One word? When seven would do…

is sort of how I felt today. Lots of stuff happened, plenty of it good but I was too busy blowing my nose, coughing and spluttering, propping my eyelids open and generally being introspective so I was aware it was there and happening but only via a long tunnel with kaliedoscope edges making it all twinkly!

It was the first session at our new venue for Home Ed group today and I have to confess to failing miserably to engage with it at all. I was slightly opposed to it moving anyway; both time, day and venue and TBH Monday morning the other side of town is simply not the best for me. On the plus side I am no longer key holding and as such don’t feel anywhere near the sort of responsibility for it that I previously did, which is a good thing. Hayley and I have agreed that we will give it til the end of the year before deciding whether to carry on. My current feeling is that unless either of us gets a visit from some sort of angel we are unlikely to be inclined to carry on really, but I am slightly relieved to have an end to it in sight. This time last year we were about to launch it (we being Jenny and I, which perhaps accounts for some of my feelings towards the whole thing) and I was filled with enthusiasm, passion and excitement about it. Approaching a year on we have been in at least 5 different venues, the only people still in the original cast list are me and Julie and it has long since ceased to be anything to fill me with little other than a sense of duty and resignation. Time to call it a day I reckon.

Today was as any other day really, we had four families including one new person who was lovely. The new venue is fab, we had got loads of stuff from the Resources Centre where Allie works (fab stuff Allie 🙂 ) which went down really well – stuff like balancing toys, bucket stilts, one of those pedals and wheels things and the theme was fireworks so there were various crafty activities on offer. Davies and Scarlett quite enjoyed it, we played on the balancing toys together, Davies made a loo roll firework, Tarly made a sticking picture and then helped me sweep the floor. I spent quite a time chatting to the new lady who is a mother of four, journalist with an actor husband who was also there just finishing the last half term for her two eldest children who are in school currently and trying out every home ed group locally to reassure herself there is plenty ‘out there’ so although we are unlikely to see them at group again I think we might stay in touch as we clicked and she had loads more questions than I could answer with a very rough voice and two children plucking at my clothing.

Left there and came home as Tarly had fallen asleep in the car. Arrived home to find a message from Joyce to say her and Bob would not be coming over for dinner tonight after all, which was a slight relief as I am now planning to be in bed by about 10pm with olbas oil on my pillow and vaseline all round my nose and a bellyfull of lemsip instead 🙂

Spent the afternoon alternately refereeing squabbles from two very tired and irritable children (Tarly also not well so far from her best) and doing some of this week’s crop of CVs (hurrah! paying work!) while Davies built a plastic train set and watched Thomas on DVD and Tarly brought me a stream of books to read to her (in the style of Bonnie Tyler obviously as my voice is now croaky and husky! Karaoke doing Rockin’ Good Way would be fab if I could only find my Shaky!).

Finally lost all my last shreds of patience and good motherliness when Ady got home so buggered off to the library and the supermarket to stock up on stuff for the next two nights – home alone as Ady is working away although I do have Ros and Joyce coming for a girlie night tomorrow 🙂 which I am sure will do me good! Am now sitting on Davies’ bedroom floor, already in pjs doing a mental stocktake of the drugs in the house with cold and flu relieving properties – I’m thinking the brandy might be my preferance!

Oh and finally, thank you Chris & Alison 😉

For once, this weekend went by without my mentally composing a blog post as I went along, the sheer volume of people around me at all times, the fretting as to what might possibly go wrong and the enjoying being with friends left me little or no headspace for such frippery!

So, this will be more the bits that stick in my mind than a full blown minute by minute account of the weekend. (Don’t think for one second it will be brief as a result though 😉 )

Friday – The journeys of various people were charted via emails and text alerts with the eager anticipation of Joyce and co arriving in Sussex given particular excitement! After the baking frenzy we managed to get the children bathed and to sleep pretty early, then enjoyed some quiet time doing last minute bits and pieces in an empty house – something we appreciated the novelty value of several times knowing what was to come!

Chris and Alison arrived with mainly sleeping children around 10pm and we had curry with visits from various non- sleeping children at various points. By about midnight all children were asleep once more, Ady and Chris headed off to bed with Alison and I fully intending to follow not too much later… I remember thinking at 2am that we really should get some sleep as it was going to be a big busy day on Saturday but somehow it was 5am before I crawled into bed 😉 Enjoyable evening with lots of interesting conversations and some photo memorabillia dragged out too!

Saturday morning some two and a half hours after I’d gone to bed I was back up again. Fortunately the lack of sleep meant I needed very little cosmetic assistance to pull of the red eyed witch look! Ady did his usual bacon sandwich and endless tea and coffee duty, I made up some goodie bags ably assisted by Tilda (with less able assistance in the form of Scarlett!) and then with much considering the best way to ship everyone to the hall Ady took Alison, Tilda (honourory adult for party decoration preparation) and I to the hall with food and decorations. I think we did a fab job actually, we had all sorts of pumpkin, skeleton, spiders webs and ghosts draped around the place, the Happy Halloween banner we’d made at group last week and various bats, spiders and snakes scattered around the place. Tilda and I mixed up some fizzy punch set off beautifully by the severed ice hands and set up tables which were soon groaning with food as people began to arrive.

All the children looked fantastic, we had a huge selection of home made and shop bought outfits, some Halloween themed and some not – I think I did a headcount of 32 children at some point. Although Alison and I were fading fast by 3pm groaning at the prospect of a further three hours I think the party carried on strong til the end. We had a variety of games and activities all of which seemed to go well (particular mention to the popcorn game which I know to some may have looked like encouraged lunacy but I thought was hilarious and much enjoyed by the children. Sorry if anyone’s offspring now thinks they should ‘try this at home’ on that one though!), we had plenty of controlled sitting in circles type stuff like the Trick or Treat and the Pass the Parcel and of course Ali’ spooky story (which made no sense at all given the various contributors – it had clearly bothered Lije who had listened to it all the way through, dwelt on it and then asked me about it last night wanting to know why there had been children in the beginning, then the main characters had not had children and then by the end they were children themselves!! – but provided a calm, sitting down moment half way through and had several adults in hysterics!), we had hyped up competition from the make the skeleton game and the apple bobbing (or as my daughter thought it was called Tarly Bobbing!) and much fun with the toilet roll wrapping game. We finished off with Barbara’s skittles outside while grown ups started stripping the hall into bin liners.

