Week 21 #Project365 – 2015

Hello all – week 21 already!!

Now that the weather is a bit better we’ve been out and about on a few walks.  It’s been good to get out and swipe the cobwebs from my brain.

Sunday –  Finished late in work, just seemed to take ages to do everything! Didn’t do much with the rest of the day.

Monday – Didn’t do much today, caught up with cleaning the house.

Tuesday – Went to see Mad Max – Fury Road, oldest son came along with us. Hubby and son really liked the film but I found it rather repetitive. Max is now played by Tom Hardy and he does nothing for me – he’s rather overrated IMHO.  The film is mainly him and a few others trying to outrun others chasing them.. lots of violent fighting and not much else.

Wednesday – Visit from son and the boys. Theo is crawling well now but prefers to pull himself up, he’s getting into everything too.. Ashley came running into the kitchen, ‘drink please Nanna’ then proceeded to raid the fridge for a yogurt!

Thursday – We felt rather lazy so drove down to Redwick and had a short walk around the local lanes. I haven’t been down there for a few years and it’s only 4 miles away. There’s a rather fine church and a pub and not much else other than a few houses.  The whole area was flooded back in 1607 and the resulting land area has become the Gwent levels and is classified as Site of Special Scientific Interest. 

Friday – Usual work followed by a nice relaxing evening.

Saturday – Usual shopping and visit to the MIL. Researching domain names, self-hosting and thinking about how I want the new blog to look.. Scary but exicited.  May ask the Aussie DIL to design a suitable logo. Any ideas are welcome!!

Here’s my selection for this week:

 

Above:

• Theo getting into everything at the coffee table.
• Swan seen on one of our walks.
• Magor wetlands – this is what’s known locally as a reen.
• Ashley – Cheese!! loves climbing in-front of the camera!

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

Week 20 #Project365 – 2015

Here’s how my week panned out:

Sunday – After having supper with our friends on Saturday they gave me some some flowers for my birthday. They look very bright on the kitchen window sill.

Monday – Had a win of £100 cheque. WOO!! Spend some of it on some new canisters for the kitchen. We already had the biscuit barrel in this range so bought the Tea, Coffee, sugar and the bread crock to go with it.
I’m debating using the rest to buy my own web domain and go self-hosted.  Quite like the idea of soosie.wales, what do you think??

Tuesday – Had Ashley for the morning before dropping him off at nursery. He has new glasses but he still wears them half way down his nose!!
Later in the afternoon we went to the cinema to see Big Game, a good Action/Adventure romp with Samuel L. Jackson playing a US president who gets shot down over Finland and his only hope for survival is a young Finnish boy on a ‘rights of passage’ expedition. It’s good fun and would make a good half term film for (probably) junior school kids.
Oh did I tell you it’s now Meerkat Movies?? I managed to get a full year of 2-4-1 via Compare the Market by buying a one day UK travel insurance for £2.67!! A bit of a loophole that many have taken advantage of!! Thanks to Money Saving Expert!!

Wednesday – usual work day.

Thursday – spent the day catching up on SKY+ and watching films as the weather was so bad. It rained all day!

Friday – Today was my birthday. A couple of cards and well wishes on Facebook. My friend in work bought me a summery scarf and lovely coaster that is hand decorated by one of the ladies that works in another department at the store.

Saturday – Food shopping, visit to MIL, quick catch up on email. Off out tonight for my birthday.

Above:

• Flowers from my friend.
• Ashley being a good boy.
• New kitchen canisters.
• Pretty personalised coaster.
• My birthday Google page (ok I did’t actually take this one as such… screen grab!)

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

Week 19 #Project365 – 2015

A much better week for us now that things from the past few weeks have settled down. Ashley’s remaining tests came back negative so they still don’t know what caused his collapse. Hopefully it’ll not happen again.

Sunday – Not much, half day work followed by lazing about the house.

