One word? When seven would do…

Davies made my tea this morning 🙂 I do hope the novelty of bringing me tea doesn’t wear off any time soon :).

He and I sat and had a chat about life and Scarlett came and joined us. We talked about it being an odd couple of months ahead with the bulk of our stuff packed up, not a lot going on in terms of activities or events and a bit of the shape of our weeks disappearing as we stop swimming and Badgers and fail to pick up anything else. We agreed that this is a small sacrifice to make in light of what we’re about to embark on next year but that it will be challenging nonetheless. Scarlett is pretty good at finding constructive things to do but Davies can get a bit aimless and needs a prod in the right direction. I came up with some ideas and suggestions of things he has talked about wanting to do.

With that in mind we looked out the folder of stuff from the RSPB wildlife action awards that we were doing last year. We had all but finished the silver and done some planning towards the gold but not sent anything off or written it up. We went through the folder again, talked about which activities to do to finish, reminded ourselves of some things we have done already which would count (eg ‘do a survey’ we could write up about the OPAL hedge survey, ‘Pond dipping’ we could write up about stream dipping). So I finished writing up some of the previous ones and putting pictures in while they got out some of our nature books and drew pictures of the creatures they had found stream dipping – eels, fish, frogs, waterboatmen etc. That went well with Davies helping Scarlett with her frog picture when she was struggling. Just need to get them printed off and the kids have a couple more poster type things to do and we are finished and can get the silver and gold sent off. Be good to get that finally finished having left it alone for far too long after a real flurry of activity when we started.

I’d decided against the planned activity at Badgers so needed to get ingredients for what I was doing instead and I had had an email to say a dvd was in at the library for me (Percy Jackson and Lightning thief) so we popped into Lancing to collect that and nip into the supermarket. The kids took it in turns to push the trolley and did all of the processing through the self checkout.

Home for lunch and the dvd didn’t work 🙁 our dvd player must be a bit picky as it often rejects new rental dvds. We found an interesting documentary about bears instead to watch though. Scarlett made some 3d structures with geomags and Davies played DS for a bit and we had a nice afternoon. I wrote out the recipes for Badgers and the kids had an early tea before we went.

I’d chosen to bring foward ‘sweet tooth’ tonight and brought ingredients for peppermint creams and coconut ice. I wrote the recipes up on the whiteboard (giving me a teacher moment. Julie complimented me on my handwriting and said I should have been a teacher. Davies and I laughed as he’d asked me earlier what I’d wanted to be when I grew up when I was his age and I said I had briefly thought I’d like to be a teacher when I was about 10.) We also made little boxes. We had 7 Badgers so I took 4 and made peppermint creams while S made coconut ice with the other 3 and then we swapped over. The second batch of peppermint cream just didn’t work, not sure if it was too much egg white or a splash too much food colouring but it was just too liquid a mixture and we didn’t have any more icing sugar so having got their hands coated in snot-like icing sugar we washed it off and I promised to make some more at home for those Badgers. Everyone’s coconut ice looked really good though and the boxes came out well.

Only 2 more sessions before we go away and then it’s just presentation night when we come back and possibly a Christmas party the week after if enough Badgers say they will come. I won’t miss doing it at all although I do think Badgers has been a great thing for Davies and Scarlett I am so not cut out for being Assistant Leader.

Back home I had a bath while the kids ate toast and watched the Wallace and Gromit inventions show with Ady. Davies and I talked about necessity being the mother of invention as he was coming up with ideas for inventions.

I’d provisionally signed us up for some textile workshops for the next few Tuesdays which although a bit of a drive away sounded really good and worth committing too but not enough people signed up so they didn’t go ahead 🙁 Which meant we were free today in the end.

I celebrated this with a bit of a lie in, Scarlett brought me a cup of tea in bed and when I was up and we were all dressed we looked out the window at the grey, windy, rainy day and Davies declared it ‘a good day for watching films and eating popcorn’ I agreed and so they found a way of whittling down a large potential selection of films by flipping a coin and the winning film going through to the next round each time until they were left with Monsters Vs Aliens. I made the popcorn and we all half watched, half cuddled, half played with some construction toys, half did some online stuff depending on who you are :).

I bought www.wonderingwanderers.co.uk and www.wonderingwanderers.com and pointed both web addesses at the blog. I blogged, I talked to Tarly some more about her birthday and she has decided she would like to go to a localish zoo for a day trip but really wanted Ady to come too. So we’ve decided to go the day before her birthday which is a Sunday so Ady can come too, we can do the safari run and I mangaged to exchange some of our clubcard vouchers for day out vouchers which are accepted there so it won’t cost anything either :). Excellent result. She also wants a fishing rod (already purchased) a decent penknife, which she can choose herself, some wildlife books and today came up with the idea of wanting statues / models of Sploosh and Lucky. She said she’d like to maybe make them herself and paint them so I have managed to get a duck plaster / concrete mold from ebay and will get her some plaster and paint to do that with. Sorted :).

Davies is at a bit of a loose end at the moment, I know how he feels, it’s like we’re biding time at the moment and lots of things I would be thinking about signing up for or planning for next year we simply won’t be here for so we’re rather in limbo. Scarlett is better at being self motivated and finding things to do than he is so he ends up being irritating or distracting or needy to either her or I. I think he could do with some time spent coming up with ideas of things he’d like to do and some support in making those things accessible to him. He has so many amazing creative ideas but does like a lot of feedback and cheerleading along the way which isn’t always my forte but I have a few ideas to talk over with them both tomorrow.

