One word? When seven would do…

Ady took Davies and Scarlett to Liza’s this morning so I had my odd hour at home all alone before work that I get once a fortnight. It’s strange. Nice, but strange.

Work was good. It’s coming up to my 2 year anniversary of starting there which has passed in a flash. I think given my very small availability for work outside the home it is pretty near perfect really – close to home, great perks, allows me lots of scope to be me and use my skills and has a pretty good bunch of workmates. I’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about my own future plans career-wise and I’m fairly convinced library work doesn’t feature in my long term future but it’s a very good ‘for now’ option.

I collected Davies and Scarlett and we went to the park to meet up with Lucy and The Rs. They all had a nice time playing together while Lucy and I chatted and drank hot drinks from the little cafe at the park. Hard to compact two weeks worth of chat into 90 minutes once a fortnight but we have a bloody good try!

On a bit of a ‘songs from my childhood’ kick I’d picked up Abbey Road from work and was listening to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Octopus’ Garden in the car and playing them to the kids. I have such lucid memories of my Mum singing along to ‘Yesterday Once More’ in the house we moved from when I was four – she wasn’t happy for a good proportion of my childhood but that song brings back good memories of her clearly feeling carefree and happy with a light atmosphere. My parents had an old record player (which obviously wasn’t old at the time) which you could stack up records on and certain ones got played over and over including Abbey Road, an Elton John one from which I only recall Benny and the Jets and a Rod Stewart album too. Odd to think maybe one day my kids will be playing those songs to their own kids with their own childhood memories attached.

We came home and the children played with the chickens for a while then came in for their tea. Ady was going to see an old school friend who is leaving the country to live in America after work so I took Davies and Scarlett to Badgers and sat in the car tonight. Ady came home with a black and white great long picture of all of the boys in his school year from 1977 so we’ve been doing a sort of ‘where’s wally?’ with it until we worked out which was him 😆

I actually quite enjoyed sitting in the car with my book and a bag of toffees although I did have to turn the engine on a couple of times to put the heater on for a few minutes. Ady had beaten us home and tidied up so I read a huge pile of books to the children (including a couple of Eric Maddern – Fire Children and Curious Clownfish, Falling Angels , Smartest Giant in Town a slightly odd one called Arion and the Dolphin and a nice one called Solo about penguins.). Davies is listening to Carnival of the Animals in bed at the moment so that was blaring out for ages.

I watched Definitely Maybe which was quite a nice film – bit predictable but a good cast and it focussed on couples getting together which always appeals to my romantic, nostalgic side ;). Ady slept on the sofa 😆

Stupid wireless thing is still not working but I refuse to spend any more time on it while getting all impatient with the children so I’ll try and sort it at the weekend when Ady is around to do something else with them instead.

The usual round of morningy stuff (make breakfast, drink tea, hang washing out, put more on, let chickens out and feed them, collect chicks from indoors and put them outdoors for the day, persuade children to get dressed and etc.) and then I settled down to finish my CV while the children played with geomags. I cleared my whole inbox and was about to shut the laptop down when it suddenly lost it’s wireless connection and stopped working.

So I spent the next 3 hours or so battling with the router and settings and getting increasingly pissed off with the laptop, the router, the children, the cat (she kept treading on the keyboard) and life in general really. I battle daily to rein in my natural impatience and intolerance but lose the battle big time with stuff like that. I’ve finally got the internet connection back up but can’t get wireless to work so I’m having to sit on the floor next to the router with cables. What makes it worse is I’m sure it’s something incredibly simple really it’s just that it’s completely outside my ability to fix and that makes me doubly cross.

The children pretty much got on with it without me; Scarlett put on a Barbie show for Davies in her bedroom and then they created a camp in his bedroom with draped blankets. I did apologise for my grumpiness and they did feel very sorry for me and my broken computer bless them.

At 3pm we headed off to swimming lessons and were early again. This time we went in and got changed and went into the pool early though and had 15 minutes in the small pool where the lessons are before they started. There is a small slide in that pool and they both had a great time chucking themselves down it until the lifeguard told them off for going head first. This little boy who was there with his mum in his armbands and floatie suit was all agog at them saying to his mum ‘wow look at the big boy and big girl mummy!’ which made me smile :).

Then it was time for Tarly’s lesson so Davies and I got out and went into the big pool leaving her there.I didn’t watch but she said she had a good lesson and did some good backstroke. Both kids’ lessons were observed this week by the swimming instructor leader woman, presumably to gauge who should be where next term. I’d been hopeful that Scarlett would move up after Christmas but actually I’m not sure she will. Davies and I swam some lengths and he went off to investigate the deep end under the diving boards. They are shut until his lesson starts which is a shame as he is desperate to go off the lower board and he would be fine to jump off it. We then messed about for a while with me chucking him about and then played ‘it’ in the water which had both of us in fits of giggles trying to chase and get away from each other. He just about managed one quick go on the slide when it opened before going to have his lesson.

Scarlett came to join me in the pool then and we had some playing of it and she did some good swimming before begging me to take her on the big slide. I hate the slide (water up my nose which gives me a headache and has me tasting the pool for hours afterwards) so she plucked up courage and did it herself. About 15 times!! 😆 She was literally clambering out and dashing back round to do it again and again. She got told off for runnning and then told off for coming down on her tummy and I had to really plead with her to get out because I was getting freezing just hanging around watching her. We watched the end of Davies’ lesson and then came out.

Home for a bath for them, chicken bedtime and dinner for them with me continuing to tinker with the laptop inbetween until Ady came home and I headed off to Reading Group. I was there fairly early and got chatting to a German girl who comes about HE. She was very interested in it and had loads of questions so as other arrived so we carried on talking with everyone eventually joining in. It was quite interesting to hear some different questions to normal along with the usual ‘what about maths?’ ‘but how do they socialise?’ and ‘how will they get qualifications?’ and whilst I probably wasn’t on top form I think I did an okay job of being put on the spot.

The book we were discussing was 1000 Splendid Suns so that made for some interesting chatting and talking about the world in general including politics. It was a good group of people with a couple of new faces and some interesting viewpoints. Mike and Rose were there so we made plans to have them over for an evening in the new year which should be nice :)..

Home again for a lovely curry and a bath which hasn’t quite washed the smell of chlorine off me – it seems to take at least 2 hairwashes to get rid of it 🙁 and we watched Three and Out while in the background I have spent time on some further tweaking of network settings and still not fixed the bloody thing!

do bugger all, bugger all, bugger all, the Home Educators at home do bugger all. All day long.

Well okay not bugger all but I do something think the term ‘home’ education is very misleading, we do far more gallivanting education than we do home education.

I’ve done laundry, lots of laundry. A bit of baking (only horrid white bread so I made cheese scones for my lunch and some choc chip cookies as all of last weeks disappeared over the weekend without me having any), some rag-rugging (decorated one with some underwater beads, I may well yet adorn it further, I quite like them with a ragrug background and then other stuff attached. A giraffe which went wrong and we decided looked far more like a pony so Scarlett now has and then a far better giraffe).

Davies brought me a couple of red nose reader books this morning and whizzed through them. This is all utterly Davies-led, he has suddenly decided he wants to be able to read, has taken on board that it will only come with practise and wants to sit and read to me every day. I have said I will remind him once each day if he’s not already brought me a book and if he doesn’t want to do it he doesn’t have to. Today he was telling me about how he’s realised he doesn’t have to spell out / read every single word because some of them he knows from reading before so he recognises them and doesn’t need to work them out again ‘just like when I see ‘Davies’ and I just know it says ‘Davies”. Scarlett is very interested in what’s going on but still insists she doesn’t want to learn yet ;). Our bookshelves are long due an overhaul as I suspect we have stuff we could get rid of and stuff we could reacquaint ourselves with again now that abilities and interests have changed again. Might try and sort that before Helmsley and bring any unwanted books up with us to give away or leave on their shelves like at Melrose a few years ago :).

Davies and Scarlett then played with the geomags for ages – some Viva Pinata inspired game, then spent some time in the playroom on which originally looked like a proper playing game but I think degenerated into wanton glitter sprinkling soon afterwards resulting in removal of glitter to a high shelf. I will not allow autonomous glitter access any longer when all that is really happening is the inside of the hoover is getting pretty! They then came and sat and played DS and listened to the music I was playing (Beatles, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, INXS). We talked a bit about Nina Simone and I found some information out about her and showed them some youtube footage of her too. They both like The Beatles a lot so I said I’d get some more of their stuff from work.

We didn’t have the TV until teatime and watched Newsround and some zoo programme. Bedtime reading was Elmer chosen by Davies and a book about rocks and fossils chosen from the pile by Scarlett. Davies had expressed an interest in learning more about rocks and fossils and minerals so I’ve brought some books home and am trying to think of some way of opening that out a bit more once the lunacy that is December is out of the way.

We appear to have suddenly developed a social life again lately which is nice, I’ve felt a bit sad, old and married this year! 😉

Yesterday morning I worked. I quite like Saturday mornings, as I work with two of my favourite colleagues and the two Saturday assistants. One, James, is really funny and nice to work with. The main topic of conversation at work was Emilie’s funeral and we all said we’d been very glad we’d gone.

I made a start on the Christmas display in the junior library – a 3D Christmas tree with a 3D star on top. I’m planning some 3D presents to go round the bottom, some decorations to go it and maybe some snowflakes to go round it. I’ll take some photos when it’s finished.

Back at home Ady and the children had spent some time in the garden. The four chicks have been having some daytime outside time as they are now almost fully feathered and we’re keen to get them aclimatised so they can go outside sooner rather than later, not least because they need daily cleaning out or they get smelly kept indoors. Davies spent some time with the cockerel who although a bit noisy is very tame and friendly. Ady had been chopping some firewood and come across some enormous larvae eating at the wood

They came in and googled and discovered they were stag beetle larvae, learnt all about them (as reported to me when I got home) and then went back out and discovered a couple of stag beetles out there too

Ady and Davies carried on outside chopping wood and rearranging the chickens area, Scarlett spent ages playing Viva Pinata on her DS and I threaded up my pegloom and made a start on a present ragrug. Then Scarlett went outside for a bit while Davies came in and played on the DS so I put some music on for us to listen to and we had a very nice couple of hours doing our own things and singing along to The Beatles, The Carpenters and Nina Simone. Scarlett and Ady came back in and Scarlett did some ragrugging too, she’s getting pretty good at it.

