Jump, jump, jump…

Scarlett being poorly has been the main feature of today 🙁 None of us are particularly ill people so when the kids are so ill it means they grind to a halt I know it means they really are ill. Scarlett said to me yesterday ‘do you know how I feel Mummy?’ ‘no darling…’ said I looking at her with maternal love and compassion. ‘I feel crap!’ she announced! 😆
She is being brave and doing plenty of rallying whenever she can summon the energy but clearly all she really wants to do is sit on my lap. Which no doubt means I will be going down with it sometime very soon.

First thing there was breakfast (at the table) for the children while I did laundry processing, chicken feeding, tea making and kitchen tidying. I decreed Scarlett didn’t need to get dressed but did need a jumper on over her pjs and we kept warm by burning all her germ infested tissues on the fire 🙂

I spent some time online catching up blogs in various places and had a reply from the leader of the local branch of Young Archaeologists Club. It included details of their branch, their newsletter and details of 2009 events. I read it all out to Davies and he is delighted at the prospect so we’ll sign him up for that. It’s a monthly Saturday morning event, in various places in West Sussex with an archaeology theme. Cost is just £10 for the year and adults can stay (big plus for him). None of the meetings clash with Wildlife Explorers or Magic Lantern and it all sounds really interesting and fun :). Hurrah – thanks for prompt Helen, no need for me to orgo-plan when I can just nick ideas of other people’s blogs 😉

Mid morning I left them DSing and went to do some baking. We had some home made mincemeat from last Christmas which hadn’t all been used up this Christmas so I made another batch of mincemeat muffins and then decided to make a fruit cake with the remainder. I decided it was better to chuck some eggs and flour and sugar and my time at it and chance it being okay rather than chucking it straight out and the oven was on anyway. I winged it a bit on the ingredients and was very aware there was probably way too much fat in it from the suet in the mincemeat but midway through cooking I pressed down on the cake with kitchen towel and got out all the excess fat. The result is a Christmas pudding! It’s very rich, lovely flavour and will be nice warmed up with cream. I also made some cookies using up Davies’ leftover Christmas smarties at his request.

We had lunch and I offered to do some of Tarly’s kits with her. We made a start on a hat knitting kit and then on a making fairies crafty kit. She didn’t have much of an attention span and drifted off to play her DS. I offered to read her a story and she curled up next to me and fell asleep before we could even choose a book. She dozed, in a restless fashion for about 3/4 of an hour.

Davies and I went and made up some pasta dough and while it was resting had a couple of games of his Very Hungry Caterpillar game and he told me how he’d make a Very Hungry Caterpillar DS game. He likes the idea of designing games :).

Then we tidied everything away and went to make pasta! The machine is really good, despite our reservations it was easy to use and made excellent spaghetti. Davies had his with a tomatoey sauce and Scarlett woke up in time to have hers with butter. They both proclaimed it delicious and ate most of it. I know pasta is very cheap anyway but for the price of 100g of flour and an egg (even cheaper when our hens start laying again) I was very impressed :).

When Ady got home the 3 of us were all cuddled up together on the sofa with 2 DS games sort of playing both between the 3 of us. They both have a Build A Bear factory game they’ve been playing today.

Scarlett got changed into fresh pjs and Ady read her a story in bed while Davies and I snuggled up with a pile of books, and he read a fair bit of them to me :). It’s not fluent, he’s still spelling most things out rather than recognising whole words. The three of them were then upstairs in some sort of Top Secret birthday related stuff while I had a bath.

I made more pasta (tagliatelle this time) for Ady and I for dinner and managed to burn three fingers on a pan which are now sore and blistered. 🙁

Tomorrow is supposed to be swimming lessons but I can’t really see that happening, certainly for Scarlett at least. Davies has already been complaining about a sore throat and although she’s asleep Tarly is very restless and doing lots of tossing and turning and whimpering in her sleep so I’m not expecting a peaceful night :(. I’ve had my mind made up about work on Wednesday morning already as Liza’s A has got flu too so I guess it’s between Ady and I as to who gets to stay home and tend the poorly and who gets to escape to work – assuming we don’t already both it ourselves by then.