The day started way too early. Tarly was in our bedroom at 5.41am. It was my turn to get up but I don’t really consider the day to have started much before 8am, 7am at a push and 6am if I am being really extreme – so a full 19 minutes before my earliest possibly start time was still the middle of the night as far as I was concerned. She was persuaded to snuggle in bed with us and had all but gone back to sleep curled up into my back when Ady got up for a wee which meant she leapt out of bed too and made so much noise Davies woke too and we all ended up getting up. Although once the children had been placated with milk and cartoons me and Ady headed back off to bed again ;-).
Ady and Davies spent some time in the garden chopping firework, wombling in the garage, playing with mud etc. while Tarly and I did some baking. We made some snickerdoodles at Ady’s request although he still refuses to call them snickerdoodles and comes up with a different crazy name for them every time. We had various lengthy phonecalls with Chris and Julie through the morning too, the upshot of which was that instead of the planned chestnut collecting walk we ended up going over there for Bonfire Night fayre and fireworks, so Tarly and I also made some parkin. Scarlett was in full on ‘little girl who had a little curl’ mode today, delightful and dreadful by turn – hence some of the fireworks 🙄 I suffered the usual pangs over the ‘girlies in the kitchen, boys getting dirty outside’ set up but I guess some stereotypes are just that because they are in much the same was as cliches wouldn’t exist if they weren’t the default most of the time. And I certainly don’t hanker after playing in the mud or chopping wood either although I’m sure I could manage it just fine if the need arose.
We had lunch and then headed over to C&J’s. The children all played outside while Julie and I made a lovely apple cake (I’ll bung the recipe on Indigestion later, it was delicious) and some spiced citrus punch, which the adults spiced up further with tots of brandy. We had a small firework display as darkness fell and just enjoyed a really nice afternoon together. We talked about Guy Fawkes and fireworks generally during the day in a very low key way, which would be something we could pick back up on again if needs be but if not was a nice introduction to the whole reason behind the tradition.
We came home firework spotting as we went with plans to head across to the pub for their free fireworks but both children were already really tired so Davies and Ady ended up standing in the garden for half an hour or so watching from there while Tarly and I sat and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original) which was on TV.
The taking stock of the title comes partially from some further thinking about learning styles and Home Ed which is rather more coherant now I’m not in pain any more and partially from the chicken bones from Friday’s dinner which I have been boiling up today with carrots, onion and herbs to make stock for soup. This month is looking likely to be our very most frugal yet and I am also quite keen to start Davies and Scarlett eating more of the same food as us so I’m hopeful that soup is going to be something they will eat more of.
And now, I’m very tired so I’ll do some flickring and some more of what I had planned to say later in the week.