Hallo-Bloody-Ween October 31, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Musings.Tags: anti-halloween
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Every year it’s the same. Halloween creeps up way too fast (even though I am constantly reminded by all the aisles of orange and black crap at the supermarket). Every year it’s the same …. what can we do/where shall we go to avoid being at home when the trick or treaters come. This year we can’t really go out as we have a new baby and can’t go into town so hubby stuck a notice to the door. They still rang the door bell and woke Evie up … grrr. It was made somewhat worse as next door decided to have a Halloween grotto. I’m not a party pooper and if other people’s kids want to dress up and beg then it’s up to them, but I don’t like the idea of kids going round to strangers houses and also dressing in the occult fashion. I think if Evie wants to get involved then I will change it to All Saint’s celebration where she can dress as an angel and go round on 1st Nov to people’s houses ringing doorbells with her daddy offering to do chores for them. I pretty much know she won’t want to do that 
The little kiddies aren’t a problem as they aren’t too menacing, but it’s when you get the teens coming round looking like something out of a horror movie/bank robbing film threatening you with tricks. Thankfully we’ve not been tricked before (unless you count the time the car got smashed, but that wasn’t actually Halloween). There are quite a lot of older generations living in houses in our road and I imagine they must be quite scared on Halloween too.
Yay, First Proper Belly Laugh October 30, 2008
Posted by graciek in Evie, Life in General.Tags: first baby laugh
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Evie is almost 14 weeks old today. She’s been smiling since about 5 weeks but today she did her first proper laugh today. It was soooooo adorable and hubby and I couldn’t help but laugh too. Evie had done her #2 (she only does one every 3-5 days) and hubby had the misfortune of changing her – by all accounts it was a bit of a mess in her trousers. As I was holding and playing with her afterwards hubby came in and Evie was all smily as usual. Then he started calling her a naughty girl in a funny/comedy accent (think King of the Lemurs ofMadagascar) and she started to chuckle. Proper full on chuckles that made her tummy go all wibbly! It was totally infectious and the more she giggled away the more we did. It only lasted for about 30 seconds but it was so cute.
Freecycle Time Wasters October 29, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General.Tags: freecycle, time wasters
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Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) is a most wonderful idea. You sign up to your local area’s group and people post items they want to offer or that they want and other people answer. The only proviso is it’s got to be free (no payments or trading) and it all reduces the amount of stuff going to landfill that is otherwise useful for someone else. As we’re trying to slowly purge a lot of our stuff before we emigrate we’ve been putting a lot of things onto freecycle this week. We’ve got rid of almost everything that we’ve put on offer. It’s a little annoying though with the time wasters. Almost as soon as you’ve posted an offer they email you asking for it. You email them back to ask when they can collect and then you get eerie silence complete with tumbleweeds. Could it be that they only check email once a day? Could it be that your email has disappeared into their spam folder? or could it be that thy just decided they want it but can’t be arsed to pick it up. My other even more annoying bugbear is people who arrange a time to come pick up and item and don’t bother turning up – what’s that, oh yes I totally love waiting around all evening for you to come pick up an item I am giving to you for free!!!! I would think that about 1/4 of the people we’ve had respond on freecycle are timewasters. We’ve got around the second type of timewaster lately with small items I put them in the recycling box by the front door for people to help themselves.
I’d say that on average we’ve probably given away as much as we have received ourselves which seems fair. Notable scores include an almost new bit of carpet for our nursery, stones/rocks for our pond waterfall and hopefully this weekend we will have got a cot for our baby for when we arrive in Australia. Given away things like a digital camera, DIY leftovers, piano/keyboard.
Evie’s Latest Stats October 28, 2008
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Took Evie for her fortnightly weighing check. Today she weighs in at 11lb 6oz. She’s put on 14oz in the last fortnight which is really good, considering the previous fortnight she’d only put on 2oz. She’s dropped below the 25th percentile weight, but as she is still putting on weight well the health visitor wasn’t too concerned. Evie is also very tall. She’s 62.5 cm now which puts her at almost 91st percentile height. Evie is going to be a supermodel (tall and skinny). She looks noticeably bigger this week and she’s now into her 3-6 month clothes. How sad putting away all the 0-3 month clothes. Good news is that she’s going to have a new cousin (congrats Luke and Suzi) and so we can recycle the clothes back to them (they have 2 boys but are hoping this one is a girl).
