Do I mind?

I am feeling very disappointed & sad at the moment. The light that I saw at the end of the tunnel was actually a train going in reverse!

Earlier this morning I received a phone call from Medbury School.
Mrs Criglington I was going through the paper work & I notice we have erraneously sent you a letter stating that we would accept James to start in Term 3. Unfortunately we cannot take him in Term 3 so I hope you don't mind if we accept him in Term 4.

Do I mind? To be pc I should say no I don't mind, what's another 10 weeks to me?. Truthfully, I mind!

I had planned how I was going to incorporate exercise into my morning as well as doing an hour of housework & then an extra 15 minutes of either baking or more housework. I was then going to spend the rest of my time scrapping.
I was so excited that finally I was going to have a bit of a longer time to myself in a block. I put off making a dentist's appointment thinking I can do it next term one morning rather than having to make it a rush job between dropping kids off & picking James back up. I was delaying a trip to the doctors for a flu jab for the same reason. Now what do I do? Do I wait another term or shall I try & fit it in. We all know how these particular trips can always be longer than you think thay would take.

Yes I mind! Who has to tell an excited little boy that he is not going to school next term after all? How do you tell him that without breaking his heart? We had even bought part of his uniform already in preparation for his starting. It means that we have been buying winter uniform stuff when in actual fact he will be starting in summer uniform. We have Phyllis taking in the shorts now (there's no rush for them now thankyou Phyllis). Whenever we go to the school he goes & has a look in the window of what is going to be his classroom.

Yes I mind! I will mind James until October & keep in mind that I have to prepare him for school & try to have him at least write his name by the time he starts. I will snuggle up & read to him on Wednesday afternoons. We will run the errands together & get a cup of coffee & something for him to eat on Friday afternoons. I will keep in mind that I have to enjoy these few weeks of James & me time because before long he will be at school. He has to go there one day.

Brent's Effort Card

This must have arrived on Thursday night but we only found it today while sorting through Brent's prep folder.

What a fantastic effort you've put in Brent!

Thanks NZ Police!

Look what arrived in the mail today. Yes we are very annoyed that we got ticketed doing 119km/h while completing a passing manouevre on the way to Wanaka but let's try & see the positive side.

We are now the proud owners of a priceless photo. Who else would be able to take such a beautifully clear photo of our car & us in it in such a picturesgue area. So for that I would like to thank the NZ Police. I can't believe that they actually got us with our indicator going, so we are usually very law abiding citizens & indicate where we are going not like a lot of other motorists we saw that day. Speaking of which it was a busy day on that road, why else would we have past 7 cops on the way down to Wanaka. Which brings me to the question is it better sit behind a car that does 95 km/h on the open flat stretches & then brakes for every bend & get frustrated or is it better to pass them?

Yes I am annoyed but it seems to me that obviously when driving you are only allowed to go past a car that is driving at like 70km/h on the open road. How else are you going to get past it without breaking the 100km/h speed limit? Oh sorry you can pass a car going 95km/h as long as you can sit on the other side of the road for like the 5 minutes it would take to pass it & not break the speed limit.

So where exactly do you think this photo is going? That's right I want to scrapbook it but what I would really like to do is to have a NZ Police officer tell me how to pass a car travelling at 95km/h without breaking the speed limit while staying on the other side of the road for as shorter time as possible. If anyone out there can answer that question please reply here so that I can scrapbook it for my son's as "How to Safely pass a car going 95km/h without breaking the speed limit".

Oh the by the way for those who think they know the road to Wanaka take a guess where we were.

Thanks once again NZ Police for the priceless photo & also to the NZ taxpayer for paying to have such state of the art equipment that can take such awesome photos.

Discovering Digital

Well you can already see some changes on this blog & it is due to a digital scrapbooking course I am doing. I am finally able to work out how to do some stuff in PSE4 & look at that I can personalise my own blog banner.

This is the title page & a couple of other pages that I have been taught how to do from http://www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com/my.php

I am really enjoying this class becuase it is not only teaching me how to do scrapbooking digitally but I am learning how to use PSE4 at the same time.

So this week I have been taking a digital scrapping class online.

Scott is still sick but he has now given me his sore throat too, so we are both on antibiotics at present trying to fix ourselves up. Luckily both boys seem to be getting over their colds & don't seem to have caught our sore throats.

Not much has really happened this past week, probably because we have both been feeling so awful. Scott's been at home more than at work but then he had to work over the weekend so really any chance of getting better flew out of the window with that.

The boys & I went into town last Friday to have coffee with Scott. While we were there we went into Bally's & bought Brent his new shorts. After Brent's winter shorts problem last year we decided to buy James a couple of the smallest pairs of shorts. What do you know, just like Brent they are falling off him. Hopefully by buying them a term early I can try & adjust them so they don't fall down. James is very excited by having some of his uniform & P E uniform already.

