One word? When seven would do…

Most of the time I feel a bit sad for living quite so close to where I grew up. Worthing holds no magic for me – true there is a memory on every street corner but actually because I’ve spent my whole life here the happy childhood snapshots types have been largely diluted by watching it change from quite a pleasant seaside resort with it’s own charm and feel to a subsidery of Brighton (which I think still has a lot of charm), rather a ‘chav’ town, none of the delights of a city and all the crapness. Having lived in South Manchester for a couple of years we experienced all the good sides of city living and the in my opinion / experience the massive difference between southerners and northerners too. Odd to feel more attached to somewhere I only lived for a couple of years but I love going back there far more than I used to look forward to visiting Worthing when we didn’t live here.

Anyway, where I was going with that was that today we went to a park where we occassionally went when I was a child. It’s across the road from my parents house – walkable in about five minutes and although I was not really a ‘park’ child as a kid and neither were my parents ones for taking us to them particularly I do have various memories of being there as a child. It’s a huge green with cricket and football pitches, trees all around the periphery, an enclosed playground area in the centre and right in the middle a biggish area of trees. When I was a child it used to be totally trees, really dense in the middle and we used to spend hours in there making camps and clambering about. In the late 80s they thinned it out in the centre to make a BMX track as was the craze back then. I distinctly recall going there with my Dad and his cousin who was visiting one January when we had a rare heavy snowfall and having a fantastic time in this massive space full of snow.

So this morning we all had to be dressed and breakfasted far earlier than usual to be at the GPs for 8.30am. I’ve had a small very itchy patch of skin on the back of one hand for weeks and weeks. It has cleared up and come back several times and last time I used a smear of my Mum’s steroid cream and it went overnight but it’s back and driving me mad so I went to the docs to get some steroid cream of my own. She reckons it’s ringworm though which reading the description online seems fairly likely so I’ve got antifungal cream instead. I’m blogging this mainly because there was a conversation with the children while in there which was interesting and needed the background to explain, not because I really wish to share the woes of my itchy fungal infection with the world! 😉 They were sitting on the floor playing with a basket of toys while I talked to the doc and we suddenly both became aware that they were trying to identify the species of an odd plastic toy with eight springy legs. Scarlett was saying ‘it can’t be a spider Davies, spiders don’t have antennae’ and Davies was saying ‘but it can’t be a crab because crabs have pinchers and this has got wheels’. They then realised we were watching / listening to them and Davies came over to find out more about what me and Doc were talking about. She was looking up something in her medical book so I explained to Davies about my itchy bit on my hand and he asked why I didn’t just put ‘itch cream’ on it (Euradex – used it on his recent rash) so I explained that it didn’t help and we talked a bit about itches and then about how if someone mentions something itching then you feel it on yourself too. I said that if you talk about itchy eyebrows then everyone suddenly starts scratching at theirs – and indeed me, both children and Doc did – so we’ve been doing that all day, trying to get each other to scratch somewhere 😀

We came home and I did a couple of loads of washing, made some cheese scones and chocolate chip cookies to take with us to the park while the children did drawing and watched Discovery Kids. I love DK, it’s really educational but put across in a really fun way – I think they have the balance just right.

Off to the park and we met up with Julie, Jack and Maisie and the older couple who HE their grandsons. Davies went off with the younger of the two boys who is 8 into the trees in the middle of the park. I nipped over to check on them and was assured by him that ‘aslong as Davies stays with me he will be under excellent supervision’ 🙂 He is HFA, very charming and excellent with Davies as he doesn’t really do playing but enjoys exploring and is very old head on young shoulders. They were off together for a good 20 minutes and Davies really seemed to enjoy being with an older boy for a while until they left and he went back to being the leader with Scarlett, Jack and Maisie again.

Julie and I stayed for another hour or so and let the children go out of sight and explore which is always nice to let them have the freedom to do, while we chatted. Then we went into the playground bit for a final go on the swings and slides before being beaten by the wind and ever changing weather and going home.

Back home the children did some dot to dot and colouring in of sheets with letters on from the scrapstore, whilst watching more Discovery Kids and then having their tea.

I really must do the exercise a couple of others have about jotting down the conversations we have during a day as we cover such diverse subjects and they come out with such interesting questions and observations that I’m forever thinking ‘oh I must blog that’ and forgetting.

Given that most of the suggestions were ones I either expressed an interest in doing or have already done. 🙂 Anyone gets a surprising result I’d be amazed!