We had lunch – Scarlett came and made her own including negotiating the tin opener to open a can of tuna and Davies put Curious George on. After lunch they played with the geomags and Davies did some making 3d structures including the Tardis, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and Scarlett took photos of them then they experimented with dropping geomag balls on them to see the impact of asteroids 😆

I realised the phone wasn’t working again, this time no phone line (although the internet is working so there obviously is a line somehow) so I dealt with that (waiting fault checking and possibly another engineer visit) while the kids got everything ready for swimming. Amazingly my car started straight away and we had 2 hours and 10 minutes in the pool. I managed 108 lengths, Davies jumped off the top diving board several times – I’d been watching him climb the steps, stand at the end and bottle out about four times, then stand under the steps and I could see him talking to himself before marching up the steps, leaping off and then clambering out with a huge smile before running up the steps to do it again :). He has gone off it before but not for quite a while so he was really proud of himself :). He was disappointed not to be the one in his lesson who everyone was told to watch for a perfect demo of breast stroke as that is his favourite stroke and I think he’s been called to show everyone it before but I did remind him he had already been in the water for 90 minutes before his lesson so is not necessarily at his best by then. In fairness to the kids I am not sure the lengthy time at the pool before their lessons is that great although they are both really pleased to be there for 2 hours each week. They will have two last lessons after we get back from holiday and my sponsored channel swim will have ended so we will only go for their lessons and I will sit and watch those last two, which will be the end of swimming for some time I imagine aside from dips in lakes and rivers perhaps…

Back home Ady had only just got in so we all helped in lighting fires, pulling curtains etc then Ady cooked dinner for the kids and they watched Ray Mears which we’d taped for them last night. Ady and I watched the Shepton Mallet show, enjoyed it again although at least one of the people on it is very annoying and got more so this week :).

We were supposed to be at Pulborough Brooks this morning. I even put bread in the breadmaker on timer before I went to bed last night so we could take lunch with us. But when the alarm went off at 8am there was wind and rain lashing against the windows so I knew we wouldn’t be going. Quite aside from the not needing to drive 10 miles to get cold and wet I was not at all convinced my car would make it in the rain anyway.

So I rang Julie to check she wasn’t going as she has taken over organising the monthly meet up and I’d promised we’d be supportive of it, arranged to meet up with them next week instead and then rang Tasha to arrange something else with them as we were planning to pick them up and take them with us. We went for going round with bread and soup to their house.

We watched Sorry I Haven’t Got A Head which makes us all laugh and then packed up soup, bread and knitting and headed over to Tasha’s. Shockingly the car started and we had a very lovely few hours round there. Toby has a tv in his bedroom so I think watching that formed the bulk of the kids time there although there was some playing outside and some ‘truth, dare or joke’ game which had them coming into the room a couple of times to say silly things 😆

Tasha made some croutons from my bread to go with the soup and stuck a sponge pudding on to cook for afters. We sat and ate and chatted and laughed lots. Will really miss them next year.

We left when I got a text from S to say she was sending her husband round to collect the clothes for the nearly new sale so handed all that stuff over and then we shot back out to the post office to get all the paid for ebay stuff sent off. Room in the playroom to dance again now :).

Back home the kids put the chickens away, I chopped some wood, both Tarly and I had a go at lighting the fire and failed (damp sticks) and then Davies got it going, I did their tea and Ady arrived home.

I read a couple of Colin Thompson books at bedtime – we are having debate about suitable bedtime reading with Davies not wanting anything that plays on his mind before he tries to get to sleep and Scarlett not wanting anything too funny or pacey that gets her too excitable. And of course both of them enjoying the debate ;).

I cooked – sausages to go with leftovers from Saturday and we watched the Good Life programme with Sue and Giles which we enjoyed lots. Some excellent TV at the moment.

Saturday was Wildlife Explorers so up and out earlyish. Davies and Scarlett went and did some drawing and then went out onto the reserve to look for birds. Davies is now 2 years too old for that session and Scarlett will be too old from next month and it’s showing as they are not learning anything new or being challenged but it’s Davies’ choice to still be there and there is no point in Scarlett moving up for the last couple of months so they will see out the time there before we go.

We arrived slightly early so went into the play area first and on the very wet grass I managed to slip over so had wet muddy knees :rolls: Ady and I decided to go for a coffee so sat outside for a while before getting too cold and retiring inside to the coffee shop. We racked our brains for birthday (and indeed Christmas) presents for Scarlett. She likes the idea of night vision binoculars so we’re keeping an eye out for some of those (not the Nat Geo or similar toy ones, a proper decent pair).

We collected D&S and came straight home as I was keen to get cracking on my dinner party preparations. So I got peeling and chopping veg and pastry making while Ady and the kids were outside clearing the patio and the garage a bit more. They came in and played a board game for a while and then went off to get some bits from Tesco for me.

I sat down with a cup of tea feeling quite smug to have already got the soup made and ready to warm and add final touches to, the pastry case for the pie made and blind baked, the toffee made and the apple filling cooked all ready for assembling, the veg roasted for the gratin and the rice all ready waiting for the stock to cook it in. So made myself a cup of tea and started running a bath.

Ady and the kids were gone for ages though and my stress levels started to rocket when the knock on the door I was expecting to be them was infact my parents, calling in for a cup of tea and then they did arrive home with the wrong cheese, the wrong liqueur and a load of sweets when the kids had had a load of sweets the day before as well and we always have sweets kicking around in the cupboard anyway because I tend to ration them out a bit. So I was horrid to Ady (wonder what my parents thought of being the ones sitting in one room witnessing a row in another?!) and was then clock watching and wishing they would go so I could dash back out to get the right cheese and right liqueur and maybe get a hurried bath too. Fortunately I’d not opened a bottle of wine while cooking as I’d half been tempted to do…

I got the rice on and dashed to the supermarket (again, so much for saving all that stress by going on Friday night!), got the bits I wanted, came home, assembled the gratin and made the cheese sauce, put the pie in to bake slowly, did open the wine and did have a quick bath. Ady redeemed himself by tidying up and lighting candles and making everything dinner party perfect, the kids set themselves up for a sleepover in Davies’ room with films etc. and finally when the guests arrived all was well.

It was Mike and Rose, the not-swingers and Kristianne also from Book Group who did that dreadful dinner with tofu and a dog.

Ady showed them the campervan at their request while I warmed some mulled wine, we had a bit of a chat infront of the fire and then I served the soup. It was very lovely – followed a recipe from River Cottage for butternut and (pea)nut butter soup with garlic, chilli and ginger, topped with pumpkin seeds and served with pumpkin seed topped granary rolls. That went down very well :).

