One word? When seven would do…

The end of the week is nigh 😉

A blah day today really. Another truly crap nighgt, Tarly was in our bed from 1am, at 3am I sent Ady to put her back into her bed and he discovered that the cat had been in her room and pooed on her bed 🙁 So he sent her back up to me and had to clear all that up. Bloody cat!

Davies’ rash is still in situ although it has spread more outwards now and is leaving his torso and heading to his face more. Fingers crossed he will be on the mend tomorrow.

I had been going to see my friend Lucy today but I cancelled it in the end and my parents arrived at lunchtime, with lunch and stayed for the afternoon.

We’d spent the morning making some cookies, watching schools TV, playing with micro machines and polly pockets and generally snuggling up on the sofa.

We had lunch and then Dad headed off about 3pm and Mum played with the kids for a couple of hours while I did various things such as re-making Tarly’s bed with clean bed linen, tidying her room generally and clearing up the kitchen from the earlier chaos that is baking with two children!

Ady got home around 6pm, Mum headed off for home and both children were asleep shortly after 7pm.

Feel like I’ve not done an awful lot either with the children or with the benefit of having someone engage them for a couple of hours but oh well!

Tomorrow Ady and the children are going over to see Chris and the twins while Julie and I hit the NCT nearly new sale which usually turns up a few bargains. I’ve had four CVs from CV Lady which need to be back for Tuesday and there are piles of things in pretty much every room which are suddenly closing in on me so I want to feel like I’ve got something done.

Can’t say it’s been a good day particularly given all the various stuff going on but I feel remarkably unscathed considering.

Woke ridiculously early this morning (before 7!!!) by Ady who was struggling to get himself ready for work and see to Davies who was up early also and in need of love and cuddles. As I was still eating dinner at midnight, blogging at 1am and probably turned off the light and went to sleep well after 2am I am feeling fairly removed from reality anyway 🙁

Sat with Davies doing cuddling and then Tarly came and joined us. Davies requested Green Eggs and Ham so we set that up on Ady’s laptop and they played with that, Polly Pocket and a rare moment of activity brought out their ‘going on holiday’ game which seems to be a favourite currently and has them packing themselves up and travelling up and down the stairs. The suggestion by Davies of playing it was greeted by great joy from Tarly so clearly I am missing some obvious appeal! 😉

I got dressed, sorted out which of the outfits I was going to wear, practised my speech infront of the mirror feeling very loony and did more cuddling duty. Also spent a while on the phone to Jenny while Tarly ‘decorated’ herself with a variety of my make up 🙁

We shared a couple of slices of the very lovely apple pie and then Ady arrived home so I went and got dressed and as Tarly was making a big fuss about coming with me Ady distracted them and I went to wait for Mum, Dad and Frazer in the garden.

I drove us all over to Doreen (John’s partner)’s house and met up with her son and daughter in law and several of John’s friends. We were in the second black funeral car to the crematorium and I have never riden in one before. Astonishing how many looks you get and what people’s reactions are to seeing the procession of cars. I watched one student cross herself, several people catch sight of the cars and their facial expressions change to one of sorrow or reflection and lots of glances full of pity for the mourners contained within.

A bit of background necessary if this next bit is to make any sense – John was married to my Grandmother (Mum’s Mum) from when I was 6 months old to when I was about 12 or so. So he was sort of my Grandad for those early childhood years. He and Granny split up fairly bitterly but drifted in and out of touch over the years and even got back together a couple of times. They saw each other perhaps once a fortnight recently although John was sort of ‘with’ Doreen who he had met through some sort of OAP social dating agency type organisation (I believe they both liked Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain!). They spent every evening together and went away for weekends but both went home to their own houses each night so their relationship was about companionship rather than any great romance. Granny and Doreen had never met although were aware of each other. My Mum and Granny have a strained relationship anyway and this whole thing has been very awkward as we were invited to Doreens, to go in the funeral cars and back there afterwards. Granny was not.

So she was there, with a friend for support and clearly feeling very excluded from everything and unsure of what to do. Coupled with the fact that she was totally devastated by his death as she truly did love him it was a very difficult day for her today. We all stood for a while and then I went over to see her. Frazer followed and then so did Mum and Dad. She asked who was Doreen so I pointed her out and then I got caught with the vicar doing the service.

There were 20 people attending and we were in a very small chapel. Granny ended up sitting directly behind Doreen and placed her hand on her shoulder and introduced herself and was pretty much blanked in return. Bearing in mind she probably knew all 20 of the people there and some of them would have attended her weddding to John 31 years ago it was very hard that no one spoke to her.

So the service was pretty basic, the vicar read out some words Doreen had relayed to him about who John was and then I said my piece. It was very well recived and jerked lots of tears, and very oddly lots of congratulations afterwards which seemed slightly inappropriate really.

Afterwards there was the same awkwardness with Granny returning to her car and Doreen being surrounded by her family and quite loudly being nasty about her being there and trying to introduce herself. I made a bit of a statement by going over to Granny and giving her the speech so she had the copy of it. I cannot bear the idea that an occassion such as a funeral is turned into anything more than a time of celebrating the life of the person who has died and joining together in your sorrow and mourning. They would both have been feelin dreadful saying their final goodbyes to him so to taint that with schoolgirlish nonsense seems very sad. For once I thought my granny conducted herself with dignity and grace today.

We went back to Doreens for the ‘wake’ where I got tied up with an old man who fought in WW2 and was stationed at all sorts of thrilling places and had been born and grew up in India. Very interesting stories to tell but told in typical ‘old bloke’ fashion of totally losing his thread midway and moving onto a different story. I could hear my Dad and Frazer in near hysterics behind me! The best moment came when he had started a very long and convoluted story and his wife called across to say they needed to leave to catch their train and he said ‘won’t be a minute dear, I’m just telling the tombstone story’ which of course was his punchline!

Mum, Dad and Frazer came back here and Mum has just gone to take Frazer home and get changed before coming back for dinner.

Davies is worse again 🙁 The rash has reappeared with a vengence and he is tired and irritable. He’s been piritoned up again and we’ll see how he’s doing in the morning. Ady, bless him has been doing the glass test, taking his temperature and after me telling him it was an allergic reaction to something rang me on my mobile to say he’d looked it up in a medical book and thought it was definitely hives! 😉

When we got home I made some Halloween mobiles with the children – sticks with ghosts, pumpkins and bats dangling off them which look really good and they really enjoyed making.

I guess I’m glad the day is over really, it has hung over me since before the holiday. Hopefully Davies will be better tomorrow and we can continue with our arranged get together with my friend Lucy at her new house.

The rash is back 🙁

But he’s feeling pretty okay and piriton is relieving the itch so I think we’ll give it another 24 hours before seeking medical attention!

Funnily enough it is looking almost exactly like a rash which Scarlett had in January 2004 which lasted about a week, looked really dreadful and had me with her at the doctors three times with them doing precisely nothing about it as we could not work out what had caused it and she was not ill so we decided it had to be an allergic reaction to *something* she had come into contact with which left of its own accord and never came back.

Well he seems better this morning. The rash has gone down except in a couple of places where he had really scratched at it and it is now sore. His eyes are still very swollen but his other puffy bits have gone down. He’s got a slightly upset stomach but other than that – and being pretty tired – he seems fine.

Ady’s home again at midday to be with the children this afternoon so they can expect a quiet afternoon mainly watching dvds with him ;-).

Currently they are playing Green Eggs and Ham on Ady’s laptop and the TV remains off knowing it will be well used later! Oh and Tarly has just brought in her Polly Pocket stuff.

Plans for starting a lapbook type project are still in negotiation as I keep thinking of other topics to do it on and can’t decide what to choose before introducing them to the idea! So far I am tossing about dinosaurs, Halloween, Green eggs and ham, Knights, Castles & Dragons or one based around one of their favourite films / dvds. I think I need to make a list and have some ideas for all of them and then let them choose one to start us off. Will come back to that next week.

or something 😉

Mad all round day today and as it is actually now tomorrow and I have only just eaten my dinner it’s been a pretty long one too.

