We were supposed to be on a Dinosaur Walk this afternoon in Hastings but it had been postponed due to the weather leaving us with a free day. We are still 40 minutes behind the rest of the UK thanks to our 10 minute daily increments to catch up to the whole BST thing so found ourselves at nearly midday having not long breakfasted and watched most of Back to the Future III pondering what to do with our day.
After some discussion we decided to head into Worthing to continue Ady’s Second Hand Shoes Quest without him. I told Davies and Scarlett they could have £1 each to spend however they chose but gave them some guidance on spending it wisely and checking in with themselves that nothing they might later find for sale would trump what they had in their hand before making purchases. There are about 12 charity shops in the town centre so I put 2 hours parking on the car and we set off. It rained fairly solidly for the duration but we had a nice couple of hours. I got a couple of new tops, Davies got a couple of new tops and Scarlett got about six new tops (when I say new I mean new to us obviously) which she is in need of as her wardrobe consists of things she has grown out of, things she now considers too pink to wear and things that are too stained with nail varnish / paint / Scarlett’s potions to wear out in public – that child has the biggest selection of ‘alright for just playing in’ clothes ever. But no shoes for Ady 🙁
Scarlett found a soft toy eagle in one of the shops and debated spending her pound on it – it was in as new condition but she struggled with spending the whole pound in one go and even asked the woman at the counter twice how much she wanted for it :). I love her confidence in going up to the counter and chatting to the volunteers in charity shops, infact both the kids are great at this and completed all their own transactions today. We only got one ‘no school today?’ question with a very nice ‘Good for you!’ response to the Home Ed answer 🙂 Clearly no one would have been able to level any issue at my super brave, confident children working out how much money they’d have left or socialising / talking to people anyway :). Scarlett also found some random thing for sale and when I couldn’t give her an answer as to what it was she took it to the counter and asked and had several of the staff pondering over it trying to give her a reply :).
The eagle was eventually haggled for when the shop manager came out to check what Scarlett’s dilemma was and she got it for 50p, hence spending half and saving half – Davies brought his whole pound home :). We also ventured into a cheap shop as Scarlett really needed pjs – all of hers are aged 5-6years ones that Davies finally grew out of. Kids pjs don’t seem to come up in charity shops so I resorted to buying new – she found two sets of two pairs for £6 each – so 4 pairs for £12 which I thought was not too bad. We also found various tops they both liked for £2 each and I ended up with a huge bag of tops, pjs and socks for £20.
Employing both children at different times to distract the other I also bagged an X box game for Davies and a plaster mould sea life kit for Scarlett that they’d respectively spotted but had been outside their budget to give as Easter gifts.
Scarlett was then reminded of the really cool old fashioned sweetshop we use and so we decided to call into that parade of shops, which also has 3 charity shops on the way home. Charity shops merely netted a further 2 tops for Davies and 1 for Scarlett rather than any shoes for Ady but we had a very nice 15 minutes with the sweet shop owner selecting sweeties to bring home.
Not getting home until nearly 4pm we decided to go for late lunch / early tea /try and make sense of the whole clocks leaping about malarky with a HUGE meal for the kids. They watched the end of Back to the Future III and ate lots, I did laundry processing and chicken worrying and a chunk of book reading (still enjoying it J 🙂 ) and then we lit the fire and snuggled up to read some Humphrey (enjoying the latest Humphrey book – Holidays according to Humphrey, has C got it yet Mich?).
Ady came home, the kids went to bed with the intention of having them asleep within two hours (they went to bed at 7.15pm which is ridiculously early even when it wasn’t 6.15pm 48 hours ago but S was asleep by 10pm and D by 11pm which is pretty good going anyway even without the hour so it worked on some level). I cooked toad in the hole and adhered rather too closely to the Keith FFloyd style of cooking so probably need to go to bed soon as I’ll only be half an hour behind the rest of you come the morning…
Don’t think so . . .
Comment by Michelle — 30 March 2010 @ 11:28 pm