Next I did the roasted veg and brown rice gratin as recommended by The Beans (and seconded by Michelle) and with a nod to Alison I did some purple sprouting broccolli for everyone else ;). I was most pleasantly surprised by it actually, there was real depth of flavour with the rice, veg and cheese sauce. K went back for seconds! 🙂 We still have about half the huge dish I made leftover and will be having it for dinner tomorrow night. I imagine everyone will be pleased to hear we plan to serve it with sausages – proper meat ones though! 🙂

We had a bit of a break then and savoured the variety of bottled ciders Mike and Rose had brought with them, following the autumn feast theme :). Conversation was all very grown up and included human rights, cervical cancer vaccinations, education, motivation and parenting. All very interesting and at times slightly heated :).

We moved onto wine and dessert; a toffee apple tart with cinnamon cream which was very delicious. Davies and Scarlett appeared a couple of times each but were really good and were fast asleep long before midnight (surprisingly!). Mike and Rose had left Chloe (Mike’s daughter) home alone (she’s nearly 14) and promised to be home by 1am so they all left just before 1am to adhere to that leaving Ady and I to have a cup of tea and watch some TV to wind down before bed.

It was a really nice evening. Not the sort we have with you lot who read this and could have been improved with a bit of bacon no doubt but a good one all the same.

Today a bit of a lazier start, I was woken by a cup of tea from Scarlett :). Davies and Scarlett were playing with the playmobile stuff (one of the boxes of toys we’ll be keeping) and we had a chilled morning. Ady and Davies went off to take some of the wrong purchases back to Tesco and visit the tip with a car load of rubbish, Scarlett ran herself a bath, had a happy half hour splashing away in there and chattering to herself before getting out, cleaning the bath round and tidying up the bathroom. She is doing a fine line in being Nearly 8 and Very Grown Up lately :).

I took that as my cue to go and do something useful too so went to tackle the playroom which is the holding bay for stuff we sort out but hasn’t left the house yet and was getting almost inaccessible to enter. I finished labelling up all the clothes and shoes for my friend’s Nearly New Sale, folded stuff or put it on hangers and have one large box and about 30 hangers worth of clothes ready for her to collect (fingers crossed tomorrow). I cleared several things which have already been on ebay / car boot sales and didn’t sell so have got them listed on freecycle, several have already gone. I stacked the books up and have listed them on ebay as one job lot, collection only, having had a quick weed out of some suitable titles for secret santa / birthday gifts for friends.

I now have another small pile ready to photo and list on ebay and need to ambush the kids rooms again but I think we are all but at the point where we need to start boxing stuff up and losing furniture ready for Dad to come in while we’re away. A load of phones we’d listed last weekend ended today and added another £100 or so to the running total so Ady and I set up a chain of wiping the memories of them and boxing them up ready to post.

Ady cooked dinner – MEAT! – which we all ate together at about 5pm watching Ratatouille and then we finished off the apple tart. The kids had a bath – it was supposed to be Davies’ but Scarlett ended up getting in too and they went off to bed early. Someone came to collect a wet suit we’d sold on ebay and I suspect we’ll be pretty early to bed too. Another productive weekend but it will be nice to have finally got everything cleared and not feel the pressure to be emptying the house when it’s all done.

Work day for me all day. I was up early with Ady and the kids and left with an hour to myself after they had left before I had to go to work so blogged on Monster&Teeny about motivation, spurred on by some conversations with friends who visited my Book Sale and some work colleagues over the last few weeks, along with a conversation with Davies and Scarlett about pocket money. Interesting stuff, but tricky to write rather than talk about as I don’t want to cause offence or make others think I am judging their choices so feel the need to keep qualifying what I’m saying which sometimes then comes across as patronising. I should do more daytime, undistracted, sober writing though, it’s enjoyable :).

Off to work where it was banking first and catching up with S, who’s daughter is very ill with a worrying pain & vomiting something which has had her in and out of hospital for the last 10 days. She is in a bad way generally – 18, looking for a job but not knowing what she wants to do, just written off her first car after 2 accidents within a couple of months of passing her driving test and is likely to lose her licence as a result, has had a couple of bouts of glandular fever and just generally sounds very sad and low. I feel so sorry for her and for S who just doesn’t know what to do to help her daughter and is now desperately worried about what this latest illness might be. There has been speculation about an ulcer apparently and having brought her home on Wednesday S left work early in the end yesterday as the GP had been out and her daughter was being readmitted to hospital again yesterday afternoon.

I wasn’t doing Rhyme Time as I’d suggested to Y that maybe it was time to get some more people trained up with me leaving in February and therefore only around for another 8 or so sessions. The Childrens Librarian was in anyway so she took one of the new staff in with her and they did it. It was quite nice sitting at the desk and listening rather than being the one in there leading it.

It was grey and drizzly at lunchtime so I stayed in the staffroom and enjoyed a whole hour with a cup of tea and a magazine all to myself :).

The afternoon dragged rather, I spent some time removing staples from a wall display area, some more time creating cut out letters for a display and then handed it all over to the girl to put up. I even ceremoniously handed over the staple gun and staple remover which has previously always been refered to as ‘Nicola’s staple gun’ 😆 I’m quite enjoying shedding jobs at work :).

I had a long chat with R, one of the librarians who was the supervisor in the afternoon about the restructuring at the library which has all the senior people applying and reapplying for jobs within the new structure. Some are worried, some are positive and some are a bit que sera sera about it. R’s wife also works for the council in a different department and her role is also under threat so it’s very stressful in their house currently. We talked about the ‘one life, live it’ reasoning behind our adventure next year and he told me about his brother who was an architect for a big London firm, working long hours and hating it so retrained and is now an Eco-architect working on green builds, living in a commune type community self sufficient farm project with a load of anarchists and couldn’t be more happy. It’s interesting how so many people know someone who has gone off and done something crazy and how many of them observe how much happier they now are. Hopefully we’ll join those ranks rather than being the cautionary tale instead :).

