Innocent remark!

Oh this is priceless!!

Submitted by a Primary school girl for a homework assignment!

After it was marked and the child brought it home, she returned to school the next day with the following note:
Dear Ms. Davis,
I want to be very clear on my child's illustration. It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint. I work at B&Q and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm. This picture is of me selling a shovel.

Mrs. Harrington

Whot's bin goin' on 'ere den?

I went out for an hour to visit a beautiful New Born scrumplet called Lara Jade (sigh!)
Before I left, I put the yorkshire puddings in the oven with strict instructions for them to be served with the roast Beef, cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, swede and roast parsnips 20 minutes later.
The table was laid, dishwasher on, worktops clear and spotless.
When I came home all the dinner was gone, no-one had left a plate of food for me (huff!).
The table was a mess of plates and saucepans, as were the worktops.
Smallest daughter was running round in her pyjamas with suspiciously greasy hair, grinning insanely.
"Why has the scrumplet got greasy hair?" I demanded of my husband, two other children and my brother-in-law.
"Um......"
Smallest daughter yelled goodnight and went peeyawng!upstairs.
"Well?"
"Um, well she was happily running round with the colander on her head, none of us remembered the roast potatoes had been in it" said Darling Husband
(huff)
I walked into our sitting room... OHMYGOD!!
Den monsters had landed and been very busy.
The room had been transformed into blanket city.
Our lady that does was coming in the morning and she would have a fit..also how was she supposed to clean anything?

Once the children had been beaten and sent to bed, I dismantled the rather large den, which measured approx 6 meters x 4 meters, so, fairly impressive as far as dens go.
It was built using the following:
2 x 70cm high Christmas Wicker Cones
2 x Antique Dining Chairs
1 x Kitchen Dining Chair
2 x Bar Stools
6 x Large feather cushions
2 x small feather cushions
10 x blankets
1 x large cardboard box
2 x trunki's
1 x Laundry Basket
1 x Antique Cupboard (cleverly incorporated by opening it's doors)
1 x Adult Dressing Gown
1 x Claret Chenille scarf (used as a luxury hammock for a toy cow)
1 x miniature sleeping bag (for the Gruffalo- what do you mean what's a Gruffalo?)
1 x Didgeridoo
oh, and a riding hat!

Picture Perfect

I've been tagged by Mamma Po to put up my fav pics.
I'm not one to put pics of my children on here very often, though I'd love to, because of course they are the most beautiful children in the world, so here's some that are lovely but not giving too much away.
I should say Thanks to Mamma Po but I've just wasted an hour looking through tons of photos (and enjoying every minute).
The one above is the 1st Prize winner in the vegetable model competition at our village show, my daughter is a genius!!

The pic below is of my youngest daughter and my very tall nephew..the biggest and smallest cousins together at a Ploughing match (we know how to have a good time!)


This is one I took while we were having a Birthday picnic in one of our fields last August. It's an awesome picture..(no-one steal it or use it, it's mine). We live in a magical place!

Snow Hope for drivers

My next door neighbour just phoned.
She lives about half a mile away across the fields, their enormous beautiful house is at the bottom of a long fabulous smooth tarmac drive.
She went outside into the farmyard yesterday to get in the Landrover and collect the children from school, which was closing early.

She discovered the stock box was attached and so requested her husband remove it.
"Why don't you take your car?" he said
"Because it won't get up the drive in the snow" she said
"Of course it will" he said
"Fine, if you think it'll get up there, you drive it" she said

Her husband got in the car.
She went back into her house.

Minutes later she heard sounds she could only liken to a hedge trimmer and could smell clutch burning.
On closer inspection she could see from the tyre marks that her husband had zig-zagged most of the way up the drive but couldn't quite get to the top.
He was stuck and not happy.
He offered to push her in the car if she got in to steer.

He got out.
She got in.
He pushed and got the car nowhere.
He admitted defeat, walked down the drive, unhooked the stock box and drove the Landrover straight up the drive and went to get the children.
She went back into the house.

When husband returned he asked:
"Have you tried to move your car"
She replied "No"
"Did you leave it in gear?"
"No"
Him..."ah, well it's now down the bottom of the field resting against the fence"
OHMYGOD!!

But the weird thing is...

Half way down the field is a telegraph pole.
The tyre marks of the getaway car show the car careered towards the telegraph pole and circumnavigated round it before continuing on it's crash course against the fence!!
I bet she couldn't have done that if she'd been steering!
What are the chances of that?

And the car?
broken bumper, nothing more!

On the Plus side....

The nights are drawing out again...yes they are, and we'll have lots of lovely snow in the next two months and then Spring will be here.
Dust off the sledges and buy a warm hat!

Both Christmas Cake attempts were unmitigated failures.
On the plus side, the birds had some very nice nosh while the heavy snow covered up the worms.

