One word? When seven would do…

I had a lovely long lie in this morning until gone 9am, which I really needed after two crap nights and a disturbed night with Tarly last night too, so waking after enough sleep always puts a good spin on the day! 🙂

I then got washed, dried and put away every scrap of dirty washing in the house except for the very last load which is still swinging on the line and can stay there til tomorrow.

I got my printer working again, which is very good as I need to write a complaining letter to my insurance company and I don’t think handwriting it would have been such a great option. Just need to summon up the relevant rage to get that written now – Ali can you help? 😉

The post brought nothing scary and the phone only rang once which was my Dad. This year’s council tax and water rates have both come in now and although they have gone up neither has gone up to the point of buggering up our budget too much – this is good. 🙂

I think I might have found a good venue for a new HE local group – it is slightly over my self imposed budget but only by £2 per hour and it does tick pretty much every box looking at the website, including an outside space and the right location. I’ve been emailing back and forth with the man in charge there and will go and have a look at it later this week to double check and ensure they are happy with the purpose we’d be using it for (I can’t face a repeat of the time I had shocked faces looking at me asking ‘why are these children not in school? Is there something wrong with them?’ at one potential venue.) but it seems to be free pretty much every day which means I can be a bit flexible with when I arrange it for and ensure I am not clashing with anything else that local HE folk attend too.

We had Primary History on for much of the morning although it was not watched too closely so we had a bit of discussion about skin colour which covered history and geography as we talked about different countries too. The children played with geomags and although I had intended to do some reading aloud with them they were so engrossed in their games I ended up sitting reading some more of my book group book. I’ve finished the Looking for JJ one and thought it was pretty good actually. Very readable, very similar to a lot of books I read in my teens and nowhere near as harrowing as I was warned it would be (which might say something dreadful about my shockability actually, but never mind 😉 ) and I’m already forming my views about what I think of the other one, so that will make for a better book group next week I’m sure.

Then Davies requested I did drawing with them instead of reading to them so we got out pens and paper and I drew a W&G picture for them and showed Davies how to copy a style of lettering, so we did that for a while. Their papier mache has dried really well so we’ve popped the balloons inside and need to plug up the hole and add a final layer to smooth them out slightly and cover the newsprint, I’ve said we’ll probably do that tomorrow, maybe with kitchen roll. They are being surprisingly patient and sensible about a project spanning a week or more rather than being able to do it all ‘now’ so that’s good. 🙂

Then my Dad arrived. He came over to look after Tarly while I took Davies to badgers but he arrived a couple of hours early so he sat reading books to Tarly and being very impressed with her looking at 100EL seeing the letters she remembered. 🙂 Davies did a load of pictures loosely based on Were Rabbits using one sheet of paper to illustrate a story as he told it by drawing as he went. Then I told him to do a series of pictures to tell a story so he drew 4 pictures and then told us all the story. I tried to persuade him to do a title page but he was not up for that, he did number them 1-4 though. The children had an early tea which they’ll need to get used to on Mondays and then Davies and I headed off to badgers.

He’d been calling it ‘stupid badgers’ all day and kept checking how many times we’d need to go before he could decide that he didn’t like it and we didn’t need to go anymore so I was not feeling hugely optimistic really but he surprised me and himself by really liking it! 🙂 There are only two more sessions left before the end of term and they are changing over Badger Leaders but both the current and the new leader were there and the new woman is all fired up with loads of great ideas so it would seem a good time to get started really. They are right at the end of Caringwhich they have covered this term and had a midwife in to talk a bit about her job (in as much detail as 5-10 year olds can handle 😉 ). She was the mum of two of the badgers and did all sorts of stuff like taking blood pressure, showing them how to get a vein up for blood tests, listening to the baby’s heartbeat (the new leader’s daughter is pregnant and was there to oblige), listening to their heartbeats, showing them the newborn baby scales and going through various items in a home birth pack. D loved it 🙂 Next week there will be a policeman in to talk and the last week is an end of term party, so he’s really happy at the prospect of both of those.

They explained how the group is quite stuctured, there is not much running around like loons goes on, which is probably for the best really 😉 and that on the weeks when they don’t have a speaker they do things like crafts, telling stories, imaginative games etc – all based round the theme for that term. It sounds excellent 🙂 They have around 12 children most weeks, a balance of boys and girls and all the children there seemed really nice. I was the only parent who stayed and they are happy for me to either stay or not stay – D is not up for me disappearing just yet but I don’t think it would take too many weeks before he was fine with it – there is another room next door where I could always sit and read if it took him longer to settle but it is a minutes drive from home (10 minute walk in the summer) so it’s not a problem to stay or go really. I really liked the firm and gentle way they kept a rein on the children and she was explaining how hot SJA are on child protection and so on, obviously all the children are local and were very welcoming to D, remembering and using his name straight away and making him part of their group. So hurrah, hurrah, hurrah really! 🙂

Ady’s had an appraisal at work today which went very well and he has a massive presentation to the board to do in a couple of weeks which has been hinted today could result in promotion/payrise so that is all very positive.

And finally, Dad brought round two envelopes which arrived in the post for us at his house this morning containing a £50 win for me and a £100 win for Davies on our premium bonds! 🙂

So of course tomorrow is bound to be dreadful, but today? Today is good!