I got ambushed by an older bloke who wanted to come and talk at me (rather than to me) about how he’d sued councils and police forces and all sorts of people, how his ex wife was a witch, how women had got it all wrong with their feminism and were no longer attractive to men like him and a load of other such ‘opinions’ for about half an hour. He left after thanking me for our chat and saying how much he’d enjoyed it. I agreed it had been a pleasure but it was more from catching the eyes of people standing behind him and thinking how lucky I am to be able to be happy about being me rather than wanting to bring everyone else around me down than because it had actually been pleasurable talking to him. I then talked to an older woman who comes in very regularly and lived near where my Dad grew up and is trying to find information about who might still be around in that area that she knew in childhood. I’ve been helping her every time I’ve been in recently and she’s a nice woman who seems lonely and is happy to have found someone to smile and exchange a hello with. It’s people like both of them who make you realise libraries are more than just free loans of books and they are the ones who never make it onto the statistics of visitors and library users really.

Back at home the kids were just finishing their tea and were very pleased to see me. They both had gripes about Ady who had clearly had a fairly stressful work day with them along with him. Next year is going to be so good for the three of them… I wanted to go out and get the food for tonight as we’ve got the Not Swingers coming for dinner and I thought having all the food already here would be a good move and save me an hour of stress today. Both the kids wanted to come with me so armed with my list we went off while Ady had a bath and an hour to himself. We got everything (dinner parties are definitely cheaper without meat ;)) and then after a bit of a hiatus about stories we ended up in Scarlett’s bedroom cuddled up while I read to them before they went off to bed.

Ady and I had dinner and watched the Attenborough programme. I drank too much and fell asleep on the sofa watching An Idiot Abroad before finally staggering up to bed in the early hours and then being unable to get back to sleep. I’m not making any silly pledges today about alcohol but I do think being away next year will be a good thing for my liver…

sung to the ‘tune’ of We Didn’t Start the fire. A song I would love to write some new lyrics for and one day probably will :).

I had a very long lie in this morning to make up for several crap nights sleep and felt better for it, despite a noisy / wriggly ten minute cuddle with Scarlett about an hour before I actually got up.

I had texts from two of the three potential Book Buyers to say they weren’t coming. I fear we peaked early with our first two buyers book sale wise but am still hoping we might sell a few more. Maybe I should stick them on ebay…

We watched some Beat the Boss which we all quite like and I processed some washing. Davies and Scarlett were drawing – Scarlett doing some firework pictures and Davies having a go at a landscape drawing kit he got for Christmas last year. I showed them how to make firework pictures by colouring over rainbow stripes with black crayon and then scratching firework shapes off and then we got into using the letters of our names to create pictures – a boat using the D of Davies for the sail and so on.

They sort of cleared that up and started playing with geomags while I spent some time sorting out kitchen cupboards. It hadn’t been my intention but I’d gone to find cake tins for Christmas cake baking and not been able to find the loose bottom of one of the pair of tins I wanted to use so started rummaging looking for it. Having taken most of the contents out of the first cupboard and not found it I decided to do the job properly and take everything out, chuck out the stuff we don’t need and put it all away again tidily. This meant matching up tupperware boxes with lids and chucking out all rogue lids and boxes, both the kids bottles went (it’s been *years* even though they were both still using they way past 5yo for milk at night), I found some new decent tea towels so chucked out some of the old tattered ones and created three less crowded and tidy cupboards, a pile of stuff to chuck out and two large bags of stuff to freecycle (which as no one has come forward to ask for will probably end up at a charity shop tomorrow). But no loose bottom. Which I then discovered the other side of the open cupboard door when I closed it so must have fallen and slid out in the very first pile of stuff I took out after all. Never mind, another job ticked off the list as done.

By then the kids were getting on each others nerves and I could hear Davies doing a fine line in being irritating to Scarlett so I called him out and asked him if he’d like to help me instead. He agreed and set to cutting out greaseproof paper to line tins, then greasing and lining them while I weighed out the first batch of ingredients and started mixing the first cake. Davies then chopped some cherries for me and I called Scarlett to come and have a stir and make a wish. I’d used bantams eggs for the first cake and we all had a stir before pouring the batter into the tin. I then asked Scarlett if we could use Splooshes eggs for the second cake. We have had them for a fair few weeks and I was worried they were just going to end up going off. We tested them for freshness in a bowl of water and then smelt them when cracked open to check and they were fine (another double yolker) so Scarlett did the mixing eggs and brandy while Davies weighed out and rubbed in flour and butter and I mixed fruit and sugar. Scarlett then chopped some cherries and we all had a stir and made wishes for the second duck egg cake.

Just as we were pouring that batter into a tin there was a knock at the door and Tasha, Toby and Vinnie arrived to look at books :). The kids had a great couple of hours playing inside and out and I had a nice chat with Tasha who took a few books.

They left and Davies and Scarlett came in for a very late lunch then we made some 3d shapes with the geomags and panels and experimented with the strength of different structures. As the oven was on for hours with the cakes I stuck jacket potatoes in for the kids tea and they watched a Harry Potter film while playing.

Ady came home, the kids had tea, Scarlett asked me to make her a count down to her birthday calendar and we looked at potential places for her to have an animal ‘experience’ as her birthday present. Everything is either stupidly expensive or just too basic with tasks like feeding rabbits or grooming ponies. I understand 8 year olds can’t be set loose feeding tigers by hand but it would be nice to think she could do something exciting and different. All of the really interesting stuff is over 16s only 🙁 The other problem is of course her birthday being so close to the shortest day of the year we are only looking at a few hours daylight and bloody cold outside so most zoo trips are not likely to be enjoyable either. Ady is working on her birthday too so as will my Mum I expect so at best it will be me, Davies and possibly my Dad accompanying her somewhere. I did ask if she wanted to do something with friends but she declined. She’s really not a cinema and McDonalds with a couple of friends kind of girl ;).

