One word? When seven would do…

When I woke up this morning the sun was shining, by the time we left the house it was tipping down with rain and it continued to do so for about two hours 🙁

Ady shone shoes, the kids were persuaded into several layers of clothing including socks – Davies took no persuading at all, Scarlett took most of my skills which having honed on her I will be using to persue a career in hostage negotiations and talking down armed gunmen one day 😆

As we pulled up at the carpark where the Badgers and Cadets were meeting the heavens truly opened. I like the thought that there are servicepeople looking on at us thinking ‘are you really grateful, do you really remember us? Will you stand in the rain for two hours?’ As usual the worse the weather, the more people seem inclined to come out and have stiff upper lips and ‘Be British’ so it was a huge turnout this morning in Worthing.

Ady dropped the kids, me, two brollies and my mug of tea off and went off to find free parking. Davies went off to join the important St Johns people he was laying the wreath with (one adult, one cadet and for the first time apparently, one badger). Scarlett and the other 3 or 4 Badgers who had arrived joined the Cadets as there simply weren’t enough of them to make a parade of their own. It would have been simply neglectful to leave the children without coats in the pouring, freezing rain for nearly 2 hours so in the end they kept them on this year. Ady rejoined us and along with one of the other Badger mums we went to watch the service. As always I cried a bit when I saw the very old men pushed along to join the parade in their wheelchairs and saw other old people crying through the service. I was very proud of Davies who was the only little kid involved in laying wreaths, and very proud of Scarlett who stood still, quiet and sombre for the duration.

We walked round the block with them and there were no firemen related incidents this year but we did hook up with my parents who had come along. I’d mentioned it to them but I often mention stuff the children are involved in and invite them along and they seldom do attend so when it had rained this morning I thought it a certainty they wouldn’t come – Dad doesn’t do rain!

The service and parade complete we headed into town in search of hot chocolate and found a cafe selling rather good ones with whipped cream and flakes. All the better given Dad paid for them 🙂 😉

We sat and chatted about wars and relatives who fought in them. My Granddad (Dad’s Dad) fought in the first world war but was too old to fight in the second and worked in a munitions factory in Scotland instead. Dad said he said very little about fighting in WW1 – he was in Egypt and lost two brothers, other than to advise against joining the army as ‘you get your dinner and your pudding on the same plate!’. Dad reckoned either he had a very sheltered war experience or was sanitising it for the retelling! It’s easy to think it is all so distantly removed from us happening last century until you realise parents and grandparents were directly affected. Dad and I were talking about visiting Ypres, I went with the school when I was about 14 and would like to go again, Dad has never been. Ady would also like to visit Dunkirk too.

We said goodbye as they’d parked at an opposite end of town to us and walked back to our car along the seafront. The sky was dark grey and the sea was almost luminous green, very striking.

The colours and contrast hasn’t come out on photo, but it still conjurs up what I love most about the sea in the winter. Summer with the line between the bright blue of the sea and sky almost merged, calm ocean and golden sand is nothing when compared to the beauty of a raging sea under a grey sky splintered with lightning.

We called into Iceland to get a cheesecake for dessert and queued behind a man who stank of cigarettes, alcohol and general unwashedness. Scarlett asked rather loudly ‘what’s that smell?’ not thinking for a moment it might be coming from a person so we talked a bit about that and then when we’d got back in the car we saw a man walking along barefoot with just a sleeping bag clutched to him. Davies wanted to know if that was what Grannys new job was about (she’s going to be the retail manager for a new charity shop for a local homeless project) so we chatted a bit about that too and reasons why people may become homeless. I suspect there is very little in the way of books or films suitable for the kids on the subject to help answer their questions.

We got home and decided as everyone was cold, wet and a bit tired popcorn and dvds were in order so with some negotiation (Davies gets that from me ;)) we settled on Madagascar 2 and even managed to get Ady to sit down for the whole film and watch with us 😯

Davies and Scarlett went off to play – this involved packing up rucksacks and pretending to go exploring and camping while I got roast lamb cooking. We ate at 5pm, watching Jimmy’s Farm and all hankering after the smallholding / livestock owning lifestyle again. We then watched Life while eating cheesecake.

I went off for a bath while the others watched Total Wipeout, then the kids went to bed and Ady went for for a bath while I watched X Factor.

