The last week has been a bit hectic in my world, but here are a few snaps from last weekend. I went to Liverpool last Sunday, until Tuesday morning. So there is one picture of the Liverbird, one of Birkenhead, Paul O'Grady's hometown.

Then we have the Albert Docks and the picture on me above shows the Liver building in the background.

The photograph above and to the right is during our shopping trip to Liverpool one, whilst we were there it started snowing very heavily. I've never seen such big snow flakes, collected a few on top of my head. LOL!


Here to the left we have the reason for my trip to Liverpool. We went to see Strictly Come Dancing. It was a great show, but I wasn't really in the right frame of mind because I'd found out a few hours earlier that my mum had been admitted to hospital. Came home for this reason early the next morning and ever since I landed at base my feet haven't stopped. Thank goodness mum's home now and is on antibiotics for pneumonia. She stayed in hospital for 4 days. Now we've just got to sort my dad and Gary out. They think my dad might have had a slight stroke and Gary has got Type 2 Diabetes.

On the college front, I haven't managed to do a thing, which is a nightmare really because we've been given two 5000 word assignments. :-S I suppose I'll have to get a wriggle on this week. I've started the observations for the case study we need to do, but I really wanted to do at least a couple a week. Let's hope I can fit it all in, mum and dad come first, college will have to fit in around everything else at the moment.

One more day and back to work, see ya tomorrow! xx

My last few days wrapped up in a short video.

It's been hectic and I'm knackered. Another course

tomorrow morning, so I don't even get a lie in on a Saturday. *sigh*

Sunday I'm off to Liverpool until Tuesday, am going to watch

Strictly Come Dancing!

OVER AND OUT!! xx

This.....THIS.....THIS.....THIS photograph to the left is a picture of the biggest pain you could ever imagine. It's driving me flipping crazy. Ofsted have brought in a new self-evaluation form for all early years settings. Simple, you might think and yes I thought so as well. That was until I downloaded it. 32.......32.......32........32 pages! Having read through it, I though, ah ha, lets use our old self assessment and complete using bullet points, easy. Ha Ha! NO, nothing is easy, especially if it's come from Ofsted. They need me to explain everything in detail, no bullet points allowed. *sigh* Anyway, completed to section 3, a total of 2400 words so far, but I've still got a long way to go. I have no idea when I'll get around to uploading it to the Ofsted site, but it's going to need to be fairly soon. Then I just have to remember to keep it updated.

That's my best effort today I'm afraid, not very interesting, but by gawd it was good to get that rant off my chest. lol! xx

I didn't think I was going to get around to taking a photograph today, but then I came across this when I was out walking the dog earlier. The photo hasn't come out as good as I wanted it to because I was using my camera on my phone.

This tree was full of crows, as I was walking past quite a few flew away, but I still managed to capture some of them. It was kind of eerie really.

Anyway, today went OK. Mum's appointment was at 3pm, although we didn't go in until 3.30pm. We were told that her tumour which was removed was grade 3 cancer, which is the most aggressive form. However, the stage of the cancer was a Ta, which means it is non-invasive and it hasn't spread through the lining of the bladder wall, thank goodness. Because it was a grade 3 type cancer they have now cancelled her cystoscopy which she was going to have three months from the op and she will now be having the same sort of procedure she had before Christmas when she had the tumour removed. If there is any cancer cells evident, this way they can remove them immediately. The cancer nurse informed us that mum might have to have some form of Chemotherapy, but it won't be the intravenous form, it will just involve washing the bladder out with a chemo solution. So it was fairly good news. I think we might have to pay for our own parking space at the hospital, as I think mum might be a regular patient, but it looks like they will be keeping a close eye on her for the foreseeable future and that's fine by us.

Other than that it's been a rather non-productive day, just waiting on those results was tiring in itself. Another day tomorrow, until then. xx

Well this is the view I've been looking at all day, boring, eh? It's the view from my office window. However, it does mean that I actually got some work done on my SEF. LOL!

It's been such a miserable day today, grey and raining all day.

There isn't that much to say about my day. Got up, went out for a jog with Bub, emptied the bins, put the recycling away, got ready and went to work, where I stayed until 5.30pm.

Had some parcels delivered today. One of which is my new bedding - picture to the right. I thought I'd go for the brightest I could find. lol! I quite like it, much brighter than todays weather, that's for sure. :-D

Nothing more to add today, just hope tomorrow brings us some good news. Take care! xx

Another day and another crap couple of pictures. Hopefully I will get some new found enthusiasm tomorrow and take some better pictures.