Thank you so much to everyone who came, everyone who brought stuff along (food or games), made such an effort with their costumes, helped to tidy up or generally just contributed. It was a great day 🙂

People started to scatter back to wherever they were spending the night and we had a smaller continuation back at ours with Chris and Alison, Chris and Helen, Simon, Steve and Sarah and all children coming back for tea and to witness the comedy moment that was Elijah and Claudia sharing a birthday cake!! (We had planned to do it at the hall and include Ben but no one had any matches to light the candles – and frankly Ben would have been at risk of physical injury as it happens to probably best he was not around! 😉 ). The Clarkes watched X Factor and slowly people melted away and children simmered down until it was just The Beans and Chris and Alison left with us. We had pizza delivered and a relatively early night at 1am ;-).

Sunday was lovely. I was woken by Tarly at 8am ish who clearly shares her father’s hostess gene and wanted me to ‘come downstairs and talk to the grown ups!!’ I had sniffed my way through Saturday and realised upon waking that actually I am infact ill, I think it’s just a cold which has probably not been helped by late nights but the morning spent lounging about, drinking tea, eating bacon sandwiches, painting nails of various small girls and generally not doing an awful lot seemed to restore me a little.

We headed off to Brighton and eventually met back up with the others – Brighton is a nightmare for parking so our arrivals were staggered over about an hour I think! Tilda came with us and highly amused me by listening to War of the Worlds and deciding that was where Davies’ DaDaDerrr had come from! We had a lovely time on the beach, looking at shells and seaweed, playing chase the waves etc and then on the pier. We had chips for lunch and then said goodbye to The Beans before carrying on to the end where we allowed all children one ride each (although the little four got an additional go somehow!). We got our self timer group shot, which was Ady’s one regret from the party 😉 and then headed for home. Joyce and Ros caught up with us at that point and everyone came back for dinner 🙂

I was feeling slightly spaced out by that point so I suspect I was not my usual witty and charming self but I’m sure Ady’s dinner (assisted by his commis chefs, The Lovely Ros and The Lovely Alison) made up for my general intolerance of children and being tucked behind my laptop for much of the time uploading photos to flickr! I’m always amazed by just how many people can fit into what we always think of as a pretty small house without it feeling that cramped really. The children tend to scatter between the children’s bedrooms and the playroom (and briefly the garden! Oi! In!), I think everyone who came here must have watched Wallace and Gromit at least seven times each 😉

Everyone left around 10ish, we got Davies to bed, Ady managed to put the house back together somehow in record time and headed off to bed.

It was a lovely weekend. I’m so glad we did it, the children had a whale of a time (although Tarly was very upset this morning when she woke up and Lulah had gone ‘I want Lulah to stay here FOREVER!’) and we’ll definitely be doing it again next year. It was lovely to meet some new faces and to get some of the other bloggers together for the first time (Dani & Allie and Ali), nice for some of my other friends to meet some of my online friends and I’m sure nice for some of you to meet some of my other friends and finally, ever mindful of The Cause it was yet another triumph for blasting away that stupid myth that HE children don’t get to socialise enough – those kids mixed and mingled better than a martini in a silver cocktail shaker shaken by a person with a very strong wrist!

Had a lovely day again today. Went to Brighton in the afternoon, pics hereand some more from The Beans here and had another chaotic evening back here before waving goodbye to houseguests for the evening.

Have come down with bad case of bird flu which coupled with ‘Party Come Down’ is wiping me out rather. 🙁

About to have a bath and head off to bed, will blog weekend in full at some future point!

Went supremely well I thought. May blog about it in full at a later date, but then again I might not bother 😉

Pics are here – I imagine there will be more to follow from others…

And how right I was! Sarah, Chris & Helen… and of course the long awaited snaps from Mr P 🙂

Today has been a good day in the main, I feel like I’ve got lots done, practical stuff, longer term sorting out stuff and of course a fair amount of last minute party prep!

After a lovely evening with The Clarkes last night the kids didn’t get to bed until about 10.30pm so they both slept in past 8 this morning which meant far from them dragging me out of bed as per normal I was sitting in the lounge drinking tea in full make up, dressed and enjoying the peace of early morning with no children which has probably not happened here for about 5 years now!

My Dad arrived at 8.30am to do a bit of wallpapering repairs. He is a decorator by trade so does all such stuff in our house but of course you end up waiting that much longer and having stuff left half done all the more. There has been a strip of paper missing under our window for months and last week he came and redid the papering but when we went to dig out the leftover paint it had all dried up. We actually want it repainting in a different colour so rather than buy more paint just for that strip for a week or two until he repaints the whole room he has done it in a sort of contrasting colour – very Changing Rooms!

Really enjoyed having him here actually as he stayed most of the day and had lunch with us. We have had various chats about all sorts of things and I talked through a couple of things with him which I needed an ear to bend about. As always he really came through with the sort of unconditional love, support, refusal to hear me think the worst about myself and reasssurance that ‘everything will be alright’ which I think probably only a parent can give you. Whilst I hope my children don’t have to have the crisis in the first place to turn to me in, I do hope that they would feel able to and I would be able to offer them what my Dad did for me today. Love my Dad 🙂

After he left I did some baking for the party. Hours of work with not a great deal to show for it really as it was all fiddly stuff and our kitchen is so small you can only do a limited amount before you need to totally clear up and start again. I made loads of gingerbread biscuits – some decorated as skeletons and some as pumpkins and some fairy cakes which I have made into spiders. I think they all look great anyway. I’ve had loads of texts and emails today from people telling me what they have made /are bringing so I certainly don’t think we’ll be short of imaginatively created food anyway!

