One word? When seven would do…

This morning, just for a change, it rained :(.

Scarlett had woken at 2am, claiming a bad dream, wanted a drink, come up to bed with me, laid and chatted for nearly an hour, cried because she said her ear hurt, decided she wanted to go back downstairs again, made me sit on the floor beside her bed and then when I said I was going back to my bed (what she really wanted was me to sleep in her bed with her) decided to come back up with me again :rolls:. Every so often she has a couple of episodes of broken nights, every time it nearly kills me and every time she then goes straight back to sleeping through and having no problems. Maybe we’ve been overdosing the Doctor Who watching?

So it was a slow start to the morning with no particular place to be and no inclination to go anywhere in this weather anyway. I was slightly shamed by Michelle’s twitter about going out for a walk and thought that actually we should have waterproofed up and done similar but by then we’d made plans for Lucy and The Rs to come over in the afternoon anyway.

So we flicked through the tv channels looking for interesting things. We watched a bit of a show called ‘The Blasters’ about people who demolish buildings, a bit of Hider in the House and some other kids gameshow that they like to watch and a bit of Raven. Then we found a really interesting programme about whether apes are as clever as humans with all sorts of experiments on how apes learn language, communicate and so on. Both the children were really interested in that and we followed it up with some Really Wild Show (or whatever that programme with the woman who used to be on The Really Wild Show is called now).

One of the women I work with choppped a tree down in her garden a couple of weeks ago and I helped her find a wood chipper to hire online at work. She was telling me they just had a pile of logs which were too big to be chipped to get rid of of and I said if they were suitable we’d have them gladly to burn on our fire next winter so she’s had them ready to collect at her house for ages. I decided that I really needed to take them off her hands so we drove up there in the rain and she dashed out to help me load them in the car. Her lovely husband has chopped them up perfect sized for our fairly small fire and there are five huge bags so they will greatly appreciated later this year (much later I hope although it’s practically cold enough to have fires even though it’s bloody JULY!).

We’d just got in and were debating what to have for lunch when Ady appeared as he was practically passing the door on his way somewhere and realised it was lunchtime so that was nice :). He headed off again while I used up some too soft to eat bananas in making some banana and chocolate chip cakes, which did as my lunch :). Ady got given a huge hot water dispenser flask thing at work that someone didn’t want so I’ve been boiling the kettle and filling it up to make tea out of rather than boiling the kettle several times a day when I’m home all day or have friends over who are likely to be drinking a couple of cups of tea or coffee. It will be great for camping but it’s nice to have instant hot water for drinks making at home too – makes me think of Melrose and that fab boiler in the kitchen there :).

Lucy and The Rs arrived and stayed for a good 3 hours plus. There was some initial squabbles although I think it was more Davies and Scarlett related than anything else. They are so good at playing together that they can either be rubbish at letting someone else break into their game or they can resent someone playing with the other one and try to disrupt things. They all settled into it in the end though and when it stopped raining for an hour towards the end we chucked them all out in the garden to run off some energy and get some fresh air. Richard did manage to fall over and scuff his knee badly to match the other knee which he scuffed last week when he was here. Last time the other three made up a song and dance to cheer him up, this time Davies and Scarlett both fetched a first aid kit and vied over who would present him with antiseptic wipes and plasters first :lol:.

Our guests left, Davies and Scarlett had tea and then got changed for Badgers. Ady had got a present of a sunflower each for all the Badgers and it was ‘bring a pet to Badgers day’ so I battled to get the big box of sunflowers into my car while Ady dashed home and selected a chicken to put in a cat carrier to bring with us. The Badgers were slightly depleted in numbers tonight but there was a cat, 3 rabbits and our chicken brought along to make up the numbers. I’d not really expected to stay and was very scruffily dressed so felt a bit self conscious sitting in the circle of chairs for the sort of show and tell type session it ended up being. Davies spoke most about the chickens with a small amount of help from Scarlett. He was actually excellent – spoke really clearly and confidently, explained things really well and gave lots of little nuggets of information and anecdotes too. He explained about hatching eggs ourselves, having hens and cockerels, incubators and letting hens go broody themselves, what an incubator is and how it works, the difference between chickens and bantams and loads more. He easily knew more than I did a year ago and put it all across really well :). On the way home he said he really liked talking to people and telling them about stuff he knows about :). He also was in charge of letting people hold the hen and answering any little questions they had while they did it although Ady and I got called on a fair bit for that and I explained about different types of feathers to a surprisingly interested little group. We were most profusely thanked for bringing her in by the leaders :).

There is a fairly new girl there -H, I think she is about Davies’ age and just twitches my HE radar with the way she is dressed and her general personality. Tonight her mum was there too with their rabbit and she had me looking at her thinking ‘hmmm, you look like ‘one of us’ too’. She was super chatty so I might ask her next week (or get one of the children to ask H :lol:). Scarlett likes H a lot too and has been insperable from her since she started.

Scarlett was fairly rubbish at sitting still and being quiet but then there were cats and rabbits to play with. Once the Badgers were ‘released’ from sitting in the circle she spent the whole time chatting to the grown up son of one of the leaders who had brought 2 rabbits with him to show. She was clearly asking intelligent questions and seemed fairly locked in conversation with him so it is just that formal setting she struggles with (and who can blame her, I was sitting there wanting to pull faces and be silly!). She really does love animals though.

We came home and had a final read of The Tear Thief and The Fish in the Forest (one of the stories fromt this book) before I take them back tomorrow. I’ve ordered loads of Barefoot books so hopefully they should be waiting for me at work already.