One word? When seven would do…

Davies and Scarlett played in the garden this morning until it was time to go out. We were off to Liza and Andrew’s for a play and a testing of the water for regular playing while I am at work. I had written down bullet point directions to get there off AA routefinder but got lost when I mixed up my roundabouts and took a second exit off the third roundabout instead of a third exit off the second roundabout (or something). Davies and Scarlett were trying to help but actually when you can’t read spotting ‘Shirley Drive’ is something of a challenge 😆 We’d had a plan to time the journey but our scenic detour coupled with being unable to find the actual address even when we were on the right road meant there was no hope of working out how long it had actually taken :rolls:

We found number 76 and Liza lives at number 78 (not Shirley Drive I hasten to add, I am not giving out her address on my blog ;)) so we parked outside, paid £1.20 for parking for a couple of hours and set off. We walked for one and a half blocks before deciding something was wrong and ringing Liza to find out just where 78 was. We ended up walking back to the car and driving back up the road where we saw Liza and Andrew waving so pulled in again and paid to park there instead.

We had a really nice four hours; Liza fed us and supplied copious amounts of tea, Andrew provided entertainment for Davies and Scarlett by way of DSing, Wiiing and various other toys. Liza and I chatted and the children all rubbed along well with Scarlett spending some of the time playing Dolphin Island (I know, I know, and Liza’s lent it to us so it is currently back here in my house whispering ‘Ni ic, Niiiiiiiiic. Come and play me, see if you can get past day twenty niiiiiine!’ ). The time flew by and we managed to time our journey home at under half an hour too :).

Back home I did some more of my mosaic picture while Davies and Scarlett played with Mousetrap. Not played it, played with it, they used all the component pieces to make up a game where the mice were having adventures, very entertaining to listen to :lol:. Then they went back out in the garden again.

Ady came home and fed them while I nipped out for food supplies for payday dinner and came home to find the children back in the garden again. I read some stories to them but Davies took forever to get to sleep – he appeared back downstairs at nearly 1130pm, so he’ll be delightful tomorrow no doubt :(.

We have various weather dependant plans for the weekend which may or may not involve a night away so I may suspend my boredom with summer for a few days now and hope for sunshine :).

Today was easily the hardest days work I’ve done at the library since I started. When I first got the job I was warned about the ‘summer reading game’ in hushed tones. In much the same way as I’d been warned about Christmas at Clinton Cards, January Sale at Bhs, 10% off for over 60s on a Wednesday at B&Q…. Last summer I had only been there six months and wasn’t really working on the enquiry desk so although I did a few stints on the Summer Reading Game (henceforth called SRG for my blog) dedicated table it was towards the end of the time and didn’t see that hard.

But today was the first day of the school summer holidays for most children round here so they ALL descended to the library to sign up for the SRG. Except for those who were early and had already joined before today, because they came in with their first two books already read to tell us all about them.

At 930am when we opened I happily welcomed the first couple of children. I explained the SRG to them, talked about how they might want to make their books choices, went through the bronze, silver and gold awards and little prizes at every step of the way, chatted to them about their favourite authors and other authors they might like to try, encouraged them to choose a good wide selection of books, gave out their first challenge of spotting SRG characters hidden around the library for a prize draw, praised their writing, laughed with them about how all the local schools have done some sort of merging and renaming thing so even the children not changing schools in September will be going back to a school with a different name.

By 10am by patter was sounding tired even to my own ears.

By 11am I had signed up 7 children all called Chloe (sorry Michelle! I really like the name Chloe but having been one of 5 Nicolas most of the way through school I have an aversion to names that are really popular) and discovered 3 ways of spelling Callum that I’d not known about before. I’d been ‘treated’ to the story of a 7 year old born 4 months premature – amazing yes, miracle child yes, struggling to feign interest in her ‘telling the lady how big you were when you were born Chloe’ prompted by her mother – YES.

By midday I had mastered signing ’em up in record time and suspect I had the manner of an air hostess performing the safety procedure talk at the start of a flight with a crazed grin and a clear script.

I’d also began to talk to children who had returned with their first two books to tell me all about them. This varied wildly from the ones who wanted to basically retell me the entire story to those who I had to drag monosyllabic answers from about who’s this then? when I could just read the bloody book for myself if I cared!

Just before 1pm an 11 year old With Attitude came in to say she’d already read all six books after signing up on Monday. I wordlessly printed out her ‘well done’ certificate, gave her her bookmark and stickers (what is it with 11 year olds – aren’t they supposed to be binge drinking alcopops and cultivating eating disorders anyway, not collecting stickers for reading books!).

At 1pm I went for lunch and sat in the staff room seriously contemplating quite how I’ve ended up in a job where I sing Incy Wincy Spider to a roomful of under 2s once a fortnight and sit trapped behind a desk coaxing children to tell me what their favourite bit of a Rainbow Fairy story was. I’m fairly certain this was not my calling! 😆

The afternoon was quieter with altogether more adults than childen coming in but it was exceptionally hot and I am not officially bored with summer and would quite like it to cool down again please actually. Not rain, but just be cooler.

Meanwhile back at the ranch Ady was home in the morning and he and the children went on a sandpit sand purchasing pilgrimage so we can now recreate that just back from the beach effect on our hall carpet whenever we like without stepping out of our own front garden.

My Mum was here in the afternoon and she took Davies and Scarlett (without suncream!!!!) to the park for a bit and then they played in the garden with the chickens. When I pulled up there were two double glazing men waiting for me as they’d seen Mum in the garden with a chicken and wanted to find out more about them and ask about buying some :shock:. I took them round to the back garden where Davies and Scarlett mostly talked to them about them, insisted that they both held a chicken (the one interested in them was well up for it, the other looked frankly terrified!). He fell in love with the speckledy hens of Toms but only wants hens so he’s coming back in a couple of weeks to talk prices and I’ve said we might be able to breed for him at a price :). I felt all knowledgable talking about them and realised how much I actually do know about chickens now :).

Mum stayed awhile and the children made their own pizzas (Ady had put the dough on before he left so they did shaping, spreading puree and grating cheese) before adding the ingredients for the next batch for Ady and I’s dinnner later. We also chatted about just how the breadmaker worked too. They had dinner and went back to play outside.

Ady came home, Mum left, the children had showers and I read them several stories then they went to bed.

We planned to make some mosaic pictures today with the cut out colourchart squares but when we started gathering together necessary stuff we realised we didn’t have any glue. We found nice big pieces of cardboard but nothing to do the fixing with so we decided to walk into Lancing to buy some glue.

So we could tick off some exercise on the childrens’ fitness challenge sheets I walked very briskly and they semi-jogged but we went through a succession of alleyways which cut straight through rather than the twice-the-distance and not very interesting walk along the streets. Now the alleyways are your classic back passageways really – overgrown, full of broken glass, weeds, graffiti and so on, perfumed with eau da urine. Unless you are Davies and Scarlett however. They walked along exclaiming at the ‘beauty’ of everything. In the broken glass chips from beer and alcopop bottles they saw emeralds and diamonds, the nettles had ‘pretty zig zag shaped leaves’, the dandelions were like ‘sunbursts of yellow’ when in flower and ‘fluffy white clouds’ if they’d gone over to dandelion clocks. They spotted each little blue forget-me-not and daisy and other flowering weeds I don’t know the name of.

Whilst I still don’t think the alleyways should be litter filled and used as toilets it did strike me that as adults we so rarely see the beauty in things the way that children do. And they don’t do it in a conscious ‘behold the wonder of nature’ type way, they just see and feel it. I was chatting to a friend the other day about positive attitudes, feeling that things are mostly good and being a glass half full sort of person and pondering that I wasn’t always like that and I certainly don’t get that attitude from my parents. I think I realised today that actually it hasn’t been passed down a generation, it’s been passed up. Spending most of my time with people who see wonder and beauty everywhere has rubbed off :).

We had a quick look round the charity shops and Scarlett fell in love with a small cuddly rabbit for 20pence, Davies found a very 70s book called ‘Fun with Felt’ which I’ve not looked at yet but he tells me has some cool things to make inside. We got our glue and walked briskly home again.

We then started our mosaic pictures. We found a couple of books for inspiration – that 100 history projects book that I think most of us have on our bookshelf from a couple of years ago and a book about Ancient Rome which was an ex-library book. We sketched out a basic design on our paper and started cutting and sticking. I went for a dolphin leaping from the sea, partially inspired by a similar sort of design at Fishbourne that I’ve always admired. Davies went for flowers and Scarlett’s is still fluid (as in she has changed her mind at least twice and so far it is just lots of squares :lol:). We did that for an hour or so and I explained it would be a work in progress for a while rather than an instant piece of art but I think we’ll come back to them, I certainly want to finish mine.

Whilst we were doing the pictures the children put on Watership Down but it didn’t really hold them and eventually they decided it was too nice to be inside and went out to play with the chickens.

Then it was time to pack up towels, sunsuits and some marshmallows and sticks and head along to Worthing beach to meet up with Caz, Bid, Archie and Elliot. They are the friends Davies and Scarlett went to play with fortnightly for a while when I was working. They have rented out their house and spent the last month or so in their old campervan WWOOFing around the country. They’ve already got a story to tell and have met loads of interesting and different people, including several Home Educators. They were back in Worthing for a week to catch up with Caz’s parents before heading off for another month of WWOOFing and then heading off to LA in September on the first leg of a round the world trip that will take them to Mexico, Vietnam, New Zealand and other places.

The children had a ball playing in the sea, on the sand and pebbles, clambering and just being together; the four of them get on really well. Ady joined us on his way home from work and it was just a lovely few hours on the beach. Ady got the full guided tour of their campervan and naturally it’s led us to chat about doing something similar. We’d not have the luxury of keeping our house and doing something like that so it would be a less secure for the future adventure and not something to leap into but we quite like the idea of a lot of what they’re planning.

No idea when we’ll see them again – sometime next year probably but it was really nice to see them and wish them good luck and safe travelling and we’re looking forward to farflung postcards from distant lands with news on them along their way. 🙂

We came home and I chucked the children in the shower to get all the salt, sand and seaweed off them (one point to a house with a shower to come back to I guess) before reading stories and sending them off to bed. They are weighing up how they’d feel about having very few toys with them and living in a ‘RV’ – Scarlett isn’t at all sure about not bringing all her soft toys and Davies is a bit unsure about leaving the dalek behind :lol:.

The chick died in the night – not at all surprising and the children were accepting if sad about it :(. If we keep one of the cockerels I guess we might get back into chick rearing again but it won’t be for a while. I think the break will be good.

