Mollie loves her Crutch!

The BIG news this week is that Mollie has an injury! For a few days she hobbled around with pained expressions and odd little noises and every time we visited Mum and Dad she would insist on using one of my Dad's crutches the whole time we were there. In exasperation we finally gave in and took her to A&E....that's the royal 'we' as usual - it was Steven who got the pleasure of a three hour visit to the hospital!

Much as we suspected the Doctor failed to find much for her to be complaining about....didn't even require an x-ray to make his diagnosis which was - 'a strained/sprained heel'!! Far from being chagrined or embarrassed by this slight on her suffering Mollie returned home triumphant because the kindly Doctor let her bring home a crutch!!

I suspect we will have to return to the Hospital at some point to have the crutch surgically removed from Mollie, she can't seem to make it further than 6inches without her extra appendage at the moment and the click-click-click accompanies her every movement! (Don't be fooled by her face in the photo - underneath that look of contempt she's grinning like the proverbial cat with a vat of cream!)

Back to catch up on HS:MS:HS again! Will I ever get organised enough to play along properly I wonder.....

Birthday....... undoubtedly my favourite birthday photo of all time has to be this one of my Dad's 60th.....(my Dad is officially the Best Dad/Grandad in the World by the way!)

Yes, there really are 60 candles on that cake and if you look carefully you can probably work out which end we started lighting them from!

French

and rain ... no problem finding that word in my space recently!

Tessa

HS:MS:MS Saturdays are portrait days and today the challenge is to post a b&w portrait. She's going to be disappointed about this - you can't see her funky red highlights in b&w!

It's still hard to believe that she's 15 already, in her last few months of compulsory schooling with a whole world of opportunity and hard decisions ahead of her.

Sensible, kind, thoughtful, considerate ... the best kind of daughter. Obstinate, opinionated (just like her father), self-conscious, self-doubting, sensitive (not to mention hearing impaired and diabetic!) ... like all teenagers, not always the easiest to live with!

I know, because I was once a 15yr old girl (with a whole different attitude!), that we are very very lucky to have a daughter like her......I only hope she knows that we know how lucky we are and how proud we are of her.

Resigned to Failure

I've come over all Abba this week! I've pre-ordered my dvd of Mamma Mia and bought some high heeled boots and skinny trousers......mid-life crisis?!

One of my resolutions this year was to not buy clothes(!) I did really well up until September but then I reached my first big hurdle... a friend's wedding...can't count wedding clothes can I?! But since then I've found flimsier and flimsier excuses to buy outfits - the latest non-excuse is a school reunion in a couple of weeks. So, I've failed on that resolution, how about the rest.....

stop chewing my fingers......it's disgusting and looks horrible Success! (for the most part anyway!)

lose about 7/8 lb ha,ha,ha!!!

be a better housewife (e.g. do the washing before everybody in the house runs out of pants and socks) what was I thinking?? Perhaps next year I'll set myself a resolution slightly more achievable ........ ending world poverty single-handed maybe?!

take more photos yes, although perhaps next year I'll try for less quantity, more quality!

blog daily (or regularly at least!) 104 out of 325 - big fat failure!


On Monday this week Fletcher had a Victorian Day at school......I think he actually looked less like a scruffy little urchin in his outfit - alot smarter than he usually looks on school days (and cleaner too!)

Haven't been out much to take photos this week but I still have some flowers in my garden....

although I'm not sure what's happened to the berries.....

To colour or not to colour.........that is the question!

Today over on HS:MS:HS it's SPS.....

Having taken this shot of Fletch (the only willing slave available to me at this time of the morning!) I've played around a bit with it and honestly can't decide if I prefer it with colour or without......oh well, I'll just post both!

Friday ..... music to my ears!

Fridays are just the best aren't they?! On Friday I finish work at lunchtime which means I can be even more self-indulgent than usual and today I've really scored because Steven was home early enough to do the school run for me too!

Walking the dogs earlier I had another one of those 'ggrrr - no camera' moments when only a few feet away from us a beautiful Kingfisher flew out of the reeds and away across the harbour ..... not that I would have had enough time to take the shot anyway, he would have been well out of sight by the time I'd dropped the dog leads, swung the camera off my shoulder, removed the lens cap......but I can still dream of the gorgeous shot I would have taken!!

Yesterday morning I did grab my camera. I took this from my bedroom window between getting myself ready for work and screaming at the kids to get ready for school!

Today's HS:MS:HS challenge is music ....

Music was more exciting, more cherished, and probably more listened to when I used to save up my money and go to Our Price in town and buy a 12" or an album - or even more exciting, a picture disc! Downloading a track from iTunes just doesn't compare. Times move on and we now listen to music on the PC or via the iPod on a sounddock and miss out on that special tactile pleasure that you only get with a proper record. Music, like so many other things, seems to have become throwaway. However all is not lost in our house, Tessa (15) now has our old hi-fi in her bedroom along with all our old albums and singles and listens to them regularly. One of her favourites at the moment (the one playing on the picture) is Erasure's album Circus, a true 80's classic!