Sadly the night stretches ahead somewhat similarly I think 🙁

Davies developed an itch across his tummy (waistband area) at lunchtime and at group I noticed it was a sort of a rash but hard to tell as he had been scratching it. We arrived at Tumble Tots and I saw a couple more bumps on his neck and hands but he insisted he was fine to go in. By the time we left there his whole neck was bumpy and itchy and he has gotten worse as the evening’s gone on. I have been out tonight and just been up to administer more piriton and his whole body has this rash, his eyes are puffy, his ears are swollen, his lips are swollen and his hands and feet are a little puffy. Clearly some sort of allergic reaction to something. If he is not improved in the morning I’ll take him across to the doctors first thing. He also has the cough from the cold we’ve all had which is keeping him awake 🙁

So, that aside we have been dashing about loads today. Tumble Tots for Tarly at 9.30-am which she did really well at again. I’m so glad I have persevered with it for her as she is very agile and super fast at climbing and is really enjoying it now. I *think* she moves up a class when she hits 3 and she is certainly ready to move up now so that will be good 🙂

Davies sat in the waiting room with his leap pad and some pens and paper but there was a woman there selling cards and wrapping paper (her kids attend one of the TT groups) and he had been chatting to her. He told me she asked him his name so he told her and then asked her what she was called (Sarah, apparantly!) and I asked him if he had told her he was Home Educated and he said yes (I assume the school question had come up when he’d said he was five). He seemed to think he had made a friend so I assume he had represented us all well! He’d also drawn a picture of Julie – the group leader so I told him to write his name on it, which he did with no help and then I wrote out ‘Julie’ and he copied it beautifully and then went and presented it to her. She put it on the notice board and it was still there when we went back this afternoon so he was very pleased. 🙂

Came home and got Tarly changed as she was in TT shorts and T shirt and the weather has totally changed from that being suitable (I even considered vests yesterday!) and we headed out to the wizard store to get a few bits including some cheap plasticine for group and some more halloween bits.

Home again for lunch and we continued watching CBBC which we had watched Raven on at breakfast time. (I’ve never seen it before but Davies says he’s seen it and it’s great.). We’ve started either having the TV off or tuning into more educational stuff of late – I feel like we are using it far more as a resource than a babysitter and it has spun off lots of conversations too which has been lovely. Davies has a total love affair going on for anything with Steve Irwin in it and is a mine of information on all things croc’ related as a result 🙂 It was some schooly drama which they both sat rapt watching and then both declared they did not want to go to school, not ever, at the end of 😉
Shoved a beef curry in to cook very slowly for dinner – which I have just eaten my share of 12 hours later!

Out again to Home Ed group. The theme was dinosaurs and we had a variety of activities on offer which was good. Davies and I did some plasticine modelling of some, I’d brought some plastic ones too which we identified and sorted into various groups (carnivors, herbivores etc), we had icing dinosaur biscuits, making fossil footprints, decorating dinosaur teeth and loads more. A good session 🙂

Out of there and straight over to Tumble Tots for Davies. He is really enjoying the slightly more advanced feel of the older group and Tarly and I sat and did a puzzle sticker book and chatted and then she played with the dinosaurs for a while. I am really enjoying the two hours of just me and Tarly on Wednesdays – first the two of us doing TT together and then sitting together while Davies does his. Very nice 🙂

Back home again by which point poor Davies was fading fast and itching like mad 🙁 Tarly insisted on soup again for tea so I plonked her infront of Dora (I know what I mentioned earlier, but carry on reading!) with soup while Davies and I had some time in the kitchen. We were very amused to hear Tarly yelling from the lounge at the TV, in Spanish, joining in with Dora so that was clearly very educational too 😉

We’d bought some cooking apples and some blackberries at Tesco (although I had had intentions of PYOing we never made it so I thought we’d still do the baking!) yesterday so we made an apple and blackberry crumble and a lovely apple pie. I melted some sugar, butter and cinnamon in a pan and tossed the apples in that before filling the pie so the kitchen smelt lovely 🙂 Tarly came and joined us when she’d finished her tea, got her stool and washed up for us and then ran off again when she heard the Fifi and the flowertots theme music 😉

Ady arrived home and started bathing the kids while I tidied the kitchen up a bit, then we swapped and I finished bathing them while he sorted the lounge out. Both pj’d up and in bed I headed off at 7.45pm for Vickie’s house for the meeting about the future of the group.

Sadly due to poorliness I took apologies from Jenny and Julie with me which was a real shame as although I know both their feelings on moving it all forward their contributions would have inevitably added to and changed the conversations. There were 7 of us there and we had a some really good chats about what we want, what we can offer and what our expectations are. We have come up with a way to move forward which feels very positive to me although it is not necessarily what I went there with in mind. I feel now that there is support from the group, enough of us with a common aim to move it forward from here and a real possibility of building something great. I hope those not present feel the same when it is fed back to them.

Ady rang me at 11.45pm to tell me the keys would be under the mat – I had left with full intentions of being home for 10pm to watch Lost and I really thought it was about 10.15pm when he rang – oops! He was awake but in bed when I got home, having driven through flooded roads – its a dreadful night. Davies was very restless and I have been up to him several times with juice and cuddles and gave him some more piriton about half an hour ago and he seems more peacefully asleep now. Hope he is better in the morning.

Tomorrow is John’s funeral so I will be spending the morning practising my speech infront of the mirror probably – oh and constantly trying on each of the possible black outfits to decide which to wear – Oh how that would make John laugh – he’d tell me to come in my dressing gown and stand at the front and sing a silly song instead!

Thanks for all the offers of help for food and decorating. At risk of being ‘too organised’ I want to ensure it is all totally sorted in advance so that Ady and I can enjoy the actual event as well and don’t end up just running around fretting about everything in the style of an over anxious bride and groom 😉

So I’ve been plotting how to keep it all moving along given that there will be various groups and sub groups of people there, some of who know each other, all sorts of ages of children again some of whom know each other and five hours to ‘fill’.

My plan at the moment is to have food and drink assembled in one corner from the outset with a couple of people keeping an eye on rotation of bringing more out from the kitchen as and when and topping up drink recepticles etc and keeping a cautionary eye on it not getting too messy anywhere.

I plan to have some no adult intervention required games and stuff around to engage and entertain various pockets of children. Ideas for these so far include:
Themed skittles with the skittles in the shape of ghosts or witches being knocked down with pumpkins;
apple bobbing – we have a couple of sandsized containers so it can be done en masse;
the mystery shoe box containing yucky stuff for you to thrust your hand into and identify;
some pinatas (although I have concerns about arming small children in large groups!)

Stuff which will require adult assistance such as:
pass the parcel;
pin the something on the whatever;
musical statues/bumps/ whatever we rename it to tie in with being Hallween-y;
musical chairs;
fancy dress prizes;
some team games such as pass the pumpkin, catch the balls in pumpkins tied around waists, pumpkin puzzles etc.

We have got a karaoke machine but I’m wondering whether that is just asking for trouble 😉

The last hour it will be dark (although we could make the room darkish anyway and probably will in the interests of spookiness so a scary storytelling session might be fun.

Anyone got any suggestions of ideas or links for anything else?

Of course souvenier merchanise will be available to purchase in the foyer 😉

Aided very ably by a new soundtrack 😉

A dreadful night with Tarly (oh how the pattern repeats and repeats – various nights away in various places, Ady home and then away again and a cold all conspire to have her waking at 2am, getting into our bed and then thrashing around and making lots of noise until dawn before falling asleep herself just as Davies wakes up!) meant I gave up at 4.30am and went to sleep in her bed, so was awoken by Davies in a state of utter confusion about where I was and what I was doing underneath her rainbow canopy in a sea of pink and purple!

We breakfasted and made up the bits of the sketeton that arrived yesterday as parts 1 & 2 of the Funny Bones mag subscription (ribs, brain, neck and top of skull) and had a brief chat about that and showed them what their skeletons would be doing inside when they tilted their heads back and forward and turned their heads from side to side. Then we all got dressed and they played in Davies’ room with his castle some convoluted game about princesses, dragons and knights while I changed our bed and felt briefly housewifely!

We then started to make up the wooden fire engine from the kit that Ali had given him yesterday but the glue included was not sufficient for a five year olds lavish ways with it so we decided to head off to Tescos as we needed food for lunch, food for the whole week for dinners, staples such as bread and of course some more wood glue!