The extending handle with attachments received for Christmas was a tad disappointing. One attachment is for darling husband to clean his tractor windows without having to climb onto it and the other looks like a rather large toilet brush.
On the plus side, if the house across the valley need their toilet cleaning, I can do it for them without leaving my kitchen.

Shirl has now arrived at her country residence with 'wotcha mate!'
On the plus side, it will give me new Blog fodder (watch this space).

Pictionary proved to be quite a volatile game yesterday with nieces. Tears and tantrums and scribbling out were all par for the course.
On the plus side, it did distract them from noticing ants crawling across the ceiling above their heads.

The Antworld space habitat for ants hasn't proved to be the best present this year.
An aunt took middle child to get ants from the greenhouse but it seems the ants the aunt found were the wrong size ants because they all escaped out of the air holes.
On the plus side, they did leave their eggs behind.

Happy New Year everyone
May all your dreams come true (slushier than the mushy stuff outside in my garden)
Frog
x

The Frog Christmas

Well, it was certainly a different Christmas.
It was our first one without MIL, so the whole family wished to be together. Now, with the amount of people that involved, careful thought was required.
One BIL was taken very ill just before Christmas and we had to knock the altogether plan on the head, he needed peace and quiet. He stayed home with wife and family.
One BIL is huffy so we all ignore him.
One BIL was to eat with his sister and family.
My sister and BIL stayed at their house avoiding all relations (and very wise too).
Shirl and 'Whotcha! mate!' were snowed in, in their tiny Kent residence.
So I was to cook lunch just for the Frog family, one sister in law, two Aunts and two Uncles and one brother in law.
Although there were 11 of us, we had to consider that BIL eats more than most families put together so I catered for 15.
Christmas morning was bright and sunny, snow covered the garden and fields, it was lovely!
SIL brought all the family china and silver for us to use, just for the day and she came armed with home-made Plum wine, a bottle of fizz and a Christmas Pudding she made with my children a few weeks ago.

Our biggest crisis was terribly serious.
We heard a scream.
Howls followed.
The teenager burst into the kitchen saying the youngest Frog needed me.
I rushed to her yelling to the teenager(in a delicate and ladylike manner)...'What's happened?'
The teenager didn't answer.
She couldn't speak.
There were tears in her eyes.
My goodness...what was I going to find?
Youngest scrumplet had used the loo and wriggled forward to get off, when her paper hat from her cracker slipped from her little head and landed in the water!
Middle daughter was crying laughing.
Little scrumplet was howling, tears streaming down her cheeks, and between sobs screamed..'IT'S NOT FUNNY!!!'
The teenager hid outside the bathroom trying to compose herself.
I managed to placate the poor little thing with magic kisses and my paper hat from my cracker and escaped from the bathroom before I burst into laughter as well.

Youngest daughter was given a present to open to placate her.
It was Astronaut Ice- Cream.
She was quite puzzled and then pointedly said:
"Mummy this present isn't a very good one for me because I don't want to be an Astronaut when I grow up!"

Worst Christmas Gift Ever

I know it's almost Christmas, the girls have eaten most of their advent calender (chocolate of course) and we have had our office party today. Not as good as last year perhaps, but very nice all the same. We had 5 of us at the party and only three jokes were the same in the crackers this year.
Here are the best Christmas stories I've ever told and I encourage you to read them. The first is about having the school pet for Christmas, the second about saving the day.

I've never written a Blog about my worst Christmas presents, but my dear friend Dulwich Mum is writing about such things and so I thought I'd give it a little mention too. Take a look at her fabulous post.
Shirl is not one for knowing what my taste is, she's a little more frugal than I am.
She did once give me a state of the art vacuum cleaner, small, but beautiful.
I was so chuffed!
I rang my sister in excitement and told her what I'd had.
Sister: "Is it the one Mum won in that competition?"
Me: "....gasp, um, (splutter) she what?
Sister: "Oh, sorry"

Furthering the theme, another year she gave me a pair of Marigolds and a bottle of Clean-o-pine.
Was my house dirty I asked?
Shirl: "No, not at all, I didn't know what to buy and I just thought it would be useful"
I was so not chuffed!

But the best worst present ever, was when I was expecting our second child.
I hadn't been able to eat much all through my pregnancy.
I had a few weeks to go and fancied some chocolate.
Darling Husband was really pleased to hear I wanted something, so ran to get the present Shirl sent me.
I opened the Terrys Chocolate Orange and was disappointed to see it was white frosted on the outside and looked a little stale.
Darling Husband grabbed the box and looked closely at it.
The sell-by date was 4 years previous...!!
4 Years!!
My sister almost died laughing..thank goodness for inhalers.
I kid you not
I think Money is the best gift, hmm......