I don’t even remember posting that last night! 😳
So, catching up then…
Friday work all day for me. I did banking in the morning, followed by Baby Rhyme Time. We had a good crowd including Pushy Mum, Pushy Granny and faintly disinterested daughter who are fairly regular attenders. When I asked if anyone had any requests Pushy Mum and Pushy Gran asked in unison for ‘Peter Rabbit’ and did the pointy ears with their hands 😆 😆 Faintly disinterested daughter, who must be about 4 was busy sticking the handle of one of the shakers up her nose and doesn’t seem to give a monkeys what we sing. Two of the little girls have taken to following me into the office afterwards to try and ‘chat’ to me. Must remember to close the door behind me to prevent this in future.
I spent some time digging out the songsheets from the Christmas rhymetime I did last year with Christmas songs and some rewritten lyrics to some of the favourite songs (twinkle, twinkle Christmas tree, the bells on the sleigh go jingle, jingle, jingle). Jan was saying she thinks I should do a Rhyme Time in the style of Marguerita Pracatan. Definitely up for that 😆
I had my usual stints on the counter, the enquiry desk and shelving and then spent some time putting up a display of Jacqueline Wilson books. No one had put their name down to do the Christmas display either so I have put my name down for that and need to think of some inspiration.
Back at home Ady and Scarlett had spent the morning tidying Scarlett’s bedroom up and Mum, Davies and Scarlett had spent the afternoon watching Deal or no Deal, playing Deal or no Deal on the DS and Davies had made several animations based on Trap Door including speech bubbles and titles. Mum remarked on his spelling and writing and Davies further proved his reading by casting an eye over the post and asking ‘what’s that from the Dome then?’.
I had a cup of tea and chat with Mum, made Scarlett a hasty dinner of eggs on toast which she ate, then got changed for Rainbows and Davies showed me his animations. It was pouring with rain and really miserable so we assumed the Sea Scouts fireworks wouldn’t be happening, and didn’t want to go even if they were. Ady arrived home, Mum left, I took Tarly to Rainbows and then nipped to the supermarket for mushrooms for Ady’s pizza. It was so rainy I decided to park outside Rainbows rather than take the car home and walk back so sat in the car playing with my phone for ten minutes before going in to collect her. She’d been decorating mini gingerbread men and done one to look like me bedecked with mini marshmallows and loads of red strawberry laces sweets to be my hair :). She’d taken her Arctic Animals book for show and tell along with the couple of 3d penguins she’d made from it.
Back home we read which we have read before but was the only atory book about war we had on the shelf at work and I wanted to read something with them before Sunday. I do like Shirely Hughes :). We then read a chapter of Littlenose the Hero
Then it was bedtime, as been mentioned elsewhere I drank lots of wine and staggered to bed around midnight.
Saturday Our cockerel has got his body clock all messed up and keeps crowing at 4am. No idea why, he didn’t crow when it was 5am, it is pitch dark and the only real response to such behaviour is ‘do you want cranberry sauce with that?’. We’re fairly sure none of the neighbours can hear him as ours is by far the closest bedroom with all the others having hedges to further muffle the sound and it is by no means loud to us but he did wake me last night.
This morning was only about the second Saturday this year that the kids have had Wildlife Explorers and I have not been working but it happened to also clash with YACs for Davies. It never has before and I think YACs is normally much later in the month than the first Saturday which is what Wildlife Explorers always is but I assume they’d moved it closer to Remembrance Day as it was WWII themed. Davies had agonised over which to attend and decided on YACs. So Ady took him in one direction and I took Tarly in the other.
YACs was fab apparently. They prepared and cooked WWII food, then all sat and ate together, had some visitors who had been children in the war to talk about their experiences including a couple of evacuees, dressed up in various wartime things and then went outside to practise throwing grenades and running away. Throughout the morning they had an air raid siren that went off several times which meant they all had to get under the table. Ady was very enthusiastic about the whole thing and Davies had a great time too :).
Scarlett meanwhile learnt about feeding the birds and made a bird feeder by smearing a pinecone with peanut butter, then adding seeds and nuts to it ready to hang from the tree in the garden. They went outside to play a game about what birds eat what foods (berries, worms, snails, seeds etc.) and she said it was good fun.
I walked round the reserve. It was quite slippery in a few places thanks to muddy spots from lots of rain and fallen leaves. They are continuing to put massive animal sculptures around the place and now have a lizard, snake, butterfly and something else I couldn’t identify as raised mud areas to go with the existing cow and coiled snake. They look fab.
I saw, and correctly identified (checked on a spotter sheet in one of the hides to confirm my guess) a couple of green woodpeckers and a jay aswell as loads of other birds I couldn’t identify, several rabbits, squirrels, cows and some of the herd of deer. I could hear geese honking but couldn’t actually see them. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I enjoyed my walk round all alone :).
I collected Tarly and we decided to look in a couple of charity shops before heading home. I found a jumper for me, a top for Tarly and she picked up a little ornament which is either a weasel or a stoat which I agreed to buy. We chatted about poppies, how I knew the names of the towns and I enjoyed listening to her chatter away :). We drove back over the downs which is always a pretty route and beat Ady and Davies home by about 15 minutes. Scarlett and I had some lunch (they were full from the food at YACs) and Ady did some stuff in the garden, the kids played with the chickens and I unpicked half of the jumper I knitted last winter (I wasn’t happy with it so I’ve taken off the sleeves to use again and am going to re-knit the body) and started again with it.
Everyone else came in, I nipped off to Asda for a few bits, the kids had a bath and I cut Davies’ hair and brushed and plaited Tarly’s ready for tomorrow, they had dinner and watched whatever Star Wars film it was that was on, while both reciting all the lines along with the actors. I read my book :).
The intention was an early night for them both but neither of them managed it despite being in bed from about 730pm.
I have gone easy on the wine. With one eye still on those 2012 Olympics 😉