Davies and Scarlett had dragged out Tarly’s Barbie stuff from her bedroom. We got massive amounts of Barbie furniture two Christmasses ago from a charity shop which rarely gets played with but gets lots of mileage when it does. They set up a whole houseful and were playing with the various Barbies, Kens (although they call him ‘Kev’ for some reason) and horses. 🙂

I had a day off from the laptop and sat with Davies to read his second Reading Challenge book. A few pages in it became apparent he wasn’t enjoying it and it was becoming a chore – precisely what I don’t want reading to be for them. He was battling through each sentence and getting nothing from the story – which was a phonics book called ‘Hen’s Pens’ – very much in the style of the P&J books I recall from early reading at school and just repeptitive rubbish really ‘Hen has ten pens, hen likes her pens’ – I’d expect a bit more of a storyline as a reward if I were battling to get through each word too really. So I got Davies to choose one of the pile of Barefoot books we still have here instead and said I’d read it to him instead. He chose Herb the vegetarian dragon which we’d already read once and enjoyed so I read that to him again with him reading the odd words here and there.

Scarlett gathered up her two books – a nicely illustrated version of this little chick from over the way and a Where’s Wally book. We’d not finished Where’s Wally so we started to do that and then realised there were still pages and pages to go so I got her to choose a book from the pile too and read that to her instead – she selected Forest Singer so I read that and they both listened in.

Then we dashed off to Tesco. I’ve been semi-avoiding Tesco but we’ve decided we really want Merlin cards and they are super cheap on clubcard deals so I might overcome that and shop there again to build up points :oops:. I also wanted a couple of new laundry baskets and a new sock and pants peg thingy for the washing line which I knew Sainsburys didn’t have so needs must. They didn’t have the peg thingy either but I did get a couple of value baskets, a pair of trousers each for the children reduced to £2 each and the loo roll which was what we actually needed and had failed to pick up in Sainsburys yesterday. It was creeping towards lunchtime and I was very proud when the children requested a banana and a carrot for a snack 🙂 I’ve a lot to learn from them I reckon ;).

Next stop was the library with their two books each. We popped into Woolworths first where we got the peg things and Boots next door for some make up for me where Scarlett used testers to put pink, purple and turquoise stripes of eyeshadow on – she looked very punk :lol:. Then into the library. Scarlett talked about her chick story and Davies pretty much retold the Herb story including pointing out all his favourite bits of the illustrations and adding in what he liked about the story :). They got their wallet, stickers, cards and activity sheets and chose a couple of more books each. Davies chose another two he can try to read himself and we’ve agreed he will try to make at least one of the two each visit one he’s read which seems a good compromise.

We raced home as we were later than we’d been expecting Lucy and The Rs to arrive with us and they pulled up at the same time as us. The children played mostly really well for a few hours while Lucy and I caught up on holidays, camping and life in general. Scarlett surprised me by giving Lucy a brief summary of FoH which demonstrated she’d taken in more than I’d realised :).

Then it was off for the last swimming lesson of the term which officially ends our termtime stuff here too – Rainbows and Badgers finished last week – ah the freedom! :). They both had good lessons to end on and I sat and chatted to one of the mums I normally just smile and say hello to. Home Ed came up as we were talking about the end of term and she asked when our school broke up so I explained. She breezily said ‘oh right – a friend of mine Home Edded for a while last year’ and knew loads about it. She was also pretty anti the testing and pushing children that goes on in school and confessed she is worried about her son who will start reception in September although her daughter (just finishing year one) is loving school and doing well. Nice to have a chat with someone informed and non-prejudiced for once :).

Whilst at the swimming pool we signed up for the Junior Summer Fitness Challenge which looks both pretty good and something D and S will easily achieve given their fairly active lifestyle. So our lounge door now has their reading challenge and fitness challenge sheets stapled to it to remind us to keep on track with both 🙂 – honestly we’re practically structured ;).

On the way home both the children spoke to my parents on the phone to break the news about the chick and to tell Grandad,who finances the lessons, how they’ve done this term and that Davies is going up a class. Nice to hear their side of the phone conversation all chatty and happy (chick news aside). We got home and they had tea and then we filled out their names and their views on the books they’d read on their reading challenge sheet and their names and what activities they’d already done since last Monday on their fitness sheets. Davies is at sounding out and spelling stage with things like that, with a bit of help. Scarlett is pretty much at tell her the letter and she’ll write it stage.

On the way to and from Tesco we’d been talking about colours. They both know colour mixing and primary and secondary colours but we got to talking about shades – and how pink is actually ‘light red’ but it has a name whereas light yellow and light blue don’t necessarily. We talked about shades of blue for example and then green and then I said that the best way to see how many shades of colours there are is paint cards. Now my Dad is a painter and colour cards were always something I loved to look through in his work van when I was a child. And I used to love working the paint mixing machine and even filling up the colour cards when I worked in B&Q so Davies rang Ady and asked him to collect an armful of colour charts on his way home. We sat and looked at them all, compared different brands and colours and I squirreled away a particlarly charming Crown one which has little descriptions next to each colour about their origin and which era of interior decor they hail from etc. Then we discussed what to do with them now and came up with the idea of cutting them up into little shapes of colour to make a big mosaic with. Davies and I made a start at chopping them up and we’ve got a plan to do some picture making with them tomorrow :).

And just to prove that we really are card carrying proper home educators this week we took out our pressed flowers from last week and they have come out beautifully and we’re planning to do more and Davies dug out the cut flowers in coloured water experiment from a few weeks ago to see how they had dried with the colour still there. He mixed the two phials of red and blue together to make purple, topped it up with water and picked some more white flowers to put in it, which began to turn purple almost straight away in the centre. Tomorrow I might even laminate something! 😉

We finished with stories and the excellent news just before bedtime that Scarlett’s DS game was indeed the one from Kirsty’s tent that Scarlett assumed was Elinor’s so got given back to Elinor. She is delighted and hopefully has learnt the lesson about keeping better tabs on her things (and indeed I possibly have learnt I should check at least once a day that they have all their games rather than believing their airy ‘yes’ each time I asked).

Was a slow start obviously ;). The children were reacquainting themselves with toys, telly and unlimited drawing resources. I did most of the holiday washing and even got most of it dry and have been dipping in and out of catching up in various online places along with flickring all day.

Just before we went away the hen who was sitting on (not her own) eggs hatched one and the second one had hatched either Friday or Saturday. Dad comes to feed the cat and chickens while we’re away and he’d arrived on Friday to find the first chick dead and injured outside of the run. No idea why of course – but I wonder if the fact that so far 2 out of our 4 hen-hatched chicks have died is more indicative of nature rather than the incubator method of cosseting them along until they are fully feathered and completely able to cope alone.

Anyway on Saturday Dad had arrived to find the second chick also injured and lying outside of the run. He tried to put it back in the box with the hen but she attacked it visciously so he removed it and they rang me to find out what to do with it. They were determined to intervene (I’m not sure what I’d have done to be honest) so with guidance from me they took it home to their house and made up a brooder with lamp, put water in a shallow dish and gave it some egg to eat. I didn’t expect it to make it through the night and it has sustained a nasty head injury (pecked I assume) but it did and made it through a second night too. So today the children and I went to collect it from their house and bring it to ours. I was half hoping my Mum would ask if she could keep it as she was talking about hand rearing it, which realistically isn’t something we are able to do – aside from anything else we are away lots these next few weeks and the plan was never for the children to get over emotionally attached to something with such short life span and little reward in the way of keeping as a pet anyway. If that sounds callous it possibly is but we went into the chicken keeping from a smallholding point of view rather than as chicken fanciers or bird lovers or wanting them as family pets.

We called into Sainsburys on the way to my parents for various food essentials and got Scarlett some black trousers for Badgers next term. This makes life so much easier for Badgers as it negates the need for socks and means if she has to have black shoes she can have boots if she likes instead of the most un-Scarlett-like dainty shoes she has had up to now and has grown out of.

We got home with the chick who the children have christened ‘Winky’ on account of his habit of only opening one eye at a time. It is still not eating or drinking or indeed showing any signs of wanting to so I suspect it is a matter of time before it gives up but we’ll have a go with it. It is very cute and has fought this far.

We had lunch and then walked across to the doctors for my smear test. The plan had been for Ady to nip home for lunch and stay with D and S while I went but he got sent elsewhere and couldn’t get home so after some deliberation I took them with me. The nurse seemed utterly unfazed by their presence and chatted away to them about various things. She was very nice actually, introduced herself properly and chatted generally and of course specifically about all things gynaecological. I introduced her to the mooncup which she’d never heard of and wrote down to find out more about. I am still amazed by how little most women know about the choices of sanpro available. I’ve convinced at least 3 women to try a mooncup and am still working on persuading more onto washable pads :).

It was a straightforward procedure, easily the most straightforward I’ve had done which was good. Davies and Scarlett stayed their own side of the curtain so they remained ignorant of exactly what had gone on and surprisingly for them didn’t ask many questions about the full details. I suppose I can expect them to still come back to that though – Davies asked me in the car on Friday morning out of nowhere how exactly the seed gets from the man to meet the egg in the woman. And actually I remember sort of saving up various questions about things I sort of knew were slightly embarrassing and then asking my Mum at the right moment having worked up to it even if that right moment came out of the blue for her!

We came home and they did some more drawing. Scarlett got out an old Letterland book and did some of that. She seems to like them every so often so I really should sort out a shelf of them she can access as we have a load of them around. She is asking us to spell things out for her to write lots at the moment and I’m still amazed at quite where she has learnt all the letters she knows as I’ve certainly never sat down with her and told her.

Ady and I watched a really interesting programme that we’d heard talked about on the radio when the man in it was interviewed talking about it on the way up to Kettering on Thursday. It had me shouting at the tv and crying along with the people in it. Can’t read, can’t write. Very interesting and moving stuff.

And that about brings me up to date. Hurrah!

Thursday In the morning Ady went to work while the children and I (mostly I, obviously!) packed up everything ready to go. Ady arrived home at lunchtime and we got the car loaded up and were off for about 3pm. I’d read on the website that morning that tents would not be sited after 7pm so suddenly panicked that we might arrived and not be able to set up. Unlikely I know, and having been to the site now very, very unlikely but their website promises a lot more rules and
regulations than it actually delivers ;).

We had a straight run to Northampton but drove through all sorts of grim weather conditions. The last half an hour was the worst as the satnav kept changing it’s mind about ETA and adding another five minutes every so often for no apparent reason, Davies and Scarlett had exhausted the food and drink we’d brought with us and were chorusing ‘are we there yet?’ from the back of the car with monotonous regularity. We finally did arrive, spottted Kirsty and Chris & Helen with two tents already up and Jo & Bill arrived around the same time. The weather stayed tent-errection-friendly and (aside from a small anyone-could-have-made-it error of mine with trying to attach the wrong hooks into the wrong loops on one of the inners which pulled the pole all out of shape and had us all scratching our heads about whether it was the right pole or not :oops:) it was a fairly stress free set up.

Scarlett was delighted to see both Alex and Jo’s dog Poppy. I think she would have happily have existed the rest of the weekend without anything else really 🙂

We had a nice first night. Ady went off in the style of Chris French to Tesco and was gone for ages getting stuff for dinner and some new pans as we’d forgotten to pack ours. The children all played in a gaggle and it was very late before Davies and Scarlett were even fed let alone packed off to bed.

