One word? When seven would do…

The day started with the usual – letting out the chickens, hanging out some washing and putting another load on, encouraging children to get dressed, that sort of thing.

We left home at about 10ish and did a huge anticlockwise circle – first to someone’s house to collect a bag of girl’s clothes they’d advertised on freecycle. There are a couple of pairs of trouses, some tops, a dress and a pj top all suitable for Scarlett. Curiously there was a nametape sewn into one of the trousers with the name Scarlett so that pleased her even if the surname is different. Later at Tasha’s Toby gave Davies a couple of tops he doesn’t want to wear because they’ve got long sleeves (he hates long sleeves and long legs and wears shorts and tshirts all the time) so they both got ‘new’ clothes today :).

Next we went to my parents to collect my car key and the MOT certificate. Dad had collected my car (and paid) on Friday while we were at Drusillas. He’d also left a cheque to pay for the kids swimming lessons for next term along with the £2 each for the badges and certificates they’d been awarded this term. That is something that really annoys me – Dad pays about £300 a year for their swimming lessons and it seems really petty and tight to be charging for badges that you have allegedly ‘earned’ they should be free – or at the very least tack the two quid onto the price of the lessons so you don’t realise you’re paying for it! Having worked at Scout Shops selling the scout proficiency badges direct to Badge Secretarys I also know exactly how little these badges cost so charging two quid for them is further insult really.

Mum was home, she is quite poorly at the moment with some sort of bronchal thing and sounds dreadful. She insists she’s not as ill as she sounds but I’m not convinced :(.

From there we went to the Co Op for a few bits to make up dinners for the week from what is already in the fridge / freezers. We were accosted at the tills by one of the staff who chatted to us and then insisted on bringing my eggs out to the car for me. I’d forgotten to take a cloth bag in so rather than take a carrier I have the kids a couple of things each to carry and I brought the rest – it would have been fine but he grabbed the eggs and wasn’t going to let them go. I *think* he was just offering good customer service but the kids looked very bemused by him and his rather overfriendly manner 😆

Next to the swimming pool to pay for lessons and badges with Dad’s cheque before finally going along the seafront to Tasha’s new house. Her partner (and father of her younger son)’s parents have sold their house and bought a slightly run down but pretty large house along the seafront. It has four bedrooms and is lovely and big with amazing views. There is a fully fitted out basement downstairs where they are living and Tasha and co have the house upstairs. It is rather different to the small flat they have been renting and despite having been in for nearly two weeks Tasha is still in slight shock that this is her house now :).

We had lunch, the kids played, we chatted and I knitted and we had a really nice few hours round there. Toby is a nice lad but has quite dramatic mood swings. Davies and Scarlett tend to leave him to get on with it and just carry on playing among themselves; they have never fallen out with him but I think he sometimes struggles with the two of them together and often tries to angle things so Scarlett is left out. Davies is pretty good at ensuring she remains included and Scarlett is fairly capable of dealing with such things herself anyway but I think Toby sometimes finds them a bit of an impenetrable duo to play with. They always part friends and are always keen to see each other again – today Toby wanted us to arrange a sleepover :).

We came home before it got too dark so I could get the chickens put away – we are realising we need to have some arrangement for them to put themselves away more securely if we are not home before dark – so far we’ve been lucky and risked it a couple of times but I think foxes are regular visitors to the garden and we need to find a way to keep them safer.

I sorted out the childrens’ tea which they ate while watching WALL-E and playing with Davies’ ‘WALL-E playset’ which is a collection of junk he has fashioned into WALL-E and other characters and scenery from the film. With them quiet I had a bit of a bake-fest and made 3 quiches (one for tea, two for the freezer), several batches of mince pies and some jam tarts. Davies appeared in the kitchen at one point and said he’d like a bath so I told him he could run one and he did. I checked on it to ensure it was okay and it was. So they had a bath while I finished up in the kitchen and then Ady arrived home.

We had a ‘track down all the items from the library’ half hour which has left just one book (which we *know* is in Davies’ room, just not exactly where in there) and 3 dvds (two of which are definitely in Ady’s car according to the kids) unaccounted for. I want to take some stuff back as we currently have about 60 items out.

Both of them took forever to get to sleep – Davies is desperate for a decent nights sleep and is looking very pale and is quite fragile and teary – hopefully he’ll eventually reach a point where he simply can’t stay awake late.

Dad came round first thing (I say first thing, it was probably getting on for 9am :oops:) and he and Ady went off to get some logs. There has been a sharp rise in the wood burning round these parts and logs are suddenly neither as cheap nor readily available as they have previously been. Fortunately Dad has a contact who is in the tree felling business and as yet hasn’t seen the need for a secondary business of selling the wood he lops down as logs.

They came back and Dad stayed awhile to chat (and have coffee and croissants) and saw the pictures from Scarlett’s keeper day. He’d noticed Davies doing his latest tic (he shakes his head, he says he likes the feel of his hair on the back of his neck) the other day and mentioned it to me. It wasn’t one I’d particularly noticed until Dad said about it although I’ve been aware of a chest beating one he’s had for a while when he is excited. I told Dad I’d read up a fair bit about them and know the triggers for them now. I also said that I think they would be lots more pronounced if he was in school or other situations he might find stressful and we had quite an interesting conversation about tics, twitches and OCD type stuff. I also expressed my thoughts that not everyone watches their children quite so closely or has quite such the amount of hours in their company as I do – Dad agreed although he has always been very sharp eyed about differences in Davies and Scarlett, much as he was with Frazer and I. I think he is mellowing about HE in many ways and on the days when he doesn’t have an agenda he is an interesting person to chat to about stuff like this.

Dad left and Ady started to get the lounge ready to bring the Christmas tree in. This meant getting the playroom ready to take the kids tables and chairs first. I had already melted some chocolate into moulds from a kit to make tree decorations so I got Davies and Scarlett to come and help me in the kitchen and keep them out of his way. They decorated white and milk chocolate decorations, painted some cookies with egg yolk and food colouring to make Christmas tree cookies and then got bored and wandered off while I was still making gingerbread cookies. They did wander back later for those and helped decorate them in the end though.

Ady got a real tree this year as he had to buy one for work in some price and quality comparison thing and then they gave him the tree. We’ve never had a real tree before and I do love the smell and the look of them although cost wise (and eco-friendly wise) it wouldn’t be something we could justify every year. We decided to go a bit less mad with the decorations this year so we have only edible things on the tree (aside from lights) – candy canes, chocolates and shortbread and gingerbread cookies. Scarlett has her pink tree and some tinsel in her room and Davies has gathered up all the additional decorations including the second tree (he already has a small one of his own) and created a magical Santa’s grotto up in his room which we were all invited up to earlier and given presents :).

Decs up Scarlett and I got out the aquabeads / bindeez / whatever they’re called kit that Lucy and The Rs had given her for her birthday and she did some of that. Seem unnecessarily fiddly to me and having drenched them in water I’m not sure they really stand up to being handled either but I didn’t have terribly high hopes for them from the advert. They happened to be something she had said she’d like though and she is happy with them :). Davies decided he wanted to do something with beads so we got the hamabeads out. I made a snowflake, he made a random square which he claims is a mini photoframe :lol:. Hama beads are not, never have been and likely never will be something he gets anything out of. He likes instant gratification and more scope for messy creativity than they offer. I would happily sit and make stuff with them although I suspect I’d get bored and wander off after a while too.

Ady cooked a lovely dinner and we all watched Nims Island. Another supposedly early night for them but they were both reappearing in the lounge hours after bedtime. Tomorrow seems to have a job list already writing itself of minor things to get sorted and it’s another busy week ahead.

I worked in the morning. It was a really horrible day, freezing cold, blowing a gale and pouring with rain so I didn’t feel I was missing out on much by being tucked away in the library. I had my teabreak with the two teenage Saturday assistants which was amusing. They humoured me by talking about A levels for a while before getting back to the serious business of trying to pretend I wasn’t there and gossiping about who had got off with who the night before. Made me feel old, slightly hankering after my own youth and the most important thing to dwell on being analysing every sentence uttered in your last conversation with a certain someone and slightly terrified that it’s not that long really before my own children enter that world – infact less years til they do than since I did – gulp!

Home at 1pm with time for a quick cup of tea and chivvying of children before heading back out again. Whilst doing one of my regular browses of the local theatres recently I’d come across details of the Magic Lantern film club at the Ropetackle Centre in Shoreham (the next town along from us). It had sounded so very, very Davies that I’d got taster tickets for both children to go along to it. Scarlett was fine with it and was looking forward to it (but she has her security blanket in the shape of Davies) – Davies liked the idea of it but was very anti going somewhere without me. On the website it says they do not want parents to stay and actually I think he is now past the stage where he genuinely needs me to stay at stuff and my presence is often a distracting / hampering one for him as he watches me almost constantly for clues to behaviour rather than being himself.

All that said the very reason we started home educating Davies was to do with his issues at being left and my guilt at having done so (we have long since left that behind but it’s still there in the background for both of us) so I have always promised I will never leave him anywhere he is not happy to stay. I explained that I had booked this for him because I was sure he would love it, that if I was wrong and he didn’t enjoy it I would be very sorry and would never ask him to go there again, gave him my mobile phone number and told him to get the organisers to ring me and I would come straight back for him if he wasn’t happy and he grudgingly agreed to try it.

When we arrived it was slightly chaotic with various people milling about. Both the children were being annoying with Davies looking like he was being led to his execution and Scarlett getting all stroppy about wanting to take her coat off and put it somewhere (she hates wearing a coat, takes it off as soon as she can and then wants to be rid of it) so when I found someone and he said I could stay and settle them I decided to do so. Ady appeared then having parked the car and took over finding somewhere for their coats while I sat and read to them from the programme. They were watching The Incredibles and with each showing a booklet is produced telling a brief outline of the story of the film, some information about the making of it and various other film related trivia. Normally this will be sent out before the screening to read at home before they go.

I’d just about finished reading it to them and they were called to go in. Ady and I sat near the back and Davies and Scarlett went up to sit at the front with the other children. The first half an hour or so was a sort of sketch about superheroes with plenty of audience participation and chatter about the film. In this instance they were focussing on how the message of The Incredibles is that you don’t have to have super powers to be special. Both the children put their hands up to answer questions into the microphone that was being brought into the audience and after about 15 minutes I crept forward to tell them we were leaving and would see them later. They both agreed without even taking their eyes off the show and away we went.

Shoreham is a nice little town and the river Adur runs through it as it reaches the sea, there is a beach, a load of houseboats, some interesting shops and several cafes so it will be a nice place to have a couple of childfree hours once a month. It was not at it’s best with the dreadful weather though so after a quick look in Woolworths and a charity shop browse we decided to stop getting wet and cold and went back to the car. We drove to Tescos but it was so busy there wasn’t even parking spaces and we had a quick look round Homebase before heading back early to check Davies and Scarlett were still okay.

We were ushered in to watch the end of the film – it’s one of my favourites anyway and will always be a special one to me as it was Davies’ first cinema experience -I took him, just him and I when he was about four and although he’s always loved films it was that first big screen experience that really lit a fire for him :). They were both watching the film, heads together, whispering occasional things to each other and it wasn’t long before Davies glanced round, realised we were there and then told Scarlett who also glanced round. There were actually a couple of parents who had stayed but I really do think it would defeat the object of the event if I did.

As predicted both children LOVED it and want to sign up for the years membership- which as soon as we’ve been paid I will do for them. It’s also prompted Tarly to say she will try staying at Rainbows on her own in January for at least one session aslong as I leave my phone number with the leader to ring me if she needs me.

Home for Saturday night TV, Christmas card writing for me (all done, just need posting)and alledged early bedtimes that never quite seemed to happen.

