One word? When seven would do…

Scarlett’s been playing with her aquabeads / bindeez / whatever they’re called the last couple of days creating her own designs and sometimes using the idea cards that came with the pack. She made a few this morning and then had to wait while they dried before she could use the boards again so I suggested she do some hama beading instead. We bought hama beads when we first became Home Educators, along with some workbooks, a laminator, 100 easy lessons, our EO membership and various rainbow coloured articles of clothing 😆 Like most of the above list they have languished about unused but get the occassional bout of use.

In the end both Davies and Scarlett made various things – Scarlett made a teddy and a picture of a lion in the sunshine, which at my suggestion she filled in the gaps around to make a square which is now my coaster. Davies made a maxi bead Gromit and a selection of midi bead Wallace and Gromit things. I ironed them all for once :).

Inbetween all this proper HE activity I also did several loads of laundry, made some flapjacks, efficiently sorted out inviting some people to the Butser day and working out the final balances for Christmas camp. I did a little bit of work on my Healthy Eating course too which I have had an extension to the end of July to complete and will probably still struggle to manage.

We had lunch and then headed off to the park to meet Mel, Liam and Lily. We’ve managed to arrange two dates during the whole of the six week summer school holidays that we could both make and today was the first. Thankfully the weather was on our side and we had a lovely couple of sunny hours in the park. The children took a fair while to warm up to each other, made worse by Liam falling off a ride in the playpark and hurting his wrist. Davies and Scarlett were being a bit too self-sufficient in their playing together while waiting for Liam and Lily to join in but eventually they all got there and played together. I was appalled at the levels of violence other children in the park were showing towards each other – there was so much physical contact and really nasty pushing, pulling, thumping and kicking. There were probably about 100 children there and at any one time there must have been about 10 crying and another 25 fighting 🙁

We came out of the park area to the cafe for icecreams and then sat on the grass chatting. Liam is very sporty and does football, karate, badminton, cricket and more and was unsuccessfully trying to interest Davies in playing any of them with him at some future time. He’d brought his cricket ball and did manage to get Davies to play catch with him for a while but it didn’t last long. They all ended up enjoying what looked like quite a boisterous game but was much enjoyed of doing stuff with sticks and fallen branches.

We were there for over 3 hours before we needed to get home in time to eat dinner and Davies and I to head out again. Ady got home slightly later than I’d hoped and then we hit loads of traffic on the way to Eastbourne to go and see Rhythmfest 2009. I’d initially read about it when googling for drumsticks for Davies a couple of weeks ago, made a note to look back and find out more about dates etc and never did. I remembered this morning and checked it only to find it was tonight! After a text exchange with Ros about ticket availability Davies and I decided to go.

Unfortunately I’d not done all my research and assumed it was at Bonners shop, arrived half an hour late to find the shop all closed and locked up and a poster about it being at a theatre I’d never heard of. I rang home and Ros and got no reply so sadly told Davies we’d drive once around the town centre to see if we could spot any brown signs for the theatre before giving up and coming home :(. Fortunately Ros returned my call and guided us in, persuaded me to park somewhere naughty and pulled us through the security :).

Davies had a whale of a time, really enjoyed seeing Adam, loved playing on the electronic drumkits, chatted to one of the guys about bass drums and was given a free thingy that the guy had opened up to show him, really enjoyed seeing the various catergories of people drumming in the competition and of course liked being out at night just him and I too :). Ros and I managed the briefest of chats but I quite enjoyed watching and listening to the drummers although it showed how little I know when none of the contestants I’d most liked won their sections 😆

On the way home Davies wanted to chat about dreadful teenage things I’d done, how Ady and I came to be a couple and why we moved to Manchester and back again. Funnily enough the story of how Ady and I met came up with Scarlett the other day when just her and I were driving somewhere so it was odd to be retelling it for childrens’ ears again so soon afterwards :).

We got in at 11pm to find Scarlett still up, dinner ready and Ady grring at having left his beers in his car which I’d driven off in! Persuaded children to bed, ate dinner, drank cider, had speedy bath and am now about to head to bed as I’m working in the morning.

In contrast to the previous week today has been *very* low key.

We all slept in and felt much the better for it (apart from poor Ady of course who was back to the real world again).

Once everyone was breakfasted and dressed we headed out to Boots and Sainsburys for bite treatment and food respectively. I got bitten on the back of my calf on Friday night and was aware of it being midly itchy on Saturday but yesterday morning I awoke scratching at it and it grew throughout the day until by last night it was a huge red, swollen patch with a really hard area in the middle.

This morning it had gotten worse and started weeping. I was quite concerned at the level of redness and swelling and the tight achey feeling so decided to get it looked at by the pharmacist first with a plan to get a doctors appointment if they thought I should. She actually didn’t seem that concerned and sold me some Benadryl cream (which hasn’t really done much it has to be said) and left it at that. It has slightly gone down through the day actually and has wept lots and the puncture area has gone black. I’m assuming the draining of it will be helping it and that it will be better still tomorrow.

Davies and Scarlett were bemoaning no roast dinner for the last two weeks and requested roast chicken so I bought two chickens – one to roast for them, one to do later for us and all the spare meat off the two to pick off for a curry. Ady was due home too late for me to cook and us to all eat together.

Back at home we had lunch, Davies did some xboxing, Scarlett looked through the Sky kids magazine that came in the post and her and I entered all the competitions in it online. They then both got busy with drawing and making stuff for each other and me including a note from Davies ‘To Nic, I love you, love Davies’ which he put in an envelope that he correctly addressed to me and stuck a used stamp on with sellotape before posting back through the front door to me :).

I did blogging and cooked two roast dinners – one for 5pm for children which included a choice of roast or mashed potatoes (from our allotment), peas for one, sweetcorn for the other, yorkshire puddings and chicken and stuffing balls for both. The second was served at 930pm with rather more choice of vegetables (carrots and parsnips) and gravy. Both were well received by their intended mouths :).

When Ady got home he did Mans Work in the garden securing the fence of the chickens area and putting up a corale for the new chicks to go outside. They are now fully feathered, smelly and noisy and need to be outside. There are two cockerels and five hens which is a fantastic ratio 🙂 and there are two , three and two of the various different types of breed. Sadly the 2 cockerels are the same type of fancy eggs we bought from a farm while the 5 hens are all from our own stock of cockerels and hens and therefore shouldn’t really be bred with by our cockerel I’m not sure what will become of them all yet. We could actually keep all the hens and one of the cockerels but we may decide to sell one cock and two hens as a trio (they sell well) and keep one cock and three hens ourselves. We’ll see.

Davies and Scarlett had a bath and I read them the first couple of chapters of The Story of Matthew Buzzington which is written by the Mr Gum books author, Andy Stanton. So far it’s keeping us giggling :).

I had a bath, finished cooking dinner and we watched The Day The Earth Stood Still which I think we would categorise as ‘just about ok’.

And now, fully caught up, I’m off to bed!

The weather started well which was a bonus and so I sat and painted my nails while drinking my first cup of tea instead of being more urgent about packing up. I’d said I’d be happy to get to FoH for midday and we were nearly a whole hour earlier than that so we still did very well.

The older four children went off to the playpark while the adults took down tents and Alison took BB there a while later leaving just Chris and Helen and Ady and I still taking down tents and packing up. Scarlett slept in late and only really woke once I’d packed everything else in the tent up around her. Taking down the tent works quite well if I do most of it while Ady loads it into the car and faffs around with the kitchen area. When Scarlett was up and dressed and realised she was the only remaining child she was understandably upset so I decided it would make sense for Ady to drive her to the park (too far for her to walk alone, twice as quick to drive there as it was quite a way to walk there and back) and take the shower key back to get our £10 deposit refunded at the same time while I carried on.

Unfortunately he was over half an hour when I’d expected it to take no more than 10 minutes. He had reasons – there was a car boot sale on which prevented parking so he’d had to go all the way out of the park, to a roundabout and queue to get back in, then take Tarly to the playpark. But in the meantime the sky had turned black and I’d reached a point where I could do nothing more for fear of the rain starting and me having nowhere to put all the stuff I’d taken down and packed up. Coupled with that the tent pegs were in so very hard that I was struggling to get them out too.

Ady finally returned and I took the whole tent down by myself including stuffing it into the bag. Anger can make one very strong I find ;).In the end we all left together and collected the children from the park and went almost in convoy to FoH. This time there was no traffic at all and we went straight in.

Our plan for the second day had been to get to the fool again, maybe a couple of the reenactments, particularly the WW2 one and maybe the jousting, which we’d enjoyed last year.

We ended up meandering about for a bit without really doing or seeing anything and both children were a bit hard work to try and engage in anything. Eventually we gave up and sat down infront of the Agincourt Battle area to eat some lunch. It was good timing as a few minutes later the Battle Part 2 started and we watched that. I’m not at all sure how much went in but it was high drama and plenty of noise so enjoyable regardless I think. It was time for Punch and Judy by then so we went back to the sandpit. I left Ady there to fetch my coat from the car as it was clearly not going to brighten up and get too hot and I wanted to use the loos in the carpark too. When I returned we saw Bob who kindly waited for Davies aswell as Libby to direct him over to us watching the Henry VIII play.

