One word? When seven would do…

I still hate tables. I still firmly believe they are crap magnets. I still don’t buy into the need for one to enhance quality of life / create a stable family / sit and do hama beads and french verbs at.

However, I do now seem to have one!

Over Christmas while the tree was in the lounge we moved out the kids’ table and chairs into the playroom to make room to move the sofas up to accomodate the tree. The chairs and tables are really old and despite me having little children are really getting too small for them to sit at these days. We’re also having friends over to return the fancy dinner party we went to in November (remember, the ones who weren’t swingers after all?) and were fretting about giving them laptrays that have been used for paint and glitter by the children.

So before Christmas we decided that when the tree went we’d bring a table and chairs into the lounge and get rid of the kids’ tables.

This doesn’t mean we’ll be doing workbooks.

So today was Taking Down The Decorations Day. I had a very long lie in and by the time I came downstairs the tree was already down and out of the house (Ady has put it round with the chickens so they could have a little post-Christmas celebration all of their own. It will eventually either be chopped up by Ady for firewood or taken off to the allotment by me to go in the compost bin 😆 ) and there was a frenzy of hoovering going on.

We got all the decorations down and Ady went to find the table and chairs in the garage. We did used to have a table – a nice wooden one with fake tile-top, green to match the colour the walls used to be. It was in the lounge for years and then in the kitchen at our Manchester house but when we moved back here we had the kids tables so they went in here instead. But during it’s languishing unloved and mourning the days when we used to have a table times in the garage the table has sustained water damage (or tear stains maybe – can a table cry?). One corner is really quite moldy and actually I decided that the green top of the table and the green backs of the chairs would make it look a lot like a table that belonged in a different coloured room. So after a quick browse online at both the state of the finances this month and what was available we reserved and then collected this set

We loaded the car up with various bits of rubbish from both the Grand Wardrobe Clear Out and the Unearthing The Table From The Garage escapades and went to Argos via the dump to get rid of that, and my parents house to deliver their wedding anniversary card (they weren’t in) and Sainsburys to get various food items and large quantities of reduced to clear chocolate (Quality Street because we’d somehow not had a tin for Christmas, boxes of liqueurs because they were so cheap and Terry’s Chocolate Oranges because you can’t get them at other times of year and the kids love them and they were knocked down to 61 pence each).

Once home I did table and chair errection – I remembered something else I do Michelle! I always do the flatpack furniture assembly 🙂 -and had a bath and cooked dinner. The kids’ DS’d – which seems to have been all they’ve done since Christmas really. However there is a plus side – Davies is teaching Scarlett to read and write! I overheard him telling her how to spell various words today and saying ‘let me see’ when she couldn’t read something and helping her spell it out! 😯 I’m determined not to limit their DSing although I am insisting on them putting them down to eat!

So we have a table. It looks really nice actually, we can fit six round it and I have instigated a LAW that anything left on it at the end of each evening will go in the bin so as to ensure it does not become a crap magnet. It feels like a move towards bigger older children :).

I faithfully promise not to hang a world map above it and I hearby solomnly swear I will NOT make 2009 the year I introduced normals!

For some reason I had in my head that Em’s birthday was 3rd January. So I thought I’d post her birthday card for it to arrive on the day rather than taking it early (because I love getting birthday cards in the post, it makes me feel all special and birthday-ish). Except I realised when we arrived that her birthday is 2nd, which means a card to arrive on 2nd needed to have already been posted. Bugger!

So instead, Lovely, lovely Em, please accept this lovingly made (and possibly slightly stalkerish but lets not dwell on that) photo montage in lieu of the card that should have been arriving through your letterbox on 2nd January to wish you a very happy 30th birthday indeed.

With lots of love from Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

I worked yesterday morning and then Ady and the kids picked me up. Due to my slackness the night before I hadn’t managed to pack clothes for Scarlett or I yet so we nipped home so I could get changed out of work clothes and collect pjs and a change of clothes for tomorrow each for Tarly and I and then we were off.

We’ve not been out on NYE since 1999 when we had a good night out in a restuarant with my parents (who flew to Australia the following day, on their wedding anniversary 01/01/00) and two sets of friends. I’m fairly sure that was the night that Davies was conceived so all subsequent NYE have been spent at home being parents! 🙂

We spent a fair few with my parents which is sometimes really good and sometimes not so good. Last year it was just the four of us and it was nice and pressure-free although Scarlett didn’t quite make it to midnight.

This year however we were all really excited to be invited to Em’s 30th birthday / NYE party and have been hoping and keeping fingers crossed that none of us were ill and therefore unable to make it.

We had a really straight run and arrived at about 4pm, very closely followed by Mich, Marcus and Chloe. We were properly acquainted with Beryl and Clive (LovelyEm’s lovely parents – I see where she gets it from ;)) who had very kindly opened their lovely house to us all. Wednesday Helen and family were there and The Babs and co, The Fishes (Salmon’s) and eventually The Barts all arrived too :).

The children had an absolute ball playing DSing, running around, dancing and generally being together. We had a very funny (and quite impressive) child pyramid with some of them 🙂

There was an amazing array and delicious selection of food – could have done with more cheese 😉 There was more drink than even I could plough through (infact I remained surprisingly sober for most of the evening due to fear of peaking too early and then going outside for ages and sobering up again :)), there was disco lights and funky music and some of my best friends too :).

The evening seemed to go on forever but at about 11pm when we were all wondering if we’d make it to midnight we remembered the sky lanterns and headed outdoors to get some fresh air, the kids had a run around and we set off the remaining lanterns in a magical display :). I love them sooooo much. Michelle, Em and I were managing to set them off single handed which was a far cry from all three of us struggling to hold them back in September and proved how different conditions should be for setting them off :).

Em, Mich, Kirsty and I sat out awhile longer chatting and observing the picture wall in the kitchen through the window (Mich’s questions about the grey one with lines on will go down forever in my favourite Michelle Moments catalogue 😆 ) before going in to join everyone gathered in the front room for the TV countdown.

I’d told Scarlett about the custom of the first person you kiss at new year being the person you will kiss throughout the year so she was determined to ensure that her and I kissed first – and very comprehensively 😆 Davies was slipping away and far more interested in sitting with mates than coming to kiss his mother (he’s given me plenty of cuddles since to make up for it though ;)). Was lovely to be with loads of other people to kiss and hope to be with plenty more times throughout 2009 too.

I think all the children made it to midnight although Rachael was asleep by about ten past, swiftly followed by The Babs and James, who made a lovely tableau on the sofa together 😆

One by one everyone else headed off to bed with the last few of us left in the kitchen finally heading to bed about 3am. Davies and Scarlett had allegedly gone to bed about 130am in the pool room where we were sleeping, but when Ady and I went in to go to bed we found them still sitting up playing their DSs and chatting with each other :shock:. Consequently they were the last in the house to wake up this morning at about 10am – I think Ady and I were not too far behind everyone else at about 930am. I had been up already to the loo at 730am and heard a few sounds from upstairs and been shocked at the rearrangement of the table in the kitchen while I slept when I thought I’d been the last to go to bed – do you have lovely elves Em?

This morning was really nice – one of my favourite parts of a good party is the morning after when everyone is chilled out and relaxed, the children are slightly less full of energy and there is plenty of tea to drink, food to eat and chatting to be done.

Everyone started to drift off and we were the last to leave (couldn’t have done otherwise really as our car was first in so needed to be last out) at 1pm ish. We had another straight run home and got back at 3pm.

The beauty of travelling light was it took no time at all to unpack – and the sleeping bags and camping mats slid effortlessly into the newly emptied Narnia wardrobes :). Ady chopped firewood (of course ;)), I have mostly sat and done online stuff, the children have continued to DS including having some more games put on for them and a few more duplications so they can do multiplayer stuff. They had a bath to wash 2008 off. We’ve had curry for dinner and a very peaceful afternoon and evening.

Tomorrow the decorations come down, the tree goes out and it’s Operation Table – details of which will follow in due course.

It’s roundup time 😉

January
We saw in the new year just the four of us; Scarlett didn’t quite make it to midnight.

I turned 34 🙂

Scarlett, having turned five a few weeks before was eligible for all the groups so she joined Badgers, swimming lessons and Rainbows. She has got a lot out of all of them
over the year and is making friends, learning loads and getting some independance 🙂


. Davies continued with Badgers, Beavers and swimming lessons.

