A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 17th October

October's Photo an Hour challenge fell on Saturday 17th October - the same day as Taunton carnival (although at this time of year, any Saturday will fall on a Carnival day) :-)


8am - Up early to get ready to head out to an NCT sale in Frome (we'd heard they could be a bit of a bunfight!)

9am - Just about to leave and our garden is beginning to look very autumnal.

10am - Inside the NCT sale and despite what we'd heard, it's rather well organised and very civilised!

11am - Back home and sorting out some of the bits and pieces we picked up at the sale (and just in case you missed it on Twitter, we found out a few weeks ago that Findus is apparently Findina) :-)

12pm - Dropping off some books at the library in Wells before catching the bus down to Taunton to mooch round the charity shops before the Carnival (Andrew was driving down later in the afternoon to join me).

1pm - On the bus, somewhere near Somerton, about halfway to Taunton.

2pm - Ready for charity shopping!

3pm - Just in case I'd forgotten why I (and everyone else) was there today...

4pm - Time for a stop off in Wetherspoons for a cuppa, a sit down and a toilet break.

5pm - Whilst waiting in Primark for Andrew to arrive, these babygro/vest thingies accidentally fell into my basket...

6pm - Back at the car and enjoying some dinner before heading out to find a spot to watch the procession.

7pm - Carnival selfie with me, Andrew and the brother.

8pm - The first of the large floats arrived passed us (if you hadn't guessed, this one is based on the film, Madagascar).

9pm - The last of the large floats (and the end of the procession), Harlequin Carnival Club with their entry based on Phileas Fogg's world tour.

10pm - About halfway home.

11pm - We left the sorting out til Sunday morning!

This month we had 20 lovely bloggers joining in:

Jane from Is That Your Darling joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Shazza from Sunshine and Celandines joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Kerri from Crumbs in the Bed joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Rachel from The Inelegant Wench joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Rachael from Dear Ms Leigh joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Elise from Elise and Life joined in on Instagram and on her blog
Jennifer from Adventures in Pop Culture joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Josie from Tales From The Finch's Beak joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Dee from The Life of Dee M joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Twitter and on her blog
Laura joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Just Me joined in on Instagram
Emma from Oh Gosh joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Writing, Fatshion, Me joined in on Instagram
Siobhan joined in on Instagram
Erika from Quiet Girl Noisy City joined in on Twitter
Lucy from Lucy in the Clouds joined in on her blog
Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on her blog
Hazel from World of Joy joined in on her blog (and wins the award for most exotic photo an hour post!)
And of course, myself here on this post, plus on Instagram and on Twitter :-)


November's date will be Saturday 21st November - which falls on Glastonbury Carnival day, the last of the big Somerset processions for the year!

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

October 2014

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 29th August

And so another photo an hour day rolls round - doing this challenge each month seems to be about one of the only things I'm keeping up with! Everything else - blogging, reading, baking, cleaning the house - fallen by the wayside over the last few months.

Anyway, onto last Saturday, a bit of a mixture of a day - some of it boring and some of it a bit more interesting.


9am - A glass of orange juice to start the day (the fancy 'not from concentrate' stuff as well) :-)

10am - A bit of a rest before starting some cleaning. I've realised over the last few months I need to do a bit of work and then sit down for a bit otherwise I just knacker myself out.

11am - Lots of laundry which needed to be put away.

12pm - More cleaning, although the dishwasher means I don't have to do the leg (arm?) work.

1pm - Another pitstop. A cup of tea and one of these chocolate scones picked up from Tesco the previous night.

2pm - Andrew's turn to do some housework now and all I have to do is lift up my legs!

3pm - Time to get ready to go out and this was the print I'd chosen for the evening (from the New Look maternity range although I acquired it from a charity shop, obvs) ;-)

4pm - On the road, heading off to Sturminster Newton in Dorset (the place for the first illuminated carnival of the season here in the South West)

5pm - Not too much further to go now...

6pm - Luckily my parents had already arrived and done the chip shop run for us. Me and Andrew surfed and turfed it that evening.

7pm - Waiting in the rain for the procession to reach us.

8pm - It was only a small parade but still fairly exciting; being the first one brings out all the carnival friends you haven't seen since last year.

9pm - Back to the car after the carnival and my dad had come prepared with flasks and chocolate.

10pm - Almost back home, just a few miles to go.

11pm - And the usual 'book and hot drink' pic before heading to sleep.

This month we had 23 lovely bloggers joining in (including some new faces - hello!)...

