February 27, 2008

The kids slept through it

The Earthquake last night.

The biggest earthquake in the UK for nearly 25 years has shaken homes across large parts of the country.

People in Newcastle, Yorkshire, London, Cumbria, the Midlands, Norfolk and also parts of Wales, felt the tremor just before 0100 GMT.

I was just dropping off to sleep, put the first wobble down to those weirdly vivid not quite asleep dreams, and then it did it again!  The house shook, lights went all swinging about but nothing moved really and nothing broken. I wasn’t the only one woken or still awake at 1am though, judging by the curtain twitching all around us.

February 26, 2008

Recipe …

The Recipe For Mummy Bonkers
3 parts Pride
2 parts Friendship
1 part Impishness

Splash of Success

Chug!

What’s the Recipe for Your Personality?
Found it at Kris’s place…. 

Shrek Cookery

Dragon’s Molten Lava soup for tea. With fresh home made bread.

 

Umm, bowls licked clean, crumbs hoovered and seconds demanded. A success methinks! It was rather tasty and the bread surprisingly good too, better than usual.  

Ace day

We took lunch over to Kris’s and assisted in a bit of tidying up, did some lottie digging and came home with a spare piggy. emoticon The piggy needs teaching some manners and Dino is about the only one who can get near here without the damned creature going all paranoid. So, he offered and she’s here for a month while he tries to tame the wild thing.

Kris’s Myf helped prepare lunch and I have no idea what Mimi did most of the day, but she was happy. Everyone piled into digging, clearing and weeding on the lottie and we found spuds! Very tasty spuds too, even if the ones we ate tonight did get nuked before finishing off in the oven.

Plenty of tea was drunk, laughing was heard and, of course we set the world to rights - it’s what good friends do isn’t it? 

We had a fabulous day, thanks Kris and co! 

February 24, 2008

Playdate

We spent the afternoon out on a playdate today - I made a new friend and she has a 9 yr old lad that I though Dino might get on with.

We took muffins and welsh cakes, which soon disappeared and the kids played well. Dino on his own on the playstation and the 9 yr old made dens with Mimi.

Ah well.  

February 22, 2008

Life according to Hollywood

Did you ever notice that certain things only happen in the movies, but never happen in real life? For example:

1. It is always possible to find a parking spot directly outside or opposite the building you are visiting.

2. When paying for a taxi, don’t look at your wallet as you take out a note. Just grab one out at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

3. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment it’s aired.

4. Creepy music (or satanic chanting) coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

5. Any lock can be picked with a credit card or paperclip in seconds. UNLESS it’s the door to a burning building with a child inside.

6. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

7. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red digital displays so you know exactly when they are going to explode.

8. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to learn to speak German. Simply speaking English with a German accent will do. Similarly, when they are alone, all German soldiers prefer to speak English to each other.

9. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off. Even while scuba diving.

10. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

11. Any police officer about to retire from the force will more often than not die on their last day (especially if their family have planned a party). (Caveat: Detectives can only solve a case after they have been suspended from duty).

12. Getaway cars never start first go. But all cop cars do. (They will also slide to a dramatic stop in the midst of a crime scene).

13. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises wearing their most revealing underwear.

14. On a police stake-out, the action will only ever take place when food is being consumed and scalding hot coffees are perched precariously on the dashboard…

15. All grocery shopping involves the purchase of French loaves which will be placed in open brown paper bags (Caveat: when said bags break, only fruit will spill out).

16. Cars never need fuel (unless they’re involved in a pursuit).

17. If you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your opponents will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you in a threatening manner until you have defeated their predecessor.

18. If a microphone is turned on it will immediately feedback.

19. Guns are like disposable razors. If you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. you will always find another one.

20. All single women have a cat.

21. Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet.

22. No matter how savagely a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.

23. If being chased through a city you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.

24. The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. Nobody will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building undetected.

25. You will survive any battle in any war UNLESS you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

26. Prostitutes always look like Julia Roberts or Jamie Lee Curtis. They have expensive clothes and nice apartments but no pimps. They are friendly with the shopkeepers in their neighbourhood who don’t mind at all what the girl does for a living.

27. A single match is usually sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

28. It is not necessary to say "Hello" or "Goodbye" when beginning a telephone conversation. A disconnected call can always be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying "Hello? Hello?" repeatedly.

29. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at once (this is known as Stallone’s Law).

30. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.

31. Plain or even ugly girls can become movie star pretty simply by removing their glasses and rearranging their hair.

32. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their enemies with complicated devices incorporating fuses, pulleys, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks.

33. All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.

34. Anyone can land a 747 as long as there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

35. During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.

36. You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

37. Most musical instruments (especially wind instruments and accordions) can be played without moving your fingers.

38. In Middle America, all gas station at tendants have red handkerchiefs hanging out of their back pockets.

39. All teen house parties have one of every stereotypical subculture present (even people who aren’t liked and would never get invited to parties).

40. Trucks use their horns at random (no hang on, that happens in real life too!).

Punctuation and times tables.

Dino is discovering punctuation, both in his reading and his english work. He’s really getting the hang of it and seems excited by the idea that those little squiggles make the reading easier, help the story make sense. So far he’s looked at exclamation and question marks, speech marks, full stops, comma’s and capital letters. We’re just skating over it really, explaining each situation as it crops up but it does seem to be working. He actually said to me this morning that he’s staring to enjoy reading! emoticon He’s cracking through a workbook on the times tables too, still very intuitive with the maths and now loving being able to use a calculator as well.

Mimi is adding everything up and trying to read bits too, and writing all over the place. I wish she’d restrict it to paper……  

February 19, 2008

Shrek Cookbook again

Skewered Rat for dinner. emoticon With maggots.

Kids are revolting. But I love em.  

February 17, 2008

Not that I have anything against Teachers, whales, or Jonah….

Jonah’s Fate

After hearing the story of Jonah at Sunday School, a little girl repeated the story at school on Monday.

Her teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because, even though it is a very large mammal, its throat is very small.

The little girl said, "But how can that be? Jonah was swallowed by a whale."Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human. "It is physically impossible!" she said.

Undaunted, the little girl said, "Well, when I get to heaven I will ask Jonah."

To this, the teacher said, "What if Jonah went to hell?"

The little girl replied, "Then YOU ask him!"

I found it on BeliefNet and couldn’t resist.

Beliefs

Thanks Kris. No idea if I’ve ever sat still long enough to do this one before but it’s pretty close.

1. 
Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. 
Unitarian Universalism (88%)
3. 
Mahayana Buddhism (88%)
4. 
New Age (82%)
5. 
Jainism (82%)
6. 
Liberal Quakers (81%)

Take the thing here if you want to hop on the bandwagon….