I’m feeling generally quite apathetic and removed from all around me at the moment. No real idea why and hopefully it won’t last – normally this feeling precedes some big change so if so let’s hope it’s a positive one eh?

Today we met up with our friends Mel, Liam and Lily at Paradise Park for the day as it is half term so L & L are off school.

First thing we read some books, had some cuddles, I did some washing, got quiche out to defrost for dinner and made a picnic. The children played with geomags, cuddly toys, lots of bits of tissues and some small Wallace and Gromit toys. We were running late (aren’t we always 😉 ) as I decided to tidy up before we went out rather than leave it to come home to, so I did the geomags as that always causes much sighing and huffing from the children and got them to put toys in a tidy pile (Tarly) and put all scraps of shredded tissue in the bin (Davies) – I then asked them to get their shoes and very cutely Davies put his own on and then did Tarly’s for her 🙂 Even cuter than helping was the way he talked her through what he was doing.

They played in the car all the way there and then had a great time running round with L & L. We did the dinosaur bits, the planet Earth stuff, whizzed round all the educational stuff, looked at the cacti and then spent ages in the gardens. They were running a half term competition to spot 20 odd gnomes hidden round the place with a flag of a country next to them. The countries were all listed as anagrams to solve and then hand in. We didn’t have a pen so didn’t bother writing them down but they all enjoyed spotting flags and gnomes. I was pleased that Davies identified the German flag too (Badgers). We have a flag cards game somewhere which I must try and remember to dig out tomorrow to follow up a spark of interest in them.

There was a small wooden decking area with a wooden pirate ship and a tower with a bell to ring which they stopped at and played at for about 15 minutes and then we went to the picnic area and had our lunch. Davies and Liam had a round of crazy golf – Liam’s dad plays golf and Liam is hugely competitive anyway so I think Davies with his very strange one handed barely managed to make contact with the ball most of the time let alone came anywhere near getting the ball in the hole in under 10 shots was not the most ideal competitor but he seemed to enjoy it anyway 🙂 We then had tea / coffee / ice creams in the cafe before heading back in to the indoor arcade – y bit to play on the games machines there before eventually heading for home.

Hama beads were requested when we got home so I spent about an hour looking at tents on ebay while they made patterns / played with / scattered about in a random fashion with the beads. They are clearly in some sort of late night rut as it was getting on for 9pm before they were asleep. 🙄

Tomorrow I have the doctors at 8.30am so we need to be about early and then we are meeting up with Julie and Lucy (and any other HE folk who appear) at the park with picnics, so fingers crossed there will be further physical exhaustion to make for an earlier night tomorrow.

We went up to London for the day yesterday, primarily so I could take Davies to the Pixar exhibition at the Science Museum but also for a day out. My parents came too and we caught the 10.08 to Victoria which gets us in around 11.30am. The trade off of having three other adults with us on the train to assist in ‘managing’ the children was of course offset by the children acting accordingly, but we did keep them fairly amused with pens and paper. So there was drawing, noughts and crosses and some writing done on the way up there.

We’d got the one day travelcard tickets so debated tube or bus and went with bus to Kensington. It was really busy on the bus so we all got split up with various of us getting up mid journey to offer seats to those more worthy of getting a seat on a busy bus (not me – I had a Davies on my lap and he may be short but he’s very heavy so I felt quite justified in sharing a seat with him being a good enough reason not to give it up 🙂 although of course I would if required!) I sat chatting to a french girl who was also heading to the museum and planning various other places for the rest of her day. It was qute nice pointing out Harrods etc to her as we went past, although Ady was laughing at me from his position a little way up the bus as actually I was probably only slightly less clueless than her about where stuff was in London 😆

We got to the museum and Mum decided she would join us in the Pixar exhibition so Dad, Ady and Scarlett headed off to explore some of the rest of the museum while we got tickets for that, found it, were directed back to the cloakrooms in the basement to give my bag in and then re-found it again 🙄 Unfortunately neither of the children had really caught up from their late night on Saturday and retrospectively it was probably not such a great idea to take them but having been meaning to take Davies for weeks and finding out it ends next week meant it was really the only feasible day left unless I wanted to take him on my own and drag (and pay for) Scarlett along too.