I don’t even remember posting that last night! 😳

So, catching up then…

Friday work all day for me. I did banking in the morning, followed by Baby Rhyme Time. We had a good crowd including Pushy Mum, Pushy Granny and faintly disinterested daughter who are fairly regular attenders. When I asked if anyone had any requests Pushy Mum and Pushy Gran asked in unison for ‘Peter Rabbit’ and did the pointy ears with their hands 😆 😆 Faintly disinterested daughter, who must be about 4 was busy sticking the handle of one of the shakers up her nose and doesn’t seem to give a monkeys what we sing. Two of the little girls have taken to following me into the office afterwards to try and ‘chat’ to me. Must remember to close the door behind me to prevent this in future.

I spent some time digging out the songsheets from the Christmas rhymetime I did last year with Christmas songs and some rewritten lyrics to some of the favourite songs (twinkle, twinkle Christmas tree, the bells on the sleigh go jingle, jingle, jingle). Jan was saying she thinks I should do a Rhyme Time in the style of Marguerita Pracatan. Definitely up for that 😆

I had my usual stints on the counter, the enquiry desk and shelving and then spent some time putting up a display of Jacqueline Wilson books. No one had put their name down to do the Christmas display either so I have put my name down for that and need to think of some inspiration.

Back at home Ady and Scarlett had spent the morning tidying Scarlett’s bedroom up and Mum, Davies and Scarlett had spent the afternoon watching Deal or no Deal, playing Deal or no Deal on the DS and Davies had made several animations based on Trap Door including speech bubbles and titles. Mum remarked on his spelling and writing and Davies further proved his reading by casting an eye over the post and asking ‘what’s that from the Dome then?’.

I had a cup of tea and chat with Mum, made Scarlett a hasty dinner of eggs on toast which she ate, then got changed for Rainbows and Davies showed me his animations. It was pouring with rain and really miserable so we assumed the Sea Scouts fireworks wouldn’t be happening, and didn’t want to go even if they were. Ady arrived home, Mum left, I took Tarly to Rainbows and then nipped to the supermarket for mushrooms for Ady’s pizza. It was so rainy I decided to park outside Rainbows rather than take the car home and walk back so sat in the car playing with my phone for ten minutes before going in to collect her. She’d been decorating mini gingerbread men and done one to look like me bedecked with mini marshmallows and loads of red strawberry laces sweets to be my hair :). She’d taken her Arctic Animals book for show and tell along with the couple of 3d penguins she’d made from it.

Back home we read which we have read before but was the only atory book about war we had on the shelf at work and I wanted to read something with them before Sunday. I do like Shirely Hughes :). We then read a chapter of Littlenose the Hero to cheer us up with something lighter again at Scarlett’s request.

Then it was bedtime, as been mentioned elsewhere I drank lots of wine and staggered to bed around midnight.

Saturday Our cockerel has got his body clock all messed up and keeps crowing at 4am. No idea why, he didn’t crow when it was 5am, it is pitch dark and the only real response to such behaviour is ‘do you want cranberry sauce with that?’. We’re fairly sure none of the neighbours can hear him as ours is by far the closest bedroom with all the others having hedges to further muffle the sound and it is by no means loud to us but he did wake me last night.

This morning was only about the second Saturday this year that the kids have had Wildlife Explorers and I have not been working but it happened to also clash with YACs for Davies. It never has before and I think YACs is normally much later in the month than the first Saturday which is what Wildlife Explorers always is but I assume they’d moved it closer to Remembrance Day as it was WWII themed. Davies had agonised over which to attend and decided on YACs. So Ady took him in one direction and I took Tarly in the other.

YACs was fab apparently. They prepared and cooked WWII food, then all sat and ate together, had some visitors who had been children in the war to talk about their experiences including a couple of evacuees, dressed up in various wartime things and then went outside to practise throwing grenades and running away. Throughout the morning they had an air raid siren that went off several times which meant they all had to get under the table. Ady was very enthusiastic about the whole thing and Davies had a great time too :).

Scarlett meanwhile learnt about feeding the birds and made a bird feeder by smearing a pinecone with peanut butter, then adding seeds and nuts to it ready to hang from the tree in the garden. They went outside to play a game about what birds eat what foods (berries, worms, snails, seeds etc.) and she said it was good fun.

