One word? When seven would do…

cos the alternative is too bloody awful to contemplate 😆

Yesterday was pretty good, lovely roast pork at lunchtime, did a massive overhaul of Davies’ bedroom, got rid of piles of crap, stashed loads more stuff in the loft space, finally said goodbye to some toys I’ve been trying to edge out for years and got it ready for having guests to stay in with plenty of floor space. It needs redecorating but that’ll have to wait until I get the urge or we’re away and Dad does it. Then I did the same to Tarly’s room. Got all her Barbie furniture in a wooden crate which makes it look really tidy, took great pleasure in putting all her Barbies into a big box like a cardboard coffin, got shot of some stuff and cleared out under her bed. There is still stuff under the bed but now it is arranged there ready to get out and play with rather than serving as another cupboard. She has a slat bed which I’d put together upside down so the slats were on the bottom of the frame rather than the top. It made sense at the time as there is a recess that way for the mattress to drop into but as two of the slats have broken it is clearly not the designed way. So we took it apart and put it back together again mending the slats at the same time. So the house feels sort of spring cleaned inasmuch as every room has had crap and clutter removed or at least sorted through in the last few weeks.

Today started badly, when I got up there was a massive puddle of water and soggy loo roll (just tap water and on a mat so not dreadful but still the first thing I saw as I came downstairs) and the lounge floor was a sea of videos that Davies had tried to use as building blocks for something. So they set about tidying up those messes while I got some washing sorted, then they messed about over their breakfast and faffed about over getting dressed. Outside I discovered the blue box men hadn’t taken a heap of cardboard we’d left out for collection 🙄 they always leave at least one token thing in the box, a single envelope or one plastic bottle for some reason.

The children were really squabbly in the back of the car which always drives me insane so when we ground to a halt on the road over the downs with traffic infront as far as the eye could see I knew my limited supply of patience was running low. We sat for over half an hour with most of the cars infront of us turning round and double backing, but we were probably only a mile or so from group and although I know an alternative route it would take the best part of an hour and use up loads of petrol so I decided we were so close we might as well sit it out. By then enough cars had gone by that we were close enough to see a lorry had collided with a motorbike and about 10 emergency services vehicles were on the scene dealing with it. The road finally reopened after I’d reduced both children to tears and assured them as soon as we were out of the traffic jam we’d be going school uniform shopping ready for them to start school tomorrow 😆

Group was good, they made masks with letter stickers, feathers and sequins then they joined in with running around and general craziness. Ali and Freya were there so that pleased them as it’s been weeks since we saw them last. There were membership cards being made and laminated too so I made one each for us as the children didn’t want to it themselves. It was most amusing this week to walk in and find laminating and membership numbers, mission statements and Allie with a clipboard happening at MM 😆 all very official ;).

The children were equally as squabbly on the way home and in concentrating on keeping them in line rather than the speedo I screamed past a speed check which I’m fairly sure would have clocked me doing around 80 :(. I guess if I get the points and fine then it will at least be the third self inflicted annoyance in a week (buggering up my blog, sending an ebay parcel to the wrong address which then got lost and I had to give a refund for and now a speedy ticket) so I can finally put my own ability to cock up behind me and start to focus on always being right again ;).

We got home and the children were fairly contrite, we had cuddles and they promised to behave this afternoon which they have more than managed to do. I’ve sat quietly and drunk tea while they played together really nicely and harmoniously. Guess I wouldn’t value that if they did it all the time so maybe we need to take the crap with the good eh? My parents flew off for three weeks yesterday with my Mum ringing me in the morning and asking me to keep an eye on my brother (who is 3o!!!) and to ring my granny at least once a week as she is poorly (having flown back from a month in Amercia for Christmas she’s gone down with what sounds to me like no more than a bad cold – wonder if she asked Frazer to keep an eye on me alone with my two children with Ady away this week, or Granny to ring me to check I am ok – I suspect not. Sometimes it’s shite being the capable one :lol:)

Off to walk Davies round to Beavers in a minute, forced to stay without me on just week two by me needing to take Tarly with us and not being willing to sit and try and keep ger quiet in the hall while all the lads run around playing. So we’re walking him there and then going back in an hour, think I’ll read her some stories while we’re home along which will negate the need to read them to her at bedtime 🙂 I’m hoping for an early night for them both tonight so I can have a very long bath and pretend it’s not Monday so I can drink anyway 😉

Davies has got from somewhere some information about hypnosis and wants to get either film or a book to learn how to do it :lol:. Aware of what a crazy idea this could be ‘you are feeling very sleepy, when I click my fingers you will be appauled by the very idea of your laptop, your fingers will not move over the keyboard and your eyes will hurt when you look at the screen. 3 2 1 you’re back in the room’ he doesn’t seem to be giving it up any time soon. So I’ve done a quick google to find some childrens books or films on the subject and found a series of books about Molly Moon which I’ve reserved at work but I think they are more stories than a how to guide which is what he is after.

Anyone got any ideas?

I *think* I like this and I *think* I’m going to leave it alone now. I got bored of the white and purple and I had in mind something sort of gingery but actually I like this. I especially like the archives bit and I’m quite proud of myself for managing to change the little bits I have managed so that’s where I’m going to leave it. 🙂

Anyway, enough talk about what it looks like a bit more talk about what’s going to be written on it. 🙂

I worked yesterday afternoon, I walked into work and then Ady came and picked me up afterwards. I’ve been keeping my phone on me at work as it has a built in pedometer. On a full day I am easily managing those 10000 steps there and on a half day I get at least 6000, the walk into work really helps and come the summer I’ll see if it is feasible to walk in all the time. Does explain why my feet are killing me 🙂 I can’t believe I not only used to spend all day every day on my feet I also used to do it in very high heeled shoes. Standing still is even worse than walking around and wearing shoes to walk on carpet is a real killer – far harder somehow than walking outdoors.