Once again the picture to the left was taken when I was out walking my dog. This is a view that you might see quite often during two weeks in 2012, for the Olympics. It's the harbour where the many sailing events will take place. There is loads of money being spent at the moment. There is work being done as we speak in the harbour.
At the bottom of this picture, you will see lots of rubble. This used to be an underground hospital many, many years ago, used during the war. It was demolished a few years ago now, but they have only just got round to getting rid of the rubble, it's going to be used for some sort of gas storage or something similar. However, I think with the credit crunch even that's been postponed again, hence the big mound of rubble still at the bottom of this picture.



Unfortunately not all the views where I live are beautiful and this is one of them. You would never think just one little turn to the right would give you the most beautiful view ever, well a close second to a bar of chocolate. :-P

We've had a relaxing day today, one that was well and truly required. I've done nothing, apart from the weekly shop. Mum usually does that tomorrow (Monday), but I thought it would be better to do it today with me being home. Apart from that a couple of walks with the dog and watching the TV...................bloody football.

Work tomorrow, I really need to get my head down at work now. Ofsted have developed an online Self Evaluation Form (SEF), most of which I managed to complete before we got knocked for six at the end of last year. But since then I haven't really touched it. So tomorrow is going to be the day I try to get it completed. I need to, I think I've got a meeting with the boss towards the end of the week.

Better sign off now, I'm trying to watch DOI whilst typing this. Until tomorrow! xx

So then, today, another day, a good day, busy, but I haven't really done much.

Went out this morning for a jog with Bubble, although not as early as we've been going out during the week. Today we went a little further, over the cliff and along an old railway line. Actually it's a very old railway line, one that I don't remember being used, however, it was used back in the days my mum and dad went to school. Further along the railway line, there is a very narrow cliff path, called Shepherds Dinner. It's name derives from the days that sheep and goats (we still have wild goats), roamed along the cliffs and the shepherds used this particular path to get back to the top of the Island. Half way up the path there is a wider flat part and this is where the shepherds used to sit and eat their dinner. There we go, a little bit of history to start today's blog. lol!

Anyway, this afternoon I went for a walk with my dog, Bubble and my brothers dog, daisy. She's a lovely little thing, although a little bit nutty. However, I did eventually manage to get my first picture for my blog. It took me a few minutes to get them to sit together. Daisy will never go to crufts and compete in obedience. She just wanted to play with Bubble. lol!

Next picture for the day is to the right. I didn't just want to take one of our wonderful beaches, so I tried to be a little creative and took one of a twig and the beach. LOL! Very creative, eh?.............OK maybe not. Ha!


The beach is called Little Beach, it's a nice little beach to visit in the Summer, not during grey days, like today. Not many people use it, which is another reason to go there. We often set off for this beach in the Summer with the dogs and a snorkel and mask, along with our swimming stuff, obviously. My nephew, Matt, loves it. My other nephew is still to be convinced, he's not what you might call adventurous and the one and only time I got him to go out snorkeling, I think he could have killed me. LOL!




The last of my pictures was taking during my jogging session this morning. When I got back up to the top of the Island, I looked out to sea and thought it was such a beautiful view, even with the grey clouds. Not sure this pictures shows just how beautiful it was.
The Sun was glowing out on the horizon and just to the right there was a ship sailing past.

What else has happened today? Not much really. Mum has now got a chest infection. She went to the doctors on Tuesday, but he just said "you've picked something up", didn't even listen to her chest. My brother, who is a paramedic, was really worried about her towards the end of the week and forced her to go back on Friday. So yesterday afternoon I took her to see a different doctor in our surgery and he gave her a really good examination and told her that she had a chest infection. She is also quite breathless, but I'm assuming that is connected to the chest infection. It's so difficult, before she was diagnosed with cancer we would have been more relaxed with the doctors diagnosis, but now we think the worst about even bloody sign and symptom she has.

I spent another £66 on books for my course last week on Amazon, it's costing me a fortune. Two of the books arrived today, I guess I'd better start reading them. I've done more reading since September, than I've done in the whole of my 33 years. lol!

Well that's today's blog, look forward to tomorrow. Bye for now! xx

The task is getting harder, there haven't been many photo opportunities today, so I've had to make up a little game.


The game has a theme running right through each picture.

I'm not going to tell you what the pictures are, maybe you could guess, although I will give a few words as clues.

Key words: River, boat, hair, seductive. :-D





So then, the second picture. Interesting enough it came out better than I expected, I did think it would blur more than it did.


Key words: Gift, happy, thank you very much!








Third picture and as you can see it of a very cute, green creature.

Key words: Green, happy, slimy, prince charming.

Actually, I wonder if Prince Charming is in there somewhere, who's up for a kiss?




And last, but not least and if you haven't got it by the first picture, this one should ring a bell. If you are a sensible human being that is and enjoy the finer things in life. :-P


Key words: Milk, brown, plain, nuts and fruit.


