Snow, snow, snow, snow...I love snow.

Nic woke nice and early today (well she would as she has to be at work by 7am...crazy woman), she peeked out into the street and let out an excited whisper...well Jack was asleep in our room. She reckoned I wouldn't be going to work today but if only, no work = no pay so off i went.

It was mental trying to drive through the deep snow as even the main roads were deep in snow n' slush. I told my boss we should have a work snowball fight to encourage inter-team relations but oh no, that was just not allowed.

A disaster averted (hopefully)

Life in our house has not been very good of late, in fact it had got to the point of agreeing we would be splitting up when our tenancy ends at the end of february. It has really seemed like the end of the world, for reasons of privacy I will not go into the full details here but needless to say I saw visions of me only seeing Jack occasionally ( the UK courts seem to think only mothers are fit to be parents whereas the fathers must be bottomless pockets for the mothers...and before i get loads of nasty comments about this remark just remember its my blog and my views ). I was absolutely heartbroken as Jack is my world, nothing else has any meaning without him.

After a rather frosty time we talked & have decided to try one more time to make things work, we are both at fault it is definitely not one person more than the other. We are not trying for the sake of Jack although but of us decided we wanted Jack to have a happy family upbringing rather than what has become the norm these days of shuffling him from one parent to the other. Neither of us ever saw ourselves as single parents and if possible we want to avoid this happening so fingers crossed.

I have enjoyed being at home with Jack this week, as Nic & I have trouble getting the same holidays work I have ended up taking this week off, except friday when I have to go in. Monday I had to go to the dentist, initally I was going to take Jack but recently he has been a little clingy so thought better of it and grandad had him for a couple of hours. We have been playing cars, watching kids tv (good but not as great as kids tv when I was growing up), we went to Jam Jam Boomerang yesterday which is a kids soft play centre near Coventry airport, it was heaving with mainly mums and grandparents but a couple of dads were there. Usually we go there as a family or with friends so it was nice to spend some quality time, just me and my son. When Nic got home from work yesterday she did some painting with Jack, his first painting so we are going to frame that later. Today I took Jack to get his hair cut, the lady who cut his hair sprayed some water on his hair after cutting it, Jack reached for the bottle and she handed it over......very silly thing to do, he turned the bottle on her immediately and sprayed her! That'll teach her a lesson.

Tomorrow I don't know what we will do, I might take him to the transport museum in the city centre as I have never been in there, if it's nice I might take him to the park. I would have preferred the chance to take him to the park more but the weather has just not been good enough.

One of the best books I have read in a while has to be Val McDermid's The Grave Tattoo. I have discovered a new website recently as well, readitswapit. Over the last few years I have been selling all my books on ebay after reading them, this was always a hit & miss affair as I rarely got much for my books (ebay is so pants now, greedy ebay decided to let businesses trade on their & lots of crap japanese/hong kong sellers list as UK sellers..typical greed once agains destroys what was once a great site). With readitswapit you list your books and you get an email if someone wants to swap with you, you can then view there books and either agree on a swap or decline the swap...you can also ask other people to swap one of their books for one of yours, its great. I have got a few more books to read now and all for the cost of a book i have read and postage. Unlike some other swapping sites you can swap straight away without having to send your books off to other people to gain points before you can request a book. I am getting rid of more books this way & always get another book in return that I want...why don't you take a look.

Take care all and I hope your New Year started better than mine, hopefully things can only get better...VampJack x

Merry Christmas

I am a very poorly person right now but wanted to drop by to wish everyone a very merry christmas.

I never seem to have the time to update my journal as often as I would like but I have to make an extra special effort at special times of the year. I can't belive 2008 is nearly over already, my god...Jack is nearly 2 years old. We have borrowed his grandparents camcorder ready for tomorrow morning, I can't wait to see his face when he gets all his presents, he is going to be so excited.

As I am quite poorly at the moment (not sure if its the start of flu, just a virus or something more sinister that Jack Bauer should be investigating ) I am going to go and have a nice hot bath and hopefully Jack will be a good boy and sleep well tonight. I will be reading him the night before christmas when he's in bed shortly and then hopefully I can relax for the rest of the night....after last minute pressie wrapping of course.

Take care all and have a great christmas.

VampJack x

5 minute escape

I don't know about you but i never seem to get 5 minutes to myself any more. Jack is a big attention seeker, then there's the housework, my job, birthday parties, insurance shopping...it goes on...and on...and on.

Jack has been a good boy tonight and used his potty, his reward?...stealing my bath! I can't wait until he's potty trained properly..less nappies so more money for something else he'll need. He is learning lots of new words, this week i have taught him one, two, three & a, b & c. After christmas when we know what is happening with nic's job we are going to find a child minder so he can have more interaction with other kids to help him develop more, he amazes me how much he can do already. If you had told me that before he was 2 he would be using so many words & be so independant I would have laughted at you and called those nice young men in their white coats, I really had no idea how quickly kids develop. He has also started using a cup this week without a lid on, he spills a little down hiself but not much as he is quite careful, he just seems eager to drink it in case we take it away from him which i guess is because he is used to having the odd drink from our cups then having it quickly whisked away again.

Work is quite pants, I am so bored and feel that i need something to challenge me but then I think about all the people that are losing their jobs and I realise how lucky i am. I got dressed up again last week for halloween but I only have pics from work with the rest of my team so cannot post any here as they may not wish to have their pictures displayed for all to see.

