Feeling nostalgic

THE BOYS WENT OFF TO THE SCHOOL DISCO....

THE PREPARATIONS WERE LIKE A FASHION SHOW....

THE SMELL OF LYNX NEARLY KNOCKED ME OUT....

THEY’RE GROWING UP THERE IS NO DOUBT!

Hello again,

I can’t believe I have reached “blog number 40”. This means for 40 weeks now I have been sharing my ramblings with you about the Taylor family’s daily life! Time seems to pass so quickly and I think it’s true what my Granny used to tell me that every year goes faster than the last.

I had a sharp reminder that my “babies” are growing up this week when they went off to the school disco. I always thought it was girls that spent hours in their bedrooms getting ready for these things from my own memories, but it seems boys are just the same, minus the make up! They used nearly the entire can of Lynx body spray from their Christmas gift sets and I thought perhaps I should be wearing protective breathing apparatus to enter their bedrooms. The hair gel was everywhere including a small amount actually on their hair and both had attempted the “Justin Bieber” look. The rejected outfits were strewn across the floor as if a small grenade had exploded inside their wardrobes. Once they were finally ready I took a picture of my quickly growing boys and Sam did his best “catalogue model pose” for the camera!

It really doesn’t seem any time at all since it was me going to the school disco and singing along to Duran Duran into my hairbrush whilst I decided what colour glitter spray to squirt into my hair. I think this must just be a delusion on my part as it’s only two weeks to go till my big fortieth birthday, so it must have been roughly 25 to 30 years ago. A scary thought!

It could be that I have a chance to relive my school disco days very soon as I am attending a school reunion on Saturday. It is the first one I have ever been to and I really don’t know what to expect. Will people look like they did when I last saw them all 25 years ago or will we all have to wear name badges to identify ourselves after the ravages of time have taken their toll! I have a feeling the mood will be very nostalgic as everybody there from my school year will either have just turned 40 or, like me, be just about to. The perfect time for a mid life crisis so it will be nice to be amongst others going through the same thing! My old school was actually very close to where I live now so despite doing a lot of travelling, and living in a few different towns over the years I have ended up close to where I started and have already bumped into quite a few old school friends in the village, so at least they won’t all be strangers. I also will be sharing a taxi to the venue with three others so at least I don’t have to walk in on my own and think “Help! I don’t recognise anyone!”

Also this week Rob followed up his T.V moment of fame by being recognised in a pub. We had gone to a quiz night in one of our locals and in the break we heard someone say “Excuse me but have I seen you on T.V?” I turned round with my best smile ready to talk about my year as “The New Face of Iceland,” only to realise he was talking to Rob and not me! Rob was quite embarrassed and tried to deny it, but the man was quite insistent so he had to confess it was him in the end. Feeling a bit put out I asked the man, “Have you seen me on T.V too in the Iceland adverts?” and he put me in my place and just said “No.” It was actually quite funny and at least Rob knows now how it feels to be recognised by people you don’t know!

We also started testing the new Iceland products this week. Rob’s children James and Jodie came round last Thursday, so it was a perfect time to try out the family feast Takeout box and a couple of puddings. The full reviews will be on the website in the coming weeks but it is safe to say they all gave it top marks.

It is half term this week, so a good time to stock up on food as they always seem to eat me out of house and home during the holidays. My two boys seem to eat and eat but I still have a problem getting Sam’s trousers to stay up. If they fit his long legs they are too big round the waist and if they fit round the waist they don’t go down to his ankles! I guess they must just burn it all off by being so active!

Talking of being active, the dog is now looking at me with sad eyes that say “Please can you hurry up, and take me to run round that big field now?” There is not much sadder than a dog looking at you with sad eyes, so it must be time to go and exercise both my dog and my children! She is just learning how to chase balls and bring them back now as I don’t think she did much of that in her previous life. The first time we threw a ball for her she just looked at us as if to say “What exactly to you expect me to do here?”

Please come back next week when I can tell you how the school reunion went and whether dancing to “Come on Eileen” felt as good at the age of 39 and ¾ as it did when I was 13!

Thanks for reading

Ellie
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Fame for all the family!

