One word? When seven would do…

Never hire a stupid dwarf…. they’re not big and they’re not clever!

Have failed to do my bit today 😉

My day started at 8.15am with Ady calling me from downstairs to get up, I staggered down, barely managing to drag a nightie over my head and was sitting bleary eyed on the sofa with a child (not even awake enough to register which one) drinking milk on my lap when my Dad rang.

His van wouldn’t start – again – and he needed to get it to the bloke who was going to fix it. Could I come and tow start him? Ady offered to work from home instead of the office for another hour or so (he was working at a Hampshire store today so was intending to go via the office, but could as easily have done the same stuff remotely from home) so I dashed and got dressed and headed out the door with Ady thrusting my cup of tea hastily tipped into a thermo mug into my hand as I went.

Towed Dad all the way down their road (it normally starts by half way down it) and it still wasn’t going so we decided I’d have to tow him all the way. It’s probably no more than 2 miles if that but it does comprise of getting out of the end of my parents road which has pretty much constant traffic both ways (and we needed to turn right across both lanes), over two roundabouts, through three sets of traffic lights, out of one junction and over a very steep hill. It was also just before 9am so kids were flocking into the 3 schools we drove past and lemming like lollipop ladies were at every turn. You could have made some sort of X box game out of the perils we encountered! 😉 Plus I am really shite at towing (although I shouldn’t be, I’ve done it enough!). So the rope broke twice, I ended up pushing the van across a busy road, we nearly killed a lollipop lady and every time I looked at my Dad behind me in the rear view mirror he looked utterly terrified (and not much scares my Dad!). When we finally pulled up outside the garage we couldn’t get the tow ropes off his van – we said it was because our hands were too cold (it was bloody freezing here this morning!) but I think it was more because they were shaking! 😉 So I brought Dad back here to warm up and drink restorative coffee all morning. 🙂

Ady went off to work, the children played with Floam and geomags and Dad and I browsed the internet looking at holidays. Mum has holiday booked at the end of March / beginning of April and they are planning a trip to Chile, Argentina and Brazil. We found a really good one but it had no quoted price so we’ve ordered the brochure for them to look at it in more detail. I think when I grow up I’d like to be a travellers companion. 🙂

While playing Davies said to me ‘Mummy, it’s happening again.’ He mentioned to me earlier in the week that sometimes when he looks at things his eyes go all funny and it looks blurry, but when he shakes his head it goes away. He has a slight twitch sometimes when tired or bothered or overwhelmed anyway and it often comes out as a lot of blinking and he has always (since very young, about 2) had a tendancy to go off into very deep thought at times so I put it down to him doing that and drifting away into daydreams which does make your vision go blurry (like when you do a magic eye picture) but I told him to tell me when it happens in future as I was concerned he’d start to make the head shaking a habit too. So I rang my optician and made him an appointment for this afternoon to get his sight tested.

Mum arrived just before lunch so we all ate together and then Dad stayed home to look after (read tease!) Tarly while Mum took me and Davies into town as she has a permit for parking down there from work. She headed off to do a bit of shopping and me and Davies went to Specsavers. The optician is the same guy who I have seen there before for contact lens checkups and was very good with him. He asked about school but when his next first question was ‘oh are you a teacher then?’ I’m afraid I bottled out and just said ‘yes’ and made myself appear suitably teacher-ish for the rest of the time we were there! Anyway he has a slight astigma in one eye (his prescription was +0.50 in one eye and +0.75 in the other) so he has got glasses to wear perhaps twice a week for an hour or so in the hope it will correct it over the year before we go back for a check up. He said it is very slight and there is every chance he’ll grow out of it and I have a sneaking suspicion that pretty much every person in the world could go to an optician and get prescribed glasses for wearing in some instances but I’m glad we got ’em checked.