The kids went to bed and we had baths / cooked dinner and sat down to watch River Cottage. Davies appeared with an amazing calendar he had created for Scarlett counting down til her birthday, must get a pic tomorrow. It has 30 dates, advent calendar style with numbered doors to open and a picture behind each one – mostly animals or Scarlett or characters from TV she likes. Several have bits of a picture and the next door opens the rest, a couple have little pull out pictures behind them and the final door is huge with 30 on the front and a message saying ‘Happy Birthday Scarlett love Davies’ behind it. It almost made me cry it was so lovely :). And so well made and thought out. I do have a very lovely son.

Who will do almost anything to avoid going to sleep ;).

Which reminds me of another lovely moment from earlier when Davies looked at my tatty notebook with all my recipes written in it and said ‘that’s a precious book isn’t it. One day can I have it?’ to which Scarlett who had just appeared in the kitchen answered ‘No, *I’m* getting that book, I’ve already asked!’. I did offer to write it out again for both of them in nicer books, if I’d known it was to become a coveted item I’d have gone for a prettier notebook but they both insisted it was the very fact you can guess the ingredients by what is spilt on the pages rather than what is written there that makes it so special :). I will sit one day and re-write it into two nicer books to present them with one each though :).

I’ve been sleeping badly the last few nights and last night was not helped by Davies staggering into our room just after 2am saying he’d had a bad dream. He got into bed with us and that meant the rest of my night was even more unsettled. This morning I talked to him about his bad dream and he said I had gone out to a party and been talking to him on the phone when I had slipped into a pool and been attacked by a crocodile! In waking moments he is very rational about all his current little quirky worries so I’m happy they are more a child who is able to articulate concerns and share them with me rather than anything too overwhelming.

We were all up early this morning thanks to a complicated set of childcare arrangements for today. Julie had offered to have Davies and Scarlett this morning but then rung me to say she’d double booked and Jack and Maisie were booked into an education workshop at a place called Time Machine Fun which was organised by the localish Home Ed group she belongs to. She suggested I contact the organiser (who I know) to see if Davies and Scarlett could attend under her membership with her as their nominated grown up. I got in touch with Cate who kindly agreed that would be okay but mentioned some reservations about it being designed for over 10s with adult assistance for under 10s leaving Julie stretched a bit thin.

Julie came up with all sorts of possible scenarios including Scarlett and Maisie going somewhere else while she took Jack and Davies but we eventually settled on Ady taking Davies and Scarlett with him, dropping them off at 10am and meeting Julie there and then staying in the vicinity incase he was needed. Davies took his phone incase he wanted us and I was to go to work and come home and have some childfree time before Ady brought the kids back in time for Badgers.

I’m rubbish at being without the kids, I hate them being taken anywhere in someone else’s car and admit to being far more clingy than is healthy. Can’t help it though.

So Ady took the kids off just before 8am and I used the quiet house, no disturbances, 100% sober time to sit and write an email to our local friend who is dying. I’ve been meaning to do it for nearly 2 weeks, had bought a card to write by hand in but not managed it and then heard she was checking emails and happy to be contacted that way. I agonised over what to write but settled for telling her exactly what I think of her. I think generally we’re all a bit rubbish at that. Sure, sometimes it wouldn’t be nice things you’d say so they are better left unsaid but I think hearing the good things that people think about you is lovely – both to say and be said to. So I let it flow, told her all I admire and love about her, some snapshot memories of times we have shared and just typed it all out. I felt terribly sad for having had reason to do so but happy to have said it all.

Then off to work.

I spent some time on the desk, some time taking down a display and some time shelving. None of it very exciting really but it went quickly. Davies rang at one point but I wasn’t around so just got a message to say ‘Davies rang to check you are okay.’ bless him.

I needed to get some bread for Badgers tonight so called over to Sainsburys and then called in to see my Dad for half an hour. He was looking old and tired which always distresses me. I’ve deliberately not thought too much about months away not seeing my Dad but for me personally that will be a hardship on a low level, pang of missing him every now and then type way.

Davies rang and Julie spoke to me to say she had had enough and wanted to leave so I arranged for Ady to go and collect the kids early (only by about an hour). Davies and Scarlett tell me they would have happily stayed all day and indeed one of the most interesting sounding bits was scheduled in for the very end of the session and they were running late already but they needed to get back for Badgers. They learnt loads about cameras through the ages, made various cameras with junk, took some real cameras apart to see how they work and generally enjoyed themselves loads.

Ady rang ahead and asked me to run them a bath as they were filthy so I did that and gathered up spices from the kitchen to take to Badgers along with some info off wikipedia about spices and bread. Ady brought the kids home and they went straight in the bath while Ady had a coffee and then headed back out again.

I saw the things the kids had made and heard all about their day, brushed and plaited Scarlett’s hair and trimmed Davies’ fringe so he can actually see out of it again (he refuses to have the length at the back cut at all, I think he may be competing with Tarly :lol:).

We drove to Badgers singing Bohemian Rhapsody which the kids declared far more fun than listening to real music and said we should do more often. 😆

Badgers was quite a good one. First I got out all the spices, let them smell and look at them and talk about ones they knew. We then talked about what spices are: dried fruit, bark, seeds, flower pods and other vegetative matter used for flavouring, colouring and preserving foods. We talked about which were which eg cumin, coriander, pepper seeds, cloves as flowers, ginger and tumeric as roots, cinnamon as bark, saffron as stamen. We talked about other purposes: medicinal, religious ceremony, perfume. What herbs are and where we get spices from – 86% from India.

Next I brought out a selection of breads and we tried them, I had french bread, bagels, nan, tortilla wraps, ciabatta. We talked about bread and water being the basics for bread, all of the other ingredients that can be added, how bread can be baked, fried, steamed and how it is one of the first prepared foods dating back to neolithic period. We talked about where flour comes from and types of mills they may have visited; the south downs used to have loads of windmills and a few still remain. How neolitic people would have made flour and then sampled some of the breads I’d brought.