I’m starting to feel more like I work there and less like I am observing now as I get more used to things. Everyone seems very friendly and although my shift pattern means I often see some of my colleagues just once a fortnight even that is quite nice in terms of lots of variety when I do work. I also told them yesterday that I might be able to do the odd evening (they shut at 7pm so hardly an evening in retail terms :lol:) on days when I have not worked during the day. There are aspects of it that I am struggling with, the pace of the place generally is so very, very different to anywhere else I have ever worked. There is simply no sense of urgency to get anything done. The working environment I was used to was the culture of always chasing your tail and there never being ‘nothing’ to do, I had a never ending job list which I was lucky to maintain the length of by ticking off one item before the next two got added. Here they pace themselves with jobs to ensure they don’t run out of things to do before lunchtime! There is at least one person there who has a dreadful attitude towards the public and doesn’t attempt to hide it, I am struggling with that too. I consider the job to still be within the service industry albeit a mostly free public service and I have real issues with anyone who works in the service industry and cannot provide excellent service. I hate shoddy service in shops, restuarants, pubs etc. I know that working as a checkout operator or waiter can be a shitty job, FFS I’ve done those jobs. But jobs they are, you are being paid to do them and if you don’t like them then don’t do them, don’t inflict your disdain for your profession on the people who are paying your wages. I’m struggling on a personal level with being so junior but they warned me I might feel like that and it is a totally personal thing rather than a reflection on the job or my colleagues. It does make me question my cunning plan to stay there part time until the children are more independant and then go full time with a view to a career – I couldn’t spend all day every day doing something with so little responsibility, I’m already biting my tongue during a four hour shift about things I can see need doing but the people way senior to me don’t seem to notice (an example being the way four staff stood around for two of my shifts while a big display of Christmas books was still up on a wall for nearly 2 weeks after Christmas. Clearly no one borrowed any of those books once the big day itself was over and they were already moving onto their health and fitness new year resolutions so I would have had that display whipped off and a load of books on diet, cooking and exercise out there ready.). I appreciate stuff that I don’t know a thing about is going on behind the scenes but I can’t help but be offended by people standing round earning £45 per hour collectively. But as I learn more I will either decide that I am talking bollocks and know nothing, get used to it and wonder why I ever ran around like a headless chicken in previous jobs or find things that occupy me and allow me to work at a pace I am comfortable with within the job or totally revolutionise the culture of libraries for the future 😉 !

There are plenty of aspects that I am really enjoying though and this week it has been much busier and I am being shown additional bits and pieces which show me that as I learn more I will be able to go and find things to do when I get bored which is good. I have been given a sheet with loads of training dates all through this year which appear to be very comprehensive so I’m looking forward to that. I am really enjoying talking to people – it is mostly old people or people with children coming in when I’m working and I’m enjoying that lots. I really enjoy talking to old people generally, lots of them seem to get through massive thick hardbacks daily and want to come in and tell you all about them, it is very possible that you are the only person they have a conversation with all day. I’m enjoying the banter with the regular old men who come in every morning to read the papers together and debate the news of the day with each other. I love talking to the little old women who want to tell me the plot line of the Catherine Cookson they’re bringing back and the gentleman who has been coming to the library every week for the last 49 years. I’m also rather surprising myself by being quite good with the children who come in. I stood for ages talking to a little boy the other day who was borrowing Balamory and Wallace and Gromit dvds. During a quiet afternoon a young girl with obvious learning difficulties came in with her mother and wanted to know all about how everything on the counter worked so I let her check her own books out and stamp them, explaining a bit about how it all worked. There are several of my colleagues who are really interesting people I am enjoying getting to know better.

So yesterday it was overall busier, I like the Saturday staff and there is a slightly different feel to the place on a Saturday – we also get to wear jeans to work :). I was given a few different jobs to do which made time go quicker and when a tall, ageing rocker type of bloke came in and made my colleague go all simpering and giddy, talked in a loud voice about how he lives in California and has calmed down a lot since his younger days even I was quite excited to learn after he’d gone that he was Keith Emerson once of course I knew who Keith Emerson was :lol:.

Ady and the children came in at the end to pick me up and the children chose a book each which I let them scan out themselves (I offered Ady a go but he declined 😉 ). They’d been watching Nemo, making the cast of Willy Wonka from bits of paper and playing board games all afternoon while I was at work.

Davies has been quite challenging this week, he is from time to time. It is usually classic attention seeking type behaviour and while I am aware of all the ‘not rewarding negative behaviour’ advice I am firmly of the opinion that it is always for a reason rather than him being an arse on purpose so I’m trying to balance giving him the attention he clearly wants with trying to get across that he is not the only person in the family and some behaviour is simply not acceptable.

Part of the reason for this I am sure is that Scarlett has had a few leaps and bounds moments this week. She has decided not to drink her milk from her bottle any more. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on blog before but both the children still drink milk from bottles in the morning and before bed. It’s one of those things which was briefly an issue when Davies was about 3 but has long since stopped being one for us. Having gone past ‘normal’ age for stopping using them we decided they would stop when they were ready rather than some predetermined age we dictated. She has also started to wipe her own bottom (yay!) and is now quicker than Davies and doing up and undoing her own seatbelt in the car. She is revelling in being a ‘big girl’ and I think that sort of throws Davies’ position into some doubt for him so he is acting out accordingly. Unfortunately a lot of the negative stuff is a mirroring of some of my less pleasant behaviour – impatience, aggression in tone when talking to others and a general intolerance for anyone else. Scarlett seems to bear the brunt of this and is fairly confused as to why the person she adores more than anyone else is being mean to her. All easily remedied by me exhibiting rather more of the traits I’d like to see him copying and giving them both a bit more time and attention I’m sure.

A quiet Sunday here today with roast dinner at lunchtime. The children are playing on the pc and with a box of toys they call the ‘muddle box’ because it contains a variety of odds and ends of things rather than any specific toys. This included several packs of cards, some dominos, various Happy Meal toys and so on. Davies has been setting up domino runs and telling stories around them this morning. We’ve got tidying up of the childrens’ bedrooms scheduled in for this afternoon. Might be back later.

It might be here awhile 🙂

In the words of the much quoted song I did indeed have a bad day. It’s been a bad week really, not all of which will make it to be dissected here but by the skin of my teeth I think I pulled it round at the bitter end and I’ve got the weekend to work on improvement techniques.

Today Scarlett played with a space jigsaw for a while until Davies’ game got more interesting looking so she decamped to play with him instead. He had got out the big play mat with road, hospital, school, police station etc. and set up all the various emergency services vehicles from the toy car box. He read a few of the various words on the mat as he went – he is coming to terms with the idea that actually he *can* read and that this is A Good Thing rather than something he should be denying. Slow and steady definitely, but getting there all the same :). He then wanted some people to play with on it so I suggested the lego people might be about the right size so he dug a handful of those out of the lego box and set it all up. That was the point Tarly decided it looked interesting and went to join in, taking soft toys with her and totally buggering up all the carefully laid out dimensions :lol:.

I packaged up a load of ebay sales – I sold ten items in the end for nearly £70, not quite as much as I’d have hoped but a pretty good conversion into cash from things hanging in the wardrobe. :). Took forever to do that and then we walked in the drizzle and wind to the post office to send them.

