Life is a Highway - it’s the journey, not the destination

but since I had 3 natra-sleeps earlier, the screen is a bit blurry!!! ooops. James failed his HGV test this morning which was a bit of a bummer (2nd try), BUT he has landed himself another job with the company he was going to have a job with if he passed his test. Of course it won’t be driving but he has some sort of runaround job, and they should give him some time on the trucks with L plates on so next time he takes it fingers crossed he’ll be much better. Unfortunately he starts tomorrow, and still has 3 shifts to do at Mcd’s. He’ll be so knackered, as soon as he finished one he’ll be at the other. Plus I guess this means that any last minute stuff for the wedding will fall to me, nowt new there then!

Thank goodness BA decided to pull the strikes or I may just be in a crumpled heap on the floor right now. Don’t ask about the bloody ceremony hotel, they’ll be getting an earful about something in the morning and only then if I can sort that out I’ll be able to start looking forward to Sat.

what can I wear that is suitably weird to meet Jax’s sister??? Sorry, Jax, I’ll be normal I promise. Now where did I put those rainbow armwarmers….

and anyone else who may have lost details about next week - my website Although not very exciting - meant to do more to it, but never got round to it!

Ugly Betty? I quite like the bloke who plays Daniel Meade . Yay or nay???

been baby visiting today!!! Got to see baby Robin, the newest member of the Mud and Mischief clan which was lovely. he’s so cute! Makes me only a weee bit broody, but not enough really!!

Have also managed to cry over everyone today, including my dad who I don’t think I’ve cried in front of since I was a kid Just a *tad* stressed as our honeymoon plans are up in arms due to the BA strike. I wish someone would give us a bloody break. My mum and dad, bless em, have said that if the worst did come to the worst they’d give up their space on their holiday and we could have it. We’d have the kids, but we’d at least have a honeymoon. Gotta love em eh?

just so I know where it is! Found this on a weight loss forum, apparantly aduki beans are very good for detoxing. The recip is fab although I used canned aduki beans from sainsburys as I’m useless at thinking of the next nights tea!!

Ingredients :-
Aduki beans (pre-soaked overnight or 8-10 hours) - I use half a bag of dried aduki beans
1 large onion (finely chopped)
olive oil or water to ‘fry’
3-4 garlic cloves (crushed)
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
3 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 heaped teaspoon turmeric
hot chili powder to taste (1-2 teaspoons)
1 OXO cube (any flavour, I use beef)
water

Method :-
Boil the soaked aduki beans for 20 minutes to soften them further and to remove the toxins, drain and rinse.
Lightly fry onion and add garlic.
Add aduki beans and mix with onion and garlic.
Add tomato puree, and dry herbs.
Add chopped tomatoes and OXO cube.
Add water as desired, or if mixture becomes too dry as it is cooking.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 60 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve with brown rice.

didn’t go to plan yesterday. We’d planned to go to Magna and get a year pass as atm we’re so skint and it will give us something to do when we’ve no money and the weather is crap. Anyway there was some big conference on by Asda with Wayne Rooneys missus there so it was closed to the public. Much whinging later (I have never heard a kid whinge as much as Marcus!) we decided we needed to go out *somewhere* so we headed off to Castleton. It’s lovely out there and we haven’t been since before kids when James and I went climbing up some hill! Had a lovely time wandering the streets, watching ducks and in the museum there. Was bloomin cold though and we had to invest in some hats for the kids since we keep losing theirs! Did a bit of visiting on the way back. Turned out much better than it looked like it was!

Another night of no sleep hardly last night (I’m turning into a zombie!) and today James promised we could try Magna again when he finished work, so we did and managed to get in this time. The wind was awful though, trees in the middle of the motorway and everything! Had a great time going round, we do really like it there

James has started his stag do early and is off round the pub with his mates, I’ve found chocolate (although not enough - muahahahahaha!) and looking forward to a quiet weekend - he flies to Dublin tomorrow!

