My children have a Nana and Grandpop and an Oma and Opa.

Cool news!  Leo and I celebrated 10 years marriage last week.  We celebrated by doing a big fat nothing lol.  Seriously Leo was on call and I have been down very sick since last Tuesday.  I caught a virus and its been a rollarcoaster ride of feeling not so bad and feeling absolutely rotten.  So we tossed ideas around of what we wanted to do.  Travel is out because we have had a budget overhaul in order to seriously save for our family holiday next year.  Then I found this most awsome concert is coming - I  realise its not in Invers till September but OMG - I love this mans music.  Leo and I decided to postpone our 10th anniversary and have it slightly late.  Dinner and a concert - bliss.

I walked down the aisle to Leo to this played on a flute - still love this song.

I will scan a photo of our wedding day and pop it up later… as promised a couple of pictures.  Gosh I still love that dress lol!

This is one of my favourite photos taken of Ashleigh and I.

 

Goldilocks and the 4 Cops

I have a lot to share and so little time lol - its been a very full on and busy few weeks here but I want to share with you the drama, drama, drama Ashleigh has been u  to lately.

We spent the weekend 2 weeks ago helping Ash move.  The flat she was in was only ever a temporary layover.  It was hideous, damp and her and Brooke were always cold.   But when one has to find accomodation in a hurry one can not afford to be picky.  After looking around she has found a lovely warm house to rent and the beautiful part is she is just around the corner from me.  So we called in all available hands, cars and trailors and moved her and Brooke to a fresh start.  Brooke loves the space and the sunshine and is a totally different kid in the new place, it really is a good thing.

Every second weekend Brooke goes to stay with her father and Ash gets a little time to be a teenager.  Last weekend she spent the evening at a friends place playing cards, watching TV and generally hanging out.  My Dad - or Grandpop to Ash - was available to do taxi duty and he went and picked her up at midnight to take her home.  When Ash arrived home she discovered her front door was open.  So she ran back down the path and got Grandpop to go in.  Her reasoning was she has seen way to many scary movies and the pretty girl is always the one to go into the house!  LOL.  Anyway my Dad and Ash went in and discovered a very, very drunk male snoring away on Ashleigh’s bed!!!   A 111 call produced 4 big brawny cops who hauled Goldilocks out of bed and down to the station for a sleep in a cell.  We were told Goldilocks woke up in the morning  hung over and feeling like the worlds biggest dweeb.  The police have been awesome and Ashleigh’s insurance company have replaced her bed, linen, duvet and pillows and the landlord was pretty quick in repairing the door.

But I’m so proud of Ash, she has decided to see the funny side of things and is rather chuffed with all her new bedding.   She has gone home tonight after staying here until her new bed arrived, a tad nervous but glad to be home.  I have so loved having her and Brooke here :o)  But mostly I’m so impressed that in all those years of raising a kid I am seeing results in a fabulously mature young woman.

(12 weeks till bub arrives)

 

Helicopters, Kidzone and Speights :o)

Last week Josef had the opportunity to go flying with his father to Appearing Ridge which looks over the Eglington Valley in Milford.  Leo had a fault up there and Jos was super exciting to go with him.  He just loved the day and how high they went.  Leo was quite busy so the other guys had a bit of fun playing in the snow with Josef and hanging his socks over the generator to dry when his gumboots filled up.

On Friday we spent the day at Kidzone, awesome day.  You buy a ticket each for $12 and that gets you a fun filled day of endless activities.  Next year Leo is coming with me because the kids missed out on some of the things the wanted to do because we couldnt be in 2 places at once - its kind of hard doing these activity day with a boy and a girl lol.   But we had blue skies and it was great to spend the day doing nothing but having fun.

Lots of photos lol - now to try and sort them into pages to be scrapped.

The kids have been keeping themselves pretty much occupied with a combination of Club Penguin, making clubhouses outside and for Jos his Indiana Jones PS2 game just rocks, for Jess its been playing with her littlest pet shop pets.  They want to go to the movies this week but cant make up their minds what they want to see.  To much choice I think lol.

Im loving this commercial at the moment - it so rocks!

 

Using stamps

on a layout!!  What a dare!  I am newish to stamps, meaning I have a collection but I seem to admire them more than use them.  But the challenge over at NZDares was to use stamps on the background and as an element.  So I used a StampinUp roller stamp along the bottom of the photo on cardstock.  I then stamped a Doddled Tabbed stamp by Autumn Leaves (awesome bargain buy on Trade Me) to journal in and the arrow and phrase check you out are lil’ stamps by see d’s.  Not bad if I may say so myself :o)

And its Wednesday so happy thoughts for today…

I completed the above layout lol.