We came back for lunch and then Tarly put a Barbie film on (12 dancing princesses I think – I can’t quite bring myself to watch :lol:). Davies watched for a while – it is a film after all 😉 but he gave up too and gathered up various pens and paper and props and turned an old Stella bottled beer cardboard box into a TV set complete with various backdrops, scenery, characters and floors. He made up three ‘films’ with rabbits starring in the first and second and an alien in the third. He showed them to an audience of Scarlett and various soft toys, then me and later when Ady got home he saw them too. In terms of plotline and dialogue he remained about the same all three times proving he did at least have some sort of plan rather than a totally ad lib performance. 😆

It was tea time by then so I put on Carrie’s War which I’d picked up at the library on Wednesday on dvd. Scarlett asked a few questions about evacuation and made a few observations such as ‘they’ll miss their mummy and daddy’ but them lost interest but Davies saw it through and ended up sitting on my lap for the last half hour or so. He asked loads of questions and clearly remembered bits and pieces of chats we’d had about some of the issues refered to in the film before. My Granny was evacuated to Cornwall during WW2 and kept contacts with the people who took her in for some 40 years afterwards and my Dad had cousins evacuated to North Wales from London to stay with them (he recalls nicking his cousins sweet rations :lol:) so it is something we have touched on before. And of course it is refered to in Peter Pan II (known in this household as ‘The Jane One’).

I sat with them both as they fell asleep tonight – some two hours apart 🙄 so although we’ve had our moments today I know we ended the day and the weekdays on a high. Tomorrow will be better 🙂

1.2.3

I’ve totally lost interest in changing the look of my blog 😆

Think I’ll keep the theme and play with something else instead!

Not much to say about today really, I worked all day. Lucy was here with the children in the morning and my Dad was here all afternoon. Work was good, quiet and therefore slightly tedious at times but even tedium has novelty value when it’s a different sort of tedium to normal 😆

Actually I’m really pissed off that I can’t fiddle with my blog. I’ve got the hang of doing things to the free bloody blogsome blogs so why the hell can’t I sort out the one which I actually pay for?! Humph!

Anyway, I think I probably have stuff to say about working, I definitely have stuff to say about the children, I really want to spend the day with them tomorrow instead of faffing around with a blog and I’m this close to moving the whole bloody thing over to a free blogsome one.

And yes, I do know where Tarly gets her petulant foot stamping I want this and I want it now ways from 😉

better? hate it? still need to play but that’ll have to wait til tomorrow. 🙂

column two seems to wander about a bit in IE but looks ok in firefox. also the title seems to only be there when you pass the mouse across it.

Beth 🙂 7 today!

It won’t stay looking like this 😆

But if I don’t actually do some blogging it’s a bit pointless having a blog really no matter what it looks like!

So yesterday then. Dentist first thing for Ady and the children – I was excused by virtue of being so frequently during November and December with my troublesome wisdom tooth but went along as Ady is scared enough of going to the dentist let alone being sent with two small children. 😆 Davies practically leapt in the chair first, his bottom two teeth are on the way to being wobbly apparently 🙄 and otherwise all fine. Tarly’s were all fine too and Ady’s the same. All for the bargain price of £15.50 🙂

Once home Ady went off upstairs to do some college work, I did a tidy up job on the playroom (again, sigh) and the children played with the toy animals. I’d imposed an xbox ban for the day and intended to do some stuff with them in the afternoon, including the lemon powered clock kit Davies got for Christmas. I’d got the lemon ready and everything. Except I can’t find the bloody kit anywhere 🙄 Did manage to get shot of two bags of board books from Tarly’s bookcase, replaced them with some story books and uncovered the dolls houses in the playroom which promptly got played with loads.

Ady went off to college and we broke for lunch. I thought I’d check emails while they watched TV eating lunch, had this wild idea that I’d upgrade wordpress on my blog and did some very loony things in places I really should know better than to touch resulting in pretty much killing the blog dead. 🙁 Emailed my technical support hero and spent the afternoon fretting about over 3 years of lost blogging disappeared forever. I was seriously bereft. 🙁

As a result of that trauma and not being able to find the lemon clock I was short tempered, anxiously checking my emails and the blog every three minutes and did nothing with the children except sigh and growl at them. Davies, desperate for some gaming experiences trawled the dvd extras of Willy Wonka (current fave film again having got the xbox game) and found some games on disc 2 so was playing those. I did help a bit and one of them was a logic game which talked about rows and columns so I explained what those were and how the logic element of elimination worked.

Then followed a ridiculously late dinner caused by me avidly watching my blog reappear having sat with Davies for ages too. He got this little W&G filofax type thing for Christmas with a diary, address book etc in it and a load of little puzzles like spot the difference, quizzes etc and was looking at some wordsearches and anagrams. The anagrams were too tricky to explain properly but we looked at the sillouette pictures of various characters which you were supposed to match up to the unscrambled anagrams and we looked for letters we knew would be in their names in the scrambled up words instead. He was pretty good at working out how to spell most of the words. Then we looked at the wordsearches. I was slightly reluctant on this one, partially because it was getting on for 9pm and partially because I am unsure of the wisdom of words being spelt backwards, diagonally and vertically for a child who is not yet reading but he was adamant he wanted to do them so we read the words together and then looked for them. He proved surprisingly able to read the words such as carrot, cabbage, marrow, potato and equally able to find them in the wordsearches. So I was proved wrong and pleased to be :).

Scarlett woke up at 3am which was bad as I’d only been in bed a couple of hours and she was totally awake and wanted to get up and have breakfast. She couldn’t be persuaded to just play in her room / stay in bed so came into our bed but she kept chattering and wriggling about so I think Ady took her back to her bed around 5am and then went off to work. I was woken by Davies around 8am getting into my bed and chatting and when Tarly woke I persuaded them to go downstairs and come and wake me at 8.30am. They organised their own breakfast (bread and water :lol:) and put Willy Wonka on and came and woke me when the big hand was indeed pointing straight down – but the little hand was on the nine rather than the eight!!! 😯

I somehow managed to get them drinks, make me a cup of tea, hang washing out, do the washing up from last night, defrost beef and get it in the slow cooker with onion, garlic, red wine and stock for dinner tonight and get us all dressed and out of the house in just over an hour.

We picked Lucy, Richard and Rebecca up and headed off to Fun Junction soft play. We met Julie, Jack and Maisie there and had a great time. The children got instantly lost inside the mazes and slides, we sat and chatted. We had lunch and then went back in for another couple of hours playing. I nipped across the road to the main library without children (bliss!) and we finally left there almost having to bodily drag the reluctant children away! Dropped Lucy, R & R home and then came home to watch Willy Wonka again.