Being Specsavers there was loads of choice of frames and Davies chose a red pair. We headed off back round the shops for the hour while they made them up for him. I threw out my childhood globe a while back that Davies had inherited and have been promising him a new one for ages so we went to The Works where I’m sure I’ve seen them cheap before but they only had a tiny one for a tenner. We did get a Dora sticker book for Tarly in there though which Davies went up and paid for. Then we went to look in ELC as I’d said he could have a small present for being so good at the opticians. He chose a small spaceman and then I spotted space hoppers in the new outdoors Spring range just in store. I’ve been wanting space hoppers for the children for ages and tried to get some at Christmas but the only ones I could find at that time of year were retro ones for about 20 quid each from Hawkins. At Ali’s on this week they had a great time on them, I know Davies also loved playing with SB’s when we stayed with The Beans and as I know they are bouncing off the walls a bit at the moment being cooped up in the house a fair bit I thought bouncing on space hoppers might be preferable! So we got a blue one for D and a pink one for S and Mum went halves with me :-). Ady’s going to find the foot pump tomorrow and then we too can have naked space hoppering like at Ali’s house! 😉 Looked at the rather lovely light up globes in ELC which have nice pictures on them of the animals living in each continent and some landmark buildings and stuff so Mum muttered something about ‘maybe for Easter’ :-D. We then had about half an hour to kill so we went to M&S coffee shop for hot chocolates (I love being out with my Mum, she happily includes me in her swish lifestyle and she pays!).

Back to Specsavers where a really cool Canadian guy fitted Davies’ glasses for him along with much high fiving and ‘look at Mummy with them, is she still as pretty as without’ 😳 and taught him a little poem to remember:

If they’re not on your face
keep ’em in the case

And we came home with Davies wearing them all the way and telling me how he wants to be an optician when he grows up!

We got home and he told Dad ‘I’ve got these glasses because I’ve got a slight astigmatism in my right eye, Grandad!’ which made me roar with laughter, guess he might be on track for his career choice then! 🙂 While drinking hot chocolates we had several educational conversations. I explained about how the glasses will help his eye correct itself hopefully, what long or short sightedness means in terms of the shape of your cornea being not totally round, we discussed how your eye is an eyeball but only a small section of it is exposed. We talked about patches to train lazy eyes and I used a rather good explanation of how if I had one lazy child who never tidied up and one good child who always did all the tidying if I made the child who always tidies stop doing it all the time then the lazy one would have to do it all and catch up so that eventually they both worked at the same pace. He liked that! 🙂 Then we had a chat about why a rush of bubbles came to the top of his cola when he stopped sucking the straw. I got one of those glimpses of having just one child like we were talking about in comments the other day, as I know Tarly would not have stood for such in depth conversations, explanations or demonstrations going on. We also talked about how Euchariah from Grinch Night has astigmatism too and how Marcus and Alex wear glasses and why although I have glasses I rarely wear them (contact lenses).

Mum then took Dad off to collect his van and came back so we could sort out her signing up to broadband. The children watched W&G for the third time today and had their toy cars out too.

Ady’s got all the Melrose and wedding pictures developed so the memory cards are clear for me to get some snaps of Floam and Davies’ glasses tomorrow.

And I guess that would be about it for today, expect to confirm that the Ady machine is back (thanks Ros :-)) and I got a very welcome book parcel from Joyce (thanks darling 🙂 x) so me and Ady both have sufficient to keep us occupied tonight! 😉

But I have just enought time to wish Chris French a very happy birthday 🙂 Providing he’s not been adbucted by aliens or anything!

Although surprisingly I have done very little active educating with the children today! 🙂

This morning they played with geomags, soft toys and the Floam, although I did sit with them while they used the Floam and made a few bits myself. I read Tarly a couple of books earlier while I brushed her hair but she declined the offer of 100EL for today so we’ll try suggesting it again tomorrow. This afternoon they played with playdoh.

They’ve watched Shrek and Shrek 2, the dvd extras on both and a bit of Nick Jr.

