Well, I should call it 3rd time lucky ‘cos I’ve had 2 of these bloggy-ma-things before and given up rather pathetically quickly (Oooh, we got spell-checking, not that you’ll see I couldn’t spell pathetically, ‘cos it’s all been rather conveniently ‘put right’ - nice 
- and the smilies get ‘done’ - yes, I’m impressed - yay!
…..anyway, yes, yes, yes, where was I - this blog - I’m sticking with it - don’t expect updates everyday, I’ll aim for every 2-3 days as I think that’s how long I can remember at any one time - I’ve not got Alzheimer’s, I’m just c**p at remembering!
So - here we go . . .
Natalie steering ‘SS Shieldhall’
We won tickets to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard’s - Celebration of Steam from a competition in ‘The News’ so we all set off with pack-lunch in tow. Have to say I think we experienced quite an authentic ‘perfect-storm‘ sea-voyage type-time as we turned up to queue for the Warrior at the exact time the heaven’s opened and turned us into drowned rats! The Warrior was great, we all enjoyed looking around, Hermionie thought it was a tad scary ’sarry-oat’ said quite a few times!, Natalie was a bit uneasy in the engine-room, especially once she realised we were under sea-level. Many dressed-up re-enactment people around - very nice, all quite enthusiastic about the day, the Warrior and the Victorians! Sun had come out just after lunch so we had a nice-packed lunch in Boathouse no. 7 and the kids had a good play on the (free!!!) play equipment in there. Bit of a miss on the potty-training front for Hermionie, but over the past few weeks she’s done so well, we’re there, she just get’s a bit excited sometimes and ends up wet, so I put a ‘big-girl nappy’ on her for the rest of the day - too much for her concentration today I think! Yes, so after lunch we had the weather on our side (where have the gorgeous sunny-play-outside-with-the-sand-and-water-in-our-pants and eat-alfresco-style days gone?? - please come back, the plants are growing nicely now - I promise I’ll water them if you come back - I will!) - had a look around the various steam engines around, Natalie was wondering about the pollution and “if it’s bad for the earth, why don’t they just stop!” - yes darling - if only your simple, naive, child-like, black & white truths could-be, would save me alot of explaining. Found the SS Shieldhall eventually - had expected a whopper of a boat (sorry - Ship!!), had already passed it once and written it off as a cr**py little boat in the corner, but, no, t’was the one we were after.. Turned out to be nice - very polite and enthusiastic Gentleman greeted us and told us part of the helm (I think - not too good with boat - sorry - Ship-type things!) was used in the film Titanic, although they made it look aloooooot bigger!, kids had a good go ’steering’ the ship.
Had a nice (cheap - compared to other places around) cup of tea for us oldies and a shared milkshake for the kids with kit-kats all-round. (Uugh, they’re Nestlé aren’t they! - sorry) Nice lady doing the tea gave the kids a couple (4) left-over-from-some-do-they-had crackers - cracker-freaks!! We came with the home-ed group in March and got a schools-tour of the warrior which was OK, but we preferred the freedom of going where we wanted this time! Checked out how much it would be to come down more often, can’t get a discount on the 18-month Season-Ticket with our Portsmouth-Leisure Card - oh well - I tried. Will have to figure out how many times we’re likely to come down - there’s loads of hands-on type things planned (mainly in school-holiday - Uugh!) but should all be good fun. Came home via a drive along Southsea sea-front, places we should visit down, Natalie wants to live in Southsea ‘cos of all the green fields-have ye not spotted the big ‘un across the road from us ‘luv? Got stuck in traffic ‘cos of the they-don’t play-on-Sundays-do-they football match. Home for 6 - dinner, more Grand Designs on the telly, kids to bed, Natalie armed with a pile of books. Alex on the DS for his daily-dose of Sudoku & brain-training - run the battery out and don’t charge it why don’t you - cheek!) then up the wooden-hill to settle down with laptops and Charmed as usual-type-thing. Felt quite cra**y by 11pm so sleep - Miracle!
