A little holiday. #WotW

This week my Word of the Week is:

Stu my fella has been off work this week.....I don't know how but he has ended up with 3 weeks of holidays to take before the end of March so he is taking a week a month until they are used up....It's been a nice break for him. He works in retail so over Christmas things for him were quite busy it's been good for him to relax a bit....

I woke up on Monday full of cold. I felt rotten. Stu was there to do the school run, cook and tidy up....I had a day resting, drinking Lemsip and taking flu tablets and by Tuesday afternoon I felt just about back to normal....If Stu had been at work I would have had to power through and I doubt I would have felt so better so quickly.

Stu has spent the week painting the hallway.....It has actually taken a week.As well as Stu being an expert at procrastinating the hall needed 3 coats of white paint over the dark brown we had.....Eek! We have learned a lesson. Never paint anything in dark colours.....lol It is now a nice biscuit colour. 

It has been a little holiday for both of us.....Him from work and me from doing all the housework and cooking! 

The next holiday he has from work is the week the kids are off in February so we are hoping to have a couple of days out....I don't know where though as I can't imagine the weather being nice...Eek! I'm sure we will come up with something.

In other news:

Becky was at the dentist on Monday getting her braces tightened....She saw the head guy and he said when she goes back in March she will most likely be getting the braces taken off because they have worked their magic! She is very happy about this....She is already planning what she is going to eat as soon as they are off. Corn on the cob, popcorn, whole apples and popping candy. lol All the things she has been banned from eating.

I was picking Ellie up from school on Wednesday and her teacher said can you pop in and see the headteacher. Eek! I am so glad Stu was with me.....I was worried. My first thought was what has she done now?.... It turns out the head just wanted to let us know how well Ellie is doing....Twice a week there has been a group of children from year 4, 5 & 6 taken off to work on their confidence and talking skills. This seems to be really helping. It also give us chance to talk through a few concerns we had. It was a good chat and it left me feeling very proud of Ellie and reassured. 

Tiny Tickers Heart Week 2017. #CHD

Next month from the 12th to the 17th of February it is Heart week and the charity Tiny Tickers is again encouraging you to raise awareness and funds to help babies babies ensuring they are given a fighting chance to beat their condition.....

One in every 125 babies is born with a heart problem – that’s more than 5,000 newborns each year in the UK. Heart conditions are the most common and deadly birth defect in babies – responsible for 1 in every 13 infant deaths.

Last year over 1,000 newborns were discharged from UK hospitals with no one realising they had a life-threatening heart condition.

Babies with undetected heart defects will often fall into the early stages of heart failure significantly impacting their long term quality of life and associated risks of heart failure including brain damage.

Both of my girls were discharged from hospital when they were babies with heart problems....No one knew, including me. It was only down to a freak accident of Ellie jamming her fingers in a door that their conditions were found.....In 2009 both of my girls had open heart, life saving surgery. Without the surgery they would have died in their teenage years.....The teenage years seemed a long way away then but Becky is 14 now. Without the freak accident and the surgery she may have been dead by now....

You can read our story....Part one and Part two....

Tiny Tickers want to increase early detection rates of cardiac conditions....Rates for heart problems being detected during pregnancy have doubled since they launched! They train sonographers to spot defects during routine pregnancy scans, support families with a diagnosis, campaign to improve service standards and generally raise awareness!

Just £1,000 is enough to provide training for up to 10 sonographers. If they can raise £10,000 though Heart Week 2017 they will be able to help more babies and their parents this year.

Here is how Tiny Tickers can use the money you raise:

£100 - Provides specialist on-site training for a sonographer to be able to detect heart problems during a pregnancy scan.

£500 - Lets us put information materials about heart conditions in 850 baby clinics and GP surgeries.

£2,500 - Produces a training video into one of the most common forms of heart defect for sonographers to refer to during scans.

You can sign up for a FREE Heart Week fundraising kit full of tips, advice, ideas, games and your very own collecting box...

Life on the farm....

In October I took part in Blogtober16 writing a post every day with a prompt....I wrote a post about My favourite type of animal and it got me thinking about my childhood....I think I had a pretty awesome one and this is the first of a few posts I have to write about it and living on a farm.....I have so many stories to tell I can't fit them all in one post......hehehe

Before I was born my parents bought some land.....3 huge fields.....They had a dream of building a house and living in it with a family....They did!

Before we moved to the farm every Sunday as a child my mam would pack a huge picnic and we would go to the farm....It wasn't much of a farm then....More a building site with a few horses and ponies and the big shed....My dad had a milk round and half the people he employed were tradesmen of some sort.....Bricklayers, joiners, plasterers....They came in very handy building the house.....