A few months ago Scarlett and I started researching various zoo experiences for her birthday present this year. She has always been really into animals, loves all her soft toys, is very good at caring for pets and watches animal programmes on TV at every opportunity. She has several DS games to do with animals and has said she wants to be a zookeeper when she grows up for a couple of years now.

The two nearest zoos to us are Drusillas – which is a small zoo really and more about being a visitor attraction with a few animals than a serious zoo with a conservation and breeding programme. They have mostly monkeys, lemurs, birds and rodents there. They do a Keeper for the Day for £120 which is open to children aged 6 plus. The other option was Marwell which is a proper zoo with lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes etc. This is rather reflected in the price however and for the same £120 we could have booked a half hour Animal Encounter with limited exposure to one single animal. There was no contest really :).

I’d hoped to book the day for Scarlett’s actual birthday, last Saturday and have a good sized audience of family and friends to watch her and meet up with us at lunchtime for birthday cake etc. but weekend KftD were booked right through til July 2009 so we went for yesterday as the closest date available to her birthday. For various reasons the family and friends we had invited couldn’t make it and in the end it was just us yesterday. I think it was actually for the best as it was a freezing cold day and I’d have felt bad about having dragged anyone else there to walk round in the cold and it meant that while I was off with Tarly Davies got to be with Ady and have a nice day of one to one with him.

Scarlett was incredibly excited about the day and had been flicking through the folder of information they’d sent when we booked it regularly. She’s talked about it at Rainbows and told various friends about it.

So the day started at 10am – we were slightly early so hung around in the carpark and Davies and Scarlett were impressed by the frozen spider webs and played on a seesaw in the playarea in the car park. And admired the Christmas tree adorned with cuddly zoo animals.



while I fretted with some odd fear that she would get this close to her day and somehow manage to jinx it by breaking her arm or something!

The shutters rolled up and Debbie the keeper was there to meet us. Ady and Davies had to pay to get in and after telling them we’d be at the meerkats in about 45 minutes they headed off to look round while we went into the first ‘off limits’ area of the staff kitchen where Tarly was given her name badge for the day. She also got a jumper with a Drusillas badge on the front and KEEPER FOR THE DAY on the back but it was too cold to be without a coat so she brought that home and is currently wearing it in bed :).

The zoo is arranged in a sort of donut shape around a central off limits area which has various gates into various parts of the zoo. We took the long route round for the first time though and Scarlett was introduced to all the animals through the tunnel area – lizards, snakes, crocodiles, mongoose, various pygmy monkeys. She got told all their names and some gossipy information about them all such as who was dangerous (the snake had put one of the keepers in hospital, the crocodiles are *always* locked away before keepers go into to feed them or clean out their enclosure) and various other trivia.

We went to the kitchens where the animal feeds are prepared and were shown all round that – there is a corn store for various dried food, a cold room for the fruit and vegetables (many of which are out of date or split packaging items from the local Sainsburys), giant freezers for the meat (chicks, rats, mice etc.) and a room with the jumping insects which are the only live food any of the animals get and is therefore also an area where they are looked after and fed themselves until they are needed to be the food! The first animals Scarlett was feeding were the meerkats who were having mealworms for their breakfast. There are clipboards with details of feeds (food, weight, frequency etc.) for each animal and who is looking after them for that day. Debbie explained that animals in captivity have to have strictly controlled diets as they are not having to expend as much energy searching for food, roaming such a large area or necessarily getting the same diet as they would in the wild.

We quickly fed the pigs on the way to the meerkats – they have one boar and two sows kune-kune pigs which were being fed dried food pellets that morning. They are not bred there so are kept seperate. They have been known to bite and their teeth are huge and kept trimmed like rabbits are:

Then it was off to the meerkats. On the way Scarlett paused to show them through the glass what they were about to get 🙂

she also stopped to chat to a couple of smaller children and showed them the mealworms and told them what they were and where they were going 🙂

Once in the enclosure she threw the mealworms to the meerkats and then had to clean down all the glass panels of the enclosure while Debbie raked over the ground as it was cold and hard. The meerkats make a really cute noise and are very curious little things. We were not allowed to touch them but they didn’t afford us the same treatment and I had one rest it’s front paws on my leg to investigate the rip in the knee of my jeans while another had a nibble of Tarly’s shoes 🙂

When she’d cleaned the glass panels Scarlett had to clean the clear dome which extends into the enclosure from a tunnel underneath so people can poke their head into the middle and look around – guess who was looking out as she was cleaning it? 🙂

Next stop was the porcupines. They are not aggressive but their spikes can be nasty so they are shut out into the outdoor enclosure while their bed area is cleaned out. They are quite stinky. First Scarlett had to sweep up all the old bedding (hay and sawdust)

then redo it with fresh sawdust and create a nice new bed for them.

once again she had an audience 😉


then the porcupines were let back in and Scarlett fed them (fruit and veg and nuts – they love coconut too).

We saw some old quills and learnt about the tail ones which can be rattled together to make a noise to scare predators and the back ones which have barbs (similar to the needle felting needles). They’re funny old creatures.

We stopped to chat to some baby goats, met some off show creatures – a fennec fox which is about to finish her six months quarantine having come from Spain, five bats which have come to join the rest of the bats and were recovering from a long journey off show before being introduced to the enclosure with the others. Then it was tea break time in the staff kitchen. Tarly had a hot chocolate which helped to warm her up.

The next job was more food preparation – infact a keepers whole day (which is a fairly long one) is taken up with feeding and cleaning out really. There are other elements to the job too but that makes up the bulk of it. This time there was chopping up to do for the lemurs food so Scarlett got busy with knife on some apples, cabbage and bananas


The food preparation is all a bit like a dance with various people chopping and mixing and then leaving in various places ready for others to come and collect it to feed it to the animals – all very organised.

Debbie had to provide some enrichment for the bats and the mongooses in the shape of food they’d need to work for so we went to the enrichment room and selected some long sticks to thread some food onto for the bats and a basket for the mongoose (who I always feel I should call mongeese in the plural). The bat food is cheerio shaped pellets which Scarlett soaked in water and then threaded onto the sticks.

For the mongooses they put some crickets or locusts into a pot with a lid on and brought it along with a hanging basket filled with hay. We gathered up the lemur food too and headed off to the yellow mongoose and porcupine area. The porcupines had not had a lot of food earlier so they were fed some more and then we entered their enclosure from the other side while they were busy with their coconut. The hanging basket of straw was hung up and the insects buried in the straw for the mongooses to find/.

Next to the bat cave!

Scarlett and Debbie hung the sticks with their threaded food up and the bats soon flew over to investigate. The bats there are all males (so they don’t breed) and are a daytime bat called Rodriguez fruit bats from Rodrigues Island. As they are not nocturnal they have large eyes and far better eyesight than most bats. I like bats, Scarlett was slightly less keen for some reason.

Next we went on to the pets corner where Tarly got to hold mice, rabbits and guinea pigs


then things got a bit more exotic with some lizard stroking, some tortoise holding and an up close encounter with a corn snake!

Off to feed the prairie dogs next. They semi-hibernate through winter but a couple came out to see what was happening and Tarly put the rest of their food down their burrows 🙂

They get called ‘ground squirrels’ and you can see why, they have very similar faces and the same mannerisms when eating.

Another part of a keepers job is to give keeper talks at various times during the day. Drusillas opened Lemurland last year which is a walk through area with ring tailed lemurs. This has long been Scarlett’s favourite area as there is always a keeper on hand who knows loads both generally about lemurs and specifically about the group of 10 they have there. Both Davies and Scarlett have chatted to the keeper there before at length so it felt odd to be part of the keeper talk time. Davies and Ady were there to watch along with various other people so the keeper chatted to them and answered their questions while Tarly fed the lemurs

That took us to 115pm so we arranged to meet back up with Debbie after lunch and we headed to the soft play place for warm drinks for me and Ady, lunch for Tarly (Ady and Davies had already eaten) and a play in the warm for the children. We got an hours break but the real keepers only get 30 minutes so Debbie was off doing something else before we met back up with her again at 215pm.

Next to be fed were the fruit beetles in bug world so back for fruit chopping duty again. Also due to be fed were the capybara so that was prepared at the same time. We went to bug world first and Debbie talked to Scarlett about various bugs and spiders that are in there including the leafcutter ants which are fascinating to watch. The fruit beetles get fed fruit on sticks so Tarly did some threading onto sticks and then pushing into the ground:

We then spent some time walking round various animals we’d not been past before and Debbie told Scarlett more facts about them and Tarly had some questions too. Then with super large bucket in hand we headed off to the capybara

They share an enclosure with the mara and the beavers – and therefore share food too.
They are called Tallulah and Benson (the only names of animals that stuck in my head) and are giant rodents and really quite strange creatures:

We walked round to the coati then and watched them being fed – two chicks each followed by various fruit and veg. Tarly wanted to feed them some chicks but wasn’t wearing gloves so Debbie said no. We went passed the racoons and lemurs again and met up with Ady and Davies to go to the penguins for the last keeper talk of the day. Back behind the scenes again to collect a big bucket of fish and don gloves for Tarly and then into the penguin enclosure. Debbie did the keeper talk and introduced Scarlett as the keeper for the day while Scarlett lobbed fish in the water and the penguins went crazy eating them

It was by then very cold and practically dark and the day was over at about 430pm. We went back through the off limits areas, this time with Ady and Davies coming too back to the offices where Scarlett was given a certificate, her KftD jumper and a pack of various literature including a feedback questionnaire. Then we were let out of the shutters as the park was closing.

Scarlett declared it the best day EVER and is already adamant she wants the same present for her seventh birthday :).

What I liked about it was the genuine keeper for a day-ness of it, it wasn’t a glorified picture presented, it was the real schedule of a keeper and gave Scarlett a real insight into what it would be to work there and be a keeper one day.

Thursday, yesterday (although I suspect by the time I hit publish it will have been the day before yesterday) was my back to work day. With the best part of a week between my shifts anyway having a week’s leave in the middle means I’ve practically forgotten I have a job by the time I go back to it after a holiday :).

Ady was at home in the morning and he and the children did bedroom tidying. I think he gave them both a lecture about being grateful for having their own spaces and looking after them accordingly. I’m fairly sure it will have fallen on deaf ears but it’s only right he gets to waste his breath on such inane parenting cliches every so often to take the pressure off me to do so ;).

At lunchtime Dad arrived and between them they carried out the finely orchestrated process required to get my car to the MOT centre, Dad and the children back to our house and Ady on his way to work (Dad drove my car there with Ady and the kids following in Ady’s car, then Ady brought them all back home again on his way to work). The second part of the plan was for me to get a later lunch break and ring the garage to check progress then walk to the garage to collect it.

The first part of the plan worked but when I rang them later it was to find out it had failed and needed a small amount of work doing to it to pass. This was completely unsurprising as my car has never really had any money spent on it and has sailed through it’s last 4 MOTs so was probably due a small spend. The guy quoted me 80 quid and said he’d have it ready for me today. This then required further fine planning between me and Dad as we were not going to be around and the garage is closed on Saturday. We arranged for Dad to go and collect it, drive it a short distance down the road and then leave it there for me to collect later tonight. I also arranged for Dad to pay for it for now and be paid back by me after Christmas :).

This did mean I was stranded at work withouth a car which during daylight would be fine as it’s only a 15 minute or so walk home but it is not nice in the dark and I had a heap of books to bring home so Ady managed to come and collect me in the end.

Meanwhile I had a nice day at work. I’d not really felt like going when I woke up as I was feeling a bit grotty and tired but it was actually nice to be back once I was there. In the afternoon I had a review of my appraisal and was told once again that I am a real asset to the team, given a few more jobs to do which give me a bit more responsibility and chance to use some initiative and offered the chance to go on a few more training courses. Disappointment was expressed that I don’t work enough hours for me to qualify for a few more training courses but they can’t justify that investment when I’m only there 11 hours a week.