I think it was overpriced really and not very clearly advertised as it was very busy but most people there seemed slightly disappointed. plenty of original sketches, cells from the film and storyboards, casts of characters in glass cases and lots of fairly abstract little bits of art based on the characters (quite a lot on Edna Mode from The Incredibles), all of which was interesting and good to have there to show the process but not awesome by any means. Worth the money for us on it’s own though was one exhibit which we watched three times – hard to describe really but it was like a carousel, it had the toy soldiers at the very top coming out with parachutes, then a lassoing Jessie, a Buzz bouncing on a ball, Wheezy and the green martian on a seesaw and various other detail – each character going round the circle was slightly different so when the whole thing span round really fast and they started strobe lights it all came to life and started to ‘move’. I’ve described that really badly I know 😀 but it opened up a long conversation about animation and illustrated it all beautifully 🙂

There was also a very good film which Davies accurately described as ‘like an album’ with captures of various of the Pixar films shown like pictures on a wall and then swinging into each of them. The drawings were just like chalk or pastel drawings so the art was very unsophisticated which made it all the more clever somehow. It was shown on a giant screen which made you feel you were falling into it too. Liked that 🙂

We bought a 3D drawing pad and glasses – it’s got a blue and red pattern on the paper and if you draw on it in black pen then look at your drawing with the glasses on it appears to hover above the page. I think tbh with Davies being tired anyway he didn’t appear to get huge amounts out of it but it will be something that gets refered back to and at least gave him yet another dimension to the behind the scenes side of making animated films. At least I can be confident I am facilitating this interest to the very best of my Home Educating ability ;-).

We met back up with the others and much debate about what to do for lunch ensued. 🙄 We eventually walked back up Kensington High Street, found an M&S food store and bought sandwiches, then got on the first bus that came along and stayed on it until we happened upon Holland Park which seemed as good a place as any to hop off and have a picnic. Very busy with lots of blokes doing Bank Holiday jumpers for goalposts football matches and the sandfilled playpark was full to bursting with parents sitting watching while the nannies played with all the children – love that people watching 😉

We were fairly surprised to realise it was already gone 4pm by then so we got back on a bus with the intention of getting back to Victoria and maybe heading to Trafalgar Square but the weather had turned from OK but showery to actually quite windy and cold so we caught one bus to Hyde Park and then hopped off onto another to Victoria. Dad bought us all tea, coffee or coke (Scarlett dropped hers so we spent ages speculating about which corners of the country her coke would travel to on the bottom of people’s shoes), Mum and I went into Lush and I recommended my favourite shampoo to her (Big for interested parties 🙂 ) then as no direct train was showing for the next hour or so we caught the next one going close to our way, got off and changed mid journey and arrived home just before 7pm.

The trip home was fine too – children very tired by that point, Davies had had a massive bump to the side of his head by walking into the side of a bus stop while not looking where he was going so he was slightly wobbly from that too. More noughts and crosses (although Mum played with Davies and was really annoying me by letting him win all the time and telling him where to put his cross next :roll:). The children had a bath which turned the water black and went to bed.

We had lots of drinking and a lovely curry I’d stuck in the slow cooker before we’d left in the morning. Debate about HE – good natured but boring – same points being made and debated over and over again and they left around 11.30pm.

Happy 3rd Birthday Small! 🙂

Love from Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlett xx

Thanks to a rather late night last night the children didn’t wake until 7.30am today – my turn to get up but not nearly as hideous as it could have been 🙂

Still not heard about the tent but I’m assuming it’s a no now – thanks for the offer Helen 🙂 We are borrowing Alison’s but a freecycle one of our own would have been nice. I also rang up after a cheap one in the Friday Ad but it had gone. 🙁 We’ve got a stove off Chris (Ady’s bro) now though so that’s good 🙂

So this morning we went out to a HUGE car boot sale – five rows of both sides of cars – about 1000 ‘stalls’ in all I guess. Me and Davies went off and Tarly and Ady went off – we met up at least three times walking round and I spent £2.00, Ady spent £1.20. No camping stuff at all but Davies and I got a Gromit bag (I know, I know, but they have such value on ebay I don’t mind), Ady and Scarlett got one small Shawn the sheep plastic toy, one small cuddly toy (10 p each) and videos of Bambi and Snow White. Going midway through when some people had already had enough with cute kids always nets some free stuff from people who are reluctant to get shot of their now grown up kids’ toys and just want them to go to a good home so me and Davies got a cuddly bat, Kermit and Miss Piggy while Tarly alone had charmed a Chicken Run backpack and a fluffy white cat on a pink leather, jewel studded lead out of some woman 🙂

Whilst walking round the sun had well and truly come out and although I’d worn long sleeves I had cut away shoulders on my top so I have now have attractive very pink semi circle shapes on my shoulders – nice!

