One word? When seven would do…

I had an incredibly lazy morning and didn’t get out of bed until about 10am. I’d been awake since before 8am what with the postman ringing the bell to deliver a parcel (thanks Layla, still huge for Davies but if he doesn’t grow any time soon then Tarly will have them, very gratefull received :)), children coming to tell me ‘interesting’ things and Ady bringing me a cup of tea. I was having a really interesting dream which I kept trying to go to sleep to get back to but failed, so gave up and drank my tea and read my book in bed instead.

Ady was having a busy morning doing loads of washing and taking rubbish up to the tip. Davies and Scarlett were having a busy morning making ‘stuff’ out of sticklebricks.

When I finally did get up and dressed I did some more washing, made french toast (sweet with eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon) for brunch which the children adored so might well become a regular foodstuff here and then let the chickens out for a run around free range stylee. They didn’t get a lot of chance to do freeranging as the children didn’t really leave them alone but Freddie (the oldest by a day) was adventurous flapping up to perch atop the coop and run:

Ady got to cuddle Wobble (who is clearly his favourite)

and we generally enjoyed watching them being real proper chickens now. I can’t believe how quickly chickens grow. They could start to lay any time from about 18-20 weeks – or crow as the case may be, which is really quite a staggering quick sprint to maturity – about week for every human year really 😯

We then set off to Lewes to Spring Barn Farm Park where we were meeting Freya’s birthday posse for sixth celebrations. Due to uncertainty about traffic levels we were slightly early so sat in the carpark playing ‘guess Chris’s middle name’ on twitter, which led to a few others joining in. Really like that aspect of twitter :). Ali arrived with her Mum and we lurked awhile waiting for J, Freya and J’s mum to arrive during which time Ali told some random strangers that they were ‘not the right people’, I had to perform emergency pretend-croc repairs on Tarly’s last remaining rivet using a jibbitz nicked from Davies pretend-crocs and we were greatly amused by a sign talking about breeds of pigs and ending with the proclamation that the ginger spotted one was called Kevin Bacon, which was just funny in so many ways. 😆

The second installment of the birthday posse finally arrived and we entered the farm. We were immediately drawn to the poultry to compare comb and waddles sizes and hues for telltale signs of gender for our own. Scarlett was rather bewildered that she couldn’t just pick up every chicken she came across like she can with ours at home and Davies wanted to know all sorts of bizarre things like the names of all the rabbits :lol:. We decided to head into the Maize Maze fairly promptly (I am very tempted to call it the Amazing Maize Maze but actually it was not amazing, I was not amazed. It was very good though and when it grows to full maize height (it was a proper maze for the children but adults could still see over it) it may well qualify as amazing too – a marketing dream 😉 ). We had maps with seven lookout points to find and track down clues for so we set about doing that. It was good fun 🙂

We were also taken in with the beauty of the south downs within the farm setting too – the hills rolled into the background in all four directions and everywhere was just so full of green grass and blue sky. It was lovely :). We complete all the clues and as we had no pen I used my phone to note all the answers down with on the notes feature. Handy :).

We came out of there needing the loo so headed off to find toilets and happened upon a massive area of straw bales which provided much entertainment for me and the children and many photo opportunities for Ady. I probably did start the straw fights but certainly got more than I bargained for taking on Davies and was still picking straw out of my bra this evening 😆 straw in your pants is not a nice feeling I have to tell you!
plenty more pics on flickr should you wish to see them 🙂

We had ice cream, Freya’s birthday posse came and joined us having had their own maize maze experience and we sat and chatted while the children played. There were some kindly adults playing a game of monsters with a huge crowd of children in some more straw bales which they all got involved with (and Davies tried to manage :roll:) and we had fun with J’s hat:
and probably convinced J’s mum that we should all be locked up somewhere with no responsibiliy for our children at all let alone their education following surreal conversations about Springwatch, the children’s individual-ness and my skills as a chicken-whisperer :lol:.

We left there and on the way out Davies found a £20 note all screwed up. There was a little hushed debate about whether he should keep it or not before he was bundled out the door. We were about the last people to leave and while I’d ring to find out if a possession had been found I don’t think I’d even consider whether screwed up cash would be handed in anywhere. So we decided finders keepers on this occassion. My parents will be so proud ;).

We headed back to Ali & J’s for coffee / wine / further chatting / perusing of photos which was very nice finally leaving there after 7pm. After much discussion about what to spend his finding on with me rooting for ‘splurge and enjoy’ and Ady counselling ‘save and savour’ we called into Tescos for some bits for dinner and he spent the lot buying a Doctor Who set containing a Dalek, a Cyberman and The Doctor for himself and a Littlest Petshop character for Tarly. He was so sweet about buying something for Scarlett having been assured by me that it was his money and he should spend it however he pleased :). He is utterly thrilled with it and has fallen asleep surrounded by Doctor Who mini figures tonight.

Home for tea for the children and a bath to wash off farm dirt and straw from their hair before another late night for them. We had baths, I cooked tacos for dinner and I’m fairly sure I’ll be picking bits of straw from my hair for a good few days yet despite a very rigorous hairwash :). It was a great day, lovely weather, lovely location, lovely company – thanks to Ali, J & Freya for a great time :).

Work today. Julie was here in the morning and took the children to the park. They all had a good time apparently. I got a fed-back Scarlettism from Julie that she’d not eaten all her sandwiches and wanted a rice cake so Julie said to her ‘eat another bite or two darling and you can have a rice cake’ to which Tarly replied ‘I’m not your darling!’ in a very indignant tone. 😆 Julie (who is very much a ‘more power to the women’ type of woman) swallowed her laughter and said that while she is here looking after Scarlett then she is ‘her darling’ and it all passed over. On the phone tonight she said it was fab and she loves her attitude which will get her everywhere in life 🙂 I asked Scarlett about it and she was keen to point out that ‘I am only Mummy’s darling, no one else’s’. Okay then! 🙂 I do so adore that girl.

Dad was here in the afternoon which meant more outdoors play and Ady only beat me home by about 10 minutes so he cleared the garden up while I tacked inside. As soon as I saw Scarlett I realised she had had a chunk of hair cut – noone else can see it – Ady can’t spot it at all, and actually it is fairly well hidden as it’s a bit at the front which has previously been a fringe so I imagine not a lot was cut anyway, but I play with that hair every day either brushing it, trying to plait it (well ok those are only weekly occurances) or brushing it out of her face while I cuddle her (rather more frequent) and I *know*. There was flat denial followed by hilarious tall tales about mice cutting it off to give to the rats who passed it on to the birds (we throw any hair caught in the infrequently used hairbrush out of the window for the birds to use for their nests) and talk of her ‘Special Man’ (have I ever blogged about him?) doing it but finally Davies helped her tidy her room and talked her into telling the truth. I know, in true bad mother style I was lurking in the hall eavesdropping on him saying ‘just tell me the truth about your hair Scarlett, Mummy always says she won’t be angry if we tell her the truth. You tell me and then I’ll come with you and we can tell her together’ (oh, bless him) to which she confessed to doing it herself and they came to tell me together as he promised with him holding her hand for moral support. 🙂 Aw.

My day was fairly workaday really. Banking this morning so I got to breeze about doing the banking and the tea bag for the staff room run just after 9am. I love the feel of town centres just as the shops are opening – it takes me back to my ‘shopkeeper’ days when I would throw open the front doors of the shop I was managing to start a new day of trading. The day was slow but steady and didn’t drag too much. I’m not really a new girl any more, I don’t hold much novelty status and I am starting to realise I know ‘stuff’ and can help customers properly. It’s odd, being 7 months into a job but still feeling a bit new, clearly just due to only working 11 hours a week and given the rest of the staff are all about 11 years into the job I am still new relatively speaking, but it’s nice to feel part of a team rather than worrying about being a new face now.

We let D&S stay up late tonight – about 9pm as they were playing with a Doctor Who book Ady had found in a charity shop for 25p still complete with all the activities and a Where’s Wally book I’d bought home from work for them, then they got caught up in some nature show about piranahs. Linda, who used to look after the children when we lived in Manchester rang for a catch up and Davies spoke to her for a bit, so I made dinner talking on the phone which meant for a late dinner.