I read the children a big pile of library books (mostly Christmassy ones) and was in bed super early as I was very tired and blah.

Yesterday as we walked through Brighton train station Davies said to me ‘Mummy there are two questions I really wish I had the answers to.’
‘The first is does God exist and the second is why is the sky blue?’

I explained that there was a known and scientific reason for the sky being blue which I was not completely confident of but would find out for him and today at work as part of a colleague’s enquiry desk training I set her the challenge of finding out which she did and I brought the answer home to Davies to share with him.

The God one is rather more difficult…

Today was our trip to Brighton Dome to see The Bigger Bang science show.I’d stumbled upon it when trying to book tickets for something else through the Dome website and having heard local HEors rave about Big Bang science shows before I thought I’d book for that too.

It only costs £4.50 for the train for all three of us to Brighton and it would cost that in petrol to drive and about twice that to pay for parking in Brighton so we drove to the library, parked and got the train in. We played noughts and crosses on the train which made the 20 minute journey whizz past and then debated what to do with the couple of hours we had free before we had to be at the theatre. I’d have been happy to visit the museum and I suspect Davies would have been too but Scarlett had a £5 gift card for Sussex Stationers burning a hole in her pocket (birthday pressie from a friend) so we headed into the main shopping street instead. She failed to find anything in the bookshop that she was sufficiently enamoured with to part with her gift card so after browsing a few other shops we decided to get some lunch.

Predictably when offered the choice they both voted for McDonalds for lunch but when we realised it was opposite a KFC they graciously went with that instead. I hate fast food for all sorts of reasons, ethical and clearly lacking in free range meat (if indeed meat at all ;)) and haven’t eaten McDonalds for years if I can help it but I have to confess to really quite liking the taste of KFC. I do feel guilty, it crap food but the Colonel’s secret blend has me hooked!

I’d been exchanging text messages with Tasha to arrange to see them next week and she’d said they were in Brighton to which I’d replied we were too, for the show at the Dome. Davies and Scarlett had previously been asking me if anyone we knew was going to the show and I’d said no, not that I was aware of. So I looked a bit silly when Tasha rang me to say they were going to the Dome too and actually where was it as they were a bit lost! 😆

We walked to where they were and the kids had a run around together in the Pavillion gardens area while Tasha and I had a quick catch up chat and then walked round to the Dome together. Waiting outside was a HE boy we used to see lots of with his granny so we chatted to them for a while too. Tasha had seats in a different area to us so we went upstairs to find ours. The guy leading us to our seats told us we had the ‘best seats in the house!’ and indeed I’d have to agree with him – our view was excellent :).

As we were surveying the people coming in and Davies and I were playing our ‘they look Home Educated’ game we suddenly spotted Liza and Andrew along with a group of other HE folk we knew making a mockery of my insistance to D and S earlier that noone we knew was coming. Clearly I know nothing! 😆

The children loved the show, it was interactive enough to keep their attention, with regular explosions and flashing stuff and the ‘comedy’ within it was puerile enough for children their age to find funny. Personally I thought it was okay, I didn’t think the presenters were particularly good at presenting, some of the experiments either didn’t really work or were not impressive enough to carry on a stage and I’ve seen far better exhibitions of both exciting science-y stuff being put across educationally well and with flair for free in various places. But we were there for Davies and Scarlett and they loved it which is all that counts. There was an interval (which I hate, always strikes me as an attempt to get more money out of you for ice creams) and I think they may have been better making the first half 20 minutes longer and finishing it there.

After the show we met back up with Tasha, Toby and Vinnie to walk to the station and catch a train together. There was one about to pull away as we got there so we ran and just about got on in time. There was a guy with a blue mohican on the seats near us which all the children were very impressed by and talked about, loudly, for most of the journey home 😆 We called into Sussex Stationers in Lancing where Tarly finally spent her card on two Magic Kitten books and Davies borrowed £3 from me which he replaced with his lost tooth cash stash when we got home to buy a WALL E activity book.

Home for tea and getting changed and then off out again to Badgers. It was the last one before Christmas so adults got to eat mince pies and drink mulled wine and chat and then it was presentation of all the certificates and badgers for the Active Badger badge they’ve done this term. Next term Davies and Scarlett are doing different badges – Scarlett is doing First Aid and Davies is doing Hungry Badger as he’s already done First Aid. They handed out the programme for next term and rather amusingly the week that Davies will be learning how to make tea and coffee is the same week Scarlett will be learning how to give first aid for burns and scalds :lol:. Davies has been asked if he’d like to be in the team competing for a First Aid prize which he is very pleased about although I suspect Tarly will be foot stampingly cross over when she realises.

Ady joined me there and then he headed for home with the children while I popped to the CoOp as they have a big clothing concession where we’d spotted some perfect Christmas Eve pjs so I went to get those and various other things – they had some cheap craft kits which I got a stash of for Scarlett.

Ady is coming down with the NicCold so is feeling (and looking) a bit crap. Scarlett has a horrible spluttering cough and Ady is doing an odd throat clearing cough thing – I suspect I will be grateful to head off to work tomorrow ;).

I spent some more time catching up online today – finally up to date with blogging and flickring :). I also booked my car in for an MOT (it ran out last week, oops), caught up on some emails I needed to send and had a long phone chat catch up with Julie.

Also processed more laundry, did an inventory on the freezers, started knitting a scarf for my Mum for Christmas, made a start on my Christmas shopping by ordering Fox and child dvd from amazon for Tarly and did some thinking about other Christmas gifts for various people.

Davies and Scarlett played really nicely together all day. In the morning Davies created a ‘WALL E playset’ which comprised of a small box he’s made into a WALL E, an old deodrant bottle he has made into Eve and a dismantled box for scenery. An old plastic bit from my disposable contact lens packaging is WALL E’s pet cockroach. It all folds away into a plastic case he had, micro machine stylee. Really must get some photos of it, it’s ace :).

They played with the geomags (more WALL E makings) and the toy animals, spent some time on their DSs and generally just enjoyed being together. 🙂 Davies also got out an IQ Science kit we’ve had for ages to build your own motorised cars and decided to ‘invent a car for the future’. He did some drawings and then used all the components to build it. It included various design features which I’m sure will be of great use in the future and it will run on electricity. It was all a bit like Tomorrows World round here for a bit 😆

After lunch they got changed into the swimming stuff and I gathered up various things which needed to go up to the allotment (the kitchen waste bucket, some chicken bedding etc.)and we went to swimming via the allotment. I’d already decided I wasn’t swimming together, partially because I just wasn’t in the mood but mostly because I’ve not watched their lessons for a while and it was the last one before Christmas so I wanted to see their progress.

Davies went in the big pool on his own and once again got called over to the side by a lifeguard (it’s about the 3rd time it’s happened now) – I know he is small and I know he doesn’t look like he’s a very strong swimmer but he is now well over 8 which is their rule of age for children to be there unaccompanied – also if I didn’t feel comfortable with him in there on his own he wouldn’t be regardless of his age. He did about six lengths and did some work on his handstands :).

Scarlett had a good lesson – she can now swim a width on her front or back and is developing a nice style. The letters were given out for next term and she is staying in the non swimmers class which I wouldn’t necessarily agree with but as I think their progress this term is quite a lot down to the half an hour extra each in the pool alongside their lessons each week I guess it will push me to carry on getting in the pool with them most weeks and have some one to one time with them both if they have seperate lessons times.

Davies also had a good lesson – he’s really come on this term too. There were forms to go and buy badges each for them at £2 each but I still really resent that so I’ve not said anything about that yet. I get so mad about paying out £60 or so each for a term of lessons and then being expected to cough up seperately for badges.

We came home, I put away the giddy chickens who are being stupid about getting in their house at night, the kids had a shower to remove chlorine from themselves and then dinner. Ady came home and he read Scarlett a Magic Kitten book which I want to take back to the library while I read Davies ‘Dear Mum, I miss you’ which was very good and almost made me cry.

Dinner, more Survivors and as we’ve a proper out and about busy day ahead of us tomorrow I’m off to bed.

Yesterday was supposed to be the HE Pulborough Brooks meet up but I already suspected we wouldn’t make it and sure enough it was gone 930am when Scarlett finally came upstairs and woke me up having only just got up herself. We woke Davies and decided it wasn’t worth the mad dash it would require to get there and we’d have a quiet day at home instead.

Davies and Scarlett did that reconnecting with each other thing that they always do after being away on a group holiday where they don’t spend much time together. They had ended up playing together in the snow one of the days but aside from that I don’t think they’d seen a great deal of each other last week. There were new DS games to explore together and toys such as geomags and animals to be played with and caught up on :).

I spent most of my day with my laptop. I don’t miss being online when I’m at camp as most of the people I would virtually hang out with were there in real life but it does mean there is a whole load of catching up of blogging and flickring to do afterwards. Some might of course suggest I could reduce the words or pictures but I have a reputation to protect ;). The final Bruge pictures are now uploading and I’m almost up to today though so I’m getting there with catching up.

I did some baking – cheese scones and chocolate cakes for lunch, much processing of the laundry mountain (the dirty pile is now lots smaller but the clean to be put away one is rather towering).

The chickens were rather desperate for attention – for their own safety we’d kept them shutup all day and night from Saturday night to Monday morning – we left in the middle of the night and returned in the middle of the next so they wouldn’t have been safe if left out. We left them with food and water but they were still rather indignant! Candle also required lots of attention – she has been howling at night and sitting as close as she can get to me all day purring her head off, poor cat 🙁

I cooked two dinners for Davies and Scarlett both of whom claimed to not like the first one (shop bought pizza for Davies, he says he only likes my homemade one – and pesto pasta for Tarly who I think was just jumping on the I don’t like my dinner bandwagon for attention ;)) and then chucked them in the bath to clean off all the foreign travelling grime 😉 and let them play with some of Tarly’s bath stuff birthday gifts. They stayed in there for about an hour and came out very clean and wrinkly.

I read bedtime stories of easy to read and easy to listen to books and then they went to bed. Davies was straight back to his usual after 10pm asleep time but Tarly managed a fairly early night. Ady was late home having been caught in traffic and we had comfort food dinner of toad in the hole (odd cooking for just two people after last weeks mass catering) and watched last weeks Survivors ready to be caught up for tonights.

For Christmas this year my parents have paid for all four of us to renew our passports. I think two of them ran out last year and the other two this year. We had already decided that given the chance of being able to afford to need passports were so slim it was simply not something we would be able to justify the cost of renewing them at nearly £350 for the four of us.

My parents have had a rather large inheritance this year and with a bit of heavy hinting on my part offered to pay for them and to treat us to a day trip to use them with. Having got the new passports through we had compared calendars and come up with Sunday 7th December as the only available date to go though. This was not ideal for many reasons, not least the busyness of the week before including Scarlett’s birthday but as one of the motivators had been to see Bruge looking all Christmassy we went ahead and booked the tunnel crossing online a few weeks ago.

It meant we had to leave home at 5am to get to Dover for 7am and therefore had to be up not long after 4am. I managed to get to bed at 11 which is very early for me and would probably not have fallen asleep if I’d not been so tired from the week before. Davies certainly wasn’t asleep any time before 10pm though and we all struggled getting up in the middle of the night on Sunday morning.

It was cold, dark and icy everywhere as we all got into the car but beautiful and clear and starry. Mum and Dad dozed in the very back of the car, Davies and Scarlett plugged themselves into a film and Ady and I listened to Christmas songs. We arrived in good time and had hot drinks at the tunnel shop and then drove onto the train as daylight broke. It was Davies and Scarlett’s first time abroad and I don’t think they’d quite known what to expect. I have to say as clever as I think the tunnel is it is probably the least exciting way to enter another country – planes and boats definiitely have the edge over sitting in your own car inside a carriage which doesn’t seem at all as though it is pulling off the whole travelling under the sea thing.

