Sure enough Monday was a not leaving the static sort of day for the kids and I. Ady did the two rounds of animal feeding and spent a bit of time outside tying stuff down too. I made bread rolls and soup for lunch, did some crochet and then sat with Scarlett helping her write a letter. A Home Ed woman down in Worthing had seen the TV show and having a few local HE friends in common I had accepted her friend request on facebook and we have chatted a bit. She has 4 kids and the oldest two are similar ages to Davies and Scarlett although the other way round. She suggested before Christmas that they might like to be penpals and I talked to D&S about it who liked the idea so I agreed. Her two wrote to Davies and Scarlett and because of cancelled boats the letters didn’t get here til a few days after Christmas and then we went off. Davies had written his letter when we got back but Scarlett needed help with the writing of hers and it’s just not happened. She was determined to improve her writing as she has previously just written in block capitals in a messy manner but has been working on bubble writing and more fancy styles, particularly as Maisie who often writes to her has really nice swirly writing. We talked a bit about joined up writing and cursive script and in classic leaps and bounds autonomous HE style she has produced a page of really quite nice writing. It is a way from being beautiful but looks like it was written by someone several years older than the last thing she wrote. Infact you can even see the improvement over the course of the letter itself. She also pretty much spelled the whole thing herself. When I pointed out that if she can write and spell then she can read because in theory that is easier she denied that and said that she finds it easy to work out which letters she needs to spell things but finds it hard to keep track of all the sounds in a word with more than one syllable to sound out to read it, which sort of makes sense. I do catch her quite obviously able to read a lot though and think part of it is deliberate which I have read a lot of in late readers and AHE kids.
Anyway, Scarlett and I did an hour or so of writing, getting distracted and chatting, drawing letters and so on and then she had had enough so her and Davies played a game (s Sherlock app) which he was desperate to show her.
Today the wind finally died down after yet another noisy night. Looking forward to our trip off and some time away from mud! My Granny’s will has left Ady and I jointly one sixth of any savings and investments she had. Frazer gets one sixth as does our cousin Dan and my Uncle gets a quarter as do Mum & Dad jointly. A complicated will! Our Uncle also gets her house which was built on his land 20 odd years ago. Listed in the will were premium bonds which have subsequently been sold and it is not clear what else there is so it may amount to very little at all but we have send our proof of ID documents to the solicitor. In the meantime as there has been some falling out between my Mum and Uncle over things there was a cash sum found in the house of £5K which my Uncle has split between Ady & I, Frazer & Kat and our cousin with us getting £2K. Dad had lent us £1000 when Ady was in hospital which instantly went on hotel bills and food for me and the kids, I have not even had the invoice for the hire car yet but that will be several hundred pounds. So I paid Dad back (he would not have wanted it but Mum insisted) and we will spend some of the remainder of the money on this trip. It feels a little frivilous really but I think we need the break.
This morning we walked down to the village to get some stuff from the freezer for dinner and some shopping ready for Jen (croftsitter), then back home for lunch. Scarlett and I finished her letter and then I chopped wood for a couple of hours making some good headway in the woodpile. Not sure whether Jen will keep the fire lit all day long or be keen to chop some wood herself anyway so trying to make sure she has sufficient without leaving so much she just burns all our supplies!
Really tired tonight after a few nights of crappy broken sleep thanks to the wind and the wood chopping has made me all achey too. I was ranty at the kids this evening and think I am really just ready for my holiday now!