Sunday 24 April 2011

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!
 
May your day be warm,
and your sky be sunny; 
Your eggs be colourful,
and your chocolate yummy!

~Muir

Saturday 23 April 2011

Cherry Cheesecake Day


Today is Cherry Cheesecake Day. 

The best kind of cheesecake is homemade - don't let anyone tell you any differently. The premade stuff that you buy in the frozen food section is barely worth eating. It's flavourless and bland. A bit like cardboard, actually. But then, it is cheese and cheese never tastes good frozen. 

So go out today and buy the ingredients for a proper Cherry Cheesecake. And enjoy it.

:)

Friday 22 April 2011

Earth Day 2011






The Earth has everything we need: cities, forests, and oceans — all in 3-D. Farms are more expansive then Farmville and the ability they give us to connect out-classes Facebook. You can drive on the Earth, bike on it , and play on it. You can picnic under trees and ski down snowy mountains. Planet Earth defines the term green. The Earth has it all.  Life without our beautiful blue orb would very bleak and yet most of us seldom acknowledge, the support our Earth offers us 24/7 in every imaginable language. Perhaps the best way to celebrate Earth Day is to just stop, take a deep breath, and show gratitude to the place from which we all got our start.

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Garlic



Today is Garlic Day! So get out those cloves and fix up something good to eat! Or just eat them on their own, if you like!

Garlic Trivia:

Garlic contains 17 amino acids. Amino acids are essential to nearly every bodily function.

Garlic, along with onions and chives, is a member of the lily family.

Alliumphobia is the fear of garlic.


And let's not forget - it keeps vampires at bay. Unless of course the vampire is Italian.

Sunday 17 April 2011

Blah Blah Blah

Today is Blah Blah Blah Day, a day in which we celebrate all the nagging that has ever come our way by doing something about it, or not! Because after all, people wouldn't nag us if they didn't have good reason to do it. Back in my day, we had to walk up hill in 30 inches of snow and ice to get a good nagging at... blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah... And that's why penguins still don't fly to this day!

Friday 15 April 2011

A Random Passage From The Good Book

When my friend and I went to Nantwich last month, I picked up a copy of The Good Book. I've been reading it here and there, sometimes reading the pages in order and sometimes just letting the book open to a random page. Today is a random day, and since I've been neglecting my blog here recently, I thought I would share the verse and my thoughts with you.


Proverbs Chapter 70, Verse 8:  "Friend and flatterer do not meet in the same person."

A true friend will not try to flatter you. Flattery is false and rings of insincerities. A friend will give true praise where it is warranted, wise counsel when it is needed, and will not hesitate to give you a swift kick up the backside when you're being an ass!

How then, do we tell a friend from a flatterer? Plutarch, I believe, said it best, 

"In the first place, we must accurately remark upon the whole tenor of his life and conversation, whether or not the resemblance he pretends to the original be of any continuance, natural and easy, and all of a piece; whether he square his actions according to any one steady and uniform model, as becomes an ingenuous lover of conversation and friendship, which is all of one thread, and still like itself; for this is a true friend indeed. But the flatterer, who has no principles in him, and leads not a life properly his own, but forms and moulds it according to the various humors and caprices of those he designs to bubble, is never one and the same man, but a mere dapple or trimmer, who changes shapes with his company, like water that always turns and winds itself into the figure of the channel through which it flows."

A friend will be themselves no matter who they are around, while a flatterer changes his beliefs, his ideals, indeed his entire personality, according to each person he is with. That's an easy way to tell the two apart, no?

In parting, be a friend not a flatterer.

~Muir

Saturday 9 April 2011

Back Home Part 2!

As promised, here are more photos. These are of the sculptures around the beach and the views from it. I plan on using a lot of the photos that I have taken over the last week and paint them using ArtRage.


















Back Home!

We're back home now. Our week away was nice and relaxing, but it is good to be back home. Paul was missing his roller coaster and water slide videos and I was missing drawing!

Yesterday we went to the arcade where Paul played on several games and we won, as a friend calls it, lots of "useless tat." But it was all fun and maybe some of it won't be completely useless, hehe. After the arcade, Paul ran off some of his boundless energy at the playground, which is conveniently located just outside the arcade. It was such a nice day, with temperatures in the 70's, so we went for a walk along the beach before walking back to the caravan for supper.

I have lots of photos to share of our last day so I will be making two blog entries. This one, which has photos of Paul in the arcade and playground and a photo of the "tat" and one which will have all the photos of the beach.

The next week is going to be busy with housework and "normal" life, but since Paul is out of school and has at least one special day planned, I will try to get more photos up here before school starts again.








