By 9am I had already gotten dressed and had a beef stew cooking in the slow cooker.
By 10am I had already got a load of washing on the line, the children were dressed, a picnic lunch was packed.
By 11am we were standing in the car park at Highdown Gardens awaiting the two families coming to join us on our Activeo event of a Spring Walk.
I did think about taking some pictures and making it a photo blog day but decided against it as a) it is far from typical and b) I realised that I’d dressed Scarlett in an identical outfit to the one she wore last year for photoblog day and Davies was wearing the same trousers as last year too…hmm, spooky coincidence!
We had a nice walk round Highdown gardens although the woman and her daughter who’d come along too seemed to enjoy it the little girl (I think she was 8 ) clung to her mother and didn’t talk to us. She was really interested in new group though so that’s promising. She was a nice lady, full of questions and story-swapping about HE and actually it’s been a while since I met anyone new so it was quite nice to be doing that again. She has a 10 yo boy who does one day a week in school but would come along to HE group so that will be nice too.
She left after picnic lunch to go swimming with her daughter leaving me and Julie and the children. The children were fully engaged with some complicated game involving stripping a big stick of all it’s bark and chasing butterflies and bees. They got a range of looks from the large amounts of elderly people out enjoying the gardens from indulgent smiles to frowns at their noise and boisterousness but Julie and I enjoyed sitting on a picnic rug and chatting. 🙂 We left around 2pm when Scarlett decided she needed carrying.
Since arriving home the children have disappeared off into the newly spacious playroom and are playing with the megablocks and the cars on the car playmat, I’ve done a couple of emails, taken a scary money phonecall and made some snickerdoodles as we were lacking anything sweet in the house that isn’t chocolate and egg shaped 😉
I’ve started Catch 22 but failed to get into it although I’ll give it a full 3 chapters before deciding against it and I also looked at the first bit of To Kill a Mockingbird before deciding that having seen the film at least once during school days perhaps I’ll leave that one for now. I was reading stuff on the website for the Pay It Forward movement last night and feel quite inspired to re-read that again actually. I read it and loved it, watched the film and thought it was a good film but not actually that representative of the way I’d interpreted the book and I think I’d like to read it again – actually I think I might suggest it for reading group too.
Right, another cup of tea beckons, maybe with a snickerdoodle on the side…
Nic, don’t put that book down….it took me a couple of chapters before I got in to it and I nearly abandoned it. It’s stylistically very, very clever but it was a while before I realised as such and didn’t think it just daft and pointless.
In fact, I’m going to read it again now as I just finished Small Island this morning.
Your blog is very difficult to just read every few days. I blink and suddenly four posts appear…. 🙂 🙂
and what the bloody hell *is* a snickerdoodle???
OK Heather, will go back to it.
And pmsl, you have been away too long 😉 I fear a snickerdoodle has become less a half cake half biscuit rolled in cinnamon type home baking triumph as introduced to me at Melrose by Katy B and more a symbol of what I have become in your (unrelated) absence! 😀
Blimey well done!
Newly spacious playroom sounds good too.
And well done with scary phonecall.
Managed to do stuff here too today (washing, clearing). Feel loads better for it.