100 days happy revisitied

One of my other posts was about enjoying my job and feeling I am making a difference. This last week has been tough with work and I have had to be in at the weekend as well. Today I am celebrating planning ahead to things I would like to do with my job role. I am happy to have the freedom to decide things to work on and to have the space in which to do them. I frequently complain about how science doesn't pay compared to the level of education and technical skill needed but at the end of the day I can spend time discussing cool science and setting up experiments in the lab. Nice to be able to look ahead for once as well and realise I do have lots of ideas. These are my fluorescently dyed cells which I think are pretty cool. The last one is a single mammalian cell in a well which will grow to form a cell population which can be scaled up to produce a therapeutic antibody for use in patients.

Actually this is from last week but I've still kept it off and am on the downward trend. Thanks to Slimming World, I am 2 stone (28lbs) lighter than I was at the beginning of June. I have another 12 weeks to Christmas and just bought my 12 week countdown last night. I'm grateful to a lovely group of people who are on the same journey, particularly the amazing Pauline.

I don't have a photo for today, but would like to use an old one instead - one of my favourites of Christian. This morning was really tough, in fact most of the day was. Work and home are both full of stress. I had to do a bit of a reset and stop feeling like a failure.  I started counting the successes of the day, particularly against the odds. I got everybody fed, dressed and out to school/nursery/work on time despite loads of traffic problems and dramas. Everyone is doing well at school/nursery and work. We are succeeding in eating good food - lots of fruit, veg and home cooking. Everyone has clean clothes, the house is relatively tidy, the cars are working. We are pushed to the limit but we are making it all happen every day. Life is good and it's no where near as difficult as it has been in the past. Today is a success!

#100happydays  . Enough said. It was a very nice bottle of wine, and much needed after a tough day. I'm grateful for The Wine Society who kindly deliver a box of awesome wine - called their Essential Box - I quite agree. 

#100happydays  day9. Spending time with my precious happy girl at Tiny Talk and chasing round the house being silly. Also remembering that even in the most difficult times I used to play these games with Stirling too.

#100happydays  day 8. Happy to have use of the awesome creche area at church so we can still in some way be part of everything, even with crazy children. We've been playing with the jungle hospital which is currently treating a dinosaur, cow and pig of course.

#100happydays  day 7. Love my birthday bunting. It makes it out for everybody's birthdays. Today it's out for a certain little lady is 6.  @SewHappyCrafts On other notes, perfect boiled eggs make the world go round.

#100happydays  day 6. Singing You Are My Sunshine in the car with Stirling. No gray skies here though. Now I have Mr Blue Sky running through my head. Delete Comment

I've been listening to audiobooks on my journey into work since I don't get time to read any more. This week is The Chimp Paradox. Your chimp is the limbic part of your brain controlling emotion and reactions, where your human is the frontal cortex and reasoning. I actually found it really useful but laughed out loud when it talked about feeding your chimp bananas this morning - as distraction or reward. Just hilarious. So todays mantra is exercise, box, bananas ( in relation to managing the chimp that is). http://chimpmanagement.com/the-chimp-model/the-model/some-science/

Actually not an awful day, just very full on both at work and home. Just exhausted and children not sleeping. Would be nice to have some time to chill but no such luck. Instead I was teaching Bea "Cheers!". I had a very nice G&T, she had water.

Work lunch out catching up with old colleagues and coming back to a coffee and free afternoon. I love my job and the work I'm doing at the moment. Maybe a boring post to some but I am grateful for having a job that I look forward to going in to. I'm grateful for the amazing opportunities I have had in my career.  PS also we had a good dance to the soundtrack to Moana this morning, which was also a happy time.

After a rubbish nights sleep all around, I was fearing the worst for my Monday. This is my day off from work but Stirling still has to get to school, Bea and I to tinytalk and then sort the house out, prep dinner, collect Stirling and get him to swimming class. Normally by the end of the day I'm shaking with the effort of fighting everyone through every aspect. Today was a good day... Stirling ate all his breakfast and then brought the bowl out, we all got to where we were supposed to. Stirling even listened in his swimming lesson. It may have been a rare experience but at least I will be able to look back on it and know that it happened.

Today is harvest festival and a great time to start this challenge. This morning I woke  up to both my children snuggled in. My happy day 1. We made it out to church and I am so thankful for the wonderful community we have there. It's been difficult recently being reminded that sometimes people who are awful have a lot more than us and yet are extremely ungrateful for it. I have to let that go and focus on what I do have. My son is a bit of a nightmare getting ready in the morning or then leaving whatever he is doing. He has challenged us every step of the way today. I am grateful for having a supportive marriage where we deal with the chaos together and open the bottle of wine in the evening. One day we might get a little peace and quiet. Until then there's chocolate and alcohol. And finally, a photo of my darling Christian, which turned up recently. 4 years since we lost him. This was from a touring car race at Brands hatch. I scrapped together money from