Monday – We decided to go out for a drive and headed out towards Lydney and ended up at Lydney Harbour. A nice area where fishing boats used to launch into the Severn Estuary. Nowadays it’s more pleasure craft that use the basin and locks. You can cross over the locks and take walk along the estuary.

Tuesday – Housework in the morning, I also tidied the freezer, loads of stuff in the wrong drawers since hubby has been putting the shopping away!!
We went to see Avengers – Age of Ultron – loads of action but the story drifts a bit. But Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans always worth looking at.. OOOSSHH…

Wednesday – After work son came for a visit with the boys. Theo is still trying to crawl but goes round in circles or backwards. Ashley was back his usual self. He loves having his photo taken and tried to get right up close – so funny. I allowed him to use my camera this week and he loved taking photos of his daddy and brother but he also started swinging it about… oh no you don’t young man…He wasn’t keen on being told off.

Thursday – Didn’t do much today no food shopping as all we needed was fresh food and it can wait until Saturday.

Friday – Work day – bored to tears as there wasn’t enough work to last the 7 hours I worked. I’d much prefer to be kept occupied.

Saturday – Shopping followed by the weekly visit to MIL. Lidl had an offer on Minced beef – 500g for £1.29. Bought 6, three for the freezer, one for lasagne on Sunday and two made into meatballs and spicy burgers. Love the bargains like this as it ends in cheap meals for the 2 of us. My Mum taught me well on how to make dinners from scratch.

In the evening we went to our friends house for supper – yummy chilli, good chatter and a catch up with their son too.

Hope you’ve all had a good week. 

I’ve selected my favourites for the week.

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

Week 17 and 18 #Project365 – 2015

Here I am catching up again. Week 17 started ok with a lovely win from Hotter shoes, but it soon went downhill. Hubby was supposed to get an appointment for the results of his biopsy. When he called the hospital they gave him the option of discussing it with the Urology specialist nurse. The news wasn’t good they had found early signs of cancer. As you can imagine he was devastated and despite visits from the grandsons’ and me telling him it will all be ok he was really worried.
I’m so glad they sent him an appointment for the following Tuesday.
So that basically was week 17 – worry worry worry!!

Week 18 

Monday – Busied ourselves with housework, reading through some very useful booklets that the hospital sent Hubby and watched a couple of films to try to take his mind off tomorrow.

Tuesday – We went to the hospital for Hubby to discuss his biopsy results with the consultant. While we were waiting in the Ante-room I checked my phone and I had 2 missed calls from our son. I thought it would be a ‘Mum, can you look after the boys?’ or ‘Can Dad fix this?’ type of call so decided to call him back after we’d seen the consultant. (more on that in a bit!!)
The consultant explained very clearly that the amount of cancer found was minute… out of the ten needle samples the amount would barely be dot and in his professional opinion it is unlikely to become anything more sinister as his PSA test count is only just over what it would be for a man of his age. He recommended that Hubby is monitored by blood tests every 3 months and possible biopsy again in a year or two.
To say he was relived is an understatement!

As we left I rang our son he was a bit frantic. Ashley had collapsed and passed out in nursery and they were at the hospital with him. They told him straight away that Ashley would be in for at least 72 hours. He barely woke up on Tuesday, they did lots of blood tests, a brain EEG test and a CT scan but found nothing out of the ordinary. He was placed in a high dependency unit overnight with a nurse checking him hourly. He eventually woke at 5am asking for toast and a drink! By the time son and DIL got there at 7am he was up and about as if nothing was wrong!

Wednesday – After work we were going to see the new Avengers film but went to visit Ashley instead. He was back to his usual self and charming everyone who came past him.

Thursday – We looked after Theo so that his mummy and daddy could spend time with Ashley.  It was rather odd looking after a baby again.
Ashley had another brain scan today and it was all ok thank goodness.

Friday – Ashley came home. There are still some test results to come back and hopefully they’ll be clear. But it still remains a mystery to why it happened.