And that is probably about it actually. Looking forward to a nice weekend 🙂

I just can’t stop – look here, you’ll feel the same 🙂 It’s no Wonderpets granted, but for it’s day it was bloody good kids tv 😆

It rained today, that miserable grey drizzly rain that’s barely even qualified to be called rain but gets you all wet anyway. But never mind that, we were off to Drusillas! 🙂 Packed a picnic and Ady took us over there before heading off to do some stores in that direction. We met Ros and co at the entrance along with about 3000 school children. We’ve rejoined for the year after a year off so the children were really excited :). We hurried through the first bit getting buffeted about by children in pacamacs and decided to have a quick look round the farm bit and get our obligatory egg picture before going to the playpark before the school children got there. The children played (somehow they managed it today, unlike yesterday at the park, thankfully 🙂 ) while Ros and I sat and drank tea, Ros cross stitched and we chatted, it’d been way too long. We eventually moved indoors into the soft play area, had to buy socks for D&S due to a very over zealous woman in charge of the area who kept putting annoucements over her tannoy about how to play – then we sat while all the school trip adults called their charges over it too – very funny 🙂 We briefly lost Tarly – I’d not seen her for ages and then realised her shoes were missing so she must have gone back outside. Spent about five minutes looking for her before finding her holding court in a playhouse with a small group of other little kids. She was quite indignant at being pulled away saying ‘but I was making new friends Mummy!’ so we all went back inside again. Adam and Davies, and eventually the others wandered away again but Scarlett spent ages sitting on the floor looking through a Drusillas book and ticking boxes, writing her name and telling us which bits said ‘yes’ and ‘no’. She’d got a postcard and note from Alex in the post this morning and brought that along with her in her little bag so she also wrote ‘Scarlett’ on the back of the postcard too. 🙂

Ros and co had to leave before us due to their very busy schedule 😉 so we went back into the zoo part and had a proper walk round looking at the animals and talking about various things we saw, looking at the lift the flap bits around the zoo about what groups of different animals are called – like a flamboyance of flamingos, a parliament of owls and so on. We finished up with an ice cream and a ride round on the train which has been rebranded as a Thomas train with various Thomas landmarks around the track. I could probably tolerate that if they didn’t pipe the Thomas song into the train on a loop all the way round, which is still echoing in my head now 🙁 I hate Thomas, round Tidmouth sheds and far away. I couldn’t get any signal in Drusillas, I never can so we walked to the exit to ring Ady and find out how far away he was and he had just pulled up in the car park five minutes previously. 🙂

We popped into Asda on the way, Ady’s found some iron on transfers for t shirts you print yourself so has been printing off things onto them and wanted some plain t shirts for the children to iron them on to, he’s done one for me too, but I’ll wait until I am wearing it to take a photo to blog it. 🙂 Home for the kids’ tea, some chicken free ranging and a quiet evening. I’m working all day tomorrow with Julie here in the morning and Dad here in the afternoon so I’m hoping for a sunny day to keep all the children outside instead of indoors trashing the place for the day. Oh and also hoping that Ady gets home before me to tidy it all up too ;). And then, hurrah, it’ll be the weekend!

Drusillas is a localish tourist attraction to us. We first took Davies there when he was about 9 months old and we had at least a couple of visits there with the children when we used to visit from Manchester. We had an annual membership the first year we moved home, missed a year last year due to finances and have just renewed again today with the last bit of Ady’s bonus.

I think pretty much every time we’ve been there we’ve taken a picture of the children in some giant eggs they have in the farm area – very often with Ros’ children too. Ady laughed at my pictures today and said ‘one day they’ll be too small to fit in there’ so I’ve been off looking through old flickr sets to track down some ‘children sitting in the eggs at Drusillas’ pictures from the past:

Here’s Tarly in July 2005
you may recall that was the year of the scab on her knee (I think she fell over on it something like 9 times before it finally healed).

Davies in March 2005

All of them in August 2005

And today – Davies with a bit of Adam, Ellie’s feet and Amelia’s legs:

And Scarlett:

hmm, that face shape is starting to look a bit familiar…

Work this morning. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually described my workmates here, have I? The whole of West Sussex is split into regions with each region having about 5 branches within it. The five branches have a Senior person overseeing all of them with a Senior Library Assistant working in each branch running it day to day with a team of Library Assistants – which is what I am. The Senior Library Assistant (SLA) at Lancing is called Yvonne and she is lovely. She is my direct line manager. Above her is the Senior Support Manager who oversees our local group of branches, Wendy. Above Wendy is the Operations Librarian, Brenda, who runs the book group I go to, so I know pretty well, certainly better than most of my colleagues and above her is Louise who is the Senior Librarian, who I’ve also worked with when I did the couple of recent evening events. Due to the way my own rota works I end up working 2 of my days with Yvonne and 2 with Wendy so I know them equally well although Wendy is more senior.

We have a new person who will be doing relief work but is in for training at the moment so as it was my turn to ‘do the papers’ this morning I had her with me showing her how to do that (mark them as recieved, stamp them with DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY and the date, put them out, take away yesterdays and file them – all very high level stuff 😉 ). Quite nice not to be the new girl any more and to realise I can acually show someone stuff that I know how to do now, however menial :). I had a glut of training sessions just before Kessingland and we have a pre-training objective setting meeting and then a post training evaluation meeting for each session. With me being on leave and then Wendy (who does the post training sessions) on leave too we had three still to catch up on, so my first hour at work was spent out the back doing that. I like Wendy, we get on well and kept drifting off the subject of what we were supposed to be talking about. 🙂 Then it was tea break time and then I had an hour and a quarter on the Enquiry Desk with Wendy doing training. Then I was doing some book repairs, glueing spines and fitting new jackets, so I didn’t do any of the stuff I normally do on the counter or shelving books. Consequently the morning flew by. 🙂

I came home for lunch – Ady was working from home today and looked after D&S while I worked. I’d brought home a Doctor Who (from the first series with The Ecclestone and Billie, the stuff they’ve not seen yet) dvd so they watched the first one on that while having lunch. Then we gave Ady some peace and headed off to the park to meet Lucy and The Rs. Davies and Rebecca had their bikes – Scarlett decided she didn’t want hers. This was a good choice as I’m pretty certain she’d have gotten bored of it and I’d have ended up pushing it or carrrying it, so I supported her wholeheartedly in her decision. She can run faster than Rebecca and Davies were managing on their bikes so I guess she didn’t need it anyway! 🙂 We began in the playground park bit where I recalled just how much I hate taking Davies and Scarlett to parks. If we go to the beach, the woods, fruit picking, pretty much any outdoor space where they are required to find their own fun then they are very very proficient at it. If I take them somewhere where they need to carry out their play in a dictated manner on specific play equipment then we seem to have problems. 🙄 At their ages, and with their ability I feel I have done my time of standing behind a baby swing and pushing them (and believe me I really have done that, for many hours if you were to tot it all up. When they were toddlers it was something I actually quite loved to do, now it just makes my arms ache), or watching every single slide down the slide they do, or rescuing them from the top of the climbing frame or ‘just standing there’ while they go across the monkey bars. I feel I have earnt my stripes to be able to sit it out on the bench while they play now if we go to parks. But this does not often happen, so as such we don’t often go to parks… Parks are NOT fun, they are dreadful places and I think I may start a one woman boycott of them from now on until they are old enough to go to them on their own. So there. Na.

We left the playground bit and walked / rode a bit further ending up at some rocks. When I was a child the rocks had a slide coming down from them so you clambered up the rocks and slid down the slide. The slide has long since gone but the rocks are still a big draw for the children. Utterly proving my theory above we stood for well over half an hour while they very happily played at clambering over the rocks, finding a game to play using their imagination and then befriended a small boy and started a game of hide and seek with him. We didn’t have to get involved once! Davies and Scarlett were calling the boy ‘Oliver’ and I heard him ask how they knew his name and then they came down from the rocks and said they had seen him there before last summer. This is entirely probable and I could maybe even dig back in my blog and find out but there is no other explanation for them remembering his name so I guess it’s true. Amazing, kids, aren’t they? :). We then wandered on from there, round the lake following the path and then back retracing our steps when the path ran out and D & R couldn’t cycle on the grass. We offered a choice of ride on the train or ice cream and they all chose ice cream so we went to the cafe and had ice creams. On the way to the cafe Scarlett had climbed down close to the lake near some grasses and suddenly screamed in utter terror claiming to have seen a snake. I don’t think I’ve ever heard either of my children cry out in fear before so I guess she must have done. She has now elaborated the story to contain her stroking it, wrestling with it and it being a veritable rainbow of colours so I’m guessing that a grain of truth, like her seeing a slow worm has now escalated into full blown python taming though :lol:.