We had plenty of Winter Walks (TM)
and even more exciting than that the children started riding Honey the pony 🙂

It was also the month that all the wood got washed up on Worthing beach

At one of the HE meet ups I organised we met Caz, Archie and Eliot for the first time and Davies and Scarlett made firm friends with A and E. This was a sudden but very good family friendship as Ady and Bid finally were introduced to each other too. We had a fairly teary farewell with them later in the year as they headed off on an amazing round the world adventure. I’m still getting regular updates from them (currently in NZ) and hoping our paths will cross again sometime someday somewhere…

February saw Ady do the first of many TV appearances on QVC as a guest presenter. A very exciting interlude which may well be repeated again in 2009 (only during the gardening season, so Febrary to May -ish) which led to him finding his fan base and even being recognised out in public. Mostly by old ladies 😆

We spent some time in local museums including Littlehampton, Brighton, Booth, Hove, Worthing. Littlehampton was great, a lovely sunny mild day in February which we also spent some time on the seafront including chips and ice cream before the museum on Saturday 🙂

Davies has his first public art exhibition at the library of which he (and I) was very proud 🙂

We ticked another thing off our list of places to go in 2008 and had a visit to The Planetarium.

Davies made a movie, we had plenty of Winter Walks (TM)

During half term we went to a Green Diggers event at Pulborough Brooks where I was sent away with a voucher for a drink from the cafe and told to come back in 90 minutes much to my surprise!

We caught up with schooled friends:

We went to an event at Pulborough Brooks which should have been good but was hampered by extreme cold and the children and I coming down with or in the throes of whatever nasty virus was doing the rounds at the time. We had a trip to Fishbourne for their half term event.

The four of us went to Heathrow for the Terminal five trials. It was a really interesting day although later apparent that the testing had not been anywhere near in depth enough ;).

We had another trip to London to the Ecobuild fair which was an interesting day out with lots of freebies and conversations starters.

March Mothers Day, a visit to Bodiam Castle
our hens finally started laying 🙂

We had 3 weekends in London courtesy of Ady’s work as he had weekend shows at QVC. The shows were either first thing in the morning or last thing at night so enabled us to have most of the days together to make the most of being in London. Although we weren’t paying for food or hotels it would still have been very easy to spend loads so armed with London guide books and plenty of web research we managed to work out plenty of free places to visit. The first time we stayed at County Hall and had a very long walk taking in the Tate Modern, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and more in a massive 7 mile round walk. We also went to the Movieum that weekend which we enjoyed. In other visits we also took in Museum of London, The National Gallery and the Bank of England Museum. We took tea and Fulham palace and were at Putney Bridge for the boat race. We finished off on the last weekend with a visit to Chistlehurst caves on the way home which was also fab :).

One the one single weekend in March we didn’t go to London we had a visit to another NT property – Petworth house where we were captivated by the beauty of all the daffodils and narcissus.

We had our annual visit to Coombes farm to see the lambing, whilst not as many born right infront of us as last year we did see a couple and also had a tractor ride across the top of the downs too which was beautiful, if freezing!

We went to the Salmon’s Superheros party which was a fab weekend and the kids got to be Dynamic Davies and Super Sparkly Scarlett, complete with capes 🙂

Somehow – and even I am now wondering if March had an extra week or two in it this year given how much we seemed to do during it, we also managed a day trip to Legoland.
Definitely the best one yet as both children were tall enough to go on everything and we had Ady with us which meant we could. Several times 🙂

April
Scarlett won Badger of the month for being ‘kind and helpful’ – this rather made her month! 🙂

just a week apart we had a day of practically t shirt weather at a nature reserve

followed by a day of snow deep enough to build proper snowmen – it melted all away again the same day though

We had our annual Not Bluebell Bluebell Walk 😆 where Davies got his foot stuck in the water (twice)

The kids had a Green Diggers event, this time at Tilgate Park, we had an amazing walk at Pulborough Brooks where we saw adders performing their fight / dance to see which male gets to mate with the female
.

We had 7 more chicks hatch in our incubator (3 were cockerels – one of which died and the other two were rehomed. Another 3 were hens, who we kept and the seventh was Spatchcock, much loved and quite disabled chick who lived a short but happy life, dying of natural causes a while later).

Davies decided to leave Beavers. I stared walking on the beach weekly while the children were at Badgers and enjoyed some blissful strolls. We went to the Safety Day organised by a Home Edder in Berkshire and had an educational and informative time there.

We had our annual This Time There Really Are Bluebells Walk, a FANTASTIC day to the British Wildlife Centre and a great day in London with LovelyEm visiting the Museum of Childhood and the Diana Playground and we had our annual photoblog day.

May
We had another visit to Petworth House for their annual tunnels open weekend. They have a tunnel connecting the main house to the servants quarters underground so we went along with Mum and Dad and had a really nice day there exploring the tunnel

We spent Bank Holiday Monday at the beach and then at the river bank crabbing. We had the best start to the camping season with an early weekend away at The Sustainability Centre for their Green Fair weekend. Just the four of us, first outing for the new tent and blissfully lovely in every way – weather, location, company, campfire and all 🙂

Ady had a birthday. I had a wonderful weekend away on my own with friends in London, we had Barbecue Saturday where we had barbecue lunch with Chris, Julie, Maisie and Jack while they were still a four person family and then went on to Tom’s for a barbecue complete with horses, chickens and dogs (to run around with, not eat barbecued ;)).
We had a great time at Eve and Rei’s birthday party at the gym and at Wednesday Helen’s afterwards . Our hen hatched some eggs herself – two chicks, one of whom died, the other is our current cockerel.

June Started with me doing a ‘Dad’s Special Rhymetime’ at the library as part of the annual Adur Festival. We went to the Sompting Festival on the village green , we went to an organic farm as part of Open Farm Sunday, Davies, Scarlett and I went to the South of England Show and as usual had a fab day out there, we had a lovely time exploring art exhibitions on the local houseboats moored at Shoreham as part of the local Beach Dreams Festival.
We went along to Springwatch at Brighton, which was another great day out and we had a lovely visit from Katy and Becca 🙂. Baby Lorna finally made her entrance into the world and we had a fabulous holiday in Cornwall. We took the Eden Project, St Michaels Mount, The Lost Gardens of Heligan, a cider factory, an ice cream factory and had lots of sneaky campfires in a barbecue and enjoyed the fab facilities (farm animals, heated outdoor pool) at the campsite.
We had a great time at Buzz and Boo’s Medieval Birthday party at Ros and Tony’s . We had a couple of trips to the local PYO farm and Ady finally made it with us to Fishbourne Roman Villa.

July
My Mum and I had a nice day out to celebrate her birthday, we had a great day out at soft play with not so frequently but local home ed mates, Spatchcock died 🙁 , we celebrated Freya’s birthday with her at one of Ali’s fab parties, had a great time at the Brighton Kite Festival, Davies, Scarlett and I had a surprise viewing of a rehersal for a Shakespear in the park play when we were visiting with Julie, Lorna, Maisie and Jack. We had an excellent weekend away with friends at Wickstead / Festival of History weekend with camping, rollercoasters and reenactments and we had a bittersweet farewell with Caz, Bid, Archie and Elliot at the beach before they jetted off on the first leg of their round the world adventure. We went to the local Fire Station open day and the RSPB family fun day and visited Bedgebury Pinetum where we’d been meaning to go for ages.

My brief foray into competition entering paid dividends with a family entrance ticket to the British Motor Show which Ady took the day off work to come along to with us and we had a great time looking at campervans, having a ride in an off road track landrover, go karting, climbing wall and getting loads of freebies :). We ended the month with a surprise meal out and cinema visit to see WALL-E for the children.

August
My Dad turned 70 – he is now officially old enough to tell all sorts of random strangers how old he is :).

We had a great week away, blighted though it was by truly dreadful weather. The first half was a couple of nights Off The Path, a night with Linda and Stuart (friends in Manchester) and a night at Jay’s – a Feminist Parent friend for a gathering of FP folk. We had planned to sleep in our bought-specially-for-the-occassion smaller tent at all three locations and ended up sleeping inside at all of them instead!
The second half of the week was camping with LovelyEm at Eweleaze which was also blighted by poor weather and cut short for all of us but we did have two perfect nights and one perfect day with one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen :).
We had a lovely bank holiday Sunday with Chris and Julie and then at the Big Picnic event in Worthing to welcome the olympic flame where the children took part in an amazing torch parade. We followed this up with an equally lovely bank holiday Monday with my parents visiting Raystede Animal Sanctuary and going out for a meal :).
We finished off August in the company of friends at Chris and Helen’s splendid Pirate Party (aarh!) but without Ady who went to the airshow with friends from work.

September there was ragrugging, there were final trips to the PYO before it closed for the winter and we had a fire check from the firemen.
We had our loveliest camping trip with friends yet at the Sustainability Centre with Michelle, Marcus and Chloe, LovelyEm, Eve and Rei and Ali and Freya. which included various nice things particularly the day spent at Butser.

