Meanwhile back at the ranch…

You’d think from the amount of posts I’ve done today that I hadn’t actually been away from the laptop but I have 😉

First thing I got two loads of washing on – one of which is dry, the other of which is still in the machine but will dry overnight. That puts me back up to date with washing so tomorrow, in between running around like a loon (which is the new pattern of Wednesdays for us!) I plan to get the spare set of loose sofa covers clean and dry to swap them over so we leave a clean house – will also aim to get all the beds changed and bedlinen washed before we go away too. Before doing that I built a massive brio track which the kids played fairly nicely with while I did the first bit of pc stuff.

I tried to raise someone at the advertised Badgers sett to get Davies’ name down to start when we come back but failed – will try that again tomorrow at some point.

Kids have played with geomags, glitter and glue, drawing, beads and more.

At 10 ish I broke off an IM chat with Ali to get Tarly dressed, clear away the brio, hoover the crumbled playdough, dash round the shops (I say dash, I mean meander at toddler pace stopping to sniff every flower, avoid every crack in the pavement and discuss every sound of course!) to get bread and crisps for lunch. I also placed a Book People order for some really exciting looking books which should be here tomorrow 🙂

Just about managed to be ready for guests arriving at 11 with a fairly tidy house 🙂

Lucy, Rebecca and baby Richard (my long lost teenage friend who is HE curious) came round for chats and lunch before we all went to the toddler group in the church round the corner.

Interesting chats interupted continuously by children but mainly about HE, how it works, LEA, what autonomous means, what an Ed Phil is and so on. Hard to get continuity when you are trying to explain a difficult concept and keep losing your thread but I think she is gradually getting the idea. I get the impression she listens to me and goes away all inspired and keen to do it, then gradually that wears off and dwindles until she next sees me again. She mentioned today what a huge responsibility it would be and whether in 20 years it would have actually made a difference. I explained that I *have* to believe it will otherwise I would not be doing it, but that it is certainly not for everyone, or the easy option, or without sacrifices and a lot of soul searching. I’ve promised to send her some links and other bits to ponder a bit further over so we’ll see. She’s joined EO yahoo list and been fairly put off by all the extreme cases she’s read about over there so that probably has not helped 🙁

The toddler group was, well it was a toddler group really! I’ve never been much into them as I don’t really struggle to meet and make friends anyway, I dislike the church hall environment and any references to the other purpose of the location always make me feel a little uncomfortable (the first song in the sing song was about thanking the Lord for stuff the children chose, random example – we thanked the Lord for oranges with much clapping and exagerated hand circles to represent oranges – not really my thing! And my two looked very bemused by it all too!) and the toys are always dusty, crappy and broken.

But, the children actually quite enjoyed playing with the various stuff – they had lots of pretend food, various sit on toys and cars, a trampoline, musical instruments and dressing up stuff – all of which was serviceable if slightly tired. They interacted with the other few children there and I got to sit and chat to Lucy and drink tea someone else had made for me with posh biscuits – and all for a quid!

I guess it is better to see Lucy there every so often and be able to walk away from the mess than have them round here and try to make the tea, keep managing the children and have to tidy up at the end of it. It does clearly state 0-5 but there were a couple of older girls there who I think were not at school because it wasn’t starting until Thursday or something so D didn’t stand out today, I’ll give it another try as and when and just see what we get out of it each time. At least we can walk there in a couple of minutes and I don’t think they will try too hard to convince us to attend Sunday services 😉

We left there and came home to jaffa cakes and geomags, I did a bit more on the laptop while the children played, then tea, Ady arrived home, bathed them while he hoovered (again!) and they are now in bed.

I’m cooking tonight, so I need to have a nice long bath first and I probably should make an effort to put some of the huge pile of washing away – oh and I really must do those CVs tonight too – they are not due back until Thursday but I am attempting to create an illusion of myself as organised, reliable and speedy so a day early would be good 🙂

Tomorrow looks to be bedlam with TT2 for Tarly at 9.30am (must find her TT T shirt), group from 1-3pm (theme not back to school party) TT2 for Davies at 3.30pm (necessitating break neck speed dash across town 😉 ) and as Ady is taking the day off to work from home which should mean I can take them both to TT2 without the other one) he will no doubt have some typing up he wants me to do for him in the evening.