Challenge Accepted - 10 Things You Didn't Want to Know

Last week I was challenged by the glorious Glowless of Where's My Glow? to come up with "10 things you didn't want to know about me". Now mine will be nowhere near as interesting, funny or witty as hers, and that's because, well, she is just so cool (I'm honoured really that she asked me to play), so here goes......

1) We have two different cutlery sets in our drawers, I will always choose the plain ones to eat from. I only ever use the fancy ones for cooking, measuring etc. If hubby gets me a fancy one I will put it back and choose a plain one (I don't think he knows that I do this....) and I will even wash a dirty plain one rather than use the fancy design. Why...... I don't really know

Which would you choose? Or would you not care?

2) At an age where perhaps I should be over this sort of thing I just cannot go to sleep if any cupboard door or drawer in the bedroom is open, the cupboard monsters might get out.

3) I have just about every single card, letter and invitation ever sent to me, and I mean EVER! I have all of my baby cards from when I was born (thanks mum, I know where I get my hoarding instincts from) so as you can probably imagine, we have A LOT of boxes in our house! You'd think that with the frequency that we have moved house over the years that maybe I could have purged some of these, but no. So don't ever volunteer to help when next we move house!

4) Use by dates and best before dates are just guides, right?

5) My favourite joke of all time, and the only one I can ever remember when asked to tell a joke, is this one:

Knock, knock
Who's there?
Interrupting cow
Interrupting, and before they can finish the "cow who?" bit, you yell out "moooooo"

OK, maybe it doesn't work so well as a joke when you have to type it out! But it works quite nicely with a whole farm full of different animals for the punchline as my kids have discovered.

6) When I was little my mum challenged me to learn the alphabet backwards, and I can still do it.

7) Whenever I buy a book, magazine or newspaper I never take the top/front one (usually the third one).

8) I'm learning to ride a unicycle



Image from here. Might have to get me a skirt like that one!

 9) Toilet paper MUST be hung with the paper coming from the back to over the top. I WILL change it at your house if you've done it wrong.

10) When I was at primary school I met an astronaut. It didn't inspire me to become one.

So there you have it, 10 useless facts about me! Do you do any of these things? Tell me something about you.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Miss Ellie, 6 years old today! What a lovely day we've had, with maybe just a little too much cake and sugar!

Old Stuff

Photos taken at Yarloop Workshops 11/9/11

Thanks all, Monkey Boy is doing well - we went back to the hospital on Friday for a dressing change, it all looks good!

Memory Loss

Today Miss Ellie was commenting about how good her memory is and it is actually quite good! You know when you play a game with your kids and you let them win? Well, when we play "memory" (that card game where you turn over two cards and try and get a match) she absolutely kicks my butt, there's no chance of me "letting" her win, I couldn't stop her! And she was saying that her memory is better than Monkey Boy's, because he is only little and she's bigger, and that his would get better as he gets older, but not too old, because then your memory starts to go a bit funny (this is from listening to her Grandpa say that his memory is not very good). So I asked her at what age she thought her memory would start to go bad, "um" she says "maybe when I'm like 10".

A Waiting Weekend

So, the previous weekend was wonderful, this one was one of waiting....

It all started innocently enough on Friday morning. I was going to be catching up with a friend and her little boy for a play but the weather was looking a bit dodgy, so instead of heading off to the playground we decided to go the local fast food with the golden arches where they have a small under cover playground (and the coffee is better than the other option of massive hardware store with indoor playground). The boys played, the mums chatted and all was good. It was time to go, they left and we went off to the toilets before leaving too. I was holding open the door on the way out and Master Bee tripped over my foot, fell on the ground and started saying "ow, ow, ow". Being the caring mum that I am I said something like "you'll be ok", picked him up and carried still crying boy out of said restaurant (if you can seriously call it a restaurant??). Walked about 20 metres to the car with boy still crying and saying "ow" and then looked down to see both of us covered in blood (OK, maybe a little dramatic, not covered, but lots). What the???? And discovered rather large cut on his hand.