Friday we headed over to Wicksteed Park for the rides. We bought wristbands each for us and the children which came to £50. I still can’t quite decide how I felt about the park really. It was really expensive, even taking into account the educational discount we get at places like Legoland. They also seemed to have strange height restrictions and guidance about which rides required adults to ride with children. Scarlett was particularly fed up to realise there were lots of rides she was too short for given she is tall enough for everything at Legoland. Davies was right on the cusp of the 1.2m and it seemed to depend on individual ride operators whether they deemed him above or below it.

Rant about cost and height restrictions aside (and I do know it’s for safety reasons, well insurance reasons 😉 but the inconsistency between different theme parks does annoy me) the children had a fab day. We were a bit horrified to discover huge amounts of school children on a trip first thing and had to queue for the first few rides but they seemed to disperse through the day and when we made our way over to the tamer rides there was hardly anyone else around.

Some events of note were me trying to get my full moneys worth from my wristband and going on everything. This fell short when I tried to squeeze myself into the ‘minitower’ ride and the poor attendant had to tell me I was preventing the bar from coming down enough for the ride to start – ie I was too fat for the ride 😳 :lol:. Scarlett got on a horse on the carousel inbetween Elinor and Alex and then decided just as the ride was starting that she didn’t want to be on that horse after all. Ady and I were also on the ride so unable to do anything other than watch (and maybe laugh a bit) as she spent the whole ride with her head buried in the horse crying. A photographer had got on the ride behind the girls and asked if he could take some photos of them ‘having fun’ – presumably for some publicity shot. I’m guessing he didn’t get many shots he could use :lol:. Even funnier was that Scarlett wanted to stay on and go on a different horse so her and I walked almost the whole way round the ride before she decided which horse she did want to ride and then happily spent the next ride on it. Which horse was it? Yep the one she’d been on the previous time and cried about 😆

Davies and I went on a pirate ship ride which he barely scrapped into the height restriction for and I realised right at the top when we were hurtling back towards the ground that actually perhaps he was a little short for it and could possibly slip out as it jerked up at the very top so held onto him for most of the ride. He was fine and actually quite enjoyed it but I told him I didn’t think it had been safe as the ride slowed down and explained what could have happened. We were busy doing that so paid no attention to the other couple of people on the ride who had requested from the ride operator that they could stay on and have another go until he set it in motion again and Davies had to do the ride getting very graphic proof of just which bit he could slip out at! He did well considering ;).

After such high dramas it was lunchtime. Scarlett and I stayed back for one last go on the carousel and arrived back at the ‘camp hub’ last. Hunger sated, tales of death defying ride antics swapped and fleeces collected we set off back to the rides again. The log flume, rollercoaster, umbrellas and ladybird coaster were firm favourites with Kirsty’s and our children so we had a second go there for a while. Then we made our way over to the ‘wet rides’ including bumper boats and a crazy speed boat style ride for one person where you were launched from a great height into the water in a boat. Ady and I both stepped up to the pedal powered monorail challenge – which I bitterly regretted by about halfway round :lol:.

We had a ride round on the train and the children got to have a go at ringing the bell before heading back to the big rides for one last go round the log flume and umbrellas. We certainly made the most of being on site and were there from when the rides opened until they closed.

Jax & co arrived with James that evening so our party grew. Davies and Scarlett were horribly tired but took forever to go to sleep despite me reading them a story (ok so it was the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops so slightly on the bloodthirsty side but even so… ;)) .

Saturday was Festival of History day one. We called into Tesco for lunch supplies and then headed there. We’d agreed in advance that attempting to go round en masse wouldn’t work so hatched a plan to meet at lunchtime to gather together instead. In the queue I had a phonecall from Bob to say ‘we’re in the queue for the carpark of FoH’ to which I replied ‘so are we’. Bob said ‘we’ve just passed the bit where we could have turned right early’ to which I replied ‘so have we’ – it turned out they were about 5 cars behind us! 😆

We went first to the bit I think was called Living History – a huge tent filled with all sorts of interactive bits and pieces. Davies and Scarlett both did some giant jigsaws – of aerial views of places, stained glass windows etc. and both got a postcard for their efforts. They did a ‘what’s in the bag?’ quiz sheet of various archeological finds such as coins, bits of pottery, flints etc. and Scarlett did a ‘work out which bit of dug up remains would go where on the pictures of Roman dwellings. She really enjoyed all that and chattered away to the woman running it for ages. She was quite impressive actually, telling the woman ‘it’s a flint’ when she was just calling it ‘a bit of stone’ and discussing the various types of pottery tiles with her :). We chatted to some people manning the ‘found with a metal detector’ display and rummaged through their finds trying to identify things before moving on to sample some chutneys and wines.

I hadn’t really appreciated quite what a huge event it was going to be really. Also although I can understand it is wars and conflicts and the results of them that have shaped history and made it what it is I hadn’t really expected it to be quite so battle-focussed. Scarlett actually said to me at one point ‘Mummy why did you bring us here when you hate violence so much?’ :lol:. We’d decided not to splash out on the programme for a fiver as they tend to be one of those things that are too expensive to chuck away when you get home but just end up added to general clutter. We did find one abandoned (and it truly was abandoned, noone around and rather screwed up) towards the end of the day so it did assist with planning our day better on the Sunday.

We had a bit of a wander round generally and then ended up at the main arena for the end of a reenactment and when people moved away when it ended nabbed a good spot ready for the next display. A real life injury in the field (I think someone had fallen off a horse, it didn’t seem serious but the ambulance was on the field for ages making everything else run late for the rest of the day) meant we had a bit of a wait but it was worth it to watch the Roman Imperial Army. The commentator was hugely knowledgable and easily filled the 20minute delay talking about Romans and padding it all out nicely. I think I have some hangover zoning out still left from history lessons at school though as when he started quoting lists of dates and battles I realised I had stopped listening and Ady confessed he’d done the same. Actually given our distinct lack of historical knowledge events like FoH are probably perfect for introducing Davies and Scarlett to history in an interesting and relevant way so they at least get some exposure to the idea of learning about the past – along with Horrible Histories of course! 😆

There were a few showers while we watched the Romans so we huddled under our umbrella. On the way to the arranged meet up at the Family Zone for 1pm we looked at the various WW1 stands and learnt about what they carried with them, what sort of rations, personal kit and so on they would have had as well as their various weapons.

We met up with Bob & Katy, Chris & Helen, Jax, Kirsty & James and Merry & Max along with all assorted children for lunch. Davies and Scarlett (and I think eventually most of the others too) sat and watched a Punch and Judy show while eating their lunch which they said was ‘really funny and very crazy!’

Davies then headed off by himself and ended up at the Medieval Storytelling tent. Scarlett and Alex followed him and the three of them were in there for ages. Davies was really enthused by it and has been telling me about the storyteller today and how he made noises, used his whole body to emphasise his story and draw everyone in.

The children were all drawn by the giant sand area of the Victorian Seaside and I think Davies and Scarlett would happily have played there all day. I did point out that we have a beach down the road from our house, we had driven over 100 miles and paid lots of money to be there to see the other attractions and eventually lured them away!

We went off to do the WW1 trench experience next which had a long but fast moving queue. It was being managed by two soldiers walking amoung the queue and talking loudly to them. The young boy directly behind us drew the attention of one of the soldiers as he was dressed in armour. Clearly that had been enough to register me in the mind of the soldier as when we returned the following day he hailed me as ‘here again Madam? Ladies and Gentlemen I urge you to applaud the bravery of this woman, who has returned for a second tour of duty again today, bringing her young family with her to save the lives of many!’ – very impressive! The trench was one of those brief but moving experiences which really did go a long way to recreating what it might have been like. I didn’t think the children had taken much in but Davies particularly wanted to go again on Sunday and they’ve both refered back to that bit since.

We listened to a soldier talking about mess tins and soldiers rations and how they got more inventive with their food adding spices to their spam, that sort of thing ;).

Then we moved across to the Family Zone tent which was all but empty and did some of the many activities there. Davies and Scarlett both made Henry VIII finger puppets, then Davies and Ady went off and did some miniature buildings

while Scarlett and I made a tudor rose (her) and an Armada sinking boat picture (me)

I made a star chart to navigate a boat thing but the woman running the activity confessed she didn’t really understand how it worked and then got distracted from talking to me by a school teacher gathering information for school trips :(. Davies made a cool ruff though 🙂

Ady was itching to go and see the D day stuff that he could hear happening outside and was catching glimpses of parachutes and planes from but we couldn’t get anywhere near so decided to ensure we saw all of that on Sunday. We were walking back to the entrance and happened upon the jousting about to start so sat and watched that. We cheered for the South (it was north, south, east and west competing) but despite coming close South lost out and came second :(. We did get walked past by a suffragette who I cheered and got my photo taken with 🙂

which of course led to a potted history of suffragettes for D and S too.

After the jousting we were lured back to the main arena and watched the end of another re-enactment before the Grand Parade when representatives from every re-enactment through history march along more or less in chronological order – all very impressive and indeed a grand finale.

We went back to the campsite via McDonalds for the children as I had this vague idea they might go to bed early :lol:.In actual fact the addition of Merry’s four girls to the mix meant the children acted out that imortal line from Summer Lovin’ and ‘stayed up til ten o’clock’ when it finally got too dark for them to carry on playing the game that had kept them entertained and happy in their big gaggle for hours further down the camping field :).

Sunday We all packed up first thing. I quite like to pack up the same way as we set up, in installments, punctuated by periods of sitting down and drinking tea. It was not quite that leisurely but it wasn’t hurried either. It was marred by the discovery that Scarlett had lost her favourite Zoo Hospital DS game. We hoped it would turn up at the other end when we unpacked everything but it hasn’t made it home with us :(. It didn’t really hit her til today when she suddenly realised this meant she couldn’t play it and she’s been quite sad about it :(.

I think we finally got to FoH about 1130am, this time with a bit more of a plan. We had a good look round the medieval village area, Scarlett fell in love with a puppy (which seemed to be mutual. He was in a crate and the owner got him out so he could give Tarly the full body hug he was desperate to do :))

We were walking parallel to the Arena when the cry went up for children to come into the arena so in we dashed. They gathered a foam ‘sword’ (a bit of pipe lagging) as they went in and were split into two teams – the normans and the saxons. The dressed up commentators rounded them up and talked tactics to them, lined them up facing each other and let them loose! With hilarious results of course 😆


I doubt it was very true to historical accounts of 1066 but they all had a lot of fun! 🙂

By then it was time to meet up with the others again at the giant sandpit for lunch. Not everyone made it this time – I’d run out of twitters so was sad to hear Kirsty and James hadn’t made it back for the second day at all and were on their way home with RAC assistance :(. We never did see Jax or Merry again but we had lunch with Chris and Helen and The Babs and co who had arrived so that was nice :). I spent half an hour in a queue for tea which I eventually gave up on as it still didn’t seem to be moving and I’d taken a phone call (the second in a series) from my Mum which had irritated me too. We missed the play I’d quite wanted to see and the Punch and Judy show wasn’t there on Sunday so we headed back to the Trench at Davies’ request.