We had an hour before we were due at Chris and Julie’s so we popped home again for lunch and then headed over there. Listening to an old cd in the car with Irene Cara’s Fame! on it Davies wanted to know how come she thought you could ‘make it to Heaven’ when you have to die first to get there and why you’d sing a song about that. So that was a nice one to field ;-).

The children played – Ady and Chris hoovered out their cars and me and Julie chatted. We’d taken our most recent photo album with us so we looked through that and she was able to put some names to faces of other friends she hears lots about but has never actually met.

We had a nice couple of hours there then came home. Ady had showed Davies a video clip on his phone of Tony accompanying Ros, Sarah and I to Summer Lovin’ last night so he decided he wanted to watch Grease, so we had that on while they had their dinner. Ady bathed them while I got dinner on and baked a chocolate chip sponge cake to have for pudding tomorrow night when my parents are over and despite not going to bed until 11pm last night they were both slow to get to sleep tonight.

Tomorrow we’re off to London for the day with my parents. Visiting the Science museum and Davies and I are going to the Pixar exhibition so we’re looking forward to that. 🙂

Spent ages looking at tents online after the tent shows yesterday. Got up this morning and someone had posted a 6 man tent on freecycle. I’ve emailed to say ‘YES PLEASE!!!’ 🙂 but have not heard back yet….

Thanks for all the replies, really interesting 🙂

It actually started because I was pondering on what level of impact school has on people and how much it contributes to who you are as an adult. Not remotely scientific and also bourne from huge curiosity and general nosiness 😉

For the first question I was after professions – I don’t know whether it was just an indication of the 80s when I grew up, the school or area I lived in, being considered ‘bright’ or just my own upbringing but I don’t remember ever hearing anyone wanting to be a wife and mother. It was all about a career. Actually it took me several years to stop defining myself by my job title so I was clearly very conditioned somewhere along the line.

My own answer – a variety of things. I wanted to be a teacher for a while and then realised I didn’t / don’t actually like children very much. I wanted to write and illustrate childrens’ stories for a long time but was never remotely encouraged so grew to see that as impossible and then I wanted to work in finances somehow – banking, pensions, mortgages or something like that.

What are you most proud of yourself for? I was wondering whether people are most proud of achievements they have strived for or those which come naturally. Whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic rewards that motivate us. Sadly you are all so bloody humble I didn’t get much on that one 😆

What am I proud of myself for? I think I’m just proud of being me really. I could have gone down several roads, I could have crumbled and fallen at various fences and I didn’t. At 32 I still feel I have most of my life well ahead of me. I’m not hugely proud of my marriage as I don’t really feel it takes any work – I’m simply glad we found each other and recognised we were a couple really despite lots of rather good evidence (and people giving their ‘input’) to the contrary. I am hugely proud of my children but if having them has taught me anything it is that you can actually take very little credit for them or their actions and I would never either give them the responsibility of making me proud or disappointed, not pin my hopes on another individual for my happiness or self worth anyway. I tend not to be so proud of the things which I find come easily. I like being praised for things like writing but as it takes very little effort I don’t really feel proud of it as such.

Who do you admire? That was almost entirely curiosity although it was lovely to read that some of you admire relatives – actually I guess I’d be very proud if one of my children at a future point said they admired me!

I admire a variety of people for various reasons. As a capitalist I like the rags to riches, success against the odds stories of people who dreamt big and started small and really, really made it. I admire hard work and I really admire people who follow their own path and stick with their beliefs and confidence in themself. I think the world is a better place for the presence of the likes of Bob Geldof et al. I propably don’t really aspire to be like anyone, but then that wasn’t actully the question – you don’t need to want to be someone to admire their qualities.

I admire my Dad for many things – he’s been through a fair old amount – much of it self -inflicted, which for me is something it is even more admirable to come through the other side of in one piece – you need to deal with the crap and deal with your own feelings towards yourself regarding it. He is definitely someone who’s attitude I have learnt from, the aspects of my own personality which are most like him are the ones I like about myself the most.

I also admire Ady for almost the opposite reasons. He’s endured crap from outside of his own control and emerged butterfly like into one of the most respectful, optimistic and able to see the best in everyone people I know, despite having had plenty of evidence that actually people are crap and very likely to hurt you. I admire him loads for still giving people the chance to potentially hurt him by loving them anyway.