THE DOG’S IN THE PAPER, AND ROB’S ON T.V...

SAM’S ON U-TUBE FOR ALL TO SEE...

JUST WAITING FOR LUKE, NOW WHAT WILL HE BE?

THERE’S NO ESCAPE FOR THE PUBLIC FROM MY FAMILY!

Hello again,

This week it seems everyone in my family is in the media including the dog!

I opened this week’s local paper to find an article written about the rescue centre where we found Pip, and across a two page spread there was a picture of her puppies! The story told of the work done at the centre and in particular Pip’s own story of how she came to be there when she was pregnant.

Not to be outdone, last night my phone kept going off from people texting to tell me they had just seen Rob on our local news too. I completely missed it as he hadn’t said a word about it, but apparently a film crew had turned up outside a pub where he was celebrating a colleague’s retirement. He said he didn’t know he was going to be on the news, but I did ask him who he thought the people were interviewing him and pointing a camera at him and why he didn’t ask what it was for? Apparently he thought it was just some random people making a film and didn’t recognise the news reporter!

Sam is also getting some fame in his own right for playing the drums in a u-tube video so now I’m just wondering what Luke is going to appear in next.

 I wonder, now that she’s had a taste of fame should I get Pip an agent and sign her up for some dog food adverts? I could teach her how to do the Can- Can and tell her how it all works when you make adverts from my own wealth of experience! I don’t think Rob will be following up his experience in the media as he was so embarrassed he refused to watch himself.

Anyway, in the real world this week I completed my induction course for my new carer’s job. Now I just have to wait for all the references and checks. The induction days were good and the others starting with me were all very friendly. One of the topics we had to cover was health and safety. I think whatever your job in this day and age you always have to cover the health and safety at work act. I understand that this is important and serious and has to be covered, but I do also think we have gone totally health and safety mad in this country. Some of the things you “learn” are so common sense that you sit there thinking if I wasn’t capable of working that out for myself I don’t think I would have made it to 39 years old! I have watched many training health and safety films for many different jobs, but they are all along the same lines. I remember one where you had to watch different scenes and then answer questions as to whether or not what the person was doing was good practice or dangerous. For example, a man in an office putting his cup of coffee on top of his computer monitor, or someone going up a wobbly step ladder in their slippers and standing on tiptoe on the top. If you take it all too much to heart you come to the conclusion that the only safe thing to do is to sit in a room surrounded by cushions and never leave the house just in case! I’m afraid my philosophy in life is that you take your own risks and as long as you never endanger any innocent bystanders you have the right to do the odd stupid thing! Let’s face it many sports and jobs would be completely banned, and life would become very boring if no one ever took a calculated risk.

I had some more exciting news this week when my list of new trial products came from Iceland. Everyone in the family (and some of the neighbours) love it when I have to write the food reviews, and I’m never short of volunteers to make sure I am giving an unbiased opinion. I am already planning the “Family Take Out Box,” for when Rob’s children come for tea in the week, and am personally quite excited about the “Lamb Moussaka,” so please check weekly on the Iceland website to see what we thought!

Sam and Luke have a new favourite tea at the moment and it’s “wraps.” Basically you can put pretty much anything you like inside a wrap but they particularly like the Quorn pieces with cheese and salad. It’s a good meal to do for children and adults eating together as you can add different things according to your own taste and they are always fun to make at the table. If they have eaten it all sensibly, I do allow them to do something silly with the last wrap. Luke has found you can make a “wrap mask” by eating the eye holes and mouth shape and Sam has attempted some animal shapes! Yes I know you shouldn’t play with your food but sometimes it can be fun and it does all get eaten in the end.

We also stuck to our family decision of making sure we have a meal together at least once a month when my parents and brother came over for a Chinese takeaway. My mum had a friend staying so with the extra guest I found my table could actually fit 8 people round it at a push. I think I might invite them all back to do some food testing.

Anyway that’s our news so far for this week, the boys are off to the school Valentine’s disco tonight so please come back next week when I can tell you how they got on. That is assuming they tell me anything, which they probably won’t!

Thanks for reading

Ellie
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The glass is always half full!