We watched the birds feeding from our bird food things I strung up on the tree and never expected a bird to eat from (bird seed mixed with suet and pushed into a cleaned tin can dangling from a tree infront of the lounge window with string). Davies had made them and Scarlett had supervised me hanging them up so they were both thrilled to see loads of birds swooping between our and the opposite neighbours gardens, landing on roofs and telephone wires. We also watched the snow for a while and speculated on whether it would settle and if not, why not.

I have completed various bits of the clothes washing cycle and pulled out every cupboard and flat surface in the playroom and tidied it up. It doesn’t look hugely different unfortunately but until the children grow out of some of the toys I don’t think it is likely to really. At least everything is contained within the cupboards again rather than all over the place. I also dug out a couple of things I want to present to the children with a view to us doing – things like jigsaws and matching games we’d forgotten, a couple of link the letters type games for Davies and the Owl Puke he got for Christmas, so I have planned activties for tomorrow other than the creation of another 17 new blogs! 😉

My Dad did indeed freak us all out by not arriving home until nearly 10pm without a word from him all day. He’s just rung now to say he’s home safe so I’ll no doubt cross examine him about just what he was up to when I next see him. Mum is off work tomorrow so she’ll be coming over at some point during the day too.

And that would probably be about all I have left to say really, well certainly while I’m being me anyway. 😉

Join us before it is too late.

Previous non bloggers as diverse as this, this and this have already joined the ranks in reaction to this crisis.

You owe it to your grandchildren!

Manning all stations single handedly fear not folks I will keep blogging for the good of Queen and Country, for the love of the written word and for the sanity of those who cannot move without coughing ’til they vomit and therefore require entertaining 24/7 by the inane ramblings of some loon on the Sussex coast. (Joyce, love, really, could you not get into Ready Steady Cook though or something repeated from the 80s shown on UK Gold – I might need to sleep at some point!).

Ros is coming through with assistance in the way of a couple of ‘what bodily function are you?’ type quizzes and I suspect Ali from where the days go might pop by at some point to share some chick pea bases recipes with us but just incase I’ve started a couple more blogs here and here and here and I urge you to to the same. If we all just start another two blogs right here today we can make a difference, we can save this from going any further.

People I urge you to make a stand, shoulder to shoulder with Joyce and I, together we can stop this dreadful fate.

Scarlett had marmite sandwiches and ‘red’ hula hoops washed down with orange juice. She arranged all her sandwiches into a tower (they were cut triangularly) and put a sea of hula hoops around them – I think we’ve been watching too much Masterchef Goes Large here 😉 She ate all the hula hoops by putting them on her fingers and telling me ‘you used to do this when you were a little girl Mama’ and then eating them. She has probably finished about 2/3 of her orange juice, which is in a yellow tumbler. Yellow and pink are her favourite colours. She has not eaten any of her sandwiches as she declares herself ‘fulled up’. They can stay on the plate until tea time and if she claims to be hungry during the afternoon she will be directed back to them.

Davies had peanut butter sandwiches and red hula hoops. He also ate all the hula hoops first although he didn’t wear them on his fingers. He then ate all of the sandwiches including the crusts, which he doesn’t always do. He did this mainly because I had told him if he ate all his lunch he could play with playdoh. He has got a drink of Ribena in a green cup but it remains untouched on the mantlepiece. Green is not his favourite colour, his favourite colour is red but green and yellow were the first two cups out of the cupboard.

I had six crackers with butter and cheese (mature chedder) for my lunch. Two crackers were Hovis ones – shaped like loaves of bread with HOVIS written on them and sort of digestive-esque in texture and flavour, two were round crackers with some sort of herb in them and two were mutligrain square crackers. Because I enjoy symmetry I ate them in order : Hovis, round, square, Hovis, round, square. I also had red hula hoops but I didn’t eat them all first and I didn’t put them on my fingers. I accompanied my luncheon with a large mug (stolen from Starbucks in Manchester, but not by me although I suspect I could be ‘done’ for receiving stolen goods as a result of owning it) of rooibos and caramel tea (from Lidl, very nice and about half the price of posher brands, I believe Alison drinks the same ones and there was a version of them at Melrose last week but that was the rooibos and vanilla flavour) which I allowed to get to warm rather than hot as I don’t like tea too hot, it burns my mouth and throat. I ate all of my lunch too, but my motivation was not playing with playdoh!