Anyway thanks chaps – I enjoyed reading. 🙂

Shame the season didn’t behave accordingly with all the sunshine and balmy warmth but never mind.

There are loads of tent shows going on this weekend and a very local one happened on a green near us so we went along this morning. Of course we have no money to buy a tent with but it was helpful to get into the Kessingland vibe wandering around in fields pitched with canvas while the wind blew a gale and the rain beat a merry tune on the tent roofs 🙄

The green is near a small parade of shops so we had a quick browse round the charity shops and I picked up a little Singer Sewing Machine for £2.50. It works perfectly too 🙂 The children had both been fascinated when Ros brought her’s round last week so they were really delighted to have one to use of their own. I was probably not the most patient teacher trying to show them how to use it but Tarly did really well although Davies decided he’d come back to it another time 😳

We had lunch and then headed off over to Ros’. There was another tent show on the way which was far more interesting and we spent ages there wandering around in the tents trying to decide what we liked and what we didn’t. Again almost entirely academic although I do notice plenty of tents advertised as used once or twice and going at half price in the local paper so I’ll keep an eye out and go begging to my Dad if needs be 🙂

Had a lovely time at Ros’. Sarah and children were there so Davies disappeared with Adam and Joe while Tarly lurked around the grown ups helping us to drink Pimms and playing with Kessie. Ady was happy watching the big screen and Ros, Sarah and I (with a little help from Tarly) drank a bottle of Pimms and enjoyed a catch up. Tony cooked a lovely chilli (I picked out the beans and mushrooms :lol:) and then accompanied us on the piano – perfect! 🙂

When our’s were the only children still visible and audible as all the others were in bed at least if not asleep we headed home. Thanks for a lovely time 🙂

Tomorrow we’re Car Booting Sale – ing in the morning (camping stuff spotting specifically!) and then seeing Chris and Julie in the afternoon.

I got 89% 🙂

Firstly woo and also hoo as Ady is not only having Monday off (hurrah, a bank holiday off 🙂 And we have proper bank holiday stylee plans and everything!) he is also able to come to Kessingland for the whole week instead of just the weekends either end. This is fantabulous news as I was starting to get really quite twitchy about the thought of camping in general, specifically in drought conditions 😉 and despite telling myself and the children it would be ‘An Adventure’ I don’t think any of us were believing me. It also means (depending on how clever we are with our packing) we may even get away with just the one car – Ady’s – which will save petrol money too – hurrah 🙂

I had a really crap nights’ sleep, I fell asleep on the sofa and staggered up to bed around 2am and then was awake again during the night (what was left of it) so I slept in til 9am with the children coming to visit to ask for things like ice lollies for breakfast. I said yes to everything – god, I’m neglectful 😳 I felt much better for a bit of a catch up sleep though and got up and made them proper peanut butter on toast breakfast too.

We then headed over to Ali’s via the Wizard store where I bought them both a small notebook each to use as their own ‘diary books’ so they were very pleased with that and crunchies for everyone, cos it is Friday 🙂 – oh what a successful ad campaign that one was!

Rain prevented the outdoor play all the children were after and J was working from home in the cupboard (did your Tesco order ever arrive Ali?) but we managed some good chats despite many and varied interuptions covering areas as diverse as religion, liberal and capitalist views, dream locations to live, selfishness, education and loads more – nice to have proper grown up conversations, so really enjoyed that 🙂 Freya and Davies were putting on one of their fairly frequent double acts – this time Davies was ‘playing’ a harmonica and Freya was dancing and twirling so we told them about Caberet Night at Kessingland and said they could do and act to perform to the crowd if they wanted. This idea was met with much enthusiasm so they did lots of practising, lots of dress rehearsals to us and ever more extravagent introductions to their own act. I have a feeling it may just be Davies and Freya followed by Alison, Layla and I at Caberet Night but at least we won’t let the side down. (Actually I suspect if that is the case Alison, Layla and I will just keep singing ever more drunkenly until others either join in, come up with an impromptu act to shut us up or simply throw food at us til we stop! 😆 ) They also played with Freya’s fab new gears set thing and them Davies played for ages at the end with Ali’s Fun Blox, prompting Ali to very kindly lend them to us til we next see them – you’ll be pleased to know he didn’t stop playing with them the whole afternoon and Scarlett joined in too, so thanks again for that Ali. 🙂