Scarlett lost her first tooth, Davies turned 8, we went to Jack and Maisie’s sixth birthday party, we met new (home educating) friends Tasha and Toby and had a good visit to the newly reopened soft play place in Worthing.

The big news of the month was that we got an alllotment :). We officially took it over from October 1st but spent a day there in September as soon as we got the keys starting to dig it over :). and got the unexpected bonus of finding some late potatoes too :).

We had a fantastic day at Tom’s doing some fishing and shooting which the kids really enjoyed :).

October kicked off on the 2nd with a trip to London for one of the RI lectures. This one was about the ear.
We spent lots of time at the allotment and I had another weekend in London with FP friends which was very enjoyable :).

We went to a couple of film week screenings – Nim’s Island, Prince of Egypt and Ady took Davies and Scarlett to see Horton Heard a Who. Ady and I went to a wedding where I enjoyed the welcome drinks, toasting drinks and first dance drinks very comprehensively 😉 – the children had a very nice day indeed with my mum and dad – a rare event indeed!

We had a great time at Ali’s Not Halloween Not Party and we had some official Halloween fun at Pulborough Brooks Trick or Tweet event and Booth musuem’s after dark event.

November
We had our annual ‘sometimes around November 5th’ fireworks event at Chris and Julie’s. We went to a local HE meet up at Spring Barn Farm which was mostly nice but tainted by the weather, the kids getting muddy and then whinging and me being stroppy!

We had a great weekend visit from The Barts which included a mad round trip to Reading to celebrate Claudia’s birthday with a swimming party, a trip to the allotment for Kirsty, the kids and I and the Remembrance Day parade which Davies and Scarlett participated in as Badgers and the rest of us got cold standing and watching.

We met up with Michelle and Chloe and The Beans for the heart talk at the RIand had a picnic in the park afterwards.

I went to the very poignant funeral of a work colleague who chose to end her life.

We found stag beetles in our firewood and found out loads about them and Ady and I had a great night out (lentils aside) being grown ups at a dinner party.

The children had their last pony ride of the year which was the second time they’d been off the lead and in control of Honey themselves. Scarlett particularly loved this and we have big plans to do more next year :).

We saw a filmeducation screening of The Fox and The Child which Scarlett had been desperate to see for months since seeing a trailer for it. She now has her own copy and dreams of her own fox too! 🙂

December saw us heading Northwards again. We spent a really fab weekend with friends Jay and Mark which saw Scarlett beginning celebrations of her birthday 🙂
From there we went to Helmsley for NicCamps does Christmas which definitely takes the title for best camp so far for me :).
Scarlett turned six, we had an amazing trip to France / Bruge with my parents (their Christmas present to us was the trip and the passports for the four of us to enable us to go in the first place :)) , The children and I had two theatre trips – one to see The Bigger Bang (a science show) and one to the ballet of Peter and the Wolf / Carnival of the Animals. Both of which were very much enjoyed by all three of us :).

Scarlett had the truly amazing experience which I suspect will be one of her strongest childhood memories – Keeper for the Day at Drusillas park.

We had another Not Party at Ali’s this time for Christmas (and to meet the new kittens), we had Ros and Tony’s Christmas party, we spent plenty of time at the beach, Christmas at my parents and as I’m about to blog we saw 2008 out and 2009 in surrounded by some of our very best friends.

It’s been another ace year. I know this post is peppered with ‘lovely’ ‘fab’ ‘amazing’ and other such words and truly that is pretty much how our life is. We are surrounded by wonderful friends, have fab times with them, enjoy many holidays, day trips and social times.
This year we have done plenty of soul searching as a family about where we want to be and although what we have now isn’t perfect it is close enough to it for us to have decided to stay put and make alterations to what we have to help it come closer to perfect. We can’t pull off full on self sufficiency without severly compromising our freedom to upsticks and go away so we’re getting close to it with chicken keeping and an allotment.

Once again we end the year with less debt than we started it. 2009 looks set to be an uncertain year for many people financially so it’s good to feel that we are fairly in control of our finances now and still enjoying the luxuries of holidays, day trips and as many free events as we can find to attend to make our money stretch as far as possible.

We have our health, we have our friends and we have each other. If we end 2009 saying the same I will consider us very lucky people – as we have ended 2008 saying it I wish you all a very happy new year and as many blessings as we seem to have :). xxx

This morning was punctuated by people calling for freecycle stuff. We left the last few bags on the doorstep and all but one lot has now gone. Hopefully she will call for it tomorrow, if not it can be relisted as there was other interest in it (shoes and boots).

We had arranged to meet Chris and Julie at the beach for a walk at 11am. Obviously as we live on the coast there are beaches all the way along near us and each little area has it’s own feel. Lancing and Worthing are nice enough but quite crowded and seasidey. Climping, where we met is more secluded, a little more ‘wild’ and has been used in filming for various tv shows. There was a digger moving the shingle around to create better sea defenses and it was making sheer drops of banks along the high tide mark.

Partially to distract the children from going in the water and partially because he’s not a proper grown up Ady showed us his beach jumping trick of leaping off the sheer edge and seeing how far you can get. Davies was pretty good, Scarlett just ran as fast as she could down it, Jack and Maisie liked the idea of it but were very nervous. Julie was wearing Lorna otherwise I think she may have had a go,Chris thought it was bloody mental and I was keen and willing but a bit crap at it. Good fun though :).

We found loads of interesting shells, seaweeds including a dead mans finger and some fossils and all got nicely pink cheeked and felt very alive with lungfuls of sea air, the breeze blowing away the cobwebs and the beach jumping getting our pulses racing :). It was a lovely couple of hours in the sunshine :).

We came home via Tescos for a few bits and had lunch while watching Scarlett’s Fox and the child dvd. It is definitely more impressive on the big screen and we were disappointed that there are no decent dvd extras as we were hoping for a making of type bit but we still think it’s a good film.

Tarly did some playdohing, Davies did some DSing and I did some cutting up cards to make baubles. Ady did some chopping up firewood and we all did some watching music tv counting down to the end of the year type shows. The kids had a well timed bath (they were asking what was so weird about kissing a girl and liking it and the next song was the kings of leon one – phew) and then their tea at which point I went to the kitchen and did a couple of hours of baking making two quiches and two lemon meringue pies to bring to Em’s. Also made bolognaise for dinner :).

Bed for the children and given I still have packing to do and am working in the morning I really should go to bed myself.

Ady’s work closes between Christmas and new year so depending on which days of the week the bank holidays fall on he gets up to 2 weeks off work but has to keep back however many working days that is from his annual leave.This annoys me as much as it is nice to have a proper break at Christmas having worked in retail for so many years (finish late Christmas eve when all the sale is set up ready to open early on Boxing Day so only the one day off) we tend to stay home for Christmas so it is days of his leave stolen from other times of the year when we could be away on holiday instead.

Also – and I’ve said this before and I’ll no doubt say it again – much as it is noce to have him around it upsets the dynamic between me and the kids which means we are all stressy with each other, everyone feels a bit ‘not normal’ which coupled with the feeling of the house being smaller anyway (influx of stuff, decorations making it feel cluttered), there being too many people in it all of the time and the children being full of chocolate, over excesses of gifts and not enough sleep there are always a few blow outs and tensions. This year we’ve also had low level illness (them and their fucking coughs!) and my own hormones added to the mix. It came to a head tonight with Scarlett and me and the children had a bit of a chat about it all while Ady was washing up and agreed that while Christmas is nice it comes at a bit of a price and goes on far too long and we are all pretty happy and content with the rythym of our days normally and don’t necessarily welcome all this upheaval to them.

I have been plagued by really vivid, really disturbing dreams every night for the last week or so. Ady’s blaming all the cheese I’ve been eating and who knows he may be right. I can’t remember any of them in the morning but wake feeling exhausted from all the activity during my dreams. Consequently I’ve been sleeping in in the mornings. On the plus side Ady makes me a cup of tea and Scarlett brings it up to me in bed and wakes me so it’s not all bad ;).

One of Ady’s Christmas presents was a top from Asda which he liked but noticed a hole in the collar, either where the label had been sewn in or perhaps where a security tag had been. So today we went to Asda to return it. I’d lost the receipt (I’m crap with receipts and never keep them) so he got the refund price for today rather than what I paid for it, which would have been fine if they’d had another to swap but they didn’t. Never mind, he got two other nice tops, also in the sale for not much more to pay. Davies got a couple of pairs of jeans and also swapped a Doctor Who figure he had a duplication of for 2 WALL.E figures (WALL.E and Eve).

