One word? When seven would do…

More rain 🙁

Just recently the children and I were talking about the beach in windy and rainy weather and how Ady and I used to go down there whenever there was a storm back before we had children as it was such an exhilarating place to be when the elements and nature were whipping themselves up. Nothing to make you feel quite so insignificantly small and powerless yet so very alive all at the same time :). I’d promised to take them there next time we were around and the weather was doing something exciting and today it all fell in to place.

It was the one year anniversary of the wood washing ashore at Worthing beach from the Ice Prince and so Worthing Arts Council, who seem to be chucking money and resources at some kind of regeneration programme currently (all good as far as I’m concerned, more events like the torch procession last summer and the intended Ice Prince festival are very welcome and we’ll go along and support them all. It’s nice to feel proud of where we live and it’s not often the opportunity arises ) had lined up a one week ‘festival’ of various things. It was ending with n unveiling of wood sculptures and an orange and lemon tossing into the sea by children.

We had a fairly low key morning and then as the rain had mostly stopped we headed out to the seafront to see the wood sculpture. Except it didn’t appear to be there :(.No idea if it was cancelled due to weather or other reasons or if I’d somehow got confused about what was happening but there was nothing ocurring. That was fine as we were there, the car was parked, we had nothing else planned and we found ourselves on the beach, at high tide, in increasing amounts of wind and then rain just as the kids had been asking for earlier this week :). So we beachcombed for about an hour, took loads of pictures, got cold and damp and found all sorts of interesting shells, crabs, clams, seaweed and other stuff getting washed up.

Finally when we’d had enough we headed into the town centre with half a plan to find a coffee shop for hot chocolate before going to the orange and lemon tossing. I managed to get the couple of bits I’d failed to get yesterday when we walked round Shoreham and we spent some time in the cookshop drooling at bakewear and kitchen gadgets. We decided we were too cold and wet to hang around for much longer so walked back to the car, via Iceland (the shop, not the country) for squirty cream to make our own hot chocolate at home.

We did drive past the hotel where the registering for the orange and lemon tossing was supposed to be happening and there was no indication of it taking place so either I had the dates wrong or it was cancelled due to the crap weather.

Back home the children and I did the birdwatch – not a lot about :(.We decided to watch from our lounge window and count anything we could see land clearly enough to identify within our results. The strip of garden we could see wouldn’t have had anything landing in it, the back is full of chickens which rather hamper other birds from landing and while in the front we often get starlings, blackbirds and robins it was far too cold and wet to be outside viewing that area. We saw loads of birds flying over – specifically gulls of which there were loads and several large flocks of starlings too.

Davies and Scarlett made some backgrounds for the fimo wildlife creatures they’d made earlier in the week and then I got them to dictate what they’d done for that WAA – ‘Get Creative’ and typed it all up and added pictures. They have finished the first 6 activities for their bronze award so Ady will print them all off and I’ll get that send off for them tomorrow. The Big Birdwatch is going to count towards their silver as we’d already done a lot of birdwatching stuff for the bronze. The next set of activities are rather more indepth and we’re out-and-aboutting again as normal next week so we may not get started on them just yet.

Ady cooked roast dinner – chicken with stuffing etc. so we sat and ate that and chatted about various things. We got onto the subject of ‘worst thing you ever did as a child’ so Ady and I regaled them with tales of our youth and various escapades which all seemed quite funny in the re-telling but made me realise just how much angst we have ahead as parents ;).

While we were out earlier Scarlett has said ‘it’s a crap day today isn’t it?’ loudly in Boots. We’d talked about acceptable words in different places and I’d said that while I had no issue with her using that word in context I wanted her to appreciate it could cause offense to others and to be aware of that while using it in public. She then wanted me to tell her some other words which were similar and I declined – saying that she would learn them soon enough and I didn’t intend being the one to teach her 😆 . My parents were fairly liberal about swearing and I intend to be the same but I don’t intend sitting a six year old down with a list of them! Instead I said if she wanted to learn words I’d happily teach her some to increase her vocab. in a positive way so we talked about various words and their definitions including: tintinabulation (which was one of Ady’s word of the day words this week), audible (which led to visual, tactile, odour and aroma) and more which I have already forgotten. We also talked about dictionaries and thesaurases. Cunningly moved that one away from in depth discussion of the word ‘fuck’ and all it’s uses I thought! 😉

After dinner the kids played with lego for a while and then Ady put on Return to Neverland which we all watched before the children got ready for bed. I read them the first chapter of Heidi (inspired by Jan) because I have been singing the theme tune from the 70s show all week since reading about it on her blog and we happened to have a copy on the shelf. They listened to the first chapter but didnt particularly get caught up with it – wonder if there are retellings of it that would be more appealing? I then found the theme tune on youtube for them to listen to as Ady and I had been murdering it (and doing bad impressions of the bad dubbing) and then it was their bedtime.

We’ve watched Lost (not getting any clearer really!) and it looks like I might just make it to bed before it’s tomorrow!

Yesterday I was at work all day. It was Baby Rhyme time day and felt like a very long day. Due to a change round in a couple of people’s shift patterns at work I am now working more with a particular colleague who is quite hard work. In the interests of not spending my time dreaming up creative ways to injure her I have decided to get to know her better and try and get our relationship on more of an even footing (she is very patronising which is just one of the irritating things about her. I am probably more tolerant of her than others but she still makes me grit my teeth fairly regularly and frankly if I wanted to be gritting my teeth that often I’d stay home and referee Davies and Scarlett in sofa leaping wars or something instead of going to work – it’s supposed to be respite!). I ended up doing the banking with her and then having both tea breaks and lunch break with her so it was a good time to put this into action. We chatted parenting and certainly found some common ground which leads me to have hope for better things to come :).

Ady was home in the morning and my Mum was here in the afternoon. When I got home they were both here with Ady having just arrived home again before me. Mum had on the spur of the moment when round here last week bought tickets to the Ice Show for her, I and the children. My parents used to take me and my brother every year when we were children, usually around my birthday and I remember it being magical and a really big production. My Mum did quite a lot of iceskating as a girl and dreamed of taking it further but never did.

Ady dropped us off outside and arranged to collect us again afterwards and then went off to get bits for dinner. We found our seats and settled in. It was a very good show, excellent skaters, loads of special effects, good music etc. I wouldn’t necessarily choose to go again and it didn’t captivate the children like some of the shows we’ve been to. Both of them really wanted to sit next to me (I think the prolonged contact Wednesday morning and yesterday afternoon with Granny was enough, coupled with not having seen me all day which can make them a bit cuddly on days when I work all day) and then Davies got upset about a stray pigeon that had found its way into the centre and flapped around for most of the second half. Davies’ favourite animals are sheep and pigeons and he was really worried that it was getting scared and fretful (which realistically it would have been).

As is so often the case when I think they have gotten nothing out of an experience though they were both full of it all the way home and have been referring back to it loads and talking about going again next year though! Scarlett was up on her feet dancing along and clapping like mad for the finale so I guess ending on a high was enough for her :).

A late night home though as we weren’t back til gone 10pm. Ady had run me a bath and got a curry cooking so Mum stayed for dinner and left around midnight.

Today was a lazy start for some people (well me actually ;)) and my Dad called round which was nice as we’ve not seen him for a couple of weeks (might have been my birthday actually?). Davies did some legoing, need to get the remainder of the lego out of my parents loft actually as I think there is a fair bit more still there and the children are playing with it lots at the moment.

Ady and the children spent some time in the garden, I did some knitting and mastered another couple of patterns. No idea what I’ll do with this knowledge mind you :). Everyone came in for lunch and then we headed off to Magic Lantern. We’d already read the booklet about the film earlier this week and the children were looking forward to seeing the film – Chang a silent movie from 1927. I think we were the only parents who didn’t stay and actually I’d have quite liked to see the film but all the time they are happy for us to leave them and go we’re going to make the most of it :).

Ady and I had a wander round the shops in Shoreham and had originally intended to have a coffee in one of the cafes but having only had lunch before we came out neither of us really wanted one. It was nice just to be the two of us though :).

We collected Davies and Scarlett and then we dropped Ady home and went over to collect a bucket full of pond water from my Dad to take to our allotment pond to get some microscopic pond life over there. This had the dual purpose of finishing off the bits needed for a WAA on creating a wildlife pond and getting some photos to illustrate it and in having a quick progress check of things at the allotment too. Will blog about that in the relevant place tomorrow.

We came home and then Ady went out to get some various bits for dinner today and tomorrow. The kids did some DSing, I did some knitting and then when Ady got home I made dinner for them and prepared ours. I had a bath which the kids then got into after their tea.

We watched XFiles I want to believe which was saved only by being an X files film with Mulder and Scully and their back story. And possibly Billy Connolly.

Scarlett’s super wobbly tooth came out first thing this morning. She came to wake me, turning the lights on as she did and thrusting it under my nose for inspection. She then came back up every 15 minutes or so until I finally got up!

I sorted breakfast – for children and chickens, cleared up the kitchen and sat down with a cup of tea then supervised Davies gathering all he needed to do papier mache (mat to protect carpet, cardboard model he was going to cover, newspaper torn into strips. His tearing was a bit cack handed so I helped with that and Scarlett came to join in too and then I got him a bowl of flour and water. I was determinded to let him do it himself so just went over every so often to provide a bit of guidance rather than taking over. He did a great job, really listened and aside from making the cardboard too soggy so it started to lose it’s shape a little he did a great first attempt. He cleared up and then put it next to the radiator to dry. I think it will need at least 2 more layers before being ready to paint but it’s looking good. It’s some sort of biplane type thing from Star Wars.

Scarlett was wanting to do some more fimo so her and I sat and did that. She made a butterfly, a worm and a little Scarlett. Again I tried to let her do her own thing as much as possible and indeed several of the things she made were too thin and unsupported so have broken once baked and touched, but that must surely be a better way for her to learn for next time than me telling her. I finished making liquorice allsorts beads which I have now varnished and threaded with some other beads to make a new bracelet for myself. I think both children now want to make beads for bracelets next – I said to Davies we could do tiny Wallace and Gromit heads to make beads and he really likes that idea :).

They’d been half watching one of the Star Wars films I’d brought home while doing all their making. Then they turned the tv off and got the geomags out after tiding up their crafty stuff. Scarlett had made a fimo R2D2 so there was some sort of Star Wars game played. I got out a knitting book I’d got from work and taught myself how to do purl stitch. I then experimented with it and have worked out how to make all sorts of patterns in my wool squares :). Very pleased with myself :). The book explains how to increase and decrease stitches too which seems straightforward so there’s no stopping me now ;). Expect knitted W&G toys to be photographed soon ;).