What a boring blog, sorry guys, will do better tomorrow. xx

Phew, eventually here. Had a bit of a busy day today, so took my pics before I went off to work this morning. They aren't very exciting or imaginative today.

First off, here's me and my dog Bubble. He's a lab/staffie cross. We went out jogging at 6am this morning and when we got back home I thought I'd take this picture for my blog. My apologies for looking so bad and my dog just wouldn't perform for the camera.............in dog talk the fact he's looking the other way means 'look at the camera and say cheese, my arse'. lol!

Anyway, as I was saying we were up and out at 6am, just jogged around the local streets. There isn't very many places to jog at that time in the morning, because where I live there are lot's of secluded areas, places that you really don't want to be on your own at that time in the morning.

I got home and was bloody knackered, yet my dog looked at me and gave me the 'come on you unfit person' look.

My second picture is again of my dog. This time I got him to give you all a little wave. Although, capturing the wave on a digital camera is really hard because of the delay. He does several tricks, he waves as you can see, he walks backwards, weaves in between my legs, twirls, stands on his back legs, walks on his back legs and goes round and round me.

One more picture to round the day off. It's a pink Orchid and was given to my mum by my auntie (My mum's sister). I just thought it looked really pretty in the light and that's the only reason I have for taking this picture.

Although now I think about it, the flower was given to my mum just after she came out of hospital, a kind of 'get well soon' gift.

My mum had a phone call today from her cancer nurse. They had a meeting yesterday to discuss mum's operation and they rang to tell her that they've made an appointment for her to discuss the outcome with them. The appointment is for next Tuesday. Very scared now, again, it's the not knowing. Argh!

Moving on slightly before I depress myself too much. It was my first session back at college tonight and although tough going after a days work, I really enjoyed being back and seeing everyone. I didn't realise when I started the course that I would develop a bond with my fellow students and the lecturers the way I have. We had to hand our essay's in tonight, which was scary. However, we did get our marks and comments for the presentation we did just before Christmas. I am absolutely over the sodding moon with the grades and comments I got. My overall mark was 67% (pass mark was 40%). I got 5 very goods and 2 excellent and some really positive comments. I am totally shocked to be honest because I wasn't totally convinced I had done it right. So, yeah, the long busy day I've had has ended on a really great high. Better get off to bed now though, have to be up at about 5.40am, early start at work tomorrow, although I finish at 1pm, so it's not all bad. :-D Take care! xx

Today I would like you to meet the most handsome bunny in town, his name is Boris. He lives at my Day Nursery and is loved by far too many children to name.

When we first got him he was only a tiny baby, however, the pet shop told me he was a 'she'. So, when I got back to the Nursery, we had a little game with the children to find a name for what we thought was a her and 'she' was officially named Violet. It wasn't until we went to the vets for 'her first lot of jabs that we were told 'she' was actually a 'he', so hence to say we had to have a deep and meaningful chat with the children, another name game took place and this time Violet was, this time, definitely, OFFICIALLY named Boris.

We had to bring him inside today, it was far too cold for him outside, so cold his water was frozen. So we partitioned off the corridor leading to my office and he had the run of the place, all day. We've moved his hutch inside for tonight and inside he will remain until the weather gets warmer.

And to the left I give you 'blob'. A name I've just made up, I have no idea what it is or what it's purpose is even. I was given it as a Christmas present. When you hit it on the head it changes colour. It's quite clever really, if you have music playing it will change colour to the beat of the music. Although, after a while it does get on your wick. LOL!

Anyway, I thought these pictures were perfect for today's blog. The colours very much sum up my day. First thing this morning, 6am to be precise, I was out jogging with the dog in the cold (brrrrrrrr). Although, I wasn't cold for long. So that's the blue colour. Then when I got to work we had a little girl who wasn't very well, so there's the white colour. Last but not least, we have the red/pink colour, which sums up the rest of my day. It was full of life, full of fun and full of motivation. Actually it was potentially the best days work I've had in a while.

Good stuff, let's hope tomorrow follows suit, see you then! xx

Well Christmas is officially over! Decorations down, Christmas trees away, all lights down and put away. It's so sad. :-( I just had to take a couple of pictures as a reminder though, seeing as they'll be gather dust in our shed for the next X amount of days, until the Christmas season of 2009 starts.

Day off today, I really should be finishing off my essay, not doing this. Ah well, got plenty of time.

Speaking of essays, Harvard referencing sucks! Who in their right mind decided that referencing had to be so bloody complicated. The essay's the easy part, referencing is in a league of it's own.

Should I get on with finishing it now? I suppose I should, it really needs to be completed today because I'm working tomorrow and Thursday and I have no brain cells left in the evenings after a days work.