Ady and I then got ready, my parents arrived and we headed off for our evening out. Mike and Rose are a couple I met at Reading Group when I started going nearly 3 years ago. They are both around 50 and both have sons in their 20s (this is a second marriage for them both, they’ve been together for about 5 or 6 years). They extended a dinner invitation to us a couple of months ago but either they or us have been busy every weekend since. Ady was really nervous having not met them before and convinved himself they were either from a weird religious sect or swingers and either way were out to recruit us! 😆

We walked to their house, which isn’t far but is at the top of a steep hill. This means they have a fab view, almost directly north of our house but up into the downs and with a panoramic view from Brighton to Worthing. It also means I was wheezing and panting by the time we arrived – very attractive! 😉 Another couple joined us shortly after we arrived and we did meeting new people small talk and all got stuck into the wine. Liz, the other woman and I both felt we’d met before and that we each looked very familiar but we never did work out why or where from. They were not any sort of mad religious types although Mike’s son is a Jehovahs Witness he promised that he didn’t even try to convert Mike himself, let alone expect him to be recruiting on his behalf! 😆

Conversation was easy, we touched on Home Education but fairly briefly, which was a relief – I so didn’t want to spent the whole evening justifying what we do. We talked lots about how we’d all met resepective partners and as the wine flowed more we got sillier and laughed more. All very grown up and enjoyable :). The only downside was the food. Mike is a real Deliah devotee, which in my experience makes for slightly bland cooking by numbers food at the best of times, even worse he is a vegetarian! I’d already prepared myself for having to eat things I don’t like as when Rose asked if there was anything I didn’t eat I could hardly give the truthful reply of ‘yes, vegetables!’. I knew I was safe on the mushroom front as I’d mentioned that and just expected lots of vegetables to try and face. But no it was worse, far, far, far, far, FAR WORSE!

The main course was okay – stuffed aubergines with mozzarella and breadcrumb crust served with cherry tomtoes. Dinner party (ie tiny) portions meant it was only a few mouthfuls and was quite tasty. But the main course was (wait for it) wild rice with warm LENTIL salad. Yep, lentils. There was rocket, goats cheese and walnuts to disguise some of the taste and texture but short of being incredibly rude there was no way of not eating the lentils really. It was probably only a couple of tablespoons so I swigged a large mouthful of wine with every forkful and focussed on the cheese and walnuts all the while pretending they were not lentils at all and singing Rick Astley to myself 😆 Ady said he was very proud of me for how brave I was and that he’d been trying to work out if he could cause enough of a distraction to scrape them off my plate and onto his 😆 But I did it, I ate lentils. I do feel dirty and ashamed and I can now say with utter honesty that I don’t like them. I shall be eating copious amounts of animal produce all of next week to try and make amends to my inner carnivore ;).

After the other couple had gone home Rose made us go and admire her garden and the bedsit she had converted for her son when he still lived at home and I confided Ady’s fear to her to try and persuade her to wind him up. She had a go at suggested he call round on Tuesday with some poinsettias he’d promised to get for her ‘because Mike won’t be around then’ but we couldn’t keep it up and started laughing straight away. Shame though, it would have been very funny to wind him up for a while 😆

We could easily have stayed for longer but were aware of my parents back at home and how late back we were last time they babysat we left about 1230am to get back before 1am. The walk home was a lot easier by virtue of being all downhill :). My parents were in a chatty mood so we all had a drink and did some planning for our upcomming day trip to France in a couple of weeks which we’re all looking forward to. I think they left and we got to bed around 3am.

This morning was understandably slow and lazy. Ady got up and fed the kids and then came back to bed again bringing me tea. We finally got up about 1030am in the end. I was keen to go to the allotment having not been this week so we eventually headed up there for a couple of hours before coming home via Tescos. I had a long bath which the children got in after me and then we all watched Fly Away Home which was on tv. I was amazed at home many lines from it Davies remembered, we’ve only watched it once before, earlier this year and I was hazy on the plot line but he was quoting lines before they were being said and getting them spot on.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, we watched yesterdays X factor and then gradually everyone else has gone to bed. And for once I think I might be there myself before midnight too.

Davies and Scarlett spent loads of time this morning watching a Shaun the Sheep dvd I’d brought home from work for them. Davies is already getting excited about the new W&G film (matter of loaf and death). I spent some time looking over a report for Ady that he’s been battling with at work. Both the children did some bedroom tidying and then I made some cheese scones for lunch (no bread) and some chocolate chip cookies for afterwards. I’ve borrowed a really nice book from work and wanted to try making something from it but didn’t have any more exciting ingredients. The cookies were nice though and more successful than my usual ill fated attempts at cooking cookies.

Davies has been saying lately he’d really like to master reading and he suggested yesterday that he does some reading to me each day after lunch to practise so I reminded him of that and far from my anticipated response from him of ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ he grabbed a book and came and sat with me. He read over half of it fairly fluently and then I finished it off. Scarlett still maintains she is not interested in ‘learning’ to read but I suspect she can’t help herself ;). They both did loads of drawings – Davies did a four scene story which he then came and told to me. Scarlett told me she wants to be a zoo keeper and a ‘painting artist’ when she grows up so we discussed various ways of balancing the two and making a living :). Davies toyed with the idea of designing DS games and then said actually no, he’d rather be making real things you could touch still.

I had 20 minutes of trying on every black item of clothing I own before going back to my original planned outfit and then I dropped Davies and Scarlett off with my Dad and drove to the crematorium for Emilie’s funeral. There is a very long lane which leads to the crem. probably about a mile or so and the hearse was being led by a horse infront, behind which Emilie’s parents and brother were walking so there was a massive tail back of cars. I was slightly fretful that the horse wasn’t for Emilie’s funeral and that I’d be late as it took about 10 minutes to get up the lane but it was for Emilie and I parked and joined the other 7 staff who were attending from the library.

It was a huge funeral, well over 200 people I would say, many of them young friends from school and university. We were all given a flower to hold during the ceremony and the filed in to the chapel. There were colour leaflets with Emilie’s picture on the front listing the order of service in what was called a Celebration of Emilie’s life rather than her funeral. It was unbelieveably, utterly heartbreakingly sad. It was overseen by a Celebrant who first talked at length about suicide, how those left behind feel and how we should be feeling, what Emilie’s personal spiritual and religious beliefs were and how to move on from our sadness. Emilie’s parents and brother then stood up and her father read her suicide note. This was both comforting and tragic and clearly the words of an intelligent, articulate woman who had made a decision she was at peace with and wanted to offer some comfort to those she knew it would devastate. I think most of us were sobbing rather than silently weeping at that.

There were then remembrance words from her brother and several of her friends, a poem someone had written about her, shared memories and stories about her and a very clear picture painted of who she was and who she had been. It was very obvious at this point that the girl we had met at the library was someone already broken and ill with depression at the end of her life as the person described was all but unrecognisable from the one we knew. I wish I’d met the real Emilie rather than the shadow of her former self.

There was then a speech from a Buddist woman. Emilie was not a Buddist but her mother is and had asked her to say a few words. This was very hard as emotions were running high and whilst I have plenty of respect for the beliefs and comforts of others there was massive comedic value in this woman’s performance complete with flowing rainbow clothing, chanting and a little bell that she rang to call the spirits. None of us were catching each others eyes and I noticed many stifled giggles around the room.

There were rainbow post it notes around the room on the backs of chairs and they asked that anyone who had a memory or thought for Emilie that they’d like to share write it down and then the ceremony ended with everyone going forward to lay their flower on the coffin and stick their post it notes on it. The coffin was covered with single flowers and a full layer of post it notes by the end.

I learnt a lot today. I learnt about someone I only briefly knew and how we often only see one side of someone, or even just a brief snapshot of who they are and how we can alter and change during different times of our lives. I learnt just how deep some people can be. I got a bit of an insight into depression as an illness, one that can actually kill and whilst I doubt, thankfully, I will ever really understand it I think I got a glimpse into what might push someone into the act of taking their own life.

I collected Davies and Scarlett from my parents and Ady had already beaten us home. Scarlett got ready for Rainbows and we walked round there. They made snowflakes today which Scarett really enjoyed and infact carried on sitting down making long after all the other rainbows had given up and gone off to play something else :). For show and tell she took the ragrug I made her, a photo that Ady’s company is using for publicity of Scarlett and a potato growing kit and a white cuddly bear.

Home again to drop her off and head out to get some bits for dinner. Ady and Davies had been drawing so she joined in with that and then they all tidied up while I was gone. Tonight she fell asleep for the first time ever without her dummy :). It is unlikely to happen again tomorrow as Ady and I are going out but at least she now knows she can do it and we can carry on working on it next week in the same low key, baby steps way we’ve done it so far.

Ady was home this morning and he and the children got some old photos out. We have a big box of photos from pre-digital camera days which were deemed not quite good enough to go into the photo albums but Ady is a bit superstitious about destroying even quite crappy photos so they reside in a box. Davies has a couple of photo albums he wanted to fill up. Apparently they found a scary one of me – on my 21st birthday when I was slimmer and paler and wore lots more heavy eye make up, looking into the camera with my – in those days – trademark wide eyed scowl which had given a red eyed effect with a very curly, very red hairstyle. Davies said it was scary, Ady agreed, Scarlett said she didn’t think it was scary but wanted a copy to keep so she could terrorise Davies with it when he annoys her! 😆

In the afternoon Dad was here and I don’t know what the children did but I do know it involved glitter. We’ve not done the MP christmas card swap for at least 2 years now but my carpet now looks like we’re participating! 😆

I was at work for the day. In the morning I did storytime – I read Six Dinner Sid which I quite like and a book called A Chair for Baby Bear which was nice too. I had 18 children, one of whom has taken a shine to me and chose to come and hold my hands to do Row, row, row your boat rather than her mummy’s. Obviously this is far from ideal as far as I’m concerned and totally contravenes my ‘No Touching The Singing Library Woman’ rule 😆

I had a lovely lunchbreak all alone in the staff room for a whole hour with two cups of tea, both drunk while still hot, sandwiches made lovingly for me by Ady, a copy of Heat magazine (one of my still mourned sacrifices in the Great Frugal Clampdown of 2005) and best of all complete and utter silence. 🙂

In the afternoon we had an educational 15 minutes when I asked Sian what the little hat thing above her ‘a’ was called and she didn’t know. Carole said she thought it was a circumflex and so we googled and learnt all about circumflexes, carets and more. I remembered learning about grave and accents at school and while looking at wikipedia I noticed ampersands and confided that I’d only learnt what they were a couple of weeks ago as a result of Deb brightkiting about them. If I had a circumflex in my name I would have known what it was called so I berated Sian about it and for the rest of the afternoon we all adopted one for our names as we all had an ‘a’ (Abi, Carole, Sian, Nicola – which is what I am called at work ;)).