Davies and Scarlett tidied all the geomags up and were looking a bit loose-end ish so I suggested a couple of things, none of which interested them and then came up with ‘bowls of popcorn and Kung Fu Panda dvd?’ which got two yesses, so I went off to make the popcorn and they got the dvd set up. It didn’t really hold me and I carried on knitting, Scarlett wandered off to play with her DS but Davies watched it through and then when it went on by itself for a second time because none of us turned it off we all dipped in and out of it while they both DSd and I carried on knitting.

It rained on and off all day which was a shame as I think we’d all have benefitted from a bit of outdoor time which none of us will get tomorrow either. I still felt cold all day and have been fairly intolerant and grumpy but have at least done lots of doing stuff with them inbetween. Looking forward to a bit more out and aboutyness again next week though.

Feeling a bit sorry for myself today but I suspect I am being tired, self-pitying and mopey rather than having any genuine reason for it so I’ll ignore myself on that score.

Mum arrived in time for me to get to work where I had a nice morning. My boss is one of these Val (Alison’s), Beryl (LovelyEm’s) type Mums / Grannys who is always having her grandchildren over for sleepovers and rearranging her life to fit in with her daughter’s so she can help her out more. She dashes from work on a Wednesday to collect her granddaughter to ferry her to and from ballet lessons and so she was telling me that while I was moping about my Mum and her reluctance to be at my house this morning. She was very good at jollying me out of myself though and it was quite a good morning :).

I got home just after 1pm and aside from fairly minor moans from the kids about my Mum – which I suspect I am perpetuating by expecting them and possibly even slightly encouraging them so I shall try to stop all seemed well.

Davies wanted me to help him with a cardboard box model of some Star Wars thing so I helped him make it more sturdy and suggested a couple of design improvements and helped with those. I did suggest it would be a great framework for papier mache-ing but it is rather large and would be better done outside, which it is clearly not the season for right now. He stayed upstairs and later came down with a smaller model of something else SW related which we decided would be a perfect first go for him at papiermacheing and are planning to start tomorrow :). He is so creative and imaginative and has such vision it would be great for him to be able to make something from nothing that could then be finished properly and turned into a really good piece of artwork. I think papier mache could be a great material for him.

The packs for the Nature Dectectives from Woodland Trust finally arrived. I have to confess to not being terribly impressed with it but possibly I should view the price as a donation rather than a purchase. I also think the activities seem pitched a little young and a lot of it is tied into their website which I can’t see Davies and Scarlett being that interested in accessing really, they are not that bothered about being online just yet. We signed them up for the emails and they both did the first activitiy of identifying leaves and writing them down. Davies read them all too, Scarlett wasn’t in the mood for anything other than one to one attention and if possible constant physical contact too so she was being quite trying.

Scarlett really wanted to do some more fimo-ing so she made a butterfly while I made some beads to replace my probably-not-lost-but-can’t-seem-to-find-it liquorice allsorts bracelet I made and then she made a ring. I upset Davies when he wandered over and started just playing with it by making a big point about it being an expensive craft material and not just a lump of plasticine to be played with. We patched it up and I’ve said we’ll do some more fimo-ing tomorrow but he does need to plan what he’s making rather than faff about with it for the sake of it.

I made their dinner and then it was time to get changed for Badgers. Ady was working late to ensure he can have Friday morning off so didn’t manage to come and meet me. I sat in the car and did a bit of knitting and read a bit of my book. Then I remembered I needed to pay subs (I only paid half the other week) so went to get some cash out and wandered round the supermarket for a while but didn’t buy anything. I got back to Badgers and was freezing in the car and needed a wee so I went and knocked on the door and they let me come in to sit in the coffee lounge. It was still pretty cold as it’s a big roomed, high ceilinged place where they only seem to heat the rooms they’re using at the time but it was still warmer than my car.

Ady had just about beaten us home and got the fire lit so I sat and read stories (My Uncle is a Hunkle, Says Clarice Bean and My Uncle is a Hunkle, Says Clarice Bean.

I made a lovely lasagne and garlic bread which the children can try tomorrow and now I am going to bed and have no intention of getting up until I feel like it tomorrow :).

I’ve been feeling quite intolerant today. I suspect there is a hormonal reason for it too but I also seem to have had various triggers to set me off too.

First thing (well as first thing as we get round these parts) Davies was being annoying to Scarlett so to get him to leave her alone and her to stop whinging at him I got him to come and sit with me and clicked on to Education city which I’d signed up to a free trial of the other day, more to see if the records of all the previous free trials had gone so I could get another one really ;). Results are in the post below 🙂

We went to Tasha’s where the kids disappeared and sat on Toby’s bed all playing Lego Star Wars on their DSs and passing them round to get each other passed various levels. Tasha and I chatted and it was all very pleasant. I do love her new house, it is right on the seafront and the sea was a murky colour today, really high tide and just outside her lounge window (with the coast road inbetween). I would so love to have her sea view out of my windows. Ady laughed at me when I said that and told me with rising sea levels and global warming living as close to the beach as we do one day we will have! I’m guessing / hoping not quite in my lifetime though ;).

In the middle of all this though I got a text from Liza to say she was ill and wouldn’t be able to have D and S tomorrow 🙁 – hope you are better very soon Liza xx. I made several frantic phonecalls to Ady who couldn’t rearrange meetings at work for the morning and my parens but couldn’t get hold of either of them. I had previously been wondering if Tasha would be up for some sort of reciprocal kids going to play once a month / fortnight as she has been mentioning wishing she had some child-free hours to do various things but she didn’t offer and pretty much made it clear she hates the idea of being in sole charge of other people’s children (which I totally empathise with ;)) so that both answered that question and didn’t help with my tomorrow situation either.

That makes me sound like I view every new potential friend as a childcare prospect which I so don’t but the kids are now at an age where I could see dropping them off to play somewhere and returning the favour for someone would be normal, easy and be something we’d all get something out of. Davies and Scarlett had already said they would like to go to Toby’s for a play instead of having eg my parents over to look after them. But anyway, not to be.

We left there and went straight to swimming. I had offered to go in the pool with them today but they’d both said they’d rather sit and DS than go in the pool while each other was having a lesson so I got a reprieve from that ;).

Scarlett went first and I was getting really fed up watching. The little sad boy from last week seemed much better today, but it was still painfully s l o w and covering the same things she has now been doing for a year. I could see the point during the first term but now she can all but swim it seems pointless doing things like gaining water confidence when she had had a quick five minutes in the pool before the lesson practising handstands underwater! She was at the far end of the row of 9 children and the first ten minutes of the half an hour lesson had already gone before she even got in the pool. I think she did about six widths in total with all the turn taking and waiting around. Several of the other mothers were moaning about the same thing. I think a lesson is about £6 a time which makes that 1/9th of a 30 minute session expensive at best, outrageous when she probably didn’t even get noticed this week for all the zero ability kids in the group 🙁

I asked her when she came out if she had enjoyed it and felt she was progressing and she said she was though. She also said she wants to catch up with Davies quick and be in his group again so hopefully that will happen.

In the middle of all this fuming I chatted to Ady again who was feeling guilty that he couldn’t be home tomorrow but then I finally got hold of my Mum who very grudgingly agreed to come over in the morning amidst much huffing and sighing :(. Davies wasn;t too happy at the prospect, he said he doesn’t like the way she so clearly prefers him to Scarlett (she does) as he wants to feel the same as Scarlett and she treats him as though he is ‘too special’. 🙁 Oh poo!

Scarlett came and sat on my lap while Davies has his lesson which went well, he is doing really well and enjoying it lots :).

We got home and found a huge parcel on the doorstep which I’ve been expecting for weeks addressed to Davies. I nipped to put the chickens away and came back to open it with them. It was the prize – which I’d arranged to be sent to Davies as there is supposed to be a certificate with it (which isn’t actually there) so it would have his name on, for this competition entry.

It is a massive amount of pyrex bakeware – roasting tin, pizza tray, baking tray, large flan tin and deep cake tin along with Wallace and Gromit oven gloves, pot stand, tea towel and cloth bag :). Woohoo!

Scarlett has been desperate to do some fimoing for her ‘Get Creative’ task for the WAA (wildlife action awards, think I’m going to be mentioning them a lot so they can be initials from now on) and make a rabbit. Ady arrived home so he took over cooking their tea and I sat with them to do some fimo creatures. I made a butterfly and a hedgehog, Tarly made a very good rabbit, a hedgehog and a mouse and Davies made a fab dragonfly.

While we were at Tasha’s I also got a text from Rose (my not-swinger friend) telling me that HE was being mentioned on Radio 2, then a BK from Merry to say she had just been on radio 2 so I was desperate to hear it, not least because it was reading group tonight and I just knew Rose would want me take on it all so I *needed* to know what had happened and been said.

The internet was incredibly slow (in fairness it was right in the middle of Obama’s live coverage so I’m guessing that might have been draining it a bit) so listening on iplayer was incredibly frustrating with loads of stopping and starting. It was agonisingly slow just to find where it was within the 2 hours show. In the meantime the kids were being noisy, the cat was trying to sit on my lap or my laptop and I was just getting incredibly stressed.

I did plenty of venting at the idiots on the radio and then left the house to the strains of Scarlett sobbing because Ady had managed to burn all the fimo creations 🙁

Reading group was fine – I’d not read the book but enjoyed listening to others discussing it, we didn’t talk about the radio show beyond a ‘did you listen to it?’ as we said goodbye and aside from getting all the way home before remembering I’d meant to get some potatoes and then having to go back out for them, and a misunderstanding between Ady and I about who was cooking dinner – he very wisely backed down from that one 😉 the evening has simmered back down again nicely.

NB Liza if you’re reading please don’t feel bad, it was my own lack of back up plan I was stressed about and my Mum’s reluctance and Davies’ lack of enthusiasm about her coming anyway. Along with radio 2 idiots, swimming lesson incompetance and the likely imminent arrival of my own peak of stroppiness each month ;).

Just downloaded the free trial for education city and D has just got 100% for the first two literacy ones he tried. First was spelling dis and un words which he did well within time – the only one he asked for my help with was ‘disloyal’. Second was singular and plural nouns. He got 70% for the first Science one he tried which was all about teeth and I would have got the same score as him cos I agreed with all the answers he gave.

He’s got bored now and wandered off to help Tarly with her Lego Star Wars DS game and probably won’t come back to it again before the trial runs out but woohoo anyway! 🙂

Oh, and just for reference, we did this snuggled up on the sofa rather than at that bloody table ;).

I meant to go to bed at a decent hour last night having been up til gone 3am on Saturday night. Predictably I didn’t get there, partially as I was chatting online with Lucy and arranging for her and The Rs to come over for an hour or so this morning. Due to our four children struggling to get on with each other for any prolonged period of time we have not seen much of them for quite a while. The consequence of this is that Lucy and I don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like but we decided to have a try today.

I’d said to come over any time after 930am which meant waking up at 915am had me dashing round in a flat spin to ensure we were all dressed and breakfasted. In the end it was more like 1030am before they arrived and the children had long since tsked at me for hurrying them and gone off to DS together. When Lucy and The Rs arrived her two joined them at the table for further DSing before heading off to play.