Funny?

That perennial question: If a tree falls down in the forest and nobody is around to hear it does it make a sound? came to mind yesterday afternoon.

As I was leaving the house to embark on my hour and a half school run (I didn't know it was going to take that long beforehand) I said to the dogs 'behave yourselves while I'm out ......... don't go getting your mates round as soon as I leave the house' and then I had a little giggle before checking myself and wondering whether or not I'm insane! So my question is, if you make a joke and have a laugh and there's nobody around to hear it does that still make it funny?!

Very often when I'm out on my own, especially in the car, I see things that amuse me and I have a little laugh to myself. Today it was the teenagers in the car behind me sharing a pair of earphones, the wire stretched out between driver and passenger, each of them with one earpiece in! Don't know why, but it just tickled me! Another day it might be a kid on a moped driving with his head literally between his knees in an effort to squeeze an extra half a mile an hour out of the tiny inadequate engine; or the old age pensioner blithely pottering along in the kerb of a busy road on his mobility scooter completely oblivious to the chaos in his wake (obviously this is only amusing if witnessed from the opposite carriage of the road!); or the short skinny boy walking hand in hand with his tall fat girlfriend etc etc

Anyway, I've no idea if I'm insane or not - perhaps everybody makes jokes to their dogs when there's nobody else around. And, perhaps the dogs, even though they still look at me with that blank expression that could mean anything from 'go on then, sod off and leave me alone..again' to 'oh, how funny, you're such a card!', really do appreciate a bit of humour now and then!

Some funny faces from the past week:

Don't forget your camera....

Today I should have had my camera with me. I've never yet got into the habit of taking my camera everywhere and I really should start. I suppose normally I don't deviate from my pretty boring journey to and from school but today after work I had to go to the hairdressers to try and get my ridiculously shaggy hair tamed into something that hopefully doesn't resemble an old sheepdog's barnet quite so much. My hairdresser is very close to Sandbanks which has become quite famous recently for being one of the most expensive places in the country to buy a house (I hasten to add that I don't personally live that close to it, unfortunately!). Today the sun was shimmering across the harbour and the house on Brownsea island was bathed in light and there were windsurfers and kite surfers out on the water............and me - with no camera, duh! So, a lesson learned, in future I will endeavour to remember to take it out with me.

Anyway, I'm feeling slightly less canine after my visit so at least that's one good thing.


Still on my lookout for pictures to match the recent HS:MS:HS challenges I finally found one (thanks to Fletcher!) for broken:

this is what my iPod display looks like since it crashed to the floor after Fletcher carelessly left it balancing on the top of the fridge door! Now it's just an expensive Shuffle until I pay £55 to get it fixed.


Another one I found.........although not an original idea I have to admit..... is cling: the last two remaining leaves on the tree

and lastly (scarily up-to-date) is brush, I'm not really one for hair-brushing much but I couldn't possibly live without my foundation brush!




Lucy recently introduced me to Shutter Sisters (thank you Lucy!) and although I haven't been any better at keeping up with their challenges than I am with HS:MS:HS I did have fun doing this one - the leaf perspective :

Off to the firework display at school tonight, but no ooo-ing and ahh-ing and clicking of the shutter for me - I'll be indoors counting the takings!

Thru the lens...and the lens...

In essence I'm a winter person. I prefer wearing more clothes than less, I enjoy wrapping up in coats and scarves and warm socks and boots. I can sit indoors all day watching tv or reading on a cold dark rainy Sunday without feeling guilty about not being outdoors 'making the most of the good weather'! But on the other hand........ leaving the house is harder in the morning and when I get home with the kids in the evening it's already getting dark and sometimes the days and weeks can slide by without a decent opportunity for a photograph.......even joining in with HS:MS:HS becomes more and more difficult and so far this week I've failed to muster up any inspiration for the words so far.

So, in desperation I've taken to experimenting instead. I picked up this idea on another blog recently and bored tonight I decided to give it a go....I've taken this through the eyepiece of my other camera but I only have two lenses which fit on both cameras (one is an old 35mm slr) and one of those is a wide angle lens so it's kind of weird - I think it looks like it's been taken with some sort of spy camera - not a very sophisticated one obviously!

Before I go and settle down for another evening of tv ..... quick note to self:

Next time you have a mad idea, like taking your 9yr old son to Toys R Us on a training day.....DON'T let him buy any shooting toys - particularly not in a pair!

Oh yes, my kitchen has become a combat zone and crossing it is a dangerous affair!