When I was about 8 or 9 we moved into the farmhouse which was wasn't finished but fine to live in....Going from a small 3 bedroom terraced house in the center of a busy town to a 4 bedroom house in-between two tiny villages was such a big change but my brother and I loved it....We had the freedom to be outside all day....

When we moved in there were no carpets (which made it excellent for rollerskating), no kitchen units and no proper heating until we got the Aga stove installed which we used to cook toast on the top of....It was rough for the first few months but it was all part of the adventure....

There was also no electricity for about three years. There was some sort of dispute about who should supply it. I don't know. I was 9. lol.....The power was run on generators and was only switched on when it started to get dark.....It used to need refilling with petrol every couple of hours....My mam and dad had that job. Not much fun when it was blowing a gale or snowing....

We woke up in the morning to candle light.....Yes my parents let my brother and I loose with candles and we never burnt the house down....My dad ran a skip hire business and ended up finding a TV in one of the skips which ran off a car battery.....It was a Black and White one but who cares I could watch Saturday morning TV which was quite a novelty....lol 

I didn't feel deprived or hard done to....It was fun, an adventure....We were fed, warm enough, clothed, schooled and happy....Electricity is a luxury really.....lol Just don't ask me to go without it now....

I was in secondary school and came home one summers day and my mother was doing something which needed electricity....Watching TV or using the microwave.... Something like that....Something I wasn't used to seeing during the day....I didn't hear the generator and I just couldn't fathom what was going on...lol

I can't remember ever being bored while living on the farm....I have so many wonderful memories which I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks/months....

Our Playmobil Hospital.

My youngest is crazy about anything medical.....She loves visiting the hospital, doctors or dentists. She loves watching all the medical shows her favourite is 24 hours in A&E. For Christmas she got the Playmobil Ambulance and that seems to have set off her love for Playmobil....

Over Christmas Ellie got some money and decided she wanted to buy the Playmobil Hospital. At nearly £67 we made sure she was sure and she was....Last weekend it arrived.

Playmobil City Life Furnished Children's Hospital has a working elevator which has space for the patient's bed, an adjustable operating table, a patient bed which rolls on wheels, a reception, a children's and baby section as well as an operating room. It has a lot of medical equipment including moveable surgical light, respirator and defibrillator.

It includes:5 Playmobil figures, 1 baby incubator, 1 toilet, 1 child's hospital bed, 1 reception desk, 1 childs growth chart, 1 scales, 1 operating room and lots of accessories. 

Ellie couldn't wait to get it opened and start building it.....It came needed assembling which I guessed it would. When she opened the box she kept pulling out bags and bags of things....Eek!

Stu and Ellie started putting it together....He got the base and one of the sides on before he had to go to work then I took over...

Oh my goodness. What a job. All in all it took about 3 hours to put together. I really feel for those parents who bought a few of these sets for Christmas and set about putting them together on Christmas Eve night.....

There was the main wall and floor parts then about 15 bags.....I followed the instructions step by step and it was take one part out of one bag, one out of another then spend 5 minutes looking for something else in another bag.....There was no logic to how they were packaged....It would have made sense to have each things parts in one bag. For example all the parts of the hospital bed in one bag instead of spread over at least 3....

I sent the kids upstairs when I was half way through so I could curse and swear at the half build hospital....Oops.

When it was built all the stress was worth it...When Ellie saw it she was amazed and instantly fell in love with it....

She has played for hours and hours with it....I am not exaggerating....She played with nothing but the Playmobil hospital and her tablet for the whole of last week.....

With a lift on the outside of the building you can transport patients and the bed between floors....It works really well.

I think it is fantastic too. There are so many little extras that are not listed on the box. Surgical instruments, drip lines, casts, baby bottles, a laptop, plates, cups and blankets....

Even Becky my teenager has been playing with it with Ellie.....It is fantastic fun. Ellie plays and there is an accident then the little people get rushed to hospital in her ambulance and are treated.....There has been car crash emergencies, heart surgery, broken bones and dog bites all treated in the hospital....

I really can't imagine Ellie getting sick of it anytime soon.....It was well worth the money we paid for it. 

We have already been looking for more Playmobil to buy and have found a few little sets which would go great with the hospital.....

X-Ray Room - £8.99
Dentist with Patient - £8.49
Maternity Room - £8.99
Doctor with Child - £8.99
Emergency Motorcycle - £9.99
Flying Ambulance Playset - £26.99

Do your children like Playmobil?