sniffing dressing gowns..

today a box arrived. inside it was my dressing gown. my dressing gown smells like home. so im going to sit and sniff it and have a good cry becuase i want my mommy. im half tempted to tie it up in a plastic bag so that the smell can't get out of it...

well...

...from having no updates for more than i week i have suddenly found time to update this many many times in less than 24 hours. this mornings was written in a very odd *omg theres a monster downstairs and its going to eat me* kind of way. when actually my nightmare was about a car crash, and so really there were no monsters involved.
now i am sat listening to the baby monitor in the vain hope that the babies might go to sleep. j is already asleep which is a bonus :)
there's also no-one online apart from B. so come online people!

can't sleep

well i can sleep. but when i do its all over the place and i have scary nightmares. i now feel like im about 5 all over again, sat here with all my lights on and clutching my teddybear and very much either wanting to call laura or home, but both would probably be inappropriate at ...3 in the morning. somehow broadcasting this to the world is distracting me.

cant actually remember...

most of the events of this last week. katherine came, and katherine left. i have been to the airport 6 times in nearly as many days and have picked up numerous children from kindegarten.
the babies are all now walking at least a few steps by themselves which is pretty cool and pretty damned scary also.
today i went to my new art class for the first time and experimented with oils which was pretty cool and very odd all at the same time. had my first german class last night as well. less surreal.
tommorow....nothing exciting is happening i dont think :)
now we are up to speed on my life as it stands.

hanging by a moment.

when we got back from berlin i was hit by the reality that actually i was now im charge of four children and would have to do my first night shift.
Most.Surreal.Night.Of.My.Life.
that alone is enough to put me off having children anytime in the near future. not that i had actually intended to. but you know..
very very fretful evening. poor fi was also ditched with me, and she was supposed to be on holiday!!!

we were here.BERLIN

berlin was quite a very long time ago now. and i have been desperately trying to find time to update this ever since. fi has been and gone, as has katherine. i had a great time with both of them =].

so Berlin. we left the house at about 5, went to the petrol station in the village, which puts some tiny english petrol stations to shame, its very old school. had a major heart attack when i managed somehow to convince myself that i had filled up the VW with the wrong type of fuel. cue a very panicked phone call to dad, and some very poor german conversation with the lady in the petrol station. but it seemed to be all ok, infact we got to berlin and back on just one tank of fuel (600+ miles!!!). we arrived quite late, having managed to find the motorola offices just out of town (free parking at the weekends!!!:D) and a 20 second walk to the U-BAHN station (like the tube) where we bought our 4 tickets for 8 euros, which we never actually used. when i later asked dad what you were supposed to do with them we found out that if you did not validate your ticket for your journey then you risked a very hefty fine.
found the hostel and went to bed.
personally i get quite bored reading long blog posts unless they're very very interesting. seeing as this is not hugely interesting im trying to keep it short but to be honest how do you cram 24 hours of berlin into a short blog post?
rundown of the sights that we saw:
Jewish war memorial (all the big black blocks)
Brandenburg gate
Potsdamer Platz
Haagen Daas
The Reichstag (which we returned to at night and was pretty damned cool)
The Art Academy of Berlin
and im sure many more that have slipped my mind.
went out drank cocktails, came back to the hostel to find a half naked boy in our room. very odd. it was ok becuase he went back to bed. and we also went to sleep.
started drive home.
stopped to check tyre pressure.
concluded that tyre pressure was precariously low.
topped up tyre pressure.
drove home.
nice and concise :)

24 hours in Berlin

THIS IS A POST I FOUND FROM JUST AFTER I GOT BACK FROM BERLIN BUT NEVER FINISHED.

i had a freaking fantastic time in Berlin. nearly as cool as new york, although we didn't do any art galleries, so i might have to go back and do that again. we drove down Friday evening, got in quite late, because traffic wasn't great. but managed to park the car where we were supposed to, found the u-bahn station, got on the right train, changed in the right places and found the hostel, pretty much straight away. i was well impressed. we got a relatively early night, ready to explore the big bad city.
if there was a prize for the number of sights one can see in Berlin in one day i think we'd pretty much win. having spent...11 hours sightseeing, and eating ice-cream. We managed the

#15-Sudocream, Calpol & Dentinox

Babies when teething are...fretful. In this instance it's fretful x 3, and all you want to do is give them a huge cuddle, which you cant because with the teeth comes really sore bums. J's mum sent us some really lovely photographs from the christening, which I think I'll scan when i get 5 minutes. I have a little list of jobs that need doing:

1. Wash & Paint the bathroom ceiling
2. Strip the bathroom wallpaper
3. Organise the kitchen
4. Put some lights up in the kitchen
5. Hang a curtain over the stairs
6. Plant my window boxes
7. SAVE THE ORCHID
8. Check the car is safe & ready for BERLIN (off to Berlin this weekend with Fi. very excited!, never been before, and the only hostel I've stayed in was in NYC, so this could be quite something!)

The babies moved into their new bedroom today which was very exciting, they used to be in mum and dads room, which meant that for a while now mum and dad have been sleeping on a sofa bed in the playroom. everyone should be cheery tommorow, having slept in their own beds!

J is ... being like any three year old probably should, and has gotten pretty good at having little tantrums. We share the Kindergarten run with a lovely lady from up the road (Christa with 300 cows) and her two children. Most mornings she picks J up and so I have to ship them all home again at half past twelve. Managed it all by myself yesterday!

#14?

I am presently feeling like...some kind of blubbering emotional trainwreck. and i want my mommy. there is no reason for this madness, except just being a bit overwhelmed by everything. on the upside its been months since i've really felt any kind of emotion at all, so it cant exactly be a bad thing. we went swimming this morning, it was rather nice. then it rained all afternoon..yay :D