Davies did really well and led lots of games, compromised and was great with the others. He really can be the one who makes or breaks the day and while I don’t want to put that responsibility on him all the time as ultimately he is just a kid too it was great that he pulled it off today and it was all harmonious :).

When they left we popped to Tescos for various things – I specifically wanted some storage for things like flour and sugar to try and organise the kitchen cupboards a bit better. I’ve only done half the job there but when I next feel motivated to tidy that will be the place to aim in the direction of and finish it off. While we walked round Davies told us a story about how French bread got invented to do with two bakers who each had half the required ingredients to make bread so decided to share and make dough but then argued about who should get the loaf and each pulled at it until it was long and thin (and baguette shaped). He couldn’t remember if he’d heard it somewhere or made it up himself, but he certainly told it very entertainingly. 🙂

At the checkout they went and sat on the windowsill next to an old woman. Scarlett noticed someone at another till had dropped something from her trolley so went to pick it up for them which earnt her a smile. I mouthed to Davies to be ‘nice’ and ‘sensible’ twice and as we walked out he asked me how he had known what I was saying if he couldn’t hear the words so we talked about lip reading – and also how often I must say those things that he is probably expecting them and hears my voice in his head anyway! 😆 Lipreading came up again later when he was writing something as he said if he says the word out loud and pictures the shape his mouth makes it helps him work out what letters he needs.

We had a late lunch when we got home and then did some more of the Wildlife Action Awards stuff. Before I move onto that I wanted to document an interesting conversation I forgot to blog over the weekend. One was yesterday over lunch when we were talking about languages. Davies had been interested in the translating French that Ali and I had been talking about at her house – I’d had a go at doing a bit and not failed miserably and it is something both Davies and Scarlett have been interested in before. When we were in France / Belgium they were asking me the French words for certain words and are proud of the little bits of French they know. It’s something we could do more of actually if I could find the right way of doing it. Anyway at lunch yesterday it came up again and we talked about various languages, how old they were and their origins, words that we had taken from French (cafe, ballet, au fait and phrases such as deja vu and joie de vivre), words that are used in both but have different meanings (I came up with formidable) and some stock phrases ‘I am English’, ‘I do not understand’ ‘ Excuse me’ and so on. I told them numbers 1-10 and we talked about how there is not necessarily direct translations for every word and how different sentence construction can be. I told them about Esperanto and we talked about different alphabets or letters in different languages. Also languages that are written not from right to left, top to bottom on a page too. We talked about bilingual people and how children learn languages easier than adults and why this might be. We pondered on the smaller your vocabularly the easier it would be to learn it again in another language. I mentioned a girl I’d known as a child who was Italian but had an English mother and spoke perfect English but couldn’t always translate from one to the other, and a German woman at reading group who says she thinks in English when she is in England and thinks in German when she is in Germany!

Back to the Wildlife Action Awards then. We’d seen and identified collared doves out of the window on Saturday so they both drew them and Davies labelled his. He also relabelled his crow and I’ve copy and pasted them into a word doc with some writing (just a few lines around the pictures explaining where we watched from, how we identified them etc. I don’t want to do it all for them by any means but I don’t want to bore Davies and Scarlett with tedious stuff like that, this is supposed to be fun for them and the point is in the spotting, sketching and identifying rather than being able to construct reports!) for Ady to print off so we can send that as evidence for the Birdspotting Activity.

Scarlett got the book, looked at it and said ‘does this bit say collared dove then?’ pointing at the top and then copied out the letters, saying each one aloud as she did so. She was really surprised at the end and said she didn’t know she knew all of those!

Davies did all of the spelling, just looking up to check each letter with me before he wrote it. He is really getting the hang of all the different letter sounds and asking ‘is it EE, EA or E with magic E at the end for the EEEE sound in beak? and ‘does it end with K or C then?’.

While he was redoing his crow label Scarlett started on the next activity which is Composting. As this is something we already do I got her to draw all the things she could think of that go in our kitchen waste compost bin and then helped her with the letters to label them:
. She did a great job and it was really interesting to see her interpretation of quite tricky things to draw like banana skin and potato peelings :).

Davies and I chatted a bit about his as I thought he could do something a bit more challenging and we came up with the idea of a story board of the cycle of compost from kitchen waste from a fruit, going to the waste bin, then the compost heap, then breaking down to compost and being used when seeds were sown for fruit before finally the fruit being ready to eat. He really liked that idea and came up with all of the individual pictures himself. Predictably with a Davies twist – you will notice that in the first picture he is wearing a top with ‘8’ on it, by the bottom he is wearing a ‘9’ as a year has gone by while the compost breaks down. He is eating with his hands while sitting on a pristine chair at the beginning whereas by the end he has learnt table manners and is using cutlery and crockery but sitting on a worn chair. Finally there are things like the flies at the compost heap looking bigger in the second picture :).

By then it was dinner time so I went and sorted out their tea which was leftovers from roast beef yesterday and while they ate I started working on a report for ‘creating a wildlife pond’ which is another of the activities. We have already done most of that but need to get some plants in it next along with a bucket ful of water from an established pond to transfer some microscopic pond life to it. We’ll go and filch some water and plants from my Dad’s pond later this week and take some pictures of us doing so to finish that report.

Ady arrived home and they were so enthused at showing him what they’d done that we got the pens back out and they carried on. Davies sat and with really minimal help labelled his storyboard:

While I helped with that Scarlett drew a picture for the next task of ‘Reduce, re-use, recycle’. The idea is to list all the rubbish your household creates, research all the different ways you could dispose of it and then ensure only the minimum goes into landfill. This is something we have done for a long time so would be a bit of a fictional work and involve lots of writing again so I got her to draw a recycling blue box (what our’s gets collected from kerbside in), a compost heap and a black sack for landfill. She then drew what goes into each – bottles, tins and newspaper for the blue box, banana skins and apple peel for the compost heap and above landfill with Ady’s help she wrote what we do rather than landfill – freecycle, charity shop, mend and make do (things like ragrugging etc.).

Davies then decided that he’d like to do the typing up of the reduce, re-use and recycle rather than drawing something so we’ll add in Scarlett’s picture and he can elaborate on it including things like our keeping chickens to feed kitchen scraps to, making new things from old clothes and so on. We made a start but got distracted by the tool bar on word so went across that and looked at what everything did which got us talking about headings and body of text, fonts, size, what bold, italic and underline mean, how to format things using align left, right, centre and justify, what columns are for, borders, tables, highlighting and font colour. He learnt loads from that little exercise and is very keen to learn more and do the report too. When we’ve done that, got the pond finished and written up and completed the last task of this lot which is ‘get creative’ for which they’ve both decided to make a fimo model of something wildlife-y we are ready to send off for the bronze award :).

Davies says he’s really enjoying it and feels like he’s learning loads about reading and writing. He said he knew most of the eco-friendly stuff already, which in fairness he did but agreed that covering it again makes him superconfident about it all and think more about how important it all is. He also said he wants to ‘delete all the stuff I don’t need in my head and use the space to learn more about reading and writing and stuff like that!’. He’s in a really creative and inventive phase again at the moment which is just so lovely to see and so very Davies :).

We had a pile of bedtime stories and then they went to bed. Scarlett went to sleep fairly quickly but Davies came back down to show me a PG Tips rocket he’d made by fixing the pg tips soft toy monkey that came free with teabags ages ago to a foam rocket using a roll of sellotape. He’d written PG on the sellotape and told me he’d decided that meant ‘positively great’ and explained how it was a sort of rocket powered teasmade. If nothing else he has a future coming up with the W&G contraptions of the future! ;).Which reminds me I really MUST get us booked on some of the science museum workshops and get up there to see the W&G contraptions display.

We had leftover roast beef too – cut thinly and served in pannini bread with mustard and red onions.

And now, would you look at that – it’s tomorrow again already!

Saturday morning I worked. I spent most of the morning photocopying pages out of books, ‘ageing’ them with used teabags and then stapling them to the wall. I cut out some calligraphy letters that I’d drawn on black paper (I got a calligraphy set for Christmas when I was a child and was really into it for a few years but hadn’t done any for years and years and quite enjoyed that) and finished my display on ‘stories from history’ which is full of those ‘my story’ books, titles like Carrie’s War, Anne Frank and various other children’s book set within historical periods or events. I’m really pleased with it, must take my camera in to work next week to get a picture of it.

I booked some display space for the children in March as one of the tasks in the Wildlife Action awards is a display. We need to decide exactly what the display is about and try and plan some art work for it. I’ve got a few ideas to put to the children so we might try and at least have a plan formed for that this week.

One of the things we noticed at Marcus and Michelle’s was how comprehensive their glassware and crockery collections were ;). We have always had a mix of stuff that we’ve collected over the years based on how much we can fit in our limited cupboard space and how much the kids and I (mostly me) have broken. I realised this week that although we had four wine glasses we didn’t have any other glasses to drink water out of with our meal and luckily we did have four of each plate / bowl for the three courses I’d planned for dinner but none of them matched. A look round the charity shops earlier in the week had made me plan to keep an eye open in there for nice glasses and crockery to see if we can build up a better collection. So yesterday with the last £2 we had I bought three red onions from the greengrocer and four glasses and a glass jug from one of the charity shops for a £1 :). We’ll make proper grown ups yet ;).

Back at home Ady and my Dad had gone to a house a few roads down to collect a sofa bed from a freecycler. One had come up just a few days after us deciding that was what we needed to put in the newly tidied and emptied playroom so is now a proper spare room with a bed for guests and a sofa for the kids to use when they’re in there. It was hardly ever used as a bed and is in pristine condition. It is more of a large single / small double but it fits perfectly and there is room for a single airbed / camping mat either side of it so we could easily put a family of four up in the playroom now, along with Scarlett’s bed and room for a double airbed / mat on her bedroom floor and probably about 10 people in Davies’ room. Feels like the house is adapting well to growing up children :).

I came home and we had lunch, I admired the playroom and then for some odd reason decided to tidy the cd tower in the lounge. It was very messy and packed full of cds all shoved in and in the wrong cases (ADY!!!!) so it now looks all organised and like a cd tower rather than a crap magnet (you know how I feel about them!). A little thing that noone else would probably ever notice. And clearly some sort of procrastination tactic given how much else I had to be getting on with!

So I finally got into the kitchen at about 3pm. I’d been agonising over the menu for the evening as Mike and Rose are vegetarians and I’m, well not. I know that some veggies get really fed up with being served meat dinner substitutes all the time – spag bol made with quorn mince or tofu and veggie sausages etc. so was determined not to do that and to make something nice that didn’t feel like it was missing an ingredient by virtue of not having meat.