I’ve been feeling rotten today. Didn’t get to sleep till 4am last night and I think everything is just catching up with me. I feel utterly exhausted. So when I finally managed to get up I set the kids up with some new websites they’d not seen before. I showed Marcus the Hot Wheels site for which he has declared he is eternally grateful and I showed Alex the Barbie site which came back with a similar report! Just nobody mention gender stereotypes eh?

I meant to do more exciting stuff but couldn’t get going with it. We watched some schools telly some other crap telly and generally played around. Well they played, I flopped.

I did love the conversation I had with Marcus today though. We may not have managed much formal education lately and I try to console myself with the fact that I think they learn an awful lot just from conversations, but it’s hard to measure any sort of usefulness they have iykwim. Anyway, I picked up one of Marcus’s library books today about cars and it had lots of stuff about old methods of transportation so he decided to look at it with me. So we started off talking about stuff in the book then he saw a picture of an old Roman road from Pompeii which led me on to tell him a little about the history of Pompeii. So then we got onto volcanos and how they work and how they can be extinct or not. Then we started talking about tectonic plates (not even sure if that’s the right word now I’m writing it, I just called them plates!!!!) and how it makes mountains and then we looked at the world map and looked at the shapes of the continents and how it’s thought they were once joined and you could see the similar shapes. Then we got onto talking about how you could drive all the way from North America to South America in one go (I decided at this point he didn’t need to go off on another tangent about the Darien Gap so I kept my gob shut) and then we talked about the Long Way Round and how that was nearly all ridden in one go. Phew! I just love the ability to go off on tangents with stuff, he’d never be able to do that in school, it would either be a project abotu one aspect, or just listening about one aspect.

James off tomorrow so we’re heading out

I’ve had enough for the time being of wedding related crap and as I’m painfully aware that as a family it’s been more about shouting and being horrible than doing stuff together and learning I decided to take a week off and spend some quality time with the kids. I feel extra bad that I can’t seem to organise my wedding AND home educate 2 kids succesfully, especially after what some other people manage, but I suppose that’s me. Life still doesn’t feel settled, or normal, and we have no money so it’s easy to say we’ll just stay in and do nothing extraordinary. In desperate need of some socialising with people, maybe after we come back from honeymoon we can arrange some visits to friends and maybe get some - anyone?

So today started out full of good intentions and we’ve kept pretty much to them. The kids had loads of crafty items which haven’t been let out of the boxes since Xmas due to increasing boxes on the dining table, so I cleared that and we got a jewellery box out to paint for Alex and Marcus decided just to paint some pictures. He’s forever drawing and making pictures, I really should encourage him more. That lasted most of the morning and then we sat and read some library books before taking them back, The Gruffalo, some other picture book and we also read a story from Our Island Story.

So then was a trip to the library which didn’t have quite enough walking as we’d hoped as James dropped us off en route to somewhere else and managed to time it right to pick us up again. Still it was nice to get out.

At home they’ve looked at their books, which tbh is quite a rarity, normally they take ages to choose then come home and forget about them! Then Marcus helped Alex to put some jewels on her now dry jewellery box while listening to the Big Toe Radio show (till the internet died).

I used this time to try and find their reading book, the one from SOnlight which they like, but is a bit of a bore. Anyway, I couldn’t find it so got out The Magic Porridge Pot ladybird early reader. normally Marcus doesn’t remember words even if he’s read them loads before, he still tries to sound them out. ANyway we sat down with this one and he managed to read it all! He seems to have got over his remembering thing and did much better. So that’s his first ever proper book. Seems to have been quite a long time coming, but I think the not pushing it has been helping him at least. Alex is as much a nightmare with the reading as she thinks she knows it all and will not tolerate any help from me when I know she’s just making the story up. It’s quite frustrating!

And now they’re sat quietly watching telly and I’m going to go off and make some tea. It’s been a good day, I hope we can continue this all week and beyond!