The children are now playing very nicely with playdoh and watching Shrek on dvd. I have just taken all the nail varnish off my nails (fingers and toes) and repainted them in a more spring suitable colour of a sort of raspberry pink to replace the burgandy wintery shade I have been sporting since November. The house is scented with my nail varnish remover now. I don’t find it unpleasant although I know that other people do.

I have rotated the washing drying on the radiators and there is a load in the tumble drier too. I have also been through the chest freezer in the cupboard under the stairs, made a list of everything in it and taken out some rolls and hot cross buns to defrost for lunch tomorrrow, two lasagnes for dinner tonight and moved things about in there for easier access. I have decided that we will have something made with sausages tomorrow but as Ady will be cooking it he can decide whether he wants to do casserole, toad in the hole or just sausage and mash. I suspect it will be sausage and mash. I have also decided that on Saturday we will have beef curry cooked in our new slow cooker which I am delighted with and on Sunday we will have roast chicken. This means I will not have to go food shopping until Monday and we will be starting our rolling five week food menu from then.

There is washing up from breakfast and lunch to be done which I am debating going to do before going to make a belated start on the playroom. I read some more of The Harmony Silk Factory while I ate my lunch and I am quite inclined to sit and read that instead of doing the playroom but I know I will feel very virtuous and enjoy the fruits of my labour if I do go and tidy up so I probably will. I will probably take some cds to listen to in there while I do it. For my combined Christmas and 30th birthday present my parents bought me a 3 disc changer cd player which lives in the playroom. I quite like it although I don’t actually use it very often at all and at the time I was pretty disappointed with the gift and wished they knew me better and had bought something a little more personal as it was not something I had ever expressed a wish to own. I could have listed at least ten things they could have spent the money on instead that I would have been delighted with.

Shrek has just finished and I can’t decide whether to offer the children the choice of what to watch next, turn the TV off altogether or just put something on that I choose for them and hope they don’t protest too loudly.

I have written their initials on their tubs of Floam so there are no future arguments about who’s is who’s. I made an alien and some stars which I have put on Davies’ mirror in his bedroom and Davies made a star too. It’s very effective for that and looks pretty cool. I am quite inspired to do something creative and space themed in there so I might get some paint at the weekend to do so.

It’s getting a bit cold sitting here, I think the heating has gone off so I will probably go and turn it back on. That will likely motivate me to get started in the playroom and the children are now watching the making of Shrek on the extras so they are occupied happily.

Right that’s what I’m going to do, going to press publish now and get on with it, yes indeedy…. Joyce I hope you are appreciating this, I imagine you’re the only one left reading 😉

Weeellll I’m glad I didn’t pay £35 for it 😉 But it is quite good. Predictably it’s tiny tubs of the stuff, you could fit the contents of one tub inside a mug and for 20 quid you got one of each colour – pink, green, yellow and blue. It is indeed pretty much just flubber with polystyrene beads in it so for a fiver per tub it’s way overpriced. I got the second set half price offer so a further four for a tenner, which I would say was more of a fair price for it really.

It is quite dry and takes a lot of working and kneading to get to a workable state and I would say it is more of a craft material than a toy really. I’ve made a globe out of a small plastic ball covered with blue and green and it does look pretty good but projects like covering a phone with it or a scooter like they do on the advert would cost about £100 in Floam to complete!

The kids are very happily playing with it, quoting lines from the TV ad and mashing it up with bits of silver foil (the booklet suggests models made of foil or papier mache could be covered in a thin layer of floam, or wire used to make armitures (which I know about from watching the W&G dvd extras!)) but I think they’d have been just as happy with a tub of playdoh each really as that is the sort of play they are doing with it.