YOU GET SOME DAYS WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG...
SOMETIMES IT’S HARD TO ALWAYS BE STRONG....
WHEN FATE DECIDES IT’S TIME TO BE MEAN...
I’M LUCKY I HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY ON MY TEAM!!


Hello again.

Do you ever get those days when it’s just one minor disaster after another? I think the story of the straw that broke the camel’s back is so true. Minor mishaps happen to everyone every day, but sometimes when you get one or two bad things all happen at once you end up exploding like a pressure cooker! Well I am speaking for myself here but I’m sure you know what I mean.

My bad day started last week with a gas and electric bill, not so bad so far you might think, but let me continue. My meter’s in the new house are in the garage so can’t be read unless I’m in, so it was an estimated bill. I always read the meter myself at that point as I don’t like to get a back log of payments due by underestimating. Sure enough when I gave the actual readings they were about four times the estimated amount. I decided to file the bills in a sensible place (shove them in the kitchen drawer and forget about them!) and go off to work.

When I returned to my car after work I found the next problem. Someone had obviously walked along the pavement next to my car with either a key or a coin in their hand and scratched it all the way down the side from bumper to bonnet. I had a little “Why me?” moment, as the back bumper is still not fixed from when someone ran into me in the snow and drove off, so my poor little car is really looking a bit battered now. It’s the sort of stupid mindless act that really drives me mad. Why do people do it? I just can’t imagine setting out to annoy and upset a person you have never even met for no reason. It’s not even as though I have a flashy sports car and someone is jealous, in fact my car is starting to look more and more like a dodgem car! Eventually I told myself there was no point raising my blood pressure over it as no one would ever know who did it. I wouldn’t have the time or money to re do the paint work so I just had to live with it and forget about it.

When I got home I found the next problem and the one that broke the camel’s back! I put the heating on as normal when we got in, but wondered why we didn’t seem to be warming up half an hour later. I checked the boiler and found the pressure gauge on zero. It has been needing topping up more and more lately, but this time it seemed to only last a few hours. I phoned the emergency boiler people and they said they could send someone out the next day but unfortunately I had to work, so the next available time would have been 3 days later on Monday. They also said if there was a leak I might need to “Get someone in to pull all the floor boards up,” as they didn’t do that! I put the phone down and sat and thought about having floorboards pulled up in my nice new house, and who could do it and about having no hot water or central heating for the next three days.

I have to admit, although I always try to be a “glass half full” person I felt a bit defeated by this point and did the only sensible thing to do in a crisis and phoned my mum and moaned! She offered to come and wait in my house all day so that the boiler people could come the next day, so I focused on the positives again and thought what a nice mum I have and that at least the heating crisis had taken my mind off the vandalised car. When they came it turned out I had a faulty “expansion vessel” so my vessel was successfully repaired and we were warm and clean again that evening and the glass was half full again!

At the weekend we decided the time had come to see how the dog would react off the lead as we have had her over four weeks now. We live quite close to the Ashton court estate in Bristol which is open to the public and has huge grounds, so after struggling with the dog car harness we were off on the next adventure. Pip hates the car and whined and barked all the way there and despite reassuring her it would all be worth it she still spent the journey fighting with her harness and trying to break free to get onto my lap.

As it turns out it was definitely worth it. We found a quiet spot and let her go. She loved running with the boys and I was amazed at her speed. She was very good at coming back when we called her and kept checking we were still in view. I wondered what she would do when she saw other people and dogs as she always barks on her lead if any man walks near her. She still ran up to a few walkers and barked, but then ran off again. There was one scary moment when she decided to chase a cyclist but other than that it was all O.K.

When she found some other dogs to play with she seemed very happy but made it clear she only liked to do the chasing and not to be chased! The funniest moment was near a small pond when she was chasing a big black Labrador who jumped into the pond with a big splash. I think she forgot for a moment that she wasn’t a big dog and jumped straight in after him. You could almost see the look of terror in her eyes when she realised her legs weren’t as long as his and she had to swim, so we got her to the side and quickly fished her out! Obviously she was quite wet and smelly by this point so we spent some time letting the boys climb trees while she dried off a bit. She actually showed us she was a good tree climber too which pleased Sam and Luke!

