No #SilentSunday here....

The last few weeks I've participated in #SilentSunday. Not today, I've got too much to say, and I'll start with - I've had a gutsful!

As you know, we're having the kitchen and bathroom done. It's now going into it's fourth week, when I was promised it'd be done after 10 working days. My living room is filling to the brim of white goods and boxes filled with plates, cups, dishes, cutlery and everything else you keep in the kitchen!

On top of that, it's raining outside, and everyone knows how annoyed I get when there's no sunshine, even more so with two weeks of washing to catch up on! I can't even stick the dryer on because that's covered with boxes.

To add to another stack, C has a terrible attitude problem. It's seems to get worse as the weeks go on. When she was little, people used to say to me, "Wait until she grows up, boys are much easier!" and I never knew or understood why they would say that. Now I do! She hasn't even reached her teens yet, her PMT is worse than mine and I feel as though my throat is like sandpaper due to all the shouting matches we're having!

And the final "cherry" - Baby B is teething. His little toothys are just breaking through and they must be giving him real bad trouble, or he's realised he can annoy mummy too! I hope it's the first.

I've gotten to this point, I can't scream anymore, I've never had a day like this, I usually love having the kids home from school, but today I can't take anymore.

If you don't hear from me within a week, let the authorities know!

(PS... I'm only joking. I'm taking the kids over their nans so I can have a cuppa and some peace whilst they annoy their grampy!)

It's not all bad.....

I've just found myself daydreaming. I do this quite often when I'm not doing anything in particular. I sit for a few minutes and just lose myself in the make-believe land in my mind. Each time it's different than the last. For those of you who have read Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree, it's a bit like the magical land at the top of the tree. You never know what you're going to see up there!

What was I seeing this time? My 3 eldest children playing on the Xbox. To be more precise, playing Minecraft on the Xbox. Hang on, I'll be even more precise, they were building magnificent castles, fortresses, houses on Minecraft, on the Xbox.

Rewind back to the real world a moment. Minecraft is their favourite game at the moment. I'll guess that it'll be Baby B's as soon as he's old enough to understand too! In Minecraft they can do as they please. They can build things, break things, the girls like building houses, decorating and furnishing them. J just likes setting their houses on fire, or spawning animals inside! Yes, he's mean!

So many people are quick to blast video games. I remember a report a while back about the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto saying that the games were to blame for a high number of crimes. I have never heard so much rubbish in my life! I love the Grand Theft Auto series and have been known to play it to release my "stress"! But just because I like bashing a few cars about, or smashing some things up with a baseball bat DOES NOT mean I want to do it in real life!

However, one thing in this report that I did agree with was the age limits of these games! Take Saints Row 3 (I won't link up just in case, but feel free to do your own research) - a game similar to GTA, you can pinch and ride around in cars, beating and smashing things on your journey. Except, this one has something different. It's called "The Penetrator" - and, as I did, you only have to guess at what it is by the name. It's a weapon at least. Back in December, I was sat in our local Sainsbury's cafe with my girls when a family walked in at sat at the table next to us. The little boy, couldn't have been any older than 9, had a copy of SR3 in his hand and was excitingly inspecting the case and telling his sister, who looked about 5, about what he was going to do when he got home to play on it.

I was sat gobsmacked and amazed that his parents had bought this game for him. The age restriction is clearly shown on the front as 18+ so why did they buy this for him? I couldn't understand, so asked his mother if she realised what the game contained. Her reply? "It's what he likes to play on so it's fine by us." Here I am, sat in the middle of the cafe, with my mouth wide open. Kind of an " :O " moment. I couldn't believe my ears! Was she serious?! So I told her again. Then I proceeded to telling the sales assistant at the customer services desk. They informed me there was nothing they could do because his mum had bought it!

This has to be a joke! But what could I do? I went home that day hoping that his mother would see some sense!