The children have alternatly played really nicely, together and apart, watched Wallace and Gromit (again!), played with the dinosaurs and created dinoworld for them using construction paper to be the sea and the land with plastic trees and vegetation, they have done some drawing and sticking, built stuff with wooden blocks, played with the castle and the pirate ship, assisted in the baking, hindered the baking!, driven me mad and squabbled with each other! Tarly is now asleep and Davies is falling asleep as I type so hopefully they will be on top form tomorrow.

Right, I have two hours before Chris and Alison are expected, I still need to have a bath, wash my hair, paint my nails with spooky effects, see if I have any fishnet tights or stockings, laminate a couple of last minute bits and waft around the kitchen a bit in a feeble attempt at looking like I am helping to cook dinner! 😉

See some of you tomorrow 🙂

We have just been left by the Clarkes which is phase one in the blogbumping festival that is Halloween in Sussex ’05 🙂

In the style of 21st century socialising there were at several points three laptops out with no IRL conversation and at least two of us in the same conference IM chat – excellent fun! 😉

Today has been good, reminded me of all that is good about my life, which I think I needed 🙂

Had a fairly laid back morning, I sorted out beef stew and got in in the oven low, cut out some bits for a skeleton game for the party, did some very half hearted tidying (so if Sarah talks about me to any of you and mentions my slovenly ways, ah well!) and generally faffed.

Then we set out (late as ever!) to Havant for the Pumpkin soup thing. It was done by these people and I possibly slightly missed the point of them as I didn’t find it hugely engaging. The children seemed to enjoy it though, although I probably wouldn’t describe them as captivated either. It was aimed at undr 5s and it didn’t really hold Tarly for the whole show and Davies was certainly a touch old for it and was more enjoying it from a production point of view somehow than an actual performance. Cheap though and I’m sort of glad we went. Tarly slept in the car on the way there, which was no bad thing considering the lateness of the hour she retired last evening and how late she went to bed tonight too. Davies said he didn’t feel very well (bird flu!) and sort of dozed a lot of the way which probably did neither of them any great harm.

We left there and headed home via the petrol station and arrived home with just about enough time to do some cosmetic tidying and get some tea on for the children. The Clarkes arrived right in the middle of their specified time window (what a novelty!), Ady arrived about an hour after them and a very pleasant evening was had by all! Set Ady up a yahoo IM account and installed trillian on his laptop (pompeyady for anyone interested although I imagine he will never log in again if I am being realistic!), did some flickring and somewhere inbetween all the technostuff we actually did some IRL chat too ;-). Managed to eat beef stew, drink rather a lot of wine, Ady did stuff with the children including some glitter pictures of fireworks and I think Tarly may have illustrated her particular specialist artistic skill to the Clarke children (eww!) before they had to head off to ‘Beat The Barrier’ at their campsite.

Tomorrow we plan some final touches to party prep, some baking and maybe even a spot of tidying 😉 then again maybe not!

Did very little yesterday morning despite having rather a lot to do 😉 Had a horrid moment of shrieking at the children which I later apologised to them for, in tears, while they both cuddled me and said ‘don’t cry Mummy’ and wiped my tears away with tissues for me. Not sure if that made me feel better or worse really, children are too forgiving… They then managed to play nicely together for a while and ate their lunch sitting on the stairs, surrounded by loads of their toys apparantly in their car going on holiday! Davies has been doing some pc ‘games’ too, lots of mazes and matching and stuff so loads of early maths skills being ticked off as well as IT. Given that Tarly normally sits and watches him doing in in rapt attention too she’s probably picking stuff up too. She has also been watching Dora and Fifi Flowertot lots, the only things on TV which seem to capture her for long and she always ‘interacts’ with both, shouting at the screen when Fifi forgets something, or Dora ‘needs your help’. Her smattering of Spanish is far bigger than I had imagined, she happily counted to five with Dora the other day to my shock! TV – a huge boon to the lazy autonomous educator 😉

Home Ed group in the afternoon which I was totally not in the mood for but as I knew it would only be three families there anyway, and I needed to get the keys for the hall for Saturday and I needed to see both Julie and Vickie so it made sense to go and see them there. The theme was Halloween but by lunchtime I was so wrapped up in other things I had lost the ability or time to think of anything creative to take, so I grabbed a roll of lining paper and some crayons.

As it happened Vickie had not brought anything to do either and Julie’s activity was a brief one (drawing on paper with crayons and then painting over with runny paint, which I made an executive decision would be the grown ups job to do – both my two happened to be wearing new clothes yesterday!) so I cut off a long piece of paper, wrote ‘Happy Halloween’ on it and drew lots of spooky things like pumpkins, witches and ghosts and then set the children to colour it all in together. Which they did very nicely 🙂 Some of them even had a go at drawing a few extra bits on it too – Davies did an excellent owl and a couple of spiders. Then they pretty much organised themselves into a rowdy, but enjoyed game so we left them to it! Did manage a fairly educational conversation with Davies amid the madness about crayons, wax, paint, paper, porousity (not sure thats a word actually! Don’t worry, I didn’t use it with him, but we’d been talking about things being porous or not the other day so it sort of fitted in well). Made a mental note to demonstrate some of what I was saying with stuff like more wax, vaseline, oil, water and so on at some point.

Came home and played with the children and the geomags for a while. We made a city with some geomag houses and flats and a church and then the kids made some geomag people to live there. We chatted a bit about shapes, both the ones we made round the panels and the ones that several panels put together made. Also a few fairly vague nods towards talking about magnets were in there somewhere!

