One word? When seven would do…

An enfored quiet day today, which was probably well needed given the kids have been suffering from lack of sleep and were possibly not up to behaving in polite company anyway 😉

Yesterday the sunny skies suddenly clouded over and rain came down just as we were getting in the car to head over to Joyce’s. Although she is only staying about 12 miles away the route to drive is either along the coast (which at rushhour time is very s l o w) or the A27 through the downs which is also quite slow when it drops back down to the coast. So it took nearly 45 minutes 🙁

Arrived and found ourselves behind three caravans waiting to get in so Ady parked up in the ‘late arrivals’ section and I popped into the office to find out what to do. I was greeted and ‘helped’ by a very official man who told me I had to sign in, park where we were and then walk to their van – with two small children, a picnic table, three bags containing stuff including Pimms! and pjs and stuff for said small children – we were just starting to unload everything when along came Hannah with the security card to get into the site so she jumped in the car and we tried to get in. But alas and alak the ‘red hot security’ was on our tails and the man came along, told us off for attempting to breach park security, tapped the sign saying ‘NO VISITORS CARS PAST THIS POINT’ and even pointed at me and said ‘I just told YOU to park here didn’t I?’ (he stopped short of saying ‘young lady’ but it was inferred!). So very sheepishly we turned the car around, unpacked everything and with Hannah’s help set off for the caravan on foot once more.

Joyce had done a lovely pasta bolognaise, Scarlett refused to eat it on the grounds that ‘I am a little girl’ but luckily there were also sausages on offer 😉 Davies also refused to eat it but Ady and I were I hope, appreciative enough to make up for them! Slightly hysterical moment when Joyce handed me a bag of cutlery with individual covers on each knife, fork and spoon. I started to unwrap them wondering just how to broach the subject of dust covers for cutlery and why we didn’t have any at our house (thinking oh no, Joyce obviously was impressed by the cleanliness of our home, but oh, what slatterns keeping their cutlery in one of those plastic trays inside a drawer!) but she assured me that it was new cutlery and the individual bags could be thrown away and she would not be reusing them 🙂

Weather had cheered up enough after food to dispatch menfolk and offspring to the small play area so Joyce and I could get stuck into the pimms and continue our conversations from Saturday – very nice and very sad that we live so far away from each other in the normal way 🙁 Menfolk and offspring returned for dessert but by 10pm everyone was yawning, all children were in pjs so we called time and set off for home. Kids managed to stay awake all the way home chattering and observing stuff we drove past but Davies literally fell asleep as we pulled into the drive and Scarlett was not long after him.

So we were up late this morning (8am, Ady long gone on his way to Slough by then) and as all three of us were filthy I managed about ten minutes in the bath with a magazine before I got ambushed and we all ended up in it 🙂 Very nice as they washed my hair for me, I washed Scarlett’s using posh shampoo and conditioner and as she let me brush it too it has gleamed and swished today and looked beautiful :-), we had discussions on shaving legs and other body hair and then we all got dressed and headed into town for an hour for a few bits. Had text conversation with Ros trying to arrange some sort of get together but it wasn’t to be, also invited Joyce over but she was using her phone for a modem and it is clearly male and cannot multi task 😉

A quiet afternoon planned then with some reading and maybe a bit of craft planned as Davies wants to make a hedgehog due to overhearing me talking about a tin foil and cocktail stick hedgehog me and some friends had made one drunken afternoon in a bar years ago (he was called Kevin and he was enigmatic but one of the bar tenders put him in the blender and made Kevin juice 🙁 ) and we’d talked about water and I’d tried to explain water cycles to him while walking round the shops so I wanted to get a book out and show it to him illustrated to make sense of it.

Unfortunately as I was faffing around getting them into the house, bringing in the shopping and so on I had a slight accident. There were two pints of milk on the doorstep to bring in and somehow as I reached to pick them up I tripped up the step, fell heavily on top of them and smashed them. I got up, glanced down at my arm which appeared to have a big gash on it and several smaller cuts with blood already dripping, broken glass and milk everywhere and two shocked children watching me all wide eyed from inside the house. I totally panicked, grabbed a teatowel and put it round my arm and rang my dad. Phonecall was something along the lines of ‘Daddy, I’ve fallen and done something to my arm, can you come over?’ and he was here within minutes 🙂

I managed to keep it together until he arrived worrying more about the fact my arm didn’t hurt and that Davies was keeping up a running commentary on the blood seeping through the towel. He got here, looked at the arm, dusted off the glass splinters and pronounced it ok (it had looked bad due to the way I had turned my arm over to see if and squashed it therefore opening it up – it’s actually one cut and a few scratches and although sore is not even remotely serious – blush!) and then set about sweeping up and hosing down the steps.

Came in for coffee and spent the afternoon here which was very nice. 🙂 He left and we did indeed sit down and read some books including two on water which amply explained and illustated water cycles with evaporation, condensation and so on, sorts of clouds, why the sea is salty, how water is treated and got back to our taps and how water can be liquid, solid or gas too. So that was science well covered 🙂

Ady arrived shortly afterwards and struggled to keep a straight face at the extent of my injuries 😉 he made the kids some tea while I read some more to them and then to bed they went. Davies was still awake at gone nine mind you. He went up to bed wearing the space man helmet from his dressing up box and wanted an Usborne Beginner book on life in space, we then read the one about Knights and he was sitting up in bed ‘reading’ more when I peeped in at 9. Oh well, at least he was resting!

Tomorrow is another mad day, round to Rachel’s first thing, then Joyce and co for lunch, then onto Home Ed group where several of my social circles already crash and bump together anyway. We will have me, Jenny, Joyce and Ros off the blogring, mixing with Julie my SIL and Vickie from TT2 among others. It’s our last session in the hall until September so hopefully it will be a good one. I have prepared absolutely nothing for it (oops!) so will no doubt be dashing about like a loon for most of the morning.

Off to bed as totally wiped out and as ‘somebody’ decided we are having at least 3 alcohol free nights a week from now on I have not even had a restorative glass of anything tonight to buoy me back up, so sleep it will have to be 😉