Ady got home with precious Costco supplies – we’ve been out of Skippy peanut butter since before Christmas, I was down to the last couple of scoops of washing powder and Ady’s filter coffee was about to run out so the children celebrated with skippy sandwiches then I took Davies to Badgers. This week I literally walked him in, kissed him goodbye and left to sit in the car with no fuss at all. I sat and read my book in complete peace and silence under the interior light of the car eating sugared almonds (as close as I could get to bonbons!) and then popped back in to collect him. On the way home he was telling me that they had made first aid kids (they are doing First Aid Badger this term) with green card and would be putting crepe bandages, triangular bandages, alcohol wipes, safety pins, scissors, eye wash in them. They making a lid with a white cross sticker on top because first aid kits are green with a white cross. I was stunned at how much he’d taken in in one hour there 😯 he also said he’d been chatting to another boy who is also six but is even smaller than him (I know who he means) but he didn’t know his name, so he is clearly getting in there with the other children. 🙂 He said he really enjoyed it and is looking forward to going next week. Hurrah!

Tomorrow I’m working all day – for only the second time ever due to all the reduced hours over Christmas. Lucy is here in the morning and my Dad in the afternoon. My parents are coming for dinner as they are jetting off on Sunday for a month long holiday to South America. So you might have to get used to this pink for a couple of days before it changes again! 😆

Merry 🙂

Anna! 10 today 🙂

oh yeah.

It’s rained pretty much all day today.

I’m cold and although we can’t really afford the bill I’ve had the heating on all day, I could put more clothes on but I need to dry the washing.

The house is full of washing, dirty washing that I can’t get washed and wet washing that I can’t get dry.

I’m sooooo tired. I meant, really meant to go to bed early last night to recover from Saturday night, but online car crash rubbernecking kept me up way later than I meant to be. And then the kids were both up at 7am when Ady went to work, so I had about 5 hours sleep – not nearly enough for one night let alone to play catch up from the night before.

Kids are really tired too and have ‘wet play syndrome’ which in Tarly comes out as acting as though the world has ended over the tiniest little event. In the space of ten minutes earlier she cried because I wouldn’t buy her anything in the charity shop at group (she couldn’t find anything to buy), because I made her go back into group (she didn’t want to go back to group, she thinks group is horrid), she didn’t want to go home (as she sat wailing in the corner and said to Kate ‘NO!!!!’ when Kate asked her if she was ok and did she want her Mummy? so I decided to take her home) and that I hadn’t let her play enough 🙄

So I’ve no idea where the morning went given we were up so early. I realised it’s my friend Miranda’s 40th on Wednesday at the weekend so we decided to make her a calendar with some of the photos of her gorgeous house, so I spent ages setting that up and emailed it across to Ady at work which made us 40 minutes late for group (and when I got home it had bounced back anyway :roll:).

The hall that MM is held in has been all Changing Rooms style makeover done up over Christmas and now has gorgeous bright coloured soft play style shaped bits of multi purpose style furniture and a posh floor and a special ceiling. Which looks fab and makes it the sort of place people who are pretensious would call ‘a positive space’ but they’ve taken away all the tables for drawing at and the stools for sitting at the worktop, drinking tea and chatting at. I assume they are hidden and will be returned but it meant leaning against the worktop to drink tea instead and it’s at completely the wrong height for leaning. And I got called Nikki again, and I was so tired I spent most of the time I was talking to people concentrating really hard on not yawning in their faces instead of paying attention to what they were saying and was utterly crap at talking to the couple of new people just smiling vaguely at them and saying ‘my name’s Nicola’ which will confuse things even more as I never call myself Nicola normally but I’ve got into the habit from being at work and meeting new people. So now people will be talking about Nic, Nikki and Nicola and not knowing they all mean the same person. 😆 I paid for the years membership though, me and Tarly not being in the right mood today aside it is a good group, I’m glad we’ve found it and it feels like the right place to be making our local HE contacts, the children seem really happy with the mix of people there and although it isn’t actually in our local town it takes no longer to drive there than it did to get across town to some of the venues I hired for the Worthing group. And oh, how lovely it is to just turn up each week instead of worry about whether enough people will come to cover the rent 😆

Came home for late lunch (must get more organised at sorting out lunch to take with us to group, it cocks up the whole day eating lunch at 2.30pm) and more drudgery with wet and dirty washing, washing up and getting dinner on. Kids played and it all calmed down to normality again. Sometimes I forget that most kids their age wouldn’t be up til midnight with a houseful followed by a birthday party on Sunday and Home Ed group on a Monday – if they keep our socialising hours I guess they do need downtime. Poor over socialised HE kids! 😆

Ady came home in time for me and Davies to walk round the corner to the Beavers group. Predictably the Beaver Leader fell over yesterday ice skating so it was being run by the Cub Leader and the Quartermaster instead – ably but without any ability to tell me stuff I needed to know as a new person. However it did contain 15 little boys aged 6 to 8 who all live within about a mile radius of our house so that’s a bit good 🙂 There was one other new boy but at least half the others already knew him from school. I didn’t find out anything like where to get the t shirt from, whether it’s better to buy the sweatshirt through them (they might offer discount, if not I’ll get it where I used to work), whether he has to be invested before he gets a woggle and scarf, what the subs are and so on. But I did get asked, before they even took Davies’ name if I’d be able to help out once a term and when I said ‘er ok I guess so’ was told they’d bring a CRB check form for me next week. And my library one won’t be any good. So they can do one for Ady too and he will do a session a term as well (which he is already excited about :lol:). They did some ball games including heading and catching, some general running around, some drawing and some circle time type stuff all of which had me inwardly cringing on one level but I won’t normally witness it and Davies was fine with it. He integrated straight away actually, easily with the adults and fairly effortlessly with the boys. He’s a real people pleaser and watches how others act and then emulates them, just like Ady, so he quickly blends in and looks like he belongs. He initially said he didn’t want to come back as it was lots of running around and that had made him really tired, until I pointed out that it was practically bedtime so he was *supposed* to be tired. So he’s agreed to go back next week and I’ve already won a Beaver sweatshirt on ebay (it’s a colour that suits him anyway so if doesn’t get worn for Beavers it’ll get worn) so I’m pretty pleased about that. Got him sorted I reckon with Beavers on Monday and Badgers on Wednesdays. Scarlett can start Badgers too when she turns five and I’ll look into the girls version of Beavers at the church hall – Rainbows? And also gymnastics for her for a future date. I don’t think dance will be her thing as much as gym and unless she begs me to be a ballerina I’m avoiding that one like the plague ;). I also signed Davies up for swimming lessons a while back so must chase those up for him but those are a 12 week only thing. I reckon 2 nights a week is more than enough for ongoing activities but both have healthy doses of running around being sociable rather than anything structured so they should be exactly what he needs.

I finally made full use of my two big baskets crammed with lush stuff by having a bath bomb in my bath, using a face mask, shampoo and conditioner which was all lovely :).

And now look, it’s 11.30pm again already. Grr. Tomorrow we have absolutely zero things planned other than the dentist first thing in the morning so it’s a no laptop day and we’ll see where the day takes us.