Saturday – Quick catch up with son in Oz.  He applied for an internal job a few weeks ago and his manager wasn’t keen on him possibly leaving. Son only applied as it was more IT based which meant more money. His manager agreed to take a look at his job specification and has told him that if he stays his current job will be aligned with Engineering IT and he’ll get a pay lift into the bargain. It’ll mean more work for him to do and it’s good to know he’s appreciated where he is.

Selection from week 17 

• Mr Chubby Chops
• Cool little Dude
• I could choose a pair of red, white or blue shoes to celebrate Hotter getting a Queens award. 

Selection from week 18

• Ashley as his usual self in hospital. The blue thing near his ear is his right hand – boarded and bandaged to keep the shunts in!
• Theo – a bit out of focus but the best I could get before he tried to take the camera off me!
• Molly seems to have found a new hiding place. 

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

Linking up for the last time to The Boy and Me.  Sad times but the project will go on via various other blogs that take part in the project.  Wishing ‘Joanne’ a fond farewell.

Week 16 #Project365 – 2015

A quiet week for me this week.

Sunday / Monday – 2 quiet days, work and a bit of a tidy up at home.

Tuesday – Went to see John Wick – film starring Keanu Reeves as a retired assassin who’s mourning his wife’s death. His car gets stolen and his dog is killed by some Russian thugs…thing is the thug is his ex-boss’s son. All hell breaks loose! Good action and story and Reeves is really intense in the lead role. Although it must have taken him all of an hour to learn his lines…he says very little throughout the movie.  We only went to see it as it was the best of very few to choose from. Both Hubby and I were surprised at how good it is.

Wednesday – work went ok today. Not much else happened!

Thursday – Shopping at Morrisons as they had offers on Tetley tea and Lucozade.  I had to get someone to check the price on Lucozade as it wasn’t showing as on offer. Assistant said he thinks it came off offer on Sunday… oh no Pet… it was still showing at £2.50 this morning on YOUR website…
I had to walk around the store to get a wifi signal and managed to get the page showing on my phone. I showed it to the same assistant who was then talking to the manager. After a bit of argy bargy over whether it was an online only price (it wasn’t) they agreed to sell it to me for £2.50.
Then when I checked my receipt a small piece of ginger (no bigger than your thumb) showed up at £1.20 and 2 small carrots showed at weighing 640g – over 1lb in weight??  That was a visit to the customer service desk to get it checked and refunded. Both should have come to 42p!!
I relayed it all to their ‘Talk to Morrisons’ site and put it on their Facebook page! The staff looking after the FB page were really good and gave me £10 of Match and More points. I call that a result!

Friday– reasonable day in work, even had a laugh!! Bit of smutty talk going on and it resulted in us all cracking up!

Saturday – A rush about day – down to MIL then back home for a wash and change and off to Cardiff to see Simple Minds – for the 3rd time! Fab gig and great atmosphere.
We got caught in traffic on the way there which only left us just over an hour to get dinner and a sneaky pint!

Above: 

• Simple Minds
• The Newport Clock being re-erected. It was made for the Garden Festival Wales in Ebbw Vale in 1992.
• This weeks film – John Wick 
• £1.20 for ginger and 48p for 2 carrots?? 

Hope you’ve had a good week….

 

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

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Week 15 #Project365 – 2015

I’ve had a lovely family week – seeing both grandsons smiling and laughing is enough to light up anyone’s day!

Easter Sunday – Son, DIL and grandsons came for Easter lunch. We had a lovely time together but it was tinged with a little sadness when DIL told us that her grandfather had passed away. She was feeling rather guilty for not going up to Blackpool with her folks for the funeral. There’s not much you say to ease the sadness.

Monday – We were going to go out for a drive but decided to have a nice relaxing day at home, tidying the garden and enjoying the sunshine.

