I managed to not get to bed til 1am and then not to sleep til gone 2am last night having been online chatting and then caught up in a book once I got to bed so I was very sleepy this morning. Unfortunately the children were not being very quiet once they got up so I got up in a bad mood and then had loads to do before guests arrived at 11am. Ady popped home to collect his overnight stuff and leave his car here as he is in London tonight for a press release thing with QVC tomorrow.
Then Caz, A and E arrived, the friends we met a few weeks ago and spent the day with at their house a while back. The four children fell straight back into play mode with the full delights of D’s Doctor Who collection, the rail of dressing up clothes and the many adventures to be had in our garden fully sampled and made full use of. It’s funny, I’ve always lamented not having a very good garden for children but actually seeing it through their eyes although we may not be able to have a trampline for lack of flat area or other garden play equipment the very fact that there are different elements and heights and walls to scramble over and piles of wood and tiles, paths and lawn, different places to hide and the way you can run all round the house seems to actually lend itself really well to all sorts of imaginative games for a group of children after all. So there was plenty of playing with sticks, hiding and generally getting the cockerel all riled up and crowing like crazy while Caz and I drank copious volumes of tea and chatted. They have fairly similar dreams to us of eventual lifeplans so I shared some of our recent exciting ideas and we chatted about that and home ed generally and parents attitudes towards different lifestyles until the children came in to tell us they were hungry.
They all wanted different lunches, from peanut butter sandwiches to a request for ‘scrambled egg, beans and toast’ all of which I was able to supply. There was one tricky moment when neither Davies or Scarlett were happy about E sitting at their table to eat his egg, beans and toast (and it really was a plate of food requiring a table) so I sent them both to their rooms and then went and visited them both to discuss it. Not at all sure what it was about and they’d both whipped the other one up by refusing I think and then both decided it was fine after all so came back into the room and were lovely again. Fortunately Caz found the whole thing hilarious as she had got the false impression that D and S were wonderful at all times (one of their cunning tricks they pull off for their first few meetings with people :lol:) so was relieved to discover they could act like, well children, I guess. The three boys then chose to watch The Simpsons Movie and Scarlett decided she wanted some attention from us so we did a puzzle with her, Caz and I upside down and with varying degrees of crapness on European Geography (map puzzle) before they had to head off for Italian lessons. It was a really nice few hours including a totally unprovoked offer of childcare (which I’ve not accepted but will certainly keep as a reserve option – the four children were delighted at the prospect), it’s funny how people seem to come into your life at certain times when you are both going to gain something from it – it feels like one such situation with this family :).
Davies and Scarlett played some X box together and then they both drew pictures for the butcher as we needed to do our monthly meat shop. Unfortunately the butchers was shut (not sure why, there was a note on the door but we didn’t bother getting out of the car to read it, I suppose it could have been a ‘back in five minutes’ note actually) so we drove on to Tescos. No FR chicken at all on the shelves although absolutely loads of the cheap stuff – Ady has noticed the same as he does the rounds of supermarkets for work market research and I wonder if it is FR stuff selling fast and first or whether supermarkets are not stocking it in hopes we’ll all give up on the whole idea and return to the cheap stuff instead which all seems to have massive offers and deals on it. Realised while we were there that we were cutting it very fine for getting back for dinner for the children before Beavers so got them Happy Meals each and dashed home for them to eat them before D got changed and we went round to drop him off.
Scarlett and I very companionably sat and played with DS and laptop while he was at Beavers with odd mini-chats inbetween before returning to collect him. The church where Beavers and Rainbows is held is having a church parade and children’s service on Sunday which they are really pushing hard with free cooked breakfast and ‘fun, fun, fun’ type stuff. This actually really offends me as I have real issues with the idea of recruitment drives for religion – surely the whole idea should stand on it’s own merit and not require clever marketing or gimmicks? I’m also very hesitant about the idea of making something that has such a clear message of it’s own if you only believe in it masked as something else. I will happily talk to D and S about religion, explain to them why people believe and what they believe in but when the whole thing takes on a sort of Happy Meal free gift type mentality I start to run the other way bloody quick. So that was a long way of saying that while I smiled at the elderly woman lurking in the foyer at both drop off and collection times saying ‘Hope to see you on Sunday’ in a pointed manner to us all we have no intention of attending!
Davies came out rather subdued as he hadn’t taken a yoghurt pot to make a bird feeder. I do loosely recall them calling out to us as we left last week about bringing one and then promptly forgetting (as did Davies) so he’d not been able to make one. Another rant there really about yes we should have remembered but we pay subs for the materials for activities and it probably wouldn’t have hurt for the organisers to have had a few spares in the event of boys not bringing them rather than just excluding them. Davies did say they were all playing games and just called up one by one to make their bird feeder so when he said he didn’t have a pot he just got to carry on playing as I was all set to march back in and rant but I used to hate that punishing and making an example of the child thing at school particularly when it was likely the parents fault so I’m buggered if I’ll let Davies carry the rap for something petty like that if he’s going to get upset by it!
Anyway, Davies and Scarlett got washed, teeth cleaned and pj’d, I ran the hoover round, lit a fire and bunged some jacket potatoes in the oven for my dinner and then we sat and finished the Naughty Little Sister book before they went to bed and I had a bath. I do miss Ady being away lots but it does seem to run smoother when they are being ‘helpful cos Mummy is on her own’ rather than ‘normal and bed avoidance cos Daddy is here too’. I’ve spent the evening filling in a form for work with suggestions on increasing issues of books, boosting membership to the library, selling more income generating services and so on to send to the big boss to assist with the Business Plan for next year. Tomorrow we’re spending the day with my Mum and then both my parents are coming to watch swimming lessons. And no doubt berate my further on my away-with-the -fairies slightly mental according to them plans for the future! 🙄
There’s always bribes involved when any organisation is struggling for membership or participation. My union branch AGM now includes a full fish/other and chips meal and free alcoholic drink!
I wonder where macdonalds gets it meat from………..:p
I know, it’s not FR chicken and I did have a pang of guilt about that but realistically we can’t manage FR food when we’re out all the time just yet. It’s a definite eventual goal though :).