You know you are a grandma when ...

1. The muted palette of colours that adorn your once calm home - the creams and shades of coffee that you worked hard to coordinate - are joined by lime green travel cots and bright red walkers.

2. You realise that whilst black is  a good colour for a woman of your age - very forgiving and covers a multitude of sins - it shows every bit of rusk, banana and regurgitated milk.

3. You remember how amazing it is to snuggle a warm little body and read 'Dear Zoo' for the nth time. Nothing changes.

4. The new Thomas the tank engine and Postman Pat DVDs fill you with horror. Postman Pat as a clone who appears on x Factor and is horrible to everyone in the village - I don't think so!

5. You replace the photo of your son in your purse with one of your grandson.

6. You open your 'posh' leather handbag to reveal a nappy, a dummy and yet another copy of 'Dear Zoo'.

7. Your son realises that actually you weren't that bad a mum and asks for your advice on everything from washing temperatures to car seats.

8. On learning that there is going to be a grandchild number 2 your heart leaps with joy and the thought of a double buggy no longer holds any fear.

9. You at last have a 'willing' or ready model who at the age of 9 months knows to smile at Grandma's camera.

10. You understand that nothing can compare with a beautiful child beaming because you are there and holding out his arms to be loved.

Thank you to my son and daughter in law for letting me share 'our Tommy' at times of difficulty with mum in a dementia care  home there have been times when his smile has been the one thing that has kept me going x

Collages

Collages are a great way to display lots of images. There are a variety of apps which will allow you to do this - my personal favourite is #Moldiv as it is easy to use and has some really 'classic' layouts - I'm not a personal fan of clip art type frames and extras - I like clean lines and Moldiv provides this.

There are times however, when I want to use images on my PC. The site http://www.pizap.com/ has a number of templates - all of which are easy to use. (There is an app but this just didn't appeal in its marketing - too messy)

1. Choose your template

 2. Click add photo button (you can select more than one at once)

3. Choose your photos

 4. Save your collage

Having said that I like clean lines I can see  possibilities for the jigsaw layout! 

Determination

This is what determination looks like. My gorgeous grandson Tommy - as many of you know - was born without a right hand. He showed us just how determined he was yesterday by crawling - so proud of him! x

Nearly there

I'm sure that by now you are all heartily fed up of myself and @debrakidd 'banging on' about fund raising for a new classroom for Kakuma. If that's the case - apologies and stop reading now! However, we are soooo close - we need approx another £800 and we can have a classroom built within 3 months. We've managed to raise £4,400 through generous donations, friends, selling clothes (Debbie you need to stop now), selling cards, offering our time ...basically anything we can think of. I cannot begin to tell you how much it affected us - how grim the conditions in Kakuma 4 are.

 The dust, the heat, the lack of resources all make life almost impossible at times.

It's Good Friday today and my kitchen side is full of Easter eggs for various children - I expect yours is too - is there any way you could donate the cost of an Easter egg - £2 or £3 to help us achieve our goal - knowing how we felt after just a few days I cannot imagine the horror of this now being your way of life. The best way we can help is to provide other classrooms - 200 in a class is unworkable - each new classroom cuts down on class sizes.

Thank you so much to those of you who have already helped.

Please - we need your support.

https://www.justgiving.com/ww-ep