We had all had enough and Lucy and The Rs were invited back to ours but Davies had Badgers and it would have been a small window of time back here so they declined. We got home, the kids had tea and then Davies and I went to Badgers. I’d taken a book I’d very nearly finished (fell asleep during the last chapter last night in bed) and a new one. The old one I finished quickly and the new one was rubbish so I undid the car windows to let in a lovely breeze and laid back for a quick snooze – it was bliss 🙂 I was only dozing and was still aware of all the sounds around me but I love being able to feel the sun and the breeze and listening to the seagulls calling was just lovely.

After handling the chickens a bit when Lucy and Ali were round yesterday I’ve been feeling bad that I’d stopped spending much time with them and don’t want to lose their tameness so I spent some time with them free ranging round me. They clearly still have the imprint thing going on with me though – they can see me through the lounge window and all come running to one corner when I go to the window, come running when I go outside and I leant out of the upstairs bedroom window this morning and called them and they all came running out of their house :). I’m going to research it a bit but I think we might start letting them free range in the garden during the day if we’re around and not out all day long. Maybe at the weekend we’ll have a go for a few hours and see what they get up to. They can fly probably to my shoulder height now and I think they’d like a bit more freedom than the run allows them.

We watched The Pursuit of Happyness tonight – well I did, Ady got fed up with how long and depressing it was and went to bed, but I saw it through. I won’t say much about it incase people haven’t seen it, but I liked it, thought it was a good story if a little predictable. Like Will Smith though 🙂 which helps.

Tomorrow we’re off to Drusillas. We’ve not had membership for over a year but it has been much missed by me and the children so we’ve kept back a little of A’s bonus to fund annual passes which we’re getting tomorrow. They have a Wallace and Gromit day there in August which it would have been a shame to miss and as membership is only about the cost of 3 visits I know we will get our money’s worth. Going to keep the W&G day a surprise for Davies though, we’ll just turn up on that day and not mention they’ll be there. 🙂

Which is just a line from the theme tune to The Littlest Hobo, which Julie and I were singing at the weekend in a nostalgic and slightly hysterical from too much elderflower cordial on a sunny afternoon type manner and has been stuck in my brain ever since.

I am definitely a ‘better under pressure’ person I reckon. I have a perpetual, rolling list of stuff I really should be doing at all times, which I will never actually complete and that’s fine. As one job gets ticked off the top of the list another seven add themselves to the bottom which of course means I will indeed die leaving some things undone. But as the list is ever evolving and there is stuff which becomes simply too late or irrelevant to complete and falls off undone (things like ‘marry Shakin Stevens’ for example) that may mean the list on my deathbed is as basic as ‘wake up tomorrow morning’ and be the only final thing I don’t quite manage.

So today I really needed to make some level of progress with the ongoing laundry cycle and I did – I moved all the laundry into the correct bedrooms and put all Tarly’s away. I did another load and hung it out. I also got the tent out and put the flysheet on the line, the bedrooms over the wall and the groundsheet out to dry out. Tomorrow I’ll peg the groundsheet out flat and hose the dried mud off it. As I was struggling to get motivated to do all this I had promised myself some baking as a reward. Not the eating of the baking you understand, the actual baking of the baking. I don’t quite know when it happened but I have become someone who actually really just loves baking. I love the satisfaction of pulling stuff out of the oven which is going to be delicious and I made all by myself which others will consume and compliment me on. It’s great :). Davies had the lego out and was making daleks and having played with some ponies for a while Scarlett joined in with him. They did do some token ‘helping’ with the baking but it really only extended to greasing the baking trays, checking that I would make some snickerdoodles and then coming to ensure I was letting them know as soon as things were baked and cooled enough to eat. They did help a bit with the shaping of the cheese scones too. I made some peanut butter and choc chip cookies as well as the snickerdoodles and cheese scones and then as I had half a bar of chocolate left and some bananas on the turn I made some banana and choc chip muffins too. All very delicious. 🙂

I had just finished and the children had just tidied up the lego when Ali and Freya arrived, just as I whipped the hoover out to get shot of all the crumbs of the baking the children had eaten and ritually scattered about the place, which is probably not the most hospitable way to greet guests and didn’t do wonders for me trying to convince Ali that I am serious about experimenting with anarchy :lol:. Davies showed Ali his Wallace and Gromit playhouses and then the children played xbox. It was slightly fraught with turn taking issues until we lured Scarlett away to do jigsaws with us instead leaving Freya and Davies to it. Davies very entertainingly managed to ‘read’ most of the words on a game he’s only played once before leading to me asking if he can actually read now without me knowing it. He didn’t answer which suggests to me he is sneakily ploughing through the collected works of Shakespeare up in his bedroom at night. Or maybe he just plays too much xbox? 😆

Scarlett bored of jigsaws before Ali and I did so she went off to play outside, which happily conincided with Lucy and The Rs arriving, so Lucy joined us in puzzle construction while the children reassembled themselves mostly outdoors. We had a field trip to look at the chickens – and erm the other wildlife we seem to have acquired – eww 😯 put in an appearance too. Aside from a few minor dynamics issues between the children who all have seperate relationships with each other but had never been a group of five before and took a little reasserting of positions a lovely afternoon was had by all. My establishing rules about shoes and areas of the garden which were out of bounds probably did even less for my claims to anarchy but I didn’t finish the last puzzle – I left the piece out before putting it all tidily away proving I can resist the temptation to do things properly 😆

Ady came home, Lucy and The Rs left, I dropped Ali and Freya home and came back to find children ready in the bath. I washed Scarlett’s hair which was becomming some sort of mini ecosystem with wildlilfe habitats and plantlife and brushed it afterwards. Ady got called away to my parents who have had a HD tv with various other home entertainment stuff delivered today and couldn’t get it to work, while I put the children to bed and made a quiche for dinner (I’d made the pastry earlier during Bakefest). Ady returned, a decision on the location for NicCamps 2007 winter camp has been made and from a rather sluggish start I feel I have achieved some stuff today aswell as enjoying spending time chatting with Ali and Lucy. A good one 🙂

I’ve just posted to the NicCamps list details of the five hostels that are currently available with prices and bedroom details etc. There are a couple of people on the NicCamps list who have not said whether they are up for coming this time or not and if anyone else might be interested shout and you can come and join the discussion about where to go. 🙂

Today, today 🙂

Very efficient morning with the children breakfasted and dressed nice and promptly. I’ve not blogged about Scarlett and her milk actually have I? She still has a bottle of warm milk morning and evening. Davies only stopped earlier this year, way past six and totally in his own time. Scarlett also still has a dummy which again I am confident she will leave behind somewhere between now and her 18th birthday :). So, most mornings the children get up with Ady before he heads off to work around 7, 730am ish. I tend to stay in bed until around 8, 830am depending on what we’re doing that day and how late I’ve stayed up the night before. I enjoy at least an hour alone in the quiet once everyone else has gone to bed at night, which often ends up being more like 3 hours and therefore does not mix well with early rising. Scarlett had missed Ady going off early one morning last week so managed to locate her bottle and got the milk out of the fridge, poured herself a bottle and screwed the lid on. She then got the stool out of the bathroom, climbed onto the worktop, opened the microwave, put the bottle in, set it for one minute (I asked her how long she’d cooked it for and she said ‘one minute, I pressed ‘express’ three times and then pressed ‘start’ – blimey, she’s going to teach herself to read by using kitchen appliances!!!), waited for the beeps then took it out, climbed down and enjoyed her milk. I guess I don’t need to worry about it keeping her baby-fied still drinking from a bottle really do I 😆 It has spurred us on to thinking it might be better to just move the microwave down to a reachable level for her (bet if I put this on the other blog someone would suggest we need a table or I should be up with her or something 😉 ) but I was impressed.