Our aim was Bruge – Ady and I had been there before with my parents about 12 years ago around my birthday and then Ady and I had been again with friends 3 years ago, pretty much to the day I think. We liked the idea of driving through both France and Belgium and remembered it as wonderfully Christmassy. It didn’t let us down :).

Bruge is about an hours drive from Calais. Ady has never driven a car abroad (he’s not actually been driving that long as he had motorbikes for years and didn’t drive a car until he was 30)and was a little nervous but did really well. We found a free car park just a short walk from Bruge centre so parked up and walked in.

We had a good walk around, finding the square with statues in and the main square with an ice rink set up. We looked in chocolate shops, lace shops and all manner of fancy touristy shops before deciding that although it was 1130 GMT and 1230 local time we were all starving due to having been up for hours and hours already and needed to find some food.

We ended up at Meridian 3 simply because it seemed to be the only place with tables available. We had frites, croque monsieur and finished up with Belgiun waffles and Belgiun chocolate ice cream (Hagen Das).

Both children were very keen to go on the ice rink but the voice of reason took over and we decided that a very first go ever on ice is probably best saved for when we are not far, far away from home on a rink with lots of very professional and rather competitive looking skaters. I promised to take them ice skating during 2009 so if we came back next year they’d be able to go on the ice for a go.

In the square were a load of horses and carriages which we’d seen earlier and indeed on previous trips. My parents are dreadful for not doing things and then regretting not having done them later. As we know I am rather the opposite and if there is an experience to be had I will have it and screw the expense! 😉 My parents euros and my attitude and forcefulness meant we found ourselves sitting in the carriage of the leading horse with blankets tucked round our legs having a whirlwind tour of Bruge. It was fantastic – the pictures themselves are rubbish but just check out those delighted expressions on everyone’s faces. Dad regressed to enthusiastic little boy, Mum said she loved it because ‘I feel just like a celebrity, everyone is looking at me and taking photos!’, Davies and Scarlett were just utterly in their elements and Ady and I loved both the treat of something like that and watching our children so happy :).

We stopped halfway for the horses to eat and drink so Ady and the children hopped down to meet the horse, Franco and feed some swans on the canal nearby. Then back to the square and off we got. It was just great :).

We then planned to go and visit Ice Magic and after lengthy wandering and getting directions from several people including a police man we found it. Along the way Scarlett intercepted every dog we passed – and there seemed to be an awful lot of them – and did some ‘bonjour chien!’ ing at them all. She’d love to live there :).

Ice magic was, well magic really. Huge great ice sculptures carved with chain saws and displayed in a huge area with a -5 temperature complete with dramatic lighting and exclamations in many difference languages all around you all adding to the atmosphere. We all absolutely loved it and while the photos really don’t do it justice you can see the amazing detail of the work in them.


The whole thing is build of ice with giant walls marking the route round and scenes set up all over the place. Some of the ice is clear, some is cloudy (I’m sure I remember something about boiled water freezing clear? Could google, can’t be arsed). Although there are many signs asking you not to touch the sculptures obviously you can’t resist at least one feel, Davies took this a step further by licking one, fortunately his tongue didn’t stick to it :rolls:

The one area you are allowed to touch is a giant ice slide. Dad was cold and decided to head out at that point, Mum and Ady decided to be grown ups so I took Davies and Scarlett. We joined a queue of people trying to scramble up an ice slope, all of us in hysterics and all of us getting to a certain point and them smacking back down again (I have very impressive bruises on both knees and one elbow). Eventually we worked out a system of helping from infront and behind by pulling and pushing at which point we realised we didn’t actually need to attempt the slippery slope and could have just joined at the steps (which were not made of ice) 😆

Davies went down the slide first, super fast. Scarlett wanted to go on my lap but we sat down and then I gave her a gentle push to go infront. Both of them whizzed down but jeans seemed to provide some sort of friction and my descent (and lots of others) was slower. Scarlett dashed round for another go and Ady was persuaded to have a go too. Davies and I went and sat on some animal furs on top of ice seats. There was a bar serving drinks in ice cube glasses but we got distracted by an animatronic polar bear pulling a sleigh and took some photos there instead before finally deciding we were too cold to stay any longer and heading outside. Probably the only time we’ll ever walk outside into such cold temperatures and feel it hit warm!

It was just starting to get dark and we were all in need of warming up with a hot drink so we decided to head back to the square and find a cafe. We dithered a bit about which square to go to – Ady and I were keen to go back to the main ice rink square as it is so pretty all lit up in the dark but it was in the wrong direction for the car and we were all flagging a bit, particularly the children and my Mum who was a bit under the weather and we’d all been up for over 12 hours already by that point. So we decided to head to the other square which was on the way back to the car. Unfortunately although it is pretty much lined with restaurants and bars on all four sides they were all either full or had people smoking in them and the only one we found with space refused to serve just drinks as they were about to start dinner service and didn’t want 6 of us taking up a whole table if we weren’t eating. I suggested we walk back towards the car park and see if we happened upon a cafe along the way which seemed fairly likely and indeed just a little way along a side street we found a little cafe which was only open for another half an hour, didn’t serve dinner and was quite happy to make another few euros before they shut and sell us hot chocolates :).

Scarlett had reached piggy back stage by then but a shot of hot chocolate (and it was quite possibly the nicest hot chocolate I’ve ever had – Dad said the same although we couldn’t decide if it was because we were so cold or the authenticity of drinking Belgiun hot chocolate in Belgium) perked us all up nicely :).

Our plan had been to drive back to Calais and find a resturant to have dinner in before getting to the tunnel for 930pm (local time) which was our check in time for the 1003pm crossing back. We hadn’t bargainned for rush hour traffic though which we sat in for an hour before finally getting back on the E40. We also made it worse for ourselves by being unsure of which way to go and ending up sitting in one lot of traffic twice as we came out of it and went round in a circle only to rejoin the queue at the back again. Scarlett had a sleep and Davies watched a film. I think Mum and Dad dozed in the back while I tried hard to stay awake to help Ady navigate.

We finally reached Calais at 8pm so decided to just go to the tunnel and get some food in the duty free shopping area there. Ady and I spent the only money we’d spent all day on two boxes of wine – 3 for a tenner and buy3 get 3 free – so 12 bottles of wine for £20 – bargain! and we all got meals from what seemed to be a McDonalds type place but ended up being really quite nice which we took back to the car to eat.

We checked in, our passports were given the only glance they’d had all day and we joined the queues for the tunnel. We started to get anxious that we were never going to get boarded in time a 1003 departure but were reassured that all the other cars round us had the same code as us on their swing tickets and so it must be a delay on their part. Unfortunately it was indeed a delay on their part and one that lasted for two hours 🙁 Despite many electronic sign boards everywhere and a loud speaker system we only had two communications over the speakers to say there was a delay and they were very sorry. We didn’t know why or for how long. I dozed off for a while and woke up very cross at nearly midnight to find we were still sittting in the queue but we finally were off and were the first on the train.

Davies finally fell asleep curled up in the very back with my Mum having been awake since 430am. Scarlett was revived by her sleep and spent the train journey walking around with my Dad – Ady and I both dozed a little. Poor Ady then had the 90 mile drive home this end and we finally got home just before 2am – nearly 21 hours after we’d left. I got the kids straight in and in bed, they both fell asleep almost instantly. Mum and Dad had to defrost their car which was completely iced up. Ady unloaded our car as he was back to work in the morning.

Reflecting back the right side of a decent nights sleep and with the delay at the end just a bit of a hazy memory it was a fantastic day :). Yes it was totally mad to do a day trip like that at the end of an already packed to bursting week but we’ve never been very good at being sensible with not overstretching ourselves ;). I’m really pleased I pushed my parents into paying for the Ice Magic and the horse ride as they both really enjoyed the experiences (and can certainly afford them) and it was lovely to spend a day together as a family. Ady is now much more confident about driving in France which means he will be up for more day trips next year and I was really proud of the children for being really keen to learn as many French words as they could and use them at any given opportunity. It would be nice to try somewhere a little less touristy next time so there is more of a need to speak French.

I managed to do my traditional birthday post for Scarlett while it was actually her birthday (infact before she was aware it was her birthday actually) so for those of you who like reading my sentimental stuff feel free to have a peep at that :).

Scarlett’s main birthday gift from us is yet to come so I’ll blog about that when it actually happens but we had wrapped up a few gifts from Davies and us – Harvest Moon DS game, Nims Island on dvd, a Fur Real puppy, a loom knitting scarf kit and a couple of other small items. Davies, as is traditional on a sibling birthday got a small gift too which was a Ben 10 figure he’s been wanting for a while. Scarlett is a lovely person to give gifts to as she is so genuinely delighted with anything given to her :).

It was Wildlife Explorers in the morning which she had not been super keen on going to but as it is only monthly and it was their Christmas party I thought she would enjoy it once she got there. This meant it was not as leisurely a start to the morning as I suspect we all could have done with after a mad week but we managed to get presents given, breakfast (for those who eat it) eaten, dressed and out of the house to arrive on time. Although this was Wildlife Explorers number 4 for them it was the first time I’ve not been working on the Saturday morning that it’s fallen on so I got to see them disappear off, greeted by name and get stuck straight into whatever activity it was – they definitely are better at leaving if I’m not there to leave ;).

Ady and I decided to have a walk round the reserve and then go for a hot drink in the cafe but thanks to not walking very briskly, chatting and stopping for a while in one of the hides we didn’t actually get round in time to get to the cafe. That was a shame as I’d been quite looking forward to the slightly decadant feeling of sitting with my husband in a cafe without children 🙂 – the walk round was nice anyway though.

Davies and Scarlett came out having made a string of birds and coloured them in according to various bird types. Davies was able to describe each one and it’s colouring to me :). The woman who runs it also came out to have a quick chat with me (probably relieved to find they do have a mother!) and say that although she realised Davies was already 8 and should therefore be in the next age group up she would like to keep him back in this group if that was okay. Actually it’s fine as it means he gets to stay with Scarlett and we don’t end up there for two hours with one child during each.

On the way home we stopped at a supermarket to get a few bits for lunch and some stuff for dinner. Ady parked on yellow lines outside expecting both children to stay in the car with him but they both decided they wanted to come in with me instead. As I said in my earlier post I missed them a bit last week so it was quite nice to have a hand holding each of mine again :).

We got home and Ady did some stuff in the garden, Scarlett went to commune with the chickens and Davies spent some time dealing with the fact it wasn’t his birthday (I recall from my own memory how tough I found Frazer’s birthdays so I did have sympathy and coming at the end of a full on week, while he was battling the start of a cold and a whole load of tiredness I forgive his not entirely graceful dealing with it being All About Scarlett for the day) while I made frosting for her birthday cake (yes another one!).

Then we headed over to my parents to have lunch and spend the afternoon with them, my Granny and my brother. Scarlett got her usual gift of premium bonds from my parents along with Hamsterz 2 DS game and Imagine Pop Star DS game from my brother. Granny gave her a cheque which I intend putting in her bank account rather than cashing as there is nothing she actually wants or needs to buy and her account is less healthy than Davies’ anyway. Davies was given WALL E on dvd by my parents who also have the gift to a sibling thing as traditional.

Lunch was lovely. The children were fairly desperate to return to the lounge and DS / watch WALL E on my parents big HD screen so they did that while I chatted with my parents and showed them photos of the week away.

We had birthday cake and pink fizz

We left there and came home via a bit of a drive around to spot Christmas lights and decorations already up. Everyone was tired so it was an early night all round especially when we realised we had to be up at 4am to get to Dover for 7am the next morning!