We came home again, had lunch and then Ady and I decided to tackle our wardrobes. We had been planning to tidy up the playroom but there is still loads of Christmas food and craft kits that will probably get done over the next week so we decided to give that a few more days to clear stuff that will go anyway and do the wardrobe instead. Our wardrobes are built into the eaves of the roof and go back about 5 foot and are fronted by 3 full size internal doors so is quite a big space. Consequently it gets used as a dumping ground (mostly by Ady) which means when I want to find something like a pair of shoes or a bag which should legitimately be in a wardrobe I can’t because piles of stuff fall out on top of me instead. Behind the wardrobe, through a smaller door is the loft space (it is a truly Narnia-esque arrangement) which was mostly empty.

So we spent a few hours dragging out all of the stuff that was in there – proving my point about Ady shoving stuff in places there was a pc monitor, the portable tv I got for my 17th birthday, 2 (yes 2) DVD players, a box for a camera that has long since died, the tent, our sleeping bags and camping mats, 2 suitcases, 3 holdalls, boxes and bags full of outgrown kids clothes, 4 boxes of disposable cameras, loads of games and all the clothes and shoes that should rightfully be in there.

I sat and listed a pile of stuff on freecycle – some of which has already been collected, some of which is being collected tomorrow and anything left will go to the tip on Wednesday. I have a smaller pile to ebay – two motorcycle jackets that realistically we are not going to be using due to a) not having a motorbike b) not fitting in them anymore and c) having lost the nerve to be on motorbikes since becomming parents and realising our own mortality, a photo printer that connects direct to a camera and came with mine but I’ve never used, and a wetsuit that’s too small for anyone who lives here. I’ll get them listed tomorrow and if they don’t sell they can go on freecycle too. My car is loaded with stuff ready to go to the tip and the wardrobe is all neat and tidy with only clothes and shoes and the tent and sleeping bags stacked neatly at the back, easily accessible for when we next need them.

Ady went off to cook dinner while I finished sorting it all out and we all sat down to roast beef and watched the Northern Lights thing with Joanna Lumley together.

It’s that messing with your head about what day of the week it is over Christmas time isn’t it?

Ady wanted to do something to the chickens today – he’s lined their coop in a thick waterproof stuff which will hopefully keep them warmer and muffle the cockerel’s crowing too. So he spent some time outside doing that.

The kids and I stayed inside playing with DSs and then doing some of the kits they got for Christmas. They both got a plaster of paris hand or footprint kit so we did those. Scarlett took a cast of her foot, Davies did his hand. It consisted of a pack of gel to be mixed with water which you left your hand / foot in until it set (about a minute), then poured the plaster of paris into that to make a cast. They both came out really, really well. Davies’ hand particularly is quite spooky in it’s 3D likeness complete with full fingerprints and everything. We were so impressed we went back to the shop planning to get some more (they were just £1.50 per pack) but they had none left.

Scarlett opened a window sticker kit and did a little of that and Davies went through his now quite vast collection of Doctor Who figures. He ended up with 2 Donna’s as he got one seperate on and one in a kit of various assistants so he’s kept the individual one in it’s pack and is planning to swap it for something else. He now owns a positive army of daleks (I think he has 8 plus a remote control one).

We had an early and small lunch and then went to my parents. Ady chopped up some wood for them using Dad’s chainsaw, we had another small lunch – finally got to have turkey leftover sandwiches 😉 and the kids got another dose of Uncle Frazer. Mum and I looked at the photos of Bruge that she’d not seen yet and also the one of Tarly doing her keeper for the day and the NicCamps pictures which she was slightly tight lipped over and just said ‘looks very cold and bleak’ at all the lovely shots of the big gang of children having a ball playing in the snow!

We left as it got dark to get home for the chickens. More DSing, dinner for the children and we all watched Help, I’m no bigger than a bug which we thought was good. I sat and cut up Christmas cards into circles and made a couple of baubles with them which look really nice and effective and are now hanging on the tree. I’ll cut up the rest and make a whole treeful to put away for next year :).

After ranting from me about overtiredness making for gittery and threatening not to bring him to Em’s party if he doesn’t catch up on some sleep the next couple of nights Davies was actually asleep by about 9 tonight as I turned his light off when I caught him sitting up drawing and he actually laid down. Miracle!

We were over to Chris and Julie’s today for our Christmas get together with them. We only buy for the children and I’d planned to make rugs for their three but only got as far as making one for Jack before getting caught up in other crafty projects. I didn’t want to give something home made to one and not to the others so I got a book each for Jack and Maisie – and completely forgot about Lorna! 😳

So yesterday evening Ady reserved a playmat for her online at Argos and we collected it on the way over this morning – result – it had 70% off :). While Ady and Scarlett went to Argos to collect that Davies and I went to Sainsburys to get some sausages as requested by Chris. A&S saw one of the adult helpers from Rainbows at Argos which Scarlett was all happy about :). I got a really nice necklace in Sainsburys that I’ve had my eye on for months since it was a new range and has finally gone into the half price sale. I also got the matching bracelet :). I have got a necklace that Ady bought me as a birthday present the first year we were together and the clasp has gone on it. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks in my purse but keep forgetting to get it fixed and it’s only in not wearing it (and having shorter hair too) I realise quite how much I fiddle with it normally (or my hair) so I’ve taken to wearing necklaces to work more in an effort to stop me developing alternative twitches 😆

We had a nice few hours with Chris and Julie. Julie is ill, with this cold that hopefully all of my lot have now had. I think I got away with a very mild case of it but hopefully enough of a dose that I won’t get it again. All the presents were well recieved (they got Davies a set of watercolour pencils and Scarlett a book) and the kids enjoyed playing together, Jack and Maisie showed off their new toys and they all spent a lot of time running around outside which I’m sure did them good. C&J had a plan for us to all go to the beach but having been yesterday and with none of us remotely attired for beach walking we put them off and have arranged to meet at the beach next week instead.

We came home via the 3 different Woolworths that were on the way home, two of which were closing today. In both there were long queues, plenty of people coming just to gawp and very little in the way of anything to buy. In the third, which isn’t closing until next week there were plenty of bargains to be had but nothing we *needed* and as I anticipate January being a long month it isn’t the time to be stocking up on toys for next Christmas just yet!

At home I organised the kids’ tea and got ours all prepared then retired to a hot bubble bath with a book and a snowball. Unfortunately Tarly discovered me and was naked and in with me before I could really protest! I do love having her in the bath with me but I also love that time to relax, read my book and shut everyone else out – will have to go back to baths after her bedtime I think. We’ve decided to declare the DS charger lost so have ordered another one off ebay along with a pack of 10 stylus’ which will be kept at adult height and only dished out when required.

The kids eventually went to bed, we eventually had dinner and watched a couple of episodes of Armstrong and Miller on dvd. I’ve just spent a very happy half an hour perusing the Book People website (I’d stopped going there 3 years ago having broken my monthly order from there habit but was reminded of it by Julie today when admiring some of J&Ms Christmas presents.) choosing everything I would buy if I could afford it and reserving them all online from work instead. Feel very virtuous :).

Last year we went to the beach on Boxing Day and it was lovely, so this year I wanted to do the same again. One of Davies’ presents yesterday was a bike. Which sounds huge and I guess would have been if it had been something he particularly wanted and something we’d paid a lot of money for. Ady got it at Tesco (he has contacts ;)) for about £18 way back in the summer but we’d stashed it to give Davies when he wanted a bike. And he never really has 😆 For his birthday he wanted a scooter so there seemed no point in giving him both or disappointing him with a bike instead. Late on Christmas Eve we decided that it was silly having it stashed away in the cupboard any longer though and dug it out and wrapped it.

Ady’s enjoying being at home (he finished work on 23rd and doesn’t go back til Jan 5th – longer off than me!) and was up early being all domestically efficient; putting washing on, chopping firewood, running the hoover round, getting a fire lit and getting a cooked breakfast on the go. He brought me up a cup of tea at about 9am 🙂 I like having him home too although we exist in different time spheres so if he was here all the time I’d feel the need to go out to work I think 😆

The kids were plugged into their DSs – as they have been pretty much constantly for the last 2 days really 😆 I’m sure self-limitation will kick in eventually but for now we have lost them to the church of Nintendo. We appear to have mislaid a charger somewhere though so there is a battle for the single charger and as they continue playing while it charges it takes longer and there seems to be constantly a child sat next to a plug socket and one laid across the sofa.

