School's out for Summer!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoop whoop!

Teaching practice completed and successfully passed?

Check!

Assignments all completed and handed in?

Check!

Exams swotted for and sat?

Check!

4 months holiday until the next semester starts?

Check!

Yeeha! My second year of my course is over! This time next year I will be qualified! I can't believe how fast it is going and am so happy that I made the hard decision to leave work to follow my dream to become a teacher!

So what to do with my new found free time?!

Well I've had a fair bit of partying to do. I spent the bank holiday weekend in Bristol for a dear old friends' hen weekend. We partied by night, and mooched around the shops during the day. The lovely new Cabot Circus was fab and the cafes there were perfect for people watching - which due to tired feet we spent a bit of time doing!

I pinched this shot from the website; this square had the most divine shops and the water fountains shooting directly from the paving and splashing back down on the stones looked so pretty in the sunlight (and my aching feet were desperate to take a little stroll over the water outlets!)- but I didn't have my camera! I could have spent a small fortune in the Molton Brown boutique - quite literally! A travel-sized soap cost £15 alone. I think I'll have to wait for a QVC TSV lol!

Then last weekend, my uni class had our end of exams celebratory night out - much Champagne was consumed with special thanks to my fantastic friend Vicki, who was leaving us to return to New Zealand to complete the course there. I feel honoured to have met such a fantastic woman - she is so energetic and inspiring and constantly amazed me by balancing a hectic family life spread over two global hemispheres with the demands of the course, and her continual encouragement and support when it was needed by others. She would go out of her way to help anyone - she really was an angel, and had a wicked sense of humour and anecdotes

to match. She really will be missed by us all next year. So here is a group of shot of my fab class whilst we were all still decent and controlled lol - the teachers of the future!!!

The night after (as if I didn't already have enough of a headache) was Lee's sister's Hawaiian themed birthday BBQ. Here we are suitable dressed for the occasion with our good friends S&A. The Luau Marquee was home to the biggest and most lethal punch bowl you ever did see. "Bring it on!! " we cried!!!
The chooks are well and truly settled in - we are getting 2-3 eggs every day: we think it is just the smallest girl, Dolly, left to come into lay now.

That said, we have been nursing Dora indoors for the last few days!All four girls quickly got into a great routine of getting themselves off to bed at night - I had read that you may have to show them how to use the ladder to get into the coop for a few days until they get the hang of it, however our fab girls took to it like, erm, ducks to water. So when we went out one evening to lock the coop up for the night, we found it a bit strange to find Dora cwtched up under the ladder. Just a dizzy chook moment we thought, and Lee lifted her into the coop with the others.

But the next morning when I let them out, she slid rather than walked down the ladder and plopped to the bottom, where she stayed. I could see immediately that she'd hurt her leg and scooped her up and took her indoors amidst my tears (I'm such a wussy wuss wuss!!). We looked at her closely and sought advice and it seems that she has bruised her upper leg badly - apparently it can take them a fortnight to recover from bruising and strains :( We think she must have tumbled from either the ladder or one of the branch perches we had put in there to enrich their environment, poor dab. What ever it was - I feel so guilty! She is starting to stand and bare a little weight but is still not walking properly, so she's indoors where we can be sure that she won't fall again, won't be trampled on by the other girls and that her food and water is in reach for her. She seems to be getting brighter each day, and is bawking away at me as I type!!

So, as you can see I'm all partied out and busy chook-sitting! I have applied for a few summer jobs, but they are very few and far between with the current economical climate. So hopefully I'll be able to get on with some nice creative projects over the next few weeks to keep me out of trouble!!!!
Catch you soon xxxx