I had a plan for the starter – that posh wedding we went to last year served red onion and cheese tarts for starter and I had some feta cheese I’d bought at Christmas and not used. So I made some pastry bases and baked them blind (well actually Scarlett did the baking blind bit – and most of the onion chopping too), while the onions caramelised. I cooked them for about an hour on a really low heat and then topped the pastry with onions and crumbled feta cheese and a sprinkling of herbs. I bunged them back in the oven for about 10 mins just before serving them for the cheese to melt. They were lovely but could have done with some sort of garnish.

Main course was pasta. After 3 very successful goes with the pasta machine it decided to not work 🙁 I had planned to make farfalle (little bows) which would mean just using the machine to roll the pasty very thin and then cutting and shaping by hand. But the machine just wouldn’t work, the rollers kept jamming and sticking and I ended up rolling most of it out with a rolling pin which gives a way thicker finish and then using the tagliatelle cutter instead. It was fine, but took about twice as long as I’d expected it to and I was getting really stressed. I served it with red pesto, herbs and oven roasted tomatoes. Ady thought it could have done with some other roasted veg as well. I thought it could have done with some bacon! Also made garlic, rosemary and parmesan flatbread to go with it.

Dessert was my Baileys and chocolate meringue cake as made on my birthday. It was as good a second time but was also time consuming to make. I was in the kitchen for about 3 and a half hours which I mostly enjoyed although the pasta debacle was a bit of a downer. It was worth it though, everything was prepared ready to shove in at the appropriate times so aside from nipping out to the kitchen a couple of times I was able to sit down with everyone (at the table ;)) and enjoy the evening in a relaxed manner while still feeling I’d made a really good meal :).

Davies and Ady did some serious room rearranging in Davies’ room while Tarly and I were in the kitchen including setting up a bed for Tarly and the TV / video in there for the evening. We’d said they could have a sleepover and watch telly as we were having friends over. Originally we’d said they could stay downstairs with us until we started eating but the room looked so enticing they chose to go up to bed early :).

They did come back down and Rose was taken on the grand tour to see both kids’ bedrooms and meet all Tarly’s soft toys :). Then they went back to bed and although we could hear them chatting and laughing it was actually a nice background noise and they went to sleep about 11pm. We were really proud of them and they had a great time and want more sleepovers :).

We continued to have a very pleasant evening. Interesting and funny conversation, we managed to drink 4 bottles of white wine, 2 bottles of red and a fair few bottles of beer between us and they left about 3am. I was very happy and buoyant last night – less so when I woke up this morning!

Today was by necessity a late start. Ady still got up fairly early, before the children (they got up at 830am) and cleared up while I slept in. He brought me tea at 930am which I couldn’t face and I finally got up just after 10am. I drank lots of tea, lots of water and ate lots of leftover garlic bread and started to feel human again.

The kids have DS’d, Scarlett did some painting, they both did loads of lego-ing. Davies wanted some star wars figures and a quick check online at prices convinced me to allow him to make his own with a black marker pen as he’d originally asked. So we now have a Darth Vadar and a C3PO – none of which means anything to me but I can see they are a good likeness from the front of the film case. We watched the dvd that comes with Do Try This at Home! which the kids enjoyed. We met one of the presenters at the car show and used to watch their show on Discovery Kids.

Davies found a mini bead kit he’d got at Eve and Rei’s 5th birthday party in a pass the parcel (quite how we managed to still have it and remember where it originated from I don’t know) so he and I made a bracelet for him to add to the growing collection on his arm that started with his green Wickstede armband that he still wears. I then found another bead kit that Tarly had – I think from a birthday present from someone – and she did loads of threading making necklaces, bracelets for her and I and a ‘toe bracelet’ that she worked hard on a repeating pattern on. I know she’s late to such things but it’s the first time she’s ever decided to do a pattern.

We probably did other things but I don’t recall them. I know Tarly spent a lot of time sitting on me!

Ady cooked a lovely roast beef late lunch which the kids devoured but I made rather less of a dent in. Very nice and plenty of leftover beef for tomorrow too :).

The kids had a bath and should have had a very early night but Davies suddenly came back downstairs in floods of tear saying he’d changed his mind about his bedroom and wanted everything put back how it was before :(. Bless him he was really upset, partially because he thought Ady would be cross / upset having spent so long up there with him yesterday moving everything around. We put his bed back to it’s previous position and will move the rest of it back tomorrow.

I had intentions of going to bed early to catch up but I don’t quite seem to have made it somehow…

It doesn’t get much better than that really does it? 🙂

I had intended to get up at a respectable time this morning but then Tarly woke just after 7am and was all shrieky and annoying long before I had woken up properly, drunk any caffiene or could infact see properly (I am as good as blind without my contact lenses) and as the cause of her volume was that she wanted me to help her find something it was testing all round.

I am so not a morning person anyway and I really do require gentle lulling to a state of consciousness. Birds singing sweetly (in a muted way), the smell of freshly baked bread drifting up the stairs from the kitchen, the distant sizzle of bacon cooking, perhaps the cheery whistle and clinking of bottles announcing the milkman going about his rounds, that sort of thing. Scarlett doing her very best haridan impression (learnt at her mother’s knee of course ;)) really isn’t going to cut it. I debated getting up then and staying in that frame of mind or going back to bed and trying again in an hour or so.

The going back to bed won! She went to watch telly and Davies, who had also been roused from his slumber by her came and had a cuddle with me in bed before drifting downstairs as I went back to sleep.

I assembled the various things we were taking to Ali’s – white bread for my picky son, pesto as Ali thought she might be deluding herself that she actually had some, pine nuts because I love them and can’t be sure other people have a proper supply, some conchilgli as we have a bit of a backlog of pasta here and some cows milk because I just can’t bear the thought of all those poor soya beans being crushed to death to extract their milk (and therefore depirving baby soya beans of extended breastfeeding) to put in my tea ;).

Then we headed off to Ali’s. We had a really lovely day there. The kittens were just gorgeous and lovely (and I had a really long sit on me from little Fidget), Scarlett had some good time with Freya DSing and kitten worshipping and then Davies had some time with Freya DSing, pixelchick-ing (an exercise for him in feigning an interest in something ;)) and xboxing – all very relaxed and harmonious 🙂 Scarlett got to do plenty of kitten loving and Davies and I made up poems about the kittens (Fidget, Fidget with the extra digits. Rawshack the kitty is very, very pretty!).

We ate – aswell as the food I’d brought (;)) there was very nice chocolate :).

But best of all there was delayed birthday celebrating for me :). Ali (who is too nice for her own good, but certainly nice enough for the good of others, specifically ME today!) had done me a series of challenges on silver cards just like the ones Ant and Dec read out nominations for winners of things off of.

First I had to translate some French. This was timely as I’d been boasting I could do it earlier and made an attempt at something Ali had emailed to her. Reading ‘Happy Birthday. You are a good friend and your present is…. a bottle of wine’ was all within my vocab. Odd how ‘birthday’ ‘friend’ ‘present’ and ‘wine’ were all words I instantly recognised ;).

Next I had to identify the song containing various lyrics such as ‘pink carnation’, ‘book of love’ and a couple more. The prize was to listen to and sing along with said song. So Ali, Davies, Scarlett, Freya and I all got up and sang and danced for the full 8 minutes and 32 seconds of joy that is American Pie. It was ace. Totally what one should be doing on a Friday lunchtime -honestly these folk off and work and school have no idea what they’re mising ;).

Finally the children acted out a film for me to guess (Wallace and Gromit) and I was presented with a voucher to go and watch a film of my choice with Ali, Freya, Davies and Scarlett AT THE CINEMA, in the next six months :).

It was so ace, I felt very special and birthday-ish, thanks lovely mate 🙂 xxx

We came home and on the way had a bit of a ‘listen to and discuss’ about Mr Blue Sky by ELO and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer by The Beatles.

Ady was home not long after us, the kids had tea and then Scarlett and I went off to Rainbows. They did brass rubbings tonight which was quite good. Scarlett managed to fall over and bang the back of her head quite spectacularly which needed a good few minutes sitting on my lap sobbing into my shoulder to rectify. Honestly, every time we get close to her agreeing for me to not sit in for the session something like that happens which reminds both of us that we’d rather it was me there to cuddle her than anyone else. I wonder if I’ll feel the need to go to nightclubs with her incase she gets drunk and maudlin after drinking too many southern comforts and feels the need to sob in the loo towards the end of the evening like I used to? Was that really me?

I was accosted by a woman there with her newly started Rainbow who claimed to know me from somewhere and did indeed know I had an older boy but I honestly can’t recall ever seeing her before ever. She reminded me a lot of Gail who came to the last Kessingland (and Legoland actually) and was Very Intense.

On the way home Tarly and I chatted about one of the girls who always talks over everyone else at ‘show and tell’. Scarlett was saying this was really rude and inconsiderate of others and I said she should practise a firm, assertive voice and feel free to say ‘Excuse me, I am talking now’ if it bothered her. We then talked about a couple of girls who are Best Friends there and how they do the same, talking over others and being all giggly. Scarlett said ‘they go to school together and I bet they sit next to each other all the time in the classroom’. I agreed and said that lots of children get to know each other in school and then take those friendships outside of school too. I was then overcome with guilt at not providing this social opportunity for my darling daughter and said ‘if you ever wanted to go to school so you could be part of the gang and get to do all that you know you could baby don’t you?’ to which she laughed and said ‘that’s just ANOTHER reason not to go to school!’ 😆 Go Tarly!

For bedtime stories we read Uneversaurus and No Dinner!: The Story of the Old Woman and the Pumpkin.

Dinner today was pizza for Davies, Ady and I. Scarlett had a serving of pesto pasta with pine nuts at Ali’s and decided she does like pine nuts after all so requested the same again for dinner and ate the lot.

I worked all day.

There is a new girl at work – actually there are two new girls but I’ve not met the other one yet. The one I have met seems nice enough, very library-ish.

I did storytime today, it was busy with 18 children and 18 adults and the kids were all very frisky and lively. I got them to do lots of singing and lots of action songs like heads, shoulders, knees and toes and only read two stories which I encouraged shouting out during.

I got really pissed off at the return of 4 of my request to buy for the library service books as they are ‘teachers resource books’. There is a very comprehensively stocked schools library service which is not open to Home Educators. I know other ones around the country are and I am half tempted to make a big fuss about how *my* children are being denied books from the council by not attending school and not being given access to them otherwise. But I suspect I would be successful and then have to be registered in some way and brand myself as a trouble maker and become ‘that mad home educating woman at Lancing library’. So I contained my ranting to my immediate colleagues instead who probably all went up to the staff room to talk about me afterwards! It does also annoy me that the subject in question (they were all philosophy and critical thinking books about big questions such as Does God Exist and Is There Life After Death?) is considered one that should be taught in schools and not at home by parents anyway though quite aside from the HE side of things. Surely parents get asked these sorts of questions by their kids regardless of whether they are in school or not, and surely parents would like to be able to borrow books to assist with talking these things through? Grrr

Feeling very militant about all our parenting rights being eroded this week after the swimming pool little boy, the having to make Tarly’s hair tidy and now the philosophy is the teachers domain with your children, not the parents. Or maybe I’m being sensitive?