Tuesday – With the demise of Orange Wednesday we’ve not been to the cinema for over a month. Tuesdays may be our new day as it’s cheaper. We are both fans of the Fast and Furious franchise so went to see the 7th installment. This time round they have Jason Statham after them to avenge his brothers death. I would have loved to have seen the production notes that said Statham was to square up to Dwayne Johnson!! Much of the film is far fetched and some parts defy physics but as long as you can park your brain and just watch it as good action entertainment you can’t go far wrong.
As you may know Paul Walker died whilst the film was still being made. They have done a great job of keeping his part going using body doubles and CGI and the ending is a really poignant goodbye to him.

Wednesday – Work day which was brightened up by the arrival of my Jord watch!

Thursday – Usual shopping day.

Friday – Work day -as we handle cash the office is security controlled and we have control over who enters the office. I pushed back in my chair to press the button to let someone in and I fell off my chair and bashed my arm on our CCTV cabinet. Top of my arm is pretty sore and a bruise is developing but what’s worse is that it was all captured on camera! There are a few people going to have a good laugh.

Saturday – early phone call from son asking if we would like to take Ashley for the day. Well we’re not going to say no! A bit of colouring and drawing first, then some time on my tablet. I never fail to be impressed with him on apps, we have one with a subgame of mazes and he guides the ball around and you can see that he’s working out where to go rather than just guessing.  He loves the CBBC app and The Furchester Hotel is his favourite on that one. BUT is absolute favourite is Angry Birds!
At lunchtime we popped down to see his Great Granny Mo and a visit to the park on the way back. Then it was back home to catch up with his Mummy, Daddy and brother.

Here’s a selection from the week and some extras from our time in the park.

Above: 

• He loves a bit of bubble wrap! 
• Mr. Chubby Chops in his walker. 
• New watch has arrived!
• Hot cross bun and butter pudding in the slow cooker. 

Time in the park: 

• Squealing with delight on the swing.
• Is this close enough Nanny?
• How relaxed does he look here?
• Well not relaxed as having your feet up too! 
• You have to have a cone with sprinkles and sauce for a lovely day in the park!
• I-Spy!

Hope you’ve all had a great Easter week. 

 

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

If you’d like to read more about the project please click on the 365 badge

Week 13 & 14 #Project365 – 2015

This is a 2 week catch up again. I must admit that in week 13 I really struggled. Other than photos of the grandsons I had very little to share. A few photos of hedgerows and things I’ve taken pictures of before so I felt rather deflated and defeated.

I’ve made more of an effort this week.

Week 12 #Project365 – 2015

This week I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t do full time hours any longer. I’ve been working extra hours this week and I seem to havec had no time to do anything! I’m absolutely shattered!

Sunday – Back to work. Managed to finish on time and did a bit of shopping as there was nothing fresh in the house. Had a few bargains, Turkey breast fillets reduced to £1 from £5 and some pork ribs for £1 reduced from £4.

Monday – Day off – Catching up on Corrie and Suits followed by a quick visit to Mother Outlaw.

Tuesday – working but managed to get done by 1pm. Had a visit from son and the grandsons. Theo is now rolling but gets frustrated at not being able to crawl.
Ashley wasn’t himself, he kept asking to go wee but didn’t go. After about 3 attempts he said it hurts and got quite upset, ahh poor boy. A call to the doctor resulted in an emergency appointment. He has an infection on his winkie, a bit cream sorted it out.

Wednesday – working, took it slow today as I knew I’d have to wait for the ‘money man’.
In the afternoon I caught up with emails. I also had a nice surprise, when I put my Nexus7 on to charge it updated and the camera on it now works again. It stopped a couple of months ago after a bug on the last update.

Thursday – Day off. Hubby had to go to the hospital for a small op under local anesthetic. We did a quick weekly shop on way back home.
He was told to do nothing but rest – that called for a relax in the sunny garden.