Just beyond that was a field with a cow and her calf and a heavy horse with a trailer which Scarlett was interested in. She stood and chatted to the woman about the cow and calf for ages and had her first experience of ‘coming out’ as Home Educated when the woman asked if she was about to break up from school. She tossed her hair back and smiled and said ‘No actually we don’t go to school. We’re Home Educated’ to which the woman looked slightly taken aback and replied ‘oh well that’s good then’. Given the level of conversation she’d been having with Scarlett she couldn’t really have come back with anything else 🙂 . I was proud :). The horse and cows started to move off to participate in an ‘animals in the war’ display so Ady and Davies settled down to get a good spot for the D day show infront of the main arena while Scarlett and I ran after the animals to go and watch that. We had to have a loo stop but saw most of that show including the cow and calf, the horse pulling an injured man in his trailer, an ass carrying rice (we liked hearing about how they’d parachuted in strapped to pallets and not one ass had been killed in doing so – sounded crazy to us!) and finally carrier pigeons which they let go as the finale :). We finally got our tea and coffee and then walked back to join Ady and Davies.

The children and I went to get icecreams while Ady guarded the space and the show began. There were parachutists dropping from planes and all sorts of aerial and ground based displays. Not entirely dissimilar to the airshow, which made all four of us feel strange both days after what we witnessed last year at the air show. It was very impressive.

We started to work our way towards the end at that point, ever conscious of the journey home but bumped into the Raines on the way so decided to join them to watch the jousting again. This time the south won! 🙂 We watched from the other side right next to where the knights actually met and although the children didn’t pay much attention as they were too busy messing about with each other I was mightily impressed with the lances smashing so close to us 🙂

The Raines headed off to see the grand parade but we decided it really was time to call it a day and headed for the exit. Both days there were staff on the gates at the end thanking you for coming, wishing you a safe journey home and just doing the final send off. We were really impressed at how well run and organised the whole event was actually. There were hundreds of staff, queues to get in including the carpark were all really well managed, we were greeted at the gate by someone with wristbands to give to the children with mobile numbers on and to talk to each child about what to do if they got lost (find someone with an EH symbol on their clothing and show them your wristband). It was an excellent event and one I’m sure will set off things we’ll refer back to in the future.

The drive home was straightforward if long and tedious and we arrived home just after 8pm. The children had a bath, dinner and bed but that was nearly 10pm. We had to get the car unpacked as Ady was back to work this morning and it’s as easy to unpack and put stuff away as it is to unpack into a heap and have to deal with it again so we were all sorted by about 11pm – another late dinner!

It was a great weekend – expensive but sort of a weeks camp squished into 3 days really. The children had an absolute ball playing with friends, going on rides, camping which they adore anyway. We loved spending time with a selection of fab people, I am utterly in love with my new tried and tested sleeping bag, the tent went up well and stayed up well and I think having somewhere to be for all 3 of the days meant we were all together for about the right amount of time to enjoy it without the stressy bits. 🙂

Thanks to Chris and Helen for suggesting and coordinating and lovely to see the rest of you 🙂 x

Off to work for me this morning. Ady was at home with the children; it’s really making so much difference that arrangement, a complete win:win on all counts, not least regular time for Ady and the children together without me :).

I had a nice morning at work. There are four of us on a Wednesday morning, open for 3.5 hours and a good blend of staff with me and the library supervisor, a woman who is sweet enough but gives us plenty of scope for taking the piss out of her and the new starter; S. I had tea with S and we chatted about her little girl who is 2 and has cerebral palsy. She is really into the idea of HE but confessed that she has really struggled so far with motherhood and her daughters disability, feeling that she needs a lot of support and that she has not necessarily adapted well to it all. Her daughter has no mobility at all – she can roll about but not yet even crawl and she doesn’t drive so it is pushchair or nothing which she finds pretty limiting. She said she often feels judged on how her and her daughter are progressing and I was shocked to learn she has not found any sort of support of others in a similar position – I would have assumed Health Visitors / doctors would have put her in touch with support groups. She does have internet access so I showed her how to join yahoo and printed off a list of 15 UK based yahoo groups specifically for parents. friends and carers of children with CP. Hopefully she’ll take them home and get herself into the loop. I explained that for us HE had only seemed a real possibility once we’d found others doing it and that online communities and support were what had kept us going in the early days- and of course led to real life friends now, locally and nationally. She was really pleased and grateful so hopefully it will be a real first step for her.

Back at home among other things they had done a jigsaw puzzle of a pirate ship with Ady tasking them to find and count a list of various animals featured in the puzzle. When I got in they were watching Peter Pan with the subtitles on which I think was accidental but had Davies pointing words out and telling me what they said.

After lengthy cuddles with both children I got Davies to bring me one of the books he’d chosen to read for the summer reading game. He brought over Meg and Mog and with really, really minimal help (on words like cauldron where I helped with what sound the ‘au’ made and words like ‘brought’ which phonetically are never going to work) he read the whole thing. I was surprised at the words he knew straightaway as whole words, many of which are either from his DS or Xbox. He worked through it by spelling out each word in a sentence and then going back and reading the sentence with feeling. I know this is something of a milestone really as although he has been technically able to read for quite some time inasmuch as if I sat him down with a page of writing he would eventually decode it this was reading proper with acknowledgement of the story. It was still slow, he still hit 2 points where he would have happily decided he’d had enough and I was careful not to insist he finished it but to remind him how fab he’d feel if he got to the end and read a Whole Book :). I doubt this is about to be any sort of huge turning point but my key hope is something along the lines of ‘they can if they want to’ for the children and I think we’ve probably hit that point with D and reading :).

Scarlett listened for a while and then got bored and wandered off to play with the chickens. She came in very excited to report that one of the two remaining eggs (she’s kicked the others out) under the broody hen was pipping (Pipping is when the first cracks appear in the egg as the chick starts to hatch out). Throughtout the afternoon I refereed a big old fight between our two hens. The one who has already hatched chicks, one of which she still has following her about everywhere had suddenly decided that actually she’d quite like to hatch these eggs and have the hens for herself. The poor broody hen who is knackered from sitting and being broody for weeks was getting a real pasting from her and the eggs were being nicked from each other and rolled about every few minutes with both of them ‘helping’ the pipping chick by pecking bits of the egg off. The poor chick (already hatched one) was utterly confused about who was his mother now and just kept following the eggs and scrambling underneath whichever one had them at the time.

Ady chatted to someone at work who suggested we needed to deal with it before the egg fully hatched as whoever the new chick saw first would become it’s mother and we could end up with a dead chick if the hens continued to squabble over it not to mention the reaction of the older chick. Eventually Davies and I chased out the hen with the chick and left the broody hen in peace with her hatching chick and one remaining egg that both hens seem convinced is going to hatch too. By the time we put them all to bed tonight it was fully hatched and seems fine. So we now have our 3 hens and 3 cockerels chicks who will be all mixed up soon when 2 of the roos get rehomed next week, our hen with the middle sized chick and our hen with one or maybe two brand new chicks. I’ve said it before – they really deserve a scriptwriter or a blog of their own, the politics are so indepth in that coop!

All that egg-sitement over with the children and I settled down with Where’s Wally which was one of Tarly’s choices of books for the summer reading game. We had a Where’s Wally fest last year but she is back into it again. She is at a bit of a pre-reading milestone too and suddenly seems to know most of the letter sounds despite noone ever teaching her them. She is doing lots of deconstructing words and tonight was asking me things like ‘I know ‘No’ has an ‘o’in it but what other letters are there?’ I said ‘N, like N for Nic, or naughty or nonsense’ and she came back with a few other n words too. Later still I found her lying in bed with a book moving her finger under the words and deciding what they said. She wasn’t right as she was working from memory, the pictures and her own rather active imagination rather than any adhesion to what the words actually were but again it’s the start of the journey.

I did some taking badges off and sewing them back on to other jumpers, gathered up all their uniforms and plaited Scarlett’s hair ready for Badgers while they had some DS time. Then we headed off to Badgers. Ady managed to join us there in plenty of time for the presentation. We looked at the ‘work’ they’d done this term which for Davies and Scarlett doing ‘creative badger’ including making picture frames, painting pebbles, making kites, painting bandanas, a collaborative hand and foot printing collage, sewing a glove puppet and weaving paper. Both of their efforts were lovely in everything, they’ve really enjoyed this term. Scarlett has made firm friends with a new little girl too.

Scarlett was as rubbish as ever at standing on parade doing the full range of ‘little kid at nativity play’ stunts including fingers up her nose, down her skirt, showing her pants, sitting down in the middle., waving frantically to us, sighing midway during someone’s speech, and pirouetting regularly when the mood took her :roll:. She does make everyone smile though and my frantic gestures of ‘calm down’ ‘be quiet’ ‘be sensible’ and ‘get your bloody finger out of your nose’ probably look much the same to her as she does to us 😆 It all seems to be tolerated in good humour though. They were both presented with their Creative Badger badges and certificates and then Ady brought them home while I nipped to Sainsburys for various bits to bring camping to tide us over til Friday when we find a supermarket.

Unfortunately Ady didn’t have any keys so although he was able to start sorting the chickens into new accomodation to deal with the fox, chicken, grain type situation we have with all the various aged bantams and who will and won’t attack each other then children were not able to get themselves ready for bed. They did when I got home though and aside from packing clothes and actually loading up the car we have everything dug out and assembled ready to be packed for camping. 🙂

Without any real planning to do so we’ve spent 3 of the last 5 days in the company of Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. It’s been lovely actually. Scarlett and Jack have been getting on really well and it’s been so nice to be with Julie as we had slipped into more of a fortnightly getting together of late. It came about today as I mentioned yesterday that we would try and get along to the PYO farm today and Julie said ‘oh we’ll come too!’.

Before we went out this morning Davies and Scarlett played with lego and the pretend food. Davies built an ‘RV’ and gave me great descriptive detail about itand it’s various components and design features. I made some lunch to take with us and we headed out to PYO.

Julie and co arrived just after us, thankfully with suncream as I’d stupidly forgotten to pick any up again and the sun had broken through the clouds and was at full strength again so I’d have surely topped up my burn otherwise :rolls:.

The strawberries were rubbish but we sat for ages in the pea field picking, chatting, playing and in Lorna’s case having some milk too :lol:. We decided her little 5 week old life is pretty full and would make a good ‘Amazing Adventures of Lorna – breastfed in as many different locations as possible during the first 6 weeks of her life’ film 😆 Today she managed pea field, tractor trailer ride, sitting infront of Shakespeare play just in a few hours :). We also got loads of raspberries too. The children discovered the irrigation system which throws out massive jets of water across the crops and got soaked playing in that – happy, happy children :).