Tarly’s birthday is so stretched out over so many happenings this year that her actual birthday seemed fairly quiet really but she had a lovely day, has decided six is okay (she wobbled about leaving five behind on Friday evening) and suffered plenty of emotional and slushy whisperings from me about how wonderful she is with very good grace 🙂

Monday The drive to Helmsley was very easy, we’d gone from The Babs’ house last time so the route was almost the same and I’d remembered the nearest Tesco was in a place beginning with ‘T’ that you turned left instead of right at a roundabout before Helmsley at so when we saw signs for Thirsk and it looked vaguely familiar we knew we’d found it.

The others stayed in the car (surrounded by books) while I did a trolley dash round Tesco balancing stuff precariously on the heaped trolley and running back up and down aisles as I remembered vital things I’d forgotten. I finally stopped when I couldn’t fit any more in the trolley and realised just how tricky it was going to be to get it in the car anyway. At the till the cashier sent someone to get a second trolley for me when it became apparent that what had come out of one wasn’t going to go back into one when it was all bagged up. An older guy came along to help me out with it just as it started to tip down with rain outside. He said to me ‘I hope your car isn’t too far from the entrance!’ to which I felt compelled to reply ‘Oh no, I don’t have a car, I live just a few roads away’ 😆 He looked horrified and then even more so when I confided ‘no actually I live down in Sussex’. He thought we were really mad when we actually got to the most loaded up car in the carpark with kids and many books already filling every spare inch of space. Somehow we managed to cram it all in though and then enjoyed that very scenic route up Sutton Bank.

As we reached the very top of the hill there was suddenly a very brief flurry of snow, just as with split second timing ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’ came on the cd player and we all got very excited 🙂

We got to the youth hostel at about 2pm, a full 2 hours before we were supposed to arrive but I’d hoped it would be the same friendly hostel manager as when we went 2 years ago who let us in early, left us to it and opened up another bedroom for us to use too. The place was totallly locked up and dark and deserted though so after a brief walk round it we decided to have a wander into Helmsley instead. I left a message on the hostel answerphone incase the manager arrived back early and was willing to let us in and we reaquainted ourselves with Helmsley which is a lovely little town.

We got back to the car at about 330pm and I sat and did some knitting til The Babs turned up, scarily on time and the first! ;). The new hostel manager (who was equally jolly, friendly and smiley to the one from a couple of years ago – they must clone them somewhere) arrived and let us in. I got the tour complete with H&S annoucements about the wood burner, the newly sharpened kitchen knives and was shown a huge stash of spare wood for the burner before he headed cheerily off on his way and I got on with the serious business of putting the food and drink away and getting a vat of mulled wine on the go. Ady sorted our room out wonderfully so when I managed to get up there an hour or so later it was all softly lit, Christmas music playing and everything hung up and properly put away. Love that man :).

Friends all arrived fairly quickly afterwards with Mich and Chloe being the last to arrive. We had pasta (which just about stretched) with veggie or meat sauce options and piles of garlic bread. Children scattered to do crafts, DS, run shrieking around the place at risk of trapping fingers and toes in the heavy fire doors and annoying the adults and with the smell of mulled wine in the air the scene was set for the week really :).

I think everyone was fairly late to bed. I certainly wasn’t the last up any of the evenings but then the gaming folk held that title I think ;).

Tuesday We were woken by Davies pulling open the curtains on the slit window by his top bunk and saying ‘Hey, it’s snowed!!!’ I tried to convince him it was just a pictureque heavy frost but he was insistant enough for me to get out of bed and pull back the curtain to show him only to have me equally excited because he was right, it had snowed!!! :). We woke Scarlett who had been very grumpy the night before due to tiredness and we were expecting a rough first day with and she was like a character from a film as she blearily rubbed her eyes, sat up, glanced out of the window and broke into a beautiful beaming smile and a ‘WOW’. All of us were downstairs by about 830am and Davies and Scarlett stayed out in the snow for well over an hour along with loads of other children – and Chris! 😆


Tuesday was stew day so there was much peeling and chopping of vegetables in the morning, along with an army of helpers as always, all armed with the crap veggie peelers that are to be found in hostels. I think Helmsley takes the prize for most comical array of kitchen utensils actually, there were no less than 7 can openers, only one of which was fit for opening cans, nothing suitable for levering cakes out of cake tins and not a single wooden spoon with a long enough handle to stir things in the huge catering vats for cooking things in. The ovens were of usual youth hostel quality (ie crap) and of the two toasters only one was really worth attempting to toast anything in. Can openers than don’t open cans and toasters that don’t toast really don’t pull off either use nor ornament but they do seem to gather in the kitchen of Helmsley Youth Hostel to hang out with each other and maybe sit round talking about the good old days and getting high on mulled wine leftovers when all the hostellers have gone to bed or something ;).

Ady had gone off for a solo wander around Helmsley earlier to take pictures of scenic stuff in the snow so I decided to have a walk round too. Davies couldn’t be persuaded out of the DS playing flock of kids but Scarlett happily found coat and shoes and came off with me. As the two most clumsy people in our family we probably weren’t the best duo to be out walking around together in the snow but we managed to stay upright on the ice and had a lovely hour or so together. We discovered a wool shop with amazingly cheap wool so I got a couple of pairs of needles and the beginnings of my very own wool stash. As commented elsewhere I learnt how to knit a scarf and was seen for the rest of the week every evening clicking away. I do like to have busy fingers and in the absense of a laptop keyboard needles did a fine job – otherwise I would have sat and twirled my hair and there is rather less of it for twirling these days! We also found a pen with dogs on it for Tarly and then wandered back to the hostel, stopping to go down a footpath that still had untrodden in snow on it and take some photos.

Back at the hostel there was a showing of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer happening with lots of children watching and some further crafting going on. I partook of some mince pie making (wine glasses as pastry cutters, wine bottle as rolling pin – they were’nt elegant but they tasted nice :)) and then Tarly and I made up the dumplings. We were joined by Rachael and Isabelle – the next generation of dumpling tossers for the traditional NicCamps stew dumpling tossing. Pictures of tossing and icky fingers over on Em’s photostream :). One of the highlights of camp was seeing that next lot of children (Rachael, Libby, Alys and Isabelle) coming up behind the older ones and forming their own little friendships and spending time together playing :).

Stew was consumed and then as an early night was required by many children (certainly not least my own two who were already the wrong end of 3 late nights) we had NicCamps Christmas Eve and assembled them in pjs to listen to Twas The Night Before Christmas and a suitably festive story that Davies, Scarlett and I had enjoyed a few weeks ago called ‘where teddy bears come from’. some more pics of that to be found on various photo streams. My favourite is one of Davies looking enthralled (he managed not to call out the whole story line in advance ;)) – Scarlett is less keen on me reading to the masses rather than a private audience of just her so she chose to sit with Ady and do some colouring. We finished with a sing song of Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer just to really make me feel I was at work doing Storytime and then off they all went to bed. I’m not at all sure any of them managed an early night (I took my kids DSs off them at about 1030 :rolls:) but at least they weren’t inflicting their tired grumpiness on us 😆

I think that was the evening Helen had her haircut too :).

Wednesday was ‘Christmas’ and we still had snow on the ground making it a white one :). We were joined for the day and night by Jan, Catie, Megan and Jasper and Kirsty, Marcus and Alex all of whom stayed until the following afternoon :).

Ady was up early to get our chickens roasting as we were worried about the ovens not being up to the job of Christmas dinner for 37 people and had to cook the various things in shifts. We had roast and mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, mashed swede, mashed parsnips, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, veggie option. I didn’t do enough stuffing, or carrots or indeed (and believe me I can’t believe I’m saying this!) vegetables – peas would have been nice. Yorkshire puddings would have been good and I’d have like to have roasted the parsnips rather than mashing them but we did what we could with what we had and I have to say I was pretty proud with our efforts. Chris did a very well recieved veggie thing, Bob did good mashing, Katy distracted the troups with festive singing, Ady did carving and gravy making, various people stood one side of the metal trolley handing out dinners as I plated them up and Helen led a rousing ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’ which made me quite teary when we were all sitting down. I looked down the very long table at all the lovely people sitting down eating wearing their Christmas hats with snow on the ground outside and felt very proud of having been instrumental in making it all happen :). Thanks everyone xxx

Dinner over and cleared away by the people who always seemed to sweep in and do such (Matt and Katy owned that dishwasher and Mich was rarely away from the big sinks ;)) we had failed to get Christmas pudding and a bit of a ‘not bought enough butter for all the baking and toast spreading’ error on my part meant I’d not had enough to make more pastry for more mince pies so there was no afters although we had plenty of cake to make up for it. Then it was time for Secret Santa. We’d had a home made / recycled / very small budget if purchased guide for it which resulted in a real collection of lovely handmade, thoughtful, often funny and touching gifts. Davies had painted a picture and framed it for Ben and received a lovely pottery Christmas decoration from Rei – he hung it up in the hostel bedroom above is bed and it will be on our tree when it goes up next weekend. Scarlett chose a soft toy cat for Alex from a charity shop and was given a fimo chick badge and some bath stuff – which matched what she was given for her birthday from one of the Raines, I had made a rag rug for Elinor and was given a beautifully decorated wine glass from Helen, which I have been putting to good use ever since ;). Ady had given Kit a planter kit ‘as seen on TV’ with soil and seeds (soil wasn’t such a good idea to wrap without a bag – it ended up on the floor as it was opened!)and was given a camping pan with some pretend food in it from Mich. There were various other gifts of similar nature and it was all very lovely and special.

Davies got upset and he and I spent some time crying together in our room when his gift wasn’t as delightedly received as he’d hoped it might have been. I’m not great at lightening an atmosphere and cheering him up so I did my ‘thing’ of talking it through with him lots, discussing how we can own our own feelings but not those of others and we get to choose how to frame a situation and feel about it and then Ady came up and did his thing of being perky and making Davies laugh until he forgot about his tears. I think between us we cover all bases even if neither of us is perfect individually ;).

There was another film showing before bed – this time of Ratatouille which most of the children chose to sit and watch. Katy and her troop of girls made something chocolatey which was consumed while they watched. I was in the kitchen fighting with the rubbish oven and unsuitable baking trays and utensils making a PINK birthday cake for Tarly and was joined by many of the other adults so we happily drank mulled wine, inhaled baking fumes and plotted and planned for the next Christmas camp and other camps for 2009. I’ll do a post about that later and we’ll get cracking on some of the things we chatted about.

Thanks to flashes of inspiration by various people, Kirsty collecting it on her way and the equipment of an anonymous attendee ( 😉 ) we had a showing of the singalong version of Mama Mia. I wouldn’t consider myself a huge Abba fan and it is a much over hyped film with a fairly lame storyline but it was lovely to sit surrounded by mates singing along, laughing (and crying at that song about daughters) and enjoying alcohol and baked goods.


We carried on with the singing, chatting and consumption of alcohol til fairly late and whilst I can at least partly blame the wide variety of alcohol, the no real food since 3pm, the relief of the Christmas dinner etc all being pulled off okay I think it was mostly the excessive volume of alcohol which had me slipping off to bed and feeling very delicate the next day 😳 – from what I recall it was a very interesting conversation I left in the middle of and I very much hope that combination of people will be around to carry it on another time :).

Thursday morning saw loads more snow having fallen in the night and as we had the addition of Kirty, Marcus and Alex sleeping in our room there was little chance of sleeping off my hangover in peace ;). Davies was also feeling on the fragile side so he and I cuddled in bed for a while and then I got up and had a shower to try and wake myself up.