Kids were perfectly angelic in Tescos and sat side by side in the trolley. We spent ages wandering round the Halloween display and got Davies’ party outfit (vampire – very cool outfit actually), picked up the cd as indulgence for me and got some new felt tips as I have started to throw them away when they are put away without lids on and we now have a very depleted supply of mainly yellow ones with blue nibs! Got some traditional autumnal dinners for the week (chilli, roast chicken to do with roasted root veg, pork chops to do with some sort of mashed potatoes creation and stir fried brocoli – I hate brocoli but one of the staple foods when we did Atkins a couple of years ago was it stir fried with pine nuts and lemon juice and it was actually quite palatable, so as part of an effort to eat healthier and indeed wean the kids off their tinned or frozen foods we spent ages in the veg aisle and bought quite a bit to experiment with. Tonight we have spaghetti bolognaise and while seclecting the pasta we had lengthy chats about all the different pasta shapes on offer and what they were called. It felt like some sort of educational field trip actually, loads of questions asked, loads of observation and understanding of stuff displayed. An excellent advertisment for that classic ‘why we cover every subject on the curriculum just in one grocery shop!’ Home Ed line 🙂

Came home and made lunch then continued with the fire engine. We finished glueing all the bits together and then left it out to dry. Davies and Scarlett played with the London micromachines thingy he got from my brother for his birthday, I rang my Mum and then my brother to talk about the speech I am doing at John’s funeral and finished writing that and we listened to the cd rather than putting the TV on – very pleasant 🙂 Davies correctly identified one of the songs as from Shrek (Hallelujah – during the wedding preparations scenes) and they both had clear favourites among the ones they listened to.

Then we had great plans to start some sort of project and I gave Davies the choice between Castles, knights and Dragons which is a current favourite theme or dinosaurs. Amazingly he chose dinosaurs, which is handy as it is the theme for group tomorrow 😉 I have a plan to do some sort of lapbook type thing with him which will involve some reading of books together – factual and story books, some writing, some drawing and maybe some other stuff. Very low key in terms of him doing much more than listening, copying writing or being creative but hopefully his love of creating some ‘piece of work’ will urge him on with the reading and writing side of it and it will also encourage his arty stuff too. So I’d thought dinosaurs would be a good one to start with if not the castle one and he agrees 🙂 As it went we brought down a book to read to start us off and then he checked the fire engine to see if the glue was dry and it was so we decided to shelf the dinos in favour of painting and completing the fire engine instead.

I will confess right now that I hate painting with children. I struggled with my own issues to let him stick the fire engine together and it not being perfectly straight so to see the paint going on slightly randomly, mixing with colours next to it and getting splodged everywhere was very tricky 😉 Made worse by Tarly wanting to ‘help’ of course. Sigh! But I managed it, we kept it contained and fairly clean and actually he has done a very good job of it and now has stuck on the stickers (and no, they are not straight!) and it looks pretty bloody good. He’s really proud of it so thanks Ali – a good gift that 🙂

The kids wandered off after clearing up and started playing some game about going on holiday together so I left them to it and sorted their tea out.

Somehow despite being really tired Davies is still awake and has just spent half an hour in the bathroom with Ady while Ady’s in the bath doing mental maths and seemingly from the applause and copious praise doing rather well – I think I’ll leave them to it 😉

Tomorrow is chaotic mad day with Tarly’s TumbleTots at 9.30am, Home Ed group 1-3pm, straight to Davies’ Tumble tots at 3.30pm and then back out again in the evening for a meeting about the future of the group at 8pm. Jenny and I are very hopeful for a different venue, increasing members, offering something really quite exciting in terms of the diversity and amount going on each week and really moving the group forward. We will either be feeling heartwarmed that our vision is shared by others and happy that some of the burden of doing the whole bloody thing ourselves week in week out has been lifted by willing volunteers or I personally will have given up and removed myself from the group as it appears to be slightly at risk of morphing into something I have no need for and I would rather leave the people it does suit to get on with it and invest my energy in something else than keep slogging away at something that no one else seems to want. That sounds slightly dramatic but it is not meant to. Our week is just so busy and we have at least four sets of local HE friends who I would love to see weekly as well as our Tumble Tots so unless I really feel that the children – and I – are getting something worthwhile from attending group I would rather not bother for now and use the money, the time invested in trying to organise it and indeed the two hours a week spent there doing something else instead. We have had weeks where I have felt really proud of all we’ve achieved, we’ve had great attendance and people really getting involved in the weekly themes and giving their all, but we have also had weeks of very low attendance, kids just running round without being engaged in any of the activities and weeks where I really have to drag myself to the venue only to sit around wondering what the hell I am bothering for. I really hope we can continue and take it forward into something positive and something we get a lot out of (this is sounding like a speech given to Darrell Rivers now!) but if we can’t then I have reached a philosophical state about it. Group is not the be all and end all of home educating and if there is not one out there which suits our needs, and in trying to set one up to do so I have not managed that either then I guess we just don’t need a group!

I love Autumn. I also quite like Spring – I think I like the seasons of change rather more than the ones of extremes. So the leaves turning, the darker nights, the morning dew and the promise of bonfire smoke in the air and birds collecting themselves together for their ‘holidays’ all make me feel quite excited. I mentioned earlier this month that September is a busy month for us with birthdays and anniversaries and we have tended to have our two week annual holiday in September for years too so coming back from that always feels a bit like the countdown to Christmas.

Having worked in retail for so many years September really is the countdown to Christmas too and I suppose that mindset stays with me. Whether it was ensuring we were getting people’s kicthen orders and installation booked and sorted well in time for Christmas at the large DIY chain I worked for, organising Christmas temps for the recruitment agency I worked for, preparing for the onslaught of the busiest time of the year aside from Mother’s Day at a well known greetings card retailer who also employed me, or preparing all the party clothes, socks and pants Christmas gifts or fretting about staff cover and getting the January sale prepared (and yes, that really did start in October!) at the department store who employed me we were very much into 10 week countdown programmes by now.

So with plenty to look forward to – Halloween party, Firework night, another round of early November birthdays, Scarlett’s third birthday, a holiday with friends and then Christmas. Oh, and of course chocolate liqueurs will soon be in the shops 😉

Anyway, enough of all that, today Ady returned to work and I had my day planned and ready. Of course various things conspired to throw me off track with my carefully time managed morning including several phone calls, but we did manage to watch a bit of Nick Jr before turning the TV off, made some tissue ghosts in an experimental fashion to see what they looked like (very good!) and then we lined ourselves up in the kitchen in a fairly good approximation of a production line and peeled, chopped and threw into the pot carrots, swede, leeks, garlic, red onions, white onions, parnsips, potatoes and beef, topped it up with crumbled oxo cubes and boiling water and shoved it in the oven for tea. Load of educational stuff there – I was hugely impressed that not only Davies but also Scarlett named all the veg (considering they eat very little in the way of vegetables they are pretty knowledgable about them!) and could tell me about them being root vegetables (if they were) and so on. Have semi planned to go to the pick your own later this week before it closes for the winter and pick some more veg for a stew and some orchard fruits for pies and crumbles after Davies was so impressed with Layla’s crumble last weekend.

Then we dashed around collecting ourselves together and headed over to Ali’s arriving a mere hour late. Ali greeted me with ‘I’m soooo ready for guests!’ as well she might be by then 😉 On the way over we listened to James Blunt. Davies likes the first track which is a little melancholy (indeed which of his tracks aren’t!) so I listened to him doing that singing along type of thing you do while you sort of know the tune and a few of the lyrics and clearly enjoying the song and asked him how it made him feel. His answer ‘like I am flying’ very perceptive… We then flicked through the album and talked about which ones we all liked best and why. We’ve been playing Sinatra album in the playroom a lot the last couple of weeks, specifically while the kids have their evening baths and it is so lovely to hear and see them absent mindedly singing along and having clear favourites without actually realising that the tunes and lyrics are entering their memories. Davies came to me the other day and said ‘It’s Autumn now isn’t it Mummy’ we had a small chat about how we knew that (birds flying away, darker nights, colder days, leaves falling from the trees and so on) and then he knowledgably informed me that ‘it’s always Autumn in New York!’ 😉 They also both really like Mack The Knife – so either big band singers in the making who will sing for their supper in smoky jazz clubs or super star karaoke stars I am breeding! 😉

Had a lovely time as ever at Ali’s. Davies, Scarlett and Freya did various playing in duos, trios and seperately, inside and out and with various props. There was plenty of imaginative play, role playing and turn taking going on. Ali and I got involved at one point with some sticking of foam shapes on card which went down very well. Davies did a great fish picture and then really impressed us by starting to find the letters for his name to spell that out too. A slight stumbling block that all the letters available were upper case but once over that we got there very quickly. I keep fretting that I really am doing next to nothing with the whole reading and writing thing and can’t decide whether to take heart that he is actually getting there anyway (he painted his name all by himself three times at Home Ed group last week) or feel bad that he might be doing even better if I did some work on it with him. I guess as a Lazy Bugger and someone who is not very good at doing guilt anyway I will mark this as another victory for autonomy! 😉 Freya did a lovely picture she entitled Rainbow Waters and it was very interesting to see their different approaches. Davies stuck on foam fish shapes, drew on one of them to create an angel fish, debated with me how it was NOT a clown fish as the stripes were not black, white and orange, then used a felt tip to draw loads of dots on the picture which was the ‘salt in the sea’, did the name thing on it and then drew some coral. Freya’s was more abstract but clearly still working towards something she had in her mind and was deliberately creating. Scarlett did a bit of sticking on her own card and then invaded mine. I did a farm with a pig, sheep and chicken and then a space scene with a rocket, stars and planets – which only Ali managed to correctly identify to my shame! All the children then drew rings round my planets to make it more obvious!!

