One word? When seven would do…

Today was the Open House Book Sale day I had had the brainwave to do last week. I had about 8 people arranged to come along with the first at 1030am. Davies and Scarlett were already up and breakfasted and Ady was still around so I made myself a cup of tea and hung some washing out.

Ady had brought the boxes of books I’d sorted out last night into the lounge so once I’d nipped round the shop to get some biscuits, found a pot to put takings into and filled the big flask with a couple of kettlefuls of boiling water I arranged the books a bit more to allow for several people to browse at once.

I had four boxes of childrens non-fiction, two of children’s fiction roughly seperated into older and younger groupings with the pink fairy / Barbie / princess stuf grouped together, the table top had adult fiction and biographies, across two chairs were cookery books, across another two were parenting books and under the table was a miscellaneous area of other general non-fiction.

Davies and Scarlett were doing yet more room tidying on the basis that the tidier and more segregated they keep their stuff the easier the final seperation will be and that they might just get fed up of tidying so much stuff and start to want to get shot of it 😆

My first ‘punter’, M arrived bang on 1030am as arranged so having made her a cup of tea and had a quick chat she started piling up books to buy just as L, the next customer arrived. Both had come without children so once Davies and Scarlett had said Hello and offered the plate of biscuits round they disappeared off to play outside.

M had a huge pile of 46 books. I was doing 50p each or 3 for £1 so I persuaded her to choose two more for the £16 rather than £15.50 and she did choose two more but insisted on not being given change from her £20 as ‘it’s such a good cause and I have a bargain amount of books for twenty quid!’. So she went off very happy :).

Spookily L had the exact same 46 books so chose another 2 and also gave me £20 and refused change :). Hurrah, £40 in the first hour.

E and K had arrived with 3 of their 5 children – one was at Caz and Bid’s and the other at Julie’s. Very incestuous the HE world ;). Davies and Scarlett were pleased to see children and after a bit of a warming up they lured them outside to see the chickens while I had a good old chat with K and E and made them second cups of tea. They both left with a large pile of books but have been at the Home Ed game rather longer than M and L so were not quite so taken with all the text books ;).

Before they left our last buyers arrived – E and her husband and their two children. H went straight out to play with Davies and Scarlett while little N stayed mostly on her mum’s lap while they looked at books and drank tea. They chose a rather smaller pile completing my business for the day at nearly 200 books gone and a nice healthy £58 in the pot. A couple of people had intended to come but not made it and several more had been unable to make a Monday so I’ve put it up again for Thursday and am hoping more will come along then.

Ady arrived home just as the kids and I sat down to a late lunch. Davies made cups of tea for Scarlett and I *and* did all the washing up, telling me he wanted to make sure he was fully practised for such duties ready for being helpful and independant next year 🙂 He also offered to make the teas and coffees for the next book sale although actually both he and Scarlett did an amazing job of playing with all the kids and tidying up after all of their games while I pimped books to their parents, which I told both of them I was very proud of them for :).

Ady had lunch with us and then the kids went back outside to play while I wrote a couple of blogposts (several of the book sale attendees told me they are avid readers :)) on the WW blog and sorted the remaining books into genre, subject, age groupings ready to bring out on Thursday.

They found a dead and rather squashed chick in the chicken house when they went to put them to bed, not one of the two chicks we have, this must have hatched today. It looked rather disabled with stunted wings so I suspect the hen had culled it herself 🙁 Always a bit sad and Scarlett and I buried it in the garden. I got a fire lit and cooked the kids some tea.

I stuck a few bits on freecycle that we’d got from the wardrobes and bathrooms and had some very speedy responses to things so stuck them on the doorstep ready for collection. One of the item was an Ikea kids chair that I think we got Davies for Christmas when he was 2. It’s rarely been used as a chair, spent ages in the loft, then in a theoretical ‘gaming corner’ in Davies’ room and has been used as a clothes dump in our room for about a month. We had planned to give it to Julie but I decided to just get it out of the house so stuck it on freecycle where it went within about five minutes. Davies suddenly decided he didn’t want to part with it and so we had some upset from him. Not easy as the person coming to collect had sent a gushing message about how her daughter had been wanting one for ages and she would save it as one of her Christmas presents so I was really happy it was going to a good, grateful home. Davies agreed he still wanted it to go but was pretty upset 🙁

Davies and I had a long chat about things that feel hard, what is important and what we really need, what we really want and what is just nice to have but not really important. We discussed how things like love and laughter are pretty important and I said so were tears and sorrow. Which led on to how you need to feel hungry to appreciate food, thirsty to appreciate water, to be bursting for a wee to appreciate a toilet, how much better a feeling is when it answers real need in us. How pushing boundaries is scary and hard and testing but probably very worth it in the end. I told Davies I had written something earlier that might help explain it so read him out the chicken post from WW. Ady and Scarlett crept closer and listened too and we talked about whether that blog would make a good book – we’d been rather book focussed today obviously ;). I explained that I’d been writing it for a few months and wanted to keep it up through the whole year and both kids decided they wanted me to read them the blog instead of a bedtime story tonight.

So in pjs and with clean teeth they snuggled up while I read to them all about us and the last few months, the surprise of getting Willow early, the thought process behind the whole plan. We read all of August and September and saved October for tomorrow. They have been utterly involved every step of the way but to listen to it as a sort of story with themselves cast in such lead roles was really appealing to them 🙂

Davies said he felt much better about the chair and they were both really renewed with excitement and all the remembered feelings about when we first saw the van and then when we bought her and brought her home. I do think it’s easy for the whole adventure to have become just who we are and what we’re doing within our own home and of course Davies and Scarlett are not getting the level of positive feedback and shared excitement from their friends as Ady and I are so it was nice to re-inject them with some of that ‘wow!’ feeling again :).