Ducklings

The accommodation block where Sarah is living is full of about 1000 18/19 yr students. There is a pond there and two ducks have had ducklings, one has 11 to look after and one has 2 to look after. They have become the talk of the whole complex and even have a facebook group for everyone to follow their daily exploits. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=83652563387&ref=nf There are some great photos and stories on there.

Air Show

Andy and I had a great afternoon watching the Air Show today. We booked a table at the Cliffs to eat and watch the show. We had a great view and watched the whole thing in comfort. It was a really hot day so I was glad to be inside. The food was really lovely. We had canapes to start and some champagne. Then we had pate followed by cold meat and salad. After being absolutely stuffed there was georgeous profiteroles to follow and then cheese and biscuits. All the time we were eating there were planes flying by at about our height, so it was cool to get some photos. We were able to get out on to the balcony to watch the show.

With this picture you can see the pier in the background.

One of my favourite of the planes is the Sea King Helicopter which is used for air sea rescue and also here are the parachutists that all land in one spot on the beach after spiralling down in a line. An amazing finale today.

Everyone's favourite, the red arrows.

today

Today we went to South Weald park which is very near the parents in law. It was huge and had a lake in the middle of it. We took the dogs and Millie and Barney had a little dip!! LOL Barney's "dip" was accidental, we think. We were busy watching Milie worrying about her going into water after the ducks. A swan gave her a warning sound and she backed off, but Barney being dippy, jumped right in! Andy had to pull him back out as it was very deep and there was no easy slope to get up on. It was quite funny. As we walked round we threw sticks in for Millie to catch. She loved jumping straight in the water to get the sticks and kept barking for more. Poor old Barney's back legs were giving way after a while, so we went off to sit down for a bit. It was a lovely trip out. Then we popped in to see parents in law and brought back the Karcher (to clean stuff) and Andy invited them all round to ours for a BBQ in the evening. It was a bit chilly by the evening though, but it was nice.

Just finished watching De Vinci Code. We have already read the book and watched the film at the cinema. It certainly has an interesting twist. Looking forward to see Angels and Demons next week at the cinema.

101 things to do in 1001 days

No 47 - don't buy craft stuff for one month. Well it is day 8 and i am doing ok so far!! lol. The first week was the danger week, hopefully I can last another 3 weeks. In my opinion the balance of a craft weekend doesnt count, nor does postage of ATCs!!! LOL

Have managed finally to put in all the potatoes and onion at the allotment. Quite a mammoth task. Just have two patches of long grass that need turning over which shouldn't take too long. Also really must get my seeds planted so I can put them out at the end of the month. April, May and June are always so busy in the garden. I think I might give up the allotment when the rent runs out in September. I keep changing my mind about it as I love being out there, but I just can't do the heavy digging which is needed in the early Spring. Will have a think about it over the summer and if I really am not enjoying it then I really should give it up. But being out in the sun with the birds singing along whilst you work, and others working in the background is a really lovely peaceful time. However, I just usually end up in so much pain that the after effects of spending time there is not good news. i will get some photos of the allotment next time I go, probably at the weekend.

Andy has become obsessed with cutting the grass at home. Whereas when he first came to live with me five/six years ago it was hard enough getting him just to do the front lawn. He has been cutting both back and front nearly every day. We got a new lawnmower that cuts shorter, so he has cut back on that now thank goodness and given the grass a chance to grow! I put some weed killer and grass feed out on the front lawn this evening so he can't cut the grass for three days.

Went to my managerial course today. Everyone seem tired and hardly enthusiastic. We were left to our devices for two hours so that we could put together a questionnaire that we are going to ask our colleagues to complete. The intention of the questionnaire is to measure the opinions of others about our quality of written communication, namely emails. So that will be interesting to send out! Haha. If 15 of us send out 20 questionnaires and get back say 10 that will actually make 150 for our results, which is quite good. And it would be a great cross section of levels of staff. So you never know it may actually work out to be useful as a tool to measure written communcation within our group.

I have been making ATCs like mad again. There was a collage-a-thon on ATCs for all website last weekend so I made about 1o cards and have sent out 8. I still find it quite amazing that people actually want what I have made! Very strange concept to get used to. I want to make about 5 or 6 cards to send to a Facebook ATC group that is UK based. Not many people do this strange hobby in the UK, so it is always difficult to keep postage costs down. So any opportunity I can find to send within the UK the better.

I had a few positive contacts re the family tree over the past week, which is quite exciting. Have managed to extend the tree on one side and need to check an interesting story to confirm another relationship. But from one of the contacts we have actually ended up being friends on facebook. Alice wanted to talk to someone she was related to, no matter how distantly that was her own age. Her FIFTH cousin is a year younger than her and lives in Australia. So we will see what develops from that.

I am going to have to tell Sev that he can't play on his xbox war game for a few days, Sunday to Thursday as he has four exams next week and really needs to concentrate on revision. He absolutely hates revising but if he is to get good enough grades to be an officer in the Navy this year, then he will have to put some work into it. So that is a battle I am not looking forward to. he will probably be grumpy the whole time, but it will be worth it, I hope.

Sarah tells me she isn't doing too well, has had a cold for 4 weeks now. No it isn't swine flu. she is just run down and not eating properly or sleeping properly. She also has exams coming up so needs to look after herself a bit better. The photo below is of her rock climbing. Her boyfriend teaches people how to climb so four of them spent the day doing that. I am glad that she managed to get out and get some fresh air and exercise in the lovely Peak District.

Sarah Sev and Alice