Joy and laughter

A soggy start to the morning. Last nights rain had continued all through the night and there were puddles and flood all around the place. I nearly slipped over and got soaked just going to let the chickens out. We were car-less and utterly without motivation to go anywhere in such dire weather so we settled in for another morning at home.

Davies asked for the hama beads out and I ironed the various things which had been waiting precariously balanced on boards for ages. He then built a Bamzookis board and several Zooks out of hama which I also ironed for him and we talked about sturdy and non-sturdy bead formation patterns. He also said he didn’t like the various shaped boards we have (elephant, teddy etc) as he prefers to make up his own and assumed everyone else would too. I explained that just as many people are happier with a pattern to follow and enjoy that as much or more than making up their own and we talked about colouring in, dot to dot etc. I still don’t think he quite got his head round not wanting to do your own thing really though 😆

Scarlett played with the toy animals and we had an interesting conversation about whether she was a ‘Moxie girl’ after we saw an advert for the toys. She said she wasn’t. I asked if she was a Barbie Girl, a Baby Annabel girl? and got equally disparaging replies. I asked what sort of girl she was then and she replied ‘an Animal Girl’. Which I think sums her up pretty well really, in every respect ;).

We watched Evacuation and it was the last day of the 2 week stint for the kids. I started crying when they all listened to Churchill’s ‘war is over’ speech on the radio and pretty much trickle-cried all the way through with peaks at the points of the children being sad about leaving, being reunited with their parents and writing goodbye letters to the teacher and farmers. I’m such a sap!

Then I had a very welcome phonecall from Ali asking if we’d like them to come and join us in being trapped at home without a car in the rain. The answer was a resounding yes and a prospect we looked forward to for the rest of the day :).

Davies and Scarlett cleared up the hama and animals and went up to Davies’ bedroom to prepare something that would keep all three of the children occupied and happy as last time they visited nothing seemed to go well and they ended up leaving way earlier than planned. Davies had the amazing plan of making their own Viva Pinata gardens and he and Scarlett set about putting scrap paper down to cover the carpet, gathering paper, cardboard, materials, junk, glue, pens etc to do it with and generally preparing his bedroom as a workshop.

We had lunch and watched TV together including a very good programme none of us had seen before called Howard’s Big Question which was excellent. Then Ali and Freya arrived.

The children instantly disppeared upstairs, re-emerged for food a couple of hours later and then disappeared again for a couple more hours. This freed Ali and I up to drink tea, then wine, chatter to our hearts content and generally have a lovely time :). We took Scarlett round to Rainbows and I collected her again before Ady took Ali and Freya home about 730pm. A very successful visit :).

Davies and Scarlett tidied Davies’ bedroom up to a Very High Standard Indeed and then I read some stories. Scarlett and I fell out and made it all back up again with some Serious Chats about things like unconditional love and me getting cross not meaning anything other than me losing my patience (although I actually hadn’t on this occassion). Ady returned and cooked a very nice dinner and the children finally went to bed.