They had their tea and then Ady came home so I disappeared to prepare our dinner (suet pastry with sausage meat, bacon, onion, garlic, served with smashed up potatoes and gravy for those interested in our dinners!) ready to shove in the oven while we were out. Mum and Dad arrived and we dressed the kids up warm and wellied and set off to Shoreham Airport for a firework display . It looked as though there would be more going on on the airfield as the gates opened at 5.30pm and the fireworks were not starting until 8.30pm so we got there at about 7.30pm. Unfortunately there was just a funfair, which was good for atmosphere but bad for just wandering round for an hour without spending any money. We let the kids go on one ride and then went to wait for the fireworks to start. Despite plenty of whinging from ours – and others (all the way round the crowd you could hear parents threatening to just take their children home!) it was worth the wait. Over half an hour of really, really impressive fireworks which had the children oohing and ahhing. 🙂 Scarlett fell asleep as soon as we got in the car so she was popped into bed clothed (I know, the shock!! 😉 ), Davies took all of about ten minutes to fall asleep too, well it was 10pm. Finished off cooking dinner and we were all sitting watching Lost by about 10.15pm 🙂

Mum and Dad left about 11.30pm, fell into bed at midnight. Woke at 5.30am this morning with Tarly and although she went back to sleep I didn’t manage it. Which is probably just as well as I still have LOADS of things to do around the house to get it anywhere near ready for visitors. Actually scratch that, there is not a hope of getting it done now, anyone coming will have to take us as they find us 😉

Today we’re off to Havant for “>Pumpkin Soup – a children’s theatre production of some sort. It’s been organised by Julie and I could really do with not going (particularly as mother of child who was caught with Davies willy flashing will be there!) but I think the children will enjoy it. Tonight we will be enjoying the company of the Just Another Morning posse but as I don’t believe having company prevents Sarah from blogging I might be around myself 😉

Final run down of the plans for the day then:

The Actual Party – is at the hall starting at 1.00pm which is the earliest any children should arrive there please 🙂

***Pre-party prep. will be going on at the hall from 11am. Ady and a few others will be looking after children at our house while me and some helpers decorate the hall ready for 1pm.***

Food – please can you bring *something* with you 🙂 I have had offers of sandwiches from a couple of local friends, I have some crisps and other snack type stuff and will get a cake to celebrate the various birthdays, there will obviously be an amount of sweets as prizes for games and so on. So any further sweet or savoury offerings, particularly Halloween themed would be very welcome. I do have sufficient plates and cups and I will sort out some sort of lurid fruit drink too.

Games – I’ve had various offers for the games list I posted before:

Joyce is bringing loo rolls,
Sarah’s bringing a pass the parcel or two
Dani and Allie are bringing popcorn with assistance from Ali,
Alison is bringing trick or treat stuff and some wool,
Barbara is bringing Halloween skittles,
Ali’s doing her themed Halloween story.

Further wool might be helpful, or any themed game you want to bring along. I’ve made some matching pairs cards with Halloween themes, if anyone wants to bring along a version of pin the something on the someone that might go down well.

I’ve got plenty of stuff to decorate the hall with so that’s covered.

I think that’s everything! 😉

Several reasons for my absense, one of which was 24 hours without access to the blog but now I’m back. Not sure for how long as it’s looking like a busy old end of the week coming up and I’m fairly sure blogging will slide down my priorities list 😉

Sunday – Went to Drusillas with my parents. Had a nice time walking round and looking at the animals etc before getting some lunch. It always amazes me that given me and the children spend so much time together during the week when they have the chance to be with Ady or Granny and Grandad they still both tend to choose me. I ended up walking round most of the place with a child holding each hand :-). It’s pretty mutual though really as if I have the chance to go off out somewhere without them it’s nice but if I’m there too then I struggle not to be the main one interacting with them / pointing stuff out. Sometimes it’s nice to have a reminder that we are mainly together so much through choice ;-).

We went to the playground area after lunch and were joined by Ros and The Screamteam which was great. Davies and Scarlett got to run around with Pea, Boo and Buzz, Ros got to meet my parents (she’d met Dad briefly before but not my mum) and I think they all bonded very well! (Ros is physically much more suited to my family than me actually, Mum and indeed Tarly are more your petite blondes – infact Mum probably is Ros in about 25 years time :-). Infact if Ros didn’t look so much like her own family too I would suspect cuckoos at work 31 years ago! 😉

Monday – Went to a soft play centre with Mel, Liam and Lily (friends who go to school – half term). It poured with rain all day and was windy and otherwise horrid so I expected the worst from a soft play centre on a rainy day in half term, but it was not too busy. The kids had a great time, just ran off and got stuck in really, we had lunch there and then went back to Mel’s for a couple of hours playing too. We’ve not been there before as she lives with her mum and they also have three big dogs (which I am terrified of!) but I braved my fears and it was fine. Nice to see her in her own home, it always sort of completes the picture of someone once you have seen both their house, and how they are in it, you get a more accurate idea of what they are really like. (My theory anyway, which is why I am always slightly cagey about people coming to our house, it is not an invite I throw out casually anyway.)

Tuesday – my granny came round in the morning, she stayed a couple of hours and played snakes and ladders with the children for ages. In the afternoon we nipped out to get a few bits and pieces.

Davies, particularly has been quite challenging the last couple of days. After a couple of lovely days in the house last week I think they have had their fill of that for a while again (although that said they are playing happily now together upstairs, pretending to be on holiday!) and squabbles have broken out frequently over vry trivial things. Scarlett tends to lash out quite a bit and thinks nothing of snatching or walloping him and sadly he has started to hit back. I suppose I was very naive to think they would never get physical particularly as I clearly recall me and Frazer beating each other, but I have been coming down very, very hard on them both over it in a sort of zero tolerance fashion as even if I know it will happen I still want them to realise it’s not OK. Sigh, stuff 🙁

Also had a sticky moment with Davies and Granny yesterday when he pulled out a maths workbook from the bookcase. We’ve never done any sort of structured maths stuff and although I know his numeracy is fine and developing OK it is not done within the context of 3+4=7 type stuff, which is what the question she pulled out was. Together they worked it out as 7 and then she got him to write 7. His attempt was a sort of upside down 7, not right, but kind of there if you know what I mean. I would have corrected him and talked it through. I’m sure it rolled off his back but I could really tell she was thinking that he is not where he should be. Which has then played on my mind and given me niggles about autonomy. Not anything serious or any real doubts about it for us, but concerns about how it will prove itself short term to others. And I guess the answer is that it won’t, but I’m not feeling up to explaining and justifying just now.