Neither Davies or Scarlett were interested in going up to participate but both enjoyed watching it and shouting along with the rest of the audience. We spent much of it all four of us under the umbrella as it rained throughout a lot of it but we stayed dry huddled together while I had a glass of wine and we all ate pistachio nuts so it didn’t seem so bad :).

The rain stopped so we bought the children an ice cream and bumped into Alison. Ady decided he needed coffee so he went and got that while the children and I bumbled about the EH gift shop, watched a Tudor Band (with a hey and a ho!) and then we all made our way over to the jester / fool.

From watching the show the day before I had some idea of what to expect and made sure we stood in what I’d thought would be a ‘safe’ place to watch. Wrong! He parted the crowd right next to us and selected a tall man to be part of his act. The man flatly refused and when he picked him up to carry him into the circle said to him in a very low and menacing tone ‘I recommend you put me down RIGHT NOW!’ so he did.

And chose Ady instead 😆

Ady was a star, had to stand topless while he was laughed at, kissed by the fool and finally laid down and supported him while he did a handstand surrounded by a quartet of small children all laying on and around him 😆

Oh I was proud 🙂

As I said to Ady afterwards at least once that was over he could watch the remainder of the act knowing he was safe from being picked on any more 😉

We went to watch the jousting next but it was incredibly slow to start. Ady was itching to watch the WW2 stuff and in the end he and Davies went off to get good seats for it. Scarlett and I stayed with Alison and co, and then Bob and Katy aswell but the jousting took so long to get going and I was starting to feel really tired I finally persuaded Scarlett to watch just 10 minutes of it (it had started half an hour late) and then try to find Ady and Davies.

We didn’t find them as they had indeed got excellent seats right at the front but we saw all the good bits at the end and then found them when the crowds dispersed.

The heavens opened almost on cue and after a brief look around the stalls we decided that actually the weather wasn’t going to pick up and we were close enough to the end of the day to feel ready to head for home rather than try and eke out any more from the weekend.

I’m glad we did as it was another lengthier than expected journey with an original arrival time on the satnav of 738pm but we actually didn’t get home til 830pm. I felt quite ropey for most of the journey but it would appear to be solely down to tiredness as I’m fine today after a good nights sleep.

Once home we fed the children, I read them some story while they ate and Ady unpacked the car. I helped put stuff away and clear up and then had a bath. Dinner wasn’t ready til midnight by which point I’d gone past being ready for anything other than my bed so I ate a little and went to bed, where I fell straight asleep and didn’t know a thing until about 9am this morning.

It really was a fab weekend. Wicksteed park is a great campsite I think. It’s cheap, the facilities are basic but perfectly adequate. We have our portapotty anyway but actually the portaloos this time were really clean and fragrant. The showers are clean, hot and well worth the £2 a night charge (for all four of us!). It did fill right up on Saturday night and probably wouldnt be somewhere you’d want to be camping without a group to distract you from the proximity of neighbours, but pitched in our own little circle we were fine.

We love Wicksteed park and getting in on Tesco vouchers made it a real treat we couldn’t usually afford and made a real weekend out of it too. The FoH was great and I feel like we got so much out of it this year. Again Tesco vouchers paying for EH membership made that a real bargain at just £36 for the two days. It was great to see friends, both campers and day trippers and I thought the weather was mostly really on our side too. Really enjoyed it :).

We realised when we arrived at Wicksteed that neither Ady or I had charged our cameras up so we knew we’d be on limited photo supplies and were conscious of not running out before the end if possible. We ended up just using one camera a day, mostly Ady which means there are a lot less photos than usual and some that I would have taken which just aren’t there. It’s not serious but is a shame as I do like looking through them, both directly after the event and then again at a later stage. I suspect however that FoH is one of those places that you really do need a decent camera to capture the essence of all the action though, which we don’t have and even I had camera envy at all the people pointing their huge lenses at things.

We were away slightly earlier than the others but had to stop for teeth cleaning and water bottle filling on the way off the campsite and I think we all ended up arriving pretty much at the same time. The traffic (seeing a theme here?) was bad, as it was last year too actually and we took about an hour to get in despite leaving on time to arrive at 10am. Next year I think we’ll aim to get there for about 9am and just sit in the car outside instead, at least we’ll actually be there for some of the 10am start things. The gates open from 930am.

The queue to buy tickets wasn’t too bad (we are members of ET, thanks again to Clubcard vouchers). Scarlett spotted someone’s credit card on the floor so we handed that in,hope they realised they’d lost it and were able to retrieve it rather than the hassle of getting a new one but suspect the owner was already long gone as we watched people infront of us in the queue incase they realised at paying point that it was lost.

We started in The Pavillion, which has lots of activities of an archaeological variety. I’m always a bit torn at these sort of things as the activties are good and the children do enjoy them but there is always so much more going on than we ever get round to seeing I sort of resent ten minutes spent digging through a sandpit in search of broken pottery or scrubbing at a brick with a toothbrush to clean it up! We whizzed past the aerial photography jigsaws but did participate in vote for which era house would you most like to live in from the people who put those blue disc signs on houses where historical or noteworthy things happened (famous person was born here etc.). Both children then enjoyed doing a ‘what was this used for an in what period?’ type quiz on the Arcaeological Society stand. They were both excellent at it, lots of the stuff was Roman and they’ve seen it before at Fishbourne Roman Palace but it’s always nice to see a demonstration of these things going in :). I then realised that Davies’ YAC is the local offshoot of the YAC section of the society and the woman said they had a tent in the Family Zone where we could join the national group which I’ve been meaning to do for him for ages.

We talked to people in the Russian camp and learnt about the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death – I loved the way the ‘Russian soldier’ told it – it was set up to shame some of the resistant man into signing up to fight and they women managed to get past 3 German trenches. The men who were following found a stash of vodka and Russia having been dry for years took the opportunity to get drunk instead. The women managed to fight their way back, with minimal casualties despite being hugely outnumbered and with several hundred prisoners to boot. Go the women! 🙂

We talked to a German nurse about WW1 medical supplies and she showed us gruesome tools for locating and removing bullets and the size of the bullets they’d be removing. She talked about how everything would be reused after washing – somehow the idea of second hand bandages grossed me out more than syringes or scalpels! We looked at the kits laid out that soldiers would have carried on their backs and paused to watch some marching past carrying everything – made Ady’s rucksack look very lightweight ;).

We made our way to the Family Zone where we were hoping to hook up with people and were soon hailed by Jax who had found Kay. We’ve only actually met Kay (with Xanthe) once at Kessingland but I impressed myself with both recognising her and remembering her daughter’s name. Said daughter had grown somewhat though! 🙂

The children played in the sand, Chris and Helen and then Jo and Bill joined us and we ate lunch while the children watched Punch and Judy. All very pleasant 🙂

Lovely to catch up with Jo 🙂

The others all went off to watch one of the BZents storytelling shows. Davies did go with them but wandered back again. Scarlett was very reluctant to leave the sand :rolls: so I took Davies off to the YAC tent to sign up and mummify an orange. This is one of the places I would have taken photos but had no camera so you’ll just have to imagine it 😆 He also did some Egyptian writing and picked up some sheets for colouring and quizzes to bring away too.

Back at the sandpit we decided to head for one of the showgrounds and watched the Animals At War one. Ady went off to get a coffee (I’d had a couple of glasses of wine as part of my picnic so didn’t feel in need of tea) and then went off to the car to drop off the now mostly empty rucksack and the several carrier bags of stuff we’d got from the English Heritage clearance stand. We spent just £5 but got about £100 worth of tshirts, toys and gifts that will be perfect Christmas presents for several childen we know :). Scarlett went with him to use the loos in the parking field which we correctly guessed may have less queues. Infact that is my one single gripe with the whole FoH actually, not nearly enough loos. I’ve not been to many festivals really and I know it seems to be something that is a problem at all of them but I do think something that has such large ticket sales and is so well organised should have about double the amount of loos it does. There were constant queues, a good 50 people deep, so it was usually about 10 minutes and that is just too long when so many of the attendees are young children (or indeed the weak bladdered women who birthed them! :lol:).

Davies and I wandered over to catch the end of Peterkin the Fool. I don’t think we’d seen any of him last year other than his warming up the crowd for the jousting. We mangaed to wiggle to the front and both Davies and I thought he was hilarious. This could have had something to do with the wine I’d drunk and the easily pleased comedy nature of an 8 year old but we weren’t alone in enjoying his act very much. Ady and Scarlett caught the very end and we vowed to catch one of his shows again the following day.