Thanks for all the messages and birthday wishes. 🙂

I had easily my best adult birthday and a definite contender for Best Birthday Ever (although my 18th probably beats it still).

I had a lovely long lie in followed by tea, toast and presents from Ady, Davies and Scarlett. I got a gorgeous set of underwear, chocolates, bath stuff, a beautiful wine glass which Davies had specifically instructed Ady to get, some fimo beads made my Tarly which I have now strung onto thread to make a bracelet and home made cards from the children. Davies’ has a picture of me on the front and lovely writing with loads of kisses and hearts, Tarly’s contains her first ever writing of her name all by herself so is very special 🙂 Apparently Ady went out of the room for something and when he came back she’d written ‘Scarlett’ all by herself. I admit to being slightly sceptical as although she’s been typing it for a while and spelt it out with the foam letters last week her actual writing was fairly non existant. But in the car yesterday afternoon she wrote it again on the steamed up window 🙂 She’s now picking out the letters of her name everywhere and is dead chuffed with herself 🙂

Then my Mum arrived to take me over to Brighton to the Lush shop. Every year my parents spend lots of money on things I am not particularly bothered about having been bought (not to sound too ungrateful there 😉 ) so this year Ady had said to them that one of the things I was really missing being able to spend money on was nice bath stuff and the very best present they could get me would be Lush products. So she took me over there and when we got in the shop told me I had £50 to spend 🙂 And because they had their January sale on for every £15 spent I’d get a free gift too. So I spent nearly an hour going round filling my basket up and got nearly £80 worth of stuff in two massive bags which is now all beautifully arranged in the bathroom scenting the house.

We went back to my parents for lunch where Ady and the children were already waiting and had lunch and pink fizz, then came home. Layla, Si, Claudia and Jasper arrived and we had a lovely evening. The children all played really nicely, Jasper was gorgeous, Ady cooked a lovely curry followed by Thorntons birthday cake, loads more fizz and general chat. So nice 🙂 We all went to bed around midnight I think. I took Tarly to bed, got in with her for a quick cuddle and woke up around 1.30am having fallen asleep with her 😳

This morning we had a birthday party to be at for 10am which was a bit of a struggle but we managed it. It was Lily (as in Liam and Lily, our friend who go to school and some of you would have met at our parties) and the party was at a local sports centre in a big room with a bouncy castle and various climbing and soft play type stuff set out. There were probably about 15 children there – mostly Lily’s age (4) and then Liam (7 tomorrow) and Davies. The children found energy sources from somewhere on their 8 hours sleep and raced around climbing, bouncing and leaping about for an hour and a half and had a whale of a time. Ady and I sat watching them speculating on how different a child Davies is now to the 3 year old he once was. Neither of them show any signs of shyness or self consciousness in envrionments like that anymore, they get stuck in and have a good time, playing with any available child they come across. We left there and popped into Sainsburys to get a chicken for dinner. Ady popped out to get some logs, I got dinner on and we all ate together around 4.30pm.

The children had a bath and were asleep really early, we watched Confetti on dvd that I’d borrowed from work and I’m about to head off to bed, even later than last night (how did that happen then? :lol:). Tomorrow MM starts up again and I’m taking Davies along to see what happens at Beavers in the evening, so right back in the swing of things again. 🙂

the 33 years ago today post, mostly because although that was a pretty big day for me I don’t remember it, there don’t appear to be any photos of it and actually it was more about my parents than me really wasn’t it.

So to blog the day before the clock struck 12, this morning we were nicely lazy with lots of tea drinking (I made a whole pot just for me :)) and TV watching. I discovered that Fred2 (see earlier Fred & Albert post for the story of Fred1 and Alberts 1 and 2)had expired. Now Fred2 has not been quite himself for a while. He lost his fin a while back and in recent weeks has lost his tail too so he was basically just a fish body – the Boxing Helena of the aquatic world if you will. We were unsure as to whether he had some sort of fin rot type disease or if perhaps Albert3 had been eating him. Thing is, when we bought Fred2 and Albert3 in the summer they were both the same size. But Fred2 never grew – infact if you take his missing apendages into account he actually shrunk, whereas Albert3 grew like an overeater on steroids, like someone on Atkins supplementing the diet with toast. So about 2 weeks ago we seperated them. Albert3 got to keep the spangly tank with the light and the stones and the pump (mostly cos even we’re scared of him, he’s BIG!) and Fred2 got the old fish tank from the garage and was placed next to Albert3’s tank so if he had been eating him he would be able to nananananah at him through two layers of plastic (aswell as a fish with no fins can do nananananah!). He seemed to be doing OK , as far as a fish without a tail or a fin can do anyway, but this morning he was, well, dead. So I came downstairs and broke the news to Davies. Who dashed upstairs with Scarlett to go and look and then came back down again. We chatted about it, discussed what fish heaven if there is such a place might be like (lots of talk of fish cafes, all you can eat fish food buffets and an endless sea with loads of plastic treasure chests and pretend divers to swim around) and then Davies asked if we could bury him in the garden near Malice. I agreed but said Daddy would need to take care of that as I hate touching fish at all, dead or alive.. Dead cat corpses I can cuddle but fish are not my thing. So D asked to draw a picture of Fred2 in his former glory with fins and tail to bury with him. While he had the pens out I got him to make a thank you picture for the Thank You Neighbours too. We’ve decided not to replace Fred2 until the summer. Albert3 is already big enough to make the leap into Granddad’s pond so as soon as the weather is mild enough for that to happen he will be taken over to my parents and set free and Fred3 and Albert4 will be purchased together. So far Barbie & Unicorn are doing well you’ll all be pleased to hear. 🙂

Then in order to persuade D & S to get dressed around 10.30am I promised Davies I’d show him the cool animation site and Tarly I’d read her stories. They got dressed but Tarly decided to look at the site instead of having books so we all cuddled up together round the laptop screen and looked at basis rollers (2 picture animations). More about what we did over on Davies’ monster movies blog but that was a nice productive hour or so.

I made lunch and then Frazer arrived for childminding duties while I went off to work for the afternoon. It would normally be a full day for me but it was pro rataed for the bank holidays so I just worked a half day and got paid for a full one – result :). I did 1 3/4 hours on the counter, which I really enjoyed, two hours of shelving / tidying which I enjoyed rather less and a quarter of an hour at tea which was lovely as there were still plenty of chocolate liqueurs to eat with my cup of earl grey. 🙂 I came home with a couple of dvds and several more cds too – loving that perk :). I realised today I’ve been there a month today and thinks are starting to click into place. I was presented with a list of training sessions for me to attend for this year which I’m looking forward to and it’s all starting to feel quite familiar and normal. 🙂

Home to find Davies snuggled up watching Discovery Kids on the sofa with Frazer and Tarly being crazy. Frazer said she’d not stopped talking all afternoon but much of it was nonsense 😆 I think they’d all enjoyed themselves, we’ll have to see if Frazer’s up for childcare ever again ;).