This is sort of not the blog post I had intended writing really, but I need to go out now, so I’ll press send and might be back later to add to it. I’ve more to say but not sure whether here is the place to say it…

Happy Birthday Alex 🙂

managed to get back in here in time – phew!

Have ranted at small children lots for their inability to either play nicely, quietly or want to be engaged in anything I suggested to do with them. Probably a day for taking them outside somewhere to run it all off and yell into the wind but couldn’t summon the energy to do that either. It’s been an odd two weeks really and I think the fall out is still happening. I’ve learnt a bit about myself and rather a lot about others, and I’m sorry to say not all of it has been easy or happy learning. Ah well.

Off to wrestle small people into their pjs and pack them off to bed so I can open the wine, tidy the house up before Ady gets home (and Pompey were winning when he texted me at half time, so fingers crossed the result remains the same) and have a big bath with lots of bubbles.

Tomorrow we’re off to Drusillas for the day and my parents are coming too, which means they will likely come back here for dinner so I may not be around much here. Next week is looking very full with some excellent blog bumping lined up which I’m really looking forward to 🙂

Where are the (((()))) when you need them the most
You press the wrong button and your blog post is lost
They tell me your computer screen fades to grey
They tell me your web access has gone away
And I don’t need no carryin’ on

You go to HE group so you can socialise
You just meet loads of weirdos in ‘normal folk’ disguise
You tell me your life is played out on line
You’re falling to pieces everytime
And I don’t need no carryin’ on

Cause you had a pants day
You’re taking one down
You blog fourteen times just to turn it around
You say you don’t care
If your kids can’t read and write
But then you spend all your money on curriculums from sonlight
You had a pants day
The camera don’t lie
So you flickr your photos to prove you’ve got a life
You had a pants day
You had a pants day

Well you need a trip to the library
Take your new bookbag so all can see
You Home Educate your kids

You had a pants day
You’re taking one down
You blog fourteen times just to turn it around
You say you don’t care
If your kids can’t read and write
But then you buy in Pre K from the sonlight
You had a pants day
The camera don’t lie
So you flickr your photos to prove you’ve got a life
You had a pants day

(Oh.. Holiday..)

Sometimes your whole life goes on the blink
And and you think you’ll send them off to school
It doesn’t seem worth all the blood, sweat and tears
And at least you could have a life of your own
But what would you do with it, anyway

So where is the passion when you need it for you
Oh you and I
You kick up the leaves and get dog shit on your shoes

Cause you had a pants day
You’re taking one down
You blog fourteen times just to turn it around
You say you don’t care
If your kids can’t read and write
But then you buy in Pre K from the Sonlight
You had a pants day
You’ve had lots of ((cuddly vibes))
And how does it feel for one more time
You had a pants day
You had a pants day

A day of two halves today really. This morning I was out before 9 to be at the hairdressers, sat and chatted to the junior for ages, she was really sweet, 16 and super confident, full of compliments about my hair (which I tend to lap up as it’s the only part of me which elicits compliments nowadays (apart from Si and his camera phone of course! 😉 ) and then enjoyed having my hair cut and dried all straight and swishy.

Came home and we did an itinery of all the Halloween stuff we have, plenty of decorations for the hall and so on and have made a list of stuff we still need to get. Given the current drop-out rate I don’t imagine the additional paper cups and plates I had thought I needed to buy will be necessary, infact I may need to hunt down reciepts for returning some.

I’ve been catching up on blogs and other online stuff while Ady plays with the children and we’re about to swap over as he’s off to the football this afternoon. Planning to make various bits and pieces this afternoon including a birthday card for Ben (and maybe even finish the one Davies started for Lije!) and also plan to do some reading of library books too.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN! 🙂

Card and pressie here from D & S when we see you next weekend 🙂

Well we went where the days go today. sadly as Tarly had been up from 1.45 – 3.45am last night and after not going to sleep til gone 10pm Davies was still up at about 6am all of us were pretty tired and wrung out 🙁 Ali had been working until 4am so we were hardly a group full of sparkling wit, energy and vim and vigour. Ah well! Davies requested War of the Worlds to listen to in the car so we played it really loud and sang along to keep ourselves awake!

We sat and chatted while the kids played and then Ali had this *fantastic* idea of walking to the local park. To prevent the children from knowing what she was suggesting she offered the chance to me as ‘shall we go to the p.a.r.k?’ and off we set. Within moments of arriving Tarly was screaming at me and stamping her feet about me refusing to push her on the swings, Freya had removed her wellies and was running outside of the gates and Davies was sitting atop the slide yelling for us to watch him. Ali quickly decided she ‘hated the f.u.c.k.i.n.g. p.a.r.k. and we dragged three protesting children to the local shop for sweets. Except it was shut so we dragged them back home again!

Did manage a vaguely educational chat with my two about the leaves falling from the trees, the wind, why they rot away and therefore raking them up into piles is actually a complete waste of time and effort and picked some from the ground in various levels of decay to demonstrate. We did stand for a short while waiting for some to blow from the trees but it didn’t happen! They did do some halloween colouring and some sticking courtesy of Ali’s printed out stuff though, Davies did some writing of his name and recognised both his and Scarlett’s names on paper and they played nicely.