I walked round the reserve. It was quite slippery in a few places thanks to muddy spots from lots of rain and fallen leaves. They are continuing to put massive animal sculptures around the place and now have a lizard, snake, butterfly and something else I couldn’t identify as raised mud areas to go with the existing cow and coiled snake. They look fab.

I saw, and correctly identified (checked on a spotter sheet in one of the hides to confirm my guess) a couple of green woodpeckers and a jay aswell as loads of other birds I couldn’t identify, several rabbits, squirrels, cows and some of the herd of deer. I could hear geese honking but couldn’t actually see them. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I enjoyed my walk round all alone :).

I collected Tarly and we decided to look in a couple of charity shops before heading home. I found a jumper for me, a top for Tarly and she picked up a little ornament which is either a weasel or a stoat which I agreed to buy. We chatted about poppies, how I knew the names of the towns and I enjoyed listening to her chatter away :). We drove back over the downs which is always a pretty route and beat Ady and Davies home by about 15 minutes. Scarlett and I had some lunch (they were full from the food at YACs) and Ady did some stuff in the garden, the kids played with the chickens and I unpicked half of the jumper I knitted last winter (I wasn’t happy with it so I’ve taken off the sleeves to use again and am going to re-knit the body) and started again with it.

Everyone else came in, I nipped off to Asda for a few bits, the kids had a bath and I cut Davies’ hair and brushed and plaited Tarly’s ready for tomorrow, they had dinner and watched whatever Star Wars film it was that was on, while both reciting all the lines along with the actors. I read my book :).

The intention was an early night for them both but neither of them managed it despite being in bed from about 730pm.

I have gone easy on the wine. With one eye still on those 2012 Olympics 😉

far too much to attempt to blog tonight. Not at all sure what future self will make of this – will she be all reformed sober and judgemental? If so she can consider this great evidence of a drink problem and use it to highlight when she realised things were sliding.

Will she merely be old and addled? If so I don’t really care what she thinks? I could take her on, hell I’ve drunk a whole bottle of wine, I’ll take you all on!

and rather proud of myself for remaining silent on things where ‘people are wrong on the internet’ to misquote a funny cartoon. Not sure if I am coming down with something or just tired and suffering from Clocks Going Back Syndrome which must surely be something known only by its intials and with some homeopathic remedy I could try? 😉

Anyway, today we were off to Paradise Park which we have annual membership for but have not made as much use of as I expected us to, so must rememdy that in the remaining 4 months or so left. I took a fairly sizeable lunch, most of which we didn’t eat but I carted around the place with us anyway. We met Lucy and The Rs there and the kids all got on well and enjoyed each others company, leaving Lucy and I plenty of chatting and catching up time, which was great :). I was proud of both Davies and Scarlett at various points for being considerate and kind friends :).

On the way over I’d said they could each have £2 worth of tokens in the 20p amusements so they were working out how many tokens that would be each. Davies sat there counting in 20s to 100 to get 5 (20, 40, 60, 80, 100) and then Scarlett chimed in with ‘so five and five is ten – ten tokens each, woo hoo!’ But in the end they had less than that and shared them but were promised a small something in the shop for £2 each instead. Scarlett set about finding more tokens under the machines and managed to find about 10 I think 😯 She spent most on playing an air hockey type game with Davies or giving them to Davies to go on a grabber machine game to win soft toys – the deal was he got to operate it but she got to keep any prizes. They didn’t win though :(. She then gave one each of her remaining tokens to the others :).

We walked through the Planet Earth bit which has been tarted up a bit with a big chunk about water and sealife first. Davies and I learnt that ‘if you put all the water on earth into just 100 glasses, then less than 3/4 of one glass would be the water available to humans’. We also learnt a bit more about sea urchins, anenomies and starfish. Scarlett took it upon herself to educate Richard and was telling him about all sorts of things too :). He is honoured really, she so doesn’t normally bother with smaller children.

We went through the dinosaurs, the cacti garden, the various outside bits and finally came to rest in the amusements. We spent some time indoors and some more outside and the kids played the crazy golf for a while before it was time for Lucy to head off. We said our goodbyes in the shop where we spent a fair while looking at possibilities to buy. They talked about pooling their £4 for something joint and then Scarlett remembered they sell books so we went over to look at those instead. She chose an Arctic Animals sticker book and Davies, who had been adamant he wanted something with a dinosaur theme found which was at the bargain price of £2.99. I rarely refuse to buy books so I was happy to add another pound to that. He’s already been using it loads adding pictures and notes, reading quite a bit of it and tells me his plan is to use it in games with Scarlett about Prehistoric Park and pretend they have gone through a time portal to collect dinosaurs for the new park.