Downstairs it was the day we’d called Scarlett’s camp birthday so she sat around and gifts were bestowed on her throughout the day :). She got some fab presents from friends including a hand decorated box stuffed full of beads, fabric pens and T shirt and other treasures from Wednesday Friends, a windchime kit from Alys (which we sat and made straight away), a hand decorated chest of drawers from Eve, a pair of jodpurs from Rei, bath stuff from The Raines, make up from Kirsty and Co, a hot wheat bag giraffe from Mich and Clo, a make finger puppets kit from (I think) the Fish family, various other very gratefully recieved bits from others and the star of the show which was a rainbow jumper from Elinor. She put it straight on, wore if for the next 4 days and has demanded it be washed and dried today so it is ready to wear again tomorrow :). I think it’s safe to say she loves it!

I was feeling fairly rough so after doing a bit of craft with Tarly and some rather half hearted pizza dough making Ady and I decided to head off for a walk with Davies and Scarlett. Much as I love seeing my children in the thick of playing with friends I also really miss their company during camps. I spend pretty much all day every day with Davies and Scarlett and although there are times that all three of us probably welcome a break from each other it does feel odd not to have spent any time at all with them. They are my favourite people after all! Davies was looking very ‘day 4 at camp’ too so we thought some fresh air might well do him good. Ady was also keen to capture an updated version of this photo from Halloween Camp 2006

so as the recorders and violins tuned up we put on coats and boots and headed off for some family time. I was sorry to have missed the musical stuff (although we’d have only been contributing voices and audience rather than instrumental participation) but it was lovely to have a couple of hours just the four of us and catch up on chatting and updating each other on our week so far. All four of us agreed it was the best camp ever (so far). I have to say that while I love both the planning and the attending the camps myself, Ady and I get a lot out of them and it is lovely to spend time with our friends the real intended recipients of them is Davies and Scarlett. I spend a lot of my time planning what childhood memories they are going to hold and a Christmas sit down dinner surrounded by all their mates seemed like a good one to add. They have both previously expressed wistful dreams of a white Christmas too and while it was by no means something I can claim to have made happen (I’m thinking maybe the high ratio of Christians might have helped at camp though ;)) it was there on my wish list of possibles in Yorkshire in December too. So their positive feedback was very lovely to hear and bask in for a while :).

We had a good wander all round Helmsley including getting that photo (I’ve just happily looked back through the whole set from Halloween camp and been smiliing at how much the children have changed in 2 years – and how different the weather is just 6 weeks later in the year),

made some snowangels

and tried to get a shot of our four sets of footprints in otherwise virgin snow but it didn’t look like I’d pictured it on the camera.

We managed to wave Wednesday Helen off on her way home and have a snowball fight over the hedge with Chris which had me feeling very inept at chucking until I realised his height advantage with the hostel garden a good 4 foot above the level of the pavement outside!

Back to the hostel for some lunch – Ady had made soup with the leftover chicken and we picked up some nice bread from one of the several bakers shops in Helmsley. Perfect hangover food that had me feeling much more human again. Cake decoration and further half hearted vegetable chopping for pizzas. Kirsty and I had a walk to the wool shop which had been closed earlier, found open by Katy and then obviously closed again about ten minutes later as we found it shut again :(. Exercise probably did us good although Kirsty could have done with more suitable footwear ;).

I finally finished what must surely have been my most faffing attempt at pizza cooking and managed by trying to be sensible about not preparing meat and vegetarian ones together get all the veggie ones cooked first and then eaten by starving children rather than the adults they were intended for 😳 I was in a slightly stroppy mood by then and didn’t have much tolerance for children being picky about what colour smarties they had on their slice of birthday cake so Ady shuffled me off after we’d sung happy birthday and he put the kids to bed and I sat and mostly watched while other people took down the Christmas decorations and tidied the kitchen :).

It was a nice peaceful last evening, with the last few of us chatting about various things and finally heading off to bed with Ady and I having arranged to head off fairly early to get back for Tarly’s Rainbows party and leave the final clear up to others.

Friday 9am was never really going to happen despite me setting an alarm for 8am and actually getting up when it went off. Just getting Davies and Scarlett to eat and get dressed took bloody ages. Ady loaded up the car while I packed up the room and hoovered it and then worked round the hostel saying goodbye. I’m fairly sure I missed a proper goodbye to a few people so sorry about that and thank you so much for those who stayed behind for the final tidy and handover to the jolly hostel manager :).

We swung by the finally opened wool shop where Tarly and I chose a few more balls of wool (I’m planning a twirly scarf as a present for my Mum) and explained to the wool shop lady why she’d had a run on needles and wool from families with children ‘not in school today?’ 😆 Aside from a stop to fill up on petrol we got home in one go – thankfully both children are of the strong-bladdered variety and we rarely if ever need to stop for loo breaks. Ady had packed up some sandwiches for us to eat on the way and aside from it being long and tedious the journey home was uneventful. Odd to leave the last of the pretty snow behind and be away from it within half an hour, coming back to Sussex where there had been none at all.

We got home just in time for Tarly and I to get into my car and head off to her party while Ady and Davies unloaded Ady’s car, put stuff away, Davies had dinner and a bath. Her party was everything you would expect 18 small girls at a soft play place to be. Loud, shrieky and fairly high up the list of places I’d rather not be actually that I spent most of the 2 hours compiling in my head. Several of the mums hung about but they stayed in their gaggles bitching about school and other mums who weren’t there. Possibly if I’d tried to join in they’d have let me but I was more inclined to sit with my head in a book instead. Scarlett did the equivalent and ignored the small factions of girls who were comparing HSM outfits with each other (she was in the ripped jeans and Elinor-jumper she’d travelled home in) and played on her own quite happily. Her self containment and uncaringness of what others are up to is one of the things I love the most about Scarlett. I think I share that with her to a point now but it took me many unhappy childhood years to get there, I hope she always retains it. The only person she has any reliance on and is sad if she gets ignored by is Davies.

They had 45 minutes in the soft play (I did find somewhere in the centre to sell me a cup of tea fortunately) and then another 45 minutes in a ‘party room’ eating party food of sandwiches, crisps, cakes and cookies followed by jelly babies. They were all given a wrapped barbie-style doll as a present and then it was home time. There is a disco with the Brownies and a Panto trip planned, neither of which Tarly wanted to go to so that is the end of Rainbows for this year.

I’d offered to drop Rebecca home as Richard was ill so we despatched her home, called into CoOp for some supplies and got home for Tarly to have a bath. They watched The Simpsons and I brushed a weeks worth of tangles out of Tarly’s hair before bedtime. Davies took cardmaking materials to bed. We had a curry, watched Gavin and Stacey, wrapped a few pressies and I made a very feeble attempt at catching up online… too many blogs, too many flickrstreams, too many emails…

I think I agree with Davies and Scarlett, I was my favourite NicCamp so far too. There was noone there who annoyed me or who I felt didn’t contribute in some way to the success of the week. There were some slightly sad bits – I felt so sorry for Davies when he was upset and I was personally a little wistful to see the divide of the boys and the girls in their playing but minor things aside it was just a magical and wonderful week. You know it’s been a good camp when by Wednesday we’re already planning to do the same thing next year :). Thankyou so much to all who came, each and every one of you made it what it was :).

Saturday – I worked in the morning (blimey that seems a long time ago now, far more than just a week). Ady and the kids packed the car up. I had been all organised and packed one bag for the weekend and another for the week but despite explicit directions Ady didn’t manage to transfer this level of organisation into the car packing arrangement. I then blew it further by remembering the books and ringing him in my teabreak to remind him to pack them too. This meant that we were shoehorned into the car and when we finally pulled up at our destination and opened the car doors books sprang out like they were springloaded and that I spent the journey with my knees by my chin in danger of developing DVT as my feet were resting on piles of books 😆

We were staying in Leeds with friends Jay and Mark who from various places a few of you know (Feminist Parents, Leeds nappy networks). We stayed there back in the summer and Davies bonded with their son over Ben 10 so they’ve been looking forward to continuing that ever since. Jay had also laid on a borrow of a mate’s skink and the nursery’s guinea pigs as last time we were there Scarlett had told her that ‘animals are my most favourite thing’. They have a 9year old, nearly 7 year old and a 3 year old so the five children played in various combinations over the course of the weekend.

We arrived on Saturday at about 530pm and were greeted with bucks fizz and great enthusiasm. The children pretty much instantly disappeared for Ben 10 inspired games and skink adoration. We were served a delicious, lentil free dinner with 3 courses and plenty of alcohol before settling down to watch X Factor sky plussed from earlier. The children joined us and set themselves up with unplugged in gaming controllers which they used to vote for the various contestants. I forget what they judged each as but they were fairly scathing. We all enjoying debating whether Diana is infact a puppet with just the one string attached to her hand which she brings up to her face to show animation 😆

Jay then gave me some needles and wool for me to have a go at knitting the twirly whirly scarf she was knitting and we spent a fairly raucous evening watching literal videos on youtube and taking it in turns to go upstairs and tell the children to shutup and go to sleep (which was unlikely given how much noise we were making ;)). It was a fairly late night all round, setting a precedent for the week really. Davies and Scarlett were in with Luke and Zac dorm stylee, while Ady and I had a sofa bed in the front room.

Sunday morning we woke to a heavy frost which meant Zac’s rugby was cancelled and effectively saved us all from having to leave the house all day. We did plenty of slobbing about eating, drinking tea, playing and chatting. Oh and knitting :). Jay did some baking – mini cupcakes, cookies and some mince pies and then we had some mulled wine. Mark made some pre-dinner cocktails

and we had another lovely dinner with pudding of the cupcakes topped with a candle for Tarly’s birthday and the first round of Happy Birthday to you for her.

We followed by more drinks, more chatting, more knitting and yet more telling the children to go to sleep. This time it was slightly more serious as Luke and Zac had to be up for school on Monday morning. It was still pretty late by the time they actually went to sleep though – I’m guessing they’d have had a fairly early night on Monday to make up for it.

Monday morning we were all up early breakfasting and trying to create the ‘busyness’ illusion whilst Davies, Scarlett and I all felt relieved we don’t have to pull that off every day like everyone else (Ady included). Zac and Luke left with the ‘walking school bus’ followed a short while later by Mark going off to work. We had intended leaving not long afterwards but ended up hanging around for most of the morning drinking tea, chatting and watching Cbeebies with Bonnie. Jay gave Tarly a scarf for her birthday (pink, fluffy, very Tarly) and we finally left there about midday in the end.

It was a fab and wonderful weekend. I love the internet so much for helping me meet such ace people I would never have otherwise crossed paths with 🙂

which obviously we don’t do, what with not being American and all ;).

But there has been a thread on a forum I’m on about if you were to celebrate Thanksgiving what would you be giving thanks for and quite aside from the usual stuff about being happy, healthy, solvent etc. my big thanks would be for friends. We as a family have some amazing friends and I personally have some amazing friends too, many of them crossover and if to love and be loved is one of the things which makes life worth living then I utterly include my friends, whom I love, in that too.

We’re off tomorrow to embark on a friend-rich week with a weekend stopover followed by a NicCamp, both of which I am ridiculously excited about and keep hugging the knowledge of to myself like a child at Christmas, but we kicked it off today with a visit from Ali and Freya.

This morning I had piles of things to do like packing (but lots of what was to be packed was either dirty and needed washing or was clean but needed drying so I was processing that), baking (but most of it needed ingredients which had not arrived and were not due until a later shopping order had been delivered). Instead I managed to get myself very wound up by observing a woman walking her two dogs and pushing a small child in a pushchair on the opposite side of the road stop while her dog had a poo and then walk away from it. I was utterly insensed – very few things make me as mad as irresponsible pet owners and dog crap generally. I didn’t think about what I was doing and just opened the window and yelled across the street at her ‘CLEAR UP AFTER YOUR ANIMAL!!!!!’. Unfortunately she didn’t take this well and wanted me to ‘come here and say that’ and stood glaring at me for a good few minutes before walking away. I happened to be on the phone to Ady at the time so he ‘witnessed’ the whole thing and is still fretting about it now, utterly convinved that she will return and vandalise the house or car while we’re away for the week, or that she’ll mount some sort of terror campaign on us.