Emilie’s parents had been in with her note left to us at the library – she left a full set of notes to various people. It simply said ‘I am sorry to end working with you all in such an abrupt manner. You must not blame yourselves, this is something I have carried with me for a long time’. Her obituary is in last weeks paper and the funeral is tomorrow, several of us are attending from work, myself included. We’re all still very shaken by it all and reading the note was very strange.

I came home to find the house with lights blazing, curtains open, glitter adorning many surfaces and the chickens still not away so dashed around sorting all that out and getting the kids tea before sitting down with a cup of tea myself. Ady arrived home and I read a couple of books to the children; The Birth of the Earth which we thought was fab (and I was amazed and impressed with how much Davies already knew) and The Man Whose Mother was a Piratewhich we rather liked aswell.

Tomorrow is a lazy morning at home with the children and maybe a spot of baking.

which was my QOTD to Tarly who was insisting that the bit on the heart being cut up was part of Daddy 😆

My second QOTD was from Helen and was to do with a vital organ not being much different to a uterus but I can’t remember all of it now!

The children and I did our thankfully not very regular proving to ourselves that the real reason we Home Educate is down to our utter incapability to get out of the house in the morning. Which is down to our utter incapability to get up in the morning. I was up at 730am and had to wake both of them. I gave them breakfast while I packed a picnic and then got their clothes ready for them. Surprisingly due to the big clock in the lounge being slightly fast and me being quite sergeant major-ish about everything we were out of the house a few minutes earlier than I’d been aiming for. We drove to the library, parked the car, visisted the cashpoint, bought our tickets and were on the platform with minutes to spare albeit bleary eyed and slightly trembly from the effort 😆 .

The train journey was smooth and straightforward. They sat together for the most part, with Davies playing his DS and Scarlett watching. She sat with me for a while and we played rock, paper, scissors and then at Gatwick the DS ran out of charge so they came to sit with me again as someone vacated the seats next to me and we chatted and looked out of the window for the rest of the way. From Victoria it’s just one tube stop to Green Park so that was nice and easy too, then a brief walk to the RI.

This time they were very ready for Home Educators and even had specific Home Educators questionnaires for us to fill out and hand in afterwards. The two lectures we’ve attended have had about one third of the audience made up of HEors both times so I assume it has been popular and worth opening out to us for them. Hopefully there will be more events added to the programme next year; it’s dead easy for us to get to, science is something that seems to hold both Davies and Scarlett’s attention and it’s free – what more could you ask for?! 🙂

Helen and Elinor arrived with Michelle and Chloe not long after us and we positioned ourselves behind them. Scarlett decided she wanted to swap places so that was done with no fuss and once the children who wanted to had removed shoes to feel comfy we were settled in. Our four were certainly no noisier than all the schoolchildren in the wait for the lecture to start and their behaviour during the actual lecture was brilliant. Scarlett got fidgetty about halfway through the talking bit and came and sat on my lap but that was enough to pull her round again and she carried on listening once she had a bit of whispered explanations from me.

The lecture was Anatomy for the Terrified about the heart and was a half an hour lecture with various diagrams, props and slideshows with video about the anatomy of a heat and the various functions of each bit, followed by a further half an hour of dissection of a pigs heart, still attached to lungs and liver. The lecture was for KS2 which is 7-11 year olds and was pitched a little on the old side I would have said from my own memories of science at school. I certainly didn’t learn anything like that until secondary school. The lecturer teaches medical students and while she was a good speaker it was clear this was not her usual demographic. She was however passionate, non patronising, hugely knowledgable and keen to share her information with us which IMO is what makes for a good teacher.

The dissection bit was very good – it was projected up onto the wall behind so everyone could see clearly although we had a good actual view of her from our seats too. All of our children were utterly engrossed and Scarlett could be heard saying ‘Cooool!’ at regular intervals, unlike the school children who appeared utterly repulsed and grossed out by it! 😆 On the questionnaire all the children gave the lecture 9/10 and said it was great so definitely a success. I’ve no idea how much of it all went in but as Michelle says if you keep exposing them to stuff like this it must surely be trickling in even if they are not able to repeat verbatim straight away all that was said.

We had a brief look downstairs at the elements game which kept them all going for a good while. It’s the Tom Lehrer song played while the elements can be touched at the same time as they are mentioned. It looked great fun it has to be said. Nothing else is ready to be viewed really yet but it does look like there will be some interesting exhibits when the museum is properly opened.

We walked along to Green Park, where Michelle bought us tea and we met up with Chris and Alys. We ate and chatted while they ate and played. Scarlett fed the pigeons, Davies chased them, Elinor kept them away from Chloe. They all played in the leaves and the trees and generally had a really nice time. There was a funny moment when Davies was playing with Alys while the 3 older girls (wow, how odd to be classing my baby in that group!) were off playing together and I asked Davies where they were. He pointed out Scarlett who was under a tree and I asked him again where Elinor and Chloe were ‘IN THE TREE!’ he repeated and sure enough they were! 😆

We all walked to the tube station together and parted company. We headed for home as I wanted to get back in time for Badgers. At the tube station at Victoria Scarlett wanted to walk up the escalators as she always feels a bit nervous standing on those really steep long ones and they had one turned off. So we did – and about halfway up realised it was agony and were all struggling by the time we reached the top 😆 We got a train which was already at the platform and just meant we had one change at Shoreham which is the station before Lancing, with a 9 minute wait so that was nice and easy too. We had seats all the way and aside from a bit of careful behaviour management being needed at times to diffuse tired sibling squabbles (he will wind her up and she will bite every time :rolls:) it was all very stress free.

Home for dinner for them (Tarly had her staple of pesto pasta while Davies tried some leftover pheasant from our dinner last night which he proclaimed ‘quite nice’ and polished off all of) and then off to Badgers for them.

On the way we were discussing what they want to put on their list of things to do next year and whether they both want to continue with all their activities or pick up any new ones. Scarlett wants to carry on with Rainbows (aslong as I’m there), will do the first term of Badgers as they are doing first aid badge and she wants to do that but then she”’ revise it again at Easter and she wants to carry on swimming. Davies is hoping his name will come up for Sea Scouts as he is keen to do that but is on the waiting list and is happy to carry on with swimming and Badgers but wanted to pick up something else. By pure coincidence tonight’s session was with some local kids karate club leaders who were giving a demonstration and also recruiting new people for their classes so he has come home all fire up about that and keen to give that a go. I’ve said I will see what I can sort out for January but if I can make it happen and he likes it that would be an ideal one for him to start. Tarly said she enjoyed it but thinks she does enough already.

Ady came and joined me and we walked to waitrose and then sat and chatted in the car. Home again for bedtime stories, bath and dinner and an episode of Torchwood. It’s been a long day.

I’m trying hard to do plenty of picking up on clues from the children and responding to requests. Last week was a pretty crappy one with a few episodes of me and the children falling out that I’d really rather not be repeating regularly. Plenty to explain / justify / excuse it so I’m not beating myself up over it but also it’s always good to take something positive from something crappy and so if it concentrates my efforts to be more accomodating for a while that’s no bad thing. Davies has been asking for a while for me to spend some time with him on his Viva Pinata game so armed with the walkthrough Sarah sent me the link to I promised him last night we’d do some of it this morning.

Tarly woke just after Ady left at 7am again and came into bed with me for a while. We had some chats and cuddles – topics as diverse as morning breath and running away (!) and then Davies came and joined us for a while before they both went downstairs together leaving me to have a extra half hour snoozing until the phone rang and it was Dad to say his van wouldn’t start again. He had a dentist appointment (they have the same dentist as us, just along the road from our house) and had called a cab to take him there but would walk along to us afterwards and could we take him home and jump start his van again?

My Dad’s van and it’s troubles starting seems to be a characteristic of my autumn and winter mornings every year. As a child my Mum had her own business from when I was 7 and so Dad was the one who would take us to school every morning. He has driven white escort vans, with occassional forays into the world of Renaults, Bedfords (when I was very small) and even a mini my whole life and in the days before people worried about child seats or even seat belts Frazer and I would squash together on the passenger seat to be dispatched at school. For a few years Dad employed a ‘mate’ and then there would be him with Frazer and I squashed on his lap on the passenger seat too. Latterly when we got too big for sharing the seat we would have weekly turns at one having the seat and one sitting on a pile of dustsheets tucked behind the passenger seat. Autumn and winter mornings would always pose problems for vans starting with cold, damp and frost doing them no favours at all and in leaner years the vans would be older, crappier and with less than efficient heaters. This could mean Dad holding one of his big, weathered hands against the windscreen to create a perfect handprint of defrosted glass which he would then lean forward and peer through. I knew how to bump start a car as soon as my legs were long enough to reach the pedals, probably not a great deal older than Davies, when I would sit in the drivers seat while Dad pushed the van along the road and banged on the roof as soon as it had enough speed to go and I had to take my foot off the depressed clutch and rev hard on the accelorator while Dad dashed round and leapt in as I scrambled across to the passenger seat. Craziness really! So as soon as I had my own car at 17 I was regularly towing or jumpstarting my Dad’s vans and in the early days of my own car ownership when I had a variety of old bangers myself he would just as regularly be doing the same for me.

Last year (and quite possibly the year before) we spent many mornings towing Dad to the garage he uses, or following him there once we’d got him started to ensure he got there okay. I *hate* towing, especially that route as it has no less than 2 perilous junctions, two roundabouts, two sets of traffic lights and a railway bridge hill to navigate. This year’s van related drama appears to be a battery issue so we jump started it yesterday and I followed him to the garage and this morning, waited for him while the bloke had another look at it and then he went off in one direction and we came home.