Back home for dinner for them and plenty of using their new books. We put on to watch which I’d seen before when it was on TV but totally captivated the children. I think JL is fab anyway so was more than happy to watch it again and I cried when she cried at seeing the lights too :oops:. Predictably both children are now also desperate to see them and Scarlett totally fell in love with the icehotel and it’s little chapel, deciding that she’s never getting married but if she does that is where she wants to do it! 😆

Ady arrived home and we did sparklers in the garden before walking across the road to the pub which had bonfire and fireworks advertised at 7pm. The huge fire was indeed roaring away but there was no sign of fireworks and infact they didn’t start til 8pm in the end. So we had a rather boring, cold, dark hang around for an hour 🙁 When they finally happened they were rather a disappointment too, being the cheap supermarket types rather than decent commercial ones. Can’t complain as it is all free (although they’d have made a killing with all the food and drink and glow in the dark plastic tat they were selling!) but in previous years the fireworks have always been excellent so it was a shame to not live up to normal standards.

Back home for bed for the kids, bath and late dinner for us.

I waved Ady and the kids off this morning to Julie’s. We were a bit seat-of-our-pants today wrt childcare as I was staying a couple of hours later than usual at work for the My Story event so the plan was Ady would drop Davies and Scarlett off with Julie, spend the morning in the office, collect them during his lunch break, take them on a couple of mystery shopping visits then drop them home to me before doing his last hour or so. He got delayed though and ended up late collecting the kids from Julie and being all stressed about the whole business. He has a new MD and a new direct line manager at the moment and it’s all very up in the air as to how long his flexibility to do one morning a week will be. My Mum starts her new job too so the afternoon a week she does for us could also be a bit iffy but I’m assuming my Dad will step back into that role. I guess we’ll just keep muddling through for now and see how it all pans out though – it’s 3 years since I started at the library next month and it’s worked out so far.

So I had a fairly busy and typical Wednesday morning at work. I had teabreak with Frankie who I like a lot. She is having problems with her 17 year old daughter so we chatted about that and she asked some questions about Home Ed which have clearly been things she’s pondered on for a while. I’m fairly sure she considers me mental, particularly when we talked about me trying not to get Davies and Scarlett do do things ‘because I said so’ and not having a Naughty Step. :lol:She wanted to know what I did when they ‘kicked off’ and my answer of ‘well they sort of don’t really’ just drew one raised eyebrow. I should probably have confessed that the person most likely to ‘just kick off’ in our house is me really 😆

Abi and I spent half an hour or so planning our My Story event and deciding on a structure for the session, some activties and exercises and familiarised ourselves with the competition rules and so on. We had a really disappointing turn out of just two people in the end though :(. The session went very well inasmuch as we looked at the website, read some of the rules, talked about ideas, shared some hints and tips,I read one of the already submitted stories out and we talked what sort of story they both wanted to submit. One of the women had come along with a fairly sure idea she wanted to tell her Grandparents story of narrowly missed being bombed in the Portsmouth Blitz in 1941. A really powerful story of coincidences and how them living means there are now 9 grandchildren alive today. The other woman claimed to not really have a story but went on to chat to us about growing up in Ireland, being in the RAFA, marrying her husband and the rations and food supplies they lived on in their early days together, how she loathed washing his snotty hankerchiefs, how after they retired they bought a motorhome and spent weeks and sometimes months travelling near and far in it before finally giving it up earlier this year (she was very difficult to age but must have been in her 80s). We decided her issue was working out which story to tell in 1500 words rather than whether she had one!

I really enjoyed it and whilst very disappointed we didn’t have a much bigger turn out was nonetheless positive that we’d made a difference for them and shown there is a market for such events in the future. I’m a bit hooked on the My Story website now and am checking it several times a day to read the latest submissions and keep toying with the idea of posting one of my own.

In the middle of all of this the man came to replace my cracked windscreen and then came back a further twice to fix the mirror on. I am now convinced something will happen to the windscreen within the next fortnight!

