What I'm looking forward to in Autumn

It seems like summer is over, we may have a few more days of sun ahead of us but to be honest I am kind of over it, I'm ready to move on to the next chapter of the year!
My favourite season is Spring but I have a bit of a wait for that so I'm going to be optimistic (I hate the cold) and find some of the things I like about this time of year...

1. Layers of clothes. 
I don't like skimpy little clothes, I'm quite self conscious of my wobbly bits and like to cover them up. I know its not very flattering on the figure and probably makes me look more frumpy but I feel so much more comfortable covered in woolly jumpers, warm coats, scarfs, gloves... the lot!

2. Hearty meals.
yeah salads are good for you but I don't find them very appealing or filling! I like good old comfort food... stews, roast dinners, pies basically anything you can smother in gravy, Yum!!

3. Nights on the sofa.
You know after work when you've cooked all the dinner, done the cleaning, shouted at the kids to do their homework and you just cant wait to sit on the sofa and relaaaax. I always find this time of year, when it is dark early and nobody wants to go out in the cold  that they have some really good programmes on TV...well they better this year! My favourites are the good old British dramas, I love a bit of drama i do!!

4. Candles.
They are just not the same in the summer, its too bright to enjoy a good candle. Like above when you're relaxing on the sofa and you want to create the right mood, I like to just put on the lamp and light a few candles and if they are of the scented kind (Vanilla is my favourite) then they make the room smell good too.

5. Routine.
Summer was great. I could get out of bed when I wanted and go back to bed when I wanted. Most of the time I didn't even know what day it was! But I did find it made me even more lazy than I usually am (which is very) So back to work and back to school means I have to get up at 6:30 and don't get to go back to bed until at least 10:00 so I end up getting quite a lot done in between.

6. Christmas.
OK Christmas is more winter but you know you have already seen all the cards, advent calenders and other Christmas associated goods in the shop!!  I actually find the run up to Christmas really exciting, I'm a bit like a kid in Hamleys and my girls get very enthusiastic by it all so we have already started playing the songs and I've been told what they want from Santa although I'm sure that list will grow immensely before December comes around.

Happy new (school) year!

It's that time of year again! Excitement, nervousness, tears and tantrums and that's just from the parents.

3 of the kids ready for school

Working in a school I could have done with another 6 weeks off... I know I'm just being greedy, I feel for you all that have to work the whole year round!! but I'm also really looking forward to the year ahead. I'm going to be working in year 4 which means I'm going to be on my poor sons back (he's in one of the other year 4 classes) no getting away with excuses about homework because I'm gonna know exactly what needs to be done!


I thought I would do a post on school uniforms as it's such a big part of 'back to school' the kids are looking so smart (that won't last) and grown up and basically it's the closest I think I'll get to doing a fashion shopping haul as buying clothes for myself just doesn't seem to happen.

So we started off in Sainsburys as they had 25% off clothing and we all love a bargain don't we? Then to the uniform shop for skirts, ties and badges and BHS for blazers and PE kits and various other shops for shoes, bags, stationary etc.

A few things I bought

 

I thought I was lucky this year as one of my brood no longer has to wear uniform but it turns out that in 6th form you still have to wear smart clothes including smart shoes and a blazer but as the only smart clothes my son owns is his old school uniform it meant a whole other shopping spree for his outfits!

There were a few things that the kids had from last term that they hadn't outgrown or ruined and as I like to recycle I passed down a few things from 1 daughter to the other.

So here is a list of the uniform I had to buy:

• 2 skirts
   
• 2 pairs of trousers
   
• 6 shirts
   
• 3 polo t-shirts
   
• 2 blazers
   
• 4 packs of socks/tights
   
• 1 tie
   
• 2 badges
   
• 2 jumpers
   
• 3 pairs of shoes
   
• 3 pairs of PE shorts
   
• 2 PE t-shirts
   
• 1 swimming shorts

•  3 lots of stationary

•   4 new school bags

 And I still haven't finished!! Soon i will need to get coats and winter things but hopefully not too soon.

So how has your experience of uniform shopping been? Did you manage to do it all early or rush around last minute like I normally do?

GCSE emotions

So the results are in!!

As it wasn't that long ago that I was collecting my own GCSEs it was all too familiar feeling of worry and nervousness. In fact as a parent I think the suspense was harder to deal with, maybe because we know the importance of preparing for the future, we can look back and see how the choices we made affect where we are now and for some (myself included) if the opportunity was there we would go back and do things differently.

So as I found out my sons results;
English B
Maths B
History B
Sociology B
ICT C
RE C
French C
Media studies C
Science D


There were a mixture of emotions that I felt that reflected how I felt when I opened my own envelope.

My first thought was how disappointed I was, I mean I know that sounds bad because his results are pretty good, but as I said to him his results are good for an average child and he was never ranked average at school. From a young age, even as a summer baby and being the youngest in his class he was always in the top groups for Literacy and Numeracy and he has always been praised as being 'such a bright boy' by his teachers. His main downfall is how lazy he is, the minute school is over he sees that as his free time to do what he wants (mainly play Xbox games) and so I feel partly responsible that his grades were not better (he was predicted a few As) as I didn't push him with his homework/revision as much as I should have.

At the same time as being disappointed I was also relieved, he had already got into 6th form at his school to study History, Sociology and Government and Politics A levels but if he also wanted do his English A level (which is the most important one as he wants to be a journalist) then he had to get a B or above in his English GCSE... thankfully he did!