I helped a woman with her CV – she was trying to print it from the body of an email and the pc kept crashing (unrelated) so I helped her format it into a presentable document, she was very grateful :). I sent a fax of 17 pages to Canada for someone at a massive cost of £34. He was very excited as it was all his documents to get a working visa to go out there :). I spent some time photocopying pages and photographs out of a load of books and then ageing the print with old teabags ready for a display on ‘stories from history’ I’m doing on Saturday. I did a hard sell on someone who rang up about reading groups and she is coming along to ours next week and I picked up a huge pile of new books for us to read at bedtime as we’ve been on a bit of a non-fiction kick and sometimes just plain old stories are the best :).

Ady was on a course today for intermediate level excel. He seemed to enjoy it and said he learnt a bit. He was more enthusiastic about the welcome tea and posh biscuits, three course sit down lunch and afternoon tea and cakes though :lol:.

Mum was here all day with Davies and Scarlett. They watched Wallace and Gromit from Christmas, Scarlett took delivery of a parcel containing a soft toy that sings a song (Davies said my Mum put up with it for about ten minutes before banning her from playing it anymore! :lol:) and they did some more birdwatching. The pictures are excellent but unfortunately my Mum’s ability to use the bird book to identify them seems a bit sketchy. Davies had labelled one of his as raven, which is highly unlikely in this part of the country and far more likely to be a crow or jackdaw. They had both done really good pictures of what they’d labelled as ‘winter gulls’ but some investigation showed them to actually be black headed gulls in their winter plumage. I rolled my eyes a fair bit about that :rolls:

Mum and Davies had gone through the W&G calendar she’d got him for Christmas and Davies’ had written in all the family’s birthdays. Not sure what else they got up to but it all seemed to go okay.

I got home shortly after Ady and caught up with the children while Ady heated up their pheasant casserole. Scarlett really liked it and ate most of hers. Davies didn’t like the sauce although he said he liked the pheasant meat so he picked at it and then had some bread and butter and ketchup (nice!) at which point Scarlett suddenly declared she didn’t like hers actually either and wanted bread and butter and ketchup too. Davies said he’d have the pheasant again cooked without a sauce so at least we’re still explanding what they’ll eat.

They got to pick two books each from the pile and went for Storm Cats, Emily Brown and the Thing, The Catnapping Cat and Ordinary Oscar.

Bed for them, curry for us and I am very excited that we have arranged to collect a sofa bed from a freecycler to put in the playroom meaning we have a proper spare bedroom for guests now. So roll up and book your stay :).

Way back in about November I sent off for a load of free stuff from the RSPB.We’d done the Climate Action Awards one afternoon and I’d found details of the Wildlife Action Awards too so in with the free stuff I ordered the manual for that. It’s been sat around ever since waiting for me to have a proper look through it.

So this morning, as another day of not a lot stretched ahead of us I dug it out and read through it, then sat and read through it again with the children. Basically it is split into 4 sections and you have to choose at least one activity from each section each time. I think there are 22 activities in all and you need to do 6 for the bronze award, another 6 for the silver and a further 6 for the gold, so 18 in total. They are all fairly involved and require some sort of ‘evidence’ of having completed them by way of pictures, report and so on.

We’ve been through and chosen 18 to do in total and then I split them into 3 lots to ensure there was variety in each task to work through. The plan is to take it slowly and keep it enjoyable, I don’t at any stage want it to feel like work, boring or ‘for the sake of it’. Loads of it, infact pretty much all is stuff we already do: recycling, composting, feeding the birds, creating a wildlife pond so a lot of it is going to be labour intensive in terms of creating some sort of evidence that we are doing it. I could easily do it all for them in the role of ‘teacher’ but that is not really the aim.

I’ve split it so that there is a mix of activities to do, at least one big task in each group of six and it won’t all be sitting down doing writing. Some of it is really cool such as make a display about wildlife so I will book display space at the library for them for that. There is also things like ‘write to your MP’ which Davies has been wanting to do for a while about the alleyways near us and the state of them, ‘get in the paper’ where they suggest a big wildlife friendly event that you send a press release to the local paper and hope they cover – I’m aiming to tie those in together with ‘litter collecting’ and we’ll go armed with bin bags and gloves and collect all the litter from the alleys ourselves, hope for the local paper to cover it and write to the MP about it all at the same time. Both the children have more than a bit of ‘eco warrier’ about them anyway so this is feeding into their passions nicely.

So today we started with birdwatching once we’d gone through and planned which activities they are going to do. The requirement was to sketch any birds you saw on a birdwatching session and then try to identify them from a bird book. Our chosen joining gift from the RSPB last year was a British birds book- RSPB Handbook of British Birds – so armed with that and some new pencils and pens from Christmas we sat at the table looking out of the window spotting birds.

In the tree outside our window we have a pair of nesting wood pigeons. I had thought they were collared doves but careful identification from the children with the book showed them to be wood pigeons. They both drew a picture of them and we watched them for a while darting in and out of the tree and up to the lampost where they landed and canoodled for a while :).

Tarly did a really good one – she often draws birds anyway so it took the form of her standard bird and then she coloured it according to the pigeons colourings. She didn’t need any help with forming the letters and Davies read them out to her from the book.
She then decided to go a gull that we could see gliding about too and we decided was a Herring Gull. Again she drew it and just had the letters dictated to her:

She wasn’t completely happy with the size of the head in relation to the body but she’d done the body in relation to the wood pigeon and ran out of room for a head in proportion. 😆

Davies’ took a slightly different form as he tried to draw it while watching them dart around and he said afterwards he wasn’t that happy with it’s shape, particularly it’s head. I drew one aswell and he and I spent quite a bit of time discussing colour blending and shading and he used some different techniques on his to try and get irridescence and feather effects. He then wrote ‘wood pigeon’ from memory, after he’d closed the book up and spelt it out to himself as he went 😯 He even stopped to say ‘that spells PIG’ and then ‘now it says PIGE’ as he did it. He then decided he wanted to label it to show how we’d indentified it (I had labelled mine) and he wrote ‘green and white collar’ with very minimal help from me (I agreed after he suggested each letter for green and told him he needed the h in white but he worked out he needed an e at the end to make the i an i all by himself.). He then wanted to write ‘yellow beak’ but found yellow in the book on a yellow legged gull we’d been looking at and just checked with me the spelling of beak as he thought it would be ‘beek’.

He seems to have exploded into literacy suddenly and read a text message on my phone pretty much entirely earlier this week and is doing lots of sounding things out and helping Scarlett with reading and writing stuff on her DS. Clearly I could go on about this for four pages of blogposts but suffice to say it is amazing to watch, even more amazing to see how it all seems to have really clicked and how much he is enjoying it :).

We’ve decided to try and spot, draw and identify five birds (should be easy, we see various gulls, starlings, tits, blackbirds and robins in our garden regularly) and then create a dossier of them to send in for completing that task.

The other task we are considering done, and is worth double points, is creating a wildlife pond as we have already done that at the allotment. We looked through the pictures we already have of before and after and will take some more along with a bucket of existing pondwater to transfer some microlife in and some pond plants (all raided from Grandad’s pond, maybe this weekend) and then write up a bit about it all.

That alone puts them halfway towards their bronze 🙂

All of this took no more that about an hour and a half but there we were, sat at the table, pens in hand learning stuff and doing spelling and writing and it all felt very dangerously as though there should be one of those world maps above our heads. The table hasn’t yet become a crap magnet (empty as I type :)) but it does seem to have brought in some sort of tabley education with it, curse it 😉 😆

I’d casually said to my Mum that we’d be home today if she wanted to come over and have me finish her CV for her but didn’t really expect her to. But she rang late morning to check it would be okay and brought some lunch over with her. So while the children got back to the serious business of DSing – current favourite games are Left or Right: Ambidextrous Challenge (Nintendo DS), Paint By DS (Nintendo DS) and Build A Bear (Nintendo DS) – Mum and I sat at the table and I finished off her CV for her and emailed it to Ady to print off for her. We also did some looking for jobs online and then I found her details of Vision2Learn for some free computer and IT courses that she could be doing to improve her computer skills as I think most jobs she would like to apply for will require a higher level of computer literacy than she currently has. She went away very happy and even booked for her, I and the children to go to the Ice Show next Friday night on the spur of the moment :).

I cooked the kids’ tea – toad in the hole. They both were not keen on the sausages – decent ones with herbs in and suggested they would like it with frankfurters next time. Personally the idea sounds revolting to me but if they think they’ll like it I’m happy to give it a go for them. Davies did ask if I could make my own frankfurters but I said I thought it might be tricky! 😆 They got ready for Badgers, I plaited Tarly’s hair as there have been several comments about her hair from the leader (along with comments about them not wearing coats, having ‘minds of their own’ and other things which I am proud of them for but possibly make them stand out from the crowd ;)). Ady arrived home in time to come with us, handed over the freshly printed CVs to my Mum (oh the good daughter points I got for that :)) and we all left together.

Davies says he learnt about kitchen safety and washing your hands – so I’m guessing they covered health and hygiene today. Scarlett is making a pretend first aid box from paper so was telling us it was green with white crosses on it. Ady and I had a walk in the dark for the hour which was nice and we got him a Superman t shirt for £2 in Ethel Austin so now all four of us have one 🙂 – of course that probably proves Syndrome’s theory that when everyone is super, no one will be 😆

Home for toad in the hole for us and now I really must go to bed as I’ve got work in the morning.

Started the day with tea (I’ve been boiling the kettle once and then filling the camping flask for hot water for the rest of the day – working well and very green :)), chicken whispering and child feeding. I also made up a batch of bread dough , some of which I cut off for pizza for the kids’ tea later, the rest made a loaf which they both declared very nice although they claim to still want sliced white bread bought aswell. Will carry on working on that one then.

Tasha and Toby came over, her partner was off work so stayed at home with Vinnie. We’ve not seen them since before Christmas due to illness from them and us so it was nice to catch up. Davies, Scarlett and Toby disappeared upstairs to play but Scarlett came down after about half an hour in tears saying ‘they aren’t being very nice to me and I want Toby to go home’. She was easily placated and ended up staying downstairs chatting to Tasha and I and doing painting at the table instead. She was very funny and had us in fits of laughter with some of her Scarlett-isms, typically none of which I can remember now.

She did make me laugh by her original complaint which was they weren’t letting her be a seagull in the game. I asked what they were playing and she said ‘Ben 10 Star Wars’ as though that was an accepted phenomena. Quite why a seagull would be in that I don’t know, but I guess there is no reason why one wouldn’t given the queer combination of sci-fi several decades apart.