I made up Davies’ bike, we had breakfast and then I got increasingly frustrated at everyone else taking so long to get motivated to get out of the house. I may well be a bit crap at not just announcing what is going to happen, with fairly little notice and it happening ;). Anyway, we finally got going, there was an issue about getting the tyres on the bike pumped up which was resolved by Ady remembering he has a compresser thingy in his boot that runs off the cigarette lighter (does anyone use that for actually lighting cigarettes anymore, or just for charging things and running equipment? Infact is it even called a cigarette lighter anymore or a ‘dashboard power supply’ as is more fitting?). We drove to the beach the other side of Worthing town centre, mostly for it’s proximity to the road so we could park easily next to the promenade.

Scarlett had her scooter and Davies and I had a go at him learning to ride. Unfortunately, as has been previously ascertained and demonstrated many times I am crap at teaching, Davies is crap at being taught, I lose my (limited supply of) patience rapidly, he gets upset at me being impatient and we quickly lose sight of the fact we love each other and share the common goal of transferance of knowledge from me to him. Today and bike riding was no different to the various other things we have attempted and within moments he was in tears and I was making a public show of myself as a crap parent infront of all the other parents indulgently taking little video clips of their offspring clad in proper safety equipment (knee pads, elbow protectors, crash helmets, inflatable anoraks, gum shields, head to toe personal airbags that sort of thing. Can you sense my disdain for over protection?;)) trying out their skateboards, rollerskates, bikes, trikes, scooters, go karts and the like. The most amusing was a couple with a child who could have been barely walking, who you couldn’t actually see for padding, being held up between them flanking him on both sides while his feet were resting on a tiny skateboard :lol:.

Anyway, Ady took over and did a far better job that me for ages although did forget that Davies has not been raised on the ‘toughen ’em up’ school of bringing up boys and therefore telling him ‘well you will fall off and hurt yourself, that’s what it’s all about’ was likely to make him cry again and never want to sit on a saddle for the rest of his natural life. (You can either jump off this cliff through a ring of fire wearing a strait jacket or get on this bike without stablisers? The cliff eh?). I redeemed myself as Good Mother by a quick pep talk about how actually it didn’t matter if he never rode a bike and that the only necessary things in life were breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping and how there would be people alive who had never even seen a bike let alone mastered riding one (not in Beijing though obviously, we all thanks to Katie Melua that Beijing is overridden (pardon the pun) with bicycles). Then we put the bike and the scooter back in the car and had a walk on the beach. I managed to prevent the kids from actually going in the sea (although it took some doing) and they did some clambering on the rocks next to the signs saying DANGER KEEP OFF just to up our rule breaking quota further ;).

Back home for a very late lunch, after which I really wanted the Christmas cake I’d made but left at my parents house so I nipped over there to collect it and had a quick 10 minutes with them too. Back home again the day continued in much the same way. Scarlett did a couple of her kits from yesterday – make your own nail varnish and make your own lipgloss, Davies mostly DS’d. Ady put a couple more games on both their rumble packs including duplications of each others so they can connect. The current fave is a dinosaur one, combat of the giants, which they’ve both been sitting next to each other playing.

Davies, Ady and I played junior scrabble and Davies and I have been doing lots of BopIt one on one. Scarlett and I had a bath with face packs. The children had tea and eventually went to bed. Still not sure Davies is asleep, I think he might be practising staying awake for NYE 😆

Ady and I watched Hancock which for once was a film we both thought was pretty good.

Davies tried to start Christmas at 210am when he wandered into our bedroom clutching his pillowcase saying ‘It’s Christmas – look!’ I started to sit up and get ready to be festive but glanced at the clock and realised what the time was and told him it was technically Christmas but still way too early to be up. I didn’t really expect him to listen but he obviously wasn’t properly awake as he toddled back off to bed and went back to sleep!

He reappeared again just before 7am and this time joined us in bed to open the presents in his pillowcase. Ady went to wake Tarly and we all went to watch her open hers before heading into the lounge. Thanks to buying presents for the kids throughout the year we managed to get a very sizaeble stash of things under the tree (I think they had about 23 things each to unwrap) which they did in a leisurely fashion, often stopping to play with things or investigate them properly before carrying on. They both took a break when there were still gifts left to play on their DS’s. We’d got them both rumble packs with about 10 games loaded on so that kept them very busy :).

I’d gotten Ady a few bits including pratical stuff like a new alarm clock as his was broken. He’d gotten me a digital photo keyring (which I’d circled in a catalogue and written ‘Nic wants one of these!’ ages ago) and Bop It Extreme. I’d played on one at a friends house way back last year and been all wistful at the one we bought for a birthday present for a friend this year and now I have my own :). And you can do two player stuff on it which Davies and I have been making full use of.

At midday we packed ourselves up and headed over to my parents. Our present from them this year was our passports so that took the pressure right off – I HATE being given presents and having to pretend I like them and unfortunately my Mum isn’t that great at giving good presents. They were pleased with their gifts and we had a nice day with Mum and Dad, Frazer and Granny. Dinner was really nice, I mulled some wine which went down well with mincemeat muffins, the kids had taken some of their presents from home over to unwrap there and Scarlett was thrilled with her Animal Hospital stuff which her and I spent ages putting all the stickers on.

I had a couple of gritting teeth moments but I guess it wouldn’t be Christmas without those ;). We watched Doctor Who at 6pm and then gathered ourselves together to come home. Davies of course wanted to watch W&G, Scarlett opted for half an hour of playing DS in bed time instead. They went to bed, we drank champage, ate posh cheese and crackers and watched The Royale Family.

As Christmasses go, it’s been a pretty good one :).

I worked this morning. Not that it felt much like work, dressing up in sparkly clothes, donning a pair of antlers with bells on (that kept frekaing me out actually and making me think there was someone behind me!) and eating Terry’s chocolate orange segments for four hours! I was with Wendy (who is important but also likes a laugh and announce this morning ‘let’s wing it and do bugger all work today eh?’) and Sian who is lovely (and the sister of Ady’s work colleague Stacey who I got drunken and rowdy with at that wedding a few months ago). It wasn’t particularly busy and most people who came in wre in high spirits. Those who weren’t we ribbed about it and it was actually quite a nice way to spend Christmas Eve morning :).

When I finished work I nipped to the book shop / stationers for a few last minute bits and delivered the last couple of local Christmas cards on the way home.

Ady and the children had been at home, not sure what they’d been up to but they were playing xbox when I got home – oh and tracking Santa on Norad too.

Shortly after I arrived home I went to the chiller (which is located in the cupboard under the stairs in the playroom) and the ironing board which had been wedged in there not very well fell out. I was too slow at leaping out of the way and it landed on my big toe. I was convinced it was broken – it hurt enough to have me sobbing. An ice pack and cuddles from both children later it appears not to be broken just very badly bruised 🙁 Very hurty but not requiring proper medical trained attention fortunately.

The children decorated pillowcases with fabric pens in lieu of stockings to hang up and our friend Bruce called over. The children went off to play in their rooms while we chatted. They have been giddily excited all day, as I guess you would expect from young children on Christmas eve really ;).

I had a long bath which helped in making me feel more chilled out, the children also had a bath and then had their dinner and opened their traditional Christmas Eve gift of new pjs. They have had a new pair of pjs every single Christmas but somehow they never remember that is what the present under the tree is going to be 😆

We watched Toy Story 2 and then the Shrek Christmas thing and they headed off to bed. It took slightly less toing and froing that usual before they were asleep – I’m guessing this means tomorrow will be a *very* early morning ;).

Ady and I had a takeaway from the Indian round the corner that we’ve not managed to try before despite it being there for about 18 months. It was lovely – a real treat :). I’ve drunk a bottle of fizz, we wrapped the last of the pressies, assembled everything under the tree or in pillowcases and now given the children could well be awake again in about four hours I really should go to bed!

Merry Christmas everyone 🙂

Davies and Scarlett had a puzzle-fest this morning. Davies got out one of the British Isles and did it in about ten minutes and not to be outdone Scarlett went and got one of animals around the world and did a fair amount of that too. They then sat and chatted about the British Isles one and pointed things out to each other on it. Sort of like I imagined it would be when I bought it about 4 years ago 😆 They watched Animal 24:7 which is some sort of animal rescue service show and featured a fairly local service to us dealing with a fox cub and some semi-feral cats. There was also a beaver feature where some were released into a specially built enclosure. Beavers were one of the animals Scarlett fed at her keeper for the day so she was telling Davies lots of Beaver facts, which seemed to be on some sort of time delay with what the presenter on tv was saying for full comedy value as he said what she had a few sentences after her 😆

We eventually got dressed and ready to go out. I had a minor panic that I’d said I’d email Ady a calendar for him to print off at work for my Granny and forgotten so I hurriedly found a flickr tool to do it – very impressed with it actually, must go and play with it properly when I’m not in a rush. I then had a dilemma about which to do first – we needed to go and collect some freecycle clothes for Davies but my car was desperate for petrol and I wasn’t sure how far it would go. I decided to go the wrong way for the freecycle stuff but the right way to the nearest petrol station and got that sorted. The clothes were great – a whole bin liner full of stuff, mostly tops, a couple of pairs of trousers and some shorts and tshirts for next summer :).