I got home at about 330pm and rang Ady to discover he was about half an hour behind me. I had some very late lunch and then Ady and the kids arrived home so I did the kids tea too. Then it was off to Badgers.

We were asked to stay again as they were too short of adults to run so Ady and I sat and chatted to each other, to the Badger leader and generally observed the session. They talked about drinking and smoking (which led to some very interesting snippets from the various children about their parents! ;)), then they all had to draw an outfit for the others to decide what season it was. Scarlett cunningly drew someone next to a tree with green leaves so they all assumed it was spring or summer, then declared ‘no, it’s an evergreen and it’s winter!’ 😆 Julie the leader said ‘only your daughter…’ to me 😆

Davies was formally asked if he would lay the SJA wreath on Sunday and Julie very nicely asked if he could have his hair tidied up a bit. I agreed we would either cut it or tie it back :).

Home via the CoOp for more reduced bread for lunch tomorrow and a bottle of red wine to use for pheasant cooking for dinner. I read the kids which we’d not come across before but it the first book for the new local HE Book Group we’re off to in a couple of weeks so I wanted to have a look at it. It’s good, if slightly on the basic side, even if it does come rather too hot on the heels of the whole Jean Auel Clan of the Cave Bear books I read recently.

Another morning at home which Davies and Scarlett were pleased about, maybe they are getting more into time spent at home or maybe they’re just hunkering down for the winter? Whatever they continued much in the same vein as yesterday watching some TV (Evacuees again) and then connecting on their DS to play Viva Pinata. For two children who can’t read they are doing a fine job of working that out. Actually I’m being unfair to Davies with that statement as he clearly can read and is demonstrating that more and more these days with reading things of the TV, signs and instructions. He has clearly seen the value of trying and is doing it. Scarlett lies in bed every night with piles and piles of books and while she remains utterly resistant to doing any sort of reading with me there is clearly stuff going on there and she does now know all the letters.

I spent some time looking at the My Story website and was in turn entertained, amused and moved by some of the stories already posted up there. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s event and hoping we get a decent turn out attending.

I used up yet more of the pumpkin and made some cupcakes (which are very nice :)) and was amused by the short work the chickens have made of the pumpkins we put outside, they have already joined up the nose, mouth and one eye carved in one of them, and pecked a hole through the back of the other one.

We had lunch and then headed up to Truleigh Hill to visit the hostel manager and look over everything before camp. Davies and Scarlett have selected our room – they decided they wanted one with a fire exit in it, just like at Helmsley. There is an additional oven this year which will help for Christmas dinner but it is otherwise unchanged.

We spotted loads of birds, a magpies next, three cock pheasants in the field opposite and on the way home watched some mating sheep. It was all very wildlifetastic! 🙂 We talked about the starlings that gather at Brighton Piers and decided we should visit there soon to watch them at sunset.

We got back home for half an hour before heading back out again to swimming. I had my full hour and achieved my by-Christmas aim of 50 lengths :). Very pleased and proud of that. I hit a bit of a wall at about 30 lengths and really struggled to manage the full 50 in my very strict hour (I’m really trying to make it about time rather than endurance). I found the first 10 or so easy to do in a minute a length and actually the last 10 were probably not much slower than that as I was desperate to achieve it and was at 48 lengths with about 3 minutes to go. I could blame the minute or so stop for Davies and Scarlett’s lesson changeover and there was a point where three elderly people got in the way of all the proper length swimmers, got tangled up in the the 3 women who were struggling to keep up anyway and created a big bottle neck which slowed us all down but realistically that was a full hours swimming. Having managed my goal about 8 weeks early I’m not really sure where to go from here. I don’t think a length a minute :60 lengths in the hour is doable but I guess I could aim for 54 or 55 and see how I get on with that. I’d also like to do some research into which stroke is the best exercise as back stroke is my strongest, fastest and the one I actually feel some muscles working in but suspect it’s not necessarily the one having the biggest impact on fitness. Whilst it’s also the stroke I feel most able to up the pace on it is also the hardest to do in terms of being able to check who is infront of me and in my way.

Still, hurrah for 50 lengths! 🙂

Davies did some general practising while Scarlett had her lesson and then she joined up with her regular swimming buddy while he had his. She found out her name is Amber and she is also six today :).

Quick shower and change and home. Ady beat us and had already got the kids’ tea on and presented me with some garlic bread to keep me going til late dinnertime and a cup of tea – love that man :). I consumed that, replaced my washed off mascara and headed off out again to my course.