Thursday 7 April 2011

Prestatyn Days 5 and 6

Yesterday we went to Nova, a gym/swimming centre near where we're staying. Its pretty nice and wasn't very crowded at all. Paul's favourite thing was the frog slide in the shallow pool. He played on it nearly the entire hour we were there! He wanted to go into the big pool, but me not being a strong swimmer, I decided it was best that we stay in the shallow pool. Mostly for my nerves, more than anything! Nova also has a rather large orange water slide that Paul was just itching to go on. However, he was half an inch too short to be able to use it. Maybe next year! The entry price was really good! I had expected to have to pay for both me and Paul, but since he's autistic and is considered to be disabled, we were only charged for him to get in and I got in free as his carer.

Today we took it easy and relaxed in the caravan. I took a couple of photos of the more interesting views from the caravan we are staying in. One is from the living room and is of a sand dune with a fence on top of it. Just a few yards from there is the beach, so we are really very close to it! The second photo is the view from Paul's bedroom window.

Tomorrow we plan on going to the arcade, since Paul has been asking to go there all week. I now have a handful of change, so he'll have plenty of money to spend on games and such there. Hopefully I'll have a few more interesting photos to share by then!


Tuesday 5 April 2011

Prestatyn Day 4

Not much was done today. Paul and I stayed in the caravan until after lunch (we had popcorn chicken, if you're curious). Paul was dead set against going to the cinema this evening, so after lunch we walked into town and did some shopping. I bought some clothing and a bottle of chocolate-orange scented shower gel from Ethel Austin. Paul chose a magnetic photo frame snow globe and a loop-the-loop car race set (a very small one) from the same store.



Since Paul was adamant that he didn't want to go to the cinema, we instead went to Blockbusters where he chose Space Chimps 2 and Despicable Me and I grabbed How to Train Your Dragon and Prince of Persia on DVD. I had hoped that he would want to watch one of the DVDs tonight in lieu of the cinema, but he chose to watch CBeeBies instead. Oh well, we have until Friday night to watch them and we can always take them home with us, since they were pre-owned.

We also took advantage of being in town to get a bit more food shopping done. Hopefully we're all set for the rest of the week, although at the rate Paul goes through food, we'll probably need to do another small shop by Thursday.

Today's photos are the view of the hills from town, Paul playing with his car track, and tonight's sunset.

Tomorrow Paul wants to go swimming. The local baths don't open until 5pm though. Hopefully he can wait that long!

Monday 4 April 2011

Prestatyn Day 3

This morning Paul decided to "cuddle the sofa." So he did. And I took a photo of it (the first photo, below). He's quite a silly boy, but that's part of his charm.

After a hearty breakfast of a banana, an orange, a bowl of cereal, two hot cross buns and some crisps (potato chips, for any Americans reading) and three glasses of juice (for Paul) and a bowl of cereal and two mugs of tea (for me), we set off to a nearby playground. Paul had loads of fun on the various equipment there (as seen in the second and third photos). And the view was quite nice as well.

Unfortunately, it was quite windy and far too cold to spend very long outside, so we started walking back after about 45 minutes. On the way, we stopped off at a nearby shop and Paul picked out some snacks and a toy motorbike to help keep him busy for the rest of the day.

Allen, one of the people from HAFS, stopped by unexpectedly this afternoon to show one of the youths around the caravan. Autistic people are different from you and I in that unfamiliar places really makes them uneasy and stressed. Sometimes, allowing them to walk around and explore an area before they stay there overnight (or even for a day) can help them cope with the change. 

At the moment, Paul is in the shower playing with an assortment of beach buckets and spades. He's having fun, so as long as he doesn't flood the bathroom and get water all over the floor, it's all good.

Tomorrow we will either go swimming or go to the cinema. It all depends on the opening times and what mood Paul is in.




Sunday 3 April 2011

Prestatyn Day 2

It got really cold last night. The central heating in this caravan can only be turned on for up to two hours at a time and there's no thermostat, so when it turns itself off, if you don't get up and turn it back on, it stays off. Paul and I each had two thick blankets on our bed to keep warm through the night. Needless to say, I started the morning with a hot mug of tea!

It rained off and on all day, but the temperature was quite warm. Paul and I walked to the outdoor market and had a bit of a look around. There wasn't much there, but Paul picked out a small spinning top toy and I grabbed some yummy cakes for us to eat through the week (marzipan is yummy). Before we left the market, Paul asked for an orange slushie, which I bought as a reward for him being good.

After the market we walked through town and went to Home Bargains and then Iceland for a frozen food shop. We found the Scala Cinema and I plan on us going there sometime during the week to watch a film. Hopefully Paul will like it as he's not been in a cinema since he was about four years old. We got lots of yummy foods and drinks to hopefully last us the week. Although at the rate Paul is going through the fruit and snacks we'll have to make another small shopping trip Tuesday or Wednesday!

Because of the rain, we stayed the rest of the day in the caravan. Paul watched television and played with his bubbles and spinning top (and snacked nearly nonstop) and I drank tea and played Dragon Age on my laptop (it  just  plays it). Paul also decorated my travelling notebook with stickers - Bob the Builder stickers, no less.

Here are the photos for today. The first one is Paul outside Iceland, the second is of the church spire just visible from the Iceland car park. The others I think you can figure out on your own.