Left there and and they wanted Peter and the Wolf to listen to this time so we did and chatted about the instruments a bit and laa’d along with it. Got home and they watched it on video (Disney’s mini classics from ebay ages ago) then we got some plasticine out and made little figures of ourselves in the style of Wallace and Gromit which was good.

Ady came home, curry is in the oven, Tarly faded fast and is already in bed fast asleep and I don’t think Davies will be far behind.

Tomorrow I’m having my hair cut first thing and then Ady is going to watch Portsmouth in the afternoon so I’m planning some more Halloween crafts with the children, possibly while I read aloud to them a bit about the background behind Halloween and the various customs and symbols. Also need to plan in some time for baking too, so might sort out the recipes we’ve got in mind, make a list of stuff to buy and work out what day we can fit that in too.

Just impressed Ady by answering a question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire about which ball is potted in snooker after the brown. I could see how he looked at me with new admiration in his eyes. I am more than just his glamouress and caring wife, I am greater than the mother of his children and spender of his wage. Do I have a past worthy of a bit part on Lost? Did I spend shady teenage years in smoky snooker halls hustling unsuspecting blokes by playing all coy and cleavage flashing, and then stinging them for loads of money by suddenly demonstrating my killer skills with a cue and a little square bit of blue chalk (well no actually, what with my chalk phobia and all), did I spent many happy childhood years watching the snooker on BBC2 or was one of my early childhood crushes, sitting side by side with Shakin Stevens actually that fellow ginge and sharer or my previous surname Steve Davis (albeit different spelling). Nah, none of the above. I simply know all the lyrics to Snooker Loopy by Chaz n Dave and one of the lines in there is ‘pot the reds then skrewback/ for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black / snooker loopy nuts are we / we’re all snooker loopy’. One day this talent may well make me my fortune eh!? 🙂

Today continued pretty well really. Children played loads, for hours, really nicely together and quite honestly I saw no good reason to interupt them from that really. If I could be bothered, which I can’t tonight, I could easily tick pretty much every box along the side bar as demonstrated today in their playing and aside from anything else if that is their natural inclination then who are we to stop it so they can sit at desks and learn what sound the letter a makes really. And besides it allowed me to sit with my laptop doing all sorts of other stuff 🙂

We did indeed nip out to the library for a bit and then had a quick walk round the town ending up in Woollies where we bumped into Mandy, who’s party we’d been to last Saturday, so while the children played with all the toys and chatted to the young bloke there putting out more about them all me and Mandy had a chat about HE, grandparents (she is one at 41 – same age as Ady!!) and nature vrs nurture. All very interesting stuff. Mandy was the classic teen who got herself into trouble at about 19 and her and Gary were in a council flat then a council house and along the way had another baby and got married. They both worked really hard to make ends meet and better themselves and now at 41 they are grandparents, had bought their council house and have now sold it to buy their own lovely place and Gary has a management job with the firm he worked for for years and Mandy went back to college, studied psycology and sociology and is doing really well in a care in the community type role. So she loves a bit of a debate about all the stuff she learnt 🙂

Came home, kids had tea after playing upstairs some more then Ady came home and I bathed them while he tidied up. They put on a circus show for me while they were in the bath, there were clowns, a ringmaster, acrobats, spraying dolphins (no I’ve never thought of them as circus creatures particularly either!) and they ended up with all the water drained out sliding down the sloping end of the bath (its quite wide and deep).

Bedtime was fairly chaotic – I’d told Tarly she was not to come out of her bedroom, so when she needed a wee and a poo she did it in her bin 🙁 Quite impressed at both her making use of facilities available and abilty to get on the thing – so Ady was there with his disinfectant!

Davies has literally just fallen asleep at 10pm, he’s been playing with his leap pad in bed since 7pm and we have had baths and eaten out dinner in the meantime. He’s called me upstairs a few times to show me how ‘Home Educational’ his leappad is though 🙂

Also managed a fairly lengthy phone chat with Hayley who it turns out is feeling really quite similar to me about the whole group thing in terms of questioning whether it is all worth it. So we have made a decision to continue to the end of the year and ask the others during that time if it is indeed worth going all out for something huge or whether we should simply agree a soft play area or similar to see each other at weekly instead and take it from there. Feeling relieved that it’s not just me and happy that if she has doubts too then we will all have similar motivations for getting it going if we decide to do so. Am going to leave any further thinking on the whole thing until later on anyway, so that’s good 🙂

Tomorrow we have a happy day planned at Ali’s which we’re all looking forward to, tea, chatting, playing for small people and general lack of feeling obliged to do anything much as children run about educating themselves and busting the socialisation myth. Bliss!

Has been fairly sucessful 🙂 I’ve made a couple of long put off phone calls which turned out just fine (phew!), chatted to Julie about group, had a quick phone call with Hayley who assures me she is fine and will call me back to sort out stuff properly later (she had house guests) so I am reassured that she is not planning to set up a blog to slate me on or anything! 😉

Have sent some emails, a couple of which were boring duty type ones which I have not been bothered to do so felt better for doing!

Kids have mainly just played actually. They are really enjoying being home again today as they did on Tuesday, perhaps I need to slow down a little on our whirlwindy existance and plot in a day at home a week again. They have watched W&G (again, yawn!) and they did put Robots on but didn’t really watch much of it so every time they leave the room I turn the TV off 🙂

They have brought loads of their soft toys into the lounge as some sort of characters in their game and then they played with the dressing up stuff for AGES. It’s probably the first time Tarly has happily and voluntarily dressed up actually, she’s been a fairy and wandered round for a while in a pair of high heels, a string of pearls and some lacey gloves which I nearly took a picture of and then realised with a sense of sadness that even if I did I couldn’t post it anywhere for fear of weirdos 🙁 She looked gorgeous anyway! So here’s some of her being a fairy:

one of them together:

and one of young Peter!

We’ve had lunch, Tarly helped me put away two towering baskets of clean washing, there are another three loads on the line and one waiting to go out.