Ali gave Davies what must surely be the very last birthday present in possibly the most drawn out birthday ever – a construct it yourself wooden fire engine which has been earmarked for making tomorrow and went down very well :-).

Came home and both children tried the beef stew for dinner. Scarlett tried it, decided she only likes raw carrots and seemed offended enough by the piece of carrot she tried being soft instead of crunchy she flatly refused to try any more so ended up with soup (her current favourite food). Davies with all the discernment of a professional wine taster tried a small piece of each vegetable in turn and didn’t like any of them (but he really did try) and then tried the beef which he claimed to adore! I went back to the kitchen and picked out a bowlfull of beef for him with some of the gravy and he very happily ate all that up 🙂

Baths were a necessity due to bringing half of the filth from Ali’s garden home and combining it nicely with soup and stew. Early to bed for them as Tarly is just getting over her lurgy and Davies is definitely brewing his.

Tomorrow the plan is a day at home. I might get cabin fever and do either a trip to the main library in town or the pick your own if the weather is good, or we might just try and play with all Davies’ birthday presents many of which are still sitting waiting for their christening.

Says a belated Happy Birthday to Heather (thought I’d got all the September ones out of the way, sorry Heather!) for yesterday.
Hope you had a great day 🙂

as in all the animals were represented!

Been over to Chris and Julie’s today for a belated birthday party for Jack and Maisie who were 3 on Friday (September is ‘the’ month for birthdays round here it seems! Lots of festive Christmas baby making clearly! 😉 ) and joined in with a wide variety of ‘comedy’ guests. We had the quiet woman who Julie knows from toddler group, the other home educating family who include a boy who is actually in school full time currently although they consider themselves Home Educators (there are reasons!) and likes to wear a dress – he spent most of the day tripping round in Maisie’s high heeled dressing up shoes, his little sister who has just had the all clear after several ops and chemotherapy for cancer and their baby brother; A couple with two children including a very smelly baby (she had three nappy changes and still stank!) and a very precocious nearly 4 year old who unfortunately was discovered by her mother hiding round a corner with Davies while he showed her his willy (I know, I know! Ady handled that one and I am hoping that it was not too traumatic an experience for anyone concerned!). The mother apparantly ‘used to be a lesbian’ but is now married to her husband who was previously her lodger while she was still with her female partner. The husband is a blind Irishman! Also present were Julie’s mum from Germany and one of the two brothers she lives with (two middle aged special needs brothers both of whom she appears to be in some sort of relationship with. Her mother had also been over for a couple of weeks from Germany but had left last night in a huff taking one of the brothers with her!) – parked outside was Julie’s mum’s car which is the oddest vauxhall estate you ever saw. It has a roof rack festooned with red and white hazard tape, the back window is full of window stickers refering to the love of Jesus and the back seat and boot is crammed full of pretty much everything and anything you could ever need. At one point this afternoon I was serving the birthday cake and asked if Julie had any napkins or kitchen roll – she didn’t but her mum bustled out to the car and returned with a pack of four in two different designs and apologised for the fact they smelt of fish as they had been next to some sardines!

Ady had a ‘don’t mention the war’ type Fawlty Towers moment when he threatened Julie with a stick and said ‘we have ways of making you talk’ in a very bad German accent when we were talking about something and a huge silence filled the air with both German folk present freezing and looking all scared. Totally un politically correct and I do feel somewhat as though this post should come with a disclaimer of some sort that none of the opinions are my own or something!

So that was all fairly entertaining 😉

Kids ran around like loons with the other 9 children there, got very grubby, ate lots of birthday cake, flashed at unsuspecting party guests and Ady took lots of pictures! Julie and I managed a good catch up chat as it feels like weeks since we saw them and we all looked at each other’s holiday photos (they were in Cornwall while we were at Centerparcs).

Came home via McDs (again!) and after hosing down in the bath the kids were in bed and asleep fairly early. Tomorrow we all return to ‘normal’ life again with Ady back to work and us back to our usual social life – Ali’s house tomorrow 😉

You’d possibly have met us there. Well if you went to the same woods at the same time and were looking for us then you might anyway!

The female half of the Goddard’s are pretty much over the worst of the snot and splutter which has brought us down. The male half are yet to go down with it, but of course they will – and I imagine, being ‘boys’ they will make lots of fuss about it when they do 😉 . As such I decided we’d get out and ‘do something’ to make the most of a lovely autumnal day (where I noticed that the leaves were turning to the colour of my hair – slightly changed lyric from which song anyone?) and an unusual weekend day with no particular place to be.

I had first had a burst of activity trying to find the 3 pack of Halloween activity books I was certain I had ordered from the Book People and tucked away somewhere ‘for later’. This led to some turning various places upside down which led to a craft pack of making paper animals which had been shoved in the ‘for later’ place at some previous time being bought out and played with. I did find the books (after checking the reciept of my order to make sure I had actually ordered them and not imagined the whole thing!) by which point it was too late to start making anything from them anyway! Never mind – will be a task for next week then. Which reminds me actually, if anyone wants to do any halloween craft and send me the results I will happily display it at the party (which will have the added bonus of helping me decorate it cheaply!) – we’re planning tissue ghosts, cotton bud skeletons, paper chains of bats and pumpkins and some of those stained glass window style black card and orange tissue paper scary scenes here. 🙂

So we wrapped up and wellied up and drove to the woods we had been to a while back with Julie, Jack and Maisie one very rainy day. As we parked a horse van pulled up so we sat in the car and watched a family of three park up, get their horses out, do all the faffing with them and then mount them for a ride which the kids really enjoyed watching. We then walked around the woods, we climbed on trees:

lifted logs to see what was underneath:

Made fools of ourselves teaching the children how to climb over a gate (there was some debate about technique!):

Had a find the biggest stick to become the new proverbial one for beating naughty children with 😉

Generally walked around;

and then given the time of year Ady felt compelled to do what all small boys spend lots of time in September doing and set about selecting the right sticks to lob at the right trees to bring down the conkers 😉

We saw a couple of deer, some rabbits, heard lots of birds but didn’t see any, spotted all sorts of bugs and slugs and grubs in the log turning, looked at animal tracks and footprints, smelt evidence of foxes, shone a torch into a rabbit hole to see how deep it was, identified various trees, their leaves and their fruit and had a chicken and egg style conversation relating to oak trees and acorns! It’s rare that Ady gets to be the one doing most of the showing and telling and this is far more his area than mine so it was a really nice couple of hours. Ady worked many years ago as a game keeper so spent many early morning hours in the thick of ‘nature’ – he is really keen to teach Davies lots of the things he knows and also wants to take him fishing but I think that will have to be something they wait another couple of years for.

We came home via the supermarket and had soup and crusty bread for late lunch/early tea for the kids. Which necessitated a speedy bath straight afterwards! Scarlett is already fast asleep, and Davies is fighting it but very tired so I am about to go and watch X Factor with a glass of wine before cooking stir fry for dinner. Might be back later 🙂

is what we have been doing, among other things this evening.

Went to the grand opening VIP party at Bonner’s Music this evening as we are friends with the owners 😉 Having never been to the previous site so having nothing to compare it to it was still mightily impressive. Two floors and various rooms filled with more musical instruments than you could shake a (drum) stick at! The main attraction for us was the samba beat type bloke doing a session in the kids area with all sorts of improvised instruments made from stuff like bottle tops, plastic container drums and pieces of wood taped together xylophones alongside stuff like bass drums, triangles, recorders and other percussion stuff (Jenny, when we have enough money in the kitty he is a must for HE group, the kids (and grown ups!) would love him!). So we spent ages in there joining in with the beat creation which was going on and loving it. There were various other things going on like a jazz band and I’m sure Ros will blog more about the evening as a whole but we had a lovely couple of hours before the children started to wilt a little and we made a quiet getaway before they showed us up! 😉 Congratulations Tony & Ros, hope it goes really well tomorrow, you have achieved something to be very proud of 🙂

So what else have we been up to today then? Ady cleaned out my car and has done more tidying around the place and he entertained Scarlett while Davies and I completed a few more thank you cards and got them posted. I gave him free rein to draw whatever he wanted for each one and just wrote down the words of people’s names for him to copy. He did a lovely butterfly for Emma (Bowlzer), a balloon and present montage for Alison & Chris (and insisted on writing all the family’s names on the card too!), a camel for some friends of ours who had sent him money, a couple of portraits of other friends and a really nice fish picture for Ben in return for the really nice fish birthday card which Ben had made for him. As with yesterday’s creations he really seemed to have a mental image of what he was looking to create and the choosing of colours and marks on the paper was all very controlled, measured and deliberate with him coming back to it if he was not totally happy – fascinating to watch.

