Equality and Diversity training

Mandatory Equality and Diversity training yesterday afternoon. We had to begin by going round the room saying our names, what our job titles were and what we expected to get out of the training - well given that we had all been handed the three-line whip about going, I'm not sure that anyone had really planned to get anything out of it!!!!

Then we did an ice-breaker which was vaguely related to the whole equality and diversity thing - the trainer asked a series of questions and we had to stand up if we would answer 'yes' to the question. For example 'who goes to sports matches regularly,' or 'who watches a soap opera.'

Apparently I am the only person in the office who regularly practises a religion. So that's me pegged as the religious nut in the office!!!

Actually, the more interesting thing was that a few questions before that she had asked 'who feels happy to say that they have no religion,' and out of the room of about 20 of us, 5 people stood. So taking off those and me, there's about 14 people at work who either don't want to say they have no religion, or feel they have religion but just don't 'practice' it 'regularly.' Whatever that means!!!

Salted Caramel Brownies

Yum, yummy, yum, yum! And oh so bad for you...

You can just about see the glistening caramel centre of the brownies - sadly not as obvious and impressive as the pic on the website! Recipe is here and it was lovely and easy to follow and you can really taste the caramel - I was a bit worried it would get lost in all that lovely brownie.

Golden Syrup Steamed Pudding

I love golden syrup steamed pudding. It's one of my abiding memories of visiting my Nan and our family in Cambridgeshire - winter or summer, there would always be a steamed pudding on the table, lovingly steamed by Nan for probably around 4 hours!

But I've never made one myself...until this weekend. Leigh found a recipe for me and I gave it a go today. Despite not really being able to check how it's getting on during cooking it came out really well. My only amendments to the recipe are that I had to add 5 tbspns milk to make it a dropping consistency (I stuck to my guns assuming that 'dropping consistency' was the key, rather than sticking to the recipe's 1-2 tbspns milk) and the whole things needs more syrup!

(sadly I forgot to take a photo of it before anyone got their spoons in!)

Ingredients :

1. *   3 rounded tbsp Golden Syrup
2. *   115g butter or margarine
3. *   115g Caster Sugar
4. *   2 medium eggs, beaten
5. *   Grated zest 1 lemon
6. *   175g self-raising flour, sifted
7. *   1 - 2 tbsp milk

Method :

1. Grease a 900ml pudding basin. Put the golden syrup in the bottom of the basin.

2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs, a little at a time and beat well after each addition.

3. Add the lemon zest. Using a metal spoon, fold in half the flour, then fold in the rest, adding sufficient milk to give a dropping consistency.

4. Spoon the mixture into the basin, cover with greased baking parchment or foil, and secure with string. Steam over a pan of boiling water for about 1½ hours until well risen and firm to the touch.

Snow!

We were predicted snow at the beginning of the week - and we just had a sprinkling really, nothing very much. Stories of blizzards and heavy snow in other parts of the country flooded in...and ours arrived yesterday! It snowed pretty much all day and into the night and was a veritable winter wonderland when we got up this morning. The boys are VERY excited - Zachary has been asking every day since Monday whether his school is closed because of the snow!

So, thermos in hand we went sledging today and it was fab. I don't think I've ever been real sledging before - I grew up in Great Yarmouth on the coast in a very flat part of the country and even at uni although I remember snowball fights and snowman building, I'm not sure I ever went sledging (of course, my memory isn't entirely reliable!) We went to Highfields Park -

 which is the front part of the University of Nottingham and there were quite a lot of people there, but there was still lots of room...despite which we still managed to knock over one girl and crash into a tree. We saw one boy almost knock himself out on the back of a bench when his sledge slid underneath it!

The boys loved it - even Leo was practically racing back up the hill to go again! He did however have some kind of (as yet) unidentified problem with his feet as we were leaving (we think he might have just been feeling a bit tender as he's starting a cold) so only Zachary and Leigh had a snowball fight in the back garden when we got home. Snowmen and more snowballs tomorrow!

Game-a-thon!

We held the first Caple game-a-thon yesterday!

We are big fans of board games at home and are now just reaching the stage where both boys are able to play games with us at home. Certainly Leo's concentration will hold for the shorter games we have and it seems that he does better with a series of shorter games (like yesterday) rather than one longer game (like Mice and Mystics which we've tried a couple of times. Zachary can manage it in full, but Leo tends to switch off about half-way through!). But that makes sense really. And turning it into a competition made it an even more attractive proposition - the boys love competitions!