We wandered over to a Tudor skinner and chatted to her for a long while. She did much of her chatting ‘in character’ and said she’d been at Kentwell and loved the lifestyle of travelling from one re-enactment to the next from May to October each year. The children were fascinated with what she had to show and tell and learnt all about rabbits, deer, hares, boars and various birds. Scarlett loved the idea of removing a birds wing, preserving it, spread out, and using it as a fan. Might try that with next batch of partridge or pheasant we get. She also talked about various uses for various other body parts – all game was first and foremost for food but the rest was all used with the exception of teeth. I know in cavemen times teeth were also used for decoration / jewellry too. She had skins and furs at various stages and was a really interesting woman to chat to, both in and out of character. I notice this afternoon she has also commented on one of my flickr pictures – nice to see D and S made an impression :).

We wandered back to the Family Zone and I joined the queue for the loos while Ady took Davies and Scarlett inside to do some of the many, many, mostly craft based activities in there. By the time I came out Scarlett was on her second peg doll and Davies was making a paper fortune teller (one of those folded up things you write answers to questions inside). It took ages to persuade them out of there and just as we did last year we missed the planes going over while they made stuff. They both made little felt purses which I wrote little notes for them to keep inside as traditionally they would contain a message from a parent to a child. I copied one of the examples in latin for each of them but quite liked both messages actually as I thought they suited both me and the individual child. Davies’ was ‘it is human to make mistakes’ which is almost one of my catchphrases to them and for Scarlett I wrote what translated as ‘the sun shines on everyone’. It was really hot in there and we finally got them to come out.

As we exited we were approached by a woman with a bag with four smaller bags in it ‘would you like some cream teas?’ asked she. The answer, obviously, was yes so she handed them over, apologising that it was 3 adult and 1 child rather than 2 and 2. As it happened that was about perfect as the child’s one contained a drink and a big bowl of fruit salad, while the adult ones contained two scones, a pat of butter, a miniature pot of jam and a tub of clotted cream. Scarlett was very happy with the fruit salad once we’d added a dollop of cream to it and Ady, Davies and I feasted on the scones with jam and cream. No idea why they were giving them away, Ady reckoned they were giveaways for some stall or other and had to be all gone by the end of the day. IMO worth missing the planes for :).

We caught the Grand Parade first through the main arena with a child each on our shoulders and then as we happened to be standing in just the right place we had a front row view of them walking back again to end. We gave loud cheers to all, most especially the suffragettes 🙂

I bought the kids an ice cream each (Davies was full after his cream tea so gave his to Ady) and the guy told me he’d sold nearly a thousand icecreams that day! 🙂

Once the parade had ended we had a wander round the stalls, of which there are just the right number to be a nice side part of the festival but not so many it all feels too commercial. Lots were for specialist items such as replica weapons, cooking utensils, clothing and footwear and I suspect over half of their trade is to fellow participants in the show rather than the paying public. I overheard a transaction for a spear where the purchaser clarified the 8foot long pole was made of ash, paid for it and then asked ‘you don’t have a bag for it do you?’ which made me and everyone else around him laugh 😆

Scarlett managed to get a freebie from one stallholder who was selling bracelets and beads when she pointed out a bracelet made of cat shaped beads had a cat with a broken ear. The stallholder said ‘oh I’ll have to sell that one cheap then. Actually would you like it?’ Scarlett’s thrilled reaction and effusive thanks would have been well worth the few pence it probably cost her :).

We looked round a US field hospital where we learnt that m&ms were used as placebos when they ran out of antibiotics and painkillers. Finally we got chatting to the man from Grymm Toom’s Travelling Museum who was utterly fascinating. I think we were there for well over half an hour as Scarlett asked him questions about every single one of the odd collection of things on his table. He was very engaging and entertaining and very happy to chatter away to us and shook all our hands at the end.


He even handed his merman over with the suggestion Davies and Scarlett might like their photo taken with it :).

We finally left at about 7pm, an hour after it had all officially closed. It was almost as interesting wandering around at the end watching the groups reconvene and start cooking, eating and drinking together than during the event.

Davies and Scarlett had eaten so well during the day they only needed a snack for dinner so we called into Tesco for bits for them and us to eat and a top up of picnic stuff for the following day and came back to the campsite via the showers.

Ady struck one of his deals with me about cooking dinner (he very often cooks in favour of something else he’d rather not do but I don’t mind, in this instance sorting the car out a bit and packing the picnic ready for the morning – a five minute job in place of a half an hours worth of cooking, seemed like a good deal to me :)). Alison, Lije and Lulah arrived and we had a mostly pleasant evening.

I say mostly because although all the right ingredients were there with people, wine and fine weather I lost my temper and waded into a situation between the children in a rather too heavy handed manner and poor Jax ended up doing a moonlit flit with an ill child in the early hours. We did a pretty good job of packing her all up and moving a sleeping child into the car to send her on her way and waited up to hear she arrived safely at the other end but it would have been a better evening without either of those two events.

We awoke to bright sunshine, but with threatening clouds on the horizon so got the tent up and sorted asap. Amazing how much difference already having the camping mats and sleeping bags ready to just bring across from C&H’s tent made somehow. We had some comedy windbreak errection moments but it was otherwise smooth.

The rides at Wicksteed opened at 1030am and we were there shortly afterwards. Davies and Scarlett love fairground rides so we were keen to maximise every minute of the day. We’d managed to get Tesco vouchers to pay for the wristbands so saved ourselves £50 which was great as it made the weekend feel very cheap.

There were 3 very heavy rain showers during the course of the day there – the first we were on the railway for, the second we sheltered from in the amusement arcade and the third we gave up on worrying about and just carried on with the rides through. Appropriately Scarlett, SB and I happened to be on the umbrellas which did actually offer some shelter 😆

We crossed paths with The Beans at various points and probably ended up spending about half the day with them. At one point we kept SB with us while the others went back to the tent for lunch – we’d decided breakfast had been late enough in the day to keep going with just an ice cream rather than take any time out of rides.

Last year Tarly was too short for the 1.2m height restriction on a lot of the rides but this year the only ride they were too little to go on was the mad dropping boat one. Ady was incredibly brave and went on the rollercoaster and even the pirate boat several times. I was very proud of him as he really doesn’t like them but the kids were urging him with lots of ‘Come on Daddy!’ s and he said he didn’t want them to remember him as someone who wasn’t prepared to try stuff when they grow up. I love the rides anyway so I was more than happy to go on everything as many times as we could but we spent the last 35 minutes going round the rollercoaster as many times as we could until it closed. I reckon we had at least 30 goes on it and by the end I was fairly rollecoaster’d out! I have bruises on my knees, thighs and shoulders to prove it 😆

Ady, Davies and I liked the lasertag which we’d not done last year and the ride for bringing on the most joyous laughter which even had people standing watching us laughing along too was the carousel. Last year Scarlett excelled herself on that ride by crying all the way round it because she wasn’t on the ‘right’ horse before getting off, spending ages selecting the right one and ending up sitting back on the one she’d been on before crying about 😆 This year we were the first to ride on it after the very heavy rainshower and the cover had filled with trapped water which all span off and cascaded down when it started going round. 🙂



Davies and Scarlett are a joy to take to places like that as they just get every pennies worth of fun out of the rides, screaming, laughing, running from ride to ride , being fearless with their hands in the air and just loving every moment. Really want to take them to Chessington or Alton Towers later this year if we can. Poor Ady! 😆 They both had a wobbly moment during the day – Davies wanted to sit with me on the rollercoaster and so did Scarlett, Ady got on again to prevent the fallout from that and then Davies sat in the place we’d agreed Scarlett would. I shouted at him which made him cry just as the coaster was about to go. All these people were frowning at me as I’d said to him ‘Just get on quickly and stop being so ridiculous!’ which made it look to all of them like I’d insisted he go on a rollercoaster against his will. He soon cheered up though when it got going. Scarlett had a moment about not having as many goes as Davies at one of the pick and grab machines in the arcade while we were sheltering from the rain. Actually she didn’t, because Ady had let Davies have several goes and use all the change up so she was right to be upset, but tiredness made her more upset than was reasonable…

We left when the rollercoaster finished, which was probably before some of the other rides but we felt we’d had every pennies worth of fun and were getting really hungry. We went to Tesco for dinner ingredients for Ady and I and picnic supplies for the following day, then McDonalds for dinner for Davies and Scarlett (have discovered that 3 Happy Meals between them is about right for dinner and still cheaper than moving onto their full size meals). I had some mozarella sticks and some of the kids’ drink and started to feel much better as I’d been quite light headed and faint feeling, but then a full day of rollercoastering and no food is probably all but guaranteed to have such an effect!

Back at the tents we found Helen running a creche for various waifs and strays – she had Big and Small (Jax and Chris were at Tesco) and four refugee children, their mother and dog all sheltering from the rain in her tent, while she was taking a break from cooking dinner for the masses due to a run out of petrol stove 🙁 I offered wine and moral support and eventually the rain stopped, so the folk and their dog left to continue putting their tent up and Jax and Chris returned along with petrol.

We had a nice evening with a fairly early night, conscious of a busy day on Saturday.

A mental day!

I worked all day and it felt very hardgoing with my sleep deficit. 5o’clock took a very long time to arrive.