I cleared out our wardrobe and swapped wintery clothes to the front and summery ones to the back, found something to wear tonight and something for the funeral next week (actually two options depending on weather!), got several loads of washing processed (some clean put away, some wet hung out, some dry brought in and some dirty put through the wash – the cycle continues!) and then after lunch we set off for Eastbourne where we pootled round for a couple of hours stopping for McDs for the kids.

A nice day, with a real end of the holiday wind down feeling to it. Only the weekend left to go before Ady heads back to work to see whether the recent B&Q redundancies and store closures have impacted on his company and his role in any way. A quiet day planned for tomorrow again and then a birthday party for Jack and Maisie on Sunday.

I hate labels for children. I understand why they are useful in some instances and I do appreciate that if there is something ‘the matter’ with your child you would likely want to know what it is and whether it can / needs to be treated and what effect it will have on your child’s life but I also think that the risk of a wrong or incorrect label can be damaging and unless there is a definite benefit to doing so I would err away from it wherever possible.

However I have for some time been concerned with a small aspect of Davies’ behaviour and have been reading around it to find out more. I am putting it here to see whether anyone else has experience of similar or any information to share. I may well delete it at a later date and I would prefer it not to be refered to infront of Davies if and when any of you spend time with him as currently it is not an issue nor do I wish it to become one.

About a year ago I started to notice that at times of stress he licks his hands, he seems to do it unconsciously and simply brings his hands to his mouth and licks at his fingers and the sides of his hands. When questioned he says that his hands feel dry. I have gone through periods of ignoring it and periods of nagging him not to do it (not least because as a boy he often has less than hygenic hands which I would really rather he was not licking for fear of germs!). It is a definite nervous thing – he did it a lot at Kessingland when he was excited but nervous and I often notice him doing it at times when he is unfamiliar with his surroundings or the people he is with.

He also chews at his top – he brings it to his mouth and chews at the collar and the chest – at worst he can end up with a really rather damp front of his shirt. It also means his collars are a pain to wash as whatever is around his mouth ends up on his shirt too.

I’ve always been aware of tourettes almost as a bit of a comedy syndrome that means weirdos shout ‘fuck’ or ‘arse’ at inappropriate moments in the extreme cases portrayed in the media but I recently read an article about a woman with tourettes who’s first symptoms were licking as a small child (although she felt the need to lick objects rather than herself) so have looked into a bit a more and it would seem that the licking and the shirt chewing are both fairly common early symptoms.

Ady had several facial tics which are obvious when he is nervous or stressed, but he has a background and childhood to make this almost expected, but research indicates that such conditions can also be genetic or hereditory.

At this stage I have no wish to make any more of it, I am not after getting any sort of diagnosis and am also not sure whether to draw Davies’ attention to it and try and make him conscious of it and help him to break the habits or to ignore it and hope it is something he grows out of and the less that is made of it the more chance he will not be aware and will stop doing it.

is what it has been really. Much as I love having Ady home I always realise towards the end of a holiday for him just how much I like my own little daily routines. Not that I am particularly routine driven but somehow having someone else around tends to mess stuff up. It doesn’t help that the children inevitably act differently when he’s around so he gets a skewed idea of what happens when he is at work 🙁 Also feeling a bit unsocialized as I have tried to stay off the computer while he’s home, not met up with any real life friends because he’s around and parenting style in general is always slightly different when there are two people ‘in charge’ instead of just the usual one!

So today Rachel came over with Amber and brought a present of Battleships for Davies – which I am itching to get out and teach him to play as I think it will appeal lots to him. I have spent literally hours on the phone today in connection with our local HE group so I was on the phone for about the first 20 minutes she was here. The kids ended up going out in the garden with Ady while I talked about our holiday and got a brief catch up from her – have not seen her for weeks and feel like we didn’t really talk properly so will see her again the week after next for a proper catch up.

I then spent more time on the phone and then had to send a couple of emails before heading into town to pick up a few bits and to Sainsburys for a bit of food shopping.

Got home to find the kids watching Robots, followed by Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which we got on dvd last week and is proving to be popular (bizarely mainly because it has Bert from Mary Poppins in it!). Ady is systematically working through each room in the house doing an Ady style tidy up (which is another thing I will redo when he goes back to work 😉 !) and the kids had been doing some drawing and some playing with the musical instruments.

Davies then asked to get out his cement and mini bricks set I got him for his birthday so we mixed up some cement and made a start at building a house. His technique was a little odd to begin with but he picked it up quickly enough and seems to be enjoying that – another thing we need to have Tarly otherwise distracted for really.

My parents then arrived for a couple of hours. My Mum had been to select the flowers for the funeral and I have agreed to write and say a little at the funeral so she wanted to talk about that.

So, group. Well we have reached a bit of a cross roads type point really, we seem to not be providing very well for anyone’s needs, we have a steady stream of people who come once never to return again and I have steadily been feeling that I am doing a hell of a lot and getting very little back in return for either myself or my children. We have a newish member who is very keen and eager to help and I am sure will be the aid to getting it either back on it’s feet and off and running again, or to changing it to something which meets the needs of many more than we have managed to do so far, but may mean it is something we as a family decide does not work for us any more. Jenny and I had a long chat today on the phone and re-enthused ourselves with our original plan and dreams, came up with some ways forward and ideas for improvement, but they will require committment and agreement from the rest of the group. We have a meeting arranged for an evening next week where I will put them forward and see what response we get. I have a distinct feeling that our ‘helper’ is somewhat after reinventing the wheel and cannot decide whether I am struggling to accept help simply because I am a bit controlling and crap at accepting help or whether she is after moving things in a direction I don’t want them to go and I am just being a bit precious about ‘my’ group. We’ll see.

So I am feeling somewhat in a limbo at the moment. Waiting to reclaim my children and get our days back on track to how I like them to run, waiting to start implementing a few educational ideas I have fermenting and waiting to get started with some of the other pursuits I have semi planned, waiting to see what happens with Home Ed group and also aware that I have a mental to do list which is stacking up a bit.

Stuff which is pressing:
writing the funeral speech;
seeing what I have in the wardrobe suitable and which fits to wear to said funeral;
getting a plan together for Halloween party;
further planning on educational stuff;
getting the thank you cards finished with Davies;
probably taking lots of cold and flu remedies!

Right, planning time for the party is here 🙂

Basically every one who reads this blog is invited so no coy ‘well I wasn’t sure if you meant me’ type nonsense from anyone 😉

I have had yeses from:

Alison;
Kirsty;
Layla;
Jax
all of whom have been invited to stay here too. If any of you are not intending to do so please let me know so I can start deciding where to put you all. Also please feel free to stay Friday night so you are here all day Saturday, Saturday night (we’re planning beef stew (with veggie option) all round for that evening). Depending on who is still around on Sunday and how long they are around for (staying Sunday night too is positively encouraged!) we’ll do something during the day locally.

Ros, Jenny, Ali – obviously all local enough to be working yourselves out but include yourselves invited to any additional stuff going on.

Joyce and Barbara – staying with Ros so as above 🙂

Sarah and poss the Beans – assuming you are serious about camping 😉 please also include yourselves in above as you are also staying nearby.

Heather, Merry you both mentioned being maybes – have you had any further thoughts?

And anyone else????

The plans for the actual party are as follows:

I have booked the same hall we have our Home Ed group at on Saturday 29th October from 12-6pm. I would say the actual party would start from 1pm, but I would welcome some help with setting up and decorating if anyone would like to (I’ll probably leave Ady at our house running a creche for children so I can do it unfettered!); laying out food and setting up games etc.

Party to start at 1pm. We’ve planned games such as apple bobbing, various spooky versions of party favourites (pass the parcel, musical statues and so on). There is a stage and we do have a karaoke machine so if anyone fancies singing a spooky themed song and has their own music on tape to bring along please feel free 😉

Food will be tradional party fayre with a spooky theme – any contributions to the food will be very gratefully received including non alcoholic beverages for adults and children. I will try and co-ordinate that nearer the time but please shout now if you are a willing volunteer 🙂 Also shout now if you are coming and have allergies or issues with any sort of foods.