So rich grannys to pay for it, kids older than mine who are really into their arts and crafts with different media or making it yourself from the recipe Sarah posted a link to in a comments box some way below I’d recommend. Buying it yourself or expecting to redecorate your lounge in it? Erm, that’d be a no then!

Scarlett and I parted company around 1am and she remained lovely to the end – I said ‘I’m off to bed now Tink’ (short for Tinkerbell, one of the child’s many many names) so she reached up, gave me a kiss and a cuddle and said ‘sleep tight Mama’ and off I went. She did wail about wanting her Daddy for about five minutes as I poked Ady awake and told him it was definitely his turn now and he murmered about ‘just going now’, turned over and went to sleep, but she must have been making one last effort which was enough to wear her out and she went quiet shortly afterwards.

My Dad woke me with a phonecall this morning, I’d forgotten actually that I’d offered to run him to the station this morning as he is off to London for an intriguing meeting with some bloke he’s not seen for 25 years who phoned him out of the blue last week, told him he is still alive (I belive there had been much speculation that he wasn’t and his own family are not sure) and summoned him to meet him on Victoria station today at 10am. Dad’s not been on a train anywhere since me and Ady went with Mum and Dad to London about 10 years ago and I did debate going with him for the journey and taking the kids to the museum but decided against it in the end. Anyway his van wouldn’t start (again) so he couldn’t get to me and had called a taxi instead. Which was just as well as I was still in bed and so was Tarly. Dad assures me his personal safety is not at risk but this is an old friend from his rather shady past so hopefully he is not going to get drawn into some gang of OAP criminals out to stretch their pension by dealing in black market orthapedic shoes or something! 😉

By the time I was dressed and downstairs Scarlett was awake so I did the kids’ milk and breakfast and then put away two baskets of washing which have been kicking about for way too long. Draped clean washing around the radiators to dry and am on the second load of washing already this morning. I’ve changed Scarlett’s bedding, brushed her hair (and yes that is worthy of note! 😉 ), the children are dressed and playing with geomags and I’m about to go and start the task of sorting out the playroom which will probably be an all day task.

It’s snowing like crazy here. It’s not settled yet but it is getting heavier so I imagine it will if it continues although the ground is quite wet. My Mum’s just rung from work to say there has been a massive power cut across the area although we seem to have missed it – which is just as well as I have no idea where anything like torches or candles are. I think I’ll get the laptop and the mobile phone charged up and gather an emergency parcel containing bottled water, candles, tinned goods and antibacterial handwash. This could be the beginning of bird flu! 👿

And in final news the post has just arrived bringing with it the long awaited Floam delivery, so geomags are being put away, playroom looks like it might be delayed further and expect our house to become a crazy fun Floam covered castle before the day is through!

Was that better Joyce? 😉

But the child I just blogged about adoring is testing me somewhat by having been awake for two hours after being asleep for three 🙁

She’s in bed, but only cos I’m sat on the floor next to the bed and she’s being charming but lets face it there are very few people anywhere who are charmig enough to prevent you from going to bed when you are tired, having made you miss the second half of DH and still be your friend!

Did manage to finish off my ‘when he was five’ page about Davies though for the sidebar which I’ve been working on over about a week (v. unusal for me, I just needed to write it over a period of time rather than dash it off in one go and also to write it when he wasn’t around so he wouldn’t do something to colour what I wanted to say) and I have one more email I could send to kill five more minutes then I’m going to bed regardless (even though it will likely mean taking her with me 🙄 ).

I *think* I’ve done quite well today. I got my work done, I spent ages on the phone to a friend musing over all sorts of things and came away feeling very energised, my inbox remains empty, I did some reading with Davies, I fulfilled the childrens’ request to play with them with the geomags and I’ve started the next book for book group and by the end of chapter one I’m enjoying it rather than it feeling like home work so that’s all good. 🙂