Jane from Is That Your Darling joined in on Instagram and Twitter
Jennifer from Adventures in Pop Culture joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Rachael from Dear Ms Leigh joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Rachel from The Inelegant Wench joined in on Instagram
Laura joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Just Me joined in on Instagram
Kitty from The Eagle and Other Bikes joined in on Instagram
Chelsea from Love in Modern Life joined in on Instagram
Janet from Words That Can Only Be Your Own joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Kerri from Crumbs in the Bed joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Emma from Oh Gosh joined in on Instagram
Shazza from Sunshine and Celandines joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Penny from A Penny for Them joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Sarah from Sarah Rooftops joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Liz from Distract Me Now Please joined in on Instagram
Amy from Fluffy Owl's Adventures joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Sarah from The V Nice Life joined in on her blog
Elise from Elise and Life joined in on her blog
Hazel from World of Joy joined in on her blog (and it was a special birthday - happy birthday lady!)
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on her blog
Eileen from In My Playroom joined in on her blog
Shaheen from Allotment2Kitchn joined in on her blog
And of course, myself here on this post, plus on Instagram and on Twitter :-)

For September's date I'm going to go with Saturday 26th - purely for selfish reasons as I'm supposed to be off on a coach trip to the Big Pit National Coal Museum that day!
 

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

September 2014

September 2013

This Summer at the Duckpond

Questions, questions...

How have I managed to do no blogging whatsoever over the summer?
How am I already over halfway through this (still fairly unbelievable) pregnancy?
And the eternal blogger cliché - how is it already September?

Answers on a postcard please.



So that was summer 2015. I honestly had no idea back in May at the start of the summer that by the autumn I'd be well into the second trimester and expecting a Findus in January. I mean, we'd started the treatment for our frozen embryo transfer at the end of March but it didn't even cross our minds that it might actually work.

We still managed to get up to a lot of stuff though, even if at times I had to take things a bit more slowly.



Findus went to his/her first Glastonbury festival (I was 10 weeks and 5 days); I did two shifts working down there and then went in on the Sunday evening to see Paul Weller and The Who. I did feel a bit tired during Paul Weller's set so I had a doze while he was playing - I'm sure it looked perfectly fine down there at Pilton!

Oh yeah, and did I mention we met Lionel Richie? (rather than being chauffeured back to the helipad (which is along the lane we work on) he decided he wanted to walk and "enjoy the English countryside")


Me, Andrew, my parents and brother spent a lot of the summer Shaun-hunting in Bristol. Following on from the 'Gromit Unleashed' trail back in 2013, this year it was our woolly friend who descended on the place for the 'Shaun in the City' trail. There were 70 Shauns in total and we managed to spot 59 of them - a fairly respectable number methinks considering my condition! (oh yeah, that's being wheeled out as an excuse from now til January...)

Me and Andrew had our usual trip to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival at the beginning of August. Back at the start of 2015 we decided to go for the whole week which in the end, proved to be a very good decision indeed as we could spread out the number of shows and I wouldn't get so tired. We still (somehow) managed to pack in 28 of them though, including a live recording of Radio 4's 'Just a Minute' at the BBC Potterrow tent and a blogger meet up with some truly lovely ladies - Denise, Gwen, Alex and Elise (who is an absolute darling and had knitted Findus some gorgeous little booties!). We did well for celebrity spotting in the street too - not including the ones we saw in shows, we also walked past Nina Conti; Rory McGrath; Josh Widdicombe, James Acaster, Mickey Flanagan and Ivo Graham (who were all going to see Jon Ronson at the Assembly Rooms - who was fab); Rob Beckett; Matthew Crosby; Janey Godley; and spot of the week - Richard Osman.

And a Findus update...
Well, he/she is still alive. Despite being a fairly positive person for the rest of my life, I can't help but worry about this little one. I clearly have no trust in my own body. We had our 20 week scan last week (at 19 weeks and 1 day) - it was 8am in the morning and this baby is obviously not a morning person as it spent most of the scan curled up in a cosy little ball asleep. The sonographer was lovely and got me to do some kind of belly dancing move to try and wake the baby up - all you got then was it shuffling round for about 10 seconds and then going back to sleep. It did a perfect impression of someone who really didn't want to be woken up that early! Long story short, we have to go back on 18th September for another scan so they can complete all the necessary checks (and hopefully find out whether it's a boy or a girl!).



Hope you've all had good summers!

This...

Random picture of some nice ducklings at work

This...is why I've been such a crappy blogger, blog reader and especially blog commenter over the last couple of months.

