I know, I know - It's been ages since I updated my blog but I get in this weird place where I'm a bit tired of my life and the daily grind and can't begin to imagine why anyone else would want to read about it.

My brother is 40 - old bugger. We had a lovely party at mum and dads as it was dad's 65th as well. Good old fashioned BBQ with drinking and merriment. I took it fairly easy as I knew that I had to get up for the kids in the morning. Others did not and my favourite quote of the weekend was definitely "I went to sleep and then I did a big sick in my bed!"

We had a week with mum and dad in Norfolk after the BBQ which was a lovely precious family time.

We have finally decided to borrow the money to put an extension on our house. We only have one small room downstairs other than the kitchen and with both boys very mobile and Dom being huge it feels a bit cramped around here. Dom and his dad are busy scheming about possibilities but we can really only afford to put an average sized room on the side so plans like cellars and pool rooms might have to be for another, richer day.

Just before we went to Norfolk I pulled my knee while running so I have given it two weeks rest. Went to the gym for the first time back today - it was bloddy hard work. How can 2 weeks make such a difference???

I will try to post next week - but not promising anything.
TTFN

O.k. I have lost the lead that links my camera to my computer and Joe has stuck his finger through the lens cover on my camera so every photo now has a greasy mark in the middle of it! This means I have no decent photos to share with you.

No real news either to be honest.

James is standing and generally finding his feet in more ways than one.

Joe is has now given up his afternoon sleep :0( but is having "quiet time" in his bedroom after lunch which seems to be working at the moment.

This weekend we are doing the marathon journey to Norfolk for a mates wedding. We're managing to stay for an extra couple of days so nice catch up time with mum and dad.

I am back on my fitness/weight loss routine -an am really enjoying it. Am hoping to lose half a stone through June and then stabilise in July and lose another half a stone in August. I will be delighted if this happens but I'm doubtful!

We've been away! We went to a friends wedding on Friday which was lovely and we were Kid free so had a brilliant time of just mixing with old friends and chilling. I had my hair dried straight which was a nice change - tried to post a picture but something disturbed it and it had a fatal error or some other computer complaint.

We then went to Cornwall with the kids for 2 nights in a caravan with my sister and brother in law and their two girls which was actually a really lovely time. The kids were all pretty well behaved and it didn't feel like we were under each others feet which it could have so easily done.

I had a birthday (grrrr) and got an ipod so I now feel very grown up being able to listen to my own music. I'd forgotten how much I like driving with proper music on!

Well what a weird weekend.

James is now crawling. Funny - when Joe started crawling we were so excited but with James I just thought "that's gonna make life a bit more tricky". I am a bad mother.

Joe threw his head back on Sat morning while I was tickling him and caught me right on the eyebrow bone. I have a cracking black eye. I have never had a black eye before and have been struck by how people look at you. I sang in church on Sunday and got some very funny looks but no-one mentioned it. Somehow that made it worse because I didn't get to explain how it had happened. I wonder what they were thinking?

Did the end of the month pub quiz last night and came second from last. We came second last month so it was a bit of a let down but there were rather a lot of teams using iphone technology this time which was a bit of a shame. Why would you go to a pub quiz and then cheat? It's beyond me. Anyway I drank far too much red wine with my sister-in-law and have a shocking hangover today. I am currently watching Cbeebies with Joe because I don't have the energy to do anything else!

Food Glorious Food...

We had a lovely meal last night - our last night together. So in true Ruth style but without the quality...

We had prawn cocktail to start - underrated I reckon and with a homemade sauce was flipping lovely.

Main course was a spiced chicken with subtle flavours of cinnamon, lemon and olives. This isn't a great picture but I can promise you it was lovely. Joe ate the leftovers for his dinner today and had two huge helpings - must be all that curry I ate when I was pregnant!

Pud was good old fashioned strawberries and cream. Yum Yum yum!

Good Grief.....

Considering there are only about 3 people who read my Blog I seem to have been given a lot of grief for not updating it!

Mum and dad have been here since Wed. They have been brilliant and done loads and loads of jobs like putting shelves up and sorting the washing line and gardening. My house looks like a new pin! The shelves were flipping hard going though. When they are full of books I will post a pic so you can see what our living room is like. It's all greens and creams and I love it because it's a peaceful room!

Took mum and dad into Exeter on Friday for a mooch. I had to go to Barclays and waited 35 minutes to be seen. Before I went to the bank I consumed a pint of some fruit/ice combo from a coffee shop - this may have been a mistake...

When I was finally called to see the banker I realised I needed a wee - by the time I had sat there talking to him for 10 minutes I realised I couldn't wait so I had to get up and leg it out of the bank leaving a very confused looking banker! I sprinted to Debenhams to use the loo and was almost crying by the time I got there - I have never come so close to wetting myself in my life.

Bizarrely he was still sat waiting for me by the time I got back with a queue of very disgruntled customers behind. I was too embarrassed to tell him where I had been so I just muttered something about my OAP parents being lost in Exeter. It was all very surreal.

Anyway....we are having a lovely time together here. Will post some more photos next week.

