I feel like I’ve already blogged today from various friendfeed updates 🙂
The kids and I had a lie in, so letting out & feeding chickens, sorting the kids breakfast, tidying up the kitchen and then sitting down with a cup of tea was all I managed before about 10am. Both the kids needed a bath so Davies went and had one after breakfast and before getting dressed. He spent quite a while in there (no idea where he gets that from ;)) while Tarly got out her bouncy ball kit. She got it for Christmas and I’d really recommend it as a fun and well priced kit but she used it up straight away on Christmas morning and so I scoured the internet to find some refill granules. Eventually I found a company that sold something that looked similar and bought a refill from them. It too ages to come (obviously caught in the postal backlog from Christmas and the snow) and got put to one side when it arrived last week as she’d long since forgotten about her inital enthusiasm in it. But this morning she dug out the moulds and made a load more balls. This stuff actually seems better than the original granules and is making more pleasing balls.
I rang the letting agent to chat about the house. I said I was getting twitchy and he said he was too so we discussed possible reasons for not getting viewings and some ideas for action. We decided to reduce the price by £100 a month, which is fine as it only actually takes it back to what we’d initially expected, as we’d inflated it slightly to see if we got any early takers. We also agreed to have a To Let board put up and we are going to be less specific about the term of the lease as actually we don’t 100% know that we’ll be back in a year anyway. Fingers crossed these measures will have a speedy effect…
I also rang and booked a mechanic to come and look at / collect Willow on Friday to have the work done to get the electrics sorted so that she is running and ready for an MOT just before we go. We have a weekend sleepover planned in her next weekend so really want her running for that.
Ady came home as he was going up to London today to deliver some stock for a press release photoshoot and we’d initially planned to go with him as the congestion charge and parking was pre-paid so we’d thought we could have late afternoon / early evening in London and go to one of the musuems or something. In the end the kids both felt they’d had more than enough time sat in a car this weekend so we decided not to go after all.
Ady managed to change the distributor cap on my car but try as we might we could not get it started and the battery was completely dead. Dad’s jump leads are either now ruined from our trying or we were simply failing to get a connection on them as jumping it didn’t work either. Ady went off to London and I rang our breakdown cover. I decided if they couldn’t get it started then the time had come to put it into storage now. The guy came and did get it started by jumping it off his van, warming up all the spark plugs and spraying loads of dampstart on it. He recommended new spark plugs though as the existing ones are not a set of four so two have been changed at different times to the other two.
I rang a couple of places but nowhere seems to just change plugs (I guess a garage would but at a price), so we took the car for a run to charge the battery back up and then came home. We decided to have popcorn for lunch as I’d brought home The Last Airbender on dvd from work so the kids half watched that and half played with Davies’ Doctor Who characters. We nipped along to Halfords for some spark plugs and a tool but I don’t have the knack for opening the bonnet so Ady needs to teach me how to do that tomorrow in daylight and we’ll change the plugs over. Another £25. If that does not sort it then it will definitely now go into storage and I can cancel the insurance and tax, particularly as the campervan should be running pretty soon.
The kids and I played some Plants vs Zombies, they had tea and Scarlett had her bath and hairwash – much talk of hairwashing and cutting here today thanks to Chloe :). We played some more PvZ and Ady arrived home. We did a quick recap of the last four days for bad, good, learnt today as it’s just not practical to try and do a daily catch up.
Davies:
Bad: didn’t get bedtime stories (he was outvoted in the shall we play more PvZ or read a story ballot)
Good: got full version of Plants vs Zombies
Learnt: Lynda & Stuart had extended their house – he didn’t realise they had had the work done.
Scarlett:
Bad: Spent about 9 hours sitting in car this weekend
Good: had lovely weekend with Lynda & Stuart
Learnt: Play area in Chill Factor – the indoor ski slope in Manchester, for some reason the fact there was a little area for just playing in the snow hadn’t registered with her last year when we visited.
Ady:
Bad: Nic’s poxy car!
Good: Lovely weekend, good to go back to Manchester
Learnt: Giraffe’s cannot cough or swim
Nic
Bad: Had to drop potential rent as no tenant yet
Good: Reactions of Lynda & Stuart and Miranda & Harmen to Wondering Wanderers Adventure
Learnt: seedless grapes (the question was asked at breakfast at L&S’s about how seedless grapes reproduce and why pretty much all grapes are now seedless, so we did a proper google and all learnt together about fruit grown from cuttings and grafting. Great to show L&S how our HE works in action) and how to authenticate amber – I really love my amber but was surprised that it feels more like plastic than glass when I’d expected it to be the other way round. So I’ve been researching ways to ensure it is really amber. I’ve done several of the tests and am pleased to know it is indeed real amber 🙂 (which is what it was sold as but I’m glad to have checked).
So I have to proper google myself to find out how to authenticate amber?
Comment by Michelle — 18 January 2011 @ 1:39 am
Sorry, meant to actually elucidate on both my learnts 🙂
will edit it in later.
Comment by Nic — 18 January 2011 @ 9:10 am
Someone told me that kangaroos can’t fart. (sorry, on a tangent from the giraffe thing.) I have no idea if that’s actually true though.
Comment by Sarah — 25 January 2011 @ 8:08 pm