It wasn’t sensible, I am not big or clever or proud of myself and it was bloody stupid to lean out of the window of my house therefore identifying my home address and whilst in years gone by that was so typically me I have both mellowed and gotten more sensible but I was just so bloody cross I acted without thinking. Hopefully she got home, realised just how in the wrong she was (morally,legally and every other way) and has no intention of taking it any further. Davies and Scarlett however are very proud of me for standing up for what I believe in and tackling someone for doing something wrong. The redeeming fact is that I didn’t swear or continue the confrontation.

We wrapped our Secret Santa gifts and D & S did loads of drawings. I keep saying how much Scarlett’s drawing is coming on and I really should take some photos of it. I’m definitely planning to get both the children more art supplies for Christmas and do some arty stuff with them, maybe book the display space at the library for a joint exhibit for themand try and visit an art gallery for some inspiration for them.

I then checked the grocery order due later and realised a couple of things were missing from it so we dashed to Sainsburys for a few bits. When we got back I had plans to do some baking but realised I was still missing some vital ingredients.

Ali and Freya arrived so we had lunch. They gave Scarlett her birthday present which was a new DS game – Animal Genius which I’d spotted on Amazon and thought looked quite Tarly-esque so suggested to Ali. It turned out to be completely spot on – she loves it :). It is totally at her level with minimal reading which is all read out for you and loads of quizzes about animals, facts and figures, some of which she knew already so got to feel proud of her prior knowledge on and some of which was news to her so she kept rushing to come and share with Ali and I. Suffice to say it has been a real hit :).

Ali and I left the DSrs to it (some of them moved on to Xboxing after a while) and hung out in the kitchen. As ever we had some fab conversations (when I shut up for long enough to be classed as a conversation and not a Nicologue ;)). The shopping finally arrived and Ali helped me carry it in and put it away and then I actually did do my baking. We declared it wine o’clock at about 3pm and I made some rice crispie cakes and a ‘red velvet cake’ which is coming to Helmsley for Scarlett’s birthday cake. It was from a recipe book and I’d been dying to try making it and it was a very complicated recipe calling for whisking egg whites, making buttermilk and doing the whole vinegar and bicarb fizz thing but although the resulting cake is very nice and chocolatey it is not vastly different to a normal chocolate sponge so I probably wouldn’t bother again.

I made pizza for the kids’ tea and then suddenly realised I’d run out of time so Scarlett and I dashed round to Rainbows leaving Ali in charge of the cake (and doing the washing up too – thanks mate 🙂 x) with Ady crossing us on the doorstep as we left.

Rainbows was the last one in the hall this year so they made Christmas cards. I’d eaten several polos on the way round to mask the wine fumes and I think I hid it as the leader came and chatted to me for ages and didn’t seem repulsed by wine sodden breath from me :lol:. Tarly took her DS and new game for show and tell and went round the whole circle of girls showing them a little snippet of the game which took ages when it was her turn :).

Back home again and Ali and Freya headed off with Ady while Davies and Scarlett went to bed – Ady promised them DSs in bed which is one of my (very few) rules but I had to relent as he’d already said it. I packed up all our clothes and had a nice bubbly bath then made pizza for Ady and I’s dinner. I rather rashly chopped all my hair off before my bath. I’ve been thinkking about doing it for a few days and just decided to hell with it and did it. It is perhaps rather shorter than if I’d thought about it properly first but it grows quick and today has obviously been my day for recklessness!

I think I’ve done everything I need to before we go, I’ve done a list for Ady of stuff he needs to load into the car in the morning and now as I have to be at work soon and am now doubt at the start of a load of late nights I’m off to bed.

Work for me today.All day. And when I say all day I really mean all day.

Ady was home in the morning – they did some pheasant plucking (really should teach Davies Pheasant Pluckers Son ;)) and prepared the house for the onslaught of a month’s food shop delivery, which never turned up. Closer investigation by me uncovered that I had not checked back out again once I’d gone in to make an amendment so now it’s coming tomorrow afternoon instead. I think Ady is very relieved, he had a sort of hunted look about him at the prospect 😆

Dad was here this afternoon, I think it went okay but when I got home the children were both in their bedrooms having been sent there about 20 minutes previously. No one was too keen to enlighten me as to the full details of why but it seemed justified. I think it was just childish silliness but it must have been fairly extreme for Dad to snap as he is King of Patience and both children seemed fairly sure they’d deserved being sent to their rooms and said I’d have done the same if I’d been there.

Meanwhile I was at work for the day and a nice working day it was too. Tonight was Lancing’s Festive Fun evening where shops stay open late, there is fairground rides and stalls set up in the town and various other stuff. The library always participates with hot drinks, mince pies and childrens craft activities laid on for free. I worked last year and put my name down for this year without realising it was a day I was already working all day. So I nipped home, painted some holly leaves and snowflakes on my cheeks with glittery eye shadow, collected the children (and painted them similarly) and then we went back to the library. Ady was in a late meeting and joined us there at about 630pm. Davies and Scarlett are much beloved by all the library staff anyway and several of the regular borrowers were quite excited to meet them and commented on what lovely children they were. I especially liked the comment from one about how much like ‘proper children’ they looked with their messy hair 😆

I spent the last hour in the children’s library doing the crafts with them – we had snowmen to decorate, snowflakes to decorate, some colouring in sheets and a christmas cracker card to make. I was surrounded by children including one who said to me ‘I know you, you’re from Rainbows’ to which I replied ‘no Scarlett is!’ and pointed her out. Another boy asked where I’d got my holly glitter from and I said I did it myself. He said ‘but they’ve got it too’ pointing at D and S and I’m sure he didn’t believe me when I said they were my children :lol:. They had been chatting to another family about all the displays in the library when they had been saying how nice it looked and Davies and Scarlett interupted to tell them ‘our Mummy did that!’ :).

Sian and I ended up having a glitter fight and then had to hoover it all up after everyone had gone. We had a drunk and unruly man in who sat in the middle of the children’s library surrounded by all these kids making glitter snowmen and read aloud from a book for about an hour. I think almost everyone was oblivious to him but at the end he was resistent to being sent packing when we closed but eventually left.

I ran Sian and her MIL home and then had to walk round the shop in the rain to get milk as Ady met me at the door to say we had none so I finally got in just before 9am, 12 hours after I’d left.

Bath, lovely curry, wine and some TV watching and now I’m really for bed.

Efficiency R us at our house this morning and we were out by about 930am. We needed petrol and Sainsburys petrol station was closed due to ‘technical issues’ which meant we played petrol chicken to the next nearest garage. We then went to the feed store which is near the stables for layers pellets (big heavy sack – I was most pleased when someone brought it out and put it in the car for me, I struggled the other end lifting it out of the car and all round the house to the feed bin at home) and then to the stables. We arrived bang on time for our planned 1030am meet with Julie.

In fairness neither of us are great at timekeeping but she did reach new heights this morning at nearly half an hour late. When she first had Jack and Maisie I was slightly in awe of her routineyness and how organised she was with set times for not just meals but snacks and drinks too. So it was with a concealed snigger they pulled up half an hour late with the kids troughing bags of crisps in the back of the car ;). We went for a walk this time along some footpaths, through some woods and back up the road. Jack rode first, then Davies, then Maisie and finally Scarlett. Davies did great as his was mostly downhill and he did some good steering and stopping. He’s told Julie he wants to have a go off lead and try trotting – I think he is aware that Scarlett is progressing quicker than him. Tarly did a bit of trotting and loads of balancing in the saddle. Julie said that she’s been thinking about Scarlett and knows Honey (the pony) will fairly quickly be left behind by Scarlett and what she will be capable of doing. Not quite sure where that leaves us as we can’t afford lessons and it is something Tarly is loving. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it really. We do have another friend with stables of his own so maybe we can sort something out with him as and when needs be. I’d quite like Julie to carry on teaching though as she is a very good tutor.

It was getting on for 130pm by the time we finally left the stables and the children were really hungry so we called into Arundel and got a portion of chip shop chips each to eat in the car. They were not delicious, very much the end of the lunchtime shift chips but Davies and Scarlett thought it was a huge treat anyway :). We met up with Lucy and The Rs at a park on the way home for an hour where the kids played mostly well together and Lucy and I sat and chatted and froze.

We came home and they played with fun blox for ages and ages building all sorts of things while I drank two cups of tea and tried to warm up. I’m sure two trips round the chickens and the prospect of going out again to Badgers wasn’t helping though. The kids had tea and got changed and then we drove to Badgers. There was some debate about coats – they reckoned it was not worth wearing them as neither of them like to wear coats in the car (fair enough, they don’t need them for warmth and plenty of adults take coats off for comfort in the car, it’s uncomforable wearing a bulky winter coat in a car seat with seatbelt on) so they put them on to walk from the house to the car, take them off in the car and then put them on again to walk from the car to Badgers (a few paces) then have to go upstairs to the cloakroom to hang them up, collect them again at the end to repeat the charade of wearing them to the car only to take them off again. I see their point, they argued it well so I agreed.

Sure enough the first comment from the Badger leader was ‘don’t you have coats?!’ to which I explained the whole situation and said that they did indeed have coats and were not neglected children and I had their coats still in the car and could bring them if she liked as evidence 😆 she said she didn’t doubt they had coats (infact she’s seen them when they did Remembrance parade) and added ‘very independant thinkers your two children aren’t they?’ to which I could only smile and reply ‘oh yes, and that’t the way I like them!’

Ady arrived shortly after they went in so we walked to the CoOp which has had a big new extension on their cheap Ethel Austin clothing concession. I thought Ady had picked his bank card up and he hadn’t though so although there were several things in there we’d have bought we had to just browse instead. We walked the long way back and then sat in his car listening to Christmas songs for the last 15 minutes. Davies came home with me and Scarlett went with Ady and we realised we have a duplicate Christmas song cd in my car so we listened to the same as them and came in all singing Winter Wonderland :).

I read stories then had a bath before cooking lasagne and garlic bread for dinner – always a late dinner on a Wednesday. Davies went to sleep listening to a Christmas song cd too. I think it may have officially started here in the Goddard household :).

I like days when I can get up, dressed, sort out stuff like washing and chickens and breakfast for children and be sitting down drinking a second cup of tea before we actually have to leave the house. Of course I could do this every day but it would involve getting up at a respectable early time which I’m not up for so instead I just try and schedule leaving the house for 10am at the earliest ;).

Scarlett has been complaining that her Badger shoes hurt her for a couple of weeks not but because she only wears them once a week I tend to forget about it until it’s time to put them on again a week later. There are only 3 more Badgers this year and we’ll miss one of them next week anyway but I remembered this morning so we nipped into the parade of shops with a big Woolworths and got her a pair for a fiver :). We also got her secret santa gift for next week from a charity shop fulfilling the second hand-ness of the deal and then went to the old fashioned sweet shop that is also in that parade of shops and got some sweets each.

Then we went to see Tasha, Toby and Vinnie who we’ve not seen for a few weeks as Toby was away staying at his Dad’s house. We had a nice few hours round there – Toby tends to find Davies and Scarlett a bit full on I think and comes away from them for a breather every so often before returning to the game again. They all seem fine with this and it is never as a result of having fallen out, infact I think D and S are fairly oblivious as they are usually involved in whatever game they’re playing. Tasha and I chatted about selling home crafts and the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters.