Those of you who know me will maybe have been wondering about my state of mind following the final F1 race of the season, well I can tell you I was absolutely devastated, it took about 2 hours for me to come to terms with what happened. Lewis Hamilton is a fantastic driver and thoroughly deserves to be the champion but I still wish it had gone to Felipe Massa in the Ferrari. On the last laps I was screaming at the tv hoping & praying that lewis would cross the line in 6th place so Massa could win then when Glock slowed because of the rain fallling heavier I was crushed, we had the championship for 38 seconds........oh well, only another 134 days until the new season starts.

from where i left off....

Hello people of blogger world...I have been very bad and not added any entries to my old aol journal for what can only be described as a very considerable length of time...those of you that have used aol will be very familiar with the standard practice of starting an entry, restarting the entry after aol crashed...restarting again and then eventually saying bugger it and go and do something else.

So what have we been up to since i last decided to impart news of my dreary life... well Jack has got bigger & louder & bigger & noisier & bigger & more boisterous. Just yesterday he put a wodden box thingie on his head, it is a little persons toy box type thing with moving parts to amuse them...poor grandad who was doing his usual babyminding routine tried to remove the box but it was jammed on hard. After trying for a few minutes to remove the item he decided the only way to do so was to get a screwdriver and take the bloody thing apart....just as Jack pulled free! The things kids do amaze me, don't know why really cos by all accounts i was always doing things i shouldn't.

We got money out of the airline for our damaged cases in case anyone is wondering, with very little fuss actually which was quite surprising.

My mum won a photo-shoot with olan mills (i think it was them anyway) so back in august we went to nottingham to have family photo's done...there was me, nic & jack...my sister, bro-in-law & 2 kids and my mum. The photo's weren't too bad considering i hate having my pic taken. Its nice for my mum to have photo's of all of us together as we don't get together too often.

Back in July we had a nice week at my sisters, she has a huge back garden and it was great seeing Jack running around playing, we only have a poxy postage stamp sized garden and we really would love a bigger garden so he can play out more. Our garden doesn't get much sun on it so when it gets wet it doesn't dry out for weeks. Jack got more toys from my sister as she was having a clear out of her garage...my nephew got a new bike for his birthday so my sister has said hen Jack is bigger he can have his cousin's old bike.

My work is still a pain, i am so bored and desperately want a new job that will challenge me but in the current economic climate i am probably better off staying put for a while. I honestly believe that if i didn't have Jack to support i would have walked out months ago. I have to consider myself lucky, at least i have a job and one that pays reasonably well for this area. I have recently had an old friend contact me after finding me on friends reunited, he was living in gibraltar but is just moving across the border to spain so has offered to help me out looking for work & somewhere to live in Spain. It has given me a bit of a boost but again i'm not just going to jump at the first chance as Jack is my biggest priority so i have to make sure that i will be earning enough to support my family whilst still having time to spend at home with them.

Jack's vocabulary is building day by day, he mimicks us all the time in mannerisms & trying to copy words. It is such a joy every time he says a new word, mind you his favourite word is no which does get annoying. he is so strong willed as well, it is virtually impossible to get him to do something if he doesn't want to, he has become very fussy with food but hopefully that will be a passing phase. A few eeeks ago he bit my finger and cut the skin at ths side of my nail, i left it thinking it would heal on its own but it got infected and i had to have antibiotics to clear up the infection, as a result of my son's vampire tendencies (bless, he's more like me every day..ha ha) i now have only half a finger nail as the rest has dropped off.

I have just noticed whilst typing this that blogger autosaves a draft while you type...this service would have been a godsend for aol journallers.

Anyway thats all i have time for now.... Vampire Jack x

goodbye & good riddance aohell

I have not updated my aol journal for a while now, mainly because i don't use aol any more and just can't be bothered with keep trying to update a journal when aol has a nasty habit of crashing before I save the entry. Now aol is shutting down its journal service i have no reason to use aol any longer.....hooray!

I will be checking to see if my j'land buddies are moving to another service as I still wish to keep reading all their journals.

I may even start posting regular entries again!!

Vampire Jack x

Jack's first holiday

Hello again, nice picture isn't it...just one of a number of pics of my damaged suitcase following my recent trip to Majorca. We flew with bmibaby who by now will have a nice letter telling them to cough up.

Another pic of my lovely knackered case

 

And another...bored yet?

 

 

This was near the end of the holiday, look at Jack's eye, he tried turning over halfway down the slide & cut his eye...needless to say he is fine & 5 minutes later was running around again as if nothing had happened.

 

Amazing what amuses kids..a big straw & you get big smiles

 

Give them a big straw AND a beer mat & they're in heaven! 

 

Jack obviously started early..wondering what the hell these little drink umbrella's are for

 

1 bucket & some seawater = very wet Jack

 

Quiet after a day in the sun ( with plenty of sun cream of course )

 

This holiday lark is soo tiring

 

Chilling out at Sam's bar after a hot day

 

This sand sculpture was amazing, a 3 headed dragon with fire in its nostrils...

 

and a very eery looking castle in the forest

 

Back to the sunshine again, Jack loved the pool better than the beach which suited us just fine, bloody sand just gets everywhere.

 

Jack having fun on another slide (not the eye splitting slide), I think this was our first evening.

 

The hotel was average but you get what you pay for, Nic didn't really like the food but I thought it was okay. The housekeepers were crap though. We had rain for about half the time we were there but I'd rather be in Majorca with the rain than Coventry anyday, it was still boiling hot when it rained. One night we had an amazing lightning storm, it was better than any light show i've ever seen, forked lightning lighting up the place like we were in a war zone...cool!

The holiday was a nice break from the norm, Jack kept us on our feet for the first few days until Nic's parents got there then they allowed us to have a bit of rest and the chance to eat our dinners.

Busy busy busy so will catch up again soon...hope you are all well, unlike me, I have a killer sore throat, might even have to go to doctors soon feels like laringytis i had last year..take care x