Malbridge House

As I said in my first post we have five dogs, we also have a cat, three gerbils and a rabbit.!

What I thought I would do, (especially now I can put some photos in ) is do an animal a day, there are two reasons for this  1) I don’t want to be here all night, which is how long it would take to do them all!

                             2) Those of you who are animal people are now guaranteed readers for the next two weeks, those who are not are going to probably get a bit bored.

Saying that, we’ve got Mothers Day, Clarks birthday , all happening over the next couple of weeks, so I should be able to insert them somewhere for a little light relief!

So I’m going to start with our oldest dog……….. GYPSY

Gypsy, so called because when she was a puppy, she looked like a stereotypical young gypsy girl, a brown tanned face and lovely flowing jet black hair.

Gypsy’s a Yorkshire Terrier, originally thought to have been brought to Yorkshire by the Scottish workman seeking work in the woollen mills. It is thought that the Skye Terrier and now extinct Clydesdale were crossed with the long haired Leeds Terrier and the black and tan Manchester, the Maltese and Dandie Dinmont  (one of my favourite, favourite dogs)  The original "Yorkie" was bigger than todays, selective breeding has gradually miniaturised the dog over the years.

Temperment…. Spirited, not intimidated by larger dogs, ( I can vouch for that) They are good guard dogs and make loving pets. (I can vouch for that too)

Gypsy was 14 yrs old on January 5th. Yes, I am sad, I do know the birthdays of all my dogs, not the cat, and definitely not the gerbils or rabbit. ( I’m not that sad!!)

When we picked Gypsy up to take her home she was as big as my husbands hand, and to get her use to car journeys before she had her jabs and was allowed to go "walkies" she use to sit in the hat of my husbands old "parka" anarak.

Yes, we both have coat fetishes, it was his parka that first caught my eye!

In her old age Gypsy has developed an annoying habbit of standing with her front feet on the furniture and whining until somebody picks her up and puts her in the sofa or chair, my husband swears she can get up herself, but she seems to think she needs a helping hand. It’s jolly annoying at 3am when she whining for you to pick her up and put her on your bed. Honestly, if my mother was showing this type of behaviour I would have put her in a home by now, ( only joking Mum!!)

Even Cody, my fourteen month old will go and lift her up on the furniture when she whines!

Onto todays happenings, I looked after my nephew so my sister and partner could clean their old house before handing back the keys tomorrow, Callum had Beavers, Eden had Bookclub, so I’m ferrying then round for the best part of 1 1/2 hours.

Callum came out with something smuggled under his jumper which I have a suspicion could be for me.

OOhh,goodie, something else for me to photograph this weekend,  watch out for Mondays post, it’s going to be amazing!!

Right off to insert photos, and that’s me done. Have a good night

Did it, ( thanks to hubby) oops( and Lindas instructions)

My birthday cake , made by Eden last weekend. She’s obviously got the numbers the wrong way round, 24 not 42. Silly girl!!!

The power of positive thinking, I wanted rain, it rained!  Must remember Saturday to think about my lottery numbers!

Busy morning, a friend came round with her youngest two children, my sister also came round with my 2 yr old nephew, eight kids, my lounge floor looked like an advert for "Toys R Us" ( can’t do a backwards "R")

I didn’t manage to get out with the dogs until 3-30pm. By then it wasn’t raining much. I might have to stand under the shower later, just to see how waterproof my jacket is!!

My daughter is in despair over how excited I am over my wax jacket.

Anyway, I cut a fine figure being pulled walking the dogs down the road. I think it must have been like Joseph felt when he walked down the road in his Technicolour Dreamcoat, people stopping to stare in wonderment, whispering envious comments to each other. The dogs pulled walk proudly  in front alongside me.    

This hasn’t been the best week to start a blog about structured home-ed. What with my birthday, my sister moving, ( taken six days so far, just about everything has gone wrong for her) Mother’s Day on Sunday, cards, presents and preparations, we’ve not really done a lot. Usually the children work for a couple of hours in the evening on their own, but they’re so tired,  they choose their own work, in the  mornings, I decide, evenings, they do, usually it’s lapbooks, at the moment we’ve got, "our caravan" (Clarks), "Trees"( Callum) and " Songs" ( Edens).

