George & William - Happy Easter

Got the smashing school photos of you boys in the post the other day from Mummy. Don't you look grown up! Daddy emailed and said you were both doing really well at school and nursery, William it won't be long before you are following George into big school! Thank you so much also for the lovely Easter card you made, you are both so clever with your painting and artwork! We loved the wobbly eyes. We have some Easter eggs here for you but as we're not meeting up yet I'll save them for you both.
lots of love
Auntie Paula & Cousin Julia xxXxx

Paddington does Ideal Home!

Saw this Paddington Bear cake at this year's Ideal Home exhibition, the theme being London Underground. All together we had a good day wandering around, Julia got given a free B&Q do it yourself book for volunteering to get up and cut a tile with their dry tile cutter! Only two show houses which was a bit of a disappointment and neither were all that. In fact the room sets were better including the mock up of Only Fools & Horses done by George Clark. Though we didn't get to see the man himself this year :-( Off home now to chill out and watch Planet of the Apes!

The trials & tribulations of Blogger to Facebook!

This is a bit of a test post I guess really as I've been trying to figure out how to get my Blogger feeds back onto my Facebook timeline. Not as easy as it once was and until this goes live I still won't know if it works...

Anyway assuming it does maybe some of you out there can solve an issue I have with my smartphone battery. Ever since the Jellybean update my battery seems to be draining far more quickly. Maybe its me but I used to just put it on charge overnight whereas now I'm having to plug it in when I get home or even at work using the USB lead. I've tried various battery apps to no avail and I've played with turning off settings such as wifi, data, app syncing and haptic feedback. Thing is with all these off the phone ceases to be useful ;-) Since being home and having charged it up its sitting pretty stable with wifi on, auto app sync on and haptic feedback back on in the keyboard app only. Wondering if keep switching these on/off uses up more juice than just leaving them on? I have also switched off Latitude reporting my location, has anyone used that and found it hogging resources? Final thing was to limit the number of screens to two thus hopefully minimizing switching between them. If anyone has any thoughts please post on my Facebook page.

Highlights and long time no speak!

Downloaded a Blogger app on my phone & tablet yesterday and realised its been a long while since I wrote anything to my blog. Its not that life is THAT boring but most of the time since we have had the smartphones I've been posting to Facebook just because its easier. That's not meant as an excuse just an explanation. Still, in reality, life moves on month after month pretty much the same and it can be hard to find a highlight worth posting about.
Anyway to remedy that, just before Christmas, Julia attended an interview at Christchurch university for a PGCE place for teaching art to the 11-18 year olds. To increase her chances of getting an interview she's been back at Greenacre Academy, in the art department, as an assistant teacher. They've even offered to pay her now for her time which she's chuffed about. Anyhow at the interview she was told she'd hear about her offer before Christmas but in the end the offers weren't posted until the New Year. Suffice to say she got her place which has now meant sitting the QTS literacy and numeracy skills tests before she can start the course this September. For those of you out there who are gonna suggest these tests are easy let me just say go to the Department of Education and try them out under exam conditions. They are NOT straightforward by any stretch of the imagination. I pride myself on being good at English but I struggled with the punctuation and the comprehension. But this Tuesday just gone, despite having a rotten cold and being snowed in on the estate, Julia passed her literacy on her 2nd attempt. To say I was proud of her would be a huge understatement, she's never swayed from her goal to teach art and in this day and age with many young people having no pride in going out and carving a career for themselves, I'm immensely pleased that she's so focussed. All we got to do now is get through the numeracy and she's home and dry!!!

Another weekend over...

Well that's another weekend almost over with again, where does the time go? Managed to get out and do the lawns again, a necessary but rather irritating chore as I hate gardening. It's been pretty wet lately at the weekends and I don't need much of an excuse not to get out there but the downside is with all the rain the damn grass grows for England and so when I do finally get out there it involves more traipsing back and forth to the wheelie bin to empty the grass collector. Still it's done now and I feel better for knowing it'll look passable for another couple of weeks!

After doing the indoor chores like washing and ordering this month's provisions I've finally updated the website with some holiday snaps from LAST year - yeah I know how lazy am I and some other odds and sods. Thought as this year's summer break is looming I had better post some photos of last year's excursion to Ilfracombe. This year we're going stay home and go out for days given that we are hosting a 21st birthday bash for Julia this Autumn. Besides there are some great places locally to visit that we still haven't been to since Julia passed her driving test so now's the time to do that and James is coming out with us again this year and now he also has a set of wheels to his name they can share the driving! I've collected a whole handful of leaflets from the stand at work and so all we need to do is compile a list of places to visit, Groombridge Place Gardens being fairly near the top of that list as Julia and I used to go on the bus when she was younger and so it will be nice to go under our own steam so to speak. Knowing what the weather is usually like over our summer breaks we need to have some indoor plan B's at the ready and I'd like to visit a garden or two just for the sheer pleasure of snapping some wonderful foliage. We've booked a weekend away to visit Longleat Safari Park too and right at the start of our break falls the Kent County Show which I just love so that will be a good way to kick off :-)