Hello! It's me! Remember me? No?... Oh well...

Well... it has been almost and entire whole calendar year since my last blog post. University took up a lot of that time, then an endless summer spending time with the kids took up the remaining months. Now, I'm preparing to go into second year of Uni in a couple of weeks and the children are back at school and nursery, so really I thought what better way to procrastinate when I should be getting the house organised than write a post on my neglected, forgotten blog!

First off, University has been almost exactly 77.3% less scary than I thought it would be. It also actually wasn't quite as hard as I'd thought it would be! I was worried I'd soon be found out as a complete fraud and escorted from the campus once they realised I was a. extremely old and b. completely incompetent, but neither of those thing has happened. I have felt, at times, very very very very old, which I didn't think would be an issue at 31 but I guess when you spend all day with 18 year olds it was bound to happen. I haven't felt all that incompetent and that has just been down to a mixture of just doing the work I have to do on time and keeping up to date with reading and lectures (mostly). I can't deny though that the unions haven't been visited. It's been a fun year!

The one thing I struggled with was spending so much of my hometime studying and reading, and I felt I was neglecting my little family at times (usually when an essay was due) however my amazing long summer has totally made up for that! Only a couple more weeks of that left though... and right now I can't wait to get back!

That's not Autumn arriving, it is Summer departing!

Only a few more days of the kids summer holidays left - they go back to school on Wednesday (I can't be the only person who is completely not ready yet?). I've still got almost a month until University starts - but I am now all registered online although I still have to enrol for classes. I'm now only about 10% scared and 90% excited!

In other news, I have given up chocolate since the beginning of July (anyone who knows me knows this is A Big Deal) and crisps since the beginning of August. Also getting back into the gym again and once an ankle injury I gave myself a week or so ago goes away, I shall start running (fast walking) again. You would think with all of this, I might have lost weight but no - not even 1 lb! Sigh. But I shall not let myself be put off. I will be skinny!!!

So, who else is started the dreaded ironing of school shirts and sewing on of name labels this weekend?

Just keep swimming...

I think my brain has turned to mush. This no deadlines, no essays, no thinking required has been great but I'm now really looking forward to going to University in a few weeks! I have even started my stationary purchases (three pads and an academic diary for fellow stationaryphiles)in preparation.

I finally chased up SAAS to find out what was happening with my funding as I hadn't heard anything - turns out my application was processed the day after I applied way back at the beginning of June but a letter had not been generated. Odd, but I now know how much funding I'm getting. On top of that I have been looking into other funding I can apply for. After the debacle of organising childcare funding last year I am going to be much more prepared so that I do not break down in tears in the Funding Department office.

Despite looking forward to getting back into studying, I am thoroughly enjoying having more time with the children. Elise is absolutely hilarious at the moment and comes out with the funniest things. Example: 'I'm playing at crocodiles...ribbit ribbit ribbit'. due to the typical Scottish summer holiday weather we've been partaking in one of our favourite family pastimes - watching movies! I now know Finding Nemo off by heart.

Anyway, it's that exciting part where they get swallowed by a whale! Must dash!

Back to School

Okay I'm slightly late with this as the boys went back to school on Monday, but it's still their first week! So that's okay. Here they are in their uniform:



I've had a few people comment on how early it seems for them to be going back to school - here in Scotland the schools break up towards the end of June and they go back in mid-August. I have no idea why it's different up here but perhaps it's because August here is more like Autumn than Summer, and we're more likely to get better weather in July (HAH!). Ironically our best weather was back in June when they were still at school, wee shame.