James started back at kindy yesterday & was happy to be there. I was very happy to have him there too, because the noise level in the house dropped substantially for the morning. Poor Brent was a bit lost though. He is not allowed to watch TV unless we are in the room with him because on Tuesday both boys managed to swing on the tv cabinet doors & made the tv fall on to the ground. I was far from happy considering that's the second time they have done that, so their punishment is only tv when we are in that room. That doesn't really happen all that often so now the boys have to entertain themselves without tv. It's been quite good because for one day it got them to do a bit of imaginary play & colouring in. Today however both boys have rediscovered the computer & they have been playing on that.

When I went to pick up James yesterday I got there in time to see the teachers unpacking the boxes from Every Educaid. It was the trains & trainset that I had managed to get a grant for. Just to see the children's excitement was encouraging to me, & a spur to keep me plugging to get all the grants I can for kindy.

Coming up in the next week is Brent starting the second term & swimming starting for the term with James going up a class. We all go & get our haircuts done on Saturday & watch out I may be sporting a new hair colour.

Monday 17th April 2006 & the week ahead

Scott was still feeling sick so I had to drive home. The boys helped clean the upstairs while I washed the linen & towels & cleaned the downstairs bedroom. Scott packed the car & then we were off home. We left at 11:15 but we were in heavy traffic all the way until the Inland Scenic Route & Thompson’s Track. We didn’t do too badly really given the traffic & arrived home at 4:15.

Today Scott is still feeling sick but says at least his legs don’t hurt. He & the boys picked up Mo this morning & then got a few groceries for the week while I did the cleaning & laundry.

Tomorrow Scott is supposed to be going to work but I suppose that depends on how well he feels. The boys are still on holiday so I am thinking up some fun things to do to keep them occupied. Luckily at the moment they seem to be quite happy biking down to the corner & picking up acorns. I might take them both to Hagley Park & go for a walk through there with them & see what we can see. The weather is supposed to stay good for the rest of the week so I have been wondering about taking a ferry across to Quail Island & going for a walk to see the wrecks. I’ll just play that one by ear.

I also need to go into town & pick up a couple of pairs of school shorts for Brent that Ballantynes have in stock finally. Of course they do, it’s the summer uniform shorts & the boys are going into winter uniform at the end of the holidays. Typical really. Never mind I’ve got James following along close behind who’ll need shorts too, so even if Brent doesn’t ever wear them James will.

Hopefully I’ll catch everyone up on what we did this week, next week sometime. Have great holidays everyone.

Sunday 16th April

Easter Sunday & yes despite James finding a lot of dead rabbits in the past two days the easter Bunny did come to Wanaka. The boys were awake & rearing to go at 7am to find the easter eggs. It was pretty chilly but they had a lot of fun finding the little easter eggs all over the garden. It also looked like some of the birds might have enjoyed some too, either that or the easter bunny got so hungry he ate some of the eggs & left just the wrappers to prove it.

Scott came down with the flu & really was like a bear with a sore head all day. We made the decision that if I would drive home we would go home on Monday.

Saturday 15th April

Brent woke up at 6:45 as he did every morning & told us he was feeling sick. He had a headache. We had thought that we would try to be up early to get to the airshow early to get a good park. We ummed & ahhed about going. The sky was overcast & it looked windy, which day was supposed to be better, today or tomorrow? In the end we decided we would give it a miss so we made the breakfast that was going to be for the day we wouldn’t go to the airshow. What do you know? Brent suddenly felt better, so we hurriedly packed our lunch & everything to take with us & went in two cars to the airshow.

We left at 9:30 & we didn’t get very far before we were in a traffic jam. It took us 40 minutes to get to the airfield. We parked on the flat beside the Canberra Bomber & then walked to the front of the field. They had a good area roped off near the runway but away from the load speakers & we managed to find a spot. It was actually a great day to be photographing the airshow as the cloud was covering the sun, otherwise I would have been shooting straight into it. It was not cold either & really it only did a little bit of spitting from time to time.

The show itself was fantastic & because we had been & seen most of the static displays on Thursday there was no need to drag the children through the crowds to see those. The boys were really well behaved but did get scared (as did I) when the F111 seemed to sneak up on us for it’s dump & burn. The noise that machine makes is unbelievable & it reduced James to tears.

Brent was starting to tire around 3pm so we sent him home with mum & Scott, James & I stayed on until the end. James arrived back at the end of the day & told mum how he waved to the pilot in one of the planes & he waved back. He’s right too, because by 3:15 most people had left so we could get a spot up at the fence again.

It was a wonderful day & we all enjoyed it.