Being an enabler

Today we had Mel, Liam and Lily coming over to play. We really only see them during half terms and school holidays these days as they have loads of after school stuff going on, as do we and Mel works 2 days a week as do I. Their weekends are even more full than ours due to Mel not being with Russ, Liam and Lily’s Dad any more so the children splitting their time between parents. So we last saw them back in the summer holidays and today when we bade them goodbye it was ‘see you in the Christmas holidays!’ :lol:.

The hour is still playing tricks on me and for the third night running I have slept badly and woken from dreams in fight or flight readiness only to find myself lying in bed and not in any of the situations my dreams are taking me to. Davies and Scarlett had gathered all the pillows (aside from the ones I was sleeping on) and cushions and fleece blankets from around the house and were curled up together playing Viva Pinata. Scarlett has spent most of the morning playing it and is now on level 4 herself, that game has been such a hit here, she really needs her own copy.

I got them some breakfast, went and let the chickens out, brewed a pot of tea and put a second load of washing on but decided not to hang out the one that had been going overnight as it was too cold outside to be standing in the shade getting my hands wet with washing. I feel the cold so much that it would be painful and I often have to come in and warm my hands up when pegging out wet washing if it’s cold outside. So I was sat down, dressed and with tea in hand by 830am and had two hours before Mel and co. were due to arrive.

I had a pile of things I ‘really should do’ so I worked my way through them including paying for the rent on the allotment (did online :)), paying for the renewal of my domain name for the blog (did online :)), doing a food shop for later this week (did online :)). I saw a poster at work the other day advertising Peter and the Wolf and the Carnival of the Animals children’s ballet at Brighton Dome. Both are much loved works for me and the children that we’ve listened to in the car so many times the cds are scratched, none of us have ever been to the ballet but I’ve always quite liked the idea so I’d checked the prices and found a schools matinee with cheap tickets. I’d not been able to book the schools prices online so wanted to ring and organise that too. Also while checking the website I’d seen Bigger Bang advertised too and as that has been much raved about by other local HEors but we’d never managed to get there before I thought I’d book that too. The box office didn’t open until 10am though so I had to put that off.

Instead, after drinking my second cup of tea and supervising the safe return of bedding to various places around the house and encouraging D and S to get dressed, I returned to the washing, got it all pegged out and started working on some baking for tomorrow. Ali and Freya are having a gathering at their house tomorrow with a halloweeny theme and as we’re not planning anything much else for Halloween I thought I’d offer some themed baking as our food contribution. I decided to make some gingerbread biscuits and some cakes. I found a recipe I’d not tried before for gingerbread which claimed to make 20 biscuits so I times’d it by 1.5 thinking 30 biscuits would be good. I don’t know if my cookie cutters are just much smaller than the recipe called for but we have loads of gingerbread biscuits from the recipe! I’ve got quite a cookie cutter collection from various places including one off buys of those hideously overpriced cake or cookie in a box sets which have ready made stuff to add water to, some writing icing or other decorations and the cutters. The ingredients are always horrid and overpriced but they are worth getting for the cutters – we have a dalek one from them and for today I used a ghost and a pumpkin cutter from one from a couple of years ago. I also had a small gingerbread man cutter which I’ve made skeletons with.

Unfortunately I then realised too late I was almost out of butter so had to make do with only 12 cupcakes as that’s all I had ingredients for so we are heavy on the biscuits and light on the cakes!

Mel, Liam and Lily arrived while I was still in the throes of baking so Mel joined me in the kitchen while the children were introduced to the newest chicks and got involved in a rowdy Doctor Who game with Davies. Scarlett carried on sitting on the sofa playing VP :lol:.

We had lunch, played and chatted and then children went outside for a couple of hours to play in the garden. They all left about 330pm as Liam had homework on his school project to do. Davies and Scarlett tidied up the garden and then came back inside to play while I went to ice the cakes and biscuits. I quickly discovered I was lacking decorating stuff too so we had a quick dash to Sainsburys for various bits. While we were there the box office at the Dome returned my call and agreed I could book tickets to the school matinee at the schools discount price as a home educator (I was spoiling for a fight if they hadn’t!) so we got all the tickets booked and I need to get them collected before Saturday.

Home again and reversing my outside stuff by putting chickens to bed and bringing washing in off the line to drap around the radiators to air and take the last bit of damp out of them. I made the childrens’ tea and finished decorating the cakes and biscuits. They had a bath and hairwash, I spent ages brushing all the tangles out of Tarly’s hair and then read them some Olga before bed.

Ady plucked, gutted and otherwise dealt with the 6 pheasants that have been hanging in the garage all weekend. I eat them, am happy with the fact they were killed last week by Tom and could probably even do the preparing them myself with some supervision but they still freaked me out every time I went in the garage, forgot they’d be there and saw them swinging from the ceiling! 😆 We’re having them for dinner tomorrow I think.

Dinner tonight of lasagne and home made garlic bread while watching some more Torchwood – my friend Dayve just brightkite’d to say he is on a night shoot filming for the next series of Torchwood tomorrow. He’s an extra and has been on Doctor Who and Torchwood once before, am quite jealous of him spending time with Captain Jack ;).