Then we went to Pulborough Brooks. They were having a Mini Family Fun Day with a winter theme and I’d seen it advertised there ages ago and decided to go if the weather was okay. Unfortunately the traffic was dreadful and it took us nearly an hour to get there (would normally take about 20 minutes). But it was worth it – I do think the RSPB are very good at organising events. This was just a pound each for the children and there were loads of activities laid on. We didn’t do everything but both children decorated a gift bag with glitter and glue, they made some fingerprint gift tags and they didn’t do wordsearches, make Christmas cards or dangly snowflakes. I sometimes think I don’t do enough crafts with the children but then I realise that while I might not be doing it with them they actually do some sort of craft pretty much every day in their own ways.

There was a storytelling session at 1pm which I thought they’d want to attend but it was very busy and they both elected to have a walk around outside instead. Judging by what must have been the crowds leaving it as it finished when we came back again it was probably the right decision. Instead we followed the ‘Winter trail’ of 10 clues with pictures and jumbled letters to identify 10 birds from the reserve. We got most of them and the rest we got from the pictures in the hides. At one of the hides they had set up colouring so we did that and were then all getting hungry. Davies was less keen to participate in the activities but wanted to go for a proper walk around the reserve, Scarlett wanted to do all the activities and I just wanted a cup of tea really. We were all slightly stroppy when I suddenly reminded us all it was only two days til Christmas and then we all cheered up and were happy all the way back to the visitor centre where we did the bingo game. That was quite fun and had us dashing about and helping each other and other people and then we decided we really would go home.

We collected our crafts, the kids got a goody bag each (crammed full of stuff) and as I was feeling nice and also like to support RSPB I let the kids each have 50p for the lucky dip (also because they’d noticed it and not asked, which always makes me proud of them :)) – Davies got a set of coastal birds top trumps cards and Scarlett got some fox stickers and a little notepad, both really apt gifts and both worth well more than 50 p each too.

Once home we had lunch and I sat and finished the book I was reading while the kids did some junk modelling. They had both picked up various (small) shapes and sizes of cardboard boxes and trays from Asda last night and were taping them together to create things (see what I mean about crafts!). They also sat and played with the trumps cards for ages. They have had a very harmonious day :).

I did some bits in the kitchen – I’d made some chocolate truffle mix yesterday which needed refridgerating overnight so I added finely chopped crystalised ginger to one half and then donned gloves to roll it into small balls (it melts so quick in bare hands you end up with chocolate palms rather than balls). I then melted some white chocolate and chopped up some angelica and cherries to make mini holly leaves and berries and decorated them all as mini Christmas puddings. Really pleased with them, I think they look fab and they taste delicious. The ginger ones are for my Dad, I’ve not decided about the plain ones yet.

I also made a batch of gingerbread star cookies as I realised we’d not got anything to give to the Thank you Neighbours who arrived on our doorstep way back in November with gifts for all. I later melted some chocolate and dipped them in and they are also delicious and obviously home made so I’ll sort out a box for those and Ady can take them over tomorrow ;).

While doing all that I rang my Mum and whilst she was oblivious to it got really upset and pissed off with her. Ady rang me just as I rang off from her so he got the full brunt of it all and felt suitably indignant on my behalf and came home and pampered me all evening to make up for her :). I made the kids tea and took plenty of solace in them to make me feel better.

One of Scarlett’s small birthday presents had been a make your own scarft set with a cardboard loom which she had been really keen to do so we got that out and I started to thread it up for her. It was really crap though. I hate it when things for kids are made of really poor quality (like art and craft stuff). It wasn’t an expensive kit but it wasn’t cheap either and it said 6+ so wasn’t something that I’d have expected to be particularly hard but I was struggling to make it work. In the end I took off what I was making on my peg loom and threaded it up with the wool from Scarlett’s kit (which was actually what she wanted – to make something on a loom like mine) and she very happily got on with that. Candle – who is, we believe, completely blind wandered across the wool and was suddenly overcome with a fit of kittenness and started playing with it. It was very cute and makes us wonder if she does still have some level of vision after all.

I finished chocolating the gingerbread and then sat and read some books to the kids – a couple of festive ones Jesus’ Christmas party and Ituku’s Christmas Journey, a very lovely tearjerker – Her mother’s face and finally Tomatoes from Mars for a touch of lunacy.

The children took ages to get to sleep tonight – I imagine tomorrow will be even worse ;). Scarlett did finally get to sleep only to lay there coughing for ages. Every year I spend at least one night in winter stood over her while she sleeps fretting about croup and breathing. My brother was hospitalised with croup as a small child and Scarlett has always had a weakness for a barking cough and being unable to catch her breath back. She seems more peaceful now.

I watched the last episode of Survivors which I found really disappointing and non-endingy. I see there is already a second series commissioned so I guess that’s why but it just left it hanging too much I thought. Or maybe I’m just disillusioned after investing all those hours in Lost! 😆

today.

Which was supposed to be a seeing Tasha and Toby day. But Tasha text me to say she was feeling rough and needed to cancel. This was no bad thing really as we were all pretty tired and I’d wondered whether it would have been particularly harmonious between the kids today anyway. I also had various things I really wanted to get done so this morning I did lots of householdy stuff such as laundry processing, some online banking and so on.

Davies and Scarlett watched WALL.E, well I say watched, I think it was more like background music to their playing actually. They did some DSing – the current favourite game is Harvest Moon which they seem to be working in a collaborative fashion to progress on :).

The other thing I wanted to get done was some baking, for which I needed some butter; the icing of the Christmas cake, for which I wanted a cake board or container and some ragrug making for which I needed some string. With this small shopping list in mind we decided to go into Lancing and I let the children decide whether to drive or walk. They both voted for walking (Scarlett: good for us AND the environment!) and I even remembered to bring the cloth bag too for real eco-friendly bonus points :).

As we walked we sang ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’ and had interesting conversations about what cockroaches could and couldn’t survive, whether his outer body is his shell or skeleton and other such stuff. We got our string, and butter and some crumpets and pancakes for lunch. We didn’t manage to get a cake board or a container due to the only shop selling them being incredibly overpriced. I was very pleased about this when a proper rummage in the cupboard in the kitchen turned up my cake container from last year :).

On the way home we retold the Very Hungry Caterpillar with Scarlett cast in the lead role as she was claiming to be very hungry and asking what would happen if she ate all her lunch and then ate all of what I suggested she could have after lunch and so on.

Once home everyone did have all the lunch they’d said they might and then the children went off to play with the chickens (and run around the garden shrieking) for a while. I think they’ve been a bit fresh-air deficient the last week or so. I iced the Christmas cake and then they came in and made holly berries while I made leaves and then decorated a little Christmas tree I made to go on top with coloured balls as Davies insisted it have a ‘3D centrepiece’ 😆 It looks lovely :).

Ady arrived home in the middle of all this as he had the dentist this afternoon. He is having a very stressy last few days at work so took some of that out on chopping some firewood and then went off to the dentist. Davies and Scarlett had a mad half hour while I made some mincemeat muffins which really are divine :). Ady sorted the kids’ tea as it involved going into the garage where 10 dead pheasant are hanging waiting to be made oven ready which freaks me out a bit as they dangle just where the freezers are and brush against my head.

They ate while watching the first 3 episodes of Stig of the Dump (2002 BBC series) which Davies got completely immersed in straight away and Tarly was slightly more reticient about but still very interested. I’m guessing that will be finished with by tomorrow :). And henceforth will follow Stig playsets made from cardboard boxes, plasticine and bits of old tissue. There will be geomag creations of Stig and Barney made and we’ll be trawling car boot sales for memorabilia before you know it! ;).

Then we were off to Asda. We’re spending Christmas Day itself and therefore having roast dinner at my parents so don’t need to buy any of that food – although we have already done all that once so I don’t feel as though we’re getting off the hook that lightly! But we do have Boxing Day at home just the four of us and Ady is off work for over a week so we wanted to have plenty of nice food in. It was busy and there were things they had run out of so we still have a few things we’ll pick up if we get a chance but we have food – real food to make dinners out of and party food to snack on – to last for a couple of weeks so we can avoid the shops now unless we want to visit them.

The kids were great, really patient and actually quite enjoyed the chaos and we were not only way quicker than we expected to be – no queues at the tills and we were home about an hour before I’d expected us to be – we also spent loads less. Ady and I always play this game of guessing what the total will be before it shows on the screen. I said £230, he said £280 and it was actually £165 so we were very chuffed :).