We left there and went to swimming. We had a few minutes in the pool altogether first and Scarlett showed me her really rather impressive back stroke – she has suddenly really leapt forward with her swimming, I reckon she’ll get moved up at Easter to the next group :). She stayed in the teaching pool and Davies and I went into the big pool. We did some lengths, he did some general splashing about while I did some more lengths and we played tag for a while. He had about five minutes left before his lesson was due to start so he went to queue up for a quick go on the slide which they seemed to be about to open. Scarlett came over to me in the big pool but Davies was looking all sad at the side holding his hand. He’d sliced his finger on the metal steps coming out of the pool and of course the chlorine in the water was making it really sting 🙁 He held it together while I asked the lifeguard for a plaster and she got him to sit up on her high chair while she stuck the plaster on but when I took him over to the teaching pool for his lesson he burst into tears and refused to get in. Carolyn the instructor tried a couple of persuasive comments but he was getting more upset so we decided not to push it.

Scarlett was desperate for a couple of goes on the slide so she had that while I sat and watched with Davies who was by then all shivery and shaky so I told her she had to get out. She probably only missed about 10 minutes of the time she would have had if Davies had has his lesson but she reacted really dramatically and cried all the way to the changing rooms, the whole time she was getting dressed, all the way back through the foyer and all the way to the car. I finally lost my temper and told her to stop acting like a brat so she quietened down but snivelled all the way home. Grrr.

When we got home they both recovered and had a nice hot restorative bath while I sorted out their dinner. For bedtime stories we had an Eric Maddern fest with Earth Story and Life Story, a book about swallows and migration, another book about evolution and then one about a grandmother moving away and leaving her grandson with memories and stories. Digging over our bookshelves this week has turned up some great books I’d forgotten we had :).

Survivors for Ady and I which I’m quite enjoying but he’s finding a bit bleak and depressing. Injury and tears at the swimming pool aside it’s been a nice day.

As in, we have money in the bank account to withdraw from it. November was a *very* tight month and we have managed the last fortnight on about 20quid. I did fork out £40 for tickets for two theatre shows for later in December and get both kids winter coats but I’m not altogether sure where the rest went. Realistically December probably won’t be much easier but today at least we went crazy and blew about £25 on just having a nice day.

Ady was working over in Brighton first thing so offered to run us over to the cinema. I’d decided to catch the train as it is cheaper to pay train fare to Brighton than petrol and parking (which is extortionate over there – last time Ady took the kids to the cinema he paid about 8 quid for parking – cheaper to wait for the dvd to come out and get that even when it’s a free Filmeducation screening!), but as he was going there anyway we got a lift with him and then only had to get single tickets to come home.

We found the cinema after a bit of toing and froing and Ady dropped us off and we had a quick wander round the shops in the area to get cheap sweets, drinks and popcorn from the pound shop. When we got back to the cinema there were already one school group inside and another queueing up outside. They were making all the children (reception? year one? very small kids) be quiet before they’d let them in which seemed a bit cruel and pointless and indeed rather impossible – Scarlett commented on ‘school kids being really noisy’ but as I pointed out if there was a cinema full of her and Davies’ it would be far noisier! 😆

We filed in with them and I nipped off to the loo leaving Davies and Scarlett to go in and find some seats – as usual they sat right at the very front. We saw Lucy and The Rs arrive but they sat elsewhere in the cinema which was just as well as it’s far better to concentrate on the film than try and sit with mates I reckon.

I first heard about The Fox and the Child when Scarlett told me all about a trailer she’d seen on tv about it and we googled for ‘fox’ ‘film’ and ‘girl’ to find out what it was. I’d said I’d take her to see it when it was on general release but it never came to the very local cinemas and then it came up as a FilmEducation showing so we booked it. She has been so desperate to see it for months and was really excited about it all weekend. 🙂 I was slightly worried that it wouldn’t live up to her expectations and as others have said I’d seen some poor reviews of it but I needn’t have worried. Davies, as ever at the cinema sat totally immersed in the film. He sits completely still and it’s like he’s gone into the screen. Scarlett, for the first time ever also sat spellbound and aside from a couple of whispered remarks to me just lapped up every minute.

I’d say it wasn’t much of a plot line, infact it wasn’t really a story at all but the landscapes and cinematography was breathtaking and there was something quite beautiful in it’s simplicity.

We left and walked with Lucy and The Rs through Brighton into the main high street in search of kid-friendly fast food,finally finding a Burger King, it was crappy and expensive but the kids ate every mouthful. I was really amused and proud of Scarlett who was outraged at the ‘girls’ toy she was given (a cabbage patch doll thing) and marched up to the counter herself to exchange it for a ‘boys’ monster truck! 😆

We then parted company as Davies, Scarlett and I wanted to go back to some of the shops we’d walked past for a proper look. There is an area of Brighton with really cool shops selling all sorts of things where I used to go loads in my teens and I knew D and S would love. We went to The Bead Shop where I spent mucho money in my teens, was much more restrained today but could easily have blown loads of cash just for the sake of owning the lovely beads.

We got to the station and none of the computerised boards or monitors were working to tell you what train was going where when. I got confused at the ticket machine and only ended up buying a ticket for me intending to get one each for the children when the tickets were checked on the train. In the event noone checked our tickets at all so the kids rode free although that honestly wasn’t my intention. We asked a guard which was the right train for Lancing and he advised us to get on one going to Hove and change but when we got on and it started moving the on-train announcement said it was stopping at Lancing anyway so we didn’t need to change. We saw a rainbow out of the train window so that was the main topic of conversation on the journey along with whether or not there really was a pot of gold at the end of them.

A 15 minute walk home from the station which chilled us muchly and then I sat drinking tea and peglooming while the children disappeared off to play with their monster trucks. They said they only wanted toast for tea having had chicken and chips at lunchtime but Scarlett had 6 slices of toast and claimed to want more – I refused, even *I* couldn’t eat 6 slices of toast in one sitting! We had a nice retro time watching Cbeebies bedtime hour with Charlie and Lola and the Bedtime song. Ady came home and Davies spent some time showing him various things he’s been making including a foam lightsabre and a ‘saving electricity box’ which is a cardboard box with stickers and the certficate he got today from RSPB for his Climate Action award and a book he’d made from old envelopes (recycling) showing why we need to combat global warming and save the planet :). He’s since stuck stickers in the bathroom to remind us to turn taps off and on the worst lightswitches in the house for being left on :).

Scarlett and I read some Aesops Fables as bedtime stories and I made tacos for dinner.

Not only is it passworded it also appears several people who are supposed to be able to come and read it can’t see it either. Soon it’ll only be me, talking to myself. At least I never skim read it 😉

This morning we slobbed around rather as the weather was dreadful – pouring rain, howling winds and at 11am it was as dark as dusk. No snow though 🙁

Scarlett did some drawing, Davies did some pc gaming, not sure what Ady did but it’s bound to have been productive and I did some baking. I made a chocolate swiss roll – my first ever attempt. It didn’t go terribly well really, I took it out of the oven too early and it was still liquid in the middle which I only discovered when I turned it out of the pan. I managed to get it back in the pan again and back in the oven to cook to through properly but it meant I lost a little of the mixture and that having been turned out twice onto a sugared surface it took up rather too much sugar. I think I also slightly overfilled it with cream too as it only rolled over once rather than tidily a few times. It tasted very nice even if it didn’t look very swiss-rolly. I also made some cheese pennies (sort of cheesy biscuit things) which had to be chilled before cooking and could possibly have done with slightly longer chilling as they spread in the oven more than planned. They were still very nice though.

The weather seemed to magically clear up at lunchtime and we went over to my parents. We beat my Mum there by about half an hour as she was working this morning. She has a 8 week temporary contract at M&S for 20 hours a week. She is a life-long M&S shopper and thought she’d love it but although she’s determined to stick it out for the couple of months she is not really enjoying it at all. I am not hugely surprised having worked in Bhs and known how the Christmas temps there were treated and indeed what a bitchy, competitive environment that sort of high street retail is it’s not a big shock that M&S is no different. Neither of my parents have ever had jobs where they have struggled having been mostly self-employed so whilst I am sorry for her not enjoying it and proud of her for sticking it out I am also slightly pleased that she is realising just what the real world of work can be like and why I changed jobs so often. This time of year always makes me shudder at the memory of all those Christmasses worked in retail.

We had lunch including the cheese pennies and swiss roll and then spent a few hours chatting before coming home again before dark to get the chickens away. I made some door signs for the rooms at Helmsley including festive pictures which the kids coloured in and then they both decided to do some painting. Davies’ secret santa pressie is a watercolour in a frame so he did that while I made cut out snowflakes at Scarlett’s request for her bedroom.

I’ve made a start on my first non-rag-rug peg loom creation which is a rainbow scarf just made from weaving wool. So far it looks pretty good :). Baths and dinner and Survivors for Ady and I which looked quite promising.

I meant to blog the news about the allotment too. Ady’s work have been talking about putting together veg kits for the whole year which you pay for upfront and then get sent trickle-fed through as and when you are supposed to plant stuff – the idea being there is sufficient for a years supply of veg for a family. They are also wanting to create a blog to sit on their website to give a laymans guide to growing your own. Ady mentioned our allotment and they were very interested so I said he could give them the link to my self-suffish blog. We’re not sure quite what they want from us yet other than progress reports and some photos of how we get on but they will now be supplying all our plants and seeds for next year along with any other items we might need. I’m not sure whether they will be wanting to use any of my writing but apparently there were several comments about how well it was written and what compelling reading it was so I felt quite chuffed with that :).It does mean I may now be a bit more cagey about what I write on there knowing it is being read by a bigger audience but free plants and seeds in exchange for that seems worth doing and it could well lead to other things. 🙂

some of us more than others ;).

Ady has:
* moved all the roof tiles that were nestling round the back of the house in the chicken area and providing a place of refuge for rats aswell as taking up lots of space. They are now stacked infront of the garage and we’ll have one go at selling them before freecycling them. They came off our roof when we built up and so have been kicking around for nearly 8 years, I think it’s time to let them go ;).
* did some chicken renovations to make it both tidier and easier for my Dad to look after them while we’re away at Helmsley. The chicks were fine out overnight and will now stay out all the time.

I have:
* updated my brother’s CV as he is about to be out of work and is on a job hunt. Neither of us had a copy of his old CV on a computer so I had to copy type the old one and add the new bits to update it.
* sorted out all the books. Scarlett and Davies both now have at least half a shelf spare on the bookcases in their bedrooms although the hall bookcase is still full on the bottom two shelves were kids books are kept. I need to go through the upper shelves and be ruthless with the adult books I’ve been keeping too. We now have over 100 books stacked up in the playroom to go through. Some are Dora books and other good condition books that might be worth trying to ebay, many others are ex-library junior reference books which are great but slightly tatty and just not worth keeping anymore. If the children did need reference resources on the subjects they are on we could use the internet or indeed borrow books from the library. We also have a pile of early reader /phonics types books which are simply never going to be used here. I think we’ll bring a fair few of them to camp and hope that someone else can get some use out of them.
* put all the clean laundry that was in piles in various places away. This was quite a mammoth task.

The children did some ‘helping’ Ady move the tiles, plenty of playing outside until their noses were all pink and glowy (it was freezing out there today), some playing with the toy animals and the lego and some time on Ady’s laptop playing various online games.

We all had a game of Pictionary – Davies and I played against Ady and Scarlett and we were clear winners. Davies is very good, he and I are on a similar wavelength so get each others drawings quite quickly. Scarlett is getting good at drawing too but doesn’t quite get the ‘speed is of the essence’ nature of Pictionary 😆

It’s been a nice, relaxed if busy, day at home which we don’t often have. Wouldn’t want them every weekend but just this once was very pleasant.