In the morning Barbara and Chris took all five children to the beach. From feedback it was lots of fun and very seaweedy! 😆

My Mum came over in the afternoon and very kindly bathed and hairwashed Scarlett aswell as brushing her hair. She is apparently no harsher or gentler than me in that department according to Tarly. 😆

Ady had gotten home about an hour before me and got the car mostly loaded up ready to go. I got changed, packed up the few last minute things and we were away by about 545pm which I thought was pretty good going.

The journey to Wicksteed should take just over 2.5 hours so 830pm would have been about right, I had been privately hoping for 8pm but I guess that was never realistic during rush hour.

In the end we hit roadworks on both M25 and M1 which had the time slipping further and further away.Our hopes of getting the tent up in the daylight were gone and I began to fret that picking up fish and chips for dinner somewhere near the campsite were likely to not happen too so in the end we pulled off at Newport Pagnell services for some food. Scarlett had just fallen asleep so had to be woken up but coke perked them both up and although they didn’t actually eat a great deal it seemed to be enough to sustain them.

We arrived at 10pm and Chris and Helen very kindly offered use of their guest wing for the night. It was certainly a lot quicker than us errecting our whole tent. The children ran off to play with torches while we sorted out bedding and camp mats and within the hour we were drinking cider / beer / coke and eating crisps and chocolate and the children were in their sleeping bags. Thanks again for that C&H, it made what could have been a stressy arrival nicely welcoming instead :).

I slept really well, clearly the answer to that first night camping insomnia is a 10 sleep deficit spread over the previous 3 nights ;).

We’d had a plan to go to Paradise Park on Wednesday and meet up with Ali and Freya, but they couldn’t make it and in the end no-one (well certainly not Barbara and I anyway) was up that early!.

I made pancakes for a lateish lunch with the eggs that the girls had found in the garden in a new place one of the hens had found to lay in. I realised we’d run out of milk (mostly Scarlett I think who wasn’t eating at dinnertime and was then getting hungry due to being up so late and drinking loads of milk) so had to nip to the shops for more supplies.

We decided some fresh air and exercise would do everyone good so headed up to the allotment so Barbara and Chris could have a look and we walked up the hill from there into the woodlands for a play. Davies, Scarlett and Ben found a ‘secret’ pathway that had been created by fallen trees and Davies insisted on walking me round it. I say walking but actually a fair bit of it had to be negotiated on my hands and knees! Suitably fresh aired and exercised we headed back home again for pizza for dinner for kids.

It being the last night they were all not at their best and didn’t manage to agree on a film to watch in bed collectively until it became clear that it was compromise over a film or have no film. Scarlett and Davies lasted longest and both were still awake long after the other three had crashed out. Grr.

I managed to pack clothes and stuff for the weekend and Barbara and I manhandled the tent back into it’s bag as it’d been draped around the playroom recovering from Shell Island. Still sand in the tent bag! 😆 I cleaned out the chicks who were very smelly and are about to be moved outside.

We also had pizza for dinner and as I was working the following day I insisted on an early night – 2am! Which we managed, just! Chris stayed up chatting with us and we had a really last evening.

A lazy start to the morning. We were all up before 10am . The children spent a fair bit of time in the garden. It was overall a very harmonious few days between the five children even though the dynamics have changed a lot in the nearly 5 years they’ve known each other, with some of the age gaps seeming to open and close more depending on how old the 5 of them are.

There was a request from Beth to go to the beach but time marched on and in the end it was time for Davies and Scarlett’s swimming lesson so we all headed to the pool, which is on the beach, together. Davies and Scarlett went for their last lesson. I did some lengths (28, new personal record :)) and The Raines had some time on the beach before it rained. Hard 🙁

Back home we managed a more successful attempt at food for children with pasta and garlic bread. Introduced Raines to pesto.

In the evening we had pasta bolognaise and stayed up even later than the night before. Barbara and I finally went to bed as it was getting light. I think Ady’s alarm went off for him to get up about 10 minutes after I got into bed! 😳

Blimey, that’s a catch up and a half. Will do individual days rather than one HUGE blogpost. Don’t expect the individual days to be small or anything though! 😆

Monday morning was lots of laundry and some online sorting out type stuff. Scarlett spent about 2.5 hours in her bedroom tidying up. I did offer to do it for her but was clear that my brand of tidying up wouldn’t be the same as hers. Mine involves most stuff being chucked and proper homes found for anything kept. Hers involves shoving as much stuff as possible into piles under the bed, various boxes and bags and very little actual sorting out. Infact although more floor space might result in truth there is more mess created by her method than mine. Both kids are real horders, as is Ady, whereas I do try to pare down what I keep and am fairly ruthless about general ‘stuff’.

We finally got that done and then popped out to get food supplies (especially breakfast cereal 😉 but as it turned out not enough milk) for the next few days. We came home for a late lunch and I’m not too sure where the afternoon went really.

Babs and co arrived at about 430pm I think, later than planned but we still got a full 12 hours in of each others company before we finally retired to bed! 🙂

Kids played, adults chatted. Ady did a lovely pheasant dinner, I cooked the kids hotdogs and chips, which was less popular than I’d hoped (I think only 2/5 actually wanted to eat the hotdogs!) and everyone went to sleep a good few hours later than they probably should have done with Barbara and I finally turning in at about 430am ish.

Not Goddards though, there were 7 of those (although there should have been 9, so perhaps rarer than planned!).

The Weald and Downland museum is somewhere both Ady and I remember going on school trips to as kids and somewhere we took Davies and Scarlett a few times when they were much smaller but it is quite pricey and one of those ‘on your doorstep things you don’t really appreciate or visit much’. They do have lots of events on there though including some good education workshops and weekend shows so when we had a bit of spare cash a few months ago it was one of the places on our list to get annual membership for.

So we became ‘Friends’ which is their version of membership on a nice day trip there with my Mum a few weeks back and today was the first event we’d planned to go to. Chris and Julie are friends too and had planned to go today to the Rare Breeds Show event too, particularly as they are wanting to start chicken keeping and were hoping to get some hens there. At the last minute Chris decided to stay home with Lorna instead so we hooked up with Julie, Jack and Maisie there.

The weather was rather against us and incredibly blustery with wind all day, much to the consternation of the stall holders with their tarps and marquees and gazebos. There were just two or three showers though rather than the threatened rainy day and we managed to be under cover for all of them luckily.

We’d taken a picnic and the queues for teas and coffees were long enough to discourage us so icecream (and very delicious ice cream it was too) was the only additional refreshment expense. Ady bought some flour ground at their water mill, Davies bought some mango scented soap, I bought a jar of lavender and chamomile gel and we did buy a set of bird whistles. They were being sold for £2 each or £5 for the set of three (cuckoo, duck and birdsong) with a free lesson on playing them, so we went for the set and the man showed all four of us how to play them :).

Davies and I had a demonstration from a very friendly lady on braid making and she gave Davies a little cardboard loom and some threads to carry on. It’s a bit like scoobidouing with 7 strands and he’s made a lovely friendship band to add to his wristful and Scarlett and I have made templates to make our own too – need to get some nice threads to do it with now.

We enjoyed looking at all the wool craft including the spinning (wheels and drop spindles), felting (wet and needle) and weaving. They had fleeces on show along with various wool crafts all having been judged.

We spent quite a bit of time looking at the bantams,chickens, ducks and turkeys and talking to the stallholders. We’ve decided to get some ducks and had been thinking of call ducks which are quite small. They are also very noisy and after spending some time near a cage of them I think we’ve decided against that! We then thought about mandarin ducks which are very pretty but not actually great as layers and realistically we probably want to be getting some eggs off them for their feed. After some chatting to a woman selling eggs for hatching I think we may go for runner ducks. The incubation is 28 days and they need at least another 28 days under the light before being ready to go outside so we need to wait until after our September holiday really to be sure we’ll be around for the whole thing, particularly as Scarlett is keen not to miss any of the hatching or early imprinting stage. She was in her element when a woman let her spend ages holding a couple of ducklings 🙂

We spent some time in the activity barn of the actual museum as Davies wanted to show Ady some of the bridge and house building things. Scarlett and I spent some time playing with cubes of various materials with the same volume but different weights on the balancing scales.We put them into weight order and then checked on the weighing scales.It took a while for her to grasp the idea of if something was heavier than the other thing then you could take it forgranted it would also be heavier than other things you knew were lighter than the lighter thing but we got there 🙂

We also spent some time playing with timber joints while Ady and Davies were tiling a roof with tiles and wooden pegs and playing with building materials of different sizes and weights.

We had a really good day out there and have written down all the other events with plans to get to as many as we can.

Back at home Davies and Scarlett spent ages up in Davies’ room watching a Michael Jackson dvd and singing and dancing along to it. They came downstairs and helped Ady with dinner while I was in the bath and then after some upset about just what I’d said about bedtime I read them some story before they headed off to bed.