With Dad arriving at about 930am and then having coffee and chatting while the children breakfasted and got dressed it was getting on for 11 before we actually got home again. I hung some washing out as having said the season had passed yesterday it was perfect drying weather with lots of wind and sunshine again today. I also put on a batch of bread dough using the mixer and Kirsty’s tip of warming the mircowave by putting it on for a minute and then leaving the dough inside it to prove. It works really well and as our breadmaker is on it’s last legs, takes up loads of room and has to be on for 90 minutes I’m sure a brief whizz in the mixer and one minute of the microwave is less electricity too.

Then I finally sat down with Davies and his DS and the walkthrough. He was on level 7 and we very quickly got him to level 8. The problem is that however much he likes the idea of a walkthrough he quickly gets bored of following it to the letter and wants to just do his own thing again. He progressed to level 9 and got a few more tips from me but then went on to doing it himself again. Scarlett spent most of the time hanging over his shoulder watching – it’s such a common sight in our house, one blonde head leant over the other one’s shoulder watching the same DS :).

I made some bread rolls for lunch and got another load of dough made for pizza for their tea and we had a nice afternoon chatting, DSing and generally just loafing around the house. I did hanker after the allotment knowing the sun was shining and I have more raised beds to sort out up there but we have had almost solid torrential rain since Friday and it would just be a mud bath up there making moving soil around all but impossible.

I’ve been swimming myself the last couple of weeks when Davies and Scarlett have had their lessons but today I just didn’t feel like it. I mentioned this to the children and they were both fine about it and asked if they could bring their DSs to play while each others lessons were happening rather than begging me to go in with them so I decided we’d take the DSs and then I could watch their lessons too. Scarlett was first and did well, she is mastering back stroke and in a similar style to Davies her swimming is great all the time it is underwater. Davies had a good lesson too, he’s getting the hang of backstroke arms.

Home for bath followed by tea for the children – when they had lessons together it was easier to shower and hairwash them there, now I tend to get Scarlett dry and changed at poolside while Davies is swimming and then quickly get him changed after his lesson to get home. They both wanted to read a story at bedtime, so Davies read us ‘Hello Great Big Bullfrog’ and Scarlett had a go at a Hairy McLairy book. She often looks over D’s shoulder at a word he is struggling with and ‘reads’ it although I have no idea whether it is excellent coincidental guesses or actual reading 😆

Scarlett managed just a couple of minutes with her dummy just before she fell asleep but waiting until she ‘couldn’t bear it anymore’ to have it and we whipped it away as soon as she was asleep. Davies went to bed but we got him back up again to watch something with Rolf Harris about the war that we thought he’d like and he was awake anyway.

I’ve done some ragrugging today as I suddenly realised I have at least 3 I’d like to finish in the next 3 weeks and a further couple before Christmas. I’ve just got a tiny bit more to finish the one on the pegloom now and then I can start my next one which is a giraffe for a friend.

London tomorrow and as I’ve been telling D and S they needed to get to sleep as we have an early start I suppose I really should heed that advice myself.

We were supposed to go to the regular local HE meet at Pulborough Brooks this morning but when Scarlett woke me at 730am I made an early decision that the weather was looking far too wild and wet and windy to be traipsing round outdoor nature reserves. Tasha had sent me a text yesterday to say they wouldn’t be coming so in the back of my mind it was already a maybe. I went back to bed and told Tarly to come and see me if she needed me and she reappeared again just after 9am to get into bed for a chat and a cuddle with me. The landline and my mobile (which was downstairs) rang at the exact same time – the mobile was Ady so Tarly went to answer that while my Dad was on the landline asking for a jump start on his van when we could get over to him.

We woke Davies and had breakfast, let the chickens out and got dressed then headed over to him to get his van going and follow him to the garage to sort a new battery out. The kids stayed in the car with DSs and we were home again within half an hour. I got loads of washing processed (outdoor drying is totally out of the question so there was much draping over radiators and airers) while the children DS’d some more, I put on a dvd about The History Of Britain in the background which we all dipped in and out of until Tarly deemed part of it ‘too scary’ so we turned it off. We then watched some How do they do it? which was about the dancing fountains at Las Vegas Bellagio hotel (one of Ady’s favourite things in Vegas) and the stuff used to make things white.

I’d sent off for a Climate Action Awards pack each for them from the RSPB when their latest magazines had come last week and they arrived today so we spent some time looking through those and then we worked our way through some of the challenges. Davies had to complete 6 out of the 12 and Scarlett had to do 4, they both did 9 out of the 12 and plan to do at least another 2 each over time aswell :). Some of the activities included:
Checking all things in the house on standby to see if they could be turned off. We decided the microwave and the radio in the kitchen could definitely be turned off and did so. This is something we’ve been getting better at with our new energy meter thing anyway.
Checking all bulbs are energy saving or low wattage – every bulb in our house is low energy except the kitchen fluorescent tube. We are all pretty good at turning lights off and I’ve been researching online about whether it is cheaper to leave a fluorescent tube on or keep turning it off.
Reducing food miles – Davies was chuffed to note we already do this and is already a keen searcher for British flags on the food we buy.
Wildlife friendly habits – another one we’re pretty good at although we talked about getting a bird table and bird bath to improve even more.
Walking or using public transport – we were proud that we share our car by offering others lifts as often as possible and try and walk if only going somewhere nearby but we did pledge to try and learn to ride bikes / cycle more next spring and summer.
Make a poster – they both made a couple of posters with climate change action messages and got really into that.
Making a nature diary – this was something they both liked the idea of even though it would require some writing so we said maybe we’d get nice notebooks as Christmas gifts to make a start on that from January.

We all learnt something (me included) and are both proud of what we already do and keen to do more in various areas too. We ticked off what they’d done, I signed it off and we got the forms in the post for them to get their certificates for that. We’re also going to sign up for the Wildlife Action Awards too and they can start working their way through those activities. 🙂

That all took us up to just after 3pm when it was time to go to the dentist. We walked and Ady met us there. Ady went first and needs a bit of treatment which he has booked for just before Christmas. Davies was next and was commended on his teeth being lovely and clean and well looked after. She thinks he may well have some overcrowding as his adult teeth come through which may need later attention but is very happy with him for now and says they all look strong and healthy and clean :). I was next and also had a clean bill of dental health. Tarly went last and was also commended on having beautifully clean teeth and the first adult one errupting looking good but further mention of her dummy was made and the impact it will be having on her adult teeth.

We’ve talked about it so much and once again tonight it was the topic of much debate. We all have different ideas about what would help Tarly give it up – Ady thinks some sort of reward / prize, Davies is working on a fantastical story involving pussycats who need dummies to be sent to them via a portal in his bedroom and I favour convincing her of the reward of simply giving it up and helping her achieve that one small step at a time (eg 15 minutes at bedtime without it and then a review to see if she feels she can go another period of time without). I think she is now of an age where the only reason she’ll give up is because she wants to give up rather than because she is wanting to give up for the aquirement of something else. Tonight we tried a combination of all of the above and she had it for about 5 minutes before she fell asleep. I’m very proud of Davies for his efforts in helping for and his compassion and understanding that it is so hard for her though :).

Ady nipped back out again after the dentist and the evening sort of ran away with us really. He spent some time plucking some pheasants (we now have a freezerful and some for dinner tomorrow night too) but saved one each for the children to do with him tomorrow at their request.

It hasn’t really stopped raining all day but I’m hoping tomorrow will be better weather so we can get out in the morning before swimming in the afternoon.

Davies and Scarlett were at the Remembrance Day parade today with Badgers. I’d realised when it was first mentioned that it was the weekend we had Kirsty and James staying and then that it was also the morning after a late night from Claudia’s birthday party but it’s the first year they’ve been around to do it and they were both keen to do so.

It was a struggle for all of us to be up and out this morning I think – Davies and I were last up and Scarlett proved very challenging in getting her hair sorted and her fully clothed, particularly the layer required for the fact she’d be standing, coatless, for over at hour on parade. We got there though and were at the appointed meeting place well ahead of time allowing Ady and James to head off again to park somewhere free rather than pay £3.20 at the carpark we’d met in! 😯

There was a bit of standing around and then the Badgers joined on the end of the St Johns’ Ambulance group of adults, cadets and other SJA folk to march round to the town hall where the memorial statue is. I got split up from Ady, Kirsty and James as I wanted to stay very close to Davies and Scarlett just incase they needed me for any reason which meant I was near them but couldn’t see any part of the service at all. I think the others only had a marginally better view actually anyway.

It was a long service during which they both managed to stand quietly if not completely still (I could see the backs of both of them and their feet, which were shuffling about a fair bit) and I was really proud of them. We’d chatted about what it was all about and what might be happening but I’d not really anticipated it being such a lengthy service. There was a quite moving speech aswell as the usual remembrance day readings, a hymn and the national anthem and then all of the paraders marched around the block.

We kept pace and walked around with them. Scarlett was doing really well with marching and keeping pace when she spotted a poppy on the floor and tried to bend down to pick it up. She imediately fell out of step and the people to the side and directly infront were urging her to carry on but it was too late – the fireman marching behind her scooped her up and walked a little way along holding her up before putting her back down to carry on marching 😆 It was classic Scarlett and had all nearby women wishing they’d thought of the move first and tried bending down infront of a fireman on some ‘oh look there’s a poppy’ ruse too 😆

Ady wasn’t quite quick enough with the camera but here’s the moment just before he picked her up:
you can see the leader walking alongside her trying to get her to catch up 😆

I was really proud of the children for being part of it and also glad we went. I’ve not been to a service for remembrance before and it was very moving, sad, patriotic and all sorts of other things all at once.

We walked back to the car via a cook shop for Kirsty and I to peek in and Blacks for all of us to look at camping stuff wistfully dreaming of next summer.

We had had plans of going to the beach but none of us really felt up to it so I made a couple of batches of pancakes and we had a low key afternoon infront of the fire instead. We spent some time looking at old photos on flickr of home ed camps and get togethers of the past which was lovely. I love that we have friends we now have known long enough to have shared nostalgia trips with :). Ady fed everyone and then Kirsty and James hit the road about 6pm ish.