Anyway, this morning I was up with them and making breakfast etc, negating the need for circus acrobatics style worktop clambering, I got some washing done and pegged out and got some prices for available hostels for NicCamps which I’ll post onlist there probably tomorrow once I’ve done some maths. The children got into some shows on CBBC which appears to have gone to summer holiday schedule rather than Class TV, so it was programmes like ‘Stitch up’ about playing practical jokes on your mates, which they seemed to enjoy. Oh and I spent some time looking on ebay for costumes for me for the Castle Day – I quite liked the idea of a medieval wench’s outfit for myself but couldn’t find anything under about £40 so gave up and will wear jeans and cleavage as usual :).

We picked up Lucy and The Rs and headed off to Paradise Park driving through some awful rain. It did lead to conversations about why the rain stopped when we went under a bridge, why the rain was running horizontally along the front two windows off the windscreen but not along the back windows and where the rainbow might be. I think there was also some finger drawing on steamed up windows too. As usual we stormed through the educational bit pressing interactive buttons and stopping to look at various bits, whizzed round the cacti gardens and through the outdoor dinosaur walk ending up at the pirate ship area for a little rest and play. There is a bell to ring on a chain which Davies has never been able to reach before and can now brush with his fingertips when on tiptoe so it was an exciting indicator that he is indeed growing. He managed to create an extension to his reach with a stick hooked through the chain and rang it that way :). Have I also mentioned that he finally has his first proper wobbly tooth. I saw proper because there has been a smidgen of movement in this tooth for months but he steadfastly refuses to help it along with regular finger or tongue wobbling so it has only just gotten really wobbly because the new tooth is already peeking out. His trousers and sleeves all seem a little too short suddenly so hopefully he’ll hit seven not still wearing aged 4-5 clothing :).

We mostly ate lunch as we walked round but eventually stopped at the indoor amusements bit where Lucy and I ate and the children played, then we moved outside and then we went for ice creams. Very expensive ice creams but I think we decided they were indeed delicious so probably worth it. We were going to go back through to the park again but it would involve walking through the whole exhibit again and Davies had Beavers tonight so we decided to call it a day then. Davies had found three piles of tickets that the amusements spew out and can be redeemed for a penny a ticket in the shop. He’d counted that he had 51 there which equated to 51 pence (whooppee!) so I said I’d match it when he asked if he had enough to buy sweet for him, Scarlett, Richard and Rebecca. That caused a lengthy totting up of the tickets at the till and then we were off home.

Lucy and The Rs came back with us, where they all mostly went off and played and I bullied Lucy into ringing the doctors Right Now to get an appointment for her poorly throat which she managed and Colin came and picked them all up. I made tea for D&S and then Scarlett and I walked Davies round to Beavers. From saying she was tired and spending half an hour snuggled up next to me on the sofa she suddenly got a second wind and wanted to go out for a walk but I’d had enough so we came home and Ady was not far behind us. He read her a story and got her ready for bed while I went to collect Davies (who came out with two badges – one for Adventure and one for Safety – more sewing, sigh!). There were several new beavers invested tonight, one of whom walked all the way home behind us past our house and said goodbye to Davies as we came into our garden so hopefully lives fairly local. I’m desperate to invite some of Davies’ Badger or Beaver friends round to play so he has some local, same age mates and I’ve managed to extract a couple of names of children he’d like to invite to his birthday party from both Badgers and Beavers.

Tomorrow we’re home all day receiving visitors so I’m hoping to get the tents out to dry / air / clean if the weather stays nice and maybe do a bit of baking too.

I’ve been rubbish lately at inserting photos into posts, which is one of those things which doesn’t seem worth the hassle at the time but I always appreciate when I go back and read old posts. I’m not about to go back and try and do that now but here are some from this weekend which sum up where we are just now 🙂

Here’s D&S sitting on the Very Pink Bench on the newly cleared bit of garden. They are taking it in turns to drink coke and burp. Clearly this went on when I wasn’t home but it was apparently very amusing 🙂

Scarlett is just getting into that little girlie phase of wanting to hold hands with her friends – luckily she has a ready supply of other four year old little girls in the same phase. Here she is with her cousin Maisie:

Off they go, like a scene I imagine The Famous Five might have looked, off through fields to find adventures:

Taking a video of Ady and I wearing Shrek face masks. They were delighted that my hair made me look ever so slightly like Fiona. They were further delighted when Ady attempted a Scottish Shrek accent 😆

and erm, walking with beasts!

Davies would be wrapping up his second year at school about now and Scarlett would be preparing to start in September. Suddenly I am mere months away from having a seven and a five year old, which is proper children rather than babies and toddlers. I never really got my head round Davies being five, I kept thinking he was still four for ages until suddenly he was six, I can’t quite believe Scarlett is about to be five, but it seems a lot more real with her, actually I forget she is *only* four quite often :lol:.

The last six months has been good for them. Childcare wobbles (as in, not having any :lol:) aside it has done them good to have some time away from me in the care of other people. I am getting more relaxed about not being with them every second and am no longer convinced that dreadful things are bound to happen to them just because I have gone out to work instead of ‘doing my job and being at home looking after them’ – yep, even I have my moments of utter irrational fears too ;). They are spending a whole afternoon every week in the company of my Dad which I think has been a wonderful thing for all of them. The three of them have their own unique relationship now and while he would never ever say it (and has more than once assured me he will never say it!) and I don’t think he is utterly won over with Home Education by any means he is coming round to the idea that my children are nice people to be around and are not being harmed in some dreadful way by not being in school. The most recent activity here has been Davies and Scarlett selling lavender sprigs over the garden wall (mostly to our neighbours who they appear to be fleecing of their pension each week in exchange for handfuls of a shrub that they grow plenty of in their own garden :lol:) which Dad helps with by making signs to Davies’ directions and, hopefully supervises that they don’t get abducted over the wall while touting their wares. I suspect he might just be dozing on the garden bench in the sun though :lol:. Anyway, he’s been feeding back to my Mum that he is very impressed with Davies’ maturity, ability to talk to people, imagination and entrepreneurialism. I’ve always known that it wouldn’t be me who convinced my Dad that Home Education was the right thing for us to do, it would be Davies and Scarlett and little by little they seem to be doing just that. 🙂

I was hoping they’d get equal amounts of time spent with my Mum as a result of me working but that simply hasn’t happened. She is about to reduce her working days to 4 a week which she tells me will mean she can help out more with childcare but whether it happens or not remains to be seen. If it does then hopefully it will mean a similar exclusive relationship will develop for them with her too, which would be nice. My brother has done occassional childcare stints too and also has an excellent way with them, doing all the sorts of things a textbook doting, childless uncle should.

Julie has them at least once a month and both Davies and Scarlett have always adored (yes, adored 🙂 ) Julie. She is a real natural with children anyway and her and Davies have always had quite a connection. The last time she had them she said such lovely things about them to me that I am still glowing with pride now. They are very close to Jack and Maisie, their cousins and as neither Ady or I grew up with masses of family around it makes us very happy to see Davies and Scarlett with such close connections to grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. Precious, priceless relationships which have nothing to do with Education, but the fact they are at home means are being allowed to flourish all the more from time spent together that wouldn’t be there if they were at school for six hours a day.

The other regular childcare arrangement is Lucy and the Rs one morning a week. Scarlett and Rebecca are now firm friends, talking about each other regularly when not together and doing the classic little girls best friend thing of disappearing off to play with dolls and make up, holding hands and giggling. Davies spent a long while struggling with the dynamic in that situation, which is probably why it took the girls so long to settle into it but he has now found his role of adopted big brother to Richard. I was watching him yesterday employing all his best tricks to entertain and amuse Richard and thinking that he would have done well as biggest brother to a tribe of siblings. I think Scarlett might have systematically picked off any younger children one by one of course but Davies would have been just fine 😆

Home Education for me has never really been seperate from parenting. Our initial introduction to it came about as a result of a parenting issue (seperation anxiety on Davies’ part) rather than anything to do with education. As we’ve continued with it and I’ve become more and more evangelical about HE and along with it autonomy. With the recent and ongoing murmerings about whether our level of freedom to HE as we please might change, coupled with me being about to be a Home Educator of two school age children I have been thinking recently about Educational Provision quite specifically and aside from general parenting and life however. I’m not going to write an Educational Philosophy, quite frankly it would need to become a monthly exercise as I often debate and reconsider my stance on such things and unless I am required to provide one, which as yet is unlikely for a while as we remain unknown to the LEA, it would seem a pointless exercise.

