Chloé’s 4th Birthday!

Chloé is now 4 years old. We celebrated her birthday with an early wake up call, presents and an evening bowling on the 17th May.

She was quite spoilt this year. We got her a new DSI XL as her old DS had crapped out as she keeps dropping the damn thing. We got her some medical stuff as she seems really interested in that kind of thing. A stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer and some medical supplies such as bandages, plasters etc from Poundland.

She also asked for a Bean Bag and some new headphones for her DS and a few other things. After Ryan had finished school, we all went to Eastleigh to go bowling for the evening, afterwards she would choose what she wanted to do for dinner. Obviously, she chose McDonald’s!

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Practical Driving Test

I booked my practical driving test now that I have successfully passed my theory. I have added a counter in the sidebar on the right of my blog.

When I pass my driving test, it will change my life so much. We will be able to go to so many places that we had thought were just too expensive or where the public transport is quite bad.

Having my licence means I will be able to see my family more often. Rather than every 3 months I will be able to see them perhaps every month or even less! It’s all so exciting, I can’t wait!

Portal 2 – Perpetual Testing Initiative – My First Look

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks then you should already know and have played with the new feature that Valve added to Portal 2, the Perpetual Testing Initiative! Ever since they announced this awesome news, I have been wanting to get my hands on it. So, on May 8th they finally released it to the public. It is awesome!

I recorded my first time on it and uploaded it to YouTube for all to see!

The map isn’t brilliant, but its not bad for 25 minutes of work. If I was to do that in Hammer, then it would have taken perhaps a couple of hours to do! So there it is. It’s now out in the wild and people have been mapping like crazy fools over the past 2 days. As I write this, there have been 28,641 maps made.

If you haven’t jumped on the Portal band wagon, then I suggest you do it right now. For the next 12 hours Portal 2 will be £5.09, then will go back up to its usual price of £14.99. If you’[re real smart, then you will also spend an extra £3.40 and get both Portal 1 and 2 together!

If you’re one of those people who need to buy the game on a physical disk, then head on over to Amazon and buy it for £16.00 and free delivery if you live in the UK.

Maths worksheets

As it was still early last night after I printed off those maths worksheets, I decided that I would get Ryan to complete a few for me. I explained what he had to do and he done the rest himself. I am really impressed with his work! He had no trouble at all!

Of course, I had to record a video of him doing one! He’s completing the Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 5 worksheet in the video.

While he was doing the worksheets, I also snapped a few photos!

This is the set up that I used to film him doing the worksheet!

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Teaching Materials

I have looked around for teaching materials that I can use to help Ryan ( my son ) develop his maths skills and have found a brilliant website, http://www.tlsbooks.com/, that I can use to download and print out some worksheets for him.

It seems that this is an American website, but as maths is a universal language this presents no problems what so ever! It seems that tlsbooks.com also provide worksheets for other subjects as well as maths, which means I shall be coming back here in the future!

Some of the maths worksheets I have downloaded and printed out for Ryan;

  • Addition Number Charts 2
  • Multiplication Number Charts 1
  • Number Patterns worksheet 1 & 2
  • Missing Numbers 1-20
  • Number Line
  • Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 5
  • Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 10

Everything adds up to around 20 pages of work for Ryan to complete. With some time over the next week or so, I believe he can complete each and every one of these. I will post his results when he has finished.

Stupid Washing Machine!

The other night, we put some washing on as usual and then sat down to watch some television. Katie heard that the washing machine had stopped and went out to put some more on. The washing machine had flooded my kitchen, hall way and door landing ( I live in a flat ) outside!

The water had got every where! The kitchen and hall way contained the majority of the water luckily. I cleaned up the mess and proceeded to take apart the wahsing machine to see if I could fix the problem!

The first thing I looked at was the debris filter at the bottom of the washing machine. Opened it and water came gushing out. Mistake on my part, but what ever. This was not the cause. I then opened the top of the washing machine to see if I could do anything from the inside.

Once I opened it, it was very obvious!

The pipe that lead into the washing power drawer had completely come away from it. What an easy fix!

I attached it back to the draw intake and then turned it back on. The washing machine leaked every where! The leak came from the debris filter at the bottom this time. Turns out that I’m a tit and I hadn’t screwed it back on properly! I had to use some pliers to make it tight enough, but once it was all done, I tested the washing machine again and it worked perfectly!

Drying out the hall way carpet was a nightmare, but luckily we haven’t actually carpeted it properly yet, so it was all still in sections. We pulled it up and stuck them on the radiators over night ( a proper sweat fest that was! ) and they were dry by the morning. We re-laid them, and they are all fine now.

I passed my driving theory test!

Since August last year I have been using the Theory Test Pro website to study for my driving theory test. I took quite a few tests between then and now and I passed each and every one of them as you can see below, which is just awesome!

Road safety really is all about common sense!

I am really happy with the results I was getting!

On the 24th April, I finally got to officially prove that I can pass the test. I passed and I am now one step closer to driving my car that I won from JVC!

I was really happy that I passed my theory driving test!

All I need to do now is get some more driving lessons and pass my practical and I can drive my car by myself!