A Mothers Love

Writing this now so that Jessica can claim to be 2 years younger than me, though as she's refusing to age why it's so important I don't know, must be a woman thing.

Have to come up with something deep & meaningful this time seeing as the previous entry was reported to be "not my best" cue sulkage & a mega Brit-Strop apparently. (Edit: apparently, this is "one of your better ones, much better than before" - damned with faint praise I think!)

Speaking of strops, Jet continues to object to Hannah by leaving Jet bombs and puddles in various locations, we have now resorted to putting bin liners on some of the furniture to catch it, this is a situation that won't/can't go on so hopefully she'll get over whatever is stressing her out about it.  Maybe it's because Hannah is now super-mobile, she's attempting to walk, sort of, she's got the standing lark solved, but the actual moving part is still not quite there so she achieves that by crawling off at breakneck speed usually towards the kitchen, fortunately we have Ryan who gets a kick out of going after her, picking her up & returning her to temporary safety, only to see her scoot off in short order.

Frankly we need a cage for her & a cage for Jet, I say 1 cage, 2 enter, 1 leaves... I know who my $$$ would be on and it wouldn't take long :)

Ryan is enjoying T-Ball once again, meeting up with some old team-mates and making new friends in the BOBCATS, his T6 team this season.  His outfit above matches one of the early ones Hannah had, and was proudly worn for a multi-cultural day at school.

Ryan is definitely a Mommy's boy, always finishing the evening snuggled up on Jessica, yet it's Daddy who has to carry him to bed, I wonder if Hannah is going to turn into a Daddy's girl, right now she's perfecting her manic laugh when she's caught doing something naughty such as pulling mom's hair, for some reason she can't do the same to me.

Jessica is busy planning Ryan's party for this Sunday, we're hoping for good weather as once again we're outside at Clemyjontri park which will allow several kids & siblings to come and have fun.  Ryan went out and spent some of his birthday $$ this weekend at Toys R Us, picking up some Star Wars Lego sets, Plants Vs Zombies stuff and even a very small R2D2.  He's decided to wait to get the films, a decision we agree with as he's not quite old enough to sit & enjoy them just yet.

Game of Thrones is back on and that's prompted Jessica to relive every previous episode, I say she could just go to You Tube and google GoT Deaths, it'll occupy her for about 50 mins :)

It would be remiss of me to pass up the opportunity today not to comment on the inquests for the Hillsborough Disaster, if you know me you'll know its a matter of interest to me, and it's impact on Football & Stadiums across England & Europe resonate today.  No point talking about the actual verdicts as you're either interested or not, but what I will say is this, the key step in bringing down the web of lies was a mother's refusal to accept the story she was told about how, why & when he son died that day, eventually enough information came to light to force disclosure of documents which revealed the actual truth about what occurred.  96 people had their lives ended that day, Fathers, Sons, Daughters, Mothers, Grandads, Grandchildren didn't return home, people fought for justice and a fair account of what circumstance led to their loss, spearheaded by 1 woman who sadly failed to live to see this day her battle finally concluded.  Truly the campaign of Justice for The 96 was led by a mothers love.

Till next time,
J,J, R & H

Two visitors & a (near) funeral

Hi everyone,

We had some extra guests for Easter as Grandma & Grandad braved the upper deck of an A380 and crossed the Atlantic for some varied weather and of course wonderful company!

Ryan & Hannah were off school Easter week, but Jessica had taken too many flex days so had to work, this enabled us to go off to places she wanted to go such as the zoo which was busy enough that we parked right at the foot of the hill and made the mistake of going up the much steeper American trail instead of the main route past the car parks.  The animals mostly co-operated with the exception of the clouded leopard who had decided to hide out somewhere in his heavily forested enclosure.

Other trips included the Udvar-Hazy space museum where Ryan found his Halloween costume - he's going as an R2D2 Mail Box.  We made a couple of trips to Algonkian Park where Ryan got to throw Boo-Sticks in the river, and then some fool made a suggestion we walk to the play area.... lesson learned!

A random trip to Occoquan found us in an Easter event run by local stores, Jessica enjoyed casting her vote, especially as the final visit was to a wine store.

The visitors tolerated three cooked meals, lamb, slow cooked pork and a goodbye Turkey roast, I haven't heard from them since they returned but I guess any poisoning will be out of their system by now.  We also managed to introduce Popeye's, get the huge salads from Potbelly's and take advantage of curbside service from Cheesecake Factory, much to the chagrin of Ms Howard who'd been bitching incessantly about her need for Five Guys, that was settled after the departure.

Next time they come, I'm ensuring they pack toilet rolls, I now have no chance of telling Jessica she uses too much, perhaps it was food related.........maybe they took it as a hotel and stocked up :)

As for the (near) funeral well that relates to Paul, regular readers will recall I spoke of his health issues last time, well he returned looking ill, but some of his obvious fatigue was blamed on a hectic trip back and a sign of the struggles he endured on vacation.  But on Sunday he was worse, not even really enjoying a Pure Pasty delicacy, and Monday it was obvious he was in trouble.  After refusing my advice he got lucky because I chose to be more of a pain in the ass for his sake, pressing Jessica into getting him to go to hospital where he found his infection was back, had spread to his lungs and within 6 hours of admittance was undergoing the first of two operations.  The good news is he is now out (triggered by hopefully the final bad decision of a series of them) and though he's got a long way to go, finally the slope downhill has leveled out and the path to recovery is underway.

Till next time, when we'll assess just how much devastation Hannah has caused as she learns to become more mobile!

J,J,R & H.