This week (week 6, only 3 more left now) was all about composting and was very interesting. As ever I learnt new things. I also chatted with Sheila about music for Davies and Scarlett and we’re going to meet up when the course has finished so she can do some music with them. She has a piano and a folk harp and is very passionate about every child having access to music. I love how this course has thrown me together with people I wouldn’t normally cross paths with :). We set dates for our post-course interviews (I will have to nip off for mine while we’re at camp, but actually it makes it easier in terms of not needing childcare to do it while Ady is around).

I arrived home just before 10pm and the children, who had only been in bed about ten minutes both got back up to greet me. Davies had had a good time at Sea Scouts -they had had a visit from the recycling place we visited last week so he’d done well on answering all the questions she asked. He is suffering with most of the other boys refusing to believe that he doesn’t go to school though and says they tease him and say he is lying. He told me he’d told them to ‘go home and google autonomous!’ which made me laugh, I didn’t even know he had got the idea of googling 😆 I’ve said I’ll email the leader and also give him the youtube link of him on the news back in the summer. He wanted to know if he could make his own website and I said yes he could. I think the time might be right for him to have his own blog, or just take over his Monster Movies one – might look at that with him over the weekend.

Curry for dinner and in a real acid test of how old my children are now I can see the bottom of the Sudocrem tub I had when Davies was a newborn thanks to my using it for my own excema. No closer to reducing the baby talc mountain however, I think that they are probably destined to be passed to my grandchildren. 😆

Determined to see if I could not waste any of the pumpkins this year (which were free and locally grown anyway) I decided to deal with the carved out stuff today. The pumpkins themselves are round with the chickens who are making very short work of them. It is also quite gruesomely amusing watching the chickens peck at the pumpkins eyes 😆 So I fished through the flesh and stringy stuff and seeds and seperated out the seeds, chucked the best of the flesh in a pan with some carrots and stock and cumin for soup and then whizzed up the rest to make puree. I’m planning pumpkin and cheese bread, and pumpkin and orange cake with cream cheese frosting tomorrow to use up the last of it.

I made some bread rolls to go with the soup for lunch, toasted about half the seeds (with a teaspoon of bovril which has given them a lovely twiget-equse flavour) and then made a rather unsuccessful cake. I knew the mixture was way too wet while making it but decided to chuck it in and see what happened anyway. What happened was the very top burnt, the just under the top cooked beautifully and the middle and bottom didn’t firm up and started to bulge and collapse when I turned it out of the tin. This has proved to be no issue at all as the chickens eat the burnt bits, Scarlett ate the cake-y bits and Ady and I have had helpings of the rest which is now being called Pumpkin Pudding with custard and it’s lovely :).

But getting back to stuff other than cooking…

This morning we watched Evacuation which was interesting. Davies and Scarlett were not actually that horrified about most of it though, claiming they live without technology for a week at a time while camping, an outside toilet is not an issue, they’d love to live on a farm and it all looked fun. They were less keen on being away from me and Ady for weeks, months or even years mind you. They are over their annoying each other-ness from yesterday and spent most of the day connected up to each other on DS.

We all came together again for lunch. I’d managed to whizz the blender with soup in it without having the lid on properly so had to clean up lumpy soup from pretty much every surface in the kitchen! As others have already said I really should have taken a photo first, it just didn’t occur to me at the time. As predicted the kids were not keen on the soup but they did like the bread rolls.

I got out the Planet Earth kid we’d got at the charity shop last week to look at and we set up the volcano in the bath. It’s the standard vinegar and bicarb and actually due to me not fixing it up properly it didn’t stream through the plastic volcano anyway but Davies and Scarlett assure me they never tire of vinegar and bicarb :). We read a bit about volcanoes but weren’t really in the mood for the next part of the kit which was painting miniature globes and drawing tectonic plates on them so we put it away again.

Davies wanted me to find the walkthrough for Viva Pinata DS again as he wants to finish it – he’s been on the last level for nearly a year so we looked at that for a while. I phoned up to arrange for my car to have it’s windscreen fixed. I found a crack in it way back in about January which has slowly grown bigger and bigger and I know would be an MOT failure when it’s due next month so thought I’d pre-empt that cost this month as I have a £60 excess to pay on my insurance for it. I also rang the hostel manager at Truleigh Hill to arrange to go up and look round and check out whether the kitchen has been improved since 2 years ago.