The children have played with lego (although the game seemed more about scattering it to the furthest corners of the lounge than about creating and building to be fair! But I guess there might be educational value in volume covered by x amount of lego or something 😉 ), they entertained themselves for well over an hour while I was on the phone (infact 😳 it was closer to two!) without actually making too much mess through the house, they’ve watched Nightmare Before Christmas (where I impressed D beyond belief by having got the words to the Oogie Boogie man’s song up on google and singing along :-D) and W&G, they played a long and convoluted game with various soft toys and we all made geomag creations together. At Davies’ instigation we all had to make ‘something’ from W&G and then guess what each other had made. Tarly made triangles – not strictly adhering to the rules really but educational just the same, I made the van and D made the were rabbit and some construction from one of the previous films. As I have never actually managed to sit through any of the W&G films I have no idea how accurate it was or indeed really what it was but he certainly appeared to have a very clear idea of what he was aiming for and was pleased with it so that was good. I also showed them how to make tables and chairs as displayed once on Sarah’s blog so we left a little geomag ensemble for Ady to admire when he got home.

When the planned reading all got too much for Davies (and in fairness he probably managed the equivalent of 2 or 3 Bob books words wise but with less than good grace) I broke out a tub of magnetic tiles with words on and set them both up playing with them. I think they needed slightly more input than I gave in order to do anything constructive with them but they were enough of a hit just in being magnetic and therefore sticking to the fireguard so I think tomorrow we might get them out again and have more of a play.

I have been possibly a bit neglectful of the fact that Scarlett is showing lots of pre-reader / early reader skills. If she was my first or only child she’d be a prime candidate for hot housing 😉 She loves her art and is already really into copying letters although her copying is by no means hugely accurate she has on several occassions copied ‘Scarlett’ very recognisably. She probably shows more inclination to learn to read than Davies does in many ways and today she was scrambling onto my lap while he was having a bash at reading Hop On Pop and saying all sorts of letters. She even said to me at one point ‘I can read Mummy, listen d, e, h, m, five, six, seven, eight!’ which made me laugh lots. I’m thinking of getting 100 Easy Lessons out for her tomorrow and just seeing what she makes of it as aside from anything else Davies seemed very interested in the idea that Scarlett would be able to read soon and as much as that offends all sorts of weird and crazy ideas in me I guess there is nothing wrong with two children two years apart learning to read side by side really – I don’t expect Ady to have a reading age ten years older than mine 😉 I also forgot to blog the other day when we made the snickerdoodles that I sent Tarly in the kitchen to ‘go and get four cookies and bring them in on a plate’ without really considering whether it was beyond her and she then reappeared with the four cookies on a plate without seeming to have thought much about it either. Clearly we are right about her Ali 😉 I’m going through one of those phases of being utterly in love with my daughter right now, which takes nothing away from Davies but as it is generally more the other way it is nice 🙂 Coupled with her cheekiness and general independance she is also capable of being utterly adorable and somehow an ‘I love you Mummy’ from a child who really really means it as an expression of having thought it through and is stating it as fact rather than in a clingy needy way is a real delight to hear 🙂

And in order to test that she just appeared and has snuggled on the sofa with me while watching the hugely inappropriate for a 3yo Desperate Housewives! I’ve just deposited her back in bed… let’s see if she stays there.

I will not read green eggs and ham
I will pretend to be reading by running my finger underneath the bits I know by memory in a cunning and deceptive manner which looks for all the world to the casual onlooker as though I have graduated from Mat On Sam, Sam On Mat to Mouse and House which are simply not sound-out-able words! Pah!

Maybe a text he is a little less familiar with would be wise 😉

All emailed across and complete and by lunchtime on the deadline day which wasn’t too bad considering how much time I spent putting it off 😉

I’ve been on the phone to the YHA folk and that was far more complicated than the last time I did it. Seems Rentahostel is now called Escape To… and rather than browsing between about 3 websites to try and get all the relevant information I have just ordered their brochure instead so there will now be a short break before I get that in the post and peruse it properly.