Friday – Back to work. I had try to stretch 2 hours work last for 7 hours. My Friday doing admin is so boring…
Plus I missed the eclipse..no windows in the office.
Back home by 2:30pm. The Electrician came to fit new smoke alarms. Did I tell you they were both beeping when we came back from holiday..replaced batteries to avail so had to turn them off at the fuse box. They were 20 years old so due to fail I suppose!

Saturday – work again and it didn’t go too smoothly after the person who did the processing on Friday made a mistake with the cash float which took me a hour to sort out. Then, when I tried adding the figures to the system it refused..She had also not completed the End of Day processing..another half hour wasted. GRRR….
The 6am starts this week took their toll and I fell asleep within half hour of getting home!
I woke about 4pm and couldn’t be bothered even turning the laptop on.
Watched TV and was in bed at 10pm.  Not like me..I’m usually still up at midnight!

above:

• Relaxing in the garden.
• A charity shop bargain – teddy is brand new and was only £1.
• Camelia bursting to flower.
• New smoke alarm.
• It’s now light enough at 5:45am to see across the car park.

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

If you’d like to read more about the project please click on the 365 badge

Week 11 #Project365 – 2015 – Nissi Beach, Cyprus

This week we’ve been at Nissi Beach in Cyprus.  We’ve been to Cyprus quite a few times but this was the first time we’ve been to the north of the island.  So apologies here that this will probably be a longer post than normal.. 🙂
Last January I won a week at the Nissi Beach Resort. The only trouble was the holiday would only be available in March or November – out of season. By the time the organisers and the hotel stopped fannying about with dates it was too late to go in March last year and in November the resort would be pretty much closed for the winter. 

Week 9 and 10 #Project365 – 2015

Week 9 -A rather mundane week. Hubby hasn’t been too well – Man Flu!!  So we put off seeing the grandchildren until next week.

Tuesday – a quick trip to Cardiff to try to find some nice holiday clothes, but found nothing.

Boo – No more Orange Wednesday.. this week is the last one but there was nothing we wanted to see.

Thursday – I connected my phone to the laptop to charge and it picked up an update. I ended up on the Sony support forum as any emails coming in via the Sony stock email app were corrupted. I’ve had to set up all my accounts on GMail now. (Yes I have more than one… one for blogging, two for jobs, one for competitions, one for odds and ends. )

The rest of the week passed quietly with nothing much going on. See I told you it was mundane!!

When I woke on Saturday I knew I had caught his cold. Throat really sore and dreadful headache. At least it got me out of going to the Mother Outlaw’s.

Week 10 – Sunday I had already agreed to work a full day to cover for holiday. I had to drag my sorry a*** to work despite having no voice, a cough that gave me thunderclap headaches and legs feeling like lead. I managed to last the day and finished around 2pm. I was asleep on the sofa at 3pm!

Monday – despite still feeling unwell I wasn’t going to miss going to see The Script in Cardiff.  Tiny Tempah was the support – total shite.  We were sat up in the north gallery and was amazed when Danny came through right by us singing.  I was in touching distance!! Hubby behind me shouting ‘get your camera on!!’ I totally forgot about taking a photo!! I’m so glad my TZ8 powers up quickly!!

Tuesday / Wednesday – Restful days and keeping dosed up with Ibuprofen, Tyrosets and plenty of fluids.

Thursday – Back to work and a quick visit to the son’s house so that DIL can cut my hair ready for our holiday.

Two rather boring weeks – but next week will be better – watch out for week 11 coming to you from Cyprus!!

Here’s a selection from the last (nearly) 2 weeks.

Above:

• Yes – I was this close to Danny!! 
• Hall of Fame – Last song of the night.
• A big Boot in St Davids centre. 
• Dosing up – pain killers, tyrosets, carmex. 
• My poorly email inbox. 

Check out my other Project 365 pictures so far.

If you’d like to read more about the project please click on the 365 badge