We had some time left and I’d mentioned last time the idea of the Hungry Badgers planning a Christmas party so we talked about venue, guest list, themes, invites etc. Then I split them into two teams to take about food and drink and entertainment ideas. It seemed to work with the the olde kids writing and the younger ones doing drawers of their ideas.

Back at home Ady had made the kids some tea so they ate and watched the W&G contraptions thing on BB1. Then we wrapped up warm and headed back out again into Lancing for the Beach Green firework display. We’d been thinking we would finally go and ‘do Lewes’ this year having never actually managed to get there in all the years we’ve lived down the road and now having children old enough to take along for the early part of the madness there but I am working til 6pm on Friday so I just can’t see us getting into Lewes before it all closes down. We could get the train in (although those are also packed) but it would involve a couple of changes and I’d be slightly worried about bonfire, late night Friday craziness again on the way home. I wish I’d realised a few weeks ago I was working and could have planned a couple of hours off in the afternoon and got over to Lewes with a car or the campervan earlier. But I didn’t and we need to be up early on Saturday morning for Wildlife Explorers and we have friends over for dinner on Saturday and a whole host of other reasons leading to us being sensible and not going to Lewes after all :(. Which meant I’ve been scouring for local firework displays and in deference to the event that is Lewes there is very little happening locally on Friday itself.

We drove into Lancing and parked a little way away from the beach then walked down. There was a big funfair there but we avoided that and headed straight to the beachside edge of the roped off area. There were people with buckets collecting for the local cancer hospice charity (the display was free) so the kids chucked some money in and got a balloon and a little fuzzy bug thing from the bucket toting man. The fireworks were excellent, a good ten minutes worth of very impressive bangs, whizzes and colours that had everyone oohing and ahhing :).

Back home the kids went to bed, we had baths and ate dinner infront of a taped Apprentice from earlier. I did start this blogpost then but fell asleep over my laptop to had to give up and go to bed!

Today I wanted to make our Christmas cake, get an ebay parcel posted, pop into the library to collect some items and take some back and then go swimming.

We had a slow-ish start, Scarlett made breakfast for her and Davies and tea for me :). I am sure there is a healthy element of competition in them both being so grown up and helpful with all this tea making, washing up, fire lighting, chicken keeping and so on but it’s all very lovely and very heartening for next year when we are needing them to be both independant and able aswell as helpful and useful :). Before I had children if I ever did imagine myself as a mother (which I have to confess was not often) it was always with ‘kids’ rather than babies and I think at 10 and nearly 8 I do now have ‘kids’ and I love it :).

I parcelled up the ebay package, cleared out the stuff that had accumulated beneath and behind my sofa and worked out some money stuff for camp while the kids geomagged and we all half watched a documentary about whether humans have evolved from more than one initial starting point – ah found link Incredible Human Journey which was very interesting.

We then gathered stuff together and headed into Lancing. Post office first where there was a huge queue which we passed time in by discussing stamps being currency, looking at the new range of Wallace and Gromit post office products, wondering whether the little flint Davies had chipped away at could be considered a weapon and guessing which cashier we would be served by. We looked at the presentation pack of W&G Christmas stamps but decided not to buy them despite the PO running a competition to win a trip to the Aardman studios if you bought one, which would of course be one of Davies’ dreams come true.

From there we visited the bakery at the childrens’ request for a cake each for after lunch and then to the library to take some bits back, collect some that were in and both children picked a book each too.

Back home for lunch after which I realised I didn’t have time to get the Christmas cake done before we left (it needs a good couple of hours in the oven and our oven is too unreliable to leave unattended as the temperature gauge thing is broken so it flares up and down at will leaving you with raw or burnt food if not closely monitored.

I was intolerant and ranty for a bit, hung some washing up inside, Scarlett made me another cup of tea and then I sat and priced up a boxful of clothes ready for my friend’s nearly new sale. Am hoping she can collect them soon as they are really cluttering up the playroom. I have a second box to price and a couple more items to freecycle and that should pretty much leave us with most things to leave the house having gone aside from stuff in the garage and the sack of kids clothes we’re bringing to Okehampton.

I tidied all of that away and the kids put their stuff away then it was off to the swimming pool. I got stuck into my lengths and was doing really well – 53 in the first hour so well on track for my 100 in 2 hours. When we first got there it was pretty quiet so Scarlett being rowdy was rather noticeable and she got asked by a lifeguard how old she was and where her parents were when she answered that she was 7. She pointed me out and I happened to be watching so was able to wave and agree that I was with her which satisfied the lifeguard who had been mostly concerned as to whether she could swim as she was hanging about near the deep end.

I then noticed Davies wasn’t in the pool after about 10 minutes of Scarlett being in her lesson so had to stop at the end of a length to spot him. He was sitting with his towel looking cold and rather pale and saying he felt ill. I said he may as well wait until Scarlett had finished her lesson as all our clothes were together in one locker and I wanted to see if he perked up so I carried on with my lengths, stopping after every two to check he was still okay to sit and wait. Hence we left half an hour early so I only had 90 minutes swimming instead of my planned 2 hours and did just 76 lengths rather than my aimed for 100 🙁 .

Once we were out and dressed Davies seemed to recover a little and so got a lecture about making Scarlett miss out on her last half hour of swimming time, me on 25 lengths and putting more pressure on my sponsored swim and the fact he had missed the lesson my Dad pays for too. He is perpetually tired, pale and clearly suffering from a lack of sleep but still sits up in bed every night finding ways to not go to sleep. It drives me mad and I have even less sympathy when it impacts on the rest of us during the day too. I have tried wearing him out physically, ensuring he has meals at sensible times and is full of carbs, having no stimulating TV or games before bed, reading calm stories with quiet cuddles before bed, aromatherapy tricks in his room and nothing seems to work. He’s like some mad professor who is at his most brilliant in the dead of night, full of imagination, creativity and ideas but a growing 10 year old body doesn’t thrive on this and I veer between feeling glad he can allow himself to work to his own natural rhythm and not being a black kettle calling pot when I am frequently still awake many hours after midnight myself and fretting that I am being utterly irresponsible in allowing it to go on…

So we were home early and the kids put the chickens away and closed curtains round the house while I lit a fire and got their dinner on – sausages with jackets for Davies and mash for Scarlett. We were having our sausages later with roasted veg and the kids liked their sausages so much I cooked a couple more each for them :).