Every game the kids play on, I make sure I know what it contains. This normally means I have to play a few hours of it first, but I'm not complaining! I call myself a "Gamer" and, although I haven't much time for it anymore, I love getting the Kinect on and doing some "exercise" with Just Dance or rocking out on Guitar Hero! But at least I know my kids are safe.

Anyway, back to Minecraft. In my daydream the girls were building a huge mansion. A bedroom each for everyone, a playroom for each of them and the boys, a bathroom each so J couldn't run it while they were having a shower (told you he was mean!), a big room for daddy so he can watch Game of Thrones in peace whilst kicking other people's butts on Fifa, and lastly - a huge kitchen for mum. (Umm, thanks kids, dad gets to relax, mum gets to cook? Story of my life!)

But, it got me thinking, well daydreaming. Even J is pretty good at building things - he specialises in Angry Bird models at the moment and has been trying to do Moshi Monsters too. He has mentioned doing some Skylanders but gave up after spending hours working on a portal for T to come along and destroy it (she called it payback!).

So, not only does it keep the kids from almost killing each other when they're bored, it make them use their creative part of their brains!

Here we have J in the top left corner, C in the top right and T in the bottom left. I especially like the treehouse C has made although it's not a very good picture. But it goes to show what you can do on there.

Do you let your children play video games? Which ones do they like? And what are your opinions on Age Restrictions?

Who to choose now?

For the last 12 and a bit years (Is C really THAT old??) I have been a mum. I've loved every mintues of it. The tears, the tantrums, even the nappy changes! For those 12 and a bit years, which seems longer every time I type it, I've used Huggies nappies. Yes, every single nappy change was using a Huggies nappy. I convinced my sister to change to Huggies, all my friends in our baby group changed to Huggies after I told them how great they were! Their nappies were the best!

Then, about 4 years ago, they made my nappy-changing life complete! They brought out Huggies wet wipes with Aloe Vera. Now, anyone who knows me in real life will tell you how much I use Aloe Vera. Got sunburn? Use Aloe Vera. Got a wart / verruca? Use Aloe Vera. I use it for almost everything! So, my favourite wet wipes with it in - fantastic!

And everything was great! I had one small incident when J was a baby where a tab pulled off of the nappy. I wrote them a letter, enclosing the nappy (It was unused!) just to make them aware of it. To my surprise, I was sent a lovely apology letter and some vouchers to use! How's that for a sorry?!

But, that happy nappy-changing world started to crumble. In January 2013 I received that email. The one that said Huggies weren't selling nappies in the UK anymore (see here for more info). Being 6 months pregnant, that was sad news to me. I was looking forward for an excuse to buy the nappies again! What was I going to do?

A week later, I was lucky enough to win a £100 Boots voucher. The first thing I did was stock up on Huggies nappies! The sales assistant looked at me as though I was crazy! I managed to get enough size 1 and size 2 to last Baby B for as long as he would fit into them.

So, I'm now down to the final packet of size 2 nappies with a dilemma - which nappies do I use?

This is where you come in. I need opinions - I've never used any other brands so don't want to spend money on a pack to find I don't like them or they irritate Baby B's little bum.

Which brands do you like? Dislike?

Leave me a comment below :)

A (late) Mid-week Catchup!

I hope everyone had a lovely half term week last week, or are having one if it's this week. It's almost the second week of June already, where is the time going? Baby B is now 10 weeks old, yet it still feels like only yesterday I was bringing him home from the hospital.

There are certainly not enough hours in the day. I'm sure many mummies, well daddies too, would agree with me on that one. I have been constantly on the go the last few days and with minimal sleep (my own fault!) makes me a grumpy cow. I still have so much to do here, I shouldn't even be sat down right now! So I better get on with this post!

I just wanted to let you all know about a  few things that are going on despite my "Big clean-out".

I'm currently reviewing some lovely skin cream. It's called DermaSalve, and it's from the lovely people over at Skin Salveation, why not pop over and take a look, or you can contact them on Twitter.