Thursday
We were waiting on hearing from Ali as to whether they were coming over and happily got a phonecall to say they were. I had to go to the post office to collect a letter that hadn’t had sufficient postage on it so suggested to Davies and Scarlett we walk into Lancing to do so. Davies was up for it but Scarlett wasn’t and as I didn’t fancy dragging a reluctant child for a walk we drove in. We parked at the library and bumped into Sian who was on her lunchbreak and suggested we go in and join the Quest Seekers reading challenge which I’d semi forgotten about in terms of my own children actually joining 😆

We did the post office which is always interesting as the collection point is round the back in the sorting office so you get a bit of a peep at how they do all the behind the scenes stuff which is all quite bustling and busy. Then we went into the library and the kids joined up and did the ‘hunt the characters’ task around the library and then we came home.

I spent some time making phonecalls to try and arrange a trip to London and did some emailing on the same topic. I then started to complete the forms for Davies’ Badger camp which made me cry so I had to stop 🙁 I really am incredibly wobbly about it.

Ali and Freya arrrived and as Ali has already blogged we had a lovely afternoon. Ali and I spent some time in the kitchen getting food and both systematically dropping coconut and pineapple pieces while I spilled out all my angst about Badger camp. Ady rang and he got an earful about it too while the children were playing in the garden.

The kids all had a mostly harmonious afternoon and Ali and I had a great time with lots of laughs, some of my tears and a bottle and a half of wine. Thanks mate, I love you lots xxx

Ady came home and took Ali and Freya home. While he was gone there was the most spectacular thunderstorm which me and the children enjoyed very much and the Badger Camp leader rang back. Ady had left a message on her answerphone to ask if it would be okay to drop the balance payment over this morning (it was supposed to be in yesterday) and she’d rung back to say it would be fine, they have a 2 week buffer period. While I had her on the phone we had quite a chat about my worries, Davies being Home Educated and she went quite a long way towards reassuring me and allaying some of my worries. I still reserve the right to have several more big wobbles about it and be a complete mess for the entire week he is away but I do feel slightly less hysterical now than I did yesterday.

I read some stories to Davies and Scarlett, they went to bed and Ady came home and cooked a lovely curry.

Friday An all day at work day for me. Scarlett cried and cried this morning about me going to work and I was actually 10 minutes late. Not at all sure why and I was leaving her with Ady but she was genuinely upset and I’m crap at leaving either of them upset. I think she is equally as wobbly about Davies and Badger camp actually and is possibly slightly rejected by how upset I am on some level.

It felt like a really long day at work. I did Rhyme time which was nice, we had some good singing and lots of audience participation, particularly from the little girl who had brought in a duck sound maker. We also sang Jingle Bells at the request of one little girl which had some odd looks thrown into the junior library from the other borrowers 😆

One of my colleagues, Jan, invited me to her house this evening for a get together /jewellry party she was having. There is a hard core of 4 women who are very pally at work and I have never before been invited to any of their get togethers although they often share funny stories about what happened when they went out together afterwards. It’s never really bothered me as they are all older than me and I’m not really desperate to be going out in the evenings anyway but it was nice to be asked and so I thought I should make the effort to go.

It was Scarlett’s end of term Rainbows barbecue which we’d all been invited to so we went to that. It was rather a shambles with them running out of food and being very odd about giving it to the parents and siblings but being really strict with the Rainbows about sitting down effectively watching the rest of us eat before being given any themselves. Odd to see Scarlett and Lucy’s Rebecca being the very tallest there though.

We left there and they dropped me at Jan’s which had Scarlett all upset again :(. Ady let them stay up watching Moonwalker and designing their own dvd covers. I had a very nice couple of hours drinking pimms and bonding with workmates, particularly F who I like lots but haven’t always been able to find a hook to get a conversation going before. I’d intended being home by 9pm but finally left after 10 and walked home.

I had a bath, the children finally went to bed and Ady cooked a lovely steak.

Way too early start this morning as the children were off to Julie’s for the morning while I worked and Ady insists I get up to help chivvy them along. They were gone by 8am so I did some chicken run maintenance outside in my nightie before coming in to get dressed and then adding photos to some of my posts from last week. I think I only have Friday left to do now.

Work was fine. It felt slightly odd as I’d been given 2 hours off to catch up on various things so only spent one hour doing real proper in the library work and that was shelving. I didn’t go on the counter or the enquiry desk at all.

I had my appraisal back from the Area Librarian who has added her comments to it – all very nice and things like ‘thank you for your support and enthusiasm’ and ‘it’s a pleasure to work with you’. 🙂 Felt a bit blah about the whole thing today for some reason though, sometimes it all just seems a little too easy to feel good about – like being really excellent at a paper round or something…

The drive over to Julie’s to collect Davies and Scarlett seemed to take forever although it’s only about half an hour. I listened to the radio (an usual luxury even if it was just Jeremy Vine and a phone in about graffiti and tried not to fret about Badger camp which is rather consuming all of my private headspace at the moment).

I had a nice chat with Julie and Davies and Scarlett had had a nice morning with them. I do wish they lived nearer and we could do more popping in on each other and having each others children as it is lovely to see the five cousins get along so well and be such good mates. I remember being at school with children who were close to their cousins and being envious of them so I’m glad our children are having that experience. We’re actually seeing them a third time this week on Sunday at the Weald and Downland Museum.

Lorna had baby swimming and we needed to get back for Badgers so we headed off, calling in at Tesco on the way to get Davies some new black trousers as he’s finally grown out of the ones he was wearing and they were looking very tatty anyway with glue spilt on them that never did wash off. They finally got their new Badger t shirts tonight too having been wearing plain white Tshirts for the last month or so so they’ll be looking smart again when they go back in September.

Back home for tea and the usual round of grr-ing at them about uniforms and getting changed. We were later than we usually are leaving although I normally allow a bigger time buffer than we need today we actually did need it as there had been an accident along the coast road and we ended up being 10 minutes late. On the way we listened to The Commitments, just for a change, and because it’s got a lot of good drum beats in the songs which Davies is listening out for to try and learn some rhythms to play on his drums.

The Badgers went off to make ‘mocktails’ which we were all invited to try (they were vile – we all sneakily poured then down the sink! :lol:) while the parents chatted. There is a really nice group of people there and the parents always have a laugh and a chatter together, there’s even been talk of decamping to the pub while the kids are at Badgers for those of us who have to hang around because it’s not worth driving home. Might well do that next term when it’s too dark to go off walking on the beach.

The presentation was nothing dramatic today as they didn’t have any special SJA people attending. Davies and Scarlett were only getting their badge and certificate for the badge they’ve done this term so not too much sewing on of badges this time thankfully. I heard today at work that swine flu is in local schools in both Lancing and Worthing and there were a lot of coughing people in the room tonight.

Back home for the last episide of Torchwood and a very late dinner. I’m now feeling sorry for myself with a sore throat and going to go to bed.

Not giving up on those dolphins just yet – I will make life have a porpoise this year!

And it’s this Tuesday as in today and everything :).

We had a fairly lazy morning which was nice and much needed. We left home about 1130 to meet up with E, M and T at Stanmer Park. M and T are two same age as them boys that Davies and Scarlett met at Forest School. They were less keen on T (the younger one) but really hit it off with M and so before the last session I gave their mum, E, my email address and said they’d like to meet up again. We arranged to see them at the park where we’ve done Forest School for the first time as it was easy to get to and has free parking.

I was slightly blah about it this morning as neither of the children were that bothered about seeing T again and I’d failed to find much to chat about to E the couple of times we’d exchanged greetings and I am so bored of telling the story of ‘how we came to home educate’ that I always feel quite tempted to make up a different, more interesting story instead. The reasons that were so huge to us when Davies was 2 are a million miles away from why we do it now and have continued to do it and the nearly 9 year old Davies bears little resemblance to the 2 year old toddler anyway.

I nipped into Asda on the way over thinking I had enough time to buy supplies to bolster our rather meagre picnic but there must be some sort of timewarp thing happening as it was suddenly really late and E was ringing my mobile to see where we were. I’m always slightly shocked when people ring rather than text as almost everyone I know has some level of phone phobia and text and email means I rarely actually speak to anyone other than my Mum or Ady on the phone these days. Davies answered it and gave a running commentary of where we were and how long we might be.

M and T had brought their firesteels and firemaking stuff and wanted to go up the hill to where they had Forest School and make a campfire. E and I were not as enthusiastic about the idea of climbing up the hill and persuaded them to climb the tree while we sat nearby instead. Both of them spent quite a bit of time asking to go home and did lots of falling out with each other which E kept apologising for but Davies and Scarlett enjoyed themselves anyway and in the end E was good company and we had some interesting chats between children interupting. We’ve arranged to visit them at their house next time in a couple of weeks so hopefully the boys will be more settled and it will be a better meet up for them.

I did tell our real Home Ed story and theirs is rather similar although they went down the nursery, Montessori school and state school routes before coming to Home Ed so she is still unpicking issues and deschooling really. I know plenty of HEors who are glad they used nursery or school either because it was right at the time and the children enjoyed it and got lots out of it or even because in having tried it they know for certain it doesn’t work for them. I remain very glad we made our decision early on and have never used school or nursery as I think lots of the disciplines used there are way out of line with our philosophies and I’m pleased we’ve not had to go down that route.

