Stressed Mum

Archive for the ‘holidays’ Category

Time, methinks, for a little review of the year.

2011 has been great in many ways. I have spent time with old friends and made new friends. I have been to Wembley for the first (and second) time. I have seen my beloved Manchester City go from strength to strength, bring home the FA cup and fire goals, seemingly as many as they want, past almost every team they have encountered and be sitting at the top of the Premiership as we go into the new year. There’s a long way to go to the end of the season but I’m certainly enjoying it so far. Memorable highlights were beating Manchester United 1-0 in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, beating Manchester United 6-1 at Old Trafford and my first away match for years when we beat Blackburn Rovers 4-0.

I have met up with lots of people I have talked to on Twitter and they have all been lovely, not encountered a single axe-murderer yet so I’ll carry on meeting them I think!

My family continue to grow up and away and it’s lovely to see. My eldest daughter spent time this year as a nanny in Wales, Portugal and Sardinia before moving to Madrid to teach in a primary school there. My youngest daughter spent the summer living and working in Ibiza and my middle daughter got ill on her 6^th, and possibly last, pilgrimage to Lourdes. My son also seems to have got the travel bug and went off to France on an exchange trip. I managed Anglesey and a few days in Ibiza and Dublin but I’m planning a couple of trips to Madrid very soon.

My daughters seem settled into jobs or courses and my son is enjoying school, he also played Julius Caesar in a production in the summer and was excellent, his love of Shakespeare means he is getting very good at being killed!

My course has been hard work but enjoyable and the end is now in sight and anyway how hard can a degree in Facebook and Twitter be?

A good year but I can always hope for better so here’s to a great 2012 for me, my family, friends and all of you!

Today is the day it feels as though summer is over. Back to school for my teenage son, back to routine for me. In a few days the first day of the final year of my degree course.

It has been a busy and enjoyable summer. I spent a week in North Wales with my son and we enjoyed beautiful weather to go with the beautiful scenery.

My son and I also went to Ibiza for a few days to see my youngest daughter who was working there over the summer. It was very hot, pretty noisy and generally suited to a younger age group than mine! It was lovely though and old Ibiza Town was beautiful. The flight out was the noisiest I have ever encountered and I think plenty of alcohol was consumed! The flight back was much quieter with mainly families on the plane. Much pleasanter, and a reminder that I don’t really want to revisit my twenties!

A final trip to Dublin completed our travels this summer. A couple of days with friends celebrating a 50th birthday and then a couple of days in the centre of Dublin in a nice hotel. My husband finally got to visit The Guinness Storehouse and we checked the quality in a pub too!

It’s been a lovely summer but I’m glad to have my daughters back from working in Ibiza and Sardinia and I’m ready to get on with my course.

 

This year I have decided to break with tradition and actually make some New Year’s resolutions. This is not something I have done in the past as I never felt the need, I don’t smoke, gamble or drink too much so I didn’t have anything major to ‘give up’. This year, though, I have begun to feel there are positive changes I could make to improve my life and those of my family. Obviously I don’t really need to make those resolutions public but putting them here on my blog will, I hope, make me more likely to stick to them!

Here goes then. The resolutions are in the form of instructions to myself, reminders to keep me on track, I want them all to be positive so there is nothing to give up. (I couldn’t give up my two main obsessions – Manchester City and Twitter – anyway!)

Don’t do anything for the family they could easily do for themselves. I know it sounds negative but it isn’t really. Having three adult children living in the house as well as a teenager and a husband creates a lot of work. They all need to be independent so I am going to encourage them to take greater responsibility for clearing up after themselves, getting themselves to where they need to be and doing a share of the household chores. It will be good for them as well as me!

Eat more healthily. As a vegetarian I consider myself to have a fairly healthy diet, although it could be improved, but I cook for the family and don’t think they eat as healthily as they should. So I am going to make an effort to plan and cook cheap, healthy meals which suit everyone. This is something which I have let slip recently so family beware, I am going to be working on this one. More veg, less meat, proper home-made meals. If they don’t like it they can always buy and cook their own, so long as they clear up after themselves!

Get more exercise. Since having some problems with my foot I have walked much less and I can tell! So the plan is to take a walk every day for thirty minutes. This is no problem on match days as there is a long walk to the stadium from the car park, no problem in the summer when it is lovely to get out in the fresh air but will be more of an effort in rain, snow and wind. I have a new camera so I will take that with me and hopefully persuade someone to come along for company but I will still go whatever the weather.

That’s all. Nothing too difficult but it will take some effort on my part. All of these things will have benefits for myself and those I love and I hope to be seeing those benefits sooner rather than later. It will not be a great failure if I slip sometimes, I will be able to get back on track and hope the benefits I see will spur me on.

Happy New Year to you all and do share your resolutions.

I took my son to Imperial War Museum North yesterday. If you haven’t been and you are in striking distance of Manchester you should go.

I was immediately impressed by the dramatic architecture of the building and the inside impressed me even more.