This morning seemed to disappear really but reading back over my own and others blogs I have a sneaking suspicion where it went! 😉 I’ve been casting around on the rentahostel site and have a shortlist of middle of the country type YH which are available during October and have 40ish beds. I’ll ring them tomorrow to check availability and what the room layouts are and then post the shortlist for feedback. If anyone is interested in coming to a Halloween themed YH break and has not already said so in the post a few below please do so 🙂 So I was industrious, just not in very practical ways!

The children watched W&G again and some of the dvd extras so they were happily entertained. Davies also did some drawing of the characters and then I got him to do some writing. I tried to get him to write Gromit and spell it himself but he is not totally familiar with some of the letters – particularly ‘G’ so I wrote all the letters out jumbled up and got him to use them all. He did it with a small amount of assistance and then had an attempt at the same exercise with ‘Wallace’ too. That seemed to work well actually, he had lots of enthusiasm for it, so I have a bit of a plan to do some more of it. Also reminded from Katy’s blog that some of the Dr Seuss books are probably within Davies’ new reading ability so I might do some of them with him tomorrow

Then we headed over to Ali’s and listened to Peter & The Wolf on the way over there all happily singing along with the children ‘acting’ it out as best you can when strapped into a car seat!

Had a lovely time at Ali’s. Davies and Freya played together for ages and Tarly hung out with the grown ups for a lot of the time, but aside from being slightly annoying by talking to me all the time 🙄 she was also pretty cute. She drew a picture of me which was pretty good and some excellent really tidy colouring and multi-fingered hands 🙂 Ali got out the paint pens and there was a slightly hilarious lengthy debate about the crapness of there not being a yellow one with lots of very educational chat about colour mixing with Davies more of less remembering that blue and red made purple and Scarlett wanting to know why if blue and yellow made green then green and blue didn’t make yellow! After about half an hour of this with the children making do without it and me and Ali muttering about why pink was included when a primary colour like yellow was absent Ali found the yellow one hidden on a shelf! 🙂 Freya did a fab volcano picture including lots and lots of orange and some black to the lava before it melted (or as Ali put it, that’d be the rock then!) and Davies doing a rather good extention picture with grass and sky on one picture then the sky continued onto another piece of paper above it fading into black to be ‘space’ with a very good planet Earth too. He also did a complicated picture of a scene from W&G on a TV which had an ornamental boat on top of it (reminded me of Crowded House Weather with You)and Wallace’s hand on a remote control with specks to show the remote control doing something and Gromit’s head. Scarlett did something abstract with dots and fully enjoyed being allowed to mix colours! My two showed their conditioning from me by being very anal about putting lids on paints and pens though much to our amusement!

Ali and I managed a record t hree consecutive sentences and I’ve not remembered any conversations we started but didn’t end yet so I consider it a success!

Came home and persuaded the children to have beef stew for their dinner. They were not at all sure and indeed Tarly will only consider the veg and Davies only the beef but they both cleared their plates and Tarly had seconds! Frankly I needed the praise having been cheated out of it last week 😉 (I know, I know, if I will bugger off early!), I dashed off another CV and a very creative covering letter – hell I’d give the girl an interview on the strength of it – so only 2 more to do in the morning and as they are actually both for the same person, one with spin for a retail job (yes, know about that then) and the other with spin for a nursery placement based on her own experience as a mother to two young children (erm, yep again!) they shouldn’t be too tricky!

Then I headed off to the library for reading group. It was really good tonight actually. I still felt a little like the token bimbo but having outed myself as chicklit fanatic who’s never even read Catcher In The Rye and is there for that very reason I felt far more comfortable in joining in generally. The couple I thought seemed like really interesting people last time were there again and I found out that she is a teacher! There was another woman I’d not really noticed last time who is American and also very interesting, the poet guy didn’t turn up but we did have a very deaf old lady to add comedy value! 😉 We’ve been given Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory for next time which is another one I’d not have picked up to read myself and we also all brought home a book from the teenage section. I’ve got Anne Cassidy’s Looking for JJ which looks really good. And having said I simply hadn’t engaged with the characters of the book I didn’t finish I have been sent away with the dvd of the film to see if that makes it any more appealing!