My educational provision has always been very reactive rather than proactive – we live life, with me constantly talking to the children and answering their questions, listening to their ideas, experienting with things, finding out answers together as we go along and seeking as many experiences along the way as we can squeeze in. I have watched the way they learn things since birth and realised that babies and children are just like adults – some things go in effortlessly while others are trickier but worth putting the effort in for. I have seen how their learning is a combination of mimicry of those around them, trial and error and experimentation, soaking up some things which grab them or incite their passion and excitement and showing tremendous ability for recall and memory. I’ve watched them put their all into something that they have found difficult too – one of my mantras is ‘if you try hard enough you can do anything’ which they have both taken on board and providing it is something they want they demonstrate great perseverance and effort to achieve results. Scarlett has her own, very definite expectations on herself which motivate her to achieve her own goals. She is competitive with herself, always wanting to be better than the last time she tried and is relentless in her attempts to manage this. Davies is more of a crowd pleaser and will do anything for praise or reward. This worries me slightly as at the moment he is in pretty safe hands aiming to please me mostly – in later years I hope the keeper of his self esteem loves him as much as I do. He has come on in managing to be proud of himself and in that being enough for him so hopefully that will continue.

I try and provide a rich and varied wealth of experiences for them, we are out and about all the time with slices of real life; the supermarket, the bank, work interspersed with fun; days out at the beach, the park, seaonsal walks, visits to family and friends and everything inbetween; fruit picking, our recent chicken rearing experiences. Realistically any sort of sit down work or curriculum would interfere or take away from what we are out and about doing. Any time we spend at home is time the children spend playing, or snuggled up watching films or drawing, or making things, or listening to me read aloud to them, or digging holes in the garden… well you get the idea. 🙂

I am confident that we cover everything and more than they would dream of managing in a classroom just by being out and about. I have placed faith in the process with Davies and seen the payoff come true. He can count, add and subtract and multiply – true in small numbers and he wouldn’t know what a number bond or a times table is, but we have posters up about them and one day I guess he’ll just look at them and realise. He is getting good with money and telling the time, and from this ideas like fractions or decimals are being learnt, again without them being named, but if and when the day comes when he does need to have all these concepts explained alongside a syllabus I am utterly confident he will be able to relate them so much better than if he’d been talked to about ‘Johnny’s apples and Rosie’s apples’ while sat at a desk. He is reading bits and pieces and writing as and when he needs to. He often copies words out he finds in odd places and then works out what they say, he recognises all sorts of words from random places like X box games or film credits. His vocabulary is very large and again I’m confident that it will be a small leap one day from speaking those words to reading and writing them when he’s ready. Scarlett follows along a step or three behind, probably more willing that he was at a similar age but under rather less pressure from me so taking several huge leaps forward and then doing seemingly very little for ages. It’s all there though.

All other ‘subjects’ are just in there as part of life, I don’t seperate them or be consciously aware of them but Science, History, Religion, Sociology, Geography etc are all there along with Home Economics, Physical Education and Music and of course healthy doses of socialising. Davies is thriving in his Beavers and Badgers activities and doing well at swimming lessons, Scarlett is already lined up to join Badgers and swimming lessons alongside him aswell as starting Rainbows as soon as she turns five and I imagine will similarly enjoy it.

Autonomy for me is about following their passions and interests, at their speed with as much introductions to ideas, concepts and experiences as I can manage. I attempt to level no pressure on them about how they spend their time, measure them against noone other than themselves and nurture, protect and support anything they choose to put energy into. I try to respect them as individuals and as people and believe that even at their tender ages there is noone better placed than them to decide what they should learn and focus on. I constantly reevaluate and consider this though as without my introductions there are indeed things which would not have entered their sphere of consciousness yet and whilst I think too much stimulus can be as limiting as not enough I don’t want to look back and see gaping holes in my provision. Most recently as a result of a chat with a work colleague and listening to others at camp I realised that languages are something we have done very little ‘introducing’ to. They are both aware that different countries have different languages. They know smatterings of phrases in French and Spanish (thanks Dora! :lol:). In an ideal world we’d whisk them off for a six month tour of Europe and spend time ordering our breakfasts, soaking up the culture and conversing with people to get a real flavour of the languages. Not really an option currently, so I’ve ordered a children’s dvd in French and one in German from work to stick on and see whether they are interested or not. If they are and it grabs their attention then I have access to plenty of resources to take it further, if not then at least I will know I offered the chance and it will be something we can come back to as and when they feel the need.

Another area that we don’t cover and seems to be a popular one in both home ed and schooled circles is musical instruments. Davies loves to plink about on the piano at my parents’ house and can often be found sitting with his toy keyboard playing with the buttons to create sad or happy sounds, but I’ve offered lessons, either with me or my Dad or even an outside tutor (realistically without a piano at home to practise on I think it would be a waste anyway, but I offered) and he is not interested at the moment, but says he might be one day. Which would suggest to me that any coersion on my part would simply result in resentment and angst so wouldn’t be the right thing to do. They both like percussion more than music anyway so in the next couple of years I think joining some sort of music group or sessions like local music school Squeezebox offers would be the way forward as and when they are ready.

I know that my own personal barometer for success is me being happy deep inside. I can have all the outside trappings of achievement but unless I have the right feelings in my tummy, in my heart and in my head then all is not right. I have watched Davies and Scarlett go through various incarnations and struggled already in their short lives and whilst I don’t think we get it right 100% of the time and I am constantly tweaking and readjusting what we do in the main I see two children who are utterly happy, free and enjoying their lives. If we’re managing to pull that off and I can still spot very clearly the ‘educational progress’ being made daily, weekly, monthly, yearly when I have my worried about whether it’s all working head on, then I guess we’re doing exactly what we set out to do and our educational provision is therefore appropriate to their age, aptitude and ability and is most certainly efficient allowing them to live while they learn while they live.

Ady’s been working on clearing a triangle of garden just infront of our house. Years ago our front lawn was split by a stepped path from the front door down to the drive, we took the path away leaving steps up to the front door and a flat path across the lawn but left the raised bed to one side and grass to the other. Ady’s planted many shrubs and bushes in it over the years and although it looked pretty it was a big chunk of garden which we couldn’t use. So this week he’s been gradually digging out all the tree and shrubs leaving just earth there. There is too much earth to be removed without a skip or loads and loads of trips to the skip so we’re going to rebuild the three bricks high little wall and have a raised bit of lawn there instead and put the barbecue and some chairs and a table up there instead. It will be nice :).

So yesterday morning he did a couple of trips to the tip with the shrubs he’d dug out and finished digging out the rest. Scarlett played outside while he did it and went to the tip with him while Davies sat indoors with me and we played gamesgarage and miniclip games on my laptop. We had lunch then Davies joined the others in the garden for the afternoon while I walked to work.

It was quiet, hot and pretty boring in the library so the four hour shift dragged a lot. I’m really not enjoying working the every other Saturday afternoon through the summer as it so hampers any weekend plans. The almost full-time member of staff is about to leave and often they ask if anyone wants to change their hours when that happens, before they recruit for a new person, so I might ask if I can swap to working every other Saturday morning instead. To be honest, I might as well work all day if I’m going to work an afternoon and I can’t do much in a morning when I need to be at work for 1pm anyway. Between my working and Sunday morning swimming lessons all our ‘free’ weekends have filled up for the summer already.