Fancy dress is not optional and will be required and expected of both children and adults. Prizes will be awarded for best outfits in categories to be announced nearer the time 😉

When night falls (around 5pm ish usually) we will have a small firework display outside although for H&S reasons we may watch from inside and all parents are reminded that they are responsible for their childrens’ safety (and their spouses’ behaviour!) unless anyone has any bang phobias or similar!

I was asked whether any of the people who star in my blog from my real life will be putting in guest appearances. There will be invitations offered to my parents, Chris and Julie, all of the schooled children who I sometimes mention and a few people from local HE group. This is not an opportunity for anyone to attempt to blackmail me by threatening to tell anyone what I blog about them as a) it will be Halloween, your screams will go unheard in a sea of screams and I WILL hurt you! b) chances are you will agree with anything i have said about them anyway as I am very astute and a fantastic judge of character and c) I am Nic. People who spend any length of time around me know me well enough to already know what I think of them anyway because I tell them 😉

Ooh, I can’t wait 🙂

Excesses of the week before are starting to catch up with us all I think! I was up until 2am this morning trying to catch up online and today I have the definite beginnings of a cold 🙁 Hope no one I snogged at the weekend is suffering too 😉

Ady took Tarly to Tumble Tots this morning, he’d not been before so was all nervous and full of questions such as ‘should I take my shoes and socks off too’ and ‘what are the words to the wheels on the bus again?’ but they did fine. She behaved really well for him, he was the only Daddy there but they both really enjoyed it.

I got to stay and be with Davies. He had had big plans for this precious mother and son time but he ended up setting up some sort of shop with the pretend food and play till in the lounge while I sorted some washing, hung some out, did some random kitchen tidying and put some clean washing away in Tarly’s room. Then we decided to make a start on his Thank You cards from his birthday. He did one for Lynda first and drew a picture of him and her holding hands with ‘Thank You’ written at the top, then wrote the note on the reverse. He has since done one for Ben and started one for the Price children. All of the pictures are his own ideas and it’s really amazing to watch him work out what he wants to draw, visualise it in his head and then carefully select the right colours and start making marks on the paper. His style is very Rolf Harris – I have not got a clue what something is going to end up as until it is finished – but he does fairly good representations of things and they are certainly recognisable once he’s finished. His writing was very good too actually – plenty of the letters he knew already when I told him how to spell things, others he copied very nicely from one’s I had written out.

Ady and Tarly arrived home and I took Davies out to Tescos to get a few bits and pieces before coming home for lunch and then we all went to Home Ed group. Group has been a bit odd of late, we toyed with the idea of a venue change, which may still happen if the perfect venue was to come up but I am doubtful that we will get one which ticks all boxes and is reasonably priced. We also toyed with changing the time and day which would have been preferable for some people but has possibly unsettled some others. I knew we would struggle after having a summer break to get back into it, and then being away myself last week probably didn’t help but I do feel like it needs a shake up again.

We have five regular attending families – which covers the cost and makes it worth doing, but obviously we would like about double that to make it a really good group. One of the newer members has been all proactive offering loads of help so I have happily handed over some of the stuff I was finding binding (like collecting the money, paying the invoices and so on to Julie; nominated a second key holder to do locking up each week and mean it is not imperative that I go every week either and been a bit more proactive about getting people to commit to bringing stuff to do each week.) and we are planning an evening meeting without children to plot a bit further and really make it into something worthwhile. I feel quite relieved not to be responsible for quite so much of it actually, although I have every intention of going every week it would be nice to have the option of not going sometimes (like after the locking Tarly in the car incident of last time) without knowing that unless I go there will be no group. Also good news that Jenny will be around again each week having given up the job which was preventing her from coming too 🙂 So feeling more like it will be something I enjoy being part of again instead of another thing to fret about when I’m having a ‘my life is too chaotic’ moment next time!

So group was very quiet today and probably not the best week to take Ady for the first time and expect him to be impressed 🙁 Nice for him to put a couple more faces to names though. The theme was mini bugs and beasties so we had playdough with ELC stick on wings, eyes and legs, painting of ladybirds cut outs, some microscope stuff and butterfly printouts and I took along a selection of story books related to insects (Lazy ladybird, very hungry caterpillar, very quiet cricket etc).

We then dropped Ady and Tarly home and Davies and I headed off to Tumble Tots – which for him is now called Gym Bobs. He very happily bounced in and I sat and read some more of my Jodi Picoult book (you were right Joyce, it’s another page turner!) in peace for an hour. The group leader called me in to watch Davies at the end as he was ‘in charge’ of giving out stickers as it had been his birthday. They all had to line up in front of him and stretch up tall, wish him Happy Birthday and then he stuck their stickers on them 🙂 Naturally he adored it!

Came home and Davies did a couple more thank you cards, they had tea and bath and bed.

Scarlett has, after being very reliably potty/toilet trained wet herself a few times this weekend. Today she has been fine but we are back at the reminding her every 10 minutes or so stage again about whether she needs a wee which is very wearing 🙁 Hope it is a short lived phase.

Planning a fairly quiet day tomorrow but Rachel (mother of schooled Elliot) is popping round in the morning for tea and to give Davies his birthday pressie (most extended birthday ever – he is still due at least three pressies that I know about!). Tiring things these holidays!

Just as well I have been seeing some of you otherwise there might well be search parties out given how quiet I have been! 😉

After briefly appearing back in Sompting late on Friday and staying for all of Saturday we were off on the road again on Sunday morning.

Stopping at Costco to collect the traditional blue bottle of wine (our mission: to have one lurking in the home of every blogger before 2007!), a rather large communal birthday cake and at our hotel to drop off our stuff we arrived at Chris and Alison’s mid afternoon on Sunday. We sort of passed Merry and co in the hall really – nice but brief!

Ros and co arrived returning Poppy to her rightful owners, shortly followed by Layla and Si and with my children quickly getting to their usual wet and muddy state resulting in Tarly sharing a very long bath with Lulah we all made ourselves at home 🙂 Lovely dinner supplied partially by Ros and partially by the local takeaway pizza and thai restuarants with pizza for the children. We managed to eat mainly in peace thanks to the large chocolate cake being stationed in the playroom as a deterant to coming back to the kitchen to bother us! Davies did keep appearing keen to report back on stuff in the manner of Kermit the frog and his bit part as a roving reporter on Sesame Street (accompanied by lots of ‘der, der, DERRRRR’ ing) and Tarly ran past me several times to get to Ady doing her extra syllable, Holly Hunter style speaking (I’m a gay-url, sitting on a chay-air who needs hey-elp) punctuated with lots of ‘I don’t want YOU’s’ – Daddy’s girl this week 😉

Plenty of wine was consumed, laughter was had and Ady rolled out his only told when he is drunk and in good company story of an injury in his youth in a delicate place which I think he felt was some sort of initiation rite! Very, very enjoyable evening. Thanks for the hospitality and the company 🙂

We then went back to the hotel with me and the children bare foot and walked noisily through the foyer trying to text Ros to find out what room number they were staying in. Found them next door to us so Ady and Tony went down to the hotel bar while me and Ros rather successfully ignored the children bouncing from one bed to the other and locking themselves in the wardrobes while we chatted 😉 The men arrived back and Ros, Tony, Boo and Buzz left to go back next door. Kids were asleep around midnight, we took the opportunity to make use of the shower and bath facilities 😉

Woke later than planned the next morning so was pleased to get a text from Ros (from all the way next door!) to delay breakfast for half an hour. Ate that and planned to meet them at Legoland after they collected Pea and the dog from Alison’s.

Slight hiatus at Legoland about not having booked first to get the HE discount but we were allowed in (just as well, as they still got nearly 90 quid off us and I think we would have walked away and gone somewhere else for the day if we had not got the discount!) and had a fantastic day there. We stayed right til the end and still didn’t get round everything. Really good fun – photos here on flickr and very chuffed to have helped Ros celebrate her birthday. Worth particular mention was the Dinosaur Dipper ride which was for small people (Tarly was allowed on!) but seemed to be staffed by a loony who was clearly on his last day there and was doing all the ‘who wants to go faster? scream if you wanna go faster. I can’t hear you!!!!’ type stuff and making it spin so hard your head rattled (okay that might have just been the residual hangover from Sunday night then!). We all loved it so much we leapt off, ran round the barriers and went on it again three successive times. The final time we got him to say Happy Birthday to Ros on his tannoy and he and everyone else on the ride sang Happy Birthday to her 🙂 In retrospect as we were pretty much the only people on it I am not sure why we bothered to get off and run round to go back on when we could have just stayed in our seats, but it was all good fun!