Got to car, pulled out trusty first aid kit, wound dressing applied, put little boy in car and drove to emergency department at local hospital. Of course small boy pulled off bandage and wiped blood all over his face and anywhere that wasn't already covered. At least when you show up to emergency with a small person yelling and covered in blood you get seen to fairly quickly! So anyway, he had quite a deep cut on his hand and although I was a bit worried, I wasn't too worried, I thought that they would just clean it up, put on a bandaid and send us on our way. But then the emergency doctor starts talking about possible damage to nerves and tendons and sending us for plastic surgery at the children's hospital in Perth (PMH). Hang on, he only fell over in the toilet???? How could this happen???? (I went back later in the day and found a rivet sticking out of the wall, holding a piece of metal to protect the corners of the wall, I think that is what did it). PMH didn't have any theatre time available on Friday so our local patched him up with a bandage and sent us home with instructions to go to PMH on Saturday morning, with little man fasted from 3am. Now if you know our boy, you know that him and food have a very close relationship, and to be awake and go for more than an hour or so without food is something that just doesn't usually happen.

So we got up early on Saturday and drove to Perth, with a very hungry little boy who had missed his breakfast. We were seen fairly quickly but due to an overnight emergency surgery there was no theatre time available until late in the afternoon. Thankfully we were then allowed to feed small boy some toast before starting the fasting again. So from about 9am until 3pm we had to entertain him, without the usual distraction of food or television. Luckily PMH is quite well set up for this and so we spent a bit of time in the "MegaZone" playing air hockey, wacking crocodiles, cubby house climbing, ski machine racing and generally exploring what was on offer. Thankfully time passed relatively quickly without any major tantrums by Master Bee.

Playing the wacking crocodiles game 

End result, surgery went well, there was no nerve or tendon damage and so they just stitched and bandaged up his hand and let us go home. For anyone who has ever had to stay overnight at this hospital it is a great thing that an overnight stay was not required. The "recliners" that they provide for parents to "sleep" in are even less comfortable than an airline seat when it comes to sleeping!

Relaxing after surgery

So that was our Saturday, what did you get up to?

A Wonderful Weekend

What a very busy, outdoorsy few days the Bees have had this weekend. Spring is definitely in the air around Perth.

On Saturday we went to Araluen Botanic Gardens where each year they plant loads of tulips (loads in the sense of "more than a few" but not many compared to Floriade if you've ever seen that). If ever you are going to suffer from "lens envy" then this is probably the place it will happen! About every second person was walking around with amazing looking camera gear, tripods and kneeling pads (without them you end up with muddy knees, trust me on that one).  

 Having fun - wrestling on the lawn with daddy



Then today we went to Whiteman Park for a birthday party. This is a very large park in the northern suburbs of Perth, a lot of native bush, but with great cleared areas for picnics & BBQs, paths for bike riding, and a steam train.

 Waiting for the train - Monkey Boy doing what he does best, climbing on things

 A daisy chain kinda day

Such fun - blowing bubbles from the train

A great fun weekend, but now I'm very tired and worn out from all that fresh air.....

The Ethics of Shopping

I wanted to buy an electronic gadget the other day and so I did a bit of homework online to find out prices. Never having actually seen this thing I then went to a real shop to have a look, chat to the sales person to decide which model I should get and find out how much it cost to buy it at the shop. I'm all for supporting local small business and I had every intention of buying at the shop, even if it was slightly more expensive than the online one. But it was 40% more! So I bought it online, and now I feel slightly guilty about that.

Do you work in a shop? Do people come in for advice and then buy online?

And while we're on the topic of shopping ethics, should you use the toilets at the local fast food joint with the golden arches even if you're not buying something there? I have a recently toilet trained little boy and the other day we needed a toilet. The shop we were in wouldn't let us use theirs and directed us to the closest ones, those being at fast food place (oops, I accidentally typed fat food place first, is that saying something?) Is the provision of toilets part of their community service?