Ady arrived home and Davies read to him for a while from a book he’d picked up in the library while I read to Scarlett from a book she’d saved from the Book Sale box about wild animals all around us in the UK. We looked at hedgehogs and moles 🙂 She has a real repetoire of animal facts these days and often tells me a couple which are almost always things I didn’t know before. I do love being Home educated by my children ;).

Scarlett was asleep fairly quickly and although I heard Ady talk to Davies when he went up to bed about 1030pm he is now fast asleep so this sort of counts as an early night for him….

Please give me some feedback on this menu 🙂

Starter: soup, I’m thinking the butternut and nut butter soup from the River Cottage programme the other day.

Main: Roasted vegetables with nutty stuffing balls. I’m planning red onions, garlic, carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, potatoes all roasted in red wine and olive oil with plenty of herbs and some nutty stuffing balls.

Dessert: Apple tart with home made custard.

I want it to be autumnal. I do the roasted vegetable dish usually with sausages but thought nutty stuffing balls would go well as a veggie substitute. Does it sound ok?

Today was the Open House Book Sale day I had had the brainwave to do last week. I had about 8 people arranged to come along with the first at 1030am. Davies and Scarlett were already up and breakfasted and Ady was still around so I made myself a cup of tea and hung some washing out.

Ady had brought the boxes of books I’d sorted out last night into the lounge so once I’d nipped round the shop to get some biscuits, found a pot to put takings into and filled the big flask with a couple of kettlefuls of boiling water I arranged the books a bit more to allow for several people to browse at once.

I had four boxes of childrens non-fiction, two of children’s fiction roughly seperated into older and younger groupings with the pink fairy / Barbie / princess stuf grouped together, the table top had adult fiction and biographies, across two chairs were cookery books, across another two were parenting books and under the table was a miscellaneous area of other general non-fiction.

Davies and Scarlett were doing yet more room tidying on the basis that the tidier and more segregated they keep their stuff the easier the final seperation will be and that they might just get fed up of tidying so much stuff and start to want to get shot of it 😆

My first ‘punter’, M arrived bang on 1030am as arranged so having made her a cup of tea and had a quick chat she started piling up books to buy just as L, the next customer arrived. Both had come without children so once Davies and Scarlett had said Hello and offered the plate of biscuits round they disappeared off to play outside.

M had a huge pile of 46 books. I was doing 50p each or 3 for £1 so I persuaded her to choose two more for the £16 rather than £15.50 and she did choose two more but insisted on not being given change from her £20 as ‘it’s such a good cause and I have a bargain amount of books for twenty quid!’. So she went off very happy :).

Spookily L had the exact same 46 books so chose another 2 and also gave me £20 and refused change :). Hurrah, £40 in the first hour.

E and K had arrived with 3 of their 5 children – one was at Caz and Bid’s and the other at Julie’s. Very incestuous the HE world ;). Davies and Scarlett were pleased to see children and after a bit of a warming up they lured them outside to see the chickens while I had a good old chat with K and E and made them second cups of tea. They both left with a large pile of books but have been at the Home Ed game rather longer than M and L so were not quite so taken with all the text books ;).

Before they left our last buyers arrived – E and her husband and their two children. H went straight out to play with Davies and Scarlett while little N stayed mostly on her mum’s lap while they looked at books and drank tea. They chose a rather smaller pile completing my business for the day at nearly 200 books gone and a nice healthy £58 in the pot. A couple of people had intended to come but not made it and several more had been unable to make a Monday so I’ve put it up again for Thursday and am hoping more will come along then.

Ady arrived home just as the kids and I sat down to a late lunch. Davies made cups of tea for Scarlett and I *and* did all the washing up, telling me he wanted to make sure he was fully practised for such duties ready for being helpful and independant next year 🙂 He also offered to make the teas and coffees for the next book sale although actually both he and Scarlett did an amazing job of playing with all the kids and tidying up after all of their games while I pimped books to their parents, which I told both of them I was very proud of them for :).

Ady had lunch with us and then the kids went back outside to play while I wrote a couple of blogposts (several of the book sale attendees told me they are avid readers :)) on the WW blog and sorted the remaining books into genre, subject, age groupings ready to bring out on Thursday.

They found a dead and rather squashed chick in the chicken house when they went to put them to bed, not one of the two chicks we have, this must have hatched today. It looked rather disabled with stunted wings so I suspect the hen had culled it herself 🙁 Always a bit sad and Scarlett and I buried it in the garden. I got a fire lit and cooked the kids some tea.

I stuck a few bits on freecycle that we’d got from the wardrobes and bathrooms and had some very speedy responses to things so stuck them on the doorstep ready for collection. One of the item was an Ikea kids chair that I think we got Davies for Christmas when he was 2. It’s rarely been used as a chair, spent ages in the loft, then in a theoretical ‘gaming corner’ in Davies’ room and has been used as a clothes dump in our room for about a month. We had planned to give it to Julie but I decided to just get it out of the house so stuck it on freecycle where it went within about five minutes. Davies suddenly decided he didn’t want to part with it and so we had some upset from him. Not easy as the person coming to collect had sent a gushing message about how her daughter had been wanting one for ages and she would save it as one of her Christmas presents so I was really happy it was going to a good, grateful home. Davies agreed he still wanted it to go but was pretty upset 🙁

Davies and I had a long chat about things that feel hard, what is important and what we really need, what we really want and what is just nice to have but not really important. We discussed how things like love and laughter are pretty important and I said so were tears and sorrow. Which led on to how you need to feel hungry to appreciate food, thirsty to appreciate water, to be bursting for a wee to appreciate a toilet, how much better a feeling is when it answers real need in us. How pushing boundaries is scary and hard and testing but probably very worth it in the end. I told Davies I had written something earlier that might help explain it so read him out the chicken post from WW. Ady and Scarlett crept closer and listened too and we talked about whether that blog would make a good book – we’d been rather book focussed today obviously ;). I explained that I’d been writing it for a few months and wanted to keep it up through the whole year and both kids decided they wanted me to read them the blog instead of a bedtime story tonight.