Ros and Tony followed us back up the M4 to Costco again (Ros, Ady got you copies of some of the photos but forgot to give them to you – will bring them on Friday) and then we parted company for them to return to Sussex and us to return to Alison’s for the evening.

Kids were tired and actually so were we so although we had planned to stay the night Ady volunteered to stay sober and drive back home after all. We still had a lovely evening (thank you, again 🙂 ) with Chris, Alison, Layla and Si before heading off about 11pm.

Arrived home around 1am and crashed straight into bed (well ok I had actually slept some of the way home too!) and then today after a lazy start we headed off to Portsmouth. We got there for lunch, wandered round the shops for a bit, went to the dockyard but decided against actually going on any of the ships as it is so pricey. We called in Asda to get Robot on dvd and bought all the decorations and bits for the Halloween party. As Tarly had slept on the way there we called in on my parents for a couple of hours on the way home and took some muffins with us.

The Friday before we went on holiday my Step Grandfather died (he used to be married to my grandmother – my Mum’s Mum – and although they have been divorced for years he was like a Grandad to me from birth until teens and we still saw him fairly regularly. Mum had been asked by his partner if she would choose a song from a cd to be played at the funeral so we did that. I have also been asked if I will say a few words about him, so I am in the process of collecting my thoughts together and sifting through childhood memories in order to do such a task the justice it deserves. So we talked a little about that the funeral is next week.

I think I have pretty much caught up with my own blog and flickr and emails. I have not done so well with other’s blogs so I will make a start tomorrow! Ady is taking Tarly to Tumble Tots in the morning, then we are all going to home ed group and then I think I am taking Davies to his Tumble Tots (bliss, I can sit and read in the waiting room! 😉 ) and then we have a seriously early night planned for everyone as we are all really wiped out from a full on weekend following on from a hectic holiday.

Right, 2am and it’s my turn to get up in the morning. Hmmm, bed, I think 😉

To Tallulah who was 3 today!

Missed mentioning it on time – and also missed Ros’ on Monday but I hope made up for it by wishing it in person with gifts! 😉

There was that a-plenty this last week. Eden and the surroundings at CP sparked all sorts of talk about climates, different parts of the world, rain forests, trees and their life cycles, saplings, seeds, blossom, fruit, parent trees, ages of trees and what they might have seen – how different trees grow to different heights, the predators of trees and ways in which they might die and more.

Davies impressed my dad – as much as it is possible to impress him 😉 – with his chatter about life cycles of frogs, caterpillars and trees, space, the moon, the solar system, the water cycle and various other geographical stuff. All regurgitated from stuff we’ve talked about previously but lovely to hear it has gone in, been understood and re-told in his (wow) five year old’s vocabulary.

Obviously lots of physical stuff like walking, swimming and playing crazy golf. Davies really did well at swimming. He wore one of the CP loan floatie jackets which gave him buoyancy and allowed him to learn to tread water, turn around and get from one place to another. Probably way behind what other water babies are at but a real breakthrough for him who has previously just clung to the shoulders of whoever was holding him 🙂 Must, must, must keep that up. He is also generally more confident about his own capability physically with things like climbing, slides, and other playground aparatus. I guess Tumble Tots is in no small way to thank for that, but it’s been lovely to witness 🙂

Longleat reinforced a fair bit of both childrens’ general knowledge, and taught them some new stuff too. The safari had a cd to listen to as we drove round which for the most part they did listen to and talk about with us as we went. They both love animals anyway and were delighted to see some of their ‘jungle favourites’ in the flesh! Davies learnt the hard way about the food chain when he got upset about feeding the sea lions with dead fish. Nice to see his sensitivity but also I think it really helped it to all go in – time to read death in a nut again I think.

Social skills were also called upon and built on this week with eating out, living with others and not getting everything they wanted right when they wanted it. Tarly did very well in the difficult role of two year old on a sibling’s birthday on Wednesday too. 🙂

Davies has been into mazes in a big way for a while now, sparked off by a computer game which has them and he often draws them out for us to complete so he was thrilled to be the leader in walking round the giant maze at Longleat – he has started to get interested in north, south, east and west of late too – so a definite gift of a compass for Christmas and some mileage there for the future too.

There has been a lot of role play, a lot of working the audience (his dancing to the crowd along with the irish fiddler on his birthday evening a case in point) and lots of independence building stuff like paying for things in shops, asking for directions, speaking to tour guides and generally dealing with people for himself, which is all good skill building too.

The TV watched this week was accidentally pretty much all educational. We got CBBC on the TV there so watched the schools shows first thing each morning and a bit of Cbeebies which we have not seen for months. Ironically some of the more schooly stuff was backed up for us practically. There was a show called Eureka! (very good if you can get over your Fearne Cotton phobia!) which has a bit about sonic and ultra sound and bats. The next day at Longleat we saw real bats and heard their clicking and talking to the keeper about it 🙂

I was slightly fretful that this week he might suddenly appear obviously ‘not at school’ and whilst he didn’t actually – there were plenty of other school age children around, even if he had I think he would have been – in the main – a good example of how and why HE works.

We have not picked up a pen or pencil all week – although they did a fair bit of playing with stuff like wikkistix, we have only read a couple of books and certainly done nothing in any way contrived educationally, yet somehow we have covered as much, if not more than we might have done on a day where I was making a concerted effort to Home Educate. There’s a moral in there somewhere – and when it is not an ungodly hour of the morning I might try and find it and blog some more about it!

A round up then, as it is no less than would be expected (and frankly, some of you fell down badly in your task as text alert comment bloggers 😉 )

Saturday – Left home on schedule to have a couple of hours with the Clarke’s for lunch to break up the journey with a spot of blog bumping. Route finder said just over 3 hours, Sarah later told me it would have been more like 4 even on a good day and it was over 5 🙁 . It also rained on and off and we had Mum and Dad following us in their car which always adds a certain level of stress to driving having to watch out for someone behind you not getting lost.

The kids should have slept on that first part of the journey – that was the plan. We’d installed the dvd player and that was slowly driving me insane from behind – there are only so many times you can hear Finding Nemo without the joy of the pictures before ‘just keeping swimming’ loses it’s charm altogether! They were also doing a fine line in inane questions from the back and Ady was listening to his Hall and Oates cd whilst trying to have a grown up conversation with me and not get totally put off his track by the voices in the back asking for juice, food, why the sky is blue and so on constantly. Eventually at Davies’ request we put War of the worlds on the cd player, turned Nemo off, Tarly fell asleep and we all sung along about the chances of anything coming from Mars being a million to one.

I do quite like that drive along the coast heading west – you do pass through some pretty places, it is a memory filled route from a jaunt to Weymouth I believe I have mentioned before as my first big drive alone when I was 18 (across three counties!) and having had a lovely holiday in Dorset last Autumn and staying fairly nearby for HESFes again earlier this year I am quite fond of ‘The Road to Bridport’ and Ady is ever hopeful we may catch a glimpse of Hugh Fearnley – Whittingstall along the way too! I do quite like that part of the country but there are other parts with greater draw’s for me – so I won’t be joining Merry in my yearning for an EX postcode 😉

So having gone even further west that I’ve been before to Exeter we arrived at Sarah’s a mere two hours later than I had planned, giving us a very small window before piano teacher’s arrived and my parents returned from being sent off to ‘do something for an hour’. We managed to cram in yummy home made soup, chocolates, coffee and chats for grown ups, scattering into the house and playing for the children into our hour though so didn’t do too badly. I guess the blog induced intimacy and shorthand helps 😉

The second part of the journey was equally blighted by traffic – and to the soundtrack from the back seat of three hours worth of taped Nick Jnr which took in Ruby and Max, Maggie and the ferocious beast and Blues Clues- so even Ady now knows the theme tunes off by heart too 😉 Our Travelinn, once found, was well located and we will definitely be returning to Cornwall again in the not too distant future to follow some of the more interesting looking brown signed attractions.

We had an early dinner and I ended up downing most of a bottle of wine very speedily and then felt it rush to my head shortly after ordering a second. The children were tired and fractious and after doing a grand job of eating and being really quite restuarant friendly I called it a night and took them back to the room for a bath, story and bedtime. Ady stayed on in the bar for a further couple of hours with my parents – which I think we all enjoyed. I got the kids to sleep, got into bed and read my book, did my texting and finally left the door on the latch and was asleep before 11!