We did a quick tidy up and then I read Davies and Scarlett seperate stories as they were too tired to collaborate on which book to have. Tarly was asleep very quickly, Davies took quite a bit longer but I think is finally asleep now (nearly midnight!). We had baths, Ady did something delicious with some pork chops and we watched Deborah Meaden on the Dragons Den thing. It’s been another dreadful night with pouring rain and howling wind so the children and I will make a weather dependant decision about Pulborough Brooks together in the morning as that is our planned event for tomorrow.

It’s been a lovely weekend. Davies and Scarlett get on so well with Marcus and Alex (far too well to be wasting time sleeping) and Kirsty and James are excellent company. It’s lifted what was shaping up to be a fairly crap week and it was great to see various other friends yesterday too. 🙂

Saturday morning seemed to drift past us with playing (children) and drinking tea and chatting (adults). Kirsty and I went through her seed stash and she very kindly passed some on to me ready for spring sowing. We had lunch and then Kirsty and I went up to the allotment with the four children leaving Ady and James behind. They watched Band of Brothers (loudly, I suspect) and enjoyed an hour or so of childfree time to make up for the fact that later they did swimming while Kirsty and I did not.
The allotment was muddy but continuing to have sprouting leeks, onions and garlic and I was proud to show it off to my first visitors :).

The children were enjoying being out and about so we had a walk through the woodland and up onto the downs from where there are lovely panoramic sea views to the south and rolling downs to the north. We decided it was an official Autumn Walk and not only that it was an Impromptu One 😆 .We found some sloes and brought some home to double check – I want to clarify for sure but if they are we have a rich supply of them to forage and do some making stuff with 🙂 aswell as a great looking walk to explore a bit more just up from the allotment. The girls made friends with plenty of dogs and the fresh air and exercise perked us all up.

Back home for more tea drinking before we all gathered ourselves together and headed up to Reading for Claudia’s birthday party. It was a straightforward drive up and we were actually about half an hour early so went in to sit down and wait. Si and Layla arrived not long afterwards followed by various other attendees. Ady and the children went off to swim, I stayed to chat with various non-swimming grown ups and did some assisting of laying out food. It’s a great party venue with a fab recreational pool. Davies and Scarlett adore being in the water anyway, are really adventurous and quite happy to get chucked underwater and thrown about and splashed so they were in their element. Ady was amazed at Davies’s progress since last he was in a swimming pool with him and enjoyed it loads too.

Lovely to see all the children fall straight back into their rhythm with each other and greet their friends as though they’d seen them only yesterday. Davies and Scarlett mostly ate chocolate and crisps and mostly drank coke just as you are supposed to do I guess when you’re a kid at a birthday party ;). In receipt of fab goody bags (they *loved* their books, thanks Layla and Si) we headed back off again at 830pm.

Despite the lack of sleep from the night before, fresh air and swimming pool both children remained resolutely awake all the way home and played their DSs. We got home about 1015 having driven through some godawful weather with loads of broken down vehicles by the road side. Got the children straight into pjs and up to bed although it was still about midnight by the time the four of them got to sleep again. Kirsty and James arrived home about 10 minutes behind us so Marcus and Alex joined them upstairs while Kirsty and James joined us downstairs with more wine and nibbles. We ignored the TV in favour of youtube for various things including the fantastic Johan Lippowitz Torn mime, some Peter Kay, James Blunt on sesame street and finally Men Behaving Badly. Very funny evening :). It was about 230am before bed I think. But then sleep is for sleepy people… 😆

I worked all day Friday. Ady was at QVC for the day so Mum had Davies and Scarlett all day. After a shaky few times of having them things seem to have improved and all was well. They’d been for a long walk along the beach, through Lancing and home again including a stop along the way where Mum had bought them sweets. All usual grandmotherly stuff really but not something she’s particularly done before. Actually I have to give her credit, these last couple of months after a wobbly start she has been doing great and seems to be enjoying the afternoon a week she’s been spending with them. I think she still favours Davies and is far less patient and tolerant of Scarlett but she does seem to be managing to act like the adult about it rather than reducing herself to the 5 year olds level too.

Work was fine; busy but for the first time in ages and ages we were fully staffed with experienced staff, infact I was the newest person there (and I ‘celebrate’ my second anniversary of working there in a couple of weeks time) so it all felt very calm and well oiled. It was baby rhyme time so I did that and we had a good turn out of about 17 babies. It remains something I am content to do rather than happy or enjoy but it is very much ‘Nicola’s Rhyme Time’ now and I think I hide my distaste for other people’s babies slobbering all over me and the instruments fairly well ;). I’m doing Storytime again next week as I have the last 3 Thursdays I’ve worked so I’m currently doing either Rhyme Time or Story time every week. It’s a far cry from anything I’ve ever done before or indeed anything I’d particularly want to be doing but I guess it’s good experience and is probably teaching me a thing or two along the way.

I got home and had the regular fortnightly rush to get Scarlett fed, changed and decided about what to bring to Rainbows for show and tell in a 45 minute turn around. Ady wasn’t going to be home before we left so Mum offered to stay on with Davies to save him having to come out with us. I think there was only about a five minute crossover before Ady arrived and Mum left though. Scarlett took a kangaroo that has a joey in it’s pouch and some pebbles she’d collected with my Mum from the beach earlier in the day.

The activitiy was decorating glove puppets with fabric pens which she enjoyed (dog on one side, cat on the other) and then they played some games including a great one where two girls were blindfolded at one end of the room and two girls were stationed at the other end as lighthouses. They had to call out ‘Blib’ or ‘Blob’ continuously while the blindfolded girl followed their call to reach her designated lighthouse. Meanwhile the rest of the rainbows were sitting in their path being rocks, that had to squeak if the blindfolded ones got close. We walked home chatting about fireworks and something which escpaes me now but was interesting at the time.

Unfortunately once we got inside everything went a bit tits up. Within about 20 minutes I had Scarlett in her bedroom sobbing that she was scared of me (I’d shouted at her for arguing with me about putting her pjs on and putting her hand on her hip and sighing at me like a teenager) and Ady underminding me with Davies who I’d asked to do something. I gave up and went upstairs to lie on the bed myself. I decided to get back up and start sorting out the bedrooms ready for Kirsty and James who were arriving in an hour or so and lost my rag again about the misplacing of the air pump which had been last sighted earlier in the week as part of the ‘Air Museum’. Ady and I ended up having a hissed row ‘You fuck off!’ ‘No you fuck off!’ type thing without the children hearing while Scarlett continued to pretend to be scared of me and Davies was close to tears about the air pump. Ady said we should ring Kirsty and James and tell them not to come, I said we couldn’t as they’d already be halfway between here and Sheffield and it was just the end of a long day at the end of a long week.

Eventually order was restored, the pump was found, the rooms were got ready, I had a bath, Ady locked himself away and cooked a curry and the children went to bed so by the time K&J arrived at 9pmish all was well again. Alex and Marcus went upstairs to join the kids in bed (we had a dorm type arrangement for all four children while K&J took Tarly’s room), we ate curry, drank plenty and watched music television and some live Amy Winehouse music we have videoed.

Scarlett at one point said to Kirsty ‘My Mummy didn’t want you to come earlier!’ 😆 which was hilarious and if we’d not already been telling them about the row earlier could have been quite embarassing ;). We went to bed in the end about 130am. Marcus and Scarlett had finally gone to sleep but Davies and Alex were still wide awake. I yelled at them and went to sleep myself. Ady woke up again at about 3am and they were still awake…

I seem to be getting twice hit most months – PMT and then AMT (actual menstrual tension) which is a combination of being pissed off that I have stomach cramps and pissed off that it wasn’t Ady or the children being extra annoying, it was me being extra-stroppy that caused a bad day two days ago after all.
So today was AMT day.

Ady and I watched Lead Balloon last night – Jack Dee’s sitcom which is being repeated on Dave (sky channel). I watched it first time round but Ady didn’t and we were laughing at the scene where Jack Dee’s character is all chatty first thing in the morning while all his partner wants to do is sleep. I was laughing because that is so me and Ady – he leaps out of bed, radio blasting, ready to chat and be awake. I groggily follow about 2 hours later and really shouldn’t be spoken to for at least half an hour or until I’ve had two cups of tea. So why he thought it would be a good idea to ring me at 745am, wake me and then gabble down the phone into my ear about various items for sale in Sainsburys long before I was capable of either coherant speech or thought was very puzzling.

I got up, came downstairs and he rang again, this time just as I was walking into the kitchen to discover he’d not only not washed up from last night but had left the kitchen in bombsite state and added to it with his own breakfast detrius. Now I really appreciate him doing the washing up from last night when he gets up in the morning, I don’t expect it, it is a nice gesture but when I had to be out of the house in half an hour, had a load of washing to hang out and another to get on otherwise the kids swimming stuff won’t be ready for Saturday and their Badger uniforms won’t be ready for Sunday, I needed to make a picnic to take out with us and get the kids breakfast and me my two cups of tea and had been hoping to sit down for ten minutes to drink the tea walking into that mess didn’t endear him to me. So I called him a git and he hung up on me!

Scarlett and I fell out over sandwich fillings; she wanted marmite, we don’t have any, I offered about 12 different other options and she said ‘I’ll think about it and let you know in an hour’. She then got upset when I shrieked at her. She amended her initial timeframe and let me know rather quicker.

We finally got out of the house and hit major traffic on the way to Tasha’s but used a couple of rat runs and were amazingly there only five minutes after I’d said we would be (which had been quite ambitious). They already know us well enough to not be waiting on the pavement and to stay in their flat and peep out the window – wise people :lol:. They had had a similar morning except it was Toby in a bad mood so while Tasha and I chatted, Davies and Scarlett played a rowdy game involving chucking soft toys around which pissed me off in the front and Toby off in the back – he sat most of the way with his head in his hands, poor child. He recovered straight away as soon as we were out of the car and was soon running around being rowdy with them in the carpark.

We arrived at the same time as K and his daughter N and son C who we’ve met a couple of times and a not-very-local-at-all HEor who I have met over at Julie’s a couple of times but who’s parents live over that way and thought she’d come along. The meet up was a local HE get together at Spring Barn Farm. We’ve been once before, last summer for Freya’s birthday and it was very good then. For some reason I had in my head that it was cheaper than it was so I was slightly wrongfooted by paying nearly 20 quid to get in and went straight into tightwad mode telling the children they wouldn’t be able to have anything from the shop etc.