So as promised - Joe in his Easter Bonnet. It doesn't look any better on than it did off I'm afraid. "Shocking" was the word my sister-in-law used!!! Anyway although his face in this pic says different Joe loved it and was rather alarmingly very pleased that "I look like a lady".

Dom, on the other hand was rather mortified that it was him dropping the kids off this morning - not helped by the fact that I suddenly panicked that I might have misread the information and may have dreamt the fact that Joe needed an Easter bonnet at all.

I always knew this day would come!!

Ruth and my mum will find this equally hilarious - all I can say is one of you should live nearer!

Had to make Joe and Easter bonnet - for tomorrow. What a nightmare. Neither Dom nor I have an artistic bone in out body so this is the best we could come up with.

Will try and post a pic of Joe in it tomorrow if it survives which is unlikely. Do you think he'll win the prize for best bonnet??? I will eat the whole hat if he does!

I have now put links to my 15 fav songs so you can listen to them if you like! Some copyright thing that's going on with youtube at them moment means that most of them are live versions which is a bit disappointing but you get the idea!

A great weekend!!!

Met up with my mate Rach this weekend and Geraldine who I taught with in my first year of teaching in London.

Rach I see a lot but hadn't seen Gel for about 8 years and that was only briefly at Rach's wedding.

The weird thing was that really none of us had changed at all. Of course we had change physically - age and children have not gone unnoticed on our faces but essentially we were just the same people picking up from where we left off about 12 years ago. Magic.

Gel is nearly 40! that kind of thing makes you stop and think - how quickly life is zooming by - when we were last all together we had our whole lives and futures ahead of us. Rach and I were not with our future husbands and we had no idea how our lives would pan out.

I think we are all much more comfortable in our own skin these days. We all look older (I look the oldest which is unfair since I am actually the youngest!) but none of us are trying to be anything we're not. We were honest about how hard motherhood is and how much we love our husbands even though sometimes it's tough. We all admitted to our own faults and tendency towards high maintenance and there wasn't a shred of competition between us; each being happy for the others' achievements.

Meeting up with old friends you haven't seen for years can be nerve wracking - (ask Gels' stomach!) but definitely worth it. Hopefully we'll do it again soon.

This is another one of those Facebook things but I've change the rules a bit and Ruth - you have to do this one. Here are 15 albums or songs which are significant to me in some way. I have tried to put them in order but actually that's not as easy as it might look.

So in reverse order...

15 Christina Aguilera - Beautiful - not into her at all but there is no denying she has a great voice and this is a brilliant song.

14. Carl Orff - Carmina Burana - When I first heard this on The Omen I just had to know who it was by - perfect.

13. Zero 7 - Home - Scott Mills played this on Radio 1 (many moons ago before I switched to Wogan!) I went straight out and bought the album. The best music for lounging in a bath to. Still sends shivers up my spine.

12. Joan Baez - Donna Donna - My dad used to sing me to sleep when I was very tiny and I remember him singing this song to me. I now sing it to my own children.

11. Queen - the show must go on - the words make me cry every time.

10. Yes - Going for the one - just brilliant. Best up really loud.

9. Vaughan Williams - lark ascending - I heard this late one night on classic FM and had to sit in my car outside my house until I found out what it was.

8. Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the way - What was on the first time Dom gave me a lift home from the pub. Great album, shocking guitar solos!

7. Alice in Chains - Jar of flies - This album was the soundtrack to my last couple of years at Uni. Still love it.

6. Dolly Parton 9-5 - The beginning of my love affair with Dolly. I had a friend, Alice who I stood next to on a belt at the chocolate factory that I worked at. She used to sing it to pass the time and I knew the song before I had ever heard Dolly sing it. Alice challenged me to find a better "feel good" song and I still haven't found one!

5. Pink Floyd - The wall - Just a work of art. Still get lost in it.

4. Steve Vai - Passion and warfare - Without a shadow of doubt in my mind THE best guitarist in the world, ever.

3. Kate Bush - The Kick inside - My favourite all time female artist and this is her best album.

2 and 1. Marillion - Script for a jesters tear and Fugazi. At the age of about 13 I spent a week copying out the words to these two albums. The words were amazing and complicated and very pretentious. Fish spoke to my soul and I obsessed about this band for several years. I still know all the words and still listen to them regularly. If I could only take one album to an island it would be Script at a push. I never tire of it.

Phew - that was hard. Going for a glass of wine now.

I realised when I was looking through this last night that there was a distinct lack of pictures of my eldest son. I don't know why this would be - I adore him and he makes me laugh every day. I guess if anything I feel guilty sometimes that James hasn't had nearly as much of my attention as Joe did which is why I am trying to take some more pictures of him.

Anyway - here is Joe. He is a clever - too clever for me, funny, attention seeking, happy little boy. Sometimes I get a bit choked when I think that if it hadn't been for one doctor who had a hunch we would have lost him at 3 months. I wonder if Dr "Ken" realises how often I think about him and thank God that he was on duty that night!

It's a shame isn't it that one of the few times people get together is at funerals. These are my cousins from my mum's side of the family. We have a picture exactly like this taken when Chris on the right was just a few months old. In that picture we all fitted on the bench quite nicely but not so much now it seems!