E was very complimentary about Davies and Scarlett, which is always lovely to hear and as I’ve heard lovely things about them both quite a lot lately I did pause for a while to consider how very proud I am of them both and how right this path seems for them. There are of course days when I wish I’d never heard of HE but on the back of a week in the company of a group of mates they’ve had for several years, who were talked about glowingly by the owners of Fudge the Wonderdog (‘all your kids are so confident and friendly. We love how they chat to everyone and are really outgoing’) and had a whale of a time being given loads of freedom and trust to go off wandering and stuck together and looked out for each other it is nice to reflect on our lifestyle and choices and feel pleased with them :).

😆

They had swimming lessons this afternoon too and had to head off about half an hour earlier than we did so we headed for home and I intended calling in home for a cup of tea before swimming but as we drove out the other side of the tunnel (it’s on the boundary of the East and West Sussex border and coming out of the west facing side you are confronted with a great panoramic seaview which is always stunning regardless of the season or weather) and went past Shoreham airport I decided to turn off and take Davies and Scarlett to Lancing College chapel. It’s a local landmark and a very impressive gothic style building that is uplit at night further adding to it’s spooky appearance. It is open to the public every day but we’ve never managed to visit despite intending to for about a year as whenever we are passing we are on our way somewhere else.

I went there as a child as my Mum knew someone who was a teacher at the college and lived onsite. He invited us to lunch and gave us a grand tour of the whole college and chapel. We also used to use the swimming pool up there when we were kids as a friends’ mum had a contact there but it is years since I visited the chapel.

It is enormous and very beautiful and we had a very nice hour wandering round looking at the stunning windows and ceilings. Davies and I counted the seats and there were over 500 just in the main area. We were greeted by (I think) the verger and he asked if they’d like to light candles so they did that and we chose a couple of postcards and left a donation and signed the visitors book. They both really liked it there and asked if we could go again. Davies loves the architecture of churches, chapels and cathedrals and rather bizarrely Scarlett seems to like the peaceful calm atmosphere :lol:.

Then it was time for swimming. We had 10 minutes or so before their lesson so had a quick game of tag in the water and then I foolishly decided to get a head start on my lengths and left them in the shallow end while I did the first two. I returned two minutes later to find Davies in tears. They had been climbing out and then jumping back in and Scarlett had failed to look and jumped in right on top of Davies. His face was hurting (he may well have a black eye tomorrow) and she had hurt her inner thighs by landing right on top of his head. Sadly he came off worse so the lesson learnt is not ‘look before you leap’ for her rather ‘look before Scarlett leaps’ for Davies!

I’ve been expecting some sort of fallout from a week away and the sleepover and it seemed this was it. Tiredness overcame him and although he wasn’t seriously hurt once he’d started crying he couldn’t seem to stop or recover himself so he decided he didn’t want to do his lesson after all. I tried to talk him into it and failed so Scarlett went in, I sent Davies to go and get changed and I went back to the big pool to carry on with my lengths.

It wasn’t very restful. I saw Scarlett come running over to the pool from the other end but she didn’t notice me and then the instructor came over to ask where Davies was. I explained he wasn’t swimming today after all and I’d thought Scarlett had told her – actually I know she had as I heard her while she was taking the register and saw Davies while he was being cuddled by me. She just didn’t listen to Scarlett which is understandable really as she does do a lot of meaningless whittering around the sensible actual bits of information :lol:.

Davies came out dressed and sat in the spectators area but was all weepy so after just 16 lengths I gave up and got out. Which was a shame as I managed them no problem and felt I could have done really well today otherwise.

Both children got their new lessons for September and Davies has gone up a group. Apparently there were a few children far better than the rest of the group but not quite ready to go into the new band up so they have created a new lesson for them and Davies is one of them. She said Scarlett is doing really well too so hopefully she will make some progress through the ranks next term. It means they are staggered lessons again at the later times of 4 and 430pm which is good in terms of not mucking the day up so much but bad in terms of hitting rush hour traffic home and being in the dark and cold come October. It does mean I can do my lengths while Davies does his own thing and Scarlett has her lesson, then I can have half an hour with her to practise what she’s done in her lesson while Davies has his.

They got fish and chips for tea on the way home and thanks to the very heavy showers we had there was no need to water the allotment tonight. We read some of Jones and the giants and Scarlett went straight to sleep tonight. Ady and I watched episide 3 and 4 of Torchwood and Davies stayed awake creating a Michael Jackson outfit which he came down to show us between Torchwoods and included a fancy belt made from sellotaping coins all around one of his belts. I do love his creativity but I do wish he would try and do it during daylight hours!

Almost there, almost there!

Monthly HE Pulborough Brooks walk day and the ideal chance to catch up with Tasha and Toby and Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna all in one go.

The weather was lovely and with eating cereal in the car and hauling out of bed we managed to collect Tasha and co at the agreed time of 10am. Needing to get petrol and loading two more children and pushchair into the car always seeming to take longer than you expect meant we were about 20 minutes later than the usual meeting time but we caught up with the group about halfway round and were greeted by some of the children wanting to show me a dead mouse (because clearly that’s the sort of thing I’d want to be viewing ;)).

It was a nice walk, didn’t see any adders or wildlife really but the children enjoyed walking along and I got to chat to Tasha and another couple of women when we caught them up which was nice. One particulaly, E, is really nice and lives a few doors down from Chris and Julie but I rarely see so it was nice to have a catch up and chatter with her :).

Back at the park Julie and co had already arrived as they have been coming for the picnic and play and then doing the walk round on their own afterwards instead of rushing to get there for 1030am. Had a good catch up with them and all the kids played really well together. Davies and Scarlett would have liked to have Tasha and co back here or gone back to theirs but I was keen to get more washing done and catch up on more online stuff so we dropped them home and came home to do just that.

Davies and Scarlett watched Moonwalker while I uploaded more photos (I found if I only do 20 at a time it doesn’t crash, bet that doesn’t work next time though and is still rather laborious when you have 400 to do ;)) and caught up on blogging and various other online stuff.

My Mum and Ady arrived at the same time, Mum returning the allotment key as she’d been up there a couple of times during the week to water. Had a chat with her and then I nipped up to water the allotment and check on everything while Ady tidied up and the kids played with Lego. When I got back we read some stories and they went off to bed. Ady cooked and we watched the second Torchwood.

Thanks to a bad night we were up later than planned and thanks to intermitant showers we were slower packing up than planned too. Ady went off to empty the loo while I dismantled the inside of the tent and packed everything up. We did take down the flysheet slightly damp (and rather sandy) but everything else was dry.

We finally got away about 1pm and had a long, slow, boring journey home. We had to stop 3 times – once for food and once each for Davies and Scarlett to go to the loo.

Davies and Scarlett had been invited to Freya’s birthday party and sleepover. It was quickly obvious they wouldn’t be making the party but the sleepover was still a posibility. At that point only Davies was intending going though as Scarlett was too worried her burnt hand might keep her awake and missing us.

Due to traffic and stops the arrival time on the satnav got later and later and we eventually decided when pulling off the A23 onto the A27 that as we were about equidistant between our house and Ali’s instead of my planned going home to collect pjs and clean underwear for the morning for D before taking him to Ali’s in my car while Ady emptied his car and Scarlett had a bath we’d call into Asda for cheap pjs and pants and go straight to Ali’s. At this point Scarlett decided her hand hadn’t really hurt all day and she would really like to go to the sleepover too.

So I nipped into Asda, got pjs and pants for both, some cheap pizzas for Ady and I and we went to Ali’s where our arrival imediately doubled the sleepover children and enhanced the craziness! We had a cup of tea and a bit of a holiday debrief which was nice and allowed the children to settle in before we left.

Davies has always said he would like his first sleepover at Freya’s,as much I suspect to do with his affection for Ali as his friendship with Freya. When the birthday sleepover came up he was really pleased at the idea of having a sleepover before Badger camp too. The circumstances around it all were probably the best possible ones as it really was just a sleepover, rather than a whole day with dinnertime and stuff aswell. We were only gone for 12 hours and they did eventually spend about 7 of them sleeping! I think the amount of times they have slept in friends rooms albeit with us somewhere else in the house have prepared them well so this didn’t seem such a massive step and they are both really comfortable in Ali and J’s house and company, knowing we are only 20 minutes or so away probably helped too.

We left them at about 930pm for the sleepover fun detailed here and headed home. Predictably things were not all in order at home 🙁 Our bedroom door which we both swear we checked was closed was now open and Candle had used our ensuite bathroom as her own so there was a lot of mess to clear up in there :(. The chickens didn’t seem to have much food (they had already put themselves to bed but I was worried enough to go out with a torch to shine in their house and do a headcount). I had a bath while Ady disinfected, hoovered and cleaned up and then ran it away and ran him a new one (camping grime warrants a bath each ;)) while I cooked the pizzas, which we horrible!