Sunday – The Eden Project.

Really enjoyed it here. I thought the entry fee was pretty reasonable (and we didn’t even get Home Ed rates, but paid for a year’s pass for me and Ady – Davies won’t be under five next time so will use the Home Ed rate for him then). Sarah had told us about the zip wire the day before so I was keen to do that and Ady was keen to face his fear of heights and give it a go too, so we left the kids with my parents and clambered back up to give it a go. I barely squeezed under the weight restriction rather embarrassingly but the harnesses still had a fair bit of tightening needed so my blushes were saved! We listened to the H&S talks with growing consternation and despite having planned to leap together side by side Ady did a great big leap off while I was still collecting myself together and hurtled way infront of me the whole way! It lasts 30 seconds and the first 10 were spent thinking ‘argh, what am I doing!!??’, the second 10 thinking ‘actually this is really rather fun!’ and the final 10 waving madly and yelling to the children who were stood below wondering what on earth their parents were up to!! If it hadn’t been a tenner a throw I’d have happily spent the whole day doing it!

We then walked round the outside attractions for a bit, then did the humid biome, then lunch, the the warm biome. Back outside for some more of the outside stuff including the children taking part in their big daffodil bulb planting extravaganza before slowly working our way back up to the top. I could talk more about it but you have either been there and know already or have not been and would therefore wonder what I was on about, so I won’t!

Loads of educational conversations with Davies, all of which I have now forgotten but he refered to afterwards so I know he hasn’t!

Dinner that night was very jovial. The children were on their best behaviour after having a bath with me to perk them up before hand. Davies has been getting really whingey during the day but he pulled himself round very well. He sat and told my dad all about nocturnal animals, amphibians, the life cycle of a frog and a turtle in great detail and was generally an admirable PR officer for HE 🙂

Monday – off to Centerparcs.

Another several hours journey – this time Davies watched Scooby Doo and Tarly slept which made it slightly more peaceful. Arrived at about 1pm so dumped the car, walked in to get some lunch and buy some shopping from the Parcmarket to be delivered before heading back to collect the car and get into our villa. Confess to a heartsinking moment when we pulled up outside it as we have only previously been to the Cumbria one where all the villas are beautiful log cabin style affairs. This looked more like a large ugly flat roofed static (infact all week the kids refered to it as ‘our caravan’). But looks were deceptive and inside was lovely, with more bathrooms than people, a shower and steam room, a jacuzzi and radio piped into all the bathrooms.

We were a bit miffed to discover that we had to purchase a grill to use the brick built BBQ so ended up using a couple of disposables we had brought with us for dinner that night from the patio (which Ady cooked outside alone in the dark and then brought inside for us to eat!).

Tuesday – Not the best of days. Ady and I needed to go out and get a birthday cake for Davies and as Davies had specifically requested a Spiderman cake and refered to it a couple of times since I felt the need to get him just that. We were out of the village before 9.30am having left the children with my reluctant parents 🙁 but the first supermarket we came across didn’t have spiderman cakes, Ady decided to fill the car up with petrol which meant a half hour queue and then we rowed about whether Davies would rather have his spider man cake or us back with him at Centerparcs. Ady was insistant that he would not be bothered about the cake, I knew he would be. We only drove about 10 miles further that CP in the end to Trowbridge where we happened upon a Tescos and were back at the villa by midday – and not missed at all, but it had set my mood and after lunch when we set off to walk into the village centre again for the rest of the day I ended up having a complete hissy fit at everyone over something very minor and trivial and stomping off. 🙁 Hid in the woods for 20 minutes or so, had a quiet cry and composed myself to go back again.

We went into the village, booked the next two nights food events and had dinner at the American diner style place there. It started well with the kids going off to play in the soft play area but they were very tired after 4 late nights, too much stress in the atmosphere and too much sugar and Tarly ended up having a massive and very public tantrum too. I carted her off to a quieter corner and eventually calmed her down to finish the evening ok – but sadly my stress ;evels and the childrens’ behaviour generally was on a bit of a downward spiral from constant undermining of my authority and parenting style – which is a bit of a joke when I am the one who is with them 24/7 really, but I will not dwell on such things. I am confident that I do a very good job and that a snapshot opinion based on a weeks’ holiday is not accurate of my relationship with them anyway.

Wednesday – Davies’ birthday.

A bad night with Tarly and I ended up bed swapping with her so that I would wake up in the bedroom with Davies, which was odd really – so at 4.35am – the time he was born, he and I were in a small room alone together with me gazing at him wondering where those years had gone. We both woke up together at about 7.30am and he said to me ‘Is it morning time?’ ‘yes darling’ ‘Is it my birthday then?’ ‘yes darling!’

He waited for me to go and put some pjs on and wake Ady and then we let him out of the bedroom to see the decorated lounge and all his pressies. Scarlett and my parents joined us shortly afterwards and he was thrilled with all his gifts. He got a wooden castle and figures, three different micro machines, a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and various other bits and pieces, all of which he loved and I spent ages putting together and assembling!

We needed milk so my parents grudgingly agreed to go and get some as we were off swimming. They ended up actually going out of CP and into Bath where they rang me from at 5.30pm to check whether we still needed the milk!! In the end they met us at the restuarant in the evening, so the whole point of them joining us on holiday to spend more time with the children, particularly on Davies’ birthday was all a bit lost really. My Mum then had the cheek to be all afronted that we will be away again for Tarly’s birthday in December!

We went off swimming and had a lovely time actually. I like swimming although swimming is not something you get to do an awful lot of with when you are with two small people! But we did go down all the slides, splash about, do some floating and a bit of swimming lesson type stuff and it was a very nice couple of hours. We got the Land Train back to our villa and as the kids were wiped out and not looking likely to make it through the evening we sat them down to chill out with Shrek on dvd while I carried on making up the micro machines.

We walked back to the Pancake Restaurant where we were booked in for a fondue night with live music. I had popped in earlier with some banners and streamers and another birthday cake for Davies so he got appropriate fuss made of him and our table all decorated, later on the singer announced to the whole room it was Davies’ fifth birthday and a cake was brought out with the whole restaurant and the fiddler singing happy birthday to him. Very memorable and he had a lovely evening to round off a lovely day.

Thursday – We had promised Davies we’d play the crazy golf the previous day so we set off there first thing and despite the only rain of the week pouring down on us throughout we had a very nice time. Back to the villa for lunch before heading back into the village for swimming again. Another nice hour or so playing on the slides and wave machines before heading back to get dried and changed for the last nights Party on the Parc event.

This was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, but the kids enjoyed it and the food was good so we tried to overlook the fact it was a glorified Sparky’s! The kids loved the magician and both had great fun ‘dancing’ to the disco which was playing back to back novelty records such as Barbie Girl, Agadoo and Macarena – urgh! Scarlett had gotten overexcited and ended up wearing no pants so I was amused to see her dancing her ass off, flashing her no knickers status and generally having a ball on the dance floor – ooh that girl reminds me of someone! 😉 We left just before 10 as we were all fading fast and got the Land train back to the villa. The kids fell asleep very quickly and we started the packing up for the morning efforts.

Friday – after oversleeping and not scrambling out of the villa until a full hour after last eviction time we drove across the road and into Longleat. We had an excellent day there and it was well worth the money. We’d got a £1.50 each off voucher as we left CP and it was a very full day out for the money. We drove round the safari, did the train and the boats to feed sea lions, watched the parrot show, walked round the house (where Davies thorougly impressed the guide by asking whether the ceiling in one of the lower rooms was the one from the TV show (Animal Park) which had been repaired – it was!) and did the maze. A really good day out.

A couple of hours drive home and we arrived to the house in an utter shambles which took hours to clear up (cat mess which I will not gross you out with full details of 🙁 ). Scarlett had slept on the way home and was put into bed still sleeping, Davies took forever to get to sleep, we had a takeaway meal and then Ady headed off to bed to leave me to catch up online, but Tarly woke at 11.30 and didn’t go back to sleep until 3.30am so I didn’t get to sleep until 4 and although I managed a bit of reading I didn’t get much chance to upload photos or blog myself.

Today – after a small lie in to try and catch up – we have popped into town for lunch and to get the underwater camera photos developed, kids are now asleep and I am off for a bath and dinner. The washing mountain is still very much in evidence and as we are away again tomorrow night it may well be added to before it goes down – ah well, at least it means some of the lesser worn clothes we all own are getting an outing eh! 🙂