My daughters, especially C, suffers really badly with eczema, and I get so annoyed when special creams do nothing for her. We've been back and forth to the doctors over the years trying to find something that will work for her skin. At the moment, it seems to be doing it's job. She hasn't complained about it being itchy and the redness is going down.

The full review will be available shortly!

Finally, before I get back to it, I wanted to let you know I am so excited! I've been invited to my first Blogger event! It's at the new store opening of Kiddicare in Bristol! I love Kiddicare, so I am snapping up this opportunity to go! It's in Bristol, which means a nice little train ride for me and the boys (the girls are in school) and they get to play and have fun too! So keep your eyes open for my post about my trip out!

Catch you all soon :)

Four days down, too much to go!

My last post was about my little secret. Maybe not a little secret anymore, my hoarding is getting too much.

Day one (Friday) started off badly. I wasn't feeling good so had a nap when the girls went to school. My "nap" turned into 3 hours sleep, I finally got out of bed at 11.15am when I had originally planned to be up and ready to tackle the smallest bedroom at 9.30am. A big fat OOOPS! By the time I'd sorted the boys with their brunch (which consisted of toast and a bowl of cereal for J, he's going through a faze where he has to have two different cereals in the same bowl, this morning he had coco pops and shreddies, and Baby B had his normal bottle, full to the top.) it was almost 1pm. I had 2 and a half hours until the girls were due home and another hour on top until we had to go out.

Stood in the doorway, I wished someone or something would give me an excuse to not start this now. I look at the pile of junk just in the doorway. How on earth was I going to sort through it all? We had 8 years worth of clutter, stuff I didn't even remember we had, books unread, cds unlistened, and I don't know what else!

I thought to myself, If I don't start now, it'll never get done. So, I picked up a black bag and began filling it. It didn't take me that long either. Over the three days, up until yesterday, I spent about 3 hours in there each day. Once I got past the stuff we had put in there before Christmas, and after (tree and decorations!), it was quite empty. There were three big boxes of stuff which we had from the move that we'd never got round to emptying so I just put the stuff straight into a rubbish bag. 9 black bags full and numerous pieces of wood later, all that's left in there now is a table and two 2-seater sofas. And I can't move them until tomorrow when the Mr has a day off work.

Now onto the kitchen cupboards........

And so it starts.....

For the last few years, our local housing association have been putting in new kitchens and bathrooms. It was going to happen eventually, but I was hoping we'd have a while longer until it was our turn. But we have the planner coming next week to go through what will happen, what colours I want, and to discuss all the bits in between. Now, most people would love a new kitchen and bathroom. Not me. Well, not right now.

I have a secret. I've not told anyone before now, and I need to do something about it.

You see, I am a Hoarder. No where near as bad as those we see on the programme on TV - as I do like to move easily - but my attic is full of junk. Any cupboards that aren't for clothes, are full with junk. I have kept almost everything from when the kids were little. Their first drawings, work sent home from school, toys, books, the list goes on. I've always threatened to throw it all out. I'm good at that. It's the departing with it I don't want to do. But now I have to.

The workmen will need to re-wire the house before starting any work, something that I've been asking them to do since we moved in almost 8 years ago. I've never decorated, purely because when our flat was re-wired, the wallpaper got ripped, marks were left on paintwork and, in my opinion, the place looked worse than it did before they started! For the first 6 months after we moved into the house, I kept on to them, asking them constantly to re-wire the house before we unpacked properly. Since then, the house still stands un-re-wired, un-decorated and un-homely!

 Don't get me wrong, my house isn't dirty. I sometimes let it get messy (I do have four kids you know!) but give it a good clean at least once a week. I think I need more storage, but then that'll be adding to the problem not helping it. And I hate throwing out things that aren't broken. I have sets of books (the girls are avid readers) that are too good to chuck, no local charity shop will take them and I don't drive so can't do a car boot sale. I've tried a certain auction website but with postage prices rises I'll lose money or they won't sell.

So, the "Big Clean-out" starts..... just one small problem.

Where do I start?