Home for dinner, Gavin and Stacey overload and overuse of the ‘delete all messages’ function on my mobile – I hope no real messages have been sent to me today because I’ve been mass deleting everything unread. It has finally stopped now so I can go to bed safe in the knowledge my phone won’t explode in the night if I’m not there deleting messages every few minutes.

Yesterday we had our annual drive around West Sussex the weekend before Christmas delivering cards to friends who really live too close to just stick them in the post. I am of the shove it quietly through the letterbox and run style delivery, Ady is of the knock on the door and chat politely and promise to get together in the new year style delivery.

We also had various things to collect having reserved them online in two different branches of Argos. And we had nearly enough luncheon vouchers from online surveys to pay for a bargain bucket!

So a good few hours of yesterday was spent in the car. We also stopped for Scarlett and I to dash into Peacocks for a new outfit for her and some new jeans for Davies as I’d realised his one remaining pair without holes in the knee now had a hole in the knee. We try and smarten ourselves up at least a little for Christmas Day and we also had a party to go to with a smart dress code so it justified getting something new for the children to wear. I’d already got Davies a new top (black, long sleeve with a waistcoat and tie printed on it, very Davies :)) and Scarlett chose a black skirt with sequins (adjustable waist so got age 8-9 and pulled the waist right in, it’ll fit her for a couple of years!), a red shrug style cardi and under suffrance a pair of black tights with stars on them. We decided she was bound to have a top at home to wear with it and found a dress that is slightly too short to be a dress anyway and went perfectly with it.

We got all our cards delivered and got home around 4pm. Then we all got ready. I’d bought a black dress in Asda the other night – £12 reduced to half price and then with the VAT reduction it was £5.71 – bargain! I had various shoe ponderings but went with my mad pink ones in the end and they did fine til I kicked them off to dance on the sofa later.

We drove over to Ros and Tony’s new house. They always have an open house at Christmas and we went to two previous ones but last years clashed with Ady’s work do so we missed it, and we really missed it as it is always lovely with loads of food, drink, nice people, happy festive feeling and most of all musical people who are happy to play music and do singing. What more could one want?! This was our first visit to their amazing new house, still very much a work in progress but already stunning, gorgeous and just full of potential for the fantastic home it will be sometime in the future :).

No party ever seems to happen at Tony’s without a bonfire and this was no exception. My shoes, common sense and it being far too far away from the bottles of wine prevented me from venturing outside but plenty of others (Ady and kids included) did and came back in stinking of smoke having been bouncing on the trampoline and climbing in the trees right next to the fire 😆

At one point I was walking through the hall (which is enormous and has sofas and fireplaces with inbuilt seats and a big sweeping Dallas style staircase and everything) and realised I was all alone in this great big space with Avril Lavigne blaring out so I did the only sensible thing, leapt on the sofa and started dancing. More people came out and joined in and there was a mad variety of different interpretations to the music 😆

Scarlett was in her absolute element; there was Kessie, Pea’s cat Rainbow and plenty of stairs to run up and down in looking very cute and oddly un-Scarlett like in her pretty clothes 🙂

Davies veered between having a great time and two episodes of crying – once was a genuine injury – he got kicked in the nose on the trampoline. He was so upset I wondered if it was broken and it is bruised today. The other was overtiredness and wanting to go home. It was about 10pm and he was tired but I was cross because at home he is never asleep by 10pm anyway and the rest of us were having a really good time. Ady dealt with him and he managed to perk up and keep going for another hour or so by which time Ady wanted to go too (what with going to work today and all).

We finished off with carols, Christmas songs and then whatever we could persuade musically talented people to play for us to singalong to on the piano (we left after Bohemian Rhapsody).Oh it was great :).

She can’t access my blog for some odd reason at the moment so she won’t know I’m saying it but thanks Ros for a lovely, lovely time anyway 🙂 x

apart from those in Sainsburys 😆

A fairly lazy start to the day, actually I’ve had a fairly lazy day all round really. I’ve done some looking up recipes online and writing them in my recipe book. I had intentions to actually do some baking but was lacking too many ingredients to do it. I did some online reserving of various things – Frazer is coming in with us on a cd player for my parent’s car so I reserved it from Halfords (although they later rang me to say they didn’t have one at that branch but ‘thought they did at another branch, maybe I could try there?’ – so their website doesn’t work then) – Ady managed to find one at yet another branch. I also reserved the last couple of bits we want for Tarly at two different branches of Argos, both of which we’ll be going near tomorrow while Christmas card delivering so that’s all my Christmas shopping finished :). I spent the rest of my time mostly drinking tea and reading Dawn French’s autobiography.

Ady was more productive and went off for several hours to Tom’s to chop firewood in a labour in exchange for half the wood deal. He also brought home 8 pheasants so in January when we run out of food on about the 15th of the month due to running out of money we’ll be able to make full use of this google search.

Davies and Scarlett did some Christmas craft kits that had been put away with the Christmas decorations last year undone so were only rediscovered last weekend. They mainly contain glitter and glue so are on the messy side. They also watched WALL.E, did some painting and made a game called ‘Animal Heroes’ out of paper and cut out shapes which kept them amused for ages.

When Ady got home I went out. I wanted to get a few bits from Boots for Tarly, food for dinner tonight and the missing baking ingredients and also a Christmassy or otherwise special top for Scarlett to wear on Christmas day. I didn’t manage the top but I did get everything else, and quite enjoyed wandering round with no real pressure all by myself listening to the other shoppers all stressed and arguing with each other.

Back home again I had an early bath with an aim to having an early dinner. It didn’t happen as Tarly came in the bathroom and ended up getting in the bath with me while Davies and Ady watched crap Saturday night tv together.

Work all day day for me today. In the morning I spent ages faffing around making nursery rhymes festive and then photocopying them so we could have Christmas themed baby rhyme time. We managed it with a combination of Christmas songs (Little Donkey, Away in a manger, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer and the like) and some butchered nursery rhymes, some of my own rewriting (I did Incy Wincy, Row, row,row your boat, wheels on the bus) and some not (a great twinkle twinkle and some to the tune of including London Bridge and nick nack paddy whack).

It was an intimate rhyme time with just 8 adults and 8 children due I guess to illness and other commitments at this time of the year but it was nice and quite nativity play-esque. Several of them took the song sheets home with one mum saying they were planning a singalong with family and would love to sing the songs :).

I’d planned to do a bit of shopping at lunchtime but had gone to work wearing a different coat to yesterday having left my cash card in yesterdays coat. I couldn’t be bothered to drive home so instead sat in the staff room drinking 2 cups of tea, eating various festive fayre and reading out of date Grazia magazines. Was nice :).

It all feels very ‘end of term’ at work and I only have one shift left which is Christmas eve anyway now.

Ady was home with the children in the morning and then dropped them at my parents house (at their request) for the afternoon. As he was literally driving past the door again on his way home he picked them up which meant I had nearly an hour at home alone before they all arrived. Home alone isn’t something that happens very often and actually having not seen them for more than 10 minutes this morning I was rather missing the children so I was very glad to see them when they got home. Albeit for a few minutes only before I headed off again.

Ady got paid today so I went off to get the remnants of the Christmas shopping for Davies and Scarlett (and a few bits for Ady). I did a load in Asda, wandered lost around Toys R Us, popped into Tesco and got home at about 930pm.

We managed to wrap up all the kids presents and re-hide them away again, have dinner (very late, almost midnight) and drink lots while watching Friday night tv. I am now feeling very much full of the Christmas spirit and infact should probably go and sleep it off!

We seem to have gremlins in our house today. Not of the variety that Leo blogs about but the sort that make mischief. While we were out the freezer compartment in the fridge freezer in the kitchen defrosted which meant I stood in a puddle when I got home, had to clear out the fridge and mop it all up but worst of all the pizza which was in there for Davies’ tea got waterlogged and soggy and was no good :(. Also today the Christmas tree fell over, all of it’s own accord. Noone was anywhere near it, it just toppled over, all the decorations fell off, the poor cat was terrified and the large volume of water that Ady filled the pot with in the foolish hopes that it would help to weigh it down so it would be more steady emptied itself all over the floor. It looked like – and indeed was – a job for the Adymachine and thankfully there was an Ady here to operate it as I still don’t actually know how.

I overslept again this morning – and I went to bed at 11pm last night which is unheardofly early for me. Tarly woke me at about 730am as the loo roll had run out in the bathroom downstairs so I went downstairs, attended to that, moaned at her about what a crap way (pardon the pun) it was to be roused from slumber and stomped back up to bed and promptly fell back asleep again for another couple of hours.