We drove a little along the road to Highdown Gardens and discovered a man in a funny hat in the carpark and then signs along the paths leading to ‘Rainbow Theatres’.It turned out to be the dress rehearsal and setting up of stage etc. for some plays happening there over the next week or so. We set our picnic rug up in full view of the stage and were soon approached by one of the set builders to say if we hung around we’d see a performance soon. We ended up staying for a couple of hours watching them get dressed up and start to run through the play. The children wondered around and about, sometimes stopping to watch. Davies was very interested in the setting up and costume stuff but was less for sitting and watching the performance which was Taming of the shrew.

Reluctantly we left as we had to get back for swimming. So we whizzed home for the children to get changed and me to shove pizzza dough into the breadmaker.Ady arrived home and we all went off to swimming. They both had a great lesson; Davies is really doing well and Scarlett appears to have had a real breakthrough and is actually swimming although she stops when she needs to breathe and puts her feet down. Davies has gone up a class from September which I am proud of him for but both children are quite upset at the idea of not being in the same class anymore :(. We spoke to the instructor about whether she thought Scarlett could take a couple of week long courses through the summer and get put into the higher class too but she said she doubted there would be space for her even if she was up to that standard :(. It means Davies’ lesson is at 4pm and Scarlett’s is at 530pm which will be a right pain for us so we’ll have to see how that pans out and hopefully it will only be for one term before Scarlett gets put up with Davies too. It is staggering how Scarlett has gone from thrashing wildly in the pool to a rather graceful stroke in mere weeks :shock:.

We came home and Ady took over while I got changed and dashed back out again to the library for book group. We were discussing two books this month having not met last month so that was quite lively. We finished about 830pm and I walked home again to find the children awake but allegedly in bed :rolls:. There was some toing and froing before they actually did settle down though.

It was second-Monday-in-the-month Pulborough Brooks Home Ed meet up today.The last couple have only really been Katie-who-organises-it and us but today had a massive turn out :).

Scarlett is being tricky (again – I’m sure I could find plenty of excuses or justifications, but really she’s being a poo-bag and I’m rather conscious of the impact on Davies who tends to wait patiently, trying to help if he can and adopting an air of ‘is it worth the hassle?’about him). We had a strop about her trousers which resulted in her putting two other pairs on before going back to the ones she started with. I will accept deciding not to like an item of clothing for rational reasons such as being uncomfortable or even not liking the style or design – I very clearly recall a pair of red flared dunagees with a soldier on the front that I loathed at a much younger age than Scarlett is now. But she is very articulate so a simple ‘I hate them!’ isn’t really going to cut it with me. She has had ‘potential issues’ in the past with things as varied as deciding she is scared of her bedroom, suddenly disliking food she has always loved and other such nonsenses and I have always employed the technique of not pandering to anything that she can’t clearly state the reasons for her upset over.

So that episode had us running late and we needed petrol and some additional top up to our scanty picnic. The petrol station had nothing so we decided to pop into the Tesco petrol station for food. Then we hit a major traffic jam through the small village that Pulborough Brooks is the other side of, then I went and got the extra food and it all conspired to make us half an hour late altogether. Both children chose to take spotter sheets and we walked along fairly quickly chatting as we went, all good humour restored :). We caught up with the others fairly quickly into the walk – Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna were there along with 2 of Julie’s other good HE friends and their children, Katie-who-organises-it, another 2 HE families who often come and a new family from Lewes with two children, the oldest is flexi-schooling at Lewes New School.

Scarlett and Jack imediately ran off together; Davies mixed hanging back with me and Julie or whoever I was chatting to at the time with running ahead with George and Aled the two other older boys who were there and he knows fairly well. It was a nice walk with plenty of different people to fall into step and chatter to for a while. Scarlett and Jack went right off ahead and Davies went off to catch them up. They’d been in the visitor centre / shop for a while by the time we got there and had already handed their spotter sheets in and got their packs :). The volunteers there seem to be getting more used to the fact they know their way round and are not going to go running out into the carpark and get run over if they are not tethered to me now :lol:.

I collected our random picnic from the car and we all sat together in the play park to eat and play. I felt rather ‘odd one out’ for a while as everyone was talking about school / Etudeo / structured reading and writing, plus they all seemed to be feeding their children mixed seeds and pulses with hummus dip and raw vegetables while Davies and Scarlett were mostly eating Monster Munch :lol:. There are some very interesting sub-sections of HE culture (and I’m very aware we are in one just the same as everyone else) and this is not my natural habitat one! I did get to cuddle Lorna for a bit which was nice but marred slightly by Scarlett having another big strop. I don’t think it was related but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she was pulling the ‘I’m YOUR baby!’ stunt. She recovered fairly quickly and we’ve chatted about it since. She can be so mature and rational about things when she is not being a lunatic! She so is the little girl who had a little curl ;).

I got stupidly sunburnt on my arms and cleavage for managing to completely forget about suncream. I was so good about it back in April but have gotten out of the habit what with there being no sun for weeks and all. The children are fine, they were covered anyway and playing mostly in the shade so at least I don’t have bad-mother-guilt to contend with aswell as stinging red bits :(.

We left and nipped home to collect library tickets and some books to return before heading to the library to join this years Summer Reading Challenge. They did the find the characters treasure hunt, got their stickers, registered to start and chose a couple of books each. Davies has chosen books he thinks he might be able to tackle himself for his starting two so we’ll see if he gets anywhere with that. He also had a mini-adventure at the library when he needed to use the loo so I sent him to get the key for it and go off himself as he knows the building really quite well now. He did manage to use the lift though, got confused about going down and pressed 1 instead of G so the doors closed but the lift didn’t go anywhere and he pressed the alarm button. Someone came and ‘resuced’ him so he was very happy with his handling of the whole situation :lol:.

We had a quick look round the charity shops while we were there and found two brand new sealed kits in one. A ‘puddle monster’ kit which is basically a plastic pond with a channel for grass seed to create a swamp look and some sea monkey eggs – for 99p! We planted the grass seed and have put the puddle monster eggs in so should see something with the magnifying glass tomorrow :).

We also got a flower pressing kit with a nice chunky flower press aswell as bookmarks, cards, envelopes and glitter glue to make things from your pressed flowers. We all went and picked some to press and did that too. Funnily enough we’d been talking about flower pressing recently and talked about having a go at it so it was great to find that for a quid too :).

We came home, did the activities, Davies and Scarlett played with the geomags and then had tea. Ady arrived home and Davies and I popped over to Ali’s to return Freya’s car seat and drop off some promised plants from Ady. It was nice to have Davies all to myself for an hour or so and we had some good conversations about all sorts of things :). We popped into Sainsburys to get a few bits too and then came home. Time for a couple of stories and then bed.

Yesterday when driving past Stanmer Park on the way to Freya’s party we noticed the Kite Festival was on. We first happened upon it 4 years ago in much the same way when we were driving past to go somewhere else. I thought it was 2 years ago, but decided it could have been 3, only to discover checking back on my blog it was 4!

My hair is a bit shorter now but I was wearing that same jacket again today!

Davies on the other hand does appear to have grown in the last four years!

So this morning Ady and Scarlett went off to the car boot sale. The idea is anyone who is up by about 8am gets to go. Frankly I’m over car boot sales anyway so the appeal of buying other peoples tat for 50p or staying in bed in a quiet house for an extra hour is never going to be a tough choice to make. Davies tends to go more for my way of thinking too :). So he and I had a leisurely hour together once I’d got up, put away a load of clean washing and gone to wake him up too. We watched Gladiators and he ate cheerios while I drank tea :). Ady and Scarlett bumped into Julie the Badger leader and went round the car boot sale with her. They came back with a couple of books. Davies and I nipped up to Sainsburys for picnic food and then we all headed off to Stanmer Park together.

Scarlett was wearing a dress we got cheap the other day because I’d liked the colour but actually the design and the colour on her made it look like some sort of nurses or careworkers uniform. Adding a cardigan to it today because it was cold seemed to enhance that look – it was horrible :(. She won’t be wearing that again!

The weather was rather threatening but it never actually did rain and a couple of times the sun broke through and it was lovely. Davies and Scarlett made their own kites;

which actually flew really well 🙂 Davies had a great time with his for ages and I managed to get some impressive loops and twists out of it – not bad for an old cut up carrier bag and some bamboo barbecue skewers 😉

Sadly it went the way so many kites have gone before and got caught in a tree. But it knew the good times, it felt the wind in it’s recycled video tape tail, it had the glory of making a small boy smile with the joy of the next best thing to flying himself! Davies was wobbly but brave about it all.

We sat and lunched next to the arena where a constant show was on of various things. They did an Indian fighting kite display a la Kite Runner, choreographed flying to music, an amazing display of two kites with really long tails flown to ‘Windmills of your mind’ which was just stunning, a fab display by one man simulataneously flying 3 kites to Barcelona (which Davies listened to a few bars of having never heard it before and then said ‘this sounds like Queen’ :lol), various stunt and trick kites and my personal favourite of one man in a buggy and another on a board kite surfing with all sorts of cool moves.

They then called in the first 30 children, of which Davies and Scarlett were among the first five :lol:, which was great until they then wanted a few adults too and I got called in aswell :). They did a huge parachute game to music which was actually quite fun – and all the children got sweets too.

and we all took a bow at the end!

Then the children who had made kites all got to take them into the arena and fly them. Davies was very brave about having already lost his and came to help Scarlett fly hers. They gave some prizes for best flying technique but as Scarlett (and actually even Davies) hasn’t really moved past running very fast with it she didn’t win anything!

We had one last wander round the stalls selling kites and then watched the giant kites being flown before heading for home.

I cooked ham in coke while the children had a bath and watched youtube videos with Ady of bubble blowing. We’d been talking about the man who blew cube bubbles and smoke filled bubbles yesterday and managed to find some videos of him to show them. We all ate, I read another pile of stories and then it was bedtime.

Scarlett fell asleep pretty quick but when I got out of the bath Ady and I followed beautifully written signs and arrows up the stairs to Davies’ bedroom for ‘Christmas Songs’. He told us where the nearest fire exit was, alerted us to the first aid kit should we need it and then sat on a little chair and sang along to a musical book ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’. Totally out of season, he (rather amusingly) said ‘great stockings we bring’ instead of ‘glad tidings’ and clearly a bed avoidance tactic but it brought tears to my eyes just the same ;). Lovely child!

It’s been a lovely weekend 🙂

Yesterday morning I worked. I’ve sort of lost track of what’s extra and what’s not but I seem to be working every Saturday that I’m not away in a tent this summer! It was fine, I finally managed to finish my display for the Team Read, this summers reading game which kicks off tomorrow.

