Under the thumb!

A most productive Sunday, what started out as a beautiful, day with the sun out all day and beautiful sunshine, ended with having to decorate the bathroom all day. I had bought the paints sometime ago as it had got to the time again that it needed a lick of paint, Mrs Stu decided that it was time to do it today as we had nothing else to do and we meaning 'me'! All day was spent cleaning everything out of there replacing the sealant around the bath, all the gloss work redone and all the walls repainted in a day as well as fitting new taps as well. 

I got lots of help as Mrs Stu found lots of places she had to go visit, take Little G to her friends and to leave The Terror, with me to help, until she picked him up later on to go to a friends house! Which was a lot of fun as he stood in the paint tray and walked it around the bathroom and managed to paint my head as well in 'Mint Crisp'. Where do they get these names for paint colours why can't it just be simple like pale green which is what it was, is there a committee that sits down and discusses it to see what ridiculous colour would appeal to women. It was actually great them being out as I could just have the ipod on loud as i painted....actually it was not so great i would rather of been in the garden with a beer and the ipod on!

The cat has found out he likes to chase flying things....

andwhen life gets to busy it's time to kick back and relax!

A walk in the park....with more pics

The Terror running free towards the fountain

This is the fountain he was running to, I think it needs a bit of work, with a few more nice plants putting in.

Exploring the spring plants

Just in the park with The Terror while Mrs Stu and Little G are doing their karate gradings for the first time, so while they are doing that I have taken The Terror out as he was getting louder than the forty people doing their gradings! Now we are exploring the fresh air and having father and son being daft time. Mrs Stu almost never went to her grading as she fell over my boots and twisted her knee a couple of days ago......oh dear!

*UPDATE* They have both passed their belts and are now on the long slope towards a black belt, with lots of time and injuries it will take to get there. I should know I've walked the path a few years ago now and when I was there again there was that itching again to get back into it and start again. The reason I stopped was time there was never enough in a day for me to go and do it. I use to love beating people up....joking, but it was fun as well as physically exhausting at times, maybe it's time to look into it once more.

Rain, rain go away, come back.....

What is it with the weather and the like they say global warming and it is as cold and as wet as ever,  I have booked summer once again this year for July 18Th, so if you have days booked off either side then change them now. After this date it is a downward spiral to winter again!

The other night I came home from work and as I was cooking for the mass horde Little h came up saying he wanted to play outside and doing anything to have an easy life while trying to get something done without the constant call of "Daaaaaadddddddddd, can I.....", I let him play out in the garden. It was only a light shower at the time so I put his coat on him and hood up and let him out, the fresh air would do him good. Two minutes later he was back saying he couldn't play on anything due to it being wet, so being a good parent that I am I gave him a towel and it kept him outside for a full thirty minutes trying to dry his slide and toys so he could play with them!

The cat is starting to piss me off now in the mornings, he will come into the bedroom at five, jump on the bed, walk up me and then start patting me on the face to get up and feed him or let him out. he is heading for my bad books again mighty quick!

Champions!

At last the mighty England cricket team finally wins a trophy of note and what better place to do it than in the land down under! It may be the women's cricket team but I bet they would give our current men's team a run for their money. They could even take on the men's Australian, team after their defeat to the South Africans the other day (losing by an innings.....the shame of it!).

So rejoice in the fact that England are World Champions!

Weekend mutterings

Another quiet weekend has come and gone nothing much to report on the home front over here. Little H has finally grown out of his cot and we finally got him a "BIG BED" as he has been going around telling everybody. It was time we upgraded from his cot as he is eighteen now and his legs were sticking out of the end!....only kidding he was two, but saying that even two was old but he fitted in it and couldn't escape in the mornings so he stayed in there. He was so excited when it came and couldn't understand how come he had to wait a day from Friday until Saturday until I built it as he wanted it "NOW"!. It is a raised bed just so we can store some toys under it for him and he can use it as a den as well, although his sister seems to of taken command of it now and sees it as hers.

We have just had mothering Sunday, over here and Saturday was spent running around getting last minute gifts, cards and flowers, I took it out of their pocket money as the gifts were or their mother! Then Sunday it was out for a nice pub lunch, where I got to eat meat which is a real luxury for me these days, it was a beautiful Sunday roast with all the trimmings. Living with a vegetarian and cooking the meals i usually can't be bothered cooking two different meals so I put up with the same to stop the hassle, the food is getting better now and actually tastes quite good when you cover it in a sauce of some kind as when I started eating veggie some of the things tasted quite bland and cardboard tasted nicer!

Hot and wet!

Having some great Spring type weather over here at the moment, it got to a mighty 16C today, which was not much use to me as I was stuck indoors all day in my windowless box that I call work. Inside has always been colder than the outside but the people who control the boilers for all the units around including ours decided to turn of the heating today, the penny pinching bastards to save them a few pounds, whereas we are still paying the rent for the place they decide if we have heating or not!

