Mr Motivator

No, Not that awful guy who made me turn the TV off every morning, I am referring to Ralph Marston. Never heard of him? Well, depending on where you are reading from, I am not completely surprised.

A few years ago, during my own "difficult" time in my life and hopefully the most difficult, I looked everywhere in desperation for help out of the deep dark smelly pit I had fallen in to. I have posted about this time in my life before and am not about to start whinging about how hard life is and how I have had it harder than anyone else, but I want to share with anyone who is interested, something I found back then and which helped me through.

On my search for help, I found a website by Ralph Marston called The Daily Motivator. Have a look for yourself. (I have also put the link in "The Quiet Area") There are several presentations to make you stop and reflect, to encourage you to be positive and to help you through difficult times.

This morning, while sorting through some papers, I found some of the little motivational cards I had printed from his site, which had been helpful to me back then and it made me wonder whether the site still existed. It does (obviously). Although I was not visiting the site in a desperate search for help this time, I read todays "motivator" and have printed it (with permission of course) because it is very relevant to my current "battle" to eat healthily and lose weight.

I am 3 weeks in to my plan, which has got to be a record, but with a bit (okay a lot) of help from "Gael Lindenfield", I feel like I am going to stick at it this time. I have only lost 2 pounds though in 3 weeks and although I am staying focussed on my goal, I cannot help feeling a bit disappointed and demotivated. Reading the Daily Motivator reminded me that although some of my efforts will not bring results, I will benefit from them. Good point. Even though I am not losing weight, I must be healthier for eating more healthily and getting more exercise.

Thanks, Ralph!

Room

Many months ago, I blogged about how Big J had taken to sleeping on the floor of his bedroom so we had taken his bed out of his room and put a mattress down for him to sleep on. I think he quite liked sleeping on the mattress on the floor and it certainly made it easier when we went camping as he was already used to it!

While attempting to clear out the garage, I came across Big J's bed and thought maybe it was about time he stop sleeping on the floor.

We assembled the bed. It wouldn't fit! The bed he used to sleep in was a child's bed. This was a full size one and just an inch too long for the space we wanted it to go into. Bum!

We had already broken the already flimsy wardrobe by moving it. Now we had to move it again. Larry was getting frustrated to say the least with my constant flow of suggestions as to how to solve the problem and it was getting closer to Big J's bedtime. It was looking increasingly like Big J was going to be sleeping on the floor again.

Finally, we managed to find a place for the bed, the wardrobe and the toy box leaving just about enough room to swing a goldfish.

Tuesday saw a necessary trip to The Range (Hardware etc. store) to buy some storage boxes to go under his bed. These replaced the toy box which is now going to take the bed's place in the garage (I'm sure there is some kind of logic here?! Please let me know if you spot it!) We also found a cute pop up storage panda, which we filled with all his soft toys. At last we could see some floor space.



This morning, after hearing some banging from Big J's room, I anxiously called to him to ask what he was doing. "I'm Hiding in my polar bear!". So much for buying a cute storage solution. He thought it was a tent! No sooner do I put the toys into the panda, than he has taken them all out again so that he can climb into it.



And the floor space has gone again! Oh well, easy come, easy go!

Harry Potter

Larry and I practically gave up spending time alone together when we had Little Z and then made things worse by having Big J. We have no social life and couldn't afford one even if we wanted one.

As the summer holidays are here (and almost gone again!)and I have lots of teacher friends now with nothing to do (hee hee!), I decided to talk one of them into looking after Little Z for a few hours (would I find one crazy enough?) so Larry & I could go to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It didn't take long. My friend Sarah, probably the busiest of all my teacher friends, who is trying to sell her house, buy another house and do several other things besides, agreed to look after Little Z (did she know what she was agreeing to?). So, while Big J was still at nursery and Little Z was playing with Sarah's rabbit, Toby, and making cakes etc. Larry & I went to the Odeon at Leisureworld.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been out for quite some time now, so we were in one of the smaller auditoria, but we did not expect it to be full so thought we were likely to be able to sit where we wanted and have room to move our arms. It seems many others had the same idea. It was full. We did have a choice of seats, but it was limited. The seats were quite comfortable, though and if it was not for the teenage couple sitting next to us who evidently thought they were in a café and it was okay to talk (not even about the film for goodness sake!!!) in normal voices throughout the film, we would have really enjoyed it.

The film was good. As a fan of Harry Potter, I would not say it was brilliant, but I liked it. I think it was fairly true to the book, although I don't think the scene with Sirius in the Department of Mysteries was as big and exciting as it could have been. Somehow it didn't quite meet my expectations. Parts of the story which I thought were important had been omitted or changed, which disappointed me. I think if you have not read the books you will enjoy the film more than if you have read them. Either way, I would still recommend going to see it if you haven't already.

Expecto Patronum.....


What would your Patronus be? Find out here.

Be prepared though. Apparently mine would be an Amoeba! How glamorous!

What will he do next?

It is difficult in todays world to shelter our children and protect them from things we don't want them to know about, at least yet. We try our best to teach them about the dangers and to teach them right from wrong. It is different from when I was a child. Children have access to so much and seem to know about things they are not ready to know about. I find that even if I stop Little Z watching something on TV or on a DVD that I don't think is suitable, there will be someone at school happy to tell her all about it. I am glad however, that I can rely on the adult members of my family not to teach my children to do stupid things like run into the sea, for (randomly chosen) example...