Hopefully we’re be back on schedule next week.

Haven’t had time to do the photo thing yet, I might need a couple of hours without children and unless I do it in the early hours of the morning, that ain’t gonna happen!!

 It was my birthday a couple of days ago, so today, with my birthday money I bought myself a wax jacket. I’m thoroughly sick of getting soaked to the skin walking the dogs. I tried one on and the children decided that I looked like a shepherd! We decided I’d only need a hat and a crook, personally I would like the rambling farmhouse, acres of countryside and the obedient collie to go with it!! I don’t want much!

So I’m sorry everybody but tonight I’m praying for rain, raindancing and doing whatever else I can think of to bring the rain on . So tomorrow, if you see a lonely figure with 5 bedraggled dogs walking across the Dorset countryside with an especially fine coat on, that’ll be me roadtesting my new wax jacket!

We’ve had a cooking evening, Eden, Callum, Clark and myself made cheese scones, Dorset Apple Cake and Barm Brack(cold tea cake) I’ve also had my breadmaker going and made a loaf of bread and some fruit loaf. We do quite a bit of cooking, a) it helps feed my army and b) I think it covers a good range of subjects, weighing, measuring,we can all get involved in it at the appropriate levels.

I am hoping to take some pictures and you never know you might get one on this blog by the weekend.

That is my challenge to myself for this week, to learn how to post pictures, as well as the ironing and hoovering the bedrooms!!

Then I will go onto videos, then we’ll have a livefeed, like the cameras on a badgers set or on a birdbox, move over The Osbournes, come on down Malbridge House!

Just to prove that my children do actually recieve an education, here’s a poem that my daughter did earlier, on the topic of "Spring"

Daffodils are blooming,

Shoots are coming up,

Animals come out of hiding,

Ducklings swimming behind their mother duck

The Easter Bunny sets to work,

Delivering all his eggs,

Going as fast as he can be,

Hopping on his back legs.

With a basket of chocolate,

Bumping in his hand,

Losing eggs, 1..2..3..

Along, as he ran.

Tulips and roses,

And the Bleeding Heart

Carnations and Primroses,

All start to part.

Bulbs and seeds,

Start to grow,

Corn in the fields,

Flowers tied in a bow.

Animals that were hibernating,

The sun warms the land,

The Grizzly Bear arises,

And roars as loud as he can.

By Eden.

Without Linda this would have been the shortest blog in history, 1 post!! So I would like to publically thank her.

I’ve been thinking all day of how to get people to keep coming back to read my blog, but I think I don’t actually need to do anything, I spent all this afternoon trying to "copy and paste"  a picture that I had downloaded into a file to put in the sidebar of my blog. The one that the lovely Linda has done for me.  I’d never heard of Flickr or Photobucket, so this will be my cliffhanger. Just how computer un-savvy am I? You will be coming back to read exactly what I’ve been trying to do with a ticker-counter, a picture or a link and you will laugh in disbelief , you will tell your friends, "you’ve got to read this ladys blog, if you’re feeling inadaquate, read this, you’ll feel so much more able " !!

Home-ed, I haven’t had time for home-ed, children have had to fend for themselves, luckily Grandma had the top two boys, they washed her car, I do loan them out, and they know they’re not to come home until they’ve earnt a tenner each!

We have made some Mother’s Day cards, I would have taken a photo and posted them but a) my Mum will read this and b) they would be in a file somewhere and I would still be trying to "copy and paste" them until midnight tonight!!

I would like to finish off tonight by saying  thankyou for all your lovely comments, it’s nice to have support when you’re doing something new.

I’ve discovered these today too.!!

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Right, here I am. It’s taken me ages just to get this far!!

I’m hoping that I’m going to learn a lot otherwise this site’s going to be pretty boring. I can type, but I’ve not got a clue how to link things, post photos or videos.  Stick with it, hopefully it’ll improve.

The title for this blog is half my husbands name and half mine.  We always said  we would call our house this but never got round to having a plaque made.

We have five children, dd is 10 and then four ds, 7, 5, 2 and 14 months. We have 5 dogs, but I’ll go into them at another time.

We are very busy, I hope to have lots to write about and hopefully someone, somewhere will make a comment or two.