Don’t expect I’ll be around much until Sunday – I’ve got a pretty full day booked tomorrow 🙂

We went to Lucy’s this morning. Davies and Scarlett enjoyed exploring all the new toys Richard and Rebecca had had for Christmas while Lucy and I chatted. One of the (many) topics of conversation that came up was school and how HE children being ‘school curious’ is probably a totally natural and normal thing. I recall being ten or so and every kids tv programme or book I read was about school, best friends and first interest in boys, parties, sleepovers etc. Even the happiest HE child must be swayed by that whole other world which other children their age inhabit and spend most of their waking hours at. Even if I’d known about HE when I was a child, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy school I doubt I’d have wanted to have been Home Educated simply because I couldn’t imagine not being at school. I assume that for a Home Educated child, being different is an everyday part of their life and they must ponder what it would be like to join the rest of the world for a while. My favourite TV show was Grange Hill, my favourite books were the Malory Towers series – I reckon I’d have been pretty desperate to get to school and grab some of the promised action. 😆 I think the whole friendship thing is possibly something girls are more likely to fret over too. I recall so wanting to have a Best Friend when I was younger, someone to share secrets and make up with, whereas my brother and indeed Ady so he tells me, simply had a pack of mates they hung around with. They might have had a best friend but really it was being part of a team or gang that was more important. Very generalised I know but even from watching Davies & Scarlett I already notice that Scarlett tends to pair up with one other child to play whereas Davies is happy running round with loads of other children. Home Ed for us has always been about the children, not me. It suits us as a family but only because it has shaped our lives since we started out, if it was no longer part of our lives then family life would take on a different shape. I always think that if I’d never had children I wouldn’t have missed them because all of the positives about not being a parent would have compensated for what I didn’t even know I was missing. I think school vs HE would be the same sort of thing really. There obviously are benefits to school and that would be what we focussed on if the children ended up there.

All that said, I can’t see it happening here any time soon, it would have to 100% come from the children and at the moment I can’t think of much other than idle curiosity which would sway them. Lucy and I concluded that it is definitely the better way to approach it to have tried HE and decided school might be an interesting option for a confident, happy 10 year old than to send a 4 or 5 year old with the option of HE later if school didn’t work out though. And then carried on drinking tea and chatting while the children played. 😆

I’d arranged to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie at Highdown this afternoon with the possibility of Lucy, Richard or Rebecca or two or three of them joining us. In the end just Rebecca came along but unfortunately once there she decided she was missing Lucy and ended up a bit teary. We rang Lucy so she could talk to her and then as she seemed OK but just a bit subdued we carried on. Davies, Scarlett, Maisie and Jack were all really enjoying being there. They played for ages setting up some sort of complicated assault course to race round and then did a show based on ‘four little men in a flying saucer’ which they’d seen on TV this morning. Julie and I sat on a bench and chatted, Rebecca sat on my lap and dozed a bit. The children wanted to move on again so we walked a bit further before finding another bench so they could play in some trees.

We’d arranged to meet Lucy at Sainsburys but as we were working our way back to the carpark Scarlett disappeared. Her and Maisie ‘got lost’ last time we were at Highdown and had been hiding rather than lost but as she was alone it didn’t occur to me that she might be doing the same so there was a frantic five minutes of calling her before she finally answered from out of a bush right next to where she’d disappeared 🙄 must read her the boy who cried wolf. 😆 We drove back listening to Tumble Tots Action Songs which Davies suggested Rebecca might like (Tarly suggested War of The Worlds which was slightly less suitable I thought :lol:) and met Lucy in Sainsburys car park. She kindly offered to have all the children in her car while I dashed round Sainsburys which was great as I did it in record time and felt very smug when I barely recognised my friend Rachel who I’d not seen for a few months and was looking very very thin and quite drawn and dealing with her son in school uniform and her toddler daughter throwing a spectacular supermarket tantrum and was able to smile, say hi and ‘I’ll leave you to it’ before swinging off with my basket! 🙂 It transpires that Rebecca was actually feeling poorly and by the time I got back to Lucy’s car she was crying with pain of earache so I hope it had not been too traumatic for her and that the next time she spends time with us without Lucy it is happier for her.

We came home and I got out some foam letters which I’d covertly picked up in the Wizard store earlier when we popped in to get birthday presents for Liam and Lily, who’s birthday party we’re going to on Sunday. Davies has been really into his writing and spelling this week and Tarly has started spotting letters from her name everywhere so I thought maybe some letter tiles to play with would be good. These were a quid each and are foam puzzle pieces with push out letters and numbers. I would have got just one set but it occured to me that Scarlett wouldn’t even be able to spell her name without a second set for the second ‘t’ so I got them one each. As they opened them I suggested they try to find the letters from their names. Davies did his, then said that was excellent as his name has six letters and six foam squares would make a cube, so proceeded to do that. Scarlett shocked me by gathering the letters and spelling her name straight away. 🙂 (Davies lent her his t). Then she looked at Davies cube and said ‘three of the letters in Davies’ name are in my name too’ and pointed to the S, A and E. Then even more staggeringly they both tidied them all up ready for dinner. They put A Close Shave on while they ate and then I suggested Henry’s Cat which I used to love when I was a child and they both like now. While it was on and they were watching I googled it and happened upon the official Henry’s Cat website and then followed links to this totally excellent site by Stan Hayward who created Henry’s Cat. HC was one of the first characters I learnt to draw (did you know his face is made of the letters Miiow?) when I was probably not much older than Davies and that site looks fantastic for Davies to spend some time looking at. I then followed further links to Stan’s blog which is worth reading for various nuggets of film and animation related tidbits. I was so impressed that I emailed him and he’s emailed back already so I’m feeling quite starstruck at exchanging emails with HC creator 🙂 and he says he’s looking to make the makemovies site even more child friendly soon too with a large animation database to be added. Ady’s leaving his laptop here tomorrow so I can just set Davies up on it and let him explore to his heart’s content. 🙂 I’ve also found some other software which should let us make the length of each frame on our animations shorter so the movements are more fluid between shots.

I’ve been thinking about the structure of our weeks moving forward. We have MM on Monday, I am working alternate Wednesday and Thursdays and every other Friday which only leaves Tuesday definitely free each week so I am determined to make that the day we spend time doing stuff together. That means no sitting behind my laptop all day and actually planning a few options in advance of things to do even if it’s just cuddling up with a film, reading a pile of books or stuff like doing some animations with Davies or some other crafts with Tarly. The children adore their time spent playing together and I’m never going to intrude on that but they are starting to get to the age where plenty of the things they’d enjoy doing are things I’d like to spend time doing too so just for that one dedicated day a week I’m going to try and claim their time and let them claim mine. Tomorrow I’m only working in the afternoon so I can do some stuff with them in the morning too.