I sat and knitted some squares. I bought several single balls of wool from the shop in Helmsley with no real idea of what I might do with them but inspired by a couple of blankets / throws at Michelle’s I decided to knit lots of squares to sew together. Due to my irregular knitting it will be various shapes and sizes of ‘squares’ as well as various colours and textures – will either look cool and funky or very odd. Either way it should keep me warm :).

At 3ish we all left together and we headed off to swimming lessons. First one back after Christmas for us as we missed last weeks. Davies wanted to go in the big pool while Tarly had her lesson but I didn’t want him to as he’s out of practise and often knocks himself out in the big pool, gets a stitch and then isn’t at his best for his lesson afterwards. I relented after a while and he had about ten minutes in there just before his lesson.

Tarly’s lesson has changed with loads of new starters in it. She was at the top end this week and I really hope she gets moved up soon. It was a perfect illustration of why groups are a crap place to learn anything as even though they are all ‘non swimmers’ the scope of skill is vast. Scarlett was at the top end, totally confident, pretty much swimming but getting bored through lack of a challenge or any real attention. At the other end were the ones who needed help just to get into the water. I can so see how the children with plenty of ability either get bored and lose it or certainly don’t gain anything while the ones at the bottom end get disheartened and hurried along. I don’t think anyone gains from that environment yet it is one I recall being in daily at school.

The saddest thing though was the tiny boy, who must have been just five who had to be coaxed into the water, complete with swimming noodle and arm bands and just stood, face to the edge sobbing his heart out for the entire 30 minutes. The coach, the lifeguard and eventually his mother who was summoned down from the spectator area complete with tiny baby in a sling tried cajoling, encouraging and finally losing patience with the poor child. What they didn;t do and what I was itching to do myself was to help him out of the water, give him a big cuddle and apologise for putting him in a situation he clearly wasn’t ready for, get him dried, dressed and home and wait until he actually wanted to learn to swim. I would imagine the only thing he was learning was a dislike and even a fear of the water along with a feeling of embarrasment, being sad and not being listened to. 🙁 Made me feel very sad indeed 🙁 .

Back home again for tidying up of Davies’ room for the children while I cooked their tea. Tonight they had pizza as we were having a pheasant casserole (a la Hugh!) and Ady had yet to deal with the pheasants. They will have their portion of that tomorrow lunchtime.

Instead of stories we read Doomed Ships – Shipwrecks, Ghost Ships and Abandoned Vessels (Adventures in the Real World) which was interesting but one of those books with lots of text boxes and illustrations with notes which make it hard to actually read aloud to someone else. We need to get some more stories actually, all the books we’ve been borrowing lately have been reference rather than fiction.

They went to bed, Ady and I had our very delicious casserole (I think my favourite pheasant dish so far, we have a freezerful of them so need to find plenty of variety of things to do with them) and the evening just seemed to disappear.

Today was supposed to be Pulborough Brooks day. We’ve not made it for quite a while – I know December was the day after France so we didn’t get there and today we were supposed to be taking Tasha, Toby and Vinnie with us too. But I staggered out of bed just before 9am (I didnt get to sleep til gone 3am somehow?) and had to wake Davies who was still very pale. When I asked them both children said they’d rather not go and just stay home instead. So I text Tasha and arranged to see them tomorrow instead.

I was actually a bit disappointed; I’ve not seen Tasha for a while, I knew Julie was going and I’ve not seen her either since cancelling seeing them last week due to Tarly being ill plus there was at least one new family planning on going and I like meeting new people. I also quite like the fresh air and exercise for all three of us that the walk offers. But I decided to be a responsible parent (for once) and not drag a coughing child round outside. It turned out to be the right decision as it started raining about half an hour later and didn’t really stop all day. Julie left a message on the answerphone to say they’d got soaked there so I’m glad we gave it a miss.

Davies and Scarlett were doing that threes a crowd thing over the weekend with Chloe – Davies was tired and being hard work so Tarly jumped into the breach and was very happy to have Chloe all to herself. They both got a chat from me about that yesterday and today were back to being bestest friends and played together all day long with barely a cross word. I had warned them that if we were having yet another enforced day at home they had better ensure it was a harmonious one and they pulled it off really well.

They played DS for a while and I think Lego star wars was a favourite then they played with the lego and recreated it all. Most of the lego collection is stuff Frazer and I had as children and it’s odd to watch D and S sitting playing with it in fairly similar ways to how we used to. That got put away and they asked to watch Star Wars so I let them put that on while I went to do some baking – cheese scones for lunch and some flapkjack just because I’ve not made it for ages and a chocolate chip cakey / biscuity tray bake too.

The film went off and they got out the geomags to make all the characters and carry on a game which seemed loosely based on the film but with the usual D and S style additions.

I decided to have some productive time and complete a few of the tasks still kicking around from last weeks bout of efficiency so I finished shredding the last of the paperwork (now have four bin liners of shredded paper to use as chicken bedding). This was very theraputic as I came across both sets of school place application forms. No idea why I kept them at all but they were both there. I also found pin numbers for all the credit cards we used to have.

I then tackled what is my least favourite householdy task and put away the mammoth pile of clean washing. This included some stuff from being away at the weekend and to my shame some of the washing from after Helmsley that never quite made it to being put away. All clear now though :). I also stuck two loads through and got the first hung up to dry so that all felt very productive.

While I was doing this first Scarlett and then Davies got out their paints. They are really good at putting away what they have finished with first before getting out the next thing. This makes a real difference to my enthusiasm for them getting stuff out in the first place as I now have confidence they will put it away again after themselves rather than me ending up either nagging or doing it myself. I’m not sure whether this has dawned on them or persistent nagging has finally drilled it into them to just do it in the first place! It also helps having the playroom so sorted as everything is accessible to them to get out as and when they please :).

They both did some nice painting – really must sit and do some with them next time, I love painting 🙂

Then it was time for their dinner. It is well documented that Ady and I eat late, I have always eaten late even when still living at home and when first together Ady and I between us worked 4 nights out of 7 til 8pm so dinner time was always at least 9pm. Davies when he first started eating dinners had a 5pm dinnertime which has only really gotten slightly later as he and Scarlett have got older. Ady and I enjoy eating together, just the two of us as a social / reconnecting / still Nic and Ady not just Mummy and Daddy type thing of an evening after the kids are in bed. I am really reluctant to lose that just yet particularly given I sit and eat lunch with the children and they have a sociable dinnertime together the two of them anyway.

It does mean though that we’ve always had two different meals happening and now the children are getting older and are willing to try new foods without it being a big deal or a battle I think it’s time to start introducing them to the dinners we eat rather than the more traditional kiddie-fayre they have been eating. Retrospectively it was probably time a long while ago or maybe even from the beginning but starting now is fine :).

So my plan is to either feed them what we are having later, or a version thereof, if it is feasible to cook a portion for them and then do ours later. Some dinners will be possible to cook for their dinnnertime and either keep warm or reheat later for Ady and I and some will be better cooked for Ady and I with leftovers kept for them for the following day.

So today was salmon fillets. Ady and I had it with mini roast potatoes in their skins with rosemary, and peas. Neither of the children likes frozen or indeed cooked peas (happily eat them raw out of the pods in season though) and I didn’t want to present them with a completely unfamiliar plate of food so they had salmon fillets with potatoe smiley faces. They both ate the lot and loved the salmon so next time I will do them different potatoes too to try knowing they will eat the salmon anyway. This isn’t designed to be some big battleground or turn into something that could give them food issues / potential eating problems. More about expanding their food tastes, letting them try new things and just broadening their horizons a bit. Not to mention hopefully being a bit cheaper. Next stage will be to get them more involved in the planning and eventually cooking of the food too – we talked about where the salmon came from, what cut it was and how I cooked and seasoned it. I’m looking forward to them trying things like (mild) curry, tacos and fajitas and some of our other favourite meals :).

Bedtime stories were Wheels Keep Turning (Wonderwise)
, Traction Man Meets Turbodog
and various random facts from How Much Poo Does an Elephant Do?

Ady and I had our salmon and entertained ourselves with some Gavin and Stacey, some Masterchef and then two rounds on a Telly Adicts DS game he’d found – he won them both!

Some social stuff it would be nice to get together for if anyone is interested 🙂

May 8th/9th/10th
It’s the Sustainability Centre’s Green Fair on Sunday 10th May. Last year we camped there Friday and Saturday night and packed up Sunday evening after the fair. I’ve provisionally booked to do the same this year.
It doesn’t cost anything to book although I suspect they will be fairly limited on spaces and camping is cheap there. Been as you are on the site already you then don’t pay to get into the fair either.
Weather permitting – and if it’s rubbish we won’t bother doing it – it is a lovely weekend :).

July 6th – 12th ish
We’re planning on camping on Shell Island for the week with a day trip to CAT which is an hour’s drive away. Shell Island isn’t bookable so no cost involved in planning to go but if you want to join us for CAT then I need to try and gather numbers to organise a group booking and find out about discounts.

July 24th, 25th & 26th
Kelmark Festival of History is the weekend of 26th/26th. We’ll plan to stay at Wicksteed again and do Wicksteed itself on the Friday as we did last year. I need to swap that Saturday with someone at work but as soon as I’ve got that confirmed I will probably book the campsite as last year it got filled up.

September 7th-13th
We’re planning, again weather permitting, to go to the Sustainability Centre for the week. I’ll do another trip to Butser and possibly the campcrafts if I can get it organised properly in time. Camping at the centre doesn’t need to be paid for in advance so will be a bit weather permitting but Butser is within an hour from us so if anyone is wobbling about booking that we are more than happy to have house guests if we don’t camp for that week and do Butser from here instead.

30th November – 4th December
Christmas at Helmsley? I’ve not checked price or availability at Helmsley but you can’t book without deposit anyway and if Helmsley’s not available then I’d find a different hostel for that week. We will need to get deposits (tenner a head should be fine) in for that asap really to make sure we have that secured although balance won’t be due until much later in the year (October time). Em – are you happy to be finance manager?

Other stuff
I’m planning a day trip to the British Wildlife Centre where we had a fab day out last year. They are open to school / educational groups during term time where you book the whole place. The ‘keepers’ are knowledgable, interested and full of facts and it’s a fab place to pretty much guarantee a closeup look at loads of UK animals you don’t always see in the wild. I think it is near enough for some of you to come to a day trip for and we would always be happy for houseguests – it’s about an hour from us. I’ve not offered it on the local list yet so we could try and fill it ourselves – minimum number is 20, maximum 90 and price is £5 per person.
It would be from 10am-2pm and I’d want to arrange it on a Monday, Thursday or Friday probably, Wednesday at a push (thinking of Helen?). As it outside I was thinking March or poss April.

Anyone interested?

Cos I’ve been waiting for you and I just know whoever gets there first will mean the other one doesn’t bother with such a comprehensive account! 😉

Friday Was back to work for me. Ady was home in the morning, Frazer came over at lunchtime and Dad came over mid afternoon so Davies and Scarlett had a three tiered childcare arrangement for the day. Not at all sure what they did but the house was fairly tidy which was good :).