Church Activities October 26, 2008
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General.add a comment
Today was a big day in our church. The Bishop of Leicester came to do confirmation for 7 of our congregation. Last December hubby got confirmed but he had to go down to Leicester cathedral for that as he was the only one from our church getting confirmed. It was a family service and all the kiddies were very excited about the man in a funny looking hat The bishop did a little question and answer with the kiddies. Mostly quite intelligent questions such as “what do you do?” and “who made you bishop?”. The funniest question though was “who do you support?” – why does it all end up about football!! Evie was soo good during the service and sat there smiling away at the people in the pew behind. After the service most of the church went out for a celebratory carvery lunch at the Quality Hotel. It was so lovely going out with the rest of the church (there was about 40 of us) and I am really going to miss our church family when we move out to Sydney. I hope and pray that we will find a congregation that we will fit so well into again.
Happy 3 Months Evie October 25, 2008
Posted by graciek in Evie.add a comment
Our baby Evie is 3 months old today. It feels like time has gone by so quickly, yet at the same time she feels like she’s been with us forever. I can’t believe how much I love her – everything revolves around her. I hope we don’t end up spoiling her too much. No matter what she does, one little grin or cheeky smile and all is forgiven. I must be quite boring to talk to as all I seem to do is talk about her.
Meeting the Clan October 19, 2008
Posted by graciek in Family, Life in General.add a comment
We took Evie t’up North to meet her Daddy’s clan. She was really well behaved and enjoyed being cuddled by all and sundry. Made us parents so proud, our baby is so well mannered. Evie loves her two grandfathers. She seems to have a special affinity with both and smiles and talks a lot to them. More so than she does to us. It’s like she is being especially cutesy with them (I suspect wrapping them around her little finger).
It did make me sad when we had to leave as we’ll only be coming back to visit one more time in late November before we emigrate to Sydney. We could see that Evie and her grandparents are getting well attached and it will be sad to know that we can’t just pop up for the day (well, it would take at least a day to fly back) and we’ll not see them every few months. They’ll miss a lot of her growing up too, but we are slowly introducing the wonders of skype and video conversations to our parents. All parents now have broadband connections and webcams so we’re 1/2 way there.
Banking October 17, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money.add a comment
It’s all such doom and gloom in the media lately about all things financial. As we’re emigrating at the end of the year I’m slowly getting all my finances in order. First of all I cancelled all the credit cards I no longer use (I confess to being a bit of a card tart in the past and swapping cards when special rates finished – glad to state though that I’ve never paid a penny of interest on any of my cards). Last month I wrote to if.com to close one of my ISAs. After 3 weeks I finally got a cheque for the amount only to find they’d forgotten to sign the cheque. WTF, a bank that forgets to sign cheques?? Anyway, today I finally received a signed cheque and paid it into the bank.
Oceans of Fun October 14, 2008
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General.Tags: oceans of fun
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Evie had her first proper baby play date. We met up with the Coopers and their little girl Rebekah who is 2 months older than Evie. We decided to meet up at Oceans of Fun in Hucknall. It’s a great little place. It’s one of those indoor play adventure playgroundy type things. You know, slides, ball pools, cargo nets that kind of thing. Plus the added bonus of a coffee area for parents. Evie had lots of fun staring at Rebekah. I think Rebekah won the staring match. They also went into the ball pool with hubby and Rebekah’s mum. Evie went in with 2 slippers on and came out with only 1, so hubby had to go diving in to find the lost slipper. It kind of reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons when Maggie is in the ball pool and sinks under the balls where all the other babies are lost.
Removals October 13, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General.add a comment
We had another removal company rep round today to estimate volume for a quote to ship our stuff out to Australia. It was very sad going round the house with a spreadsheet working out what was coming and what wasn’t. Apparently we have about 1/2 a 20ft container’s volume of stuff.
I managed to sell off both our bikes and Evie’s moses basket at the end of last week. I sold them at about 1/3 of the original price. Now have to work out what else we can sell, what is being given to others, what we can boot sale and what we can freecycle.