So in pjs and with clean teeth they snuggled up while I read to them all about us and the last few months, the surprise of getting Willow early, the thought process behind the whole plan. We read all of August and September and saved October for tomorrow. They have been utterly involved every step of the way but to listen to it as a sort of story with themselves cast in such lead roles was really appealing to them 🙂

Davies said he felt much better about the chair and they were both really renewed with excitement and all the remembered feelings about when we first saw the van and then when we bought her and brought her home. I do think it’s easy for the whole adventure to have become just who we are and what we’re doing within our own home and of course Davies and Scarlett are not getting the level of positive feedback and shared excitement from their friends as Ady and I are so it was nice to re-inject them with some of that ‘wow!’ feeling again :).

We sort of split the hour this morning, getting up a tiny bit later than usual but having extra daytime too. I quite like the clocks going back, not just for the extra hour but because I enjoy the dark evenings, although I do support the 10:10 campaign for staying lighter longer for all the very good eco reasons they put forward and I know plenty of friends who struggle with less daylight and sunshine.

We’d put a selection of airbeds on freecycle yesterday so had to stagger putting them on the doorstep to make sure the right people got the right things. I don’t really like the strange not-to-sure-what-to-do-or-say ness of freecycle exchanges. In my opinion both parties are getting what they want – stuff cleared or free stuff so it’s a mutually good deal but then if someone collecting is not suitably thankful I regret giving things to them so I’d rather just let them come and collect more anonymously.

Scarlett made cups of tea (she is really very good at that now, makes it just the right colour 🙂 ), the kids tried on some wetsuits we’d dug out of the wardrobe to see if they still fitted, one was too small so is now on ebay, the other fitted both of them but Scarlett didn’t like it. Davies did though so that might come along with us next year.

We all sat and watched a home video of the first year Ady and I were at this house – February 1993 onwards. We’ve both changed sooo much – I was 20 and Ady was 29, his 30th birthday and my 21st are part of the video, along with a housewarming party, loads of friends we mostly are not in touch with other than Christmas card exchanges and the kittens we had followed by Malice and Candle at their most wild and feral. The early few months in the house were chaos, bare floorboards, no kitchen, walls being knocked down, new bathroom and heating and total rewiring with dust and mess everywhere and nowhere to escape it all. There is also a little bit of the 3 month build to create upstairs, all with a couple of months old Davies wailing as a soundtrack to the stress of further dust, a bloody great hole in the roof, our bedroom the ground zero point of the build where the stairs went in. The video shows Ady and I mostly cheerful throughout, enjoying the adventure and the process and looking forward to achieving our eventual aim of the house we wanted. It gave me fresh bolstering that we’ll be just fine with any hardships and tough times next year.

And hopeful the physical work, reduced diet and less drinking might return me to that gorgeous slender version of myself aged 20 ;).

Ady went off to empty the drawer in our bed where he has stashed mobile phones over the years when contracts have provided free upgrades, dismantle the now emptied chest of drawers and put away the clothes. Scarlett went to ‘help’ him and Davies did some Simpsons movie maker while I started listing the phones on ebay. This took hours for some reason so I hope they make more than the 99p each I have started them all off.

Ady chopped up one chest of drawers for firewood but said the second one was really quite intact so I stuck it on freecycle – loads of interest and collected very quickly :).

We rang up about an oven for sale locally which claimed to ‘need a bit of a clean, hence £45ono’ but was the exact same oven in the same colour we’d seen in the shop yesterday for £175 so I was keen to go and look at. We went via the clothes bank to drop off clothes not worth trying to sell. When we arrived at the house it was possibly the most run down from the outside property I have ever seen. All the children in the street must surely assume a witch lives there. The gate was hanging off it’s hinges, an upstairs window was broken, the garden was totally overgrown and full of stuff like a rusty bike, a fridge and a broken sink. We were incredibly reluctant to knock on the door and actually go in and had pretty much decided we’d be saying no to the cooker. But despite a couple of knocks on the door nobody answered so we were saved. The quest for the cooker continues…

Back at home Ady got dinner on, the kids played outside until after dark and then came in for a bath while I cleared the bookcase ready for the Books Sale tomorrow. We have gone from six shelves fully stocked, a couple of them with double levels of books to barely three shelves – one of books the kids want to keep (and I agree, they are really nice, new books on subjects they are interested in and are therefore worth storing), one of books I want to keep, things like dictionaries, a couple of autobiographies, things like Harry Potter which the kids want to keep to read when they are able and a shelf half full of books we will be taking with us. Both kids still have bookcases in their bedrooms so I guess we will still have a fair few boxes of books when we come back :).

Plenty for the book sale tomorrow though, non-fiction and fiction, chick lit and biographies, loads of kids reference books (mostly ex library stock) and a few work books, activity books, some reading scheme stuff and I’ve also pulled out the educational cd and pc games that didn’t sell at car boot sales but will probably go to fellow HEors tomorrow. I think I have about 6 or 7 people planning to come and I’ll do a second date either this week or next too.

We had dinner watching The Cube and the kids went to bed. I watched the last of the Single Dad and thought the ending was quite disappointing. I can’t decide whether I have enjoyed that or not really.

I feel like the kids have missed out a bit this weekend as we’ve been busy doing fairly boring stuff so they’ve been confined to the house finding their own entertainment. I’ve also felt bad looking at my friends facebook pages today seeing how much everyone else has done for Hallloween. It’s not something I am remotely fussed about either way, we’ve done a few parties or done nothing at all in previous years, this year was a do nothing year. So no pumpkins, no dressing up and no scaring the neighbours banging on their doors after dark ;).