I’d provisionally signed us up for some textile workshops for the next few Tuesdays which although a bit of a drive away sounded really good and worth committing too but not enough people signed up so they didn’t go ahead 🙁 Which meant we were free today in the end.
I celebrated this with a bit of a lie in, Scarlett brought me a cup of tea in bed and when I was up and we were all dressed we looked out the window at the grey, windy, rainy day and Davies declared it ‘a good day for watching films and eating popcorn’ I agreed and so they found a way of whittling down a large potential selection of films by flipping a coin and the winning film going through to the next round each time until they were left with Monsters Vs Aliens. I made the popcorn and we all half watched, half cuddled, half played with some construction toys, half did some online stuff depending on who you are :).
I bought www.wonderingwanderers.co.uk and www.wonderingwanderers.com and pointed both web addesses at the blog. I blogged, I talked to Tarly some more about her birthday and she has decided she would like to go to a localish zoo for a day trip but really wanted Ady to come too. So we’ve decided to go the day before her birthday which is a Sunday so Ady can come too, we can do the safari run and I mangaged to exchange some of our clubcard vouchers for day out vouchers which are accepted there so it won’t cost anything either :). Excellent result. She also wants a fishing rod (already purchased) a decent penknife, which she can choose herself, some wildlife books and today came up with the idea of wanting statues / models of Sploosh and Lucky. She said she’d like to maybe make them herself and paint them so I have managed to get a duck plaster / concrete mold from ebay and will get her some plaster and paint to do that with. Sorted :).
Davies is at a bit of a loose end at the moment, I know how he feels, it’s like we’re biding time at the moment and lots of things I would be thinking about signing up for or planning for next year we simply won’t be here for so we’re rather in limbo. Scarlett is better at being self motivated and finding things to do than he is so he ends up being irritating or distracting or needy to either her or I. I think he could do with some time spent coming up with ideas of things he’d like to do and some support in making those things accessible to him. He has so many amazing creative ideas but does like a lot of feedback and cheerleading along the way which isn’t always my forte but I have a few ideas to talk over with them both tomorrow.
We had lunch – Scarlett came and made her own including negotiating the tin opener to open a can of tuna and Davies put Curious George on. After lunch they played with the geomags and Davies did some making 3d structures including the Tardis, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and Scarlett took photos of them then they experimented with dropping geomag balls on them to see the impact of asteroids 😆
I realised the phone wasn’t working again, this time no phone line (although the internet is working so there obviously is a line somehow) so I dealt with that (waiting fault checking and possibly another engineer visit) while the kids got everything ready for swimming. Amazingly my car started straight away and we had 2 hours and 10 minutes in the pool. I managed 108 lengths, Davies jumped off the top diving board several times – I’d been watching him climb the steps, stand at the end and bottle out about four times, then stand under the steps and I could see him talking to himself before marching up the steps, leaping off and then clambering out with a huge smile before running up the steps to do it again :). He has gone off it before but not for quite a while so he was really proud of himself :). He was disappointed not to be the one in his lesson who everyone was told to watch for a perfect demo of breast stroke as that is his favourite stroke and I think he’s been called to show everyone it before but I did remind him he had already been in the water for 90 minutes before his lesson so is not necessarily at his best by then. In fairness to the kids I am not sure the lengthy time at the pool before their lessons is that great although they are both really pleased to be there for 2 hours each week. They will have two last lessons after we get back from holiday and my sponsored channel swim will have ended so we will only go for their lessons and I will sit and watch those last two, which will be the end of swimming for some time I imagine aside from dips in lakes and rivers perhaps…
Back home Ady had only just got in so we all helped in lighting fires, pulling curtains etc then Ady cooked dinner for the kids and they watched Ray Mears which we’d taped for them last night. Ady and I watched the Shepton Mallet show, enjoyed it again although at least one of the people on it is very annoying and got more so this week :).