I came home and we set off to Ali & J’s for Freya’s seventh birthday party. Much as I adore Freya and birthday parties her turning seven messes up the whole 5,6,7 thing that Scarlett, Freya and Davies had going on which was just so nice and tidy. It will now take Davies and Scarlett having birthdays to put it straight again which isn’t for ages and will also mean I have children who are 8 and 6 which I am in total denial about the possibility of! :lol

The party was fab. I enjoyed being ‘the friend who knows where all the tea making components are’, Ady took charge of the one person at a time trampoline rota, Scarlett hilariously announced to Ali ‘I’d like to go outside, are there any rules?’ and Davies appeared to be being lovely every time I saw him. He had some idea to convert the energy from the trampoline bouncing into electricity and various other little insights I caught the end of through the day. We met the partner of one of the HEors we see a fair bit of which was nice, I like seeing people’s other halves and seeing whether they are like I expected them to be :). We saw a couple of other HE friends and some of Ali’s other mates too.It was a good mix of attendees and considering the amount of them it was all very smooth and enjoyable. I say this with the airy manner of someone who mostly sat down chatting and drinking Smirnoff Ice of course while others ran around after all the children 😆 :lol:.

There was a treasure hunt and party bags which all netted fab prizes of the sort I used to get myself at parties including stretchy men, wooden pigs, fortune telling fish and more. Towards the end when only a few of us were left Freya brought out her Rainbow Dash Fizzy Surprise drinks of her own invention which were very well recieved by the children and brought on further sugar-rush craziness :lol:. We stayed awhile after the rest of the partygoers had gone for tea and coffee and bubble making which was just lovely :).


We came home via Asda where Davies got some Ben 10 socks and Scarlett got an armful of bangles. I’ve been wearing an armful of bangles and she’s been desperate for her own and Asda had child-size ones. So they both got further spoilt in addition to party going :). A late tea for them followed by a pile of books and an even later bedtime. Ady cooked a two course meal which we’d planned but not looked at the clock for so I ended up falling asleep on the sofa after huge amounts of food and staggered to bed before midnight hence yesterdays blog today.

We met Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna at the stables this morning. We hit serious traffic on the way so an optimistic 20 minute / realistic 30 minute drive took nearly 50 minutes. That gave us plenty of time to listen to our current in-car cd and for me to explain ‘revolution’ (Sandi Thom, punk rocker with flowers in my hair) and ‘play boy bunny with bleach-blonde hair (Nickelback, Wanna be a rock star – slightly harder ;)).

We arrived 25 minutes late and Julie pulled up mere moments after us, also 25 minutes late. Clearly some sort of amazing ESP or mutually compatible crapness going on there! The children disappeared off to run round the farm while Julie tacked Honey up and we caught up. They organised their own riding rota and off we went with Maisie riding first. Scarlett and Jack have always been the least likely pairing of the four cousins but the last few times we’ve met up they have been very close and today they were inseperable. They were ‘Bug Hunting’ and spotting all sorts of interesting creatures. Jack is very into nature and always has been and is pretty knowledgable about plants, flowers, bugs and so on so they were having a great time together spotting and identifying things :).

Davies had a nice long ride on Honey and actually ended up having a second ride. He seemed slightly distanced from the other 3 today but he has been doing a lot of hanging around me the last week or so and trying to join in my conversations with other adults rather than playing with ‘the children’. He’s reminding me a lot of the daughter of a friend who would always rather be with the grown ups than the children at gatherings, particularly with his efforts to join in the adults conversations. I’m trying to find the middle ground between completely censoring what I talk about and not being at all responsible with what I say infront of him.

He talked to Julie a lot while he was riding about various horse related things.

Scarlett was so into her ‘finding interesting things with Jack’ that she had to be persuaded to ride Honey at all which was something of a surprise as she normally adores it. She did have a ride but was as keen to get down again and carry on exploring really. I did get a nice picture of her turning round to talk to me though which is another of those ‘future echo’ type shots where she could almost be any age;

And I just love this picture, not because it has any great photographic value, just because it has lots of people I love in it and sums up for me the best part of our normal weekday activities; relaxed, in good company, doing things that are active and happy, chatting and enjoying being together:

We got back to the stables and the children went off to climb on ‘the mountains’ which are the straw and muck heap and an equally towering pile of lopped tree branches. We ate lunch in our cars parked side by side and then the four big cousins went off to play again while Julie, Lorna and I hung out and chatted (and gurgled and gave the odd 5 week old smile :))

We left there and Davies had gotten upset about losing a croc button so I’d said we’d call into Littlehampton on the way home to the shop where we get their pretendy crocs from to see if we could get a replacement. The shop only had two different designs but said their Rustington branch had loads so as that was also on the way home we called in there and got them a pair each of new ones. We also got them a pair each of new shoes – Tarly, more pretendy crocs with glitter and heart shaped cut outs for a quid and Davies some camouflage print sandals for £2 – bargain! I got a £7 pair of jeans too :).

We got home and as they’d been eating jam doughnuts in the car neither of them were particularly hungry for tea. Scarlett finally decided to have a bowl of cocopops after seeing an advert for them. Ady and I love the cocopops ad campaign which seems to be mostly about coming up with more and more times of the day when cocopops are ‘ideal’ for – after school, with warm milk (being their suggestions as well as breakfast), when your wife has announced she’s leaving you, when you get in from the pub too lashed up to cook a fry up (being some of our tamer ideas).

Ady arrived home and Scarlett and I headed off to Rainbows. Next week is the last one of term but she will miss it as we’ll be at Kelmarsh so she was in a bit of a party mood about the whole thing. She took her new shoes (well she wore them actually) and a couple of toy horses and talked about how she went pony riding today. One of the other little girls came up to talk to me about Scarlett’s ring, why I stay at Rainbows and the fact that she thinks I look like Scarlett. While she talked she fiddled with my bracelet which as a habit both my own children have I found very endearing. I think she has clicked onto the fact that Scarlett isn’t at school but doesn’t quite know how to come right out and ask and that was where some of her questions about Scarlett’s ring were leading (she has a little gold buckle ring that was mine as a child which I gave her a while ago and she always wears) as I assume it would be something she’d be asked to remove at school, certainly for PE – I know I always had to hand over loads of bits to the tupperware box at PE when I was at school :).

They did some sort of jigsaw puzzle activity, played a few games, ate biscuits and then had show and tell. I chatted to the leader for a long while about her foster daughter who has been helping out for the last month and how she is finding it. The girl has all sorts of problems including learning difficulties and a long history of all sorts of horrible abuse. I had found her rude and sullen but am now utterly humbled at both what a girl that young has lived through in her short life and the amazing role that foster carers play in helping children survive and live. It’s not something I think I could ever do and perhaps surprisingly (given he was fostered many times himself) Ady reckons he couldn’t do it either. Rainbows has been great for Tarly and we’re both happy for me not to stay from next term :).

Home for yet more of the pile of Barefoot Books – just 4 tonight as several of them were long ones, then bed for D and S and curry for Ady and I. I’m working in the morning and then we’re off to help celebrate Freya’s birthday :).

One of the things I keep forgetting to blog is that twice this week Davies and Scarlett have caught a bit of the daily news on TV and it has led to tricky conversations. Once was about ‘drugs’ which actually I sort of struggled to define really. I thought I was doing an ok job and then Ady reminded me that medicine is drugs too so I had to start again. I think I got the basic information over in giving them a definition, a context and point of reference for the news story and then a wider explanation about issues surrounding drugs too. It makes it all the harder when I try not to give black and white lectures about right and wrong and do more of an offering them all available information, suggesting my own stance on things and encouraging them to think through their own opinions. Clearly I’m not suggesting I laid out drugs paraphenalia for my 5 and 7 year old and told them to ‘have a go if they liked’ but I do try to explain why people might take drugs, what the possible implications are and why it may not be such a great idea to take mind altering substances with huge possible side effects in a recreational fashion (all the while knowing full well that they know we and most other adults they know drink alcohol). I just think the ‘Just Say No’ type message isn’t always sufficient when you factor in natural curiosity and teenage rebellion some way later down the line.

Then yesterday we touched on terrorism. Once we’d defined it I used the Word Trade Center attacks, IRA bombings and the July 7th London bombings as examples in my own lifetime. We talked about why people might be motivated to perform acts of terrorism and again in striving to explain it I didn’t want to go down the ‘people are evil’ route without talking it through so we discussed things that people might be prepared to kill or die for, how the threat of terrorism and a culture of living in fear is still considered a victory for terrorists. I’ve been searching today for more modern day films or books about such things and found very little. The various films made of the 911 attacks are all a 15 certficate at least and probably too sophisicated to get the point across. I did find a fairly good bit on the CBBC Newsround site which I might show them tomorrow.

Today was a working all day day for me. It kicked off with Storytime which I’d already known I’d be doing this week and had gathered a few books together ready for. I attempted to read four stories which I now concede was ambitious – The Gruffalo, I Love my bed, My Beak your beak and Hairy Mclarey from Donaldsons Dairy. We sang lots of songs and I was clambered over my small crawling babies (shudder), I had a picture of the Gruffalo for them to colour and another one from the lion in My beak, your beak. Sadly about halfway through Hairy Mclairy I just utterly lost my audience and there was not one single child still listening by the end. Four of the older girls started squabbling over who was sitting on a cushion, several of the little ones were just at the end of their concentration span and as I lost some so the rest went. There were 22 children and 18 adults though and all the adults remained with me with one of them actually calling out ‘carry on, we’re still listening!’. I actually got a round of applause at the end as I closed the book with a flourish and a ‘And we’re there!’ 😆 The oldest children are possibly 4 and at that age both Davies and Scarlett required a very interactive storytime with lots of pointing out things in the illustrations, being able to contribute (read interupt) and actually participate rather than listen so it is totally understandable. If I did it every week I can think of small measures to try and make it an easier half hour but it is not something I do regularly enough to start trying to change things. I also think a storytelling session rather than reading a book might work better although I guess that starts to detract from the whole books at the library side of it.

The rest of the day passed fairly smoothly. A new woman started yesterday so I worked with her for the first time today. Her sister works with Ady so we’d both been told about each other already ;). She is very interested in HE – she has a 2 yo daughter with cerebral palsey so we were chatting lots about that and I’ve a feeling we’ll continue to do so for a while. She seems very nice so I’m looking forward to getting to know her better and working with another new face.

Ady was home this morning and they did painting. This afternoon Dad was here and the children mostly played in the garden as finally we’ve had a dry, fairly sunny day here today.

Having always liked Barefoot Books we’ve had a couple lately which have been really good books so I went through the library’s full catalogue last week and ordered in all of the Barefoot Books categorised as POR (picture books for older readers) – 25 of which had arrived today. So I brought home a huge great piles of gorgeous books and we read a few before dinner. Then Davies and Scarlett had a much needed bath (a day in the garden after 3 days of rain meant they were rather filthy, and also had been barefoot!) and then we read another huge pile. I think we reached 12 books altogether tonight :). I’ve been poking around the Barefoot Books website a bit as they have a very interesting looking Storytelling competition which Davies is interested in and I ‘ve been taken enough with the books to consider selling them. I need to think about that a bit more but I have a germ of an idea taking off in my mind which once I’ve thought about a bit more I might share…

I’ve had some emails back from the Sustainability Centre and the Campcraft people so I’ll need to start sorting out plans for that camp and getting numbers planned. Also Davies has agreed to have his birthday party at camp rather than at the party hall which is great but possibly offers new challenges which he and I need to thrash out too.

