Update!

Hello to you, long (long) time no blog!
So just a quick update, still loving the Cheshire life, the boys have settled into school and the dog is going strong, she will be 15 this year!
Well I don't like a post without a photo and what a treat I have for you, if you read my very early genealogy post you'll be aware that we (my mum) had sadly lost the photo she had of her dad in his RAF uniform...drum roll... I went to visit her in the summer and whilst looking through and old album we found it, stuck between two pages in an album she'd searched before!!

Aubrey Belcher Lund

You can see my earlier blog here:
Genealogy Post

Hello Cheshire!

Hello remember me!

Well quite a lot has happened since I last wrote.

At the end of May we moved up the M6 from Birmingham to Cheshire to live here in Northwich.

We timed the move to coincide with the Whitsun holiday and the end of Sat's for Tommy.
Moving day arrived and so did the rain, walking up and down a wet lorry ramp is not fun, we resembled penguins carrying their young!
It was so wet that the washing machine went up and down the motorway twice as nobody fancied taking it off the truck and ending up underneath it!
Having said that it was a successful move and we unpacked and settled in really well,

we had a 'week off' to acclimatise, find our feet, the shops, the park etc and then the boys started their new schools.

All smiles.

They really were thrown in at the deep end, Jack had a week at school then three days in Llandudno! Although heart wrenching as he'd never been away from home before it was probably the best thing he could've done and wow I will never forget the hug I had when he got home.

We had a week of 'normality' before Tommy was off to London for three days! I was contemplating fitting a revolving door.

They have fully embraced all the activities 'thrown' at them and have truly benefited from all.

star of the week

off to LLandudno

and London

bike it

world cup festival

world cup festival

artisan market

sports week

loom bands

school fete

school fete

selfies by the sea

Old Trafford

Soccer Aid

Furey Wood

writer of the week

Jack took us to Llandudno

Martha

Great Orm

Great Orm fossils

lots of walks

school play

end of school!

Tommys Last day at Juniors

New Brighton

National Football Museum

Anfield

Everton

Old friends visiting

new teams

family visits

Its been a busy few months I even managed to squeeze in a 40th birthday and in two weeks time Tommy starts high school...

*reaches for paper bag and breathes in and out slowly*

London Marathon Tomorrow!

(Taken from my Facebook post)

On Sunday my other half is running the London marathon for the National Eczema Society. 

I thought I'd let you know why. 

Have you ever sat at your desk at school and had the backs of your legs bleed because the horrible old wooden school chairs made you scratch or sat rubbing your fingers together because the chalk from the board made your skin so dry and your teachers would tell you off for scratching, have your friends not wanted to hold your hand in case they caught 'it'

Had your teachers tell you don't scratch, put your cream on then sat on your hands because the cream made them burn. 

Had your heart race because a boy wants to hold your hand but your scared he'll flinch when he does. Taken your clothes off with a shower of dry skin. 

Lay awake at night scratching and scratching and scratching. 

Then watched your own children do the same. Stitched scratch mats to their babygrows then had to peel them out of sticky blood stained pjs. 

Sedated them at night so they can get some peace and rest. Change their milk so many times you're on first name terms with all the health professionals!  Watched them rake at their skin wishing they'd stop but knowing the relief it's giving them. 

I haven't grown out of my eczema and it can flare up at any point. The wooden chairs and chalk boards have been replaced with other obstacles. 

Luckily my boys have but I didn't think they would. I see many adults and children having a sneaky itch and scratch at school I'd like them to know it's ok and there are people out there that understand and care. 

Please share. 

Text MEPK54 to 70070 and donate £amount or online at www.justgiving.com/Paul-Kelsall1

Take one pan...

I'm getting quite good at these bung it all in a pan teas.

So, inspired by 'A Girl called Jack' I thought I'd blog it. 

First chop and fry an onion, add grated carrot and courgette and swede, the courgette was grown by my mum so was delicious, (we'd had two in last nights tea with some homegrown beans, pasta shells and a jar of Aldi tomato and mascarpone sauce.) the swede was left over from a pie I'd made a few days back ( ok, ok last week!) 

Then comes the magic... Open the cans and bung it in. 

In no particular order...

small tin of sweet corn

small tin of chickpeas 

tin of cannellini beans

tin of green lentils 

And a tin of tomatoes

Some passatta 

Two-ish teaspoons of veg stock

Two teaspoons of curry powder 

One teaspoon of garam masala

After tasting a bit I also put in a teaspoon of marmite and a teaspoon of miso. 

I do get a bit George's Marvellous medicine when I'm cooking!

I served it with basmati rice. 

Delicious, I shall freeze the rest and maybe add more stock for a yummy soup. 

The best complement.

Lunch.

I'm going to miss our holiday lunches, the boys have really embraced sandwiches! 

They just aren't the same when they've been wrapped in plastic and left in a corridor for 3 hours. 

And bargain of the day, these baguettes were 29p from Lidl. 

 

Whoops!

I didn't do very well on the blog a day challenge. Sorry.

But I have managed to unsubscribe from a lot of my emails, there have been a few that seem impossible to, but on the whole I now have a 'lighter' inbox.
If only it was easier to unsubscribe from the junk that comes through my front door.

'besöksstol' The Millennium Trilogy. An observation.

No spoilers.

A friend gave 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' by Stieg Larsson to me ages ago and I'd never been able to get my teeth into it, then we went on holiday and 'bingo' I was hooked.

I was two thirds of the way through the first book when it struck me that visitors chair was an odd phrase but thought nothing of it, then on Wednesday I heard Front Row on radio 4 about authors and translating books

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037v4gb

And it made think about the visitors chair again and if what I was reading was as intended etc etc but I didn't want to spoil my own enjoyment of the book so put it out of my mind again. 

I was close to finishing book 1 and my birthday was on Friday so I dropped boulder sized hints to the kids for book 2, they did pick up on them but no book materialised - so off I went to the local charity shops, I picked up the third book in Barnardos for 49p and the second book in Oxfam for £1.09 (ooh and a new bag) 

I'm now very nearly at the end of the second book and there's been lots of people sitting in visitors chairs, so I downloaded the Google translate app and set it up for English to Swedish and put in visitors chair. 

besöksstol

I even went back and forth between a few languages and always got visitor chair. 

I imagined a scenario when an English man/woman was sat with a Swede asking them to explain things, pointing at objects...

What's that?

-Bord-Table

That?

-Thats my chair, Stol. 

Your chair?

-Yes

So that? 

-Um, another chair, a visitors chair, besöksstol. 

Ooh besöksstol I like that. 

Maybe they'd had trouble with visitors and seating etiquette, visitors climbing on the lap of their hosts, so there was a need for visitors chairs?!? 

Who knows. 

I put  besöksstol into Google again and found this...

http://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/index.php/book-translation-an-insiders-perspective/

Seems I'm not alone!

So when does a stol become a besöksstol and when does a besöksstol become a stol?

And am I a visitor in my own home sat here at my Ikea 'Norden' table on my Ikea 'Gilbert' chairs?