By the way I did not go to my nan's funeral in my jeans; nor did Joe go in his tracky bottoms!

We have been in Norfolk this weekend for my Nan's funeral which was yesterday. It was a hard day but today we have had a lovely family day and the sun has been out. My brother took some pics of James and this one just made me laugh.

He's such a smiley happy boy so this picture is not his usual self - I have never seen him pout like this but it might be because my bruv looks a bit scary.

My little boy is growing up!

This was taken on Sunday went we went ot the beach because it was so hot - yes Ruth it was so hot we paddled in the sea and I got a bit burnt!!!

James is really starting to get a bit of character to his face now - he's a cheeky monkey.

It's weird; having spent the last two and a half years looking at a little boy who essentially just looks like me, I look at James and see nothing of myself at all. He's definitely all Dom.

O.k Got to go it's too sunny to be sitting inside playing on the computer!

I went to Norfolk this weekend to help sort out some stuff that belonged to my nan. This picture is of a bundle of letters found in my Nan's house with a note on them "Some of our love letters from during the war - please destroy".

I think they are beautiful - a lovingly written, cherished collection of thoughts and feelings, desires and hopes wrapped up in two elastic bands.

My nan died in the early hours of this morning.

I am sadder than I expected to be. She had alzheimer's and we have been praying for her death to be quick since a fall that she had last week which seemed to be as a result of a stroke.
She never really regained conciousness and died peacefully in her sleep - which was what we all hoped for her.

But here's the thing - suddenly in death my nan's life somehow becomes more meaningful and vibrant. I'm inclined not to think about the last five years or so where she has been muddled and sleepy and a bit awkward; but instead remember the gardener, the organ player, the nan who gooed over babies and knew how to gut fish and thread onions and pluck a chicken. I have remembered lying with my head on her lap on long journeys in the back of the car and perfroming shows and dances for her when I was little.

I loved my nan and although I cannot grieve for her death I am hopelessly sad that she is gone and will miss her terribly.

Rest peacefully Nan, with no strangers, no "boy" and no pain.

I love this picture - James was giggling and burying his head in Dom's shoulder. Still spotty though and please don't take too much notice of the dirty sleeve!

We've had a better day today - Joe is under the weather but it hasn't stopped him eating a man sized portion of pasta for his tea or being "Doctor Joe".

The Rugby is on and we're trying to get Joe into "Oli Oval" - no luck. Somehow I think he's more likely to be a dancer than a rugby player but who knows?

Sunday tomorrow - I love Sundays. I get to go to church and be peaceful for an hour.

It's a mixed blessing having a brother.

I asked him to help me out with setting the layout of this blog and have ended up with a slideshow of his band photos. Sorry about that.

My mate Ruth says I have to copy and paste these to here so I'm gonna (cause I always do what I'm told)

25 things about me is a note that is going round on Facebook at the moment. I quite enjoyed thinking of them - it's very indulgent.

There are loads that I have thought of since so I might do some more later but there were the first 25 things that came to mind.

01. I can be incredibly selfish but not about material stuff - in a demanding way.
02. I am the worst speller I know and hate it when people assume that I must be stupid because of it
03. I am extremely competative and don't always take as much delight in others' achievements as I should
04. I love my children deeply but treasure my personal space - I sometimes crave time on my own
05. I hate the phone and will go to great lengths to avoid using it
06. My Aunts house in Wales is my most favourite place in the whole world and I have never seen scenery that matches it anywhere.
07. I am a very loyal person
08. I'm a much more high maintenance wife than I expected or hoped to be.
09. I rarely gossip and can keep a secret forever but have to confess to listening to gossip and being entertained by it which is probably just as bad.
10. I have a very deep faith in God but don't always find church the easiest place to express it.
11. I still call Norfolk home and I haven't lived there for years
12. I have already planned my funeral and chosen hymns etc...
13. I love Dolly Parton - a fact of which I am ashamed - I was brought up on Queen and Cream!14. I am a better mum than I thought I was going to be but it is much harder work than I expected
15. I am always cold and have constant thermostat wars with my husband
16. I write songs and compose music that I never play to anyone
17. If I could learn to do anything new it would be to paint but I am a no hoper!
18. I have a lot of panic attacks - quite often about the posibility of having a panic attack!
19. I love my job and get embarrassed when teachers bang on about not getting paid enough.
20. Cooking and music are my two best ways to relax
21. I was 5 and a half stone over weight in July and have lost 4 of it!
22. I cry at the news nearly every day
23. Being in beautiful countryside makes me spread my arms and spin around like a child.
24. I miss living near my brother
25. I am irritated that I have ended some of these statements with punctuation and not others but can't be bothered to go back and correct.

If I was allowed a 26 it would be that I still get butterflies when my husband walks in the door - bit soppy though isn't it?

It's all a bit crap here!

James and Joe both have chicken spots! Both of them have stopped sleeping.

My nan is dying of alzhiemers - It's a horrible, undignified death.

Joe - who is potty trained but has a bit of an upset tummy has just pooed all over my new living room carpet.

I have had better days!!!

...and it's only 11 o' clock.