new family member lol

A few weeks ago, hubby took time off work and we set about moving the pond from the left-hand side of the garden to the right-hand side. At the time I thought the same thing that you're probably thinking right now... what a waste of time and effort, not to mention the money... but it is sooo much better now. There is more room as you step out of the door, the fish are not in full sun and the patio area seems sooo much bigger AND I get another veggie plot, although kids want it to be for herbs since it is so near the kitchen; so all in all it was well worth all the digging around in the mud ;o)

Here's a little something that we found during the transition... he's been put in the new pond but we haven't seen him since but I'm not overly worried as I had no idea that he was living in the old one!

The boys having a well earned rest.

The plastic covering waiting to be filled and then cut to size.

I haven't got any pics of the completed pond yet but I'll get some as soon as the rain stops :o)

Horse Riding Fun

Our home ed group recently went horseriding at a local riding school. It was great fun and the staff were very friendly. We all had a great time despite the heavens opening up at one point. The horses took it all in their stride. At the end we were all given vouchers for money off future lessons; now we just have to fit it into our busy schedules ;o)

Catch up Time

Just noticed that I haven't posted during April at all; this was mainly due to lots going on so I had very little time to be on the computer or to take any photos.

My youngest has been diligently working towards taking her ICT exam which is coming up next month (yikes!). My son has been making lots of money, well a little bit of money, doing programming and my eldest has been gearing up towards moving out.

As a family, we've been getting the caravan ready for outings (we are a little behind this year for lots of reasons, too many to go into), redesigning the garden on paper and then putting it all into practice over hubby's holidays from work and finally we've got a new puppy, well she's 9 months old but still a handful when she's full of beans in a morning.
We decided that we didn't want to be a dog free family when sadly Molly had to return to the RSPCA for further training to sort out her demons. Hopefully she will live with a trainer fulltime or with a family with lots of experience of dealing with a nervous dog.

Lots of photos to come but as usual just haven't got the time right now to do them :o)

Barrel Roof Science :o)

This is an experiment from Super Charged Science. It's in the Forces section and apparently a Barrel Roof can hold up to 400 times it's own weight!
We printed off the template and my youngest followed the video and did all the mountain and valley folds and we ended up with a tunnel shaped piece of paper, it certainly didn't look strong enough to hold anything let alone 400 times it's own weight but we carried on.

We then had to balance two pencils on the top so that the paper had something to balance on.

We then stopped and put a place mat underneath the tunnel to stop any sliding on the work surface and the pencils back on top and then another place mat on top of that. We were amazed that it could hold so much.

Then we started to place the paper on top. Unfortunatly we didn't get to 400 sheets, I think we made it to 60 and then the whole thing collapsed in a heap. Even so we were still impressed that our little tunnel had done so well.

If you go to the first photo you'll notice that not all 'legs' were touching the work surface, I think this was the problem. It was such a simple experiment to do and we had fun; it was a great one for us to start with because my daughter has done lots of origami before so didn't feel out of her depth with it.