All our names went into a hat and were drawn out randomly although some how Leigh's name always came out first and Zachary's second! So we played :

Monster Factory - game I think of as a bit like Carcassonne! Basically you have to make monsters by matching up tiles - you either have to match a big purple section or a small green section. This game makes the boys laugh a lot - they love looking at all the different monster parts!

Loopin' Louie - protect your chickens from mad flying Louie

Mario Kart Wii - one lap of the Mario Circuit. I won that. Nice

The Enchanted Tower - a great game where Robin is racing around a forest trying to find the key to the Princess' tower before the wicked sorcerer who imprisoned her there. Once the key is found you then have to find the right lock as well - will the trials and tribulations of a hero never end??

Tier auf Tier - Animal on Animal, this is a balancing game and Leo is just about dextrous enough to enjoy this now and be able to balance some pieces

Nintendo Land - a bit of a race around some of the games on the WiiU

Expedition Dino - nice bit of archeology here uncovering a dinosaur and trying to find the most bones

Monza - a card car racing game, brilliant now that both the boys are hot on their colours

Beeren Klau'n - a game of berry stealing!

Gulo Gulo - another dexterity game for children, trying to steal eggs from a nest using some rather excitingly coloured wolverines!

Points were awarded to everyone (4 for first place, 3 for second etc) and there was a bit of fudging when we had to play in teams for some of the games, but the final result was ....

Yes, our 4 year old won and was extremely pleased with himself - hurrah!!

And to round off the day, Leigh and I played his new game Legends of Andor - we didn't complete the Introductory quest - if only we'd had one more hour!!!! (or had read the instructions properly about movement....)

All in all a great day which entirely made up for the fact that I dropped my phone into the toilet the day before. Good job I'd already ordered an upgrade!

Definition..

boy
n. noise with dirt on it

(from one of my friends' Facebook status' today!)

(Oh, and the appraisal went well too :-) )

Appraisal

I have my first appraisal at work tomorrow - aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

But it's okay because I can make my life so much better (would just like to point out that I already use the fitted sheet folding method!!!)...

New year, new me - well, sort of!

Despite a fairly constant cold for the past 2 weeks, I can genuinely say I've had a really great Christmas holiday. The boys have both really got into it this year and been excited about the build-up and Christmas day was lovely (although Zachary was awake at 3am asking when he could get up! Fortunately he dropped back off to sleep about half 4 until 7ish). We also weren't able to go an visit my family in Norfolk until after New Year, and being around about at home for that week between Christmas and New Year gave us all a chance to relax and not feel as though we were haring about the country. I even had a few evenings where I wasn't thinking about things I ought to be doing!

But the decorations came down today and it's time for work tomorrow. I'm not dreading it but I've got far too used to being at home again and getting up at 6.30 is going to be a killer! I've already got a list of jobs to do on Thursday...

We've managed to do quite a bit of sorting and clearing out over the holiday - not that it's created a huge amount of new space, but certain areas of the house don't feel quite so crowded now! The cook books have been sorted through and a few designated for the charity shop, the loft/games room/hobby room/craft room has had a good tidy, and we've sorted out all the 'baby' toys from the toy storage to make room for Christmas presents - the boys were pretty good about that, they were both keen to point out things they felt they had grown out of. The annoying small plastic toys they get from McDonalds and from the front of comics were a different matter though and I had to be more discrete about those. I wasn't entirely successful on my first try - cue Zachary standing over the bin - "but I need that" small, plastic tractor which has a wheel missing and who's trailer cannot be found! Gentle persuasion and further 'tidying' after they'd gone to bed sorted that one out...

I have also made some tentative resolutions - I've tried not to be too ambitious because I know I'll fail immediately! I'm going to try to make further contact with some of the mums of children in Zachary's class and have some of his friends over for tea occasionally, there's the annual promise to myself to try to eat less cake, but I haven't made any resolutions about exercise! I know I need some but not quite sure how to fit it in yet! It appears my work has got corporate membership at the local golf club which has a gym and swimming pool so I may be able to start making use of my lunch hours there.