Work was fine – I had baby rhyme time in the morning which was quiet – only 8 babies and we had a bit of a frosty theme to it – I quite like the idea of introducing new songs every now and then. By lunchtime I was feeling worn out though and starting to wonder if perhaps I had been ill through the week and not realised as I’d done a fair bit of sitting around on the sofa and stayed in all week too – far from my usual gallivanting week.

I did a display in the afternoon – New Years Resolutions. The library is playing host – starting point and finishing point with refreshments to a new local initiative called Take A Walk which is guided, graded walks taking in the local scenery. This was a fairly small group – I think there was six of them, all older people but the idea was quite appealing so I got chatting to the organiser about whether she would welcome children along. She was incredibly enthusiastic and knew all about ‘Educating Otherwise’ as she called it having met HEors before. I’ve had a peep at the programme and will try and get along to something in the next few weeks. I think it would be interesting for me and the kids and provide us with a different outlook on some of the local sights aswell as a way of meeting new and interesting people we wouldn’t usually cross paths with. 🙂

My car had needed loads of deicing in the morning and at just 5pm when I went out to it in the carpark it was completely iced over again so I sat for nearly 10 minutes which the windscreen defrosted. De-icer in cans just doesn’t seem to do the job like it used to…

I got home about 520pm and somehow managed to make toast for Tarly, dash round and pack up clothes and toiletries for me, Scarlett and Davies (Ady had packed his own), get important things like wine and lemon meringue pies ready in the kitchen for Ady to pack up, persuade Scarlett to get into her Rainbows top and find something to take for show and tell.

Ady arrived home and took over feeding Davies and loading up the car just in time for Tarly and I to dash round to Rainbows. We were slightly late which was great as it meant I escaped paying subs. I know that is awful and of course I will pay next week but it means I can put that tenner into my car as petrol for next week instead.

The activity was colouring in paper dolls to be put on the wall for this terms display which they all did in super quick time so there was loads of time for the girls to get the toys out. There are skipping ropes, hula hoops, balls and stuff for them to play with. I ended up surrounded by small girls asking me to count their skips, play catch with them and so on, which really pisses Scarlett off as she is very clear about why I am sitting there and it is not, in her opinion, to be interacting with other children! Fortunately I share this opinion with her so am always very pleased when she finds a way of snatching my attention back. This time is was decided to push her way through the crowd to sit on my lap and demand a cuddle from ‘MY’ Mumma. 😆 My Dad always says that kids and animals always flock to people who ignore them and I rather think he is right.

Ady and Davies were supposed to collect us so we could head straight off but after standing outside for five minutes and already feeling like we were getting frost bite we walked home to find them still here faffing about. :rolls:

We managed to be away by 20 past 7 though and despite ridiculously cold temperatures – most of the way we were getting an external temp reading of -5 on the car dashboard, it dipped at one point to -7 – and Ady moaning about the grit spray on the windscreen and insisting on trying to wash it with the water on the wipers which just kept freezing, and really thick patches of fog, and warnings on the radio traffic reports and the overhead motorway signs of traffic and delays – we managed to arrive in bang on 2 hours just as the SatNav had expected :). Really straightforward journey.

Fantastic welcome to Mich, Marcus and Chloe’s gorgeous house :). Wine, snacks, smells of lovely food cooking, guided tour including having a wine soaking hug from Michelle in her bedroom! 😉 The house is just lovely, really homely, comfortable, steeped in history and charm and somehow spacious and cosy all at the same time. I felt very at home there 🙂

We had food, suddenly realised it was way past midnight and I think the children went up to bed about 1am. There is some sort of time black hole there though as whole two hour periods slip away in what feels like about ten minutes. Some of us went to bed quite late 😳

Saturday was therefore a slow start. Davies and Scarlett were still really getting over having been rough all week and were coughing aplenty and looking all pale, wan and cracked lipped. I’m sure tiredness didn’t help. We had a lovely brunch and did plenty of slobbing about which is what I’m sure most of us would have happily continued doing but Marcus galvanised us into action and we eventually headed out to Stockwood Discovery Centre. A fabulous FREE (so totally in budget!) museum and gardens.

We admired the carriages, sat in the ones we were allowed to (Mich and I decided there were plusses and minuses to various modes of transport of ladies), had a go at pedal powering the train round it’s track and worked our way outside. The drive there had been so beautiful (realised just how beautiful today when we did the same drive in thawed out conditions and it was all mundane and boring roads) with frost and ice coating everything for a real winter wonderland look. The grounds were the same and as it is tree filled it all looked very pretty and magical and Narniaesque.

The kids had a play on the various play stuff there but poor Tarly managed to stand up too quickly when there wasn’t enough room and crack her head on a lump of wood. The lump that came up on her head was the biggest I think I’ve ever seen on either of my children, it truly did look like a small egg, and she had cut the skin too so there was a little blood. She was very brave and didn’t cry for long or make much of a fuss really. I did offer to scoop up some ice from the ground to put on it so I was a very caring mother ;). Michelle reassured me that lumps are better out than in. I wondered later if that was one of her famous ‘say it with confidence and it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or even if you believe it yourself, other people will’ statements but Tarly seemed fine :).

The kids had a play on the various play stuff there but poor Tarly managed to stand up too quickly when there wasn’t enough room and crack her head on a lump of wood. The lump that came up on her head was the biggest I think I’ve ever seen on either of my children, it truly did look like a small egg, and she had cut the skin too so there was a little blood. She was very brave and didn’t cry for long or make much of a fuss really. I did offer to scoop up some ice from the ground to put on it so I was a very caring mother ;). Michelle reassured me that lumps are better out than in. I wondered later if that was one of her famous ‘say it with confidence and it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or even if you believe it yourself, other people will’ statements but Tarly seemed fine :).

There were various interesting things to look at including an air raid shelter complete with siren. It must be from hearing it on TV but air raid sirens always have this deep effect of getting my heart racing and making me feel really panicked.I can hear shouts and smell fear and hear running footsteps and children calling out and everything alongside the sirens. There were also four hens who seemed very hungry and thirsty and their water had more or less frozen over. We gave them some frost which they pecked up to drink and later Tarly and I got seperated from the others briefly and found a courtyard with a squirrel raiding a bird feeder and scattering seed so we scooped up a couple of handfuls and took it back to the chickens.

It’s a really cool place, loads to see, plenty of interactive displays and if we weren’t so cold I’m sure we’d have stayed longer. We got plenty out of it even so and would definitely go there again if we were in the area. Marcus and Chloe went ahead so missed out on the self timer opportunity 🙂

There was a geocached in the park outside the centre so we set off to find that. It was allegedly 300 metres away which turned into a further 300 metres and the temperature (and daylight) was rapidly dropping.We all debated turning back but in the end all seven of us carried on and found the spot from where the clue directed us. After a false start as to where north was we think we found the area but couldn’t find the cache :(.

It was beautiful but incredibly cold and Michelle and I rapidly lost interest and led the way back to the car. We were offered the house keys to go ahead and let ourselves in as Michelle needed diesel but declined and followed them instead. This meant we joined them on the double the distance detour over hills and past fields. It was very pretty and we thought either Michelle was leading us the scenic route or petrol stations were few and far between but realised later it was a wrong turning 😆
Davies requested to listen to Court of King Caractacus but we didn’t have it in Ady’s car so we sang it instead. Followed by Two little boys and then American Pie. It was a slightly abridged version of the latter ;).

Once back at The Manor we took sherry which seemed only fitting :).

Marcus produced yet another delicious meal, unfortunately although Scarlett found enough on offer to sate her hunger Davies didn’t and by that time was tired, hungry, feeling the cold and rather miserable. He’d decided to slip into the victim, oh woe is me role and was in turn making me feel guilty and irritated. He did rally in the end with the aid of an Old El Paso tortilla wrap and the bits he liked from a lemon meringue pie and all was well once more :).

Another lovely, late but not as late as the night before, evening with more chatting, drinking and playing I’ll name that tune.

Sunday Another leisurely start to the day with chocolate croissants, bacon, sausage and egg. As an aside we were so very well looked after, it was easily the best catered for I’ve ever been with a good solid diet of carbs and meat with the vegetables on the side so I can eat or leave as I choose without causing offence. Late dinners totally in line with our eating habits and my own semi-acceptance of tables meant M&M really were the perfect hosts in my opinion :). No idea if this is careful research and planning or very happy coincidence but either way I was very happy!

After some fraughtness and further being his own worst enemy-ness from Davies Ady did what he does best (well one of his many skills really ;)) and spent some time playing with all 3 children together, before quietly withdrawing which meant that everyone parted on good terms. We did some diary coordinating and finally after about 3 one last cups of tea’s we set off.

The journey home was just as straightforward as there and we were home in just under 2 hours. The children ate and had baths, we watched a cuckoo programme which was really interesting, followed by something on Animal Planet and then they headed off to bed. Not to sleep mind you – I heard Davies talking to Ady when he went up to bed at 1030 and Scarlett was in and out of her room for ages too. We watched the show about animals swarming with DT being Scottish in his narration which was really interesting and I’m cursing flickr for it’s slowness in not having uploaded all my photos so I can publish this in it’s fully illustrated state.

It’s been an odd week. I was so looking foward to getting back in the swing of things again after Christmas but with Scarlett being ill we’ve been housebound instead. She is fine today, all but completely back to normal although she had two seperate bloody lip incidents – both by Davies and both ‘accidental’. The first was when they were playing up in his bedroom with some Ben 10 characters and he threw one which hit her in the mouth. They were both adamant it was an accident but it made her already sore and cracked lip bleed a little.
Later there was a table related incident which I didn’t quite get to the bottom of but Davies was very contrite and she was sure he hadn’t hurt her on purpose but her top lip made contact with the edge of the table having been pushed by him and bled, quite profusely.
Bloody table ;).

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, days at home feel quite odd. I have been very productive and got lots done, the children have played with loads of toys from the playroom, done loads of DSing (together, it is a very sociable activity at the moment with them as they are connecting lots and helping each other through the games) but if I’m home I tend to have one of two default states; sitting on the sofa with my laptop and a cup of tea or being busy in the kitchen doing baking / laundry. Either way I tend not to be particularly accessible or ‘with’ the children. Whereas when we are out and about we seem to chat and interact more with each other. We are so not Home Educators, we are far more Gallivanting Educators :).

Today I gave myself a job list as I had various things I wanted to get done. I went through the freezers in the garage, chucked some stuff out and did an inventory. We have £20 for the rest of this week and next so I made a list of all the food we already had, a list of what else we needed to make dinners and worked out a shopping list for our budget.

I did some laundry processing but not as much as I’d aimed for as there are still two towering piles of clean stuff to be put away.

I made a couple of lemon meringue pies as promised to take with us this weekend :).