Or can I?

Thanks, Seany! It might have been a long time ago, but he remembered! :o)

Having said that, we did have a great afternoon.

On Saturday Little Z, Big J and I discovered Holly Hill Woodland Park and liked it so much, we went back with Larry today. We were all fairly muddy by the time we got back to the car, so will shortly be investing in some walking boots for Larry and myself. Little Z's wellies kept her feet dry. Big J's wellies, although okay for large puddles, didn't really meet his needs today.

Berry Nice!

I have not been Blackberry Picking (or Brambling as we used to call it when I was little) since I was about 13 years old. "That can't be very long ago", I hear you say, but you would be surprised. It is quite a few years ago now. Anyway, enough about me feeling self conscious about my age, after cycling at the sports centre, Little Z and I walked home with our bikes (she is not ready for the roads yet, despite her insisting she is!) and spotted some brambles near our home.

We took a tub each and went out to pick some. I was amazed at how many more I seemed to pick than Little Z. In fact, I could swear that at times, the number of blackberries in her tub were decreasing rather than increasing!

Once we had picked all the ripe ones we could reach, filling my tub and strangely leaving Little Z with about 15 in hers, we had a healthy and free dessert for after dinner. Healthy is one thing, but free is even better. I shall be going back again this week and hope no one else gets there first!

I want to ride my bicycle....

At last, we have ditched Little Z's stabilisers for her bike (we will keep them of course as they were a present from Uncle Seanie!).

Last weekend we took Little Z out to Wilverley in the New Forest to ride her bike. She was so good at riding with stabilisers and had at last plucked up the courage to ride much faster than she used to, that we thought she was ready to ride without stabilisers. We took one of them off, but found that she was relying on that one to keep her upright while she started off with both feet on the pedals. The only way to get her riding properly was to take them both off.

We had tears and tantrums and kicking the bike (and that was just Larry! It's not easy teaching a stroppy seven year old to ride her bike!), but finally, lots of shouting, screaming and stropping later she was riding, albeit wobbly, without us holding on to her bike. Yippee!!

So, all we had to do now was to get her a bit of practice so she could start off by herself and ride around more confidently. But that would be easy, surely?!

I took Little Z out to the sports centre today to have another go. We had more tears and tantrums and kicking the bike, but finally, lots of shouting, screaming and stropping later she was pushing off by herself and riding, much more confidently. After shouting at me over and over again, "I want to go home. I don't want to ride my bike. I can't do it!", and me shouting back that we would not be going home until she could *£$% well do it, it was impossible to remove her from the sports centre where she took pleasure in showing me how fast she could ride and how close she could get to running over me while I was sitting on the grass!

Now, she wants a new bike, one with gears!

Happy Campers!

We have just got back from our first proper holiday in the campervan. We have never been away for more than 2 nights in the van before, but decided it was time to do it properly. As members of The Caravan Club we get preferential rates at some sites and exclusive access to members only sites also at very good rates.

We started our holiday in Somerset visiting Larry's family as it was his mum's 60th birthday. It didn't cost us anything to camp there as we were on their drive! While we were there, we visited Minehead and Cleeve Abbey. From Somerset we went to Combe Martin, where we stayed at a commercial and rather expensive site. Combe Martin was nice, but nothing special, however, we did meet some lovely people on the campsite and there were loads of children for Little Z and Big J to play with. As newcomers to this campervanning game it was great to talk to people who had been doing it for quite a while as we picked up some helpful tips. We also quickly found out that it is almost impossible to eat your breakfast in peace and that if you want the other kids to go away from your door, you have to tell them straight!

The following day we headed for Woolacombe. On the way to Woolacombe we were driving through Ilfracombe and decided it looked so lovely that we wanted to park up and have a look around. After being given a ticket by someone who had paid to park all day but was now leaving and didn't want it to go to waste, we phoned a local farm campsite and booked in for the night. We spent the rest of the day on the unusual Tunnels Beach.

We spent the next day on the beach at Woolacombe where I got very sunburnt despite having put sun cream on. Big J spend most of the afternoon in the sea with Larry and Little Z stayed with me on the beach after attempting to go into the sea, getting scared and then wandering off by herself through the thousands of other people on the beach. I'm just glad I had "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" to take my mind off what could have happened had Larry not caught up with her in time.

Having passed through Lynton & Lynmouth on the way to Combe Martin, we wanted to stop there again on the way back so after spending the morning shopping in Ilfracombe (we hadn't had time to see the shops when we had been there the first time as we had spent all day on the beach) we spent the afternoon in Lynton & Lynmouth including taking a ride on the cliff railway before travelling back to Somerset to see Larry's family again. We stayed two more nights on their drive before driving home to Southampton.

Glad to be back? Well, yes, I suppose so, but Larry & I are thoroughly hooked on campervanning now and I don't think it will be long at all before we go away again!

Did I finish Harry Potter? Yes, I did. Did J.K.Rowling finish Harry Potter? You will have to read the book to find out or cheat as "some" people have suggested!