Ady and I were chatting about Kessingland yesterday. I know we can probably raise the funds to come, particularly if we tent it but with it being a shade earlier than last year it is very unlikely that Ady will be able to come with us.

After the hiatus that was Hesfes for me I swore I’d not do another camp without him – and of course there is the whole Linda McCartney thing to consider too (and how would we bake cookies to show him how much we’d missed him from a tent! 😉 ) but I know the children really enjoyed Kessie last year and Scarlett particularly didn’t seem to get much out of Melrose this year so I’d like for them to not miss it. Also I’d feel pretty bereft at the thought of you all in a field sending mass texts to Sarah and coming up with new in jokes without me 😉

So I’m thinking I could manage it without him – he would come for the first weekend and maybe get the following Friday off work and come back for the Thursday night / Friday / Saturday pack up and leaving. But to do so I’d definitely need to be in a tent – I’d not want to be isolated in a static every evening with the children.

So the plan at the moment is to spend the next couple of months scouring car boot sales and the Friday Ad to gather together a basic camping kit. We already have a blow up bed and the kids ready beds. Other than a tent what would you all say are basic minimum requirements and what are the sort of princessy luxuries that even when slumming it I couldn’t manage without!

Was spent sat behind the laptop really. I even had a complaint registered from Davies about it! 🙄

The children continued their geomag game and extended it into some sort of going on holiday game. I did manage to do one of the 4 CVs I have to do which was fairly crap of me really as I had planned to get at least half of them done but never mind. I did clear my inbox 🙂 We did do some paper weaving for a while, I’d seen instructions for it on a website and thought it might be something they’d enjoy but Davies was more interested in using my paper cutting thingy than he was in weaving and Tarly was keener to make flower shaped patterns with her strips of paper than weave them together so we abandonded it in the end. They both had a go though and I was quite impressed with how quickly they picked up what they were supposed to be doing even if they didn’t actually do it!

Ady came home early bringing the Wallace & Gromit dvd which was released today (Curse of the Were Rabbit) which had been purchased with part of Tarly’s premium bond win. It was hard won actually having been used as the reward for all sorts of good behaviour over the last week or so including the long long ride home from Scotland on Thursday, not showing us all up at the wedding on Saturday and any other time we’ve needed to blackmail them lately! 😉 It was shoved in the dvd player as soon as it came in the house and watched with delight. The second disc has all sorts of stuff on it such as the making of the were rabbit character which Davies is hugely into as well so I think it was a wise investment all round really. 🙂

Davies pulled his late to sleep stunt again though and ended up coming back downstairs while we ate dinner and going up to bed around 10.30 when Ady went up. Not at all sure what that’s about but hopefully he can only manage two or three late nights before his body gives up and he’s asleep before 7 again!

I’ve had my grand scale veg peel and chop fix by preparing a stew to christen the slow cooker with tomorrow. I reckon it will do at least 3 dinners for us so that’s a good start to my menu planning for March.

Tomorrow we’re off to Ali’s for a post-Melrose gossip catch up and then I have my reading group in the evening. I have not even finished the book it bored me that much. I came close and it is not actually deliberate that I’ve not read it all as I did intend to work through it but I’ve simply not been able to bring myself to pick it up again since we got back from Melrose, particularly with the brightly coloured covers of Joyce’s chicklit calling me so much louder, so I’ll have to go along and explain precisely why I found it such a rubbish read I was not prepared to invest any more of my life reading the rest of it! Right, bed.

Further to some discussion with people last week and some chatting with Ady on the way home from Melrose we were thinking of doing a Youth Hostel version of last year’s Halloween Party.

Half term in Devon (to accomodate our school attending friends 😉 ) is 23-27th October which ties in about right for Halloween so that would be the planned week. The location will be somewhere in the North Wales area, partially cos we like it up there and partially cos that makes it do-able for most of us, particularly Joyce!

At this stage I am after possible numbers only so that I can judge what size of hostel we’d need to be looking at and then get some availabilty and prices.