Hungry? Which type of hungry?

I'm hungry! A phrase I here regularly in our household. What 8 going on 9 year old boy is not perpetually hungry.
 But then we have a twist. Type 1 Diabetes.
 Lex doesn't often feel when he is low, but after 4+ years of watching him grow up with this disease, I have got pretty good at spotting when his blood sugar is lower than we would like!
Usually one's blood sugar hovers gently in the range of 4-6 mmol/l -in people who do not have Diabetes. Lex has been running around playing football with a blood sugar of 2.2 and quote ' feels fine!!'  Getting him to recognise this is slow progress. When asked how he feels when low he will say he is hungry - not much help really. So now we have developed a system of him categorising his hunger in an attempt to teach him to recognise low blood sugars.
So we have 'hungry hungry' - usually around meal times - what I would call your normal hunger.
Next - 'bored hungry' usually announced whilst sitting in the car on a long journey, waiting for the bus and the like - in other words I have nothing to do so eating seems like a good idea.
Finally we have ' low hungry' - that hunger feeling he gets when his blood sugar is on its way down or is already in his boots - time for food NOW .
Not the most scientific system but it slowly seems to be working.
Having worked on lows, we have of course been battling the highs from hell for the last 3 days - no rhyme or reason of course, maybe growing, a bug, the weather or just because Diabetes does just that. Thank god for the pump, correction bolusing with little fuss, insulin on board and my new best friend temp basals!
But summer is here and that means swimming in the lake, ice cream, bikes rides, playing out late with your mates( remember here it is only vaguely dark at the moment between 2am and 4am so day light abounds!) watching football and athletics and planning a trip to the Olympics.
 Life is good!!

Presents all round

That time of year has come for presents - no, not Christmas come early but end of the school year! Needle felting skills to the fore to save me the stress of what to buy for gifts for teachers, helpers, scout leaders and so on! Throw in a birthday or too and the production line was in full swing. here are a couple of projects I remembered to photograph before they went to their new homes.

Elli is a member of the Scouts and her scout troop is the 'Karhunpennut' or Bear cubs.  So I grabbed my Birgit Krag Hansen book, Animal felt, and some raw brown locks and away I went. Getting the head shape right and in proportion  was really hard. I could see it wasn't quite right but correcting it was hard. More practise I think! Fun to do with the uncarded locks and I plan a polar bear when I get a moment in the holidays.

This next project, like many of mine, had been brewing in my head for ages and just before the children finished school I managed to get him done. I have a couple of similar projects as works in progress so promise to post more photos as they progress.

I always envisaged mounting the perch on a 'plaque' and so , to give away a secret, I only felted the detail on one side! I sewed a couple of wool loops on the back and hung it from a couple of small nails in the wood. This was a present for my Husband's uncle's 75th birthday - he is a keen fisherman and we catch Perch regularly in the lake at our summer cottage, nice eating too!
So now the needles are resting but I hope to manage the odd session or two when the kids are out playing(she says hopefully!!) - aliens await!

Time flies when you're having fun!

 Summer has finally arrived, school's out and the fun continues.
Orienteering is now in full swing but last month we went orienteering in the park, not any old park but       Särkänniemi Adventure Park in Tampere!

 

Elli at the start by the log flume ride

Aleksi ready to go next to the Dodgems!

Under the rollercoaster to the finish!

Why is the finish always at the top of a hill?

Time for some rides!

Welcome to Angry Birds land!

I just had to put some rubbish in here!!