This morning, just for a change, it rained :(.

Scarlett had woken at 2am, claiming a bad dream, wanted a drink, come up to bed with me, laid and chatted for nearly an hour, cried because she said her ear hurt, decided she wanted to go back downstairs again, made me sit on the floor beside her bed and then when I said I was going back to my bed (what she really wanted was me to sleep in her bed with her) decided to come back up with me again :rolls:. Every so often she has a couple of episodes of broken nights, every time it nearly kills me and every time she then goes straight back to sleeping through and having no problems. Maybe we’ve been overdosing the Doctor Who watching?

So it was a slow start to the morning with no particular place to be and no inclination to go anywhere in this weather anyway. I was slightly shamed by Michelle’s twitter about going out for a walk and thought that actually we should have waterproofed up and done similar but by then we’d made plans for Lucy and The Rs to come over in the afternoon anyway.

So we flicked through the tv channels looking for interesting things. We watched a bit of a show called ‘The Blasters’ about people who demolish buildings, a bit of Hider in the House and some other kids gameshow that they like to watch and a bit of Raven. Then we found a really interesting programme about whether apes are as clever as humans with all sorts of experiments on how apes learn language, communicate and so on. Both the children were really interested in that and we followed it up with some Really Wild Show (or whatever that programme with the woman who used to be on The Really Wild Show is called now).

One of the women I work with choppped a tree down in her garden a couple of weeks ago and I helped her find a wood chipper to hire online at work. She was telling me they just had a pile of logs which were too big to be chipped to get rid of of and I said if they were suitable we’d have them gladly to burn on our fire next winter so she’s had them ready to collect at her house for ages. I decided that I really needed to take them off her hands so we drove up there in the rain and she dashed out to help me load them in the car. Her lovely husband has chopped them up perfect sized for our fairly small fire and there are five huge bags so they will greatly appreciated later this year (much later I hope although it’s practically cold enough to have fires even though it’s bloody JULY!).

We’d just got in and were debating what to have for lunch when Ady appeared as he was practically passing the door on his way somewhere and realised it was lunchtime so that was nice :). He headed off again while I used up some too soft to eat bananas in making some banana and chocolate chip cakes, which did as my lunch :). Ady got given a huge hot water dispenser flask thing at work that someone didn’t want so I’ve been boiling the kettle and filling it up to make tea out of rather than boiling the kettle several times a day when I’m home all day or have friends over who are likely to be drinking a couple of cups of tea or coffee. It will be great for camping but it’s nice to have instant hot water for drinks making at home too – makes me think of Melrose and that fab boiler in the kitchen there :).

Lucy and The Rs arrived and stayed for a good 3 hours plus. There was some initial squabbles although I think it was more Davies and Scarlett related than anything else. They are so good at playing together that they can either be rubbish at letting someone else break into their game or they can resent someone playing with the other one and try to disrupt things. They all settled into it in the end though and when it stopped raining for an hour towards the end we chucked them all out in the garden to run off some energy and get some fresh air. Richard did manage to fall over and scuff his knee badly to match the other knee which he scuffed last week when he was here. Last time the other three made up a song and dance to cheer him up, this time Davies and Scarlett both fetched a first aid kit and vied over who would present him with antiseptic wipes and plasters first :lol:.

Our guests left, Davies and Scarlett had tea and then got changed for Badgers. Ady had got a present of a sunflower each for all the Badgers and it was ‘bring a pet to Badgers day’ so I battled to get the big box of sunflowers into my car while Ady dashed home and selected a chicken to put in a cat carrier to bring with us. The Badgers were slightly depleted in numbers tonight but there was a cat, 3 rabbits and our chicken brought along to make up the numbers. I’d not really expected to stay and was very scruffily dressed so felt a bit self conscious sitting in the circle of chairs for the sort of show and tell type session it ended up being. Davies spoke most about the chickens with a small amount of help from Scarlett. He was actually excellent – spoke really clearly and confidently, explained things really well and gave lots of little nuggets of information and anecdotes too. He explained about hatching eggs ourselves, having hens and cockerels, incubators and letting hens go broody themselves, what an incubator is and how it works, the difference between chickens and bantams and loads more. He easily knew more than I did a year ago and put it all across really well :). On the way home he said he really liked talking to people and telling them about stuff he knows about :). He also was in charge of letting people hold the hen and answering any little questions they had while they did it although Ady and I got called on a fair bit for that and I explained about different types of feathers to a surprisingly interested little group. We were most profusely thanked for bringing her in by the leaders :).

There is a fairly new girl there -H, I think she is about Davies’ age and just twitches my HE radar with the way she is dressed and her general personality. Tonight her mum was there too with their rabbit and she had me looking at her thinking ‘hmmm, you look like ‘one of us’ too’. She was super chatty so I might ask her next week (or get one of the children to ask H :lol:). Scarlett likes H a lot too and has been insperable from her since she started.

Scarlett was fairly rubbish at sitting still and being quiet but then there were cats and rabbits to play with. Once the Badgers were ‘released’ from sitting in the circle she spent the whole time chatting to the grown up son of one of the leaders who had brought 2 rabbits with him to show. She was clearly asking intelligent questions and seemed fairly locked in conversation with him so it is just that formal setting she struggles with (and who can blame her, I was sitting there wanting to pull faces and be silly!). She really does love animals though.

We came home and had a final read of The Tear Thief and The Fish in the Forest (one of the stories fromt this book) before I take them back tomorrow. I’ve ordered loads of Barefoot books so hopefully they should be waiting for me at work already.

It was briefly nice this morning when I woke up but grey clouds were already hanging overhead by the time I’d got the washing machine going :(.

I gave Davies and Scarlett a few options; Drusillas (again – although even if we don’t manage a final visit on this years membership I think we made full use of it this time – we must have had 10 trips over the course of the year including the reason for buying it in the first place which was Davies meeting Wallace and Gromit last August), PYO, walk into Lancing for some library books and charity shop trawling or stay home. They both chose stay home :). We made a plan to do our own things for the morning and then settle down at lunchtime with popcorn and a film.

They watched the two part Doctor Who finale again while playing it out with Davies’ figures (and a special guest appearance of Abi from Primeval :lol:) which are suddenly getting played with loads – I’m loving seeing them recreate the team Tardis flying effort as Davies actually has 2 Doctors, Captain Jack, Mickey and Rose – I think Abi stood in for Sarah-Jane ;).

I did several loads of washing, pegged it out, battled with the washing line that fell down, fully loaded with clean washing just as it started to piss with rain. I dealt with the chickens – we’re beginning an integration process as we *think* (fingers crossed) that all of the eggs that hatched from our hens and fiesty cockerel are hens which gives us 3 more hens. We are 100% certain that all of Tom’s chicks are roos. It’s still too early to tell about the little chick although I’m holding out hope on that being a hen. The plan is for all 3 roos to go I think – the fact they are different breed to the hens sort of decides it as I’d not be keen to have mixed chicks from them and I’m quite happy not to have a cockerel anyway. So we’re aiming to get the 5 hens happy with each other and eventually all sleeping together too.

In a break in the weather (there was a very brief one) I dashed outside and put the new tent up. After lots of consideration we took the two small ones back, we had a small 4 person from Argos which when we went to put up had obviously been returned as the poles were unstrung and one section shattered. We now have an Asda 4 person with a tiny porch and one room. It seems ideal – I put it up myself in under half an hour so it would take under 10 minutes with two people, it’s about the perfect size to take the four of us comfortably but not take up too much space and having left it out in today’s rain seems to deal with weather pretty well for a cheap tent (£20). It will only be a very occasionally used tent but we did need something smaller and quicker for the odd times that the Outwell is just too big. 🙂

The children went to sit in it and do some drawing for a while and I did some more online competition entering. I’m probably spending about 45 minutes a day on it (sometimes in smaller chunks, sometimes all at once) and hopeful of winning something – there are some fab prizes on offer and a thread on MSE clumps together a big list of all the ones ending tomorrow. Some of the sig lines of regular posters on there show massive monthly wins each month so I’m feeling quite hopeful and inspired.

Then at midday-ish I popped loads of popcorn and we sat down to watch Fly Away Home which I’d borrowed from work after finding it on one of those lists people put on amazon and lovefilm websites entitled things like ‘top 10 films for the discerning child’ :lol:. It was hugely appropriate here for all sorts of reasons, not least the whole girl and her pet geese thing which was all a bit like Tarly and her chickens. We’ve also seen the GooseMan flying at Shorehamd airshow once or twice and both children claim to remember him. The conversations surrounding the film were interesting. Davies was very indignant at Amy being forced to school by her Dad (minor plotline and actually she is fine at school but he was all ‘they are FORCING her to go!’) and Scarlett suddenly piped up with ‘Amy is just like the chicks because her mummy is dead too’. We all ennjoyed it :).

They then put on a Doctor Who dvd (episodes 1-3 of the latest series – Ood, Pompeii and those fat things) and carried on watching and playing out the action with toys. I carried on comping ;).

It was swimming lesson time soon afterwards so we were off to the pool. Scarlett has gone from thrashing wildly about the pool to being very close indeed to actually swimming in two weeks 😯 and can get across the width in two or three goes with long graceful limbs and the beginning of a promising stroke. It’s amazing to see but is what I anticipated would be the case for her as I was shocked when she didn’t take to it like, well, a fish to water I guess! Davies is continuing with a slow and steady improvement and can properly swim now on both back and front. He was working on his breathing today and seems to be conquering that. They were all being assessed today by the swimming instructor leader woman to see what class they will be placed in next term. Scarlett will clearly remain in nonswimmers for at least another term and I am hoping that Davies will too as although he can swim I think another term would get him really ready to not just sink at the bottom of the next class up. Also for pure convenience sake it would be good to still have them in the same class each week. And hopefully another term would have Scarlett ready to move up with him. I guess a lot will depend on where there are gaps as he could get pushed up if there are loads of people waiting to start nonswimming classes. We’ll see next week.

The other piece of news at the pool was that from next term swimming caps will be compulsory wear for all lessons. They are giving every child a free swimming cap which will need replacing if it is lost or forgotten and they apparently won’t be able to take part in lessons without one. I think it’s a good idea really although I was a bit worried at the deal breaking potential for Scarlett of swimming lessons, but she seems to be okay about the idea. I’ve been honest about the fact it will hurt putting it on (any tips? should I leave her hair down and shove it in or put it up first?) and said that if she doesn’t like the free cap I’ll take her to choose whichever one she wants from a sports shop.

