2006 in pictures

With Mari, Amelia and Jemima










Afternoon tea at The Lanesborough













With Miss Thelma at afternoon tea










Kathy and Paul at Ali's cowboy bbq













Nick and Jemima in the hot tub at OSH










A lazy summer's day at OSH











A surprise visit to New York for my 40th birthday, arranged by the fabulous Miss Thelma.










Bridesmaid to Neil at his wedding to Monkey










Amelia's 4th birthday - organised by her devoted aunties!












In Wells Next The Sea with Mum and Gay








Southwold beach in November









Christmas












Boobs at last! Ali and Carla on New Year's eve

January already!

Oh dear, it's 2007 and I appear to have not been here for 3 months. How did that happen? I really did intend to post something here at least once a week, oh well! Now I'm wracking my brains to think what I've ben up to since I was last here, there must have been something I was doing surely? Worryingly, the only things that comes to mind are being insanely busy at work and finishing last semester's assignment , Lord that's depressing! Best move on quickly!

Christmas whizzed by in a bit of a blur, I remember there being turkey and a ridiculous amount of chocolate..... everything else is a bit hazy! And of course there were a lot of presents. I managed to wangle 4 days off over New Year and headed down to Dorset with the girlies and honery girlie Paul, we had a fabulous time ... it was just like it was 15 years ago when we all worked together at Harold Wood hospital only we had a 7 year old keeping us all in line!

Winning children over with chocolate

Well, MissThelma and I came up trumps and easliy won the 'best Aunties ever' award last weekend when we organised and ran our niece's 4th birthday party. We decided to theme the party and since Amelia is in full on Princess and fairy mode we had a pink and liliac fairy princess party complete with homemade wands with pictures of the birthday girl on them. We had all the tradional party games although the concept of musical bumps seemed to be a bit beyond them, I had to join in to get them to play properly, something that MissT is still giggling over. Still, we played all the games we 'd planned and all the kids home happy. I realised very early on that the way to get a bunch of 4 year olds to do what you want them to do is to bribe them; chocolate was their drug and I was their dealer! Did I care that they were going to be hyperactive monsters by the time the party finished? Not a jot ... after all they weren't my kids and they weren't coming home with me! 

Why oh why did I agree to do an MSc?

For reasons beyond understanding I am doing my MSc in Nursing; it seemed like a good idea when I was being strongly encouraged by work now, however, I'm not so sure!
Because of the pathway I'm doing the modules I need to do have been pretty much chosen for me but I was 15 credits short so I decided to choose what I thought would be a fairly straightforward module and that was obviously my first mistake! I have choosen to do Health Promotion which I thought sounded interesting and pretty relevent since everything in health care is about prevention rather than cure. I did have a few doubts about how it would related to critical care (my speciality) but I choose it mainly on the fact that I thought it would be an esay course!
Well, I am 3 weeks into the course and I have to say that mostly I don't have a clue what the lecturer is talking about! It is all about philosphies and empowering patients, sorry clients (apparently the term patients imply victims!). Now I'm a critical care nurse, my patients don't have much empowerment and they need medical intervention to get better not some crappy behavioural change method and frankly in my opinion, if they are in ICU they have kind of missed the boat when it comes to promoting their health! Can you tell I'm not embracing and enjoying this course?! And now I have to write some damn essay on a model of health promotion within my speciality, this was supposed to be the easy module *moan*!

I can see!

After much humming and hawing and should I or shouldn't I, I finally decided to have my eyes laser treated in March and today was my 6 month follow up appointment. I now have 20:20 vision and I can't tell you how wonderful it is! My eyes were never that bad, I mean I needed contact lens but in comparison to some friends and family they weren't awful. However, I was starting to get frequent eye infections which were a real pain, not least because it meant I couldn't wear my lens and I had to go back to glasses which I hated. But now I wake up and I can see, I can go swimming and I can see, I can do anything and I can see! So totally worth every penny (not that I've paid much of it yet!)

The joys of outlet store shopping

My friend Jane, from Glasgow has just been spending a few days with me and yesterday we decided to go and visit another friend, Ellie, who lives near Bicester shopping village. Obviously, we had to go shopping as it would have been rude not too! I was quite restrained and only managed to get a few things. I am now the proud owner of a divine dark red chunky wool cardigan from Hobbs, it was half price so they were practically giving it away! I also got a lovely candle from The White Company and some new mugs (so domesticated) from, hmmmm I don't remember where!
Ellie is very pregnant, in fact she has 7 weeks to go but I really don't understand how she is going to get any bigger ... it can't be physically possible!

My gorgeous nieces

Its Amelia's 4th birthday party and MissThelma and I are in charge of games, I never thought I would have so much fun planning games, music and most importantly, prizes for a child's birthday party!

Lipgloss tastic

I have a bit of a thing for lipglosses, I love them and don't seem to be able to stop myself buying new ones (even if I have 10 or so waiting to be used at home!). I went to New York this June with the lovely MissThelma where we discovered the wonder that is Tarte .... a make-up brand not available in England. Tarte do a fabulous lipgloss duo with the greatest names (if I'm totally honest I have to say that it's the names that grabbed me as much as the lipglosses). When I saw the lipglosses named Rhett and Scarlett, Sandy and Danny and JR and Sue-Ellen I just knew I had to have them! So I bought a few and headed on back to Blighty happy with my lot but then MissT asked a friend who was going to the States to bring her some more back which meant she had more than me. This was not fair *sulk*. MissT then came up with a brilliant idea - she would order a whole load of lipglosses, have them sent to FatherDisco who resides in Gloucester MA and have him bring them over to us when he next visited.
I am now happy to say that I now own Baby and Johnny, Bonnie and Clyde, Jake and Samantha and Ferris and Sloane as well as my original ones. But naturally I want more!