Once home it was straight in the bath and despite her earlier encounter with water she was very good and didn’t make any fuss in the bath. Now she is sweet smelling and fluffy and has proved once again how good a family pet she really is.

I have one more induction day left to do for my new job so please come back next week and I can tell you how the whole course went and if I have an official “start date” yet.

Thanks for reading

Ellie
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Family fun and new horizons.

A NEW YEAR, NEW JOB AND NEW START FOR ME...

KEEPING OLD PEOPLE COMPANY....

WHEN IT COMES TO JOBS, I NOW HAVE THREE,

I THINK I’M GOING TO BE KEPT BUSY!

Hello again and this week I have good news.

No, I didn’t manage to get the matching cup to my Pinky and Perky saucer from the auction site (stupid computer crashed just as the last bids were happening!), it’s even better than that... I have a new job.

Some of you may know that before I had my children I was a qualified nurse (R.G.N). I gave up after having Sam to stay at home with him. Then I had Luke and was away from work completely for about 5 years. If you stay out of nursing for more than 3 years you need to do a 3 month refresher course to renew your qualified status and this has never been practical for me as a single mum. Even if I re-qualified, shift work would be very difficult to organise, as I struggle enough through school holidays as it is with my current 3 day a week optician’s job.

However, I have been starting to miss the caring side of the nursing job and after some browsing on the internet I have come up with a solution. I found a company that offer care at home for people who need help with daily life. I had an interview last week and am happy to say I have got the job. After my induction course I will be calling on people who need support in their own homes and offering help with cooking, cleaning, transport, washing, dressing and pretty much anything else they need help with. (I’m hoping not DIY though as I really am useless at anything more technical than hitting things with hammers!)

Some of the time it may just be company that people want, especially the elderly and if so, I’m hoping I can entertain them with my stories of Iceland antics, and life with children and dogs! It will be closer to the line of work that I originally trained for and I am really looking forward to the one to one care. Sometimes working in the care industry can be challenging, I already know that, but I also think things that are challenging are ultimately more rewarding too.

The plan is to start this work on the days I don’t work at the opticians but to also keep that job as well. Some weeks there may just be a few hours work with the care agency and some weeks there may be a lot more so I need to make sure the mortgage gets paid!

I think it will be a busy few weeks until I establish a regular routine but I feel very positive and excited about it.

When I say I have three jobs I am including my winning year as “the new face of Iceland” which I suppose isn’t technically a job in the normal sense, but it is great fun writing a weekly blog, testing food and writing reviews, officially opening stores and appearing in adverts. It really has gone very fast in fact it is almost coming to an end as it will be a year ago in April that I won the competition. One thing it has shown me is how much I like writing and I think whatever else happens I will continue to be a “blogger” in one form or another. Perhaps a novel is the next challenge! (Well I do like to keep busy!)

Also this week I had a lovely evening out with my family. We decided to go out to celebrate my new job and had such a nice time that we all agreed we should make time once a month to all meet up, whether for Sunday lunch, a takeaway night, or a meal out. My mum helps me a lot with childcare when I am working but sometimes that means the boys end up seeing her a lot more than I do. I would say we are a close family but getting everyone, including my brother, in the same place at the same time doesn’t seem to happen as often as we all agree it should.

We are generally quite silly when we are all together and we spent a lot of the evening laughing. My Step-dad had been sorting through the old photos to make a display on the wall of ancestors past and present. We found some very funny pictures of odd hairstyles, bad clothes and forgotten memories. I did try to point out that you have to put fashion and taste into context and at the time my mum’s big curly perm and my embroidered dungarees were probably the height of fashion! My brother seemed to win the prize for most different hairstyles over the years and we all agreed it was good that he grew out of the bleached blonde spiky mullet style!

Anyway once we had all laughed at each other and censored the photos that we definitely didn’t want out on display, we went out to a lovely pizza restaurant and that’s where we decided we would all make the effort to co-ordinate our lives once a month and meet up.

My induction days for the new job start tomorrow so please come back next week to see how I got on. It feels a bit like first day at school all over again!


Thanks for reading

Ellie

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