Today was an at home day for me and the children. I had my list to work through and work through it I did aswell as many, many loads of laundry. We now have full calendars with eye tests, dentists, blood donor sessions all fitted in aswell as another 3 QVC appearances for Ady over the next few weeks, another two trips up to London for all four of us, a visit to the Planetarium arranged and we’re off to Legoland tomorrow :). Money has been slightly flush the last couple of months due to no council tax or water rates meaning we’re about £200 up each month. We have ‘invested’ this in various days out and things like yesterdays cinema visit aswell as camping essentials such as camping mats and waterproof trousers :lol:. Today I sat and tried to organise our year a bit with all the various things I have been noting down that we want to do. I created another google calendar for myself and I think I need to let Ady enter his stuff on it as it happens too so we are better coordinated.
I also managed to make the children a t shirt each for the superheroes party this weekend. Davies is going as Dynamic Davies and wanted a blue T shirt with a red circle, a yellow lightning flash and DYNAMIC DAVIES written in ‘spiky’ writing. I think we pulled that one off! Scarlett wanted a pink T shirt with hearts and ‘Super Sparkly Scarlett’ written in sparkly letters. I managed that too thanks to some silver glitter glue and the hairdryer! Her’s needs a bit more adding to with some more pink hearts but Davies’ looks good. They both want cloaks now though so I’ll have to find some material from somewhere to sort that out. I do like that they both wanted to be superheroes of their own creation and in their own persona rather than one from someone else’s imagination off a film though :). And their delight at the t shirts has been lovely :).
They watched various tv shows including ROAR and some kids drama on CBBC, then several Horrible Histories episodes on DVD before turning back to CBBC and watching some programme called CHUTE which was some sort of clips programme which introduced them to Catherine Tate’s Lauren (am I bothered?) and other clearly hilarious things judging by their laughter. They also did loads of crafty stuff with a big box of pink and purple craft bits Scarlett got for Christmas which had pompoms, glitter, glue, pipe cleaners, lolly sticks and googgly eyes and more. Davies built a raft and Scarlett made a collection of things including a bookmark (we decided we needed one last night when they told me off for folding in the corner of the page on a library book :oops:) and a cross with pink and purple sparkles on it in honour of ‘Cheeses because it’s nearly Easter and Cheeses died on a cross at Easter’. Did I tell you the story about mini babybel and Scarlett running to fetch her The First Christmas story book one because ‘we’re got a book about little baby cheeses!’? 😆
At 430pm we got dressed up in coats and waterproofs and wellies and waited for Ady to collect us to go up to Coombes Church Farm to meet Beavers for a lambing visit. We went to the farm for lambing last year and it was fab so we definitely wanted to go again this year and when the Beavers trip came up heavily reduced in price and with all of us allowed to attend we went for that option. Actually, although it was good I sort of wish we hadn’t as the behaviour of some of the boys was so atrocious I was both really pissed off with them and ashamed to be part of their group. Ady said to me ‘they’re just kids’ but was forced to agree that actually they’re not just kids when I cited the trips we’ve been on with Home Ed children who would never have behaved like those boys tonight. There are at least half of the group who are rude (talking over the farmer when she was trying to give a talk, being cheeky to everyone who tried to talk to them), cruel to the animals (throwing straw at the sheep and Scarlett was horrified to witness one of them talking about how he wanted to kick a sheep in the mouth :shock:). Just really unpleasant :(.
We spent some time in the barn where the pregnant ewes were in big pens together until they gave birth and were then moved to seperate little pens with their lambs. After a few days they are moved outside. It is still the very beginning of lambing season for them but they will have around 1000 lambs by the end of the month or so they are delivering them. We then had a ride on a tractor up to the peak of the downs where the views were fabulous all across the downs, Lancing and out to sea and we saw the first lambs already out grazing with their mothers, horses, cattle and loads of rabbits. We also spotted a buzzard, phesants and partridges.
Then back to the lambing sheds where we had been told we might stroke some lambs but clearly the rowdiness of the group meant that didn’t happen. The farmer’s son did let some of the quieter children stroke one he was holding but it was not the hands on experience we had last year when the children were able to cuddle and hold lambs. We saw a couple giving birth by which time it was nearly dark so time to go. I promised Davies and Scarlett we’ll go again as I think it was under a tenner for the three of us so as soon as we have a nice sunny day we’ll head up there for a couple of hours.
We popped to the supermarket to get some picnic supplies for tomorrow before heading home for a quick chapter of Famous Five before bedtime. Scarlett has been very quick to tears today and a little warm so I’m hoping she’s not about to go down with something. Her and Davies had a nasty collision while they were dancing to Monster Mash this morning and she is sporting a bruised cheek (he hit his head) which had her really squealing and sobbing for ages which isn’t like her. She was asleep within moments of going to bed so hopefully a decent nights sleep will restore her ready for a busy day again tomorrow.
the blog calender I use is this one although I set it up ages ago so I can’t remember how easy it was. Fairly straight forward I think. You can see the box in my side bar. Obviously it means all you lot can see what I’m up to too, but the idea was I could check it even if I’m not at home. And more importantly I can check it without getting off the sofa if I am at home!
Comment by Em — 17 March 2008 @ 11:57 pm
yeah that’s pretty much my aim too! 😆 I did get what I thought I wanted, managed to install it in the right place and even have the facility to put things into the calendar on my wp dashboard but that’s as far as it goes. It says in the readme file I need to add a line of code into the ataccess files and that’s where I come completely unstuck as I can’t actually find them anywhere to add the line! Hence I gave up before I did one of my famous killing the whole blog for the sake of one small thing gaffes.
Comment by Nic — 18 March 2008 @ 12:13 am
You can twitter to google calendar too, C told me at the weekend. Follow gcal on twitter, and it tells you what to do next.
Comment by Alison — 18 March 2008 @ 9:00 am
This Daddybean, can’t be bothered to login as me.
We use Google Calendar – primarily because I tried ones out it was the only one that easily let me colour code different things (my things, girls thing etc.) – if someone else has a google account you can share your calendars so they can view or add things (and vice-versa) or you can view their calendar items on yours (we could just use one calendar, but we both have our own Google accounts that we use)
Comment by HelenHaricot — 19 March 2008 @ 4:46 pm
I use Remember The Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com) for to do lists for all of my life (home, work, everything). It integrates with loads of Google things – calendars, maps and gmail, plus Twitter and lots of other buzzwords. You can send tasks to other RTM users, have emails to magic email addresses turn into tasks etc. I hardly use any of its groovy features, but it’s free and works for me.
I don’t use Google Calendar for myself, but I do for our local church: http://www.huntingdonmethodist.org.uk/calendar.htm. For home we are Luddite and rely on a paper calendar in the kitchen.
T-shirts and trips sound excellent.
Comment by Bob — 20 March 2008 @ 3:17 pm
Actually, the Beavers sounded annoying, but I’m glad you still enjoyed yourself a bit.
Comment by Bob — 20 March 2008 @ 3:40 pm