It was educational, moving and entertaining all at once. It is hard to describe the sound and picture shows each hour which cover the high, white walls of this ultra-modern space with the images and memories of war, which touch your heart and make you wonder how anyone could wish the horrors of war on their own people or any other yet also bring out the courage and humour of people who coped because they had to.

My son is twelve and the exhibits contained the right mix of facts, images and artefacts to keep us both engrossed for almost four hours. A timeline from the start of the First World War to modern times explains how wars started and who was involved, a special exhibition on prisoners of war gave a different perspective to the conditions of their lives and their escape attempts than any film I’ve seen.

There is a pleasant café overlooking the canal and the added benefit of The Lowry Outlet being only five minutes walk away across the bridge! An excellent day out.

Is it only me that hates Alton Towers? I took my 12 year old son there this week, the first time I have been, and it was awful. We queued on the road to get in the entrance, we queued all the way to car park J, we queued to get the monorail to the park entrance then we queued for half an hour to get our tickets. We had been there an hour before we got into the park! Now, I am British and know how to queue but this is ridiculous.

I used Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay for our tickets so it felt like a free trip but I had actually had to buy £3800 worth of groceries to get the tickets for myself, son, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. Daughter and boyfriend were essential to the trip as I no longer go on rides since getting a whiplash injury at Blackpool Pleasure(??) Beach 20 odd years ago!

The weather was fine but not too sunny, we were armed with a picnic and a map and headed off into the park to spend the day queuing! The queues were so long that in the eight hours we spent there they managed to go on only seven rides. I spent the majority of the eight hours walking or standing around as there was nowhere to sit to wait for them as they queued for half an hour or so for a two minute ride. To crown the day I got stung by one of the several million wasps that were buzzing around!

The one pleasant part of the day was a peaceful hour sitting in the beautiful gardens reading Mansfield Park on my Sony Reader but I don’t think that alone would be worth the entrance fee of £37. My son had looked forward to this trip for weeks as a highlight of his summer break and he did enjoy it but was frustrated at the lengths of the queues and the number of rides he couldn’t go on, including most of the big ones he was looking forward to most. I suspect it will be a long time before we go there again.

Due to some technical difficulties a number of my posts disappeared so I have copied them here just in case anyone is interested!

I have been doing some stitching during the last couple of weeks. My friend taught me how to make a foundation pieced patchwork block called, I think, pineapple block. This is hand-stitched onto a piece of interfacing. I know to make a quilt I would have to make at least another 19, luckily I don’t have any more fabric so I can’t, but I have really enjoyed making this one. If I ever get round to making it into a cushion I will let you know!

 

I have also just spent a very pleasant weekend in the Lake District. Just myself and my husband. This is something which does not happen very often. We stayed in a lovely hotel and the sun shone. We ate delicious food and drank very nice wine. Daughter number 3 tried to intrude with stories of an allergy developed in Spain and a steroid injection delivered by a Spanish doctor but a couple of texts and phone calls later she was much better and there was nothing I could do about it anyway!
Peace at last
After a hectic two weeks I am finally back to writing.
I have now done my exams, they weren’t too bad and as I can do nothing about them now I will just wait for results day in August.
During the last fortnight, as well as my own exams I have spent a pleasant evening in a hotel in Lancaster helping my eldest with maths for an exam, which she has now, thankfully, passed. I have calmed my scared of flying 17 year old and driven her to the airport in the middle of the night for a long-awaited holiday. I have ferried middle daughter and her boyfriend around, but not too much. I have cooked, too much, cleaned, not as much as I should and washed marathon-style. I have accompanied my son’s youth group on an activity day, and discovered climbing, abseiling and rock scrambling are much harder than they were twenty years ago and make me ache more! My husband and I have also celebrated our Silver Wedding (25 years and no time off for good behaviour!). I feel tired just thinking about it all.
Today I am driving to Sheffield to take middle daughter and boyfriend back to their University accommodation to clear up, pack and move to new accommodation ready for next year, they will be away a week and a half. Peace at last! For that week and a half there will be just myself, husband and 12 year old son. Sounds like a holiday! Plans include cleaning all unoccupied bedrooms, belated anniversary celebration for hubby and me, less cooking and meal out with friends. Bliss! Hope I don’t get bored!
June 23rd, 2009 |
Revision and Brownies
I have finally written my essay. I have been attempting it for a week and it is a few weeks late. The exams are this month so I could put it off no longer. Somehow I was dreading it more and more the longer I left it but once I got started it seemed to flow. I have mock exams to do now but somehow I think they will have to be incorporated into my revision as time is running very short.
I am now deep into revision for my first exam but somehow my family still want to eat and wear clean clothes. Can’t they see I’m busy? Still at least I’ll have a good excuse if I don’t do as well as I hope.
Did manage a short break to make some chocolate brownies for tea. They are chocolatey, squidgy and delicious, just as brownies should be. Thank you Jamie Oliver.
June 7th, 2009 |