Overall I mostly felt proud, for a start he got better grades than I did (5 Cs, 5 Ds and an E) and his dad didn't even do GCSEs as he was expelled from school! He kind of outdid the both of us so it would be irrational for us to complain.

I'm wondering if its wrong to put such high expectations on your children when it comes to exams, on the one hand it shows you believe in them and can encourage them to push themselves but at the same time does it just stress them out and set you all up for disappointment when they don't achieve what you're expecting?

Thorpe park

On our normal trips to the fair I very rarely go on the rides, I'm the one that watches the kids and carries all the bags while everyone else enjoys themselves, so when a friend asked if I wanted to join her and her daughters on a trip to Thorpe park I was quite reluctant. When I was younger I didn't mind being thrown all over the place, legs up in the air at 60mph but as I've got older I've gone off that dizzy/sick feeling and prefer to keep my feet firmly on the ground!

However my girls were quite excited about a girls day out and I didn't want to be a party pooper. It also dawned on me that with them being older I wouldn't have a pushchair to accompany me and nobody to watch on the little teacups, I would actually be free to go on all the big people rides like I was a teenager again... no excuses!

So here is a guide to a few of my favourite rides

Stealth

This ride travels from 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds and it is seriously not for the faint hearted!After it shoots you from the starting block it reaches a height of 205ft and straight back down again.
The first time we queued for 45mins and the ride took a total of 15 seconds. Yes that's a 45 minute wait for a 15 second ride!! but it was worth the experience and we decided to go back on at the end of the day, luckily we only had a 5 minute wait by then.









Detonator

Looking at this ride it seemed a bit boring, it went up and then came back down again! From the bottom it didn't even seem very high but the queue wasn't as long as some of the other rides so we decided to try it out. It was quite amusing seeing some of the faces of the people on the ride while we were waiting in the queue and it made you wonder what it was really like. I have to say when you are going up it is a lot higher than it seems and there is a great view of the park from up there! (as there is on a lot of the rides)
Then the countdown begins... and drop!!
It is the most strangest experience ever, you will literally lift out of your seat and it feels as if your stomach is in your mouth, I can only imagine what my face looked like, luckily there was no camera on this one for me to find out as I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight! I must say I did enjoy it but not sure I would EVER go on there again.
  



Tidal wave

Now you cant visit a theme park without going on a water ride and if you are going to get wet you might as well get soaking wet! You sit in a boat with 11 other people, ride up to the top and back down again, now you expect to get wet on the way down as that's the whole point but the water seems to shower over you forever and you will be soaked right down to your underwear, so much so that when you get off there is a giant drying machine that you can get into! Although this costs an additional £2 but we managed to fit 9 people in there so quite good value. I must say it doesn't dry you off completely but does warm you up a bit!

All in all we had a great day. There are loads of choices to eat but I would bring your own snacks and drinks otherwise it can get expensive.  If you are planning a trip I would get to know the map before you start off because we wasted a lot of time going round in circles looking for rides and there are not many signs to direct you around. Also its worth putting all the bags you don't need into a locker while you are on rides, you can put them to the side of each ride while you are on if you want to keep them with you but as there is so much time standing around its better to not have loads of stuff to carry.

It made a nice change for me to join the kids on the rides but as I still felt a bit sick/dizzy 2 days later I think my theme park days are over (at least until we visit Disneyland) and next time I will sit in the cafe with a coffee and watch all the crazy kids enjoy themselves.

Out of date TV licence

I got a letter through the post last month to remind me that my TV licence was about to expire and I needed to buy a new one, my first thought 'oh yet another thing I have to pay for' and then I got wondering, why do I need to pay for a TV licence? I mean I already pay extortionate prices to be able to have hundreds of channels (which I barely do watch) on my screen already, why am I paying extra just to watch a few BBC channels??

When the TV licence was first introduced there was basically 1 channel to watch - the BBC, so you were paying to watch 100% of the TV channels!
Now however there are around 200 channels and if you include all the news, international, gaming, shopping and adult channels that's probably another 200 bringing it to 400 channels. Compare this to the amount of BBC stations; there are 8 in total (not including the radio) that amounts to 2% of the channels available!!

There are thousands of people being taken to court every week for evading the £145.50 charge of an annual licence (or £49 for a black and white licence, but who really has one of those nowadays?) So I ask myself, shouldn't we really have a choice of whether we want to pay the fee? Should we opt in to subscribe to the BBC like we do to the movie channels? I mean personally the only thing I watch religiously on the BBC is Eastenders and we all know that's the most miserable thing on there and they would be doing me a favour if they took it away from me!

Or on the other hand how about they just put adverts on like they do on every other channel, it gives us that 3 minute break to run to the loo, make a cup of tea or raid the cupboards for chocolate (OK, maybe that's not a good idea) and compared to the advert breaks I had to recently endure while in Spain our ones are nothing. The programmes cut off mid sentence and '6 minutes' appears on the screen (in Spanish) to indicate that you now have to watch 6 minutes of adverts then after the programme returns for 2 minutes it pops up again saying '7 minutes' now that's probably why they have siestas in the afternoon, out of boredom from sitting through all the TV adverts!

If the choice was yours what would you choose?:
TV licence
Subscription
Adverts