I walked home again to the scent of many barbecues in the air and found the children eating their tea in the garden before coming in to wash all the dirt off them from a day in the garden. They took ages to go to sleep, Ady and I both started drinking very early and were very merry indeed before 9pm with both children still awake and laughing at our antics. I’d brought home a cd of 60s songs which proved popular with everyone. We felt like real proper parents hearing the children singing along to the songs knowing them from them being featured on films or re-recorded with us muttering about ‘remembering the originals!’ 😆 I peaked very early and having knocked over a half full glass of wine and then had a riotous phone chat with Julie, Ady served me a huge dinner which I ate and promptly fell asleep on the sofa by about 11pm 😳 – I’m so wild! 😆

This morning, as seems to happen every Sunday we were woken by the alarm rather than children and had our usual Sunday morning mad dash about gathering things together for swimming, getting dressed and breakfasted and out of the door by 9am – we so couldn’t manage a school run :lol:. It was such a lovely morning and the sea looked like a mill pond as we drove alongside the coast to the swimming pool so Ady and Scarlett elected to go and walk along the beach while I watched Davies swimming. They had a different teacher this week that has not been there before and she was excellent. A real old fashioned, no nonsense, learnt all the children’s names within a couple of minutes and had them all really putting loads of effort in with no messing around type teacher. Two of the children could manage to swim a width unaided so they were kept behind presumable to be put up into the next class now. Out of the other six Davies probably is making the least progress in terms of actual swimming, but certainly is one of the furthest ahead in terms of sheer effort put into it and enjoyment of it. He really, really, really tries and actually he does swim, just not with any style, grace or panache. But he is utterly prepared to go underwater, float, do whatever he is directed to do and puts 100% into it. What’s also great is he appears oblivious to how the others are doing and so is not comparing himself (in this case, unfavourably) to others and then feeling down about it. I did think it must have been just like watching me when I learnt to swim at a bit older than the age he is now though, in that same pool. I tried and tried and it just didn’t come naturally. I can swim, but not strongly or very well and I still wouldn’t dream of going underwater or even having my face splashed, so I’m very pleased that he doesn’t share that with me. Only two more lessons to go and then summer break anyway and I’m going to attempt to change his lesson to a week day evening rather than Sunday morning too.

We met back up with Ady and Scarlett and went off car boot sale shopping. It was a good haul today with about 50 small animals, mostly cats and dogs. for about 2 quid. I did have to rein Ady in from buying stuff we really don’t need such as figures from Scooby Doo which although the kids like the cartoon of would simply not get played with sufficiently to warrant the house room or the pound he’d had spent. Infact I had a tantrum tonight about the amount of crap in the house generally (I’m in one of my mimialistic phases, I have them every so often and declutter all *my* stuff then get depressed about how much stuff everyone else has and stop again), so I think we might give car boot sales a bit of a break for a bit. But then again we might be over that by this time next week and back there again anyway. 😆

We left there and went over to Chris and Julie’s for a barbecue lunch which was very nice. The children played, the adults ate and chatted and looked at a selection of photos of all of us about 12 or 13 years ago. We’d brought over some pictures of Ady and I when we were first together and Chris and Julie had dug out some of theirs, so that was a nice ‘fill in the blanks’ exercise for us all. Chris and Julie had spent some time living in a squat and also some time travelling and living in vehicles, ironically about the same time we were buying this house so that was an interesting parallel. Then Ady and Chris washed their cars (they have a far better hosepipe arrangement than we do, more suitable for washing cars) while Julie and I walked with the children across some fields and through a church yard to a play park for an hour or so. Various pushing small children on swings, cheerleading them down the slide and over the climbing frame interspersed with odd bits of chatting and sitting on a bench kept us occupied and then we walked back again. By now it was gone 5pm so we slowly got ourselves ready to leave and came home for toast for the children before bed and roast dinner for us.

That all feels very brief and I’m sure I’ve missed out loads, but I’ve got two blogposts in draft, it’s already long gone midnight and I’ve got another busy week ahead, so it’ll have to do for now.

We were supposed to be having a day out with my Mum today to celebrate her birthday yesterday. She’d clearly been doing research and came round last night with a list of several ideas of things to do including a day at the very nice soft play over at Ford that we’ve not been to for well over a year due to the cost of it, and a trip to the Sea Life Centre at Brighton.

She rang about 930am to ask what arrangements if any we’d made last night as she couldn’t remember anything much after having the takeaway including how they got home 😆 and was feeling very wobbly. We agreed to meet an hour later than planned and she rang back an hour later to say she really wasn’t feeling at all well and had just been ill. I was torn between feeling sorry for her at feeling crap and feeling very amused about her hangover 😆 Unsure as to whether she would make a recovery for later in the day or not we decided to amuse ourselves around the house and made a big vat of popcorn and settled down to watch Happy Feet, which I’d brought home from work yesterday. It didn’t hold any of us, Scarlett sat playing with beads, I sat reading Billie Piper’s autobiography and Davies sat strewn across me with my laptop playing logic games. It was nice though :).

Mum eventually rang back around 2pm to say she had been back to bed and was now feeling fragile but able to leave the house. I needed various bits from the supermarket and had to go and get her to bring her back here to collect her car anyway as they’d got a cab home last night, so we popped over to pick her up and she came to Tescos with us. It was a really busy Friday afternoon in there but the children were really well behaved so it was not stressful. We got picked on to go into their market research kitchen bit to do some food tasting surveys. We’ve done that several times before – don’t know how many of their stores they have it in but there is a big kitchen area with seating where they carry out market research on things. In the past I’ve done about 5 or 6 tests on various products. Today it was chicken tikka masala jar sauces. Which was fine for me, but not so good for Mum’s delicate state, particularly as she’d had that in her takeaway last night :lol:. The children refused to try any but were spoilt with little pots of sweets, biscuits and drinks while we did our taste testing and then carried on with our shopping. The time was on the cusp of not quite tea time but nearly so we dropped the shopping back to the car and then went round M&S which is on the same site. They were doing lots of odd live demonstrations of things like giant snakes and ladders and volleyball net games while dressed up in M&S clothing ensembles and promoting their school uniform on 3 for 2, so the children got embroiled in a game of giant snakes and ladders and presented with a balloon each about school uniform, which tickled all of us and then Scarlett helped Mum on her quest for red shoes, smart, with a small heel and proved to be a very diligent personal shopper amusing the other shoppers by picking shoes up, considering them deeply and then putting them down as they were ‘not smart enough’ or ‘the heel is too flat’. 😆

Having killed enough time in M&S we went to McDonalds, also on the same site and bought the kids a Happy Meal each for their tea. Mum had a coffee which made her turn green again and go very quiet so once the children had finished eating we came home. Mum and I chatted while Davies and Scarlett played with various free gifts from when we subscribed to Horrible Science including putting a poster about inventions and discoveries up on the wall which I’ve promised to look at with them tomorrow. Ady came home, Mum left, Ady and the children went in the garden for a while whilst I did the Home Ed consultation thingy online.

Not quite the day we’d planned but nice enough nonetheless. Tomorrow I’m working in the afternoon and Ady has several visits to the tip planned to get rid of the garden rubbish he’s created in digging up our front bit of garden to make more lawn.

BBC news story about pupils getting lessons in respect.

All has not been well of late. No real idea why, I’ve sat and explored why I’ve not been feeling right for ages and not been able to come up with anything. I know I was utterly exhausted by life in general and really felt like I needed a holiday, I know I didn’t feel like I’d had anything remotely resembling one and I know I came away feeling like I’d failed on several counts (organisational, wife and mother, perpetual good humour, able to get a good bargain of a tent on ebay that actually worked, able to deal with confrontations properly and without resorting to threatening physical violence, you know, those sorts of things 😉 ). We came back and the rain continued, there was the dead chicken saga,hormones and the start of a cold, an afternoon of training at work which utterly failed to set me alight and made me question my long term career plans and a whole lot of internal debating with myself about education generally. In short lots of questionning lots of things but still unable to put my finger right on what was giving me that feeling of general unease that I was feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s very rare that I poke at myself and discover anything other than basic contentment, sure there are always day to day things to fret or rant about but in the main I enjoy being happy and that’s what I am most of the time.