There was some guinea pig feeding and handling shortly after we arrived so Tarly got straight into that and was loving it. I had no idea guinea pig babies are so big and so ‘ready to go’ – although they do drink milk they are also able to eat things like carrot straight away and are far from the blind, bald little creatures I’d have expected them to be. There was a noisy cockerel who was crowing almost nonstop and because it was so cold in the barn he was sending out plumes of ‘dragons breath’ warm breath air when he did which tickled Scarlett and I no end.

The children all played with some go kart tractors, did some leaping around on the haybales and then we headed outside. I chatted to Fiona for a while and then Tasha and I sat on a bench while Davies, Tarly and Toby played. Then we went inside to warm up just as the rest of the group decided to come outside. Ali and Freya arrived and joined us inside for a while while we ate lunch. Finally we went outside too and most of the people who were meeting there were together for a while.

There was a huge great jumping pillow which was very cool and took all the kids very comfortably. Unfortunately it was surrounded by sand and puddles so predictably part of the fun was getting very wet and very sandy, in bare feet, in November. The fun lasted for well over an hour before we all decided to go back inside. At that point several of the children were got changed into clean dry clothes by parents more prepared for this eventuality than me, or indeed were children who had not quite enjoyed the wet sand to quite such a degree as Davies and Scarlett. Scarlett had some spare trousers because Ali had just given me a pair of Freya’s outgrown ones and we took her dress off and put her coat back on so she was warm and dry at least. Davies refused my offer of waterproof trousers from the car but was clearly freezing.

Most of the other children were bought ice creams at that point and my two got very upset with me for refusing to buy them one each. My reasons were: I’d already told them I didn’t have the money, I was cross with them about getting quite so wet and then getting arsey with me about it, it is November and they were freezing – I think buying them frozen treats would be taking my neglectfulness just a stage too far. I did however buy myself a cup of tea which Davies protested about and got an earful back in return for. This was enough to upset him and after stalking past me every so often with disdainful looks he crumbled into a sobbing heap who just wanted to be cuddled and to go home.

I was slightly fed up about this as actually I was having a nice time chatting but Tasha said she was about ready to go anyway so we called it a day and headed off. The children all miraculously recovered in the car and the 3 of them (Vinnie slept) sat and chatted really nicely all the way home while Tasha and I got to chat too.

We got home around 4 ish and I showered out the childrens’ clothes in the bath, then showered them and got them warm and dry and in pjs and apologised for being ranty with them and all was well with the world again. I was in the process of brushing the sand and straw out of Tarly’s hair when I realised Candle was missing. We looked all over the house to no avail so I checked the garden (having the daily battle to put the chickens away while outside – two of the hens have taken against their henhouse and prefer to flap into the hedge to roost so I have to shake them out of the hedge and shove them into the other henhouse) with no luck. Bearing in mind she is totally blind now I was pretty concerned and happened to glance across the road and see a black cat wandering about over by the doctors surgery. I really didn’t expect it to be her but it was getting dark and I was worried so I nipped across the road to check. Sure enough, wandering around in the carpark amoung moving cars there she was. I scooped her up and brought her home. I’ve no idea how she found her way out of the garden and NO idea how she got unscathed across the road but her being outside without us days are not officially over!

The children played on their DSs on a game borrowed from Andrew while I sorted their tea. Ady came home and while he and I were chatting in the kitchen my Mum arrived, on her way home from a job interview that she had been successful at and starts on Monday :). Hurrah! She wanted a glass of wine so I had one with her to celebrate and then she went home, I read the children a story and they went to bed.

An in the main very pleasant day with odd bits of crapness. A very full weekend lies ahead, the other side of a day at work for me tomorrow so now I really should go to bed and hope all the PMT and AMT is passed for this moth.

(Bet LovelyEm knows what song that’s from)
Work for me this morning while Davies and Scarlett went over to Liza and Andrew’s. Ady managed to arrange his day so he could take them for me but as I got straight up and helped him chivy them out of the house I spent the half hour in the house alone getting ready rather than relaxing and drinking tea this time.

Work was busy as Wednesday mornings often are. We talked a fair bit about Emilie and all agreed we have all been feeling, well I guess sad is the word, since last week. I think that is probably what has been the matter with me actually, the crappy sleeping and the low level feeling blue going on in the background. Everyone seemed to have felt the same so it was quite theraputic to go and chat about it.

I went to collect Davies and Scarlett and have a cup of tea and very quick chatette with Liza and then we went to the park to meet Lucy and The Rs. They all seemed to get on really well for the hour and a half we were there. Lucy and I froze – it was soooo cold.

Home for tea for the children and then back out again for Badgers. Ady was home in time to come with us. I think they mostly played games there tonight as it was a small turnout, presumably due to firework night. Ady and I had a walk to Lidl and Waitrose where I got some new gloves (girls ones, one pair of dark pink woolly gloves with a pale pink pair of fingerless ones for 99pence, bargain! :)) and we ogled the baking stuff (crystalised rose and violet petals, lavender sugar, rose water, essence of chocolate – baking porn! 😆 ).

There were various local firework displays tonight including one at the beach which didn’t start until 830pm and had a (very expensive) fairground at the same place. We’d have either had to hang around for an hour after Badgers there or come in and then be bothered to turn out again later which would have made a late night. There was also a display at the pub across the road so we decided to make for there as it had already started by the time we got there. We watched about 15 minutes of impressive fireworks there in the light of an enormous bonfire and then had a walk around the block spotting fireworks in all directions.

Indoors to the warm and dry for bedtime stories for the children while Ady cooked dinner.

Anyone remember that TSB advert from back when the TSB was just the TSB and wasn’t part of one huge great big bank with 47 initials?

The children woke me this morning at about 730am by playing the Crazy Frog dvd fairly loudly and obviously leaping around dancing to it downstairs. Having been intolerant and grumpy pretty much all day yesterday I decided that I could either start the day before I’d even got up by yelling and feeling pissed off or I could put decide that there was a reason why they felt the need to do this and it wasn’t to annoy me and enjoy the sound of my beloved offspring enjoying themselves, laughing and playing together happily. I went for the latter – I’m not actually that good at prolonged pissed-offed-ness 😆

By the time I’d come downstairs they had already turned the tv off and were drawing and colouring anyway having got their own breakfast. I peeled and chopped vegetables to get a beef stew in the slow cooker and by the time I finally sat down with a cup of tea they had already headed off upstairs to play. Yesterday had also been one of those days where I’d read lots about more structured HE types and been wobbling about not doing stuff with them (although actually when I read back at what we had done together yesterday it was loads) so I decided to log what they got up to of their own accord instead and cobbled it together for a blog post over on MT at the end of the day.

They spent from 10am to 1230pm playing together really well. They made an ‘Air Museum’ up in Davies’ bedroom which I got taken to visit, spent some time storytelling which they brought downstairs and performed for me too and then got busy with a game which involved toys coming down the stairs at various speeds. I knew we had no bread for sandwiches so made some cheese scones. I found some wholewheat flour so thought I’d have a go making them with that. They were okay but a bit on the dense side, I suspect other ingredient quantities should have been changed if using that flour. I also made some chocolate chip cookies too.

They appeared claiming hunger just as the scones were ready so we had lunch and then they were about to head off again when I decided that as the drizzle and grey clouds had finally parted and it was sunny we’d go to the allotment and make a start on the raised beds. I’ve blogged about that – with pictures – over at selfsuffish – go and be proud of me there please :).

We had a couple of hours there and then with a quick dash into the house on the way for me to change my filthy muddy top we went to the swimming pool. I’d been debating whether to go in the water myself this week or not due to feeling blah but the thought of the water after all my hammering and digging was quite attractive and the children were really keen for me to so I said ‘yes’ again :).

Scarlett had her lesson while Davies and I had half an hour of length swimming -he did 4 and I did 12 and he spent some time playing with a float Ady had bought for them yesterday. Then Davies went off for his lesson and Tarly came and joined me in the pool. She did some jumping in, some swimming back and forth from me to the side to me to the side and I pulled her around a bit too.

We got home and they had a bath to wash their hair and get the allotment dirt and swimming pool chemicals off them before their dinner – beef stew and they cleared their plates :). They watched Dora and were discussing whether the voice for Boots has changed and then got so caught up in Little Bear that they elected to finish watching that rather than have a story.

Ady came home and I had a lovely hot bubble bath to wash off my allotment dirt and swimming pool chemicals and Davies and I exchanged some notes. He sent one downstairs to tell me he loved me so I took him up quite a long note back which I really didn’t expect him to be able to read but he read the whole thing and then sent one back down later saying ‘to Mummy, thank you for my note, love Davies xxxx’ at which point I stopped for fear of channeling David and Jeannette / Annette with all the thankyou-ing 😆

Ady made dumplings to go with the stew which was delicious and now because I have aches from all my exertion today I’m off to bed to dream sweet and happy dreams of floating on raised beds!

I’ve not been in the mood for being anything today; wife, mother, friend, cat or chicken owner. Nothing!

I had booked a collection of a parcel today which I’d not yet wrapped but was due for collecting any time between 9am and 5pm so I had to be up early enough to have drunk sufficient tea to have it wrapped ready for 9am. Just as well I did as the delivery man was ringing the doorbell at 910am.

Once that was done we all decided we felt blah today and not in the mood for our half-planned meeting up with Tasha so I sent her a message to say we’d leave it for today as we were all coldy and rough. We’re seeing them later this week anyway so it probably was not bad thing as I’m keen to avoid overkill of seeing them having done that with friends in the past and lived to regret it when the children tire of each others’ company too quickly.

I have a pile of documentary type dvds I’ve brought home from work so we looked at them and decided to watch one about The Solar Eclipse of 1999. It was quite good but lasted nearly an hour and had a lot of information about why and how solar eclipses happen, at great length by Patrick Moore, some of which was factual but rather technically explained and some of which was PM going into one of his great poetic monologues about them so bits of it were hardgoing. We saw it through and talked about where Ady and I had watched it from (work, both of us, me at Bhs, standing infront of the store in Worthing high street watching along with fellow staff and shoppers, Ady at a garden centre with fellow staff and shoppers) and as the film mentioned the next total eclipse for the UK was 2090 we talked about how old they’d be and why Ady and I wouldn’t be around to see that one (probably!).