Home for tea, listening to Mary Poppins cd there and back in the car. When Ady got home I dashed off to Tesco to do food shopping for next week and a few bits and bobs for Kessingland now I am viewing it with renewed excitement as a holiday rather than my own personal week long version of Big Brother 😉

Looking forward to a busy weekend so don’t know how much I’ll be around blogging.

although I think I hide it well 😆

cos our season ticket runs out on 2nd June and at £38 per person per year it won’t make it onto our priority list of investments of our meagre spare cash fund 🙁

This morning despite being up for three full hours before we had to go I still ended up dashing about at the last minute being all irrational and shouty. The children can both get themselves dressed now, which is excellent – I chuck clothes at them (they are of course capable of doing that themselves too but I am still to controlling / altogether too aware of the ‘standard’ of sartorial taste they would pull off to let them 😉 ) and they chuck their pjs back at me. Sometimes this takes a fair bit of nagging / coercion / threats of not going out or leaving the house in pjs / yelling and tears, other times it is straightforward and stress free! Today it was stress free. But then I remembered I needed to post an ebay parcel I hadn’t packaged up yet, and I still hadn’t made a picnic and Scarlett’s hair went beyond it’s normal worst acceptable level of tangled-ness on Tuesday so I did that and we left about 15 minutes after I’d planned to – which wasn’t too bad really and probably a tribute to the fact we can actually get out of the house and maybe even hope for the future 🙂 I did get four baskets of clean washing all put away too! Wish I could learn to choose my battles as quickly as I’ve learnt to enjoy housewifeliness 🙄

As it happened Lucy pulled up after we did anyway and we were less than 10 minutes late. We listened to some classics for children music on the way over which we’ve not done for a while so that was nice.

The children had a great time all round really, looked at the animals, played on all the various interactive bits, made full use of everything in the playground and generally made the very most of the day. The weather held all day and ended up very warm and sunny so that was good. Only paid for a cup of tea too so that was frugal 🙂 I would have taken pictures but I think we just have so many of them in various positions around Drusillas it seemed fairly pointless somehow!

We left around 3pm and I did some more shouting on the way home as they suddenly decided having played beautifully all day together to wind each other up and whinge. Sorted ourselves out by the time we got home and played I spy on the way, called into the post office to post my parcel and to the train station to find out about network rail cards.

When we got home I took to my car with a bin liner and cleared out all the various child related rubbish, removed all the winter coats and outgrown spare clothes and then replaced them with clean and season appropriate spare clothes, found the waterproof trousers and coats for the children, put their wellies in there and found fleeces for all of us to go in there too. One less job to do pre Kessingland too 🙂 That led onto sorting out the coat rack in the hall, bagging up all of the winter coats that won’t fit the children next year ready for ebaying, putting all of our winter coats in the back of our wardrobe and going through the shoes and putting all the wintery ones in the bottom shoe chest and all the summery ones in the top – there guaranteed rain for another fortnight 🙄

The children had grazed on food all afternoon with the sandwiches and crisps I’d taken for their lunch, some cheese strings things (refuse to spell any of those words with Zs like on the packaging!) Lucy’d brought to share. They they had apples, bananas and carrots when we got home, rice cakes in the car and two mini milk ice lollies each so they were understandably not fussed about dinner. So we played memory match the pairs with three sets of Ice Age 2 cards they’d got at the cinema as a free gift with their popcorn. We read Cat in the hat comes back and then the children sat with some of Tarly’s Dora books with Davies ‘reading’ them to her. I also wrote out ‘banana’ ‘green’ and ‘cat’ and Davies read them. He’s so utterly convinved he simply can’t read that when he realises how easy it actually is to read a word like banana he is amazed 🙂 Very funny to watch and of course quite amazing too…

They found a diary which was a McDonalds HappyMeal giveaway at some past point today so they have both been drawing and writing stuff in that today too. They brought it, along with some pens with us in the car and were illustrating stories to tell each other in it during the journey. I think spending time with some of the older girls in our circle who all seem to have notebooks they draw and write in has been noted by them more than I realised. They’ve already filled that one up so I might get them a cheapo notebook each – seems like a good little habit to encourage.

And that was about it for today really. Tomorrow we’re off to Ali’s so naturally Davies is planning ash-art :lol:.

We’ve started a team blog with food stuff on it 😆

If you want to contribute let me know and I’ll send you a username and password!

Happy Birthday Steve 🙂