Early dinner for the kids and then off to gymnastics, along with £60 for this half terms fees. I dropped them off and then went to Asda and CoOp in Lancing as we’re trying to shop for half price or better, or reduced to clear items only this month. The plan is to visit supermarkets when we are passing anyway (so nights the kids are at gymnastics or Badgers) and menu plan around what bargains we can find to see if we can food shop cheaper than we have been. It will take a while to really see the benefits as we can’t not buy staples like flour, pasta, rice etc but long term the plan would be to stock up on those when offers are on. Ady went to Sainsburys and got loads of their Taste the Difference Mince reduced to a pound a pack. So we have 9 of those now in the freezer. In Asda I stocked up on poppdoms on offer, butter we needed anyway, kids pasta on offer, frozen veg and then on to CoOp where I had some great bargains; loads of lovely bakery rolls all at 5 and 10p each, some half price croissants and pain au chocolats which we’ll have in the morning, a bag of 5 oranges for 10p, some root ginger for 10p and a bag of British root veg (stew pack) for 10p. CoOp definitely the place to go at 630pm then. I think we spent £80 between us and we have a full up freezer already for the month. 🙂

We both got home within moments of each other, quickly put the shopping away and went back out to collect the kids who had had a good time at Gymnastics.

Home for the first few pages of before bed. I’ve finally had a look at a CV for one of Ady’s work colleagues that I’d been promising to do for months so I feel good about that. And now I have no idea how it got to be tomorrow o’clock!

The kids sleepover needed some sort of disclaimer really as there wasn’t a great deal of sleeping happening really 😆

I went to bed at 1230 and they were still awake, although quiet then. I had a really bad nights sleep as the cockerel decided to crow about 4 or 5 times at 430am – why? It was still pitch black outside and then it started raining really hard.

So it was a slow start all round to this morning. We’ve not spent much time with my parents lately so as we had nothing much planned and the weather dictated we stayed indoors I rang them to see what they were doing and we went over there for lunch.

Mum had some very good news – a year after losing her job she has been offered a proper, full time job as a retail manager of a charity for the homeless. Charity shops are a new fundraising venture for this charity which is church run despite the charity being nearly 20 years old so it is quite an exciting venture for her to be involved from the very outset of the project. She is really buzzed up about the whole thing, particularly as she was starting to feel that at 62 her working life might be over despite her not feeling it should be. Ideally she’d prefer to not work a full week so may try to negotiate that down to 4 days rather than 5 at some stage once it’s all up and running, but they have a policy of retiring staff at 70 rather than 65 so her age is not an issue. Dad was really proud of her and very vocally so which was lovely. I lived in the shadow of how they were relating to each other for so many years that being around them when they are happy and being nice to each other still has a massive effect on me (much the same as being around them when they are being negative about each other and taking swipes and putting each other down) which made for a very nice few hours round there. Frazer was briefly around so the kids got an Uncle-fix too.

We had lunch and then Ady and the kids retired to the lounge to ogle the big HD tv they have while I sat and chatted to my parents in the kitchen. Scarlett joined us after a while (Davies and Scarlett were rather overloaded with each others company and not that great at getting on well with each other today) and talked them through the flickrstream of Longleat photos.

We came home again before dark to put the chickens away and get a roast dinner on early enough for us to all eat together. The kids had a long bath and we watched Countryfile while eating dinner before the rest of the household remembered Total Wipeout was on the other side so I went off to fold laundry instead (I really HATE that show), then the children went to bed, Ady went for a bath and I watched X Factor (he really HATES that show ;)).

Yesterday I was feeling a bit guilty that we’d not really done anything Halloweeny, although in fairness it’s just an excuse for a party rather than anything we really celebrate as such. I don’t much like the whole trick or treat thing and the only way we’d ever do it is on an organised walk to people already expecting us. We’ve given away so many ‘No Trick or Treaters’ signs to elderly people genuinely worrying about having their door knocked on after dark by a gang of children wanting money or sweets with menaces that I really wouldn’t want to be responsible for that. In our own street Davies and Scarlett are the only children and while all the neighbours are very generous to them with birthday and Christmas and even just for the sake of it gifts I would feel really bad about the kids knocking on their doors begging at Halloween.