Minor disaster in the Mr-Stu household last night. Mrs Stu, was out doing something with work so I thought great, kids to bed and a few beers and then a movie. So little g was having a shower and when I came down to sort Little H for his bed I walked into the kitchen to find a pond in the kitchen, first thought was the shower was leaking somewhere so examining the ceiling to see where the waterfall was coming from there wasn't any. Turning then to the next logical source of leakage it turned out to be the washing machine! When I had loaded the washing machine, doing my good deed for the day, with Mrs Stu's and Little G's karate suits I had not put them in correctly and had left one of the tie cords hanging out which broke the seal around the door. So while I had been sorting things out with the kids the water had been running out from the machine across the floor, I then found out the kitchen has a very slight slope so that the water ran across the floor and under the fridge/freezer! So while trying to get all this mopped up, with water pouring out of the machine, the cat decided this is a great game we are playing and to attack the mop which he took a dislike to. Anyway everything got sorted in the end.  The washing machine still works again, the fridge is back in it's place after being shifted out and put back. The cat finished second best to the mop after he found out he gets wet. I lost my Mr Stu time and I have to buy Mrs Stu a new karate suit after the tie cord tore off damaging her suit. Roll on weekend!

Just some pics to fill the space

Just a few pics from the weekend as I have an empty head tonight and not much to say.

Here is young Toby, taking his first steps in the big wide world.

Here is exploring the garden showing his backside to  Mrs Stu's cushion for her garden chair, it is on the floor doing no good just like her team the Richmond Tigers!

It is just a stick now he is playing with but in a few months he will be playing the flute no problem!

A pic of the boy weighing up if he is going to give the birds any bread or eat it himself!

Morning blues

It's nice being woken by your 2 year old with him calling out on a Sunday, morning "Daddy, I'm awake now, get me up" and then go into a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I don't mind that sort of a wake up it's quite nice but when it starts at 2 a.m. then that's another problem! Inevitably he ended up in our bed, and why do children take up so much room, I end up sleeping on a very tiny strip right on the end of the bed, and then the cat makes an appearance and jumps in as well. It's going to be much easier in the future to wear ear plugs and sleep on the sofa downstairs for a better nnight sleep.

The cat had it's first taste of freedom this weekend and got to venture out into the big,bad world that we have out there. I have some pics to post to show him exploring once I get from my camera onto the computer. It was weird watching him out for the first time, going around sniffing everything and then when he got braver he started to climb and walk along the fence and jump on the shed, he vanished for 30 minutes at a time but still came back, so hopefully that will be a trend he follows. We are not all home again until Thursday now, so he is going to now go stir crazy until we let him out again then! Not sure if this is true but does anybody put butter on a cats paws the first time out?

Hope everybody has a great working week and if not the weekends almost here.

As for England's cricket results they would be better sending out an old age pensioners cricket team to take on the West Indies, as they would put more spirit into the fight!

Pass the pain killers!

At last the working week is over for me I thought it would never end, it just went on and on and on and on this week. I think it was just me really and I got bored so that just made it all the worse. Anyway the weekend is here and I have fun things to do like put in a cat flap for Toby, but I bet N0.2 child will try to see if he fits through it at some point to liven things up!

Made a bad decision the other night I went to a friends to watch the footie, as I no longer have the sports on mine and as the offer of a few beers were on the table as well, how could one refuse! It was a great night and the beer and then the whisky flowed all to easily. I knew I should not of done it on a work night as the next morning I suffered for it, getting up early. Every noise was a lot louder than it should of been, I couldn't even put my ipod on to listen to the music my head was throbbing that bad and the usual  30 minute walk to work took nearly 60 minutes. The famous last words were spoken "never again", but that was two days ago and the weekend is here....so cheers hope everybody has a nice weekend.

The cat is pure evil and a pic for Doanli!

The pic above is of a lovable, cute little cat or else this is the pose Toby, likes to give to his admiring public. This is not how I see him. At the moment we are fixed in a power battle to decide who is top dog....I mean cat...no I don't I mean dog.....no I don't, even I'm confused now..anyway there is a power struggle going on!

He is still locked inside the house until he has his last injection this week and then he will be let loose to wreck havoc in the neighbourhood with all the other cats, but how he will do it without any balls is anyones guess. Toby's latest thing to piss me off is to sneak in our bedroom when we are asleep, jump on top of the chest of draws at the side of the bed and to then wait! He waits until ther is movement under the duvet (doona!) usually my feet and then launches himself claws first onto my feet and after he has got the reaction, namely a pillow being thrown in his direction then he is off. I'll have the last laugh as I won't feed him. Saying that he is curled up in a ball at the side of me as I write this as cute as can be.

To prove Toby,  has another side to him I will leave you this picture to show you the dark side of him!

