You are the bearer of unconditional things…

Our day had a bit of a soundtrack today, might add some of the lyrics in and see if anyone can name the artist, or you know, ignore that element of the blogpost completely -up to you really.

I had to rouse both children this morning – we’re still operating on weekend guest time and as we’re off on holiday again on Sunday it hasn’t really felt worth making too much fuss over. And I suppose bedtimes are something I can rarely be bothered to make too much fuss about anyway. They breakfasted and got dressed, I drank tea, let the chickens out and processed some laundry.

We drove to E’s via Tesco for petrol – we’re taking both cars away with us on the basis that it is near enough to justify the petrol costs for my car for the added ease of not having to squish stuff in (and Ady wants to bring his new camping toy which is HUGE), but worth bringing Ady’s too for the to-ing and fro-ing we’ll do whilst we’re there. So I put a good amount of petrol in mine rather than my usual £20. Scarlett was waving around a sleeping bag which caught Davies in the face so we had a discussion about how to deal with it when you’ve done something wrong. My mantra would always be ‘say sorry (and mean it), ensure it won’t happen again, do whatever you can to put it right’ so we talked about how to do that in that instance and some other examples of dealing with mistakes we could think of. We also had an interesting discussion on Davies and Scarlett’s take on their Home Ed friends who have been in school and come out to be Home Ed’d and their Home Ed friends who have never been in school. I really liked listening to their observations and what they had to say about various people. I think the most amusing one was about a friend who was in school who they claim tries to teach them ‘school tricks like swear words’ 😆 Davies tells me he ignores that and suggests something else to do instead. We talked then about swear words and name calling and appropriate behaviours and how you know what is and isn’t okay in different circumstances.

Then we listened to songs with lyrics such as ‘all those stars that shine upon you, will kiss you every night’ and ‘if I hurt you, I’d make wine from your tears’ (same artist).

We had a nice couple of hours at Elizabeth’s. It’s all go at her house with her husband Nick arriving home, her MIL arriving to collect the boys for an afternoon of fish and chips on the pier (lucky, lucky Elizabeth!) and another friend who I have heard of locally but not previously met but had had T overnight and dropped him and his own son off and then collected his son again a bit later. He lived up to all I had heard about him (she said mysteriously ;)). Both Davies and Scarlett had picked out their ‘I can’t go to school, I’m autodidactic’ T shirts (really need to order some more actually Liza, they are washed and worn constantly!) and Elizabeth was asking if they are happy to be so ‘out’ about it which led to me talking about how I’d been quite surprised at Davies’ confidence in his Home Ed status at Badger camp and having suffered at being so obvious in continuing to be so vocal about it. I don’t think the kids knew it was the first day back to school for most children round here but I love how they celebrate what has now become their choice aswell as our choice for them educationally :).

We left about 1ish and having been teased with some delicious muffins that Elizabeth baked while we were there (she did bake them for us too, not teased as in wafter under our noses but didn’t let us try while saying ‘na na na na na!’ or anything, just teased as in tantalised and tempted to have more) and realising we had 3 bananas that were drooping we made some banana and choc chunk muffins of our own. The kids helped in various ways before wandering off to play.

Davies built a domino run which didn’t work very well using the mantlepiece and hearth and spent some time experimenting with that to get it to work better – we only have a small 27 piece domino set though, which had me kicking myself for having gotten rid of the domino train pieces we’d had for ages. Might keep an eye out for some more dominoes in charity shops, I can’t think what you could use instead really for domino run building. I do remember a clip on Blue Peter or Newsround or something of a huge and very impressive one when I was a kid though.

I then spent some time pulling together some old posts on Monster & Teeny to create a new one. I’m kind of glad to be heading away from the rest of the world as such next week, I feel quite ready for a holiday from all the Home Ed stuff somehow. It always feels a bit false to be pulling our lives apart to try and deem some of it educational and I hate the idea that we might have to. I get a lot of very positive feedback from people about Davies and Scarlett, the parenting we / I do of them and who they are, I see them happy, growing, curious and learning and am so very proud of them and then I spent some time delving into the darker side of the politics and debate and just want to run away and hide really. Hopefully I’m come back ready to be all instrumental in NBTS picnics in the week after and ready to sing the virtues of Home Ed for the masses and protect the rights of all instead of just wishing the world would bugger off and leave me and mine alone.

Can you tell that during the writing of the Monster and Teeny stuff I got my period? 😆

Davies and Scarlett went off and did something, not sure what although part of it was Davies making up a new ‘Day’ story. Not sure if I’ve mentioned Day before or not? Day is a character Davies made up who is an old paper bag who lives at a tip – his friends include Calyppo the ice cream wrapper, an old broken TV set (who’s name I forget) and other un-recyclable rubbish. Davies has written and illustrated about 4 or 5 stories with all these characters. I think Day is a bit auto-biographical and he quite likes the idea of being called ‘Day’ as a shortened version of Davies. Its’s odd how I never shorten his name but am always shortening Scarlett’s – maybe because Davies was my name for so long I still have it as a word rather than a name to be messed about with?

I had been looking at a book from work yesterday and noting down interesting looking links from it so I carried on with that and went through the whole book. The result is a new page of things to look at further for next year. Inbetween I also made pizza for Davies’ dinner, an S shaped pizza crust for Tarly who only likes the crust and the bases for our pizzas for dinner later.

Ady was really late home as he’d been being all supportive and counselling of a colleague who is having a few personal problems at the moment. Poor bloke 🙁 (the colleague, not Ady).

I read several chapters of Kensuke’s Kingdom to the kids who begged for more. We’re really enjoying it and I even flicked to the back page later to check how it ends ;). Intending to read to the end with them tomorrow.

The kids went to bed and we listened to some Arrested Development and Alanis Morrisette which I enjoyed very much. No point really in putting lyrics from either of them as I’ve already named the artists. Watched Jonathan Ross and I sewed a couple more knitted bits onto my blanket.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to work and Ady’s taking the kids to Wildlife Explorers – Davies’ first time in the older group which he is really looking forward to.