They played with the geomags then and I went to do some baking. I had some leftover puff pastry from yesterday so I made some pin wheel things with some cheese and marmite for lunch with that. Davies had been moaning about not having had one of the halloweeny spider cupcakes I’d made last week to take to Ali’s (well maybe if he’d looked up from his DS once to eat one he might have done! 😉 ) so I’d said I’d make some more and he’d requested ‘firework cupcakes’. He’s all about the seasonal tie-in that boy! 😆 I made some cupcakes using my new sillicone cupcake cases which I am very (irrationally!) excited about and then decorated them with black buttercream and coloured sprinkles to look like night sky with fireworks, then chopped up some fizzy laces and added those to have a ‘firework on your tongue’ effect for him.

We had the cheesey things and although it was dark, grey and drizzling outside I decided we’d all feel better for some fresh air and exercise so we gathered up a load of read books, watched dvds and listened to audiobooks and headed for a walk to the library. It’s only about 15 minutes, maybe a bit more at childpace. Davies has more or less mastered tying his shoelaces (he has purple DMs with gold and silver stars on them which are so cool they are worth the hassle of shoelaces!) which is quite a big deal for him. He really is very uncoodinated with all things fiddly with his hands and always has been. He gets by for things he wants to do but always looks so very awkward bless him. His pen control has been great from an early age but his pen grip is a long way from the ‘accepted technique’, he has only just started using scissors one handed (previously he had this odd two handed style with one hand in each hoop of the handles) he is just ‘all fingers and thumbs’ but today he pulled it off. 🙂

On the walk he was talking about how practise makes perfect but he was pondering how you’d prioritise which things which require practise so we talked about things which were essential and things which were simply desireable. We decided some things were essential for humans: breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping and then most of the rest were on the desireable spectrum according to personal preference. We decided you could live without ever learning to tie shoelaces but it would be a convenient skills to have acquired and talked about other times you may wish to tie a bow.

I had told Davies about E at work over the weekend and he had asked me to tell Scarlett so that came up and we talked about that for the rest of the walk. We discussed depression, reasons for feeling sad and feeling sad just because you were depressed and what the difference was. We talked about feeling good about yourself and how important that is, how your own self opinion is worth more than what others thinks of you and that if other people make you feel bad about yourself then you should reconsider whether they are your friends or not. Stuff like this comes up a lot with us and while I’m sure a lot of it is regurgitated propadanda that I have ‘fed’ them over the years I can but hope that leading by example with positive self image, encouraging them to like themselves and have positive self worth and feel good about the things they do well will all help them on their way to happiness.

We talked a bit about wealth, celebrity and fame (quite possibly a hangover from watching X Factor at the weekend with all those desperate teens claiming this was all they ever wanted, their lifes ambition and they would just ‘die’ if it all ended now) and then got to talking about mistakes and how making them, fairly regularly is what makes us human. We discussed whether children or adults made more mistakes and concluded that perhaps children make more but adults make bigger ones 😆 By which point we’d arrived at the library.

We sat and read some books in there (mostly heavy ones I didn’t want to carry home) but still managed to bring a bigger pile out than the fairly large pile we went in with. We had a quick look in Woolworths where I got cross about Nim’s Island being wrongly priced up and them refusing to sell it to me at that price and bought a cake tin for my Christmas cake only to come home and realise I still have 3 chocolate tins which are the exact same size and would have done the job. Grr.

Scarlett had picked up Mist on dvd at the library so they watched that and we all had hot chocolate and a firework cake each.

Things then degenerated a little when they failed to tidy up the geomags properly and due to running around Scarlett managed to drop a whole bowl of pesto pasta on the lounge floor :(. I lost my rag, ranted lots, threatened all sorts of dreadful things and then went to make her some more. I must be really unconvincing in my rants though as they still kept coming to tell me they loved me even when anyone else would have realised talking to me at all would be a bad idea. Ady managed to ring in the middle of it all so he got an earful too!

I recovered sufficiently to read some bedtime stories before they went off to bed and then Ady ran me a bath and cooked me dinner and did the hoovering :). He knows my threats have gravity! 😆
I can’t decide if I have a cold or not, I’ve been suffering with sneezes since last week and last night had a very sore throat but all of that seems to have cleared up and now I just feel shattered and keep waking at about 430am unable to get back to sleep. I think actually I probably just felt whingey today and children are far too self absorbed to be arsed listening to adults whinging. And rightly so, but maybe I just needed an outlet to stamp my feet!

Dad came over this morning and he and Ady went off to meet a tree feller we know who my Dad has been getting logs from for years. It’s a win:win situation really, he cuts down the logs and rents land to unload them onto and every so often burns them up there to get rid of them. Dad and us have open fires which cost a lot of money to run if we are buying fuel so are very grateful to take them off him and save him the job of burning them. They were gone for a couple of hours and came back with a good few weeks supply of logs :).

While they were gone the children and I watched another couple of episodes of Britain from above, Davies DS’d while watching and Scarlett and I unpicked a ragrug I’ve had 3 attempts at making and given up as a bad idea then started it again in a different guise. Scarlett had a go at weaving too and quite enjoyed it.

Dad came back for coffee and stayed a while to chat and we arranged a day trip to France next month with them and have booked the tunnel trip for it tonight. The children are very excited about it, it’s their first trip abroad :). The only day we were all available is Sunday 7th December, the day after Tarly’s birthday and the end of our busy week of being away at NicCamps but I guess December is always a manic month really.

This afternoon we went to the allotment. I’ve blogged about that over in the relevant place so won’t repeat myself here but it was a nice couple of hours.

We came home and the children had a bath while I got dinner on (roast chicken, stuffing, roast potatoes, honey glazed carrots and parsnips, yorkshire puddings, peas and sweetcorn, lovely :)), Ady lit a fire and he and Davies had a couple of games of draughts. Scarlett came and helped me make an apple tart for pudding. We had dinner, while watching a documentary about China which was quite interesting and then I started reading Spud Goes Green which was good.

Children to bed, bath for me and now as I slept badly (again, what’s that about?) last night and am feeling a bit wan and feeble along with developing a sore throat I’m off to hopefully have a better nights sleep tonight complete with lavender temple balm and sore throat spray :(.

I worked this morning. It was a day when the levels of busyness were inconsistent and we veered between queuing chaos and dead quiet. I spent some time going through local magazines and noting contact details of various local clubs, groups and societies as one my current jobs is to maintain the catalogue of information about local groups that the library holds for borrower reference and I am aware it is woefully out of date and incomplete. We have also started an initative called ‘Community Saturday’ at Lancing where we offer a table and chairs and some space to local groups to come in and spend a couple of hours on a Saturday morning in the library where they can chat to borrowers and generally increase awareness of their group. It seems to be working well so far and we all like the idea of the library as a central point in the local community. By getting more of these groups on our database I can hopefully increase the variety of groups we have participating in the Community Saturday thing too which will be good.

Meanwhile Ady took Davies and Scarlett back to Pulborough Brooks for their monthly Wildlife Explorers session. They had a great time, as usual and spent some time in the ‘Aren’t Mammals Amazing’ marquee learining about mammals and then some time out on the reserve watching the deer. Our RSPB membership is one of the best investments we’ve made in a long time :).

They came home and in our continuing effort to save energy and money they shut the lounge door and lit a fire and turned the heating off. Scarlett spent some time playing on the latop (Barbie.com I believe) while Ady and Davies had a draughts match and they all listened to classical music, which was the tableau I came home to find just after 1pm :).

I had some lunch and then we headed off to Sainsburys for various bits and pieces before going over to Chris and Julie’s for what has now become our annual fireworks event with them.

They had been looking at old photo albums, some of Julie as a child and some of Jack and Maisie from a few years ago when they were toddlers so while the children played we all looked at them again. 70s photos have such a characteristic look to them, way more so than any other decade I think and we featured in plenty of the ones from a few years ago so that was a nice wander down memory lane :). We also have duplications in our albums of several too and found ourselves smiling over several including:

from a holiday we all took together in Dorset in October 2004

Jack and Maisie’s second birthday party (making Davies 4, his Peter Pan era and Scarlett not yet 2)

We had a selection of nice food including Julie’s jam tarts and apple muffins, some of my gingerbread, some pumpkin soup and some toasted pumpkin seeds (coated with something that wasn’t marmite but made them taste like twiglets). It has tipped down with rain here pretty much all day long and it carried on all afternoon and evening so Chris and Ady braved the rain to light some fireworks wearing their matching high-vis coats (Ady’s is a work one, Chris got his from a car boot sale – sometimes it really is very obvious they are brothers :lol:)

The children booted and coated up and went out too while Julie, Lorna and I sensibly remained indoors and watched from behind glass :).

We left there about 630pm and came home. Davies and I watched X Factor together while Scarlett and Ady cooked a huge curry for Ady and I. Then they went to bed. Actually Davies returned back downstairs again to watch the results show as he was still awake :rolls:.

The children and I had a quiet morning and afternoon at home. I was still feeling rather shell shocked from yesterday and we’ve done a fair bit of out and abouting already this week so the children welcomed the chance to play at home.

I borrowed a selection of documentary type dvds from work, one of which is Britain from Above so we watched the first on dics one of that, which was 24 hour Britain – very interesting stuff. Davies and I watched it all while Tarly dipped in and out. They’d set up the lounge as a ‘Halloween picnic’ before I came downstairs this morning which basically seemed to entail of spreading blankets out and various cuddly toys along with eating their breakfast on the floor picnic-stylee so she carried on with that while keeping half an eye on the TV and zoning back in for the interesting bits.

They didn’t want to watch another episode so I spent some time messing about on flickr putting some photos a friend had sent over onto my photostream while Davies and Scarlett dismantled and tidied up the Halloween picnic and got the geomags out for a Viva Pinata inspired game.

I’d got an online food shop delivery booked between 10 and 12 and it arrived right at the end of the time slot at about 1150am so I spent half an hour or so putting that away before making some homemade rolls for Tarly and I for lunch (she had tomato soup with hers, I had tuna mayonnaise), warming some pizza for Davies and putting more pizza dough on for Ady and I’s dinner later.

After lunch the children carried on playing and I finished reading 1000 Splendid Suns which I’m reading for Book Group for next month. I’ve read it really quickly and whilst the subject matter prevents me from saying I ‘enjoyed it’ I have become utterly absorbed in it, he tells a good story.