Mum had a phone call from her drugs trial nurse today. (For those that don't know, my mum was diagnosed with bladder cancer just before Christmas) It's the big meeting this week to discuss mum's case. The anticipation of whether the news will be good or bad is excruciating, but I guess we have no choice but to wait. Hopefully our 2009 will begin with better news than the end of 2008 brought us.

God it's cold, I'm sat here typing this shivering.

This really isn't getting my essay finished! Wonder what tomorrow will bring, I have no idea, but I'm sure it will be full of surprises. Until then, keep smiling folks! xx

Back to work today, gawd it was tough getting up. The picture to the left says a lot about how my first day back went. I was full of motivation and drive to get all my jobs done, but it just wasn't to be today.


I prepared our termly newsletter before the Christmas break. Got in this morning, gave it the once over and sent it off to our print unit to get 60 copies. Not only did it get past me, it got past my deputy, who proof read it and it got past the girls at the print unit. See if you can spot the mistake! :-P


Spent lots of time with the children this morning. I love to hear their stories about all the nice things they've done and especially about their special visitor over Christmas. It was a bit of a wrench for some of them, we've had quite a long time off, so leaving mum or dad was a little hard for a few, so extra cuddles were at the top of the job list today. One little boy's older brother came in today, he must be nearly 6 now. I was chatting to him whilst his mum settled his brother into Nursery. We were chatting mostly about Christmas. when suddenly he said "what I don't understand is, how does Father Christmas get down the chimney when the fire is on". Hmmmm quite a difficult question for 8.30am and one I really needed to get right. So after being fairly speechless for a few seconds, I said that most people turned their fires off on Christmas Eve and those that didn't, FC had to use his extra special magic powers. He seemed quite happy with that answer and went off out with his mum chatting about the plane he had in his hand.



So then, after a while I decided it really was time for me to hit the office and get some sort of work done today. The mess on my desk was already starting to build up. --------------------------->
First job of the day was to get the tippex out and attempt to rectify my earlier mistake. :-P Then eventually getting round to completing a few other jobs that I needed to do.
Covered in the baby room at lunchtime today, which isn't a hardship, the babies are great fun. Only 5 babies to feed today, then change and get ready for either the afternoon session or going home at 1pm. I'm a very hands on boss, like to do my fair share of tasks and did I get my fair share today. Just after lunch I was comforting a little boy from our 2-3 year old room, there was obviously a problem, but with the lack of communication skill s which he has, it was hard to decipher what his needs were. However, I soon realised. My leg suddenly got very warm. Need I say more. So that was my next challenge for the day. Peg at the ready (joke), disposible gloves and plenty of wet wipes were needed. I had to laugh though, just as I was moving the postman pat undergarments towards the toilet, somebody stopped in the doorway to ask me something, which wasn't the best timing in the world. Cow pat springs to mind. Actually I reckon if I took a picture it would have been perfect for this blog............OK, maybe not. lol!
The rest of the afternoon was filled with more office work and then eventually at 5.30pm home time.
Exciting day, eh? Bring on tomorrow! Ha! xx

Well it's my day 2 and what picture could be more inspiring that the one to the left. Not only inspiring, but utterly delicious.
Having had a fairly productive day physically and mentally - did some shopping, almost finished my essay and washed the car. Ahhh no, the last one is a lie, I thought about washing the car, but in the end stopped off at the local garage to use the car wash there. However, I purchased the ticket before checking if there was anyone using the car wash, as soon as I saw that there was 5 cars waiting I decided the dirt could stay on the car for another day or two.
So to end my productive day I decided to set up the good old chocolate fountain. I told myself this was to celebrate the end of my Christmas holiday and mark the beginning of another good year at work. But to be honest I don't really need an excuse to get the chocolate fountain out. No more chocolate fountains for a while now though, the January diet must start tomorrow. :-( Although, salad doesn't have the same appeal to it really, does it? I don't care what Victoria Beckham says, if there was a choice between salad and chocolate, chocolate would come out on top for me every time. :-P
Well that's me for another day, will have to take the camera to work with me tomorrow to see what exciting images I can capture. Until tomorrow! xx

Pretty much sums up my feelings at the moment, I just need Thursday to come and I will feel a little more relaxed. It will hopefully feel as if I've been release from a cage, but at this present time I feel just like my mum's bird, Toby. He's a miserable git, squawks and goes whenever anyone goes near the cage, bit of a loner really, only happy when nobody is near. Ha Ha.
Thursday is important at the moment because my first essay is due in. I have no idea if what I've done is right and to be honest I'm past caring now. I've tried my best, what more can I do? Although, saying that, I haven't actually finished it yet, but 2800 words out of 3500 isn't bad, especially having done it over the Christmas break.
Well that's my first 365 picture and short blog, hope I can keep it up.