This...is why I had a week or so of feeling (and being) pretty darn sick back in May (and couldn't complete BEDM).

And this...is part of (but not the only) reason why we bought ourselves a new car.


This is Findus*.

Travel back in time to 1st May 2014 and I was having an egg collection operation as part of our second IVF (ICSI) treatment. They collected 10 eggs on that occasion and 8 of them fertilised overnight. By the 6th May 2014, two of the little embryos were looking really good; one of them was transferred to me there and then (which sadly wasn't successful); the other plunged into a freezer at -196°C to be stored ready for us to use at a later date.

That later date was originally September and I started taking the medication in August last year. The transfer date was all set for 19th September and then what did I do on 18th September? Fell off my own doorstep and spectacularly fractured my ankle, that's what.

Fast forward 6 months from September (the length of time the orthopaedic consultant specified I had to wait for everything to heal) and I started taking the medication again in March.

Exactly 1 year to the day, on 1st May 2015 that frozen embryo was defrosted and transferred. Two weeks later, for the first time in 3 and half years, we actually saw those two little lines on a pregnancy test.



Today is 12 weeks and 4 days and in theory (keeping everything it's possible to cross, crossed) Findus should be joining us in January.

At the moment, it's about 25% excitement, 25% disbelief and 50% 'oh-my-god-I-can't-get-too-excited-because-I'll-jinx-it-but-what-if-I-don't-believe-in-it-surely-that'll-jinx-it-too?' thoughts. We've had three scans so far - two early ones at the fertility clinic and one normal 12 week one at the local hospital (which strangely, was done at 10 weeks and 5 days). All the medical people seem to have a hundred times more confidence than I do; what's going through my mind all the time is "my body hasn't worked properly for the last 3 and half years so what on earth makes everyone think it's going to work now?"

I'm hoping all those thoughts are fairly normal though.

*Obviously we're not going to put 'Findus' on the birth certificate but we did think it was rather appropriate for a little one who spent a year in the freezer.

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 20th June

I'm a week late with this month's photo an hour post (and a whole month late with May's but we won't go there...) - I meant to have this published last Tuesday!

Anyway, the short story is for July's photo an hour date I've chosen Saturday 18th July - let's hope the mini heatwave lasts til then and we can have lots of sunny beach and BBQ themed pictures!


The long story is here's how my day panned out...


9am - It was Andrew's turn to cook breakfast and he didn't do too badly.

10am - Andrew had taken the lorry out to a local event but I stayed home for a bit and tried to get on with sorting out the 136 dresses I'd dug out of my wardrobe.

11am - Time for a spot of tea and cake.

12pm - I remembered that I still hadn't unpacked the previous night's American candy bargains from B&M.

1pm - Off to catch the bus to the other side of town to meet Andrew for lunch.

2pm - Andrew had taken his lorry to the local heritage railway station and they'd laid on a vintage-style lunch in their buffet carriage.

3pm - Off for a walk around the station.

4pm - Still at the station with Andrew's lorry, watching the last few punters drift away.

5pm - I was back home and started undoing the cards for both my dad and Andrew's dad ready for father's day on the Sunday.

6pm - The current project was this little stuffed dog which came free as a kit on the cover of Knit Now magazine.

7pm - Still knitting but the wool's getting a bit tangled.

8pm - Gave up with the knitting to take the new car out for a spin in the lovely evening light.

9pm - Andrew's choice of driving music!

10pm - Back home and everyone needs a bit of Gavin and Stacey before bed!

16 lovely people took part this month!

Jane from Is That Your Darling joined in on Instagram and Twitter
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on her blog
Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on her blog
Lizzie from Lizzie Dripping joined in on Instagram and her blog
Janet from Words That Can Only Be Your Own joined in on Instagram and on her blog
Kerri from Crumbs in the Bed joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Sarah from The V Nice Life joined in on Instagram and on her blog
Rebecca from Writing, Fatshion, Me joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Rebecca from Futures joined in on Instagram, Twitter and on her blog
Rebecca from Just Me joined in on Instagram
Laura joined in on Instagram
Dan joined in on Instagram
Liz from Distract Me Now Please joined in on Sunday on Instagram
Siobhan joined in on Sunday on Instagram
Jennifer from Adventures in Pop Culture joined in on Sunday on Twitter
And of course, myself here on this post, plus on Instagram and on Twitter :-)

 

 

I hope I've managed to include everyone but give me a shout if you took part and I haven't included you. See you next month!

 

Also, check out what I was up to in...

June 2014