Yesterday I went back to work and during the day the foggy feeling lifted. Ady was home with the children so they were happy, all my workmates were friendly, had been following the weather reports for where we were camping and talking about it while we were away. They had even been debating whether we’d stick it out or come home (and had all decided I was a stick it out sort of girl :)), all loved my hair and kept saying how nice it looked. The younger girl who works practically full time and has been trying to get another job ever since I started there finally got a phonecall to offer her one so she handed in her notice and although she knew I wouldn’t be able to accept it, my boss immediately and seriously offered me a full time job. I came home with a big pile of music Ady had wanted, films the children had wanted and books for me which had Ady and the children enthusing about the perks of my job.

I made three chocolate cakes to sandwich together with strawberries and cream whipped with cocoa and sugar creating a very lovely tripled chocolate birthday cake which we ate still warm. My Granny, Mum, Dad and Frazer arrived and for once there were no tensions, everyone was relaxed and happy. We had cake, the children made us all laugh, Granny left and we got an indian takeaway for dinner. The children stayed up til about 10pm so they went straight to sleep when we eventually sent them to bed, we all drank lots, there was much hilarious banter about whether Frazer’s black wool Versace garment was a cardigan or not and they all left at a fairly decent hour.

In short I had a really nice day, surrounded by people I like and love, busy doing things I enjoy (working to earn money, baking to applause, laughing) and I’ve woken up this morning feeling back to normal; happy, content and ready for what life throws at me next. This is good 🙂

My Mum on the other hand has woken feeling very much the worse for wear for what was for her an unusal amount of drinking and has had to retire back to bed which probably means that our day out isn’t going to happen. Which is a great shame, but I guess the morning after your 60th birthday probably deserves a hangover. 🙂

I’m all too drunken (very good evening celebrating my Mum’s birthday 🙂 ) to blog properly but have had emails from YHA.

Okehampton is not available for the dates we want so I have a list of other hostels which are. Who is interested in coming to a NicCamp for Monday 5th – Friday 9th November 2007. I need to know possible interested numbers so I can work out which hostels would suit us please 🙂

Ady and the children had a cold the week before we went camping. I was convinced I would not get it by the power of positive thinking alone and having been cold free for two weeks after they recovered I thought I’d got away with it but yesterday I started to feel a bit ‘coldy’ and today I am definitely suffering. I don’t feel dreadful, just generally low with it. Fortunately what I need is something to look forward to and be cheery about and we have plenty of things coming up for the rest of this month to anticipate with good cheer so I’m sure it won’t be long before I am back to myself again. Crap camping, dead chickens and germs aside 😆

This morning we had various things to do including going to get birthday gifts for my Mum who turns 60 tomorrow, cat food, rat poison and new toilet seats for both loos which have broken at the same time – lovely shopping list eh?! 😆 We started in Sainsburys where both children clambered in the trolley which was one of those basket on wheels type affairs. They started holding on to a side each while I guided it round but ended up sitting inside it which meant there was very little room for stuff I actually wanted to buy but did mean it was easier to navigate round the aisles without a child in each hand and a trolley to push. About halfway round they were making sound effects of the trolley stopping and starting and going round corners which reminded me of that Honda ad with the voices making the soundtrack, which I’d showed Davies a video of and the making of a while back so we talked about that and then they did that the rest of the way round, making rain on windscreen sound effects and everything. 🙂

We had a quick walk round Boots looking for potential birthday gifts but found none and then walked round to the pet shop to get cat food. It’s one of those big superstore Pets at Home places which we’ve been into loads of times so as the tills are near the door I went off to get the food while D&S went off to look at the animals and I just called them when I’d paid. I’m really feeling like I have older children this last few weeks, it’s nice :). We were supposed to go to B&Q for loo seats but as I pulled into the car park I realised it is Wednesday which is 10% off for over 60s day and the place was already teeming with mature shoppers so metally scared from working on the tills on Wednesdays for years way back and hating every minute of Wednesdays I decided not to bother and to subject us to another 24 hours of hovering over the loo instead of sitting down. But let’s face it we lived in a field last week, toilets that flush waste away rather than into a seperate bit of the container are still a luxury around here this week. 😆

We got home and Ady rang to say he was coming home for lunch and did we want to go off with him for the afternoon? We’d have loved to but already had plans with Lucy and The Rs so he came home for lunch and then headed back off again. D&S built a house for the dinosaurs out of foam blocks and then played outside for a bit. Lucy and The Rs came round. There were various games including Beauty Salons with hairdressing, painting of nails and applications of eyeshadow, some potion making in Scarlett’s bedroom, Davies put on a show using the toy animals and Lucy and I chatted. Lucy then popped out for an hour to have teeth removed at the dentists while I sat and supervised the continued play. It’s not the first time Rebecca has stayed here without Lucy and she was fine, but it was Richard’s first time of any length and he had a minor wobble towards the end but recovered quickly enough, particularly when noone seemed to panic too much when he did start to wail a bit so he seemed to realise it probably wasn’t worth peristing with it :lol:. Lucy came back, Scarlett and Rebecca carried on playing, sometimes including Richard and Davies sat playing logic puzzles on my laptop. He’s pretty good at that sort of lateral thinking on games when you need to think several steps ahead, definitely not the impulsive type.

Lucy and The Rs left, I cooked the children some tea having helped them tidy up and then went out to do some chick maintenance. I’m a bit better disposed towards chickens again today. I am still fairly morbidly convinced that the remaining four are all cockerels but prepared to wait for first crows before shipping them out as long as we don’t lose any more of them before that. Ady was not going to be home quite in time to leave Scarlett with him and take Davies to Badgers so we all went and arrived at the same time as the Badger leader who left 3 weeks ago on maternity leave coming to show the Badgers her 12 day old new baby daughter. 🙂 Had a quick coo at her and saw Davies in before Ady arrived to take Tarly home again leaving me to sit in the car for a lovely hour or so reading my book and eating humbugs. 🙂 When I went in to collect Davies I heard that she had had a fairly crappy birth experience with epidural, ventouse, forceps and episiotomy from which she was still suffering pain. Poor woman 🙁 She looked very happy though so I’m sure her new baby – Alice – is proving worth it. Davies was very interested to know what all the different words being bandied about were so I explained some infront of the Badger leader telling me and then spent the car journey home explaining the rest. So now he knows where your perineum is and why I was dreading episiotomy more than anything else in labour. One day he’ll make a very sympathetic birth partner I’m sure :lol:.

Back to work for me tomorrow, but Ady’s working from home which has all sorts of plusses, not least coming home to a tidy house and already fed their tea children at the end of the day unlike when Dad is here of an afternoon. We’ve got Mum, Dad and Frazer coming over for a takeaway to celebrate her birthday in the evening and although I have got all the camping laundry washed and dried it is currently in three huge towers waiting to be put away so I doubt I’ll be around much tomorrow aside from perhaps in my lunch break from work.

I came out as a Leader

Just realised I hadn’t blogged yesterday before blogging this morning. I’d meant to do it first thing and of course other things sort of got in the way.

Let me cast my mind back all those hours ago… ah yes. We all woke late (well the three of us not expected back at work first thing anyway!) – kids are still on camp time, which for once means as well as going to sleep late in the evening they are waking late in the morning too. I’m a bit torn about this really, I don’t actually have any issues with them going to sleep late if they are getting enough sleep – they are in their rooms by about 8pm and tend to either play or look at books fairly quietly in their beds until they fall asleep. I used to fret about this when they were still waking at 6am and then looking like zombies with great big shadows under their eyes and getting really tired and emotional during the middle of the day. But at leasts 4 people commented to me last week that Davies didn’t have his normal ‘camp look’ going on (twitches, purple shadows under his eyes, great holllows in his cheeks etc.) and they both did really well going to SKC, coming back and flaking out pretty much straight away for a good 10 or 11 hours. But it does feel a bit slack somehow – languishing in bed long after other kids their age have been sat at school desks for an hour. I can’t decide whether it is sensible to let them keep their own hours, particularly when they also suit me or if I should impose a new regime of being up and dressed with shoes on and sink scrubbed by 8am prompt flylady stylee for home schoolers. 😆

Anyway, we all woke late, breakfasted late and then got ready and went into town. I needed to move money about between bank accounts and also really desired a small bit of retail therapy, which I got in New Look with a couple of very bargainous bits for myself which thanks to A’s bonus we can afford this month and after a rough couple of weeks without the relaxing holiday I’d felt I needed before I even got there, let alone the actual holiday I had once I was there I felt quite justified in the little buzz from trying on clothes which looked nice and then buying them. Home for lunch and then I got changed, Dad arrived to look after D&S and I headed back out into town again for a training session at Worthing library.