I then started to do some logic puzzles and the children came over to join me and I showed them a spin on the fox, chicken, grain story I’d been playing with a wolf, sheep and cabbages. We did a couple more similar ones all taking it in turns to have goes before they drifted away again.

Then it was time to wrap up warm and Ady arrived home to come with us to Pulborough Brooks for a Halloween event called ‘Trick or Tweet’ which I’d booked ages ago. There were 5 families on it, I think there were about 20 of us altogether. They started with some colouring in and then we moved outside once it was dark (about 5pm ish) with our torches and into the woods. We made a circle and played a game called Bats and Moths based on the echolocation method bats use to find their prey. The ‘bat’ was blindfolded and called out ‘Bat’ to which the Moth had to reply ‘Moth’ and staying within the circle the bat had to catch the moth by sound alone. All the kids had a go at being both bat and moth and thoroughly enjoyed it.

We went back to the centre then and split into teams to bob for apples, adults included – I’ve not done that for years 😆 – they kindly filled the bowls with warm water for the apples to bob in as it was freezing outside, being a beautiful clear, cloudless, starry night (Helen is so right in her star gazing wisdom ;)).

Back indoors we had hot chocolate with marshmallows (the hot chocolate was loads of bars of galaxy melted in a fondue type pot and mixed with boiling water, it was lovely!) and the children did various craft activities including making a little trick or treat box and making a 3d card spider. The woman running it said they could all tell everyone at the end what their spider was called, where it lived and what it ate. This was of course a cue for Davies and Scarlett to make all sorts of accessories for their spiders including food, habitats, namebadges and more. One of the helpers commented on how she loved that they’d taken the activitity a stage further :).

We left, having been given loads of sweeties and chocolates to fill the trick or treat boxes. I think it was £3each for the children and free for us, it’s so long ago I booked it. It was a full two hours worth of activities and although it was perhaps a bit classroomy for Davies and Scarlett they seemed to enjoy it.

We then had an incar family conference and after a quick stop at home to put the chickens away and grab some sandwiches for the children we whizzed off to Hove to the Booth Museum for their Nighttime Explorers Event. I honestly expected it to be heaving and fully anticipated having to wait until at least 830 to get in but we pulled up slightly after 730pm, got a parking space outside and joined the end of a long queue to get tickets and be told they were running a little late and we’d be in the 730, now more like 745 admission :).

It was utterly fab :). Torchlit meanderings down the stuffed animal aisles in the dark, Victorian people dressed up talking and acting in character, giant insects beamed by projector onto the walls and wriggling about to mill about and look at. Then a room full of snakes and lizards -live ones. All utterly accessible sitting around on rocks. You were allowed to touch but not pick them up so we all went crazy for stroking iguanas, bearded dragons and huge great boas and pythons. Loved it :). Both the children asked the man in charge various questions about the reptiles and learnt stuff. Ady was taken a shine to by the HUGE boa who snaked across to him and lay on his shoulder all cosy and comfy and looked most put out when she had to be taken off him!

Next we queued for a talk about fluorescence. It was done by this fab mad-professor looking guy with a shock of white hair and a white lab coat all about minerals which glow under ultra-violet light. He explained about phospherance, luminescence and fluorescence and showed us all sorts of amazing sights under his UV lamp including first class stamps, paper money, scorpions, fingernails aswell as rocks and explained how it is used in washing powder and toothpaste to give the illusion of glowing white (ie clean) rather than a residue. Again the children knew the answers to lots of questions and asked a few of their own – I was proud of them both :).

The final attraction was a four piece band, dressed as insects, wearing stilts :lol:. They were fab. We caught them singing ‘we are family’ and ‘tutti fruiti’ and rocking the museum with their drum kit, tuba, bango and sax. Fab :).

We were finally ushered out having filled in the questionnaire -Ady’s comments said ‘Oh Bravo!’ and I got Scarlett to give me a comment for mine and quoted her saying ‘quite my favourite museum!’. Then back in the car and home. We arrived just after 9pm.

The children went to bed and were both soon asleep. We had a late bath and even later dinner and now as I am working in the morning and have another full day ahead I am off to bed too.

Just a couple of months of the year left so I thought I’d review how we’ve got on with our stuff we wanted to do this year list:
Things we want to do this year:

South Downs Planetarium – I’ve wanted to go here for years and as it says suitable for 6 plus on the website I think it will finally be something we can all go along to together now Scarlett will get something out of it too. There are a couple of shows which look particularly interesting:
Stars on frosty nights
Tour of the planets
The Northern Lights
Prices are £6 per adult and £4 per child so £20 for the four of us, nothing on the website about season tickets but worth investigating.
Well we managed two trips there; once for frosty nights and one for the planets. Ady, Davies and I enjoyed the whole thing, Tarly did get something out of each show and they both still refer to things they learnt there now but an hour is a long time to sit still and quiet in the dark when you’re five so we didn’t push it with any more visits this year. I’d still like to see the Northern Lights show and will move that across to our list for next year.

Fishbourne Roman Palace – must make full use of our season tickets and get along to some of the many events they have on this year. Interesting ones I’ve already earmarked are:
Family Fun Days through the February half term
Celtic Spring Festival
Thursdays in Summer holidays
I think the children and I have got to Fishbourne twice this year, once with Ady as well. We never managed any of the summer events and as it’s now 3pm on the last day of October half term I’m guessing we’ll not manage to get there for that this year ;). I think we’ve done all it has to offer though and made the most of the years ticket we got.

Lambing at Coombes Farm This was excellent last year, we’re still talking about it now. It’s on for a whole month in 2008 so we must ensure we go again on a nice day during that month.
Yep, we managed that, albeit a slightly stressy visit this year with the Beavers. It did mean we got a cheaper rate on the tractor ride though which we’d not done the year before. I think this could well become a staple part of our Springtime every year.

Drusillas – must justify that outlay of season tickets and manage at least another 3 trips over there before they run out in July. Having checked the events listing there is nothing of great interest so will probably try and avoid busy time and go midweek in term times instead.
I think we made use of our season tickets fairly well with various trips to Drusillas before they ran out. We won’t renew them again until summer 2009 at the earliest but Scarlett does have her birthday present day out there and I have plans to look into their volunteer programme if she enjoys that to see if there are any openings for children.

Pulborough Brooks – we’ll carry on going to the regular monthly Home Ed meet up walks there but have also been looking at some of the other events – it might be worth looking at RSPB membership.
We got the RSPB membership and along with the regular magazines Davies and Scarlett get and devour every month or so they have also joined the Wildlife Explorers Group at Pulborough Brooks which meets once a month for crafts and wildlife activities. We’ve been to Family Fun Days and a couple of other scheduled events through the year aswell as the monthly home ed meet up and family trips there throughout the year. A wise investment of a fiver or so a month :).

Chichester Harbour There are some fab events held in and around the harbour like the early Sunday morning walk we did last year. Must aim to get along to more of them, including the splendid sounding solar powered boat rides.
I’m on the monthly email newsletter for the events here but nothing appealed this year, or those which looked interesting clashed with my working days or other commitments we already had. Still want to try those solar powered boat trips though!

Looking at National Trust and/or English Heritage membership. We’ve almost enough Tesco points to pay for EH membership and there are various local places that NT membership would pay for with just two days out so probably worth investing in including:
Petworth House which has some fab events lined up including Bat walks which is something Davies and Scarlett have specifically asked to do.
We joined, we made use of the NT membership with various visits to Petworth including their open tunnels weekend. We also used our membership for visits to St Michaels Mount, Bodiam Castle and are still planning various other trips to places before it runs out next year. We will probably join English Heritage next year instead but I still want to visit Corfe Castle before our NT membership lapses. Never did manage a bat walk, but Pulborough Brooks has them and is nearer than Petworth anyway so we’ll transfer that across to next years list.

The Safety Day that’s been planned by a HEor in Basingstoke in April. Looking forward to that on.
Was a good day, I particularly enjoyed the firemen’s bit! 😆

Legoland – we’ve definitely got a trip in March planned (must get it booked)
We had our March trip and it remains a family favourite day trip. The children are real coastermaniacs and would like to try Chessington next but I suspect an annual Legoland trip will still make it onto 2009’s list.

Kelmarsh Festival of History weekend – it’s my weekend off so we’re planning to camp along with friends and make a whole weekend of it.
What a fab weekend that was! Definitely up for that again next year including the Wickstead day aswell with as many friends as possible :). Will hopefully have our own EH membership to keep the cost down too.

Eweleaze – aside from other camping trips planned this year (hopefully a May / June trip up near CAT) we’ve got a few nights extreme camping planned here in August :). We also want to do the Eden Project again so will aim for a September camping trip down that way if the weather is good.
We didn’t manage CAT so that definitely goes across to next years list. I am still humming and hawwing over booking their ecocabins actually. Everything else happened along with various other camping excursions.

Bedgebury Pinetum – meant to go there all last year and never made it, will definitely get there this year when it’s warm enough to be out all day without gloves!
Been there, done that! It was good but quite a long way to travel. Would like to go again when children are old enough to Go Ape with us :).

Other random requests from Davies and Scarlett include:
Ice Skating – our nearest ice rink is eitherGuildford or Gillingham and a quick peek shows that to be a costly activity.
I have it on good authority (thanks Liza!) that there is a regular Home Ed meet up at Guildford ice rink on Fridays as discounted prices. We’ve not managed to get there yet and as Fridays are an every-other-week work day for me it may end up being another one moving across to next year as there are probably only about 4 Fridays left this year we could potentially get there and we have plenty of stuff already booked up for the next 2 months which could well leave no spare cash for such excursions.

More pony riding – well that’s nice and easy and cheap 🙂 will arrange weekly if possible with Julie.
We are definitely managing fortnightly and it’s going well. Both Davies and Scarlett are making progress and it remains something they are enjoying.

Swimming – yes, really must do this one.
They are still having weekly term time lessons and they are now spaced in such a way that it is possible for me to have half an hour with each of them in the pool each week. Illness and can’t be arsed-ness aside we’ll try and make that a weekly thing I do.

Beach walks – just as soon as it’s a bit warmer we’ll aim to get to the beach at least once a week again.
Not weekly but certainly fairly regularly. Other outside-y things have gotten in the way of beachwalking but it can certainly go onto next years list and we’ll endeavour to continue to use the beach as much as we can.