I'm also going to try and be a bit more go-getting at work - my first step on this is to try and arrange some management training, or something similar. I want to work towards promotion at work and I really need to get myself into gear management-wise so I can be a bit more proactive.

Finally I've have thought about some female role-models to help me on my way - okay that sounds a bit weird when I type it, and please don't laugh when I tell you who they are. Out of the many noble and successful women I could choose, I have pitched myself at, a lady at my previous work who is not much older than me but always impressed me with the way she worked and was just ultra-organised (she also won some kind of young achiever of the year award a few years' back), Tina Fey as she is just brilliant and successful, and Miranda Hart for generally being happy with who she is (and her clumsiness reminds me of me!).

Happy New Year!

Robot bums

One of my regular Christmas presents from Leigh is a wonderful calendar choc-full of family photos from the previous year (and with really big boxes to write stuff in!).

Zachary was having a look through it last night and reading out some of the public holidays and important events which the calendar people print in it. He was a bit confused by 'robot bums' night though....that'll be Robert Burns night to everyone else!!!!

Christmas Cake 2012

I decided to try a holly wreath cake this year. My cake is always quite moist (and when I mix it appears to be more nuts and fruit than cake!) and I think it was probably that which made it very difficult to cut out the central space!! The suggestion in the magazine was that the section you cut out could be iced as a separate mini-cake - yep, by the time I had managed to drag the cake out from the middle of the wreath, it looked nothing like a mini-cake. Still, gave me a great chance to sample it!!!!

The ready to roll icing worked very well, although it is a bit icing sugary (I needed that to stop it sticking to the rolling pin!) Just need to work on a way to make it look all lovely and glossy and not covered in my fingerprints!!!

The march of time

The headteacher at Zachary's school is retiring at Christmas and there was a whole-school disco in her honour this evening. Watching Zachary dance, with a total lack of self-consciousness and complete freedom just made me wish that I could keep him 4 and a half and that lovely for a bit longer...

On a slightly less maudlin note, a whole hall full of 4 to 7 year olds dancing Gangnam Style is totally hilarious!!!

Kites

Leigh bought a kite-making book recently. We made our own kites today and they were fab! Made from tissue paper and bendy bits of bamboo from a window blind (I kid you not. Apparently it's the only way you can buy bamboo reed) they were light as a feather and flew really well in the breath of wind we had this afternoon.

Took the boys to the park to fly them and actually had a satisfactory flying experience when neither of them broke (the kites, not my children). Which was a miracle. Looking forwards to the next ones now!!!

New chickens and new jungle gym!

We bought 2 more chickens today! So that brings us up to 5 with new Wolverine (Leo's choice of name - he would not compromise!)

and Princess Peach (it was a close call between that and Ms Marvel)

They are both lovely amber hybrids. The chicken lady also had some lovely bantams which Leigh was really keen on, but she advised that introducing bantams to an established flock of bigger birds would potentially be disasterous unless we had somewhere separate for the smaller birds to sleep (which we don't) - or we were building a flock from scratch and buying bantams and bigger birds at the same time. So big birds it was and lovely they are too. All the chucks are in for their first night together.

Leigh's dad also came round this afternoon to help build a new adventure area for the chickens to make the most of their new walk-in run. Here are some photos of the new arrangement and it's brilliant! The chickens love climbing up the big tree branch in the middle and Leigh's put some treats high up to encourage them to try to get to the higher levels. It looks great, they've not lost any floor space, just got some new climbing fun!

Om nom nom...

The breadmaker is going great guns - the onion bread came out the same second time around, despite the amendments I made, so that's how it's supposed to be! I've also made gingerbread cake (too salty but that was wholly user error!), apricot and almond bread, pesto and pine nut bread (yum!), banana and walnut teacake and tried a white 'sandwich' loaf rather than the straightforward white loaf. All lovely. Still lots more to try!

"If he'd had another life, he'd have rescored that bit"

Yep, first rehearsal for the next concert last night! It is good to be back at rehearsals, but it is the final sign that summer is over.