So it’s a beautiful day outside, the children are playing upstairs (suspiciously quietly now I come to think of it) and I do need to return a library book at some point today. I think I’ll see if they can be persuaded out for an hour or so and then we’ll do some more Halloween crafts later on.

Ady is away for 3/4 nights in January. He’s doing some sort of roadshow up in Leicestershire. So my choices for this unexpected free time are:

Find someone who wants three houseguests and lives near Leicestershire so we can go up with him, he can drop us off and then leave us there until he comes to collect us. Would of course render us carless

Find someone else pretty much anywhere would wants three houseguests and drive there myself leaving at the same time as Ady

Welcome any number of houseguests into our home for the period of time he is away.

Stay at home and spend all those free evenings cooking the dinners for myself that Ady doesn’t like, drinking alone and staying awake until ridiculous hours of the night being online, chatting to Dwight and blogging at an average of 13 times a day.

Mad Wednesday today and yep, it’s been pretty mad!

Tumble Tots with Tarly this morning was excellent. We’re both really enjoying it at the moment. She is among the oldest in her class though and is slightly struggling with being held back by slower children and also her competitiveness is a bit pointless there! Spoke to the leader to find that at 3 she moves up to the next group – and !SHOCK! she goes in on her own then without me. Not at all sure how I feel about that yet. On the one hand it will be nice to have that hour with Davies instead as he does tend to just sit alone in the waiting room and it might be a good opportunity to do some more challenging stuff with him, sit and practise reading, writing or whatever. On the other hand I have really enjoyed the bonding time of that hour each week just me and Tarly. She has revelled in my undivided attention, strived for my praise and we’ve felt like a little team which has been so nice. Will have to find something to replace it to do with her each week I think so that we still get that little bit of her and me time. She told me yesterday that she loves going shopping just her and I so much as I would rather avoid such bad habits in one so young maybe that can be ‘our thing’.

Home again for lunch and to stick dinner on (beef in red wine sauce with some added red wine, red onions, garlic and bacon, which I’ll be serving with smashed potatoes fried off in garlic and onions, with leeks and peas on the side) and do a bit more Halloween making of stuff, so more laminating, more drawing and so on from the children too then dashed back out again to Home Ed group.

Unsure as to whether it was positive there or not really. We now have 5 of us who come week in week out and so Hayley and I fed back what we’d discovered at the fundraising fair and while the children played in dens made from blankets and cushions (the theme had been hibernating animals but when we realised how much talking we needed to get done we swiftly amended it to pretending to be hibernating animals and let them get on with it) we tried to knock together a constitution and a management committee as per the guidelines for applying for funding. One of us was not really that interested in a huge role although she is committed to the group, one of us is already playing the role of membership secretary by way of putting together membership packs, collating membership information and working out when fees are due etc (Vickie) so that role falls naturally to her, Julie is already playing the Treasurer role (well she is since I gave her the tin and the cash book and told her to be the one to collect money every week instead of me!) which left myself and Hayley. I took role of Chair and Hayley took Vice Chair/ Group Secretary which seemed sensible given the support of Julie and Vickie and Nikki for me to take the role but I now wonder whether it a) pissed Hayley off and b) is going to cause me future headaches – ah well!

Anyway, we then chatted about all the other stuff relevant to a constitution and then I moved us onto a wish list of stuff to get costed out for the grant application. Which is where it all went slightly wrong really 🙁 The kids by then (bearing in mind there were 10 running about and two six month old babies on laps) were getting pretty fractious and I don’t think anyone uttered a single sentence without one of the children wanting one of the grown ups so it felt very disjointed, I really shouted at Davies about playing a bit roughly and then he got all upset with me and kept bringing me drawn signs with a picture of me shouting in a circle with a cross drawn through it 🙁 He was eventually placated by sitting on my lap for the remainder of the meeting and drawing in my notebook. He also won over all the grown ups by drawing pictures of me driving a racing car with No 1 on it and M for Mummy and then asking me to write ‘I love you’ so he could copy it to present to me – does a good line in inciting guilt that boy 😉

Anyway inbetween all this there was some friction about some of the ideas for what we wanted to spend the money on. I worked out that our basic wish list of venue costs plus refreshments, drama teacher fortnightly, music teacher fortnightly, art and craft supplies, science club subscription, guest speakers and putting on one dramatic performance type event annually costs over the £5K and I think that is what we should apply for initially. Hayley has some ideas which are very schooly – she admits to wanting her children to go to pre school really for what they would miss out on and is really after recreating that at group. So she is after applying for things like display board / screens, storage boxes, early years stuff like dressing up clothes, play kitchens and so on. The issue there of course is that a) we have no storage at our venue and b) I think we would be less likely to get funding for things which are slightly less dynamic or interesting to a grant fund board. I can talk up stuff like drama teachers and guest speakers in an application, I would struggle to prove why our children are missing out by not having storage boxes and display boards, my children have pretend play stuff at home but I cannot supply an annual play or guest speaker there. Hayley got slightly knocky although to be fair her children were playing her up and said she was feeling even less positive than before. So now I have come away feeling crap about the whole thing again. I wonder if I am browbeating people into either agreeing with me although they don’t really and / or resenting me for pushing my own ideas through and pulling theirs to pieces. Obviously I have had my fingers burned by Home Ed group in general very recently and am also feeling slightly unsure as to how others percieve me, the fact that this is all still fresh in their minds too make me even more wobbly about it all. The problem is that in previous meeting type situations it was about work and I needed to be vocal, get my points across and at times be persuasive about talking people round to my way of thinking – but I was sat round a table with a load of others all doing the same thing. Here I am suddenly aware that we are all doing this for the sakes of our children and I don’t want to be responsible for telling people their ideas for their children are rubbish (which they’re not anyway). Oh this is rambling now so I’ll shut up, but I just wish I was dealing with slightly more forceful personalities, I would rather someone told me to shut up than just sat there thinking it, particularly now I am worrying that everyone is thinking it anyway!