Kids up quite early - 7:30-ish I think, but my head was pounding, throat sore and stomach-achy pains prevented me from actually lifting my head up and out into the blinding light of the bedroom to peek at the alarm clock. Alex up at about 9 and sorted the kids out (bless ‘im 
) me up after some magic-pills (ok, it was only 2 paracetamol’s!) to keep the head-pain at bay and once I’d realised I wanted to tape Primary Geography on the telly - Natalie was busy making a paper-stage while I tea-d-& toasted, Hermionie was busy gluing - not gluing anything to anything - Just gluing on the paper - she’s obsessed! Natalie & Alex ended up watching Primary Geography whilst I attempted to make sense of the Gas & Electricity Bills - Nope - may as well be written in hieroglyphs! Hermionie playing quite nicely later with her baby - she had to take her to the shops to get her news shoes - bless, whilst Natalie did 3 pages of Maths Made Easy (herein referred to as MME) Hermionie then getting quite idle and loud as she does so she ‘helped’ (and I use the word in italics carefully ‘cos honestly - how much ‘help’ can a two-and-a-half-year-old actually be? ‘help’ just means you’re gonna have to think more about what you’re doing, ways to involve a two-and-a-half-year-old so that she a) get’s the best from the experience without feeling like we’re actually trying to teach her something as well as keep her occupied, b) doesn’t maim herself - ‘cos, sweetie I know you’re a big girl now but the 12-inch bread knife does pose a tad amount of danger to you, so if you’ll just pass it to Daddy now, that’d be great, yes and the small but still equally pointy knife for cutting cucumber, yes - here have piece of cucumber - keep yourself busy! c) doesn’t throw a tantrum about the enforcement of b). ‘help’ means it’s gonna take more time and ‘help’ just plain pees me off sometimes, but alas the kids ‘help’ me ‘cos from the ‘helping’ comes learning and that’s what’s it’s all about I suppose, they ‘help’ make lunch, vacuum, load/unload washing machine and wash dishes ‘cos then they’ll know how to do it won’t they? They’ll then know how to tidy-up and put things where they belong when they’ve finished with the game-of-the-hour, ‘cos they’ve seen Mummy do it a thousand times before, and Mummy has her own freaky way with baskets and boxes, so everything does have a home, and everyone generally knows where everythings’ home is, they just chose to ignore that fact, oh and ignore also why don’t you the piiiiles of stuff on the stairs just waiting to distributed to their respective homes - you’d have to a contortionist to get around the pile! (at anytime during the previous paragraph - paragraph - do we have them? - thought it was one long rant), yes anytime during the previous paragraph/section - whatever! - feel free to replace the word ‘help’ with ‘hinder’). Where were we - lunch - check! Went off to Cosham to cross bits of the list - bank, library, tesco, how much we’d get to trade in 2 DS games we got from ebay for the one(s) Natalie wants. Home again, Natalie wanted to watch Eragon again (with an interruption for neighbours of course! - Hermionie fell asleep - nice timin’ luv! All had Dinner - minus Hermionie all red-cheeked and-not-amused-at-being-woke-early! Me with the tidying of the bathroom, our bedroom, dishes, Natalie watching end of Eragon, Hermionie waking and not wanting the good wholesome food Alex cooked so settling for toast instead - again!!! Grrrrgh. Me with the faffing of themes on wordpress. Kids cleaned and p’jama-d, Hermionie off to bed, Alex & Natalie watching ‘Master & Commander’ whilst both playing on the laptops! Alex got quite into the Warrior (and the Mary-Rose which we’ll have to see another time!) and it’s history etc so he thought the film might portray a bit about how life actually was on a ship (he thought the Warrior was a bit ‘too’ perfect - Mmmm ’nuff said!), then Alex & Natalie making choccie-crunchies out of my cheap-tesco-imitation-special-K-with-all-the best-intentions-of-losing-up-to-an-off-waist-in-two-weeks-Yeah-Right!-cereal + chocolate (duh!), Natalie off to bed, me blogging this and now the kettle’s on again so I’m off up. More laptopping and Charmed (season 3) and more 1% Dithrol for Alex’ legs - thank goodness he’s gotten round to trying to get rid of the psoriasis, it’s like sleeping with a porcupine!
So there you have it, a phenomenally bad use of - and ! and (), but hey, that’s me - you’ll learn to love me!
Bye!
(although not quite because of the 3 P’s- no, not Piper, Prue & Phoebe, no, no, no - Perfectionism, Procrastination and Peeing about with Wordpress themes, plugins and blah blah blah - you get the picture! - ciao!
Maybe next year then….
so we end with all the clothes - if we have sex-tuplets this time - we will more than fine to clothe them each in different outfits for everyday until they’re 2! 
So sackfulls of baby clothes coming soon to eBay then…..
so she can get a new one! - and sorting through her 
) - great for more kids books - an intersting little one about egyptian heiroglyphs and a little one about card tricks that should keep Natalie busy for while. Alex also bought some books himself (not past my budget of more than 10p a book!) and he bought me home a lovely huuuuuge hamper basket - enough for 6 picnic sets - don’t know what I’ll be using it for tho - maybe as the kids ‘dressing up hamper’…. We eventually got down toSouthsea, totally forgot it was also the 5K 
)So after all the watching of the people in pink we made it to 
), explored the Museum - tried to get Natalie to recognise Portmouths’ shape and to see where it becomes an island (well, kind of!) - don’t think she was interested - she can always spot the ‘Mummy doing her teacher thing’. We bumped in Henry VIII, but nobody would hold his hand!. We lost Alex then found him on top of the Castle (think he wanted some peace!) with the Canons (now we know what the lead semi-ish-circles are for). We enjoyed the view from up top, descended the steep-single-file-only stairs and promptly left before they threw us out for closing time. 