So fortunately I had organised a Halloween event at work and we’d been invited to a Halloween Harry Potter Party this evening :).

I dressed in my witches outfit from the party (Anna wasn’t the only one recycling her outfit ;)) and Ady ran me in to work this morning as they were heading back later so could lurk and bring me home. So I had a nice morning, spent decorating the childrens’ library with cobwebs and spiders, cutting up paper for cotton bud skeleton pictures and handprint bats and looking at rhymes to read out.

The event went well – we had 16 children all in fancy dress (including Davies and Scarlett. Davies came as a vampire – also recycling his outift, Scarlett was a cat which involved a black T shirt, black trousers (from I believe a fancy dress policemans outfit), ears and tail. Ady had face painted them both very well too). Abi read several spooky short stories, I read one spooky rhyme and then a couple of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes (Red Riding Hood and 3 Little Pigs) and Frankie read another spooky rhyme and a story. That held all of them for the first half an hour and then we did crafts. They also went well and we awarded one little girl best dressed and presented her with a goody bag. Everyone, other than Ady, Davies and Scarlett drifted away and we tidied up.

I finished at 1pm so we all came home again and took off facepaint and costumes and had some lunch. Ady had brought home a pumpkin each for the kids from someone at work who grows them commercially so they both wanted to carve them. I managed to remain utterly hands-off (oh so hard!) and just helped with digging out flesh and other tricky bits rather than design. I now have a huge pan full of pumpkin flesh and a big bowl of pumpkin seeds to be imaginative with tomorrow. We tried to watch The Story of Stuff as Davies asked something about Fair Trade which I though would be best answered by that rather than me but the internet was being all clunky so we only managed the first five minutes or so, will try that again tomorrow.

Fancy dress outfits for this evening were very cobbled together. Davies wanted to be Harry Potter so wore his vampire cape safety pinned to his black top with shirt and tie printed on (to look like school uniform) and some black trousers. Scarlett wore one of my white tops under a fake fur gilet from a charity shop and the leggings we’d painted to look like zebra print for Adam’s Madagascar Party of about 4 years ago to be the snowy owl from Harry Potter. Ady and I didn’t dress up, me in protest as part of my long running refusing to acknowledge Harry Potter at all really ;).

We arrived and the party was super organised with a Quidditch match on the lawn followed by Herbology, a Harry Potter quiz and various other games and tasks which I have to confess meant nothing to me so I am unable to recount but were clearly HP themed and very well thought out. While the Quidditch was happening (which was very rough and at least 3 children ended up wounded and wailing) the kids had to be searching for some golden ball which apparently Davies actually found first but had snatched off him. He never really recovered from that and although he decided at the end on balance he’d mostly enjoyed the party he did spend a fair chunk of it wanting to go home or looking fed up. I think both Davies and Scarlett struggled with the fact it was an established group of friends at the party who all knew each other with them as the new kids, plus the hosts were not very good at putting them at their ease or making them feel welcome, instead playing on the fact they were the obvious outsiders and making them feel it. I don’t have a huge issue with that really and Davies was playing the victim rather well which always annoys me but at the same time I felt his pain and could relate to him just wanting to leave. He managed to keep it together and participate as much as he was allowed until it was home time anyway. As usual most of it went over Tarly’s head and when she heard Davies was upset about being told he wasn’t allowed in a certain room she demanded to know who had said that and marched off to put them straight 😉 😆

Ady and I enjoyed chatting to I, who was one of the chosen few to attend the round table Select Committee meeting and talking to him about Home Ed, how we do it, why we do it and how it works. He knows a lot in theory but having much younger children still doesn’t have absolute confidence about it all in practise so we chatted a bit about how it works for us on a day to day level.

We then also drifted to the outer circle of the room as the rest of the adults all clearly knew each other and all the rest were school friends. Neither of us really felt like being the token HE parents so we chatted to each other instead. On balance we were all glad we’d gone, had a mostly good time, but were reminded of what a fab circle of friends we already have and how very comfortable we all are with them.

Back home Ady offered the kids a sleepover together and to watch films. They are still very much awake and I suspect it will be a late night for them but listening to the sounds of their laughter together drift downstairs is just heartwarming. The idea that Ady and I created those two little people up there who are now taking such delight in each others company is just wonderful, I don’t think there can be any lovelier sound in the world than their giggles together :).