weekend baby

Yay....weekend! Time to meet up with my Dotty Wren mates. Woohoo!

rain...again

Well we had 3 days of sunshine. So I guess that was summer. It's bloody freezing again now. 
I need a holiday. 
Just saying.

holiday villas

I've been spending far too much time looking at holiday villas of late. I go on for a little peak and end up losing 2 hours of my life. And I still haven't booked anything. Don't even know where we want to go. We rather blew the holiday budget somewhat at Christmas with the Caribbean cruise so really I should be looking cheapo. But I don't like cheap. I don't want some place with brown furniture and ugly curtains. I want white minimal luxury with a private pool and a sea view. I'll keep looking....

missing phone

The eldest went on a college visit thingy from school yesterday. She arrived home at 6pm to inform us that she had left her phone in the toilets at school and 3 attempts at FindiPhone from friend's phones had all come up with the same result. The phone was apparently in the middle of a field in the arse end of nowhere about 6 miles away. The other half and youngest were on their way out to footie and I was supposed to be going to the pub with my friend. I shook my head and indicated that it was indeed the sad end of the 500 quid phone and she would probably never see it again. 
She burst out crying.
I think she would have been less upset if we'd lost Alf.
I ditched my poor friend and cancelled my night out.
We did FindiPhone again. It was still in the middle of a field. Surrounded by about a zillion other fields. Honestly I don't think you could have found a more rural location in the whole of West Yorkshire. I didn't even know so many fields existed round there. We collected my sis and her middle one for reinforcements and, encouraged by the fact that the signal was remaining static and not on the move around Yorkshire, we set off on TheWildGooseChaseOfTheYear.
We established a rough location for the remotest spot in England and drove to the nearest bit of civilisation.  A bloke just happened to be going into his house near where we parked so we called him over to look at the map of doom. In an amazing stroke of luck the chap only turned out to be the bloody farmer! He knew exactly where the FieldInTheMiddleOfNowhere was. 
He grabbed his keys and said a couple of us could have a lift. So, completely ignoring all the rules about StrangerDanger, the eldest and I jumped into his 4x4 and did a spot of evening offroading to the place where X marked the spot. 
We then spent almost an hour walking round the muddiest field in the world pressing "play sound" and craning our necks to give our ears a better chance of hearing the beepity beep.
And...nothing.
We stood on the very spot where FindiPhone said it was. Nothing. We did a fingertip search in a 10m circumference around The Spot. Nothing. We searched nearby trees and an empty carrier bag we found chucked in a bush. Nothing. At one point we got excited cos we heard a phone noise. But it was just the farmer's wife phoning to see where the chuff he was. 
In the end it was getting dark and the poor farmer was in danger of starving to death/getting thumped by his wife so we admitted defeat and got back in the landrover.
We arrived home phoneless, 20 quid lighter (cos I felt I should give the farmer something for his kind help and I only had a £20 note on me) and with Converse that I'm afraid to say will never be the same again no matter how many times I bung them in the washer.
The eldest took herself off to bed resigned to the fact that she was now stuck with her old iPhone 5c for the foreseeable future. The absolute horror of the situation finally sinking in.

Anyway... before someone sets up a JustGiving page and a campaign to get her a new phone with street cred....THAT is not the end of the story.

She returned to school this morning and miracle of miracles.... although FindiPhone was still insisting it was in the middle of the muddiest field on planet earth, it was actually right there! At school! Someone had found it and handed it in! Happy days! (Well, happy if you don't count wandering round a muddy field in unsuitable footwear for an hour and missing quiz night at the pub for NO REASON WHATSOEVER that is...)

So the moral of the story is: FindiPhone is crap and teenagers are bloody slack but there are still some kind and honest people out there.

sea ya

My sis and I took all 5 kids to the seaside on Thursday. It was a little different to our last view of the sea. The North Sea is not the same as the Caribbean Sea it would appear. It's little more grey and a little less tropical. But much fun was had by all.
Back to school tomorrow. The alarm is set 😩

it's procreate baby!

I was sick of seeing everyone's fabulous Procreate drawings everywhere. All those super speedy time lapse videos were leaving me feeling inadequate with my little flat illos. I was feeling totes left behind and very 2014.
So I got myself an iPad Pro and got down with the kids.
And I love it!
I'm only using it for the laugh at the mo, not for proper real life work. But it comes in most handy when the other half is watching crappy bloody football on telly. Did this last night instead of Man City v Liverpool...

unicorn day

I keep forgetting to put stuff on here. I put them on Insta then forget about my blog. Not sure if anyone even sees it anyway. Instagram has kind of taken over hasn't it. But anyway, I quite like keeping a little record of what's going on. So here is National Unicorn Day. 
It was yesterday.
Not today.
If you were planning on having a unicorn party to celebrate I'm afraid you're too late.
Sorry.

dawn chorus

If any birds are reading this you should get yourself to my garden in the morning. Like 5am. There's a bird party. Outside our bedroom window. If you can't make it tomorrow don't worry, it happens every. bloody. day. Bring your best singing voice. And your mates.

bus trip

The youngest went skiing in Italy this week. They went by coach. 26 hours. They came home by coach. 28 hours due to crappy traffic. Arrived back at school at 7pm last night. He was home long enough for a shower and change of clothes and then off he went to scout camp. In a tent. Outside. Till tomorrow. I'm thinking he might be a bit grumpy when he comes home. 

happy easter

We're off to my sister's to drink prosecco with the fam then legging it to the pub for bank holiday shenanigans. Happy Easter indeed :)