I had a message on the answerphone today from the local Beavers group saying there is a space for Davies now available on a Monday evening. I first rang about Beavers when I found out about Badgers way back this time last year and as the two were on the same evening and Badgers came up first I never gave Beavers much more thought. But now Badgers is on a Wednesday it would make sense to give Beavers a go too – it is held in the church hall literally around the corner which aside from being convenient to get to will also mean that all the attendees are fairly local too. It would be great for Davies to get to know some same age children who live really local and from working for The Scout Association for a while a few years ago I know a well group scout group can be an excellent thing to belong to. He’s not super keen on first mentioning, but I’m going to ring back and see if we can go along on Monday and see what it’s all about so he at least knows what he’s refusing the chance to try. And I guess that brings this post back full circle, so it must be time for bed ;).

feels like this morning was about a week ago…

Up early this morning to go and fetch Lucy, Richard and Rebecca before Ady went to work so as not to have to drag Davies and Scarlett out too. I managed to have a bit of a chat about how Davies feels about me working with him later today and he is very happy with Lucy looking after them so that’s good. It seems to have not caused too many ripples at all my working but I am conscious of our weeks filling up rather too much and want to retain as much of our time at home, alone with just the three of us picking up things to do as we go along as possible as that is what I consider our most important aspect of Home Education. Socialising, groups and being out and about are very key too but at least one full day a week needs to be free to fill as we see fit on that day.

Work this morning passed very quickly. I’m still struggling with the different levels of urgency and customer focus than I was used to for so many years in retail but I’m sure it will become more natural as time goes by. Loving all the order and cleanliness of the processes though. 🙂

I was home for lunch which felt rather like walking into feeding time at the zoo with lots of demands for food and drink, crisps everywhere and a potty training toddler – got my dose of busy-ness that I’d been missing from work though ;). Our shoebox swap from America finally arrived today – a mere 2 months after it was posted so we looked at the various bits and pieces sent to us from there and ate the sweets. It is an excellent idea that but definitely something for when the children are a bit older and can participate more in the actual sending of the box too.

Lucy & co left and in a fit of efficiency I went upstairs and went through all my clothes dragging out things for ebaying. I came downstairs and got dinner on in the slow cooker (bolognaise). Davies & Scarlett were watching the directors commentry on the dvd extras of Ice Age 2 and semi-playing with various toys still out from earlier. Scarlett started to fall asleep so I took her in the kitchen to help me get their tea cooking then we cleared up and they ate while watching the normal Ice Age 2 film.

Ady got home, Davies got changed into his Badger outfit (new trousers, he’d finally outgrown the old ones 🙂 ) and we went to new Badgers in Worthing. A really good group on first impressions, much more children, a far bigger range of ages, three adult helpers all of whom seemed excellent with the children, who seemed a nice bunch too. I chatted with the leader (Julie) for a while and then sat at the back for about 10 minutes to check Davies was alright. I’d sort of deliberately not heard when one of the helpers took him off to put his coat away and he’d gone to get me to go with him which meant he started chattering away to her instead. I love watching Davies talk to adults – he does it so unself-consciously about the fact they are grown ups, he does a great line in small talk :lol:. I felt a little like I was too much of an audience so I crept over to Davies to tell him I’d be in the car and then went and sat outside with the heater on full blast reading my book. He said it was good and had already learnt a couple of the other children’s names so that all seemed pretty easy too. 🙂 We don’t get home until nearly 7.30pm so that will be a lateish night each week but worth it as I think he’ll get even more out of this group than he did from the Lancing one, it seems very well run and organised with the older Badgers having specific responsibilities and helping out lots, several older boys there too which is so what Davies needs. 🙂

This evening I have photographed and listed all the clothes on ebay – took bloody forever but at least it’s done now. 🙂 Hopefully it will be worth it. Davies has been doing more drawing and writing in bed, glad he’s getting some educational stuff in somewhere but feel the need to rearrange his timing somewhat so he is doing more sleeping in the evening and more stuff which he wants to show me during daylight hours! 😆

It currently comprises five suits, three jackets, several skirts, a couple of jumpers, two dresses. I’ve also got D & S’s old car seats to list so hopefully the sensible spending only fund will be healthy. 🙂 Just got to photograph & list it now.

And saved at the last minute from getting far to close to the old normal too!

Ady went back to work today so once we were all up and dressed I decided to go into town and browse the sales. I was getting all itchy about wanting to spend some money and had a mental list of things I’d like to get. Neither of the children wanted to go out and I’d already exchanged texts with Lucy asking them round later in the day. Then I came to my senses just as we were putting our coats on about how actually we might have a bit of cash now but we won’t have by the end of the month, there is nothing I actually *need* and the kids would have been totally miserable being dragged round the sales while I tried to get some sort of fix like a desperate junkie falling off the wagon. So we all took our coats and shoes back off again, I texted Lucy to say they were welcome any time and the children continued playing while I made myself a cup of tea and settled down with a book. Close one that…

Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived shortly afterwards and I got my fix by running round the shop for a loaf of bread instead. At the risk of belittling other, more damaging addictions I do wonder whether the urge to spend money I don’t have will ever really go away. It was quite scary how the moment I felt I could pull off some covert spending cos Ady was back at work I was all geared up to do it with butterflies in my tummy and the anticipated joy of new stuff in new carrier bags ready to empty over the bed when I got home and savour the feeling of having acquired new things. The feeling has passed now though and I plan to ruthlessly go through my wardrobe, cull it right down and flog all the stuff I am unlikely to wear again on ebay. Whatever I make from that I can justify spending penny for penny on new stuff. I have got at least 10 suits which I can’t see me having occassion to wear any time this decade (not as excessive as it sounds – I did spend a good 7 years wearing suits to work and lots of them were purchased with 40% staff clothing allowance at Bhs, but they’ll still go for loads on ebay, larger sized stuff always does. 🙂 ) and enough coats to wear a different one each day for a fortnight so some of them could go too. Then it’ll be like swapping clothes rather than buying new ones right?

Anyway, Lucy arrived, the children got straight into playing and we had a really good catch up. Although we saw a lot of each other during December it seemed to be mostly childcare or chaos so it was lovely to reminise a bit and share a few stories from the past. The children played with a variety of things – marble runs, the musical instruments and some drawing. The drawing morphed into some other sort of game to do with a golden train for which you had to have golden tickets so there was lots of creating posters, train tickets and the like. Scarlett seemed to be odd one out for a while which created a bit of minor friction but then there was a long period when Davies and Scarlett played together and Rebecca entertained herself too so that all seemed to even out in the end. Davies and Scarlett obviously took in more of Superman than I’d realised the other day as lots of their games have involved superheros or super powers the last few days and that was the theme of one of the games that they all played together with them coming and announcing their various super powers to us.