It was quite interesting, all about using the library’s cataloguing system and searching for things but it was run by a man who was clearly bored by it himself so it felt tedious and the 3 hours dragged. Home again for a crazy fast turnaround of getting Davies fed, changed into Beaver outfit and turning the house upside down to find the bit of paper about where Beavers were meeting for a Worthing Pier visit before Ady arrived home to whisk him off to go to it. They wanted adults helpers and as both Ady and I have been CRB checked I have Davies the option of which of us he wanted to go along and he chose Ady. They had an interesting, if rather windswept and chilly time looking at all the life saving coastguard stuff on the seafront, looking at wind and other seaside weather conditions, checking out the tide timetables and doing various sea safety type stuff. Ady said it was pretty good. 🙂

Scarlett had the choice of what she wanted to do and she asked for a bath followed by stories, so that’s what she got. The children more often than not share a bath and generally would stay in it for hours if I let them playing, but they sometimes ask for solo baths and after a week in a field I could relate to her wanting one (I hasten to add she has had at least two baths since coming home already, this was not her first! :lol:). Then she got into her pjs and we read some stories together til Davies and Ady came home.

This morning was taken up with chicken related dramas and when we’d finally sorted all that out we got out some Tesco experiments kits I’d picked up at the weekend. We did one on optical illusions and one on things to do with compasses. We didn’t get very far with the compass one as it had a weather vane and a sundial kit, neither of which I wanted to start doing today but the optical illusion one was pretty good. We looked at some balancing things and some colour mixing things with them both coming up with intelligent, considered comments and ideas so that was good. I’ve been doing lots of thinking about educational provision since coming back from camp and may well blog about it when I have more sitting down infront of a computer time, but actually the doing the experiments came from them – I bought the kits cos they looked interesting and were £1.97 each but they found them and brought them to me.

We had lunch and then Lucy and the Rs came round for a couple of hours. I was really proud of Davies, he managed to leave Scarlett and Rebeccas to play and said to me that sometimes he pretends to plug in one of his x box controllers and lets Richard hold it and think he is playing with him so he did that. He coaxed Richard off Lucy’s lap and down onto the floor, sat and chatted to him about the x box game and when Richard tired of that he went and got the big box of cars in for them to play with and sat talking to Richard and categorising all the cars into rows of fire engines, police cars, etc. He was just really good with him, with loads of patience and time, which given his own traumatic morning was all the more commendable I thought. Hurrah for Davies! 🙂

Scarlett and Rebecca mostly disappeared off to play although they were times all the children were in the lounge and times they were all off playing together. I think Lucy and I managed to catch up on all the things we’d not said to each other all last week – and of course good to hear the take on things from three tents down ;).

They left, the kids had tea, Ady came home, I started to slump after a fairly wobbly day having also started to come to terms with the fact that I’m now thinking all four remaining chicks are cockerels and actually having started to lose interest in chickens altogether. 🙁 I cooked tea, drank wine and am now feeling better again :). We’ve decided that if we lose another chick then the whole lot get shipped off to a farmer to do as he will with them. If they survive – and they should, we’ve really barricaded them in tonight – then we’ll keep them til the food we bought at the weekend runs out which should be another 2-3 weeks in which case we’ll know for sure if they are cocks or hens and it would be nice to keep them long enough to hear the first crow. I still like the idea of keeping a couple of hens but am resigned to the idea that it is not the right time just now for all sorts of reasons and if we have ended up with four cockerels then it clearly wasn’t meant to be just now. Joyce, we’d NEVER seen rats round here before although I have to assume they were here but the chicks must be making them bolder or something. I’ve seen two and the next door neighbour reported seeing one to my dad so clearly they are being attracted here by the chicks whereas maybe they’d just pass through otherwise. From looking at chicken forums they just seem to go together no matter what you do (another reason chicken keeping is looking less attractive). I think what’s most upsetting is that I heard it all happen last night and that it was that particular one who I had sort of championed from hatch-point.

Decided that all my brave talk about self sufficiency lifestyles would involve more that the odd dead bird to deal with so I plucked (boom, boom!) up the courage to go and sort it all out. The kids were adamant they wanted to see so having checked it was not a total bloodbath (and as they could see everything out of the lounge window and were trying so my only other option was to lock them in their bedrooms (which would have neccessitated installing locks on their bedrooms first anyway!) I let them. I warned them it was not pretty but in the same was as seeing Malice’s body was good closure for them I thought this would be the right thing to do.

Scarlett was morbidly interested and remains very unemotional about the whole thing. Davies looked, asked a few questions and retired to his room for a while to compose himself. We’ve looked at the pictures of Feathers from hatch point to this weekend and he’s ok again now. In the same way as they dealt with Malice by talking about it a lot and still including her as one of our pets even a year on I imagine there will be much talk of Feathers for a while to come. Let’s hope it isn’t the start of the ritual picking off of all of them one by one though…

I put the body in 3 carrier bags and it’s to one side for Ady to deal with – the kids want to bury it. I scrubbed out all the coop and the others are all back in there again. I think I’ve made it a bit more predator-proof too now, hope so.

And the whole eat it or not eat dilemma is out of my hands – there was nothing left of Feathers except it’s feathers…

Last night Ady and I sat reminising on our Tour Of The North this time last year, tainted by the loss of Malice before we went and the subsequent finding of Malice while we were away, followed by the long and drawn out but probably quite inevitable death of Malice a month or so later. Seems July simply ain’t a good month for Goddard animals.

Last night around midnight there was something of a commotion in the chicken house. A load of flapping, thudding and cheeping. It was pretty much over before I’d really registered what it was and I debated going out with a torch to see but it was pouring with rain, howling with wind and as the noise had stopped I decided at best I’d find nothing other than some chicks having a bit of a party and at worst would be confronted with unpleasant sights just before bedtime so it could wait til this morning.

I’m sort of glad I made that decision as I imagine I would have slept worse if I’d seen and had to try and deal with what I’ve just found in the dark last night. I opened the little door for them to come out, having heard various cheeping but contented type noises as I approached the coop. One chicken came out, two, three, four. Ah. I came back in the house and tried to decide what to do before summoning up the courage to go and lift the side of the coop to investigate. One dead chicken (Feathers) greeted me. As the children were sitting in the lounge likely to look out the window at any moment I shut the lid again quick and came back in. Having rung Ady to ascertain he is not able to come home and deal with it and rung my Dad to find no reply I’ve dealt with the telling the children bit but am still trying to work out whether I am able to deal with the rest of it, I need something to put it in, somewhere to put it and to decide whether we want to look at the body or not before I lift the lid again. Also need to try and work out what happened and how to prevent it happening again.

I’m pretty sure it was a rat attack, we’ve seen a couple in the garden since we got the chicks and there are enough smallish gaps around the coop for one to sneak in but I’d thought the chicks were big enough now to be a match for a rat. There is no way a fox could have got in and I assume a fox would have picked off more than one chick anyway, but I guess the other four are pretty vulnerable now and I need to sort something out to ensure we don’t have a pile of corpses by this afternoon.

The children were very philosophical, no tears, just lots of reasoning that as Feathers was the weakest he wouldn’t have been able to get away from whatever it was that got in there. They decided it was very sad but as I started my chat with ‘I have something very sad to tell you but it is one of the downsides of having animals…’ they were pretty OK about it. I imagine we’ll have loads of references to it and possibly some tears later in the day.

It’s currently still pouring with rain which might well seem a fitting way to be dealing with dead creatures (I always think it is somehow ‘right’ when it rains at funerals) but I’ve about had my fill of unpleasant deeds in the rain this last week or so, so I’ll reserve the right to hang on until the rain stops before going out and dealing with it.