3 things February - 3rd February, a trying day

Today has not been the greatest. It started off around 3am this morning when I woke up on the sofa and realised I'd fallen asleep there last night. Off to bed I went where my 6am alarm gleefully woke me up to do some studying before organising the kids and myself for school and all that. 'Not a chance' I thought. So I got up for my normal time and looked out the window to see... snow! Great.
At college we had our final NAB of block one, for Sociology. Not fun. I've never been so under-prepared for an assessment and if I'm truthful I'll be extremely lucky to pass. Right before sitting the NAB I checked my mobile to discover a text from my brother saying Elise had been sent home from nursery with a dodgy tummy! Luckily my sister-in-law got her so I didn't have to walk out on my assessment. And now because it's likely a tummy bug, she can't go to nursery tomorrow!
Anyway, I reckon days like this are what 3 things February are made for - to force you to think about the good things and not focus on the negatives. So here goes:

1. We started Literature class this morning, which I enjoyed

2. Snuggled up in the living room with the children while gales and torrential rain rage outside

3. I don't have any assessments to study for now for the forseeable future!

A whole new world

Well the boys went off to school this morning and Elise had her first nursery visit - which, in all honesty, could have gone a little bit better. To start off with, the woman I had been dealing with was off on annual leave. No-one else knew we were supposed to be there today and after some gentle enquiries we managed to get a tour... of the wrong room!
We got a very in-depth tour and explanation of the room for the 3-5 year old's, despite me saying she was only 19 months. As I was getting shown the miniature toilet block I was frantically trying to calculate the logistics of toilet training a 1 year old in 2 weeks. I finally managed to convey to our tour guide that I thought we were being shown the wrong room - we got a look around the younger kids room and are now booked in for a proper visit to prepare Elise for starting at the end of the month - so we go back tomorrow morning and I will try not to cry as she shoves me out the door and turns her back on me.

Paperwork Mountain.

I've not managed to update over the past couple of days because I have been doing some overtime at work. I work for a large, rather well known retail chain who has a rather famous sale, and the weekend was our summer sale - and that means all hands on deck. But back to normal now.

When I got home from work yesterday I thought to myself - what do I like to do after a weekend of working hard and not enough sleep? Ah yes, that's right. Mountains of form filling:

© ant.photos

Note: not my actual pile of forms, but I like to think it is an accurate representation. Now I have my bursary in and Elise is definitely going to nursery, you'd think my form filling days would be over but oh no, now we have other wonderful things to apply for. Firstly, as a full time student in Scotland I should qualify for a council tax rebate, and this in turn means we qualify for a school uniform allowance (take note if you have children and are studying - it's quite hard to find out these things from one source. Much of the information I learned about what to apply for was from other parents who have studied). We're also applying for funding for Elise's nursery place. I want to try and get these all sorted today or tomorrow. Top of the to-do list.

Sunshine on a rainy day...

Yesterday I was perusing a few blogs and came across the perfect rainy day crafting project to do with the boys - so I had a wee practice (nothing worse than them slaving over something only for it to not work out, nothing to do with my childish sense of impatience at all) and posted a little teaser picture on Twitter to see if any of my followers could guess what it was. I thought it looked like questionable scrambled eggs, however I did receive one correct guess (and a few wrong ones) - it's a PVA glue/tissue paper window sticker, as inspired by this blog post over at Cooking, Cakes and Children by Amy Lane. If you check out Amy's post, it tells you exactly how to make one if you or your kids fancy having a go at it.


This morning my practice sticker was all finished, and it was fitting that it was pouring with rain given that I had made a sun.




Here are the boys busily working away on their own stickers. We all decided to make rainbows.




And here they are waiting to dry. There is a lot of PVA glue on these bad boys so I'm expecting them to be ready to stick up around about November.



The boys thoroughly enjoyed making their own window stickers and it was very easy for them to get on with and do themselves. It's a nice, simple little activity for a day stuck inside and takes up enough time to keep them occupied for a while but not so long that they get fed up. Definitely one we'll be filing away to do again.


In other 'sunshine on a rainy day' news, Elise's nursery called today to make a date for her first nursery visit (16th August) and to confirm what date I wanted her to officially start on (30th August). So in less than 4 weeks my baby is going for her first nursery visit then at the end of August she will be officially attending nursery! I explained all this to her earlier, and her response was to laugh in my face and say 'Muummaayyy' in a slightly condescending fashion. I have a feeling we're going to have to take Important Big Girl Nursery Business a bit more seriously than that! Like the 86 forms I have to fill in before she starts.

Have you had any rays of sunshine on this rather grey and dreary day?