The next concert is in November - we're playing Strauss' Death and Transfiguration (which apparently Derek the conductor has "played a couple of times, but I've never conducted it. This is the first time I've looked at the score"), Schumann piano concerto and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique - about which Derek made the top comment - it was in relation to a particularly nasty passage of col legno (basically using the wood of the bow to make a tapping sound rather than the hair). He said that that passage is a mess, it always sounds a mess, whichever orchestra is playing it! And apparently Berlioz would have re-scored it if he could have!!!

Music is difficult but very atmospheric and will be ace.

Fun in the sun (or I am a child!)

We've just spent a couple of days with my sister and her family in Norfolk. Had a lovely afternoon at High Lodge in Thetford forest - the children all particularly enjoyed the wonderful music trail, and there were HUGE slides too.

Then back to Becks' house for a BBQ with my Mum, Chris and my Auntie Pat. All was going well until out of the blue my auntie says "Rebecca, do you trim your bush?" Cue momentous silence for a couple of beats until I realised she was talking about the decorative bay tree they have in the garden, with (and this is the honest truth) no idea about any other interpretation.

Seriously could not look at my sister or Leigh for fear of massive hysterical laughing and embarassing my auntie. Bless!

Two days down

School seems to be going remarkable well (touch wood!) - at least the first 2 days have been fine. Highlights appear to have been

discovering he's not the only Zachary in his class - he told this to me outside the classroom this morning behind his hand with a smirk as though he was telling me a naughty joke or something

being able to choose his lunch - this is a relief. We were wondering how the prospect of school dinners would go down - obviously our hope being that he will discover lots of new things he likes to eat. I think he's appreciating the difference between holiday club where there was no choice, and school where he feels like he can have anything he wants!

going out to play - not one, but two times (plus hand gesture)

being able to take a water bottle into nursery - he loves drinking it as we're walking along, must be the new status symbol...

and 2 stickers on his first day. Brilliant!

Keeping fingers crossed that we will get through this and next week with as good an attitude. Next week we start dropping him off at Breakfast club first thing in the morning and they will drop him off and pick him up from school - he seems remarkably matter of fact about it all at the moment. Now it's down to us not to make a big thing of it and just let him carry on as normal.

First day of school baby!

So here is my wonderful eldest son off to his first day of big school. We got him there and managed to leave without tears (from any of the parties involved!) but it will all be a bit different for him - especially the having lunch at school bit.

Collecting him just after 3 - hopefully all has gone well.

Onion bread - not so great!

Onion bread - interesting! Opened the breadmaker this morning and to be honest, the top looked uncooked - no risen at all and still in the shapes and patterns of dough rather than bread. But it was all cooked - tasty, but quite dense.

As there's no piccie in the recipe book, it's difficult to know whether this is what the bread is supposed to turn out like or whether I've gone wrong. Talking about it with Leigh at lunchtime, we think 1 of 3 things may have happened, which may or may not have affected the bread - 1. my wholemeal flour has been in the cupboard a couple of months and may have lost its 'strongness,' 2. I didn't add any horseradish as we had none and maybe that gives the bread a bit of a lift - yeah, maybe! or 3. the liquid element of the mix may have met with the yeast before official mixing time, which is a no-no according to the book. I made the bread overnight, so clearly the mix was sitting around for a good 6/7 hours before the programme actually began and some of the water/oil may have seeped through.

Anyway, will rectify all these when I try this again and will just have to wait and see if I get a better result.

New bling, new gadgets!

Lots of things have happened over the last couple of weeks - we have been to Ibiza with the in-laws (which was in no way as bad as it might have been and actually quite relaxing, save for the 3.30am start and 2am finish!), during which it was our 10th wedding anniversary. We swapped gifts before the holiday so that we didn't have to take anything with us - mine was a wonderful eternity ring. Simply lovely.

My Mum gave us some money for our anniversary which was to be used for something we wanted, but didn't necessarily need (and not for chickens!). After some deliberation we went for... a breadmaker! In an ideal world I would be sufficiently motivated to get up at 5.30am and make my own bread for the day, but given that we all live in the real world (and I can't do kneading - see my previous stabs at chelsea and hot cross buns...), the only realistic way we are going to regularly eat freshly made bread is with a breadmaker.

It is swish, elegant and lovely

We tried the rapid loaf the day we brought it home just to try it out, and then a full-time loaf overnight. The rapid loaf was fine, although came out a little pale on top, but the second loaf was much better

Onion bread is in the maker for tomorrow!!