At their request I made home made pizza for Davies’ tea and home made pasta for Scarlett’s. I’m thinking of asking them to call me ‘Mumma Mia’ rather than just ‘Mumma’ 🙂

We had a visit to the supermarket where Davies read all the items on my shopping list (it was only things like eggs, milk and bread but there is a definite leap) and we discussed some of our shopping choices including free range eggs when Davies pointed out how much cheaper the value ones were and I explained that was because they were from caged hens. We buy cheap white sliced bread (I don’t eat sandwiches, only toast and it all tastes the same when it’s toasted!) and they said Granny and Grandad had said our bread was cheap and nasty and I agreed it was but if we wanted nice bread we’d make it rather than buying the fancy expensive ones. It’s interesting how they are starting to notice the differences between our lifestyle and my parents and pick up on the things my parents obviously say to them.

While we were there the cashier, who is one of the mums from Rainbows was asking me when it started again (tomorrow) and saying how her daughter is desperate to get back and then she suddenly seemed to realise I have both my children with me and asked why they weren’t at school. I explained about Home Education and was amused that her biggest question was ‘don’t they drive you mad though, with you all the time?’. This was particularly telling as her daughter drives me mad for the one hour a week I spent in her company at Rainbows -she is a very full on child ;).

The biggest job I have done today though is clear out all the paperwork in the filing cabinet and in tray from the playroom. This was years worth of bills, statements, documents and stuff. The filing cabinet had fallen apart (it’s on freecycle now, doubt anyone will want it so it will probably go to the tip next week) and I was aware we were hoarding paperwork we didn’t need to be keeping anymore. I checked online about how long you should keep tax documents and payslips etc and then set to going through the whole thing and putting it into four piles – recycling, shredding, filing in archive style files and filing as current. I found receipts and instructions for electrical equipment we don’t even have any more, the instructions for loads of baby stuff including baby monitors, microwave steriliser, Scarlett’s pushchair and (awww) both sets for the table and chair sets that went yesterday. I had an email today from one of the recipients to say how much her little boy is loving sitting at his own table and chair and doing his drawing which made me smile :).

I also found all the paperwork from our big financial crash in 2005. There are statements, threatening letters, debt collection agency letters, all the correspondance with CCCS and copies of all the letters we sent. With the benefit of over 3 years hindsight and knowing that 3 years down the line none of those threats of court action, making us sell our house, baliffs coming round etc. actually came true it really sunk in just what a mess we had been in for so very long. Also, all filed in with all that was copies of emails and blogposts from the whole blow up with Jenny which all kicked off at the same time. What a dark few months those were :(. It was very theraputic to shred the whole lot knowing we’ve moved on and everything is in hand and positive now :).

I’ve shredded two bin liners full of stuff which will make excellent bedding for the chickens and then when they’ve liberally coated it with their own personal brand of compost accelarator it can go to the allotment and join the compost heap :). One of the blue boxes is full again with recyclable paperwork, there are a couple of small folders with payslips and tax information, one full of pensions documents and an A-Z folder of all the current stuff. There is another huge pile ready to be shredded which Scarlett can do tomorrow. I now need to get in touch with the couple of places we are still getting paper bills and statements from and try to change that over to email / electronic paperwork.

The playroom has this massive empty space in the middle now which makes me want to dance about whenever I go in there. I said this to Ady and he looked at me as though I was rather mad. Perhaps I am. Maybe it’s for the best I am back to work tomorrow 😆

Scarlett is way better today and so far the rest of us are not ill. But I was officially off work sick today so we stayed in and kept warm. The kids table and chair sets finally got collected today (they were to two seperate people) from freecyclers which they were both pleased about although they wanted more details about where they were going and what were the names of the new children who would have them etc. I was just pleased to see the back of them cluttering up the place but I guess it was quite a landmark moment. D had a few highchairs before we settled on that one for him and S had that one from the start.

I’ll stop there before this turns into a sentimental tribute to tables ;).

We had a nice morning. Davies did some lego-ing and made an excellent Shrek. He then made a stand (also out of lego) with the swamp but in perspective behind Shrek. Scarlett did some bindeezing for a while. I got her a refill pack of beads for the starter pack she’d been given for her birthday and it came with some more pattern cards. She really likes it, I think it’s all the many components and the squirting water more than anything :).Then she put that away and joined in with a lego game.

I faffed about online for a while and then decided to make some more baubles and boxes with the Christmas cards which are still sitting in a pile. It didn’t take long before the lure of glue and cutting out brought the kids over though and they took over while I made lunch. While we were doing legoing etc Davies stuck on Horrible Histories and they watched a couple of hours of that in the background. Davies was listening closely though and kept bringing me little factoids (a bit like Bob Facts infact!) that he’d learnt 😆

The day sort of drifted away really as I had an eye on the clock all the time to ensure we were fed and out ready for Badgers. The kids had an early tea, got changed, I tied Tarly’s hair back (it is a bit matted from her dossing around on the sofa and doing lots of restless tossing and turning in bed with feeling ill. Tomorrow she can have a bath and hairwash and I’ll brush it all out) and we headed out to Badgers.

It was freezing – and my car which hasn’t been used for weeks was really cold. I’d taken a flask of tea and a book and fortunately Ady pulled up not long after I’d taken D and S into the hall so I could go and join him in his nice warm car that had come all the way from Chichester with the heater on :). They have said before I can go and sit in one of the rooms there rather than in the car but I know they’d feel obliged to keep looking in on me and the kids would want to come and peep at me too.

We could see Davies through the window. They have been split up this term and Davies is doing Hungry Badger while Tarly does First Aid Badger. They reconvene for the last 20 minutes or so for games but I think it will be nice for them to be doing something apart. They both came out buzzed up and happy to have seen their friends again after so many weeks :).

We came home and I read stories – the last couple of the Wonderwise set I’d seen on the Book People and ordered from work instead (Let’s build a house, world is full of babies), The Sea of Tranquility, Whadayamean and For Every Child which is just lovely with beautiful illustrations.

Then bath and then dinner followed by the last of my lovely chocolate and baileys meringue cake. We watched the Rick Stein programme with was interesting, followed by taped Masterchef which we love, if only for the comedy element of cliches and because Ady’s met Gregg Wallace in real life and they look rather alike :).

which used to be middle aged but given I am now precisely half my Dad’s age I’m hoping isn’t middle age anymore! I guess it is a definitely more than a third though, which is slightly scary even if I am planning on growing very old and very disgraceful ;).

I’m not super keen on birthdays. I don’t mind getting older – it’s proof you’re alive and I have no hang ups about growing old but the timing of my birthday right after Christmas is always a bit flat. As a child I used to feel very melancholy at the thought that all my celebrations were already over now until next Christmas – and the last one was less than a fortnight ago. I try really hard to make birthdays really special for my children and I guess that is some throw back to not having felt that happened for me. I have a bit of a plan, inspired by Em, to make sure next year is a fab birthday surrounded by people making me feel special by organising something myself. Not sure what, where or how but I’ll think more on it.

I saw midnight in on my own. I had a text at a few minutes past from my mate Dayve wishing me happy birthday and then a barrage of emails from various survey and competition sites I must have registered with giving my date of birth, which amused me. Computer bots churning out birthday greetings on the stroke of midnight 😆

Scarlett was awake on and off from when I went to bed and I came back down to her three times before I even fell asleep. At 3am Ady woke me to say ‘she’s calling you’ which she was – it had entered my dream, a little voice croaking ‘I just want my Mummaaaa’. Rather than carry on upping and downing I got him to swap beds with her so he could get some uninterupted sleep in her bed, she could ‘just have her mumma’ and I could attempt to go back to sleep. That didn’t happen as she was then in the mood for chatting about my birthday and whether it really counted as my birthday yet and if so could she give me my present? I think we both got a bit of sleep but at about 530am when she suddenly started wailing that now she ‘just wanted her Daddaaaaa’ I decided there would be no reasoning with her and directed her back to her bedroom to find him!

She came back to my bed when Ady went to work at 7am ish and fell asleep again. Davies woke me at about 830am so I got up leaving her still sleeping to get dressed. Davies woke her though and then we all went into his room for the grand card and present giving ceremony.

Davies had made me a birthday card. It had ’35’ on the front, a cup of tea with steam and a full colour depiction of Boppit. Inside it said ‘To Mummy, Happy Boppit Birthday, Love Davies’. It’s ace, I love it :). He’s thought about what I like and drawn it on a card for me. Thoughtful, all about me and showcasing his artistic talents :). Scarlett had been too poorly yesterday to make a card so had written in one instead (we found a sackful of old cards from my Clinton Card days when we cleared out the wardrobe. When companies changed designs or phased out cards they told us to dispose of them and gave us full credit for them. The staff were allowed (in a turning a blind eye rather than an official allowed) to take them home so we have stacks of them) and drawn a cup of tea too :).

My gifts were three big boxes of quality chocolate liqueurs – one each from Davies and Scarlett and one from Candle the cat apparently. And a memory foam pillow which I have been coveting for ages.

We breakfasted, got dressed, dealt with chickens and had plenty of cuddles. Scarlett has been much better today and they were both fairly consumed with their DSs. Which left me free to go and make my own birthday cake. Ady had offered to buy one or even find time to make one but actually I like baking (really! ;)) so was happy to do it myself. I decided to try something different and after perusing some online recipes found a Nigella (who also shares my birthday – happy 49th birthday Nigella!) one for lemon meringue cake. I decided chocolate was in order for birthdays so messed around with it and made a chocolate and Baileys meringue cake loosely based on her recipe. I have to say it was quite the best birthday cake I’ve ever had. I may make it my signature dish. Although it is very much for grown ups and neither of the children was keen on the Bailey’s cream or the Baileys and chocolate brownie part.

My Mum rang and we arranged for her to come and take Davies to his swimming lesson as Scarlett was not right enough to go swimming and as I’d rung in sick for work tomorrow already I didn’t want to risk bumping into a work colleague (slim change but not worth the risk). I took phonecalls from my Granny and Ady and cards from Michelle (thanks x :)).

The children played together really nicely all day – DSing, some Very Hungry Caterpillar board gaming and some disappearing off upstairs together to play something too. Davies was telling my Mum all about how ill Scarlett was yesterday and how he was worried about her :).

Mum did come over but managed to persuade Davies not to go swimming either. Dad and Frazer also came over and Ady arrived home earlier than usual in honour of my birthday so we had the lovely cake with candles. They all left, I read the children bedtime stories and then Ady took over in full on birthday mode :).

He changed the bedsheets so I will have my new pillow and clean sheets, ran me a bath with candles, opened champagne and brought me cashew nuts and olives to snack on. Cooked me a delicious dinner and completely pulled off making me feel special and birthday-ish. Hurrah for my lovely little family :).

So there you go. 35. Doesn’t feel much (any) different to 34 really…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table is still empty!