So that was a less than fantastic couple of hours anway.

Then on to Gym Bobs for Davies, which he enjoyed. I read some of my book, played dominos with Tarly and then we went to the tuck shop bit and bought some chocolate which we shared 🙂 Davies came out and had his share and we came home for tea.

My Mum arrived with a new fireguard for us, Ady arrived home still with his headache which he has had for two days now (and I now have one in sympathy!). Kids are now in bed, I’m off for a bubble bath, a glass of wine, my dinner and Lost. Tomorrow we have nothing at all planned so I might spend some time on the phone chatting stuff through about Home Ed group with the others seperately – or drafting a letter to resign 😉

davies is happy 🙂

Was had here today.

Up horribly early before 7am and spent ages snuggled up on the sofa with both children on my lap debating what to do and feeling all nostalgic watching Cbeebies!

Roused ourselves and the kids put James and the Giant Peach on while I went through all the various emails and websites I had saved for Halloween references and pulled out details for games for the party. I’m concerned that I might be scaring people off of coming with all the organisation but please rest assured it is not going to be any sort of military scheduled event, I just want to get everything plotted and prepared in advance so that Ady and I can actually enjoy it rather than feeling obliged to run around hostessing (well OK, I am not very likely to do that anyway, but I’d quite like Ady to relax a bit too!). If anyone wants to come along, find a corner and just sit and chat to friends that will be fine and you will not be dragged into the middle of the room to participate in a Halloween themed conga 🙂 and if you’d rather participate in the general socialising without the full on party experience perhaps you could sneak back to our house and catch up on your sleep 😉

I then had a bit of a rant at them generally about tidying up after themselves, looking after their stuff and putting things away properly. The upshot of that was we all went into the playroom and dragged out stuff from the cupboards and put it all back again in the right places. I get really hacked off about this on several levels. The first is that it simply irritates me beyond belief to not have stuff put back away properly. I am not hugely tidy and houseproud BUT stuff does have a home and if it is returned to it after use then I am less likely to be asked repeatedly ‘where’s my…..?’, I also just loath lack of respect for belongings – either one’s own or other peoples. If I have something then I look after it, I place value on it and I expect the same of the children. They get an awful lot of ‘stuff’ my kids and I don’t want them to lose sight of being grateful for it and treating it well just because they might know there is more ‘stuff’ coming sooner or later. Anyway, they seemed to listen and we had a fairly pleasant time tidying it up and putting it back into some sort of order.

After watching Wallace and Gromit again we headed off to the Wizard store. I didn’t tell the children but I went intending to buy some cheap plasticine and have a bash at making the characters with them. We did get the plasticine and a couple of other bits like some Christmas activities to stash for a later date (like, erm, December!), some craft stuff like crepe paper and tissue paper to prevent me from making a huge Baker Ross order which will escalate into lots of money, a fuzzyfelt-alike alphabet and numbers set (as yet not known about to the children) and a couple of other bargain basement bits and bobs to be brought out at a later time in the manner of a magician and a hat and a rabbit!

Got home to find Ady there with some lunch ready (he’d rung to check where we were and knew we were on our way home) which was nice 🙂 He headed back off to work and the children had an autonomous hour or so playing with a plastic firefighters set and then upstairs with the fort/castle. All seemed to be fairly peaceful and they played nicely together. I’ve been listening to Scarlett talking the last couple of days and realised that under my nose she has gone from stringing words together pretty well to actually talking in complete sentences with all the little joining words there too. She has the funniest conversational words in her vocab which for some reason seem really quaint coming from a 2 yo. She is almost constantly asking what words say everywhere she sees something written and is already aware of whether something is a letter or a number somehow. Amazing period of development this age 🙂 She also totally threw me later with her drawing skill but more on that later.

About 3pm I decided to turn the computer off for a while as I was starting to compulsively check blogs every few moments and even ended up reading some of the ones I’ve not visited for ages – and in some instances remembered why I don’t read them 😉 so I printed off a load of skeleton bits from a website for a Halloween game and started to do some drawings to make some flash cards for a themed memory games. Plugging the laminator in and getting pens out was the siren song to the children who shot downstairs like the Pied Piper had come in with his instrument and joined in. Davies did a couple of really good pictures – a spooky house with red grass, bats flying around, a ghost peering out of a window and various other features. He then drew a vampire, a ghost and a skeleton. I persuaded him to write his name on all of them and wrote out vampire, ghost, skeleton and he was able to work out which was which but refused to copy them onto his pictures. Baby steps though! He then asked me how to write START so he could do a spooky maze. With a fair bit of guidance he more or less worked out what letters it needed, wrote them himself on a scrap piece of paper and then wrote them on his maze and drew it with scary characters down every wrong turning. Finally he drew Wallace, Gromit and some sheep and we laminated them.

Scarlett meanwhile totally staggered me by producing a drawing of a person which I would have mistaken for one of Davies’ drawings. She talked herself / me through it as she drew and started with a head, then did the face, then the body, legs, arms and hands. I should have photographed it at that stage as it was excellent. I didn’t though and inspired by Davies’ spooky house she then drew stuff like a fence and a gate and then coloured it in, all of which was very good but meant that unless you had each bit pointed out to you it had lost its instantly recognisable-ness which had so amazed me. Plenty more time though 🙂 I did some cutting out, laminating, more cutting out, drew some pumpkins, witches, ghosts, bats etc and then realised I needed to back the drawings otherwise the pictures were visible through the paper so did a little logo to go on the back like playing cards have 🙂

Ady came home and found us all still sitting drawing, so he sorted the kids tea out while I badgered them into tidying up and eating and then bathed them.

There have been small incidents of disharmony but really we’ve had a lovely at home day today. I feel like I’ve achieved quite a bit and spent some time really doing stuff with the children too.

Tomorrow is Mad Wednesday but we currently have nothing planned for Thursday either so we might just try another day like today then too.