Colin came to collect them around 4.30pm so I got the kids’ dinner on and they watched some tv and ate dinner. They are into a bizarre mix of viewing at the moment with some Cbeebies thrown in for retro purposes (mainly Charlie & Lola), Nick jr for only selected shows such as Wonderpets and loads of Discovery Kids. Davies appears to have fallen into a whole new sleep pattern and was still awake at 10.30pm – clearly the NYE late night is going to take a while to catch up on – I might pick up some story tapes from work tomorrow to see if that helps him drift off or at least relax a bit at bed time though as he has a tape player in his room.

He has been really into writing the last few days, either getting me to write things for him or asking me to spell words so he can write them. He did a lovely picture of a church today complete with stained glass window and used a ruler to draw all the straight lines which was a first (and totally unsuggested by me) then he took a notepad and pencil to bed and kept coming down having copied works and sentences from his books and posters in his room. He’d copied ‘best of British’ from a Wallace and Gromit poster so when he brought me that I made him spell it out and read it himself. He’s clearly on the cusp of something and his wonder at his achievements is lovely to witness – wouldn’t miss such lightbulb moments by forcing him before he was ready or shipping him off to school for someone else to see it for the world. 🙂

Scarlett is doing lots of letter spotting too – she knows the letters from her name now although she doesn’t know the names of all of them and can spot them all on a page of text. She also surprised me the other day when we were watching home videos of Ady’s 39th birthday by going up to the TV with a cake and candles saying 39 and pointing to them saying ‘look, three and nine’ cos I didn’t know she recognised numbers written down. It’s times like these that I really have to sit on my hands not to leap in and try and introduce a phonics system or have them start to learn the alphabet or do workbooks, but it’s also times like these that I am reminded that they do indeed learn these things all by themselves, because they want to, for their own reasons, when they are ready. I think I’ve said before that I believe Home Education is about listening to your children and hearing them ask, in whatever way they choose to ask, for whatever it is they need. Clearly children who are copying and spelling out words from the posters and books featuring characters that they love don’t need to be bombarded with workbooks featuring Lovely Lamp Lady and Uppity Umbrella. And the child who is getting joy from spotting the letters that make up her name is unlikely to get the same pleasure from wordsearches about things you’d find on a beach.

Tomorrow is work for me in the morning and Davies has new Badgers starting in the late afternoon. I’ve not mentioned it to him for weeks as I only realised myself that it was tomorrow when I looked in my diary earlier tonight and currently I’m more fretful about finding his Badgers polo shirt and ensuring he has a pair of black trousers to wear that fit him than how he’ll cope with the new group. I would be that mother drying school shirts with a hairdryer plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car driving them to school in the morning!

Had a really nice evening to see in the New Year. Scarlett suffered at the hands of my teasing father and intolerant mother and was very ratty for the last hour before she fell asleep but said this morning she was just sleepy. She made it until 11.30pm before falling asleep on my lap but I kept her in my arms to see New Year in asleep so she still got kissed by everyone anyway. 🙂

We had loads of picky food, lots of cava and listened to music all night, mostly The Pogues before putting the TV on for the fireworks around 11.30pm. Davies stayed up until Mum and Dad went home and we went to bed just after 1am, he joined us in our bed though and said he’d had a wonderful sleep this morning when he finally got up around 10am. I didn’t so I hope he isn’t planning on making a habit of it :lol:.

The final picture above is of Davies on the phone. He got two Wallace and Gromit open out playhouses for Christmas with figures from ebay. They were made in the 90s and one is W&G’s house, the other is the exterior of Wendolene’s Woolshop and inside is the factory from A Close Shave. On the front of Wendolene’s wool shop is a phone number and Davies had worked out what it was and wanted to ring it. I really didn’t expect him to fall for it but Ady disappeared without him noticing, Davies read out the number to my Mum and she dialled Ady’s mobile then passed Davies the ringing phone. Ady obviously managed a passable Yorkshire accent and disguised his own voice sufficiently as you can see from the delight on Davies’ face that he truly believed he was talking to Wallace. He asked about Gromit, they discussed Christmas, wished each other a happy new year, told each other a bit about where they lived including swapping addresses and then Davies said ‘I’ll pass you over to my Mummy now and you can arrange to come and visit us soon or we can come and visit you’ and gave me the phone! They said goodbye and wished each other Happy New Year again. Definitely the highlight of Davies’ year 🙂 He is now convinced that Wallace and Gromit are in fact real, that the films are just based on real people and their likenesses made from plasticine for that purpose while the true W & G go about their business at a now disclosed address in Yorkshire. 😆

Today we were all up rather later than normal 😆 and had to eat something egg based for breakfast – boiled eggs or pancakes – Scarlett had both which has cleared the egg mountain. Then Ady went and cleared out and hoovered both cars, filled my tyres up with air (one was all but flat :oops:) while I took the Christmas tree down along with most of the decorations. We’ve left up Christmas cards and outside lights and a few odd bits of tinsel which will come down on Friday but it’s lovely to have the lounge back to it’s normal size without the tree blocking the light from one window. Spurred on by that I went and cleared out both bathrooms which seems to be an annual job. I went through all the various bottles of lotions and potions and threw out almost a whole bin liner full of ‘stuff’, cleaned mirrors and the sinks and bath and generally made it feel tidier and less cluttered, putting nice new bath bits and pieces we’d had for Christmas ready to be used. I did a surface tidy in the playroom, which needs a proper tidy soon as do the children’s bedrooms but that can wait awhile longer. I also did a couple of loads of washing too, so that all felt very virtuous. 🙂

Davies has xboxed all morning playing W&G, Cat in the hat and some Barbie for Scarlett. Tarly did some Barbie.com and then they spent ages half watching Superman while playing with My Little Ponies (Scarlett), two Happy Meal toys Flushed Away characters and a game loosely based on what’s happening on Superman :lol:. The geomags have been out today too with Tarly making geomag jewellry for herself.

We’ve got a roast beef dinner shortly, eaten at the kids’ dinnertime so we can eat up more of the snack food later tonight for supper while watching TV after they’ve gone to bed (hopefully early). Tomorrow Ady’s back to work and I’m working on Wednesday morning so everything slowly starts to return to normal. 🙂 A massive thunderstorm has just started so our newly clutterfree room with the fire lit, dinner on the way and good tv lined up feels like exactly the right place to be with each other. 🙂