We were finally sitting down at about 1130 I guess and left the TV off in favour of checking emails and looking at the weeeks photos. Scarlett rang to say goodnight at which point Ady went off to bed deciding Davies probably wouldn’t ring. He was right – Ali rang later to say he didn’t want to and I sat up for another hour or so before going to bed too. It didn’t feel that odd not having the children, probably because by the time we actually got home they would have been in bed, if not asleep anyway. I slept *really* well in my own lovely bed.

In the morning we failed to unload the car which had been our original plan so we could collect the kids and go to the Brighton Kite Festival which is not far from Ali’s. Instead we decided we were probably all too tired for a day out and instead would collect the kids, come home and empty the car and have a quiet day at home with a roast dinner.

All seemed well at Ali and J’s, with sleepy looking children and shell shocked looking adults ;). They sure know how to lay on a sleepover with all sorts of treats like trampolining by fairy lights and dancing round the room at midnight. Not at all sure we’d manage to replicate such delights when we return the invitation but I’d quite like to go to one of Ali’s sleepovers myself :lol:. It was great to have been able to leave the kids with someone we trust, know will look after our children and care about them and give them such a fab first experience of being away from home overnight. Thanks guys 🙂 xxx

Sunday was indeed a quiet at home day. We slowly unpacked the car and put stuff away. I made quite a bit of headway through the laundry mountain (kendal mint cake at half way point definitely) and we had a lovely roast chicken.The kids had baths, hair washes and hair brushing aswell as nail trimming and general de-griming. The cat was much stroked and I downloaded all the episodes of Torchwood from the previous week so we could start watching the first one that evening when the kids had gone to bed.

In the evening I went to collect the chicks from Tasha, who have grown loads in a week. As pet-sitting goes I suspect they are amoung the more cute variety :).

In theory we should have had an early night to catch up – the other three did but I still mangaed to be up at 2am uploading photos to flickr.

Our last full day.

It was a beautiful sunny morning and the children all wanted to do beach and Shell Island based stuff. They went off with the inflatable boat to sit in the sand dunes and write ghost stories. Marcus and Michelle went off to the onsite shop and Ady and I went to the beach. We had a lovely couple of hours collecting shells, paddling and then sitting on the sand chatting and drinking the bottle of beer and cider we’d brought with us.

The Red Arrows did a flyby at 130pm which we watched. I was most entertained by a man on the beach who stood up and announced ‘It’s the Red Arrows’ in a commentators voice just as they flew over 😆

We went back to the campsite to find Davies had been considered missing although he never felt he was and the others had been worriedly looking for him. He had a lot of freedom this holiday and did quite a bit of roaming. But he is nearly 9, clearly felt safe himself to do so and at no point ever felt lost, scared or worried so I was fine with it. I think there were a few times when he was keen to have some space and time away from the group too so he just quietly took himself off to do so.

We needed food for the evening and something for lunch so we headed off to Barmouth, a nearby very seasidey town to the Co op, a giftshop for Scarlett to get a lucky stone, an old fashioned sweetshop to buy quarters of jelly beans and sherbet pips and a cafe for the most delicious roast beef and onions baguette I’ve ever had. We came back to the campsite via the petrol station to fill up for the return journey and a butchers which had a big sign outside proclaiming them the Gold Award Winners for Best Sausage in North Wales for some gold medal winning sausages for dinner.

Ady dropped the children and I off at the shop so we could buy icecreams and walk back to the tents while he had his pot noodle he had bought and was desperate to have while we were camping. That was nice, it does feel right having one child holding each hand and walking along chattering to them :).

Back at the campsite we headed to the beach for some rockpooling and crab hunting. We only got a couple of little baby ones but did find loads of starfish and sea anaenomies. We released them all back into the rock pools again and left as the tide got higher and with last wistful looks at the sea that showed no dolphins we went back for our fantastic award winning sausages for dinner.

It turned out to be a very, very rainy night. Ady and Marcus chatted in the Outwell porch, the children all sat in our car watching Michael Jackson’s MoonWalker but Mich and I sat under our umbrella, huddled together, drinking and chatting, determined to milk our last night for all it was worth 😆

The evening ended rather sadly with Scarlett managing to burn three of her fingers on the gas lamp in the tent. Davies thinks she deliberately put her hand on it after Ady told her not to touch it as it was hot. I think she does like to test things for herself and actually Ady is a bit of a one for over exagerrating things so the kids don’t know how much of what he says to believe so I wouldn’t be surprised. It was quite nasty and I had that fleeting moment of ‘oh shit’ when I realised we were all over the limit for driving, Scarlett was filthy dirty, tangle haired and full of sand and it was about midnight so really not a great time to be needing A&E. We used calpol and icepacks and she slept in with me while Ady went in with Davies but she had a really bad night, waking several times screaming.

At one point just as it was getting light Ady had to go out to the car to get another ice pack. I was sleeping in my pants as my pjs were still in the car from showering earlier and couldn’t see thanks to no contact lenses, I was debating whether slapping her could be excused as bringing her to her senses from hysteria and Ady managed to be so firm with the snapping to activate the cold pack that he snapped the packaging too so Scarlett had to hold her hand inside a carrier bag with it. Another of our finest parenting moments 😉

Last half an hour or so aside it was a very nice last day with plenty of beach and view time :).

Ady only had one pair of grubby jeans and one pair of soggy jeans. Davies only had a very wet pair of shoes and a pair of jeans that we’d packed without realising they should have been in his ‘to grow into’ pile and lots of shorts. But it was raining. And quite cold.

We’d planned to visit Snowdon Railway with Marcus, Michelle and Chloe so we decided to go ahead and nip to Asda for suitable clothing / footwear and meet them there. We did indeed get clothing and footwear and were on our way to meet them when Marcus rang to say there were no tickets for the train available til 430pm that afternoon. We said that would be fine and we’d find something to do and meet them there and to get us tickets. Which he did and rang us back to give us the shocking news of the cost of them which had Marcus kindly returning them again on our behalf and us realising we’d need to make alternative arrangements for the day instead as it was way out of our budget. 🙁

Next stop was an outdoor shop we’d spotted closing the day before where both Davies and I finally got proper, waterproof, fleecelined coats suitable for winter walks, boat rides, camping trips in the British summertime and many of the other pursuits we regularly follow but are never correctly attired for. Bargain prices too thanks to the mid season sale and we got them for about half the price the train would have cost us.

We then had a Family Debate about what to do with the rapidly disappearing day. Scarlett and Ady voted for back to the beach, Davies and I wanted to go somewhere Welsh on the basis we have a beach at home and should make the most of being in Wales. After some discussion we decided to go to Llangollen which is near where my Dad grew up and the venue of many, many holidays Ady and I have had and many day trips when we lived in Manchester. There is a steam train and a horse drawn canal boat both of which would have been good trips to take so we decided to head there. I still really wanted to go and see some copper mines I had a leaflet for but was overrruled.

The Sat Nav took us on a gorgeous route following the coastline so I spent much of it nose pressed to the window looking for dolphins ;). We suddenly saw signs for LLandudno which is another place we’ve visited a couple of times, most recently when on holiday with my parents about 12 years ago where we have pictures of us all stood on the pier looking at jellyfish. I’d wanted to go on the cablecars at the time but they’d been closed so we decided to try again and turned off to follow the brown signs.

We arrived at Marine Drive toll where the man told us the cable cars where closed again due to high winds. He offered us the £2.50 drive along the coast road instead which we almost didn’t take but decided to have a go with. I’m SO glad we did. We stopped a couple of times to peer over the edge of the Great Orme at the seagulls (and of course to look for dolphins) and it was stunning, and indeed very windy.

At the halfway point you could carry on or veer off to the Summit Visitor Centre and tramway and cable car area so we came off and went up the steep, twisty road to the top. Where we happened upon the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mines which had been precisely where I wanted to go but hadn’t looked closely to realise was in Llandudno! How happy was I?! 🙂

We *really* enjoyed that. Bargain price of £16 entrance for an amazing place. It was only rediscovered in 1987 during a plan to landscape the area and is 4000 years old mined in the Bronze age for copper using tools made from stone and bone. Amazing.

There are some 9 chambers going deep, deep underground although only the top 2 are accessible yet. It is an amazing archaeological find with all sorts of evidence simply sealed off for thousands of years. The passageways are narrow and low, there is no natural light and methods were primative and tough but ingeneous. Another self-guided tour this time it was done by signs written in the voice of a caveman of the time and was made very accessible for children. An amazing place 🙂

We had a walk round the outside too before retiring to the second hand book shop and tea room for tea, coffee and flapjacks and a peruse of the books for sale. Davies really liked the idea of certain stones having powers so he bought a rose quartz worry stone in the shape of a pig on some leather to wear round his neck and a green stone which is supposed to be lucky. Scarlett later regretted not getting a lucky stone too but fortunately they are in every gift shop so we got her one the following day elsewhere.

For the first time ever I sort of got the whole excitement around archaeology that Davies feels. I met with some resistance but I’m really pleased we saw the two mines we visited. They worked well together in terms of being from two totally different periods, one very recent, the other ancient history and gave a really good feel of what it might have been like to work there aswell as two different types of mined materials.