Once I did get up and everyone was dressed I made some popcorn and toffee sauce and we settled down to watch Arctic Tale together. We quite enjoyed it, excellent cinematography that would no doubt have been amazing on the big screen.

There was then one of those time voids where suddenly you are running late for no apparent reason and we ended up leaving the house when we should have been arriving at Ali’s. Partially for that reason and partially because they managed to spoil my enjoyment of a particular Nina Simone song that can move me to tears if I think about it enough I got really pissed off with Davies and Scarlett for squabbling in the car and yelled at them. This did at least silence them so I could play the song again in peace ;).

Ali’s Christmas not-party was great. A really good mix of people (two families we knew already, two families we didn’t), lots of nice food, the usual array of electronic child-entertainment and the added attraction of the two gorgeous new kittens :). Enjoyed a really lovely few hours of sitting chatting while the children played / kitten worshipped. Was good 🙂 – thanks Ali.

Home again to put the chickens away – two were still sitting out on top of the coop, fools! I dealt with the freezer defrostation debacle and got dinner sorted for Ady and I. Ady arrived home and did some kid-bedroom tidying while I read some stories – particularly recommend If the wolrd were a village, Fire Cat and Stick Manwhich was a second reading as they’d liked it so much last night.

Then came the falling down Christmas tree incident which I left Ady to deal with and nipped to the supermarket for some bits for dinner eeked out with the last £3 in the house until payday tomorrow – another month and therefore another year managed within budget :).

We had a plan to gather all the gifts to start wrapping tonight but the work of the gremlins coupled with Davies and Scarlett not falling asleep until late meant it’s been delayed again and is now scheduled for tomorrow.

Ady took Davies and Scarlett over to Liza’s this morning – this helps not only with timing as his start time is more flexible than mine but also with petrol. It also means I get a half an hour with no one in the house but me which is always nice :).

I worked this morning. Wednesdays always go quick as we are only open for 3.5 hours. I’m working again next Wednesday – Christmas eve. It will be interesting to see whether it’s quiet or mad busy then.

After work I went over to Liza’s to collect the children and have a cup of tea with Liza. She also made me lunch – thank you very much 🙂 which was very nice and much appreciated :).

At home the kids did some DSing, some WALL-E watching and some playing. I did some baking – some cheesey stars and some mince pies. Neither child likes mince pies so I made some jam tarts too and was very pleased to discover another 2 jars of strawberry and chilli jam tucked away at the back of the chiller as I thought we were about to finish the last jar 🙂 Will definitely make more of that next summer when we go strawberry picking.

I came and sat down with the children while they had dinner and we googled to find out information about the worlds tallest bridge in response to Scarlett’s question on the way home about where it was and how high. I’d mistakenly thought it would be in America but on googling was reminded about the fanfare when the bridge in France opened and we found a short film all about it so watched that together. We’ve been talking a lot the last few weeks about what we want to do /go / see in 2009 so we carried on talking about that and Davies told me about a conversation he’d had with Ady about human evolution. He thinks that we can’t just stop evolving now and wonders what changes to the current design might happen in the future so we talked a bit about that and what has changed about humans since caveman times.

Scarlett shared her theory about ensuring you don’t die by identifying in advance what your last words might be and then avoiding ever saying them thus meaning you can’t die as you’ve not yet said your last words :lol:. They both seem to be doing a lot of deep thinking of late, coming up with some amazing ideas and trains of thought, questions that I can’t necessarily give them answers to but we’re enjoying chatting about anyway.

They then got in pjs and brought over a blanket and we sat and ploughed our way through an hours worth of books. I’ve been on another mass ordering in books binge at work so had a nice big pile which we got through about a third of. We had a plan to do some present wrapping tonight but Davies took ages to go to sleep and we got distracted by the feast (!) of Christmas food programmes on telly instead.

I overslept this morning – although I must have needed it, I’ve been building up a sleep deficit and I feel loads better for it today. Ady and the kids both had this nasty virus that’s been doing the rounds but I felt generally crap for a few days without actually seeming to properly go down with it.

So it was a bit of a rush this morning to get everything done – feed chickens, get dinner on (beef stew, so loads of peeling and chopping), tidying up after myself in the kitchen and checking train times. Davies seems to only have 2 pairs of trousers which don’t have rips in the knees and both were in the wash. I got Scarlett some nice clothes out to wear in honour of visiting the theatre – a pretty skirt and a nice top, which she promptly wore with her ripped jeans underneath the skirt and her Elinor-jumper over the top – she looked charmingly Scarlett and very Home educated 😆 She did get changed into just the one outfit and I found some trousers for Davies.

We parked in the library carpark, shoved the Christmas cards that need posting in the postbox and were on the platform with about 3 minutes to spare. The ticket office is on the other side of the station and the self service machine doesn’t take cash so I debated dashing back across to buy a ticket but decided to risk it and get one on the train instead. No one actually came to check tickets so I got tickets from the ticket office at the other end, quaking slightly at all the signs telling you you MUST buy your ticket before you travel and they would charge you £20 fines and stuff. Fortunately they did just charge for the return tickets I wanted – bargain for all three of us return for £4.50 – it would cost more than that in petrol, let alone parking :).

We walked down to the theatre and although we were a full half an hour early this time they were letting people into their seats so we went in and sat down. We were three seats along from where we sat last week; front row, middle circle in the balcony :). This time I had not been so insistent that we wouldn’t know anyone there so Davies and I played Spot the Home Educators and found a few we know and a few more we don’t but looked suspicious :).

I wasn’t sure how the kids would take to it today. I’d seen a poster advertising it at work and thought it sounded like an interesting alternative to a panto or usual Christmas show so I got tickets for it – it being a ballet of Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals both of which are pieces of music they are very familiar with. We have seen various makings of P&TW and have had a lovely Johnny Morris narrated version of COTA too. It was my first time at a ballet too, it’s something that has never been that appealing to me to go and watch and it’s not something either of the children have ever shown at interest in either.

We all loved it! The music was beautiful, the orchestra were fab, the dancing was lovely and the costumes were gorgeous. We were sat amidst lots of other youngish children so there was plenty of adults whispering explanations of things to children. Davies loved the music and spent almost as much time watching the conductor as he did watching the dancing. Scarlett was enthralled by the whole thing and we all found it really magical :). I asked Scarlett if she thought she might want to try dancing like that or playing an instrument like that later today though and she said ‘No, I want to be a zoo keeper, remember?!’ which validates my decision to never dress her up in a sparkly tutu and pack her off to ballet lessons because I never thought it would be her thing! 😆 (It’s something my Mum has mentioned a few times over the years and I have always been very against).

I would take them to a similar production and possibly even take Tarly to a full proper ballet aslong as she knew the story in advance. Davies wanted to go to the museum when we came out but it was cold and getting dark so I said we’d go back another time and have promised him a day over in Brighton, just him and I in the new year.

Home again on the train – we missed the first one by seconds but another was going just ten minutes later and was already at the platform so were able to get straight on. We had a quick look in a couple of the shops in Lancing and then home to put the chickens away and give Davies and Scarlett their stew for dinner. They watched WALL-E (again) and then Ady came home and I headed off to the library for reading group.

We had an author visit from local writer Vanessa Gebbie which was a really nice few hours. I have to confess to only having read one of the two short stories of hers we were supposed to be discussing and although I enjoyed it I am not desperate to read more as short stories don’t really do it for me. But she was a fascinating and interesting person to chat to, mostly about various other things she is involved in and we all really enjoyed the short story she read to us at the end. We had mulled wine and mince pies and other festive nibbles and it was all very nice and Christmassy. We were very depleted in numbers due to so much illness about but it was very pleasant nonetheless.

Home for cuddles with children, bath, beef stew and taped Survivors and Nigella’s Christmas, which is what has finally managed to make me feel like Christmas really is coming. Which means I should probably start getting organised with those presents for people really…

While we were at Helmsley we talked about camps for next year.

I was thinking about one in March and one in December. Helmsley seems to suit most people for a Christmas camp although we could consider others if people wanted – I do like the idea that even if we are unlikely to be lucky enough for snow again we are at least able to plan for proper cold winter weather if we go to North Yorkshire in December!

We’d need deposits to book it – I think £10 per person should cover the 25% and we’ll offer first places to those who came this year. Please let me know asap if you are able to commit the £10 per head to get that booked. Dates would probably be Mon 30th November – Friday 4th December 2009.

I’ve been looking at larger hostels available in March but wanted to know who is potentially up for a camp then? I’m fairly flexible on dates (I think – not checked at work yet!) so really we can decide where we want to be depending on who is coming. eg – Em if you would come if we could be close to you then we can aim for somewhere in Suffolk, there are a couple.