I am on week three of menu planning and you would think I invented the system, meals are on time and I know what I am having.  Bye bye are the days of nipping up to the supermarket or getting takeaways because I don’t know what to cook - and trust me I was so bad for that one!!  With the price of petrol skyrocketing and the price of food becoming mind boggling its great to have in place a system where we are not going without but Im not wasting money and my time.  I wish I had access to cheaper meat and Leo and I are working out the pros and cons to having our own hens as free range eggs are pretty darn expensive these days.

Jess got an A++ mark in her homework book for always having her homework done on time  neatly and correctly.

I had a job interview this morning, I wont know til next week but I felt good.

So not a bad day so far - its just started raining, this is a good thing today because it means soccer practice is might be cancelled - lol - its just a little to cold for me today to be sitting in the car.  Leo usually meets me at practice and brings Josef home but he is working out of town today - so mummy duty means driving up there and waiting for the hour long practice to be over because its a huge waste of fuel to drive up there come home and go back. :o)

 

The Big Read

Taken from Janine’s Blog: The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see. 1)Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06. The Bible - More so as a child and teenager
07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwel
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

46 - not bad and a number of them still live on my bookshelves.  Admittedly a fair number were read as a teenager when I was sitting my National Certificate in English (which I passed with an amazingly awesome mark).  Some other- which I haven’t counted -  I have attempted to read but have found they make way better doorstops than enlightened reading.  Excellent idea Janine ;o)

 

AWOL

I’ve had quite a bit on my plate lately so it was a case of “Julie and the Great Disappearing Act”.  To my wonderfully awesome friends who have emailed and text me to see if I was okay - MWAH!  Thank you so much for caring.

Its Wednesday and yes Janine its quite a wonderful Wednesday - a lovely tradition it has become in cyber world to take note of all the wonderful things.

1. I downloaded the new version of Firefox and it promptly shut me down - cool - NOT!  Grrr, but I’m back up and running and the new version is pretty cool, it says its faster but I haven’t noticed that or perhaps that’s just Telecoms normal speed and it cant go faster lol.

2. I’ve finished 1 room in my house in the ‘Big Clean’.  Its going to to take weeks, it took 4 days to wade through my Conservatory/Scraproom.  But oh man it was worth it, the conservatory had become something of a dumping ground and after a serious clean and sort its back to a room that is lovely to sit in in the sun (with a heater at this time of the year lol) and I found a few things I had totally forgotten I had in my scrap area.

3. Jess is back at school and so far has been there for the whole week.  She is taking antibiotics for Strep throat but she was missing so much school and with the holidays coming up she was going to get seriously behind.   We have just caught up on her homework - whew!

4. Josef has been invited to a birthday party and also to a friends house for a sleepover.  Now this is a big thing because Josef has struggled with a behavioral disability since he started kindy and his friends have so far been kids of my friends or kids we have cultivated (sounds dodgy I know lol).  So for Josef to make friends under his own steam and build on that is such a huge milestone that I’m doing a very happy dance for him.

5. Ash got happy mail from Holland - thanks Karina ;o).  How wonderful it is to get something just because someone was thinking of you and wanted to make you smile.  Karina sent Brooke a book written by Dick Bruna about a little white bunny called Miffy - Miffy is so cute, there was a bunch of the coolest wee Miffy charms in the package.

Have a great week and I hope to get caught up on my bloghopping very soon :o).

 

He did what??

7 goals!  Woo hoo Josef!  He is just thriving in this team.  The coach is foreign and Josef understands very little of what he says but the mans patience is incredible and he has put Josef on the field as a striker and as a Mum I just love watching him zip around, he quite literally dances with that ball!  Saturdays game was in Winton, so drizzle and mud made for a fun game.

He has a sore ankle today from a stray kick and is so tired!!  I need an expert on 11 year old boys - yesterday he went from a huge high in the morning to a teary, angry wreck in the afternoon - what is it hormones?  Does he need more sleep?  He sleeps well and gets over 10 hours a night.  He eats well and is usually a happy wee chap - but lately - big sigh - I want to turn back the clock and get my snuggly wee dude back and send this prickly wee pear packing :o(  Although in having said that last night he snuggled up beside me and we shared a bowl of popcorn while we watched Die Hard (number 1 - geez Brucie was young once!!)  Josef has also discovered Lynx spray - I choke in mornings between Jess and her Avon blossom spray and the Lynx - it pays to get into the bathroom before them!

More layouts to share - haven’t I been good? ;o)

And last but certainly not least - this house is  supporting the Dutch in the Euro 2008 competition and what a headline is this Deadly Dutch annihilate France (Jess is not impressed as she loves all things French lol)  so lots of happy dancing here and I’m sure in The Netherlands huh Karina??