We drove onwards to the summit centre but only had 15 minutes or so there before they closed which was a shame as there looked to be plenty to do there including a wildlife display and cafe. We looked at the amazing views over bays, mountains and oceans inlcuding a green area which people had ‘graffitied’ using pebbles from the cliffs themselves positioned to write names and messages. I really liked that :).


Back down the hill and round to the other side. We drove back to the campsite stopping on the way for fish and chips for dinner, which were very nice and we sat eating while looking over the view.

We had a lovely walk along the beach as the sun set which was just stunning, before coming back to have another campfire and more marshmallows.

Was supposed to be Dolphin Day.

After my initial contact number for Shearwater boat cruises had proved no good (boat not working) I was given a mobile number and the name ‘Jason’ which sounded a little dodgey and I suspected the dolphins might be inflatable ones. I did leave a message on his voicemail but he never called me back. I then found a leaflet in the Porthmadog tourist information office and booked a trip with Tony. The leaflet promised ‘a good chance of seeing dolphins’ so whilst I appreciate they are wild animals and not that big in a rather large sea I was really quite hopeful of spotting one or two.

I had to ring Tony in the morning to check his boat was okay as he’d been having problems with it (sabotaged by dolphins maybe?) but when I spoke to him he said although it was ‘a bit choppy out there’ we’d still go. There was a map on the leaflet but it wasn’t very helpful and in the end Tony rang us to guide us in. We stopped on the way to get some travel sickness tablets ‘just incase’ – Ady has had seasickness before in small boats, I’ve never really been on one for any length of time and the kids had never done it before but have both suffered with car sickness before. As it turned out we needn’t have worried about that at all.

On the way out it was indeed very choppy but the kids declared it ‘like the best rollercoaster ride ever!’ complete with salty spray to soak us. On the way back it was calmer and so lulling that Ady and both children dozed off. I would have done too but I was ever alert for a dolphin sighting to the bitter end!

So, no dolphins. However (with a big nod to Joyce for the ‘however’ technique) we did have a fab day anyway. The boat trip was ace, we all really enjoyed that :). It was a 90 minute boat trip from Pwllheli, 3.5 hours on Bardsey Island and then 90 minutes back again. The boat was fast, exhillarating and lots of fun :).

When we arrived at the island we were greeted by the eerie sound of seals singing. In my single mindedness about dolphins I’d failed to realise we would see seals. There must have been nearly 100 seals basking on the rocks in the sunshine, calling to each other and leaping off into the sea. Scarlett was delighted and said it almost made up for no dolphins. I’ve never seen seals in the wild before and it was lovely 🙂

We watched them for a while and then debated how to spend our time on the island. We’d been given a sheet with information about the island, the wildlife, a map and several suggested walks. One was climbing the mountain which we didn’t fancy, one was round the coast and one was taking in the various landmarks. We set off for a walk around part of the coast as we were on a thinner strip of the island with just a field seperating the two sides of water. Over on the east of the Island was a lighthouse, farm and residences that people live in year round – there is a farmer and a warden who live there all the time, seven holiday homes that you can rent for weeks at a time and various houses and shops and workshops that people rent for short or long term lets, mostly during the summer season.

Davies was complaining of being cold and was struggling a bit. It never came to anything and we assumed it was just tiredness as he slept for a while on the boat on the way back and seemed fine after that but it did mean he was slower to walk around than we’d have liked and not up for as much wandering about as we may otherwise have done.

There were several shops or ‘siops’ on the Island including a couple that just had honesty boxes for anything you bought. One sold handmade felted and knitted bags, rugs and purses made with wool from the Island, honey from bees kept on the Island, things carved from wood, made from shells, painted landscapes all of the Island. We didn’t buy anything but it was all nice stuff.

We ventured further up the hill more into the middle of the Island in search of toilets and chatted to a woman who rents a workshop and house for 8 months of the year running art and craft workshops and selling things she has made. She was quite a character, well into her 50s or even 60s, clad in rainbow coloured clothing and making paper from recycled waste paper as she chatted to us. She said she loves the island and feels it is a very spiritual and creative place. Certainly judging from all of her artwork and creations she is inspired by being there.

She told us a little of the set up there and we chatted to her about water (from a well), electricity (only in the last year and not to all the properties) and making supplies last for the duration of your stay (she’d run out of tinned tomatoes!). We liked it there a lot and could well imagine a weeks break there. It would be nice to go with someone else too we decided but couldn’t quite decide who our ideal holiday companions might be…

We had a look round the tiny church, which doesn’t have electricity and is lit by candles. Scarlett liked the long handled snuffer for the chandelier.

We walked back down the hill and sat and ate our picnic in the company of a turkey who had wandered over from a nearby garden to beg for scraps. We had an hour left but Davies wasn’t really up for too much walking about and so we decided to go and sit on the cliffs and watch the seals in the sunshine, which was a very lovely way to spend a Wednesday afternoon :).

On the boat trip back, which started with a dingy ride to the catermaran as the tide was low and it couldn’t get to the shore, we said goodbye to the seals who chased us a little way out and were told it was probably far too choppy to spot dolphins but if we did to shout and they’d stop the boat so they would come over. I spent the whole journey ever alert while the other three napped but alas I saw nothing :(.

Back at the shore we decided to track down a McDonalds which was handily located next to a Tesco so we fed the children and got ingredients for a stir fry for us before heading back to Shell Island. While Ady and I ate Marcus and Michelle took Davies and Scarlett with them and Chloe to see the causeway flooding and making Shell Island really an island for a brief time. Scarlett efficiently paddled with her trousers rolled up but Davies managed to get shoes, socks and bottoms of trousers very wet 😆

I lit a fire and Ady and Davies had a game of badminton. Another nice evening :).

CAT day.

I’ve been wanting to go to CAT for a couple of years now and this was the planned day out of the week. I’d negotiated a fairly good price including two free adult admissions over the phone with the educational officer but Michelle trumped that with the offer in the HEAS leaflet. The woman on the desk thought it was a misprint and it was *very* cheap at under half price with her still giving us the two free adults too!

I felt slightly bad given I do support what they are doing there but it did mean they probably got more money out of us generally as we bought lunch there and I was more generous with saying yes to things in the shop for Davies and Scarlett too.

We went up using the water powered cliff railway which was pretty cool and had an audio explanation of how it worked. Sadly it was another rainy day although it did dry up later on.

We started off with the video about CAT and walked round the house and gardens with all the eco-friendly additions. I have to say I felt quite good about how green our lifestyle is most of the time and how much D and S already knew about green issues.

My one criticism of the day was that it was too sign-heavy. Even I got bored of reading stuff and the children wouldn’t stand still and listen to me for too many signs at a time. Retrospectively we should have booked some of the talks or a guided tour and gained something from the obvious passion and knowledge of the people there. I would go again and either try and make it coincide with one of their event days or book a tour to get the most out of the visit. For that reason it was not quite as good as I’d been hoping but we still got loads out of it and enjoyed it.

I liked the recycling area, particularly the glass bottle bridge. A quick calculation reavealed there to be about 2800 wine bottles – about 10 years worth for me I reckon 😉

I also liked the ‘treadmill of happiness’, the musical instruments from recycled stuff and the various power types in the interactive area.

There was a vegetarian restaurant which Scarlett was disgusted to learn didn’t sell ham sandwiches 😆 but we ate well there nonetheless with me having a delicious organic Welsh cheese and cranberry sauce baguette, much needed caffiene and hot chocolates too for the children and I.

The kids enjoyed the playpark area too and after a visit to the shop we were all very worn out and ready to go. Scarlett was storing up all her money from gift shops during the week (having started with about £3 in hand from somewhere else Davies had been bought something but she’d decided to take the cash instead) so she just chose a slate writing board while Davies chose a slate writing board, a spork and some other piece of wooden toy tat. Scarlett wanted a firesteel but they were quite pricey in there and we do already have one so I said no to that.

We found a supermarket on the way home and bought burgers to cook for dinner. It was Barbara and Katy’s last night and we were lucky to have another dry evening to sit out round the campfire.

I think that was also the night that Ady took the slope at the wrong angle and got his car stuck in the sand. Properly stuck in the sand. We tried pushing it, we trying pulling it, I even suggested lifting it, he tried low revs, high revs and eventually we asked the Ray Mears-alike bloke who shared our sandpit but had previously been very private barely making eye contact with us if he could help us pull it out.

He did so, refused our offer of a beer and went back and hid in his corner of the sandpit again 😆 Much to our disappointment! We did later learn after much private speculation about who he was and what he was doing that he is a cutler (knife maker) supplying Ray Mears and Bear Grylls. He was staying at Shell Island for 4 weeks selling his knives direct to shops. They retail at £400 each but he offered to make Ady one for £180 – lovely but still rather out of our budget! I was disappointed not to talk to him about it as I wanted to know where he learnt such a trade and quite how he makes them but he returned to his shyness after that chat with Ady and Chloe so I guess we’ll never know!