One word? When seven would do…

Better but in the immortal word of Catchphrase host Roy Walker ‘It’s good but it’s not right!’

Despite going to bed by 11pm last night I had one of those nights where your dreams are so vivid and exhausting that you are feeling more tired when you wake up than before you went to sleep. So I stayed in bed a while longer being interupted by requests to wipe bottoms and ‘look at this Mummy’ brought to my bedside (or at least the en suite!) until 9am when I was woken from yet another realistic dream by the doorbell!

I shot downstairs expecting it to be – and indeed rightly so – my Dad, so he made himself at home while I quickly got dressed and then plied him with coffee! 🙂 Aside from a brief rain shower right at the end of the day it has been bright and sunny and very windy here all day so perfect line drying weather that I made full use of with about 4 loads of washing :-). I also took advantage of Dad being here to leave the kids behind with him and head out to the library to return some books and sneakily walk round the town for 20 minutes child free too 🙂 Much needed and much appreciated this week!

I came home with some doughnuts for lunch for us all which we accompanied with some lovely crusty rolls from the bakers and the free packet of new improved Walkers crisps that came through the door. I remember free samples being posted really regularly when I was a child, don’t remember the last time we had any here. Dad stayed for lunch and then went off.

The children played with plasticine first thing and I showed Davies a few techniques for joining pieces together without them falling apart again. We covered keying the two surfaces with criss-cross patterns using a tool and making a hole in one piece and a protrusion in the other and then blending them. We briefly discussed other ways of joining things too.

Dad read Davies some of the My Naughty Little Sister book I had borrowed from the library. I remember either being read them aloud or reading them as a new reader myself as a child and had been telling Davies about them the other day as of course he is in full reciept of a naughty little sister of his own! I think it went down well, but I was making lunch so I can’t be sure. My Dad reads aloud really nicely, I used to love listening to him as a child. His voice totally alters and takes on this soft, lullaby like quality – he could have narrated children’s stories on TV and been excellent at it. I don’t know whether everyone’s voice changes to such a degree when they read aloud as it’s infrequent you hear other adults reading to children and I suppose you need to be a very fluent reader who is reading slightly ahead of what they are actually saying aloud in order to get the inflections right. My Mum, and Ady for example both read aloud in a slightly slilted manner which makes them not nearly so pleasant to listen to as my Dad. I did speculate to Davies that actually it could very well have been my Dad who read that book to me as a child but I don’t think he felt as sentimental about that as I did! 😉

Davies was desperate for me to do something ‘with him’ this afternoon so despite my natural inclination being to curl up with my laptop and leave them to it I did spent more time than I usually would sitting on the floor and ‘doing stuff’ with them both. I did have about an hour out to take a phonecall which left me spitting but as that was probably the only low point of my day and is hopefully in hand and getting resolved I’ll shove that to one side! I did ring the Badger leader lady having driven past the venue for Monday to check I knew where it was and found a big notice board outside listing all the regular meetings there with contact details for each. Turns out the Badgers here is a group of about 16 children ranging in age from 5 to 10 with, she says, a good mix of ages. The cost is £15 per term but she said to just come along and see what he thinks and if he likes it then we can pay to join after Easter. The uniform is £13 and then you give it back in and get the next size up (so I assume it is all second hand / used / rental type basis) which also sounds very sensible. She is quite happy for me to stay, for as long as he needs me and I have already got back up for staying home with Tarly from my Dad if Ady doesn’t get home in time – so feeling quite cheery about that next week. 🙂 Davies is slightly less thrilled but prepared to give it a go having ascertained that I will be there too – at least for now.

So phonecalls out of the way we did some drawings. Davies had started some Easter themed pictures of chicks and eggs so I drew the Easter Bunny and Scarlett coloured it in, Davies did some writing – he wrote ‘SBSHPR’ for ‘spacehopper’ which I thought pretty good and copied ‘EASTER BUNNY’ out too. Then I remembered we had a couple of Easter crafty type books kicking around from last year so we made some colour in and cut out Easter baskets and vases of flowers too. We watched Green Eggs and Ham, Sneetches, Zax and Grinch Night dvds while doing this so sang along happily. 🙂

Then with half an hour til teatime Davies wanted to do ‘one more easter egg type crafty thing pleeeeeease’. So I decided to take one more of the Real Home Educators Initiation Tests and did papier mache for the first time! 🙂 We had a newspaper in the recycling (part mached already thanks to being out there in the rain!) and mixed up some flour and water paste to cover a couple of balloons. They both did really well actually. They helped rip up newspaper into strips and remained surprisingly mess free. They both waned towards the end, which was a slight relief as their efforts needed a little tidying which they were happy for me to do and then they had sausage and mash for their tea. Well actually they ended up doing a Jack Sprat and his missus type swap with Tarly eating all the mash and Davies eating most of the sausages, but never mind!

Dinner tonight is a Friday night favourite of tacos and fajitas, which unfortnately falls to me to be cooking so I really must go and do so.

Don’t expect I’ll be around much tomorrow, I’m off to a NCT Nearly New Sale in the morning and tomorrow night Ady and I are going to see Little Britain Live. Hurrah, it’s the weekend! 🙂