Just click on the picture to see the hate filled eyes!

kitchen garden

Well what was meant to be a day outside attacking the garden ended up being a day indoors mostly due to the weather. It started off nice with the blue skies lighting up the morning but that soon changed to showers and gale force winds all day. Not to be out done though we went to the garden centre and got various trays of flowers and decided to make up some hanging baskets on the kitchen table. In the end you would of thought a farmer had ploughed a fiend through there instead of two children putting together two baskets. Anyway fun was had by all and the cat got in on the job as well by taking a liking to the sweet peas and eating them as fast as the kids planted them. He eventually took a flying lesson of the table though to get rid of his help!

Jumping and digging!

The weekend finally arrived this week to try and blow the boredon couds away that have been hovering around me all week. Little G, does gymnastics on a saturday morning so first thing it was up and out with the parent taxi to take her there. it has been great going to see her again as I have not been in quite a while as it is usually Mrs Stu he does that job on a Saturday, while I have the delight of Little H, who as a typical two year old does not know how to sit still and do nothing for 60 minutes!

After watching Little G, for a while I took Little H, to the idoor kids play area, this is one of those places inside a building that has all the slides and tunnels made out of scaffold poles and then covered in three inches of padding to prevent the little ones from smashing their skull open! Their was a young part for kids under 4 and the olderbit rather obvous for kids over four. Little H was way to big for the under 4 section so with my encouragement we explored the older section as they had bigger slides and things which are a lot more fun. When your playing chase though and trying to catch a little one who can squeeze through everything and beng 6'4" myself it is sometimes very difficult to catch him. We had a lot of fun though and that was the whole point of going.

With the weather getting better it means that it is getting time to do the garden once more, oh joy of joys how i love doing the gardening! Today is going to be spent getting plants for putting in the garden, which always look so nice in their pots in the garden centre, but it's like I have the garden hand of death the leaves just shrivel as soon as I touch them, plants come to our house to die, maybe this year a little TLC is in order!

Spring and cricket!

Well at least it's Friday and the week is out of the way, I can feel spring in the air today, walking home from work the first shoots are starting to poke through the earth, and the trees are starting to releaf again, we even had a great blue shy today it was a mighty 8C and t-shirt weather.

Last year my car broke and since it was a heap of junk at the time it was not worth repairing it, so since then I have had to walk to work everyday. It's not that far, just over 2 miles I think and it takes just a little over 30 minutes. it is the only 30 minutes I get to myself these days, but it is the most boring route you could ever walk! On the longest stretch of the walk just over a mile and a half there is just nothing, no nature, no wildlife just boring bushes and the passing cars aiming at the puddles to soak you after there has been a down pour. On one side there is a giant mound of earth that hides the airport car park and on the other is another mound of earth hiding the motorway and all I'm faced with is the dull faces of the drivers and their passengers each morning, they could wear clown faces to liven my journey into work up or something each day!

At least it's Saturday tomorrow...in fact Saturday comes in five minutes. Another glorious day for English cricket as the captain makes another test century, noticing the minnows of cricket currently playing in South Africa as well today the Aussies seemed to start rather well for a change, lets hope it's not something that continues!

Go away it's boring here!

Do you find yourself getting stuck in a routine that you are unable to get out of at times? My life at the moment is on boredom mode during the week with nothing much to do. It goes a bit like this, get up, get kids dressed and  fed, get lunches ready, get kids to school/nursery,work, home again, make dinner, clean up, get kids to bed, clean up again, flop in chair and fall asleep.....repeat this step Monday to Friday.

I suppose everybody else feels the same at this time of year as well in the northern hemisphere, with winter almost over and spring not quite here there is not much to do without spending money. (Is there nothing free anymore?) At least Saturdays and Sundays are more relaxed but due to the current economic climate finances are strained and having to save for holidays as well, so evenings out have to be put on hold for a bit. My highlight this weekend will be a nice Indian, takeaway to enjoy. My mouth is watering at the thought...yum

The Great Escape

Phew!

That is the sound of total relief after finding out I wasn't one of the ninety who got made redundant at my place of work yesterday. We have been expecting the worse and thought that this time our section was out of the door, but to be told there were only two going from our section in total was a bit of a relief. One of those had already taken a job elsewhere and the other for whatever reason has decided to go and live in New Zealand, I think there was a good pay off in the offering so that helped a bit in the decision to go. Once again another cull survived not sure how many more I can survive as there has been numerous once since I started many, many years ago and i seem to keep dodging the axe!

Now we can get our holiday booked in August, to sunny old Melbourne so my wife can go home and visit the family. It is going to be a total differnt visit this time as the places we usually go and visit have been destroyed by fire and the landscape is going to be so different. Usually it is every two years we visit  , but Mrs Stu, feels she has to go home this year and see her family. They have been like a yo-yo these past few weeks moving to safety andthen home again depending on the winds and the fires. We now just have to find some cheap airfares to get us there, at the stupid highly inflated prices just because it is the school holidays. It is looking towards Emirates as they are the cheapest again after going up a lot. Last year we flew QANTAS and they were great which was unexpected as Mrs Stu said they use to be very snobby.

It has been great here today weather wise...grey skies and rain all day with cold winds, what more could somebody ask for!