We got home and the children had dinner while Ady and I took the tent down and I whizzed to the supermarket for a few salad bits for dinner. Home for a story (chapter of Famous Five) and then bed for the children. It’s been another nice spending time together day :).

The wind and rain that started yesterday did indeed continue all through the night. I decided barely recovered from bad colds people shouldn’t be out and about in wind and rain so our plans to go to Drusillas were called off. (Hope you are feeling better soon too Ros X). So after a quick vote from the children on a couple of options we decided to take up Liza’s suggestion of The Plex of Fun soft play, or as the owners like to call it., Funplex. We’d not been for a while and a quick online chat with Ali confirmed that she and Freya would be there along with a couple other EOFF families who we’ve failed to keep up with lately so we went with that option.

We drove over listening to music and chatting and arrived to find not just the EOFFs and Liza there but a couple of other friends from MM who we’d not seen this year so that was great :). In all there were 7 families there and it was just lovely to sit and chat to all the adults while the children all just got on with it. Scarlett came and got some money off me to go and buy some water for herself at one point, which was just fab – I am so loving having older and more independant children 🙂 :). I drank lots of tea, fed the children coke and chips and just loved falling back into the sorts of conversations that I so enjoyed back when we were at MM every week. We talked HESFes, parenting, childcare, working, camping and ended with a smaller group after some had gone home having lovely vague and meandering chats about condos, apartments and complexes :lol:.

I barely saw Davies and Scarlett. D was playing the whole time and was in his element with a little group of smaller children who adore him and then with 2 same age as him boys which was fab to see, particularly as they two of the very boys I always hoped he’d play with at MM but he never seemed to. Scarlett played with various people at various points but there was a lovely ten minutes or so when her and Freya were playing on the slide hand in hand which was also nice to watch :).

We left about 330pm before the afterschool rush happened and got home just after 4pm. Sadly it was to discover Spatchcock the lame chick was dead :(. There is no visible reason why, he’d been fine when we left this morning and didn’t have a mark on him. His crop was full of food and aside from being small and scrawny he was otherwise fine. In the same way as we’ll never actually know what happened to the little chick while we were away I guess this is another of those unexplained things. I do know from hanging out on poultry-keeping forums that chickens do just die for no explained reason sometimes, particularly chicks so I’m guessing out of the 14 chicks we’ve hatched losing 2 isn’t so very rare really, and we always knew Spatchcock’s life expectancy would be short. The children were ok about it, sad obviously but very accepting that he had been lucky to live as long as he did given the state of him when he hatched. When Ady got home he dug a hole and we buried him in the garden. As with all our dead animals so far the children have decided his ghost will come visit them and are looking forward to seeing him with Malice et al very soon :).

I’d rung Ady at work to tell him and his boss had been there so he’d explained one of the chicks was dead and he’d be coming home to dig the hole. His boss aparently said ‘ah yes, you’re not a proper dad until you’ve buried a pet’ which struck a bit of a chord actually – it’s definitely something of a parenting rite of passage isn’t it, comforting a child and knowing there is nothing you can do to reverse things or really make them better. Quite often the first time you are not able to fix something for your child.

I made a big vat of popcorn and we settled down to watch the Bee Movie which I thought was pretty good actually. Scarlett didn’t watch all of it – it takes a pretty amazing film to hold her for 90 minutes, even in the cinema without any distractions but Davies and I watched it all, with an interval when Ady got home to bury Spatchcock.

We had bedtime stories – a Barefoot book of tales of wit and wisdom that we’ve been enjoying. I went through the library catalogue on Saturday and ordered in all the Barefoot books we have so we’ll be having a bit of a barefoot bookfest over the next few weeks I imagine. I was also telling Davies about a storytelling competition they are running which I thought he might be interested in.

Tomorrow if the weather is not too dire I might take the children to Drusillas, if not we’ll stay home and watch some more films. Today has been ace, a real reconnection with them for me – a nice cosyness about being together rather than the missing them for working too much but not wanting to actually be with them when I was home because I felt too ill of last week.

I’ve decided I’m bored with blogging about still feeling ill. Therefore you may assume until I blog in a delighted fashion about how well I am feeling now that I am still feeling crap. If I stop blogging altogether it may be safe to assume that I have contracted triple pnemonia and am hospitalised. Either way I remain puddingy ;).

I went off with my Mum today, allegedly to help her choose a new mobile phone for her birthday. She didn’t find one but we did have a nice few hours looking round the shops together. She chose some underwear so I paid for that and am therefore off the birthday present buying hook :). We had lunch at Cafe Rouge which was very nice and aside from getting drenched running back to the carpark it was a pleasant day. I’ve got over the fact she has no comprehension of the fact I will never be looking at £50 pairs of shoes in the same shops as she does (she bought a pair) because £50 is a fiver more than our entire clothing and shoe budget for the four of us each month according to our debt management plan. I have moved on from feeling hurt that she doesn’t realise how unempathic it is to talk about how she really *needs* a small white leather bag as the 3 she already has are too big, too small and too dressy (it must be like bloody Goldilocks trying to choose a handbag round at her house of a morning!) and I think we’ve both moved past the fact that even when I did used to spend money I didn’t have I would still never have pulled off levels of grooming and accessorising that she manages. I do think I may be a cuckoo child sometimes – and then I look at my Dad and decide his genes were stronger when it came to me!

Ady and the children had had a nice day together, they’ve spent loads of time together this week. The early rising contingent of the Goddard household (that’d be Ady and Scarlett then) had been to car boot sale and back before Davies and I got up this morning, returning with two T shirts for Tarly, some plastic animals and a gas camping heater for a quid which hooks up to our gas bottle and gives off loads of heat 🙂 Bargain! Davies watched Doctor Who a couple more times and Scarlett had been listening to the music. We watched some extra show on a dvd or something once all about the music on Doctor Who and she recognises Rose’s theme and various other songs on it and was commenting on them to Ady apparently.

Ady had roast dinner waiting when I got home but having only had lunch a couple of hours before I was not remotely ready for it so I had mine later when the children had gone to bed. They all ate, had baths, watched The Simpsons and then had a retro half hour before bed watching Maggie and the Ferocious Beast.

Tomorrow, weather permitting we’re off to Drusillas as our membership runs out in a week so I’d like to get one last visit in before that. It is currently lashing with rain, blustering a gale and not looking very lovely at all. I’m very glad we’re not tenting it tonight!

I worked again this morning. My hours are a bit all over the place as I have theoretically swapped Saturday shifts for a while to cover a vacancy but as I already had various things booked through July and August on my weekends off I seem to be working lots in a row. I am getting paid extra for the odd one or two and it also all goes in my favour as Fabulous Employee of the Decade too ;). So this week I’ve clocked up three mornings getting up for work and the grand total of 15 hours. This actually sounds pretty feeble given I used to work a 10 hour day 5 days a week every single week but that was nearly 10 years ago and I didn’t have children or a shitty cold to deal with :lol:. This week has really taken everything out of me with poorly children, feeling crap myself, a succession of late and disturbed nights sleep, Ady coughing (and therefore me wanting to divorce him and mentally cataloguing all our belongings and dividing them up) and anything else self-pitying and slightly whiny I can think of adding to the list of reasons why you should all feel sorry for me. Ah yes, I have a bone in my leg! 😆

Anyway work was fine, I spent 3 hours on the enquiry desk, part of it trying to explain that Mamma Mia is only just out at the cinema so no, you really can’t put your name down on a list to borrow the dvd when it comes out just yet to a mad old bint of a woman, making a judgement call on £18 worth of fines on a blokes account for books such as Katie Price (aka Jordan)’s first novel, a Jane Green (chick lit) book and something else equally ‘girlie’ which he claimed never to have taken out on his ticket. We’d had the books back anyway, it was just fines for them having been returned (sometime back in May) very late, so I waived them.I had someone who wanted ‘books about the United Nations’ and another person who wanted the London cabbies book of The Knowledge. Ooh it was frantic! I did some more work on my display and then I gratefully came home.

It’s my Mum’s birthday today, she is 61, a fact which fills her with horror and denial. My Granny (her Mum) is the same. She was 80 3 weeks ago, a fact I delighted in telling Davies and Scarlett knowing they would repeat it back to her regularly 😆 She told my Mum she was 21 for so many years when my Mum was a girl that she was a laughing stock in her classroom when she told the rest of the class her mum was 21 when she was already about 13 herself! So I’m surprised she is struggling so much with being her age herself. I have full intentions of telling everyone my age with a ‘you know’ after it at every single opportunity as soon as I am over 50, said with an expectant air so they can tell me how well I look for my age, how I must be kidding and how they simply can’t believe it. Of course after 40 you have to choose face or figure so I will finally be on a winner by being overweight by having no wrinkles or scrawnyness to deal with, I will be plump, jolly and ‘wearing well’ when I am 72 you know.

I had made a chocolate cake last night so when I got home I sandwiched it together with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and smashed up maltesers. I was delicious and looked very M&S posh pudding-y.

We headed over to my parents for late lunch, where Great Granny (she’s 80 you know) was also there and it was all very pleasant and nice. My Mum took the children off to the park at the end of their road for half an hour or so on her own while I slumped and bitched with my Dad and Ady talked at length to my Granny about Cornwall. Dad for the first time ever openly talked about the very clear favouritism that my Mum has for my brother, which is a carbon copy of the favourtism that Granny has for my uncle over my Mum and my Mum is now showing for Davies over Scarlett. I always used to think it was a relating more to the younger child thing as Mum is the oldest out of her and her brother, I was the oldest out of me and Frazer. But it was one of the biggest reasons why I was so adamant I didn’t want a daughter as I was so worried about history repeating yet again and me favouring a son and not getting on so well with a daughter. Mum’s clear favouring Frazer was talked about by other people within the family but Dad has never come right out and said it before but he was saying today how much she goes on and on about Davies all the time and never Scarlett, how she panders to Davies but has no patience with Scarlett and so on and how he worries that it won’t be long before the children start to notice. 🙁 Personally I think she spends so little time with them, and hardly ever on her own with noone else around that it won’t have any serious impact. I know that Scarlett will be fairly ‘well it’s your loss’ in her reaction to it anyway and that Davies will probably be the one who is most uncomfortable with it if it becomes obvious as he is very keen for fairness in their treatment from everyone. Interesting conversation with Dad though…

Ady and Granny came and joined Dad and I and we all talked about the war and evacuation as Granny was evacuated to Cornwall during the war. I’m very aware that the whole generation of evacuees are all getting rarer and rarer and would love to document some of her experiences as although Davies and Scarlett aren’t really old enough to listen to them just yet I imagine stories like that from a family member will be very precious one day.

Mum and the children returned so we did the cake, lit the candles and my Dad did tricks with the matches like putting them inside his mouth to make his cheeks glow and burning them all the way down. Stuff like that amazes D and S like they have some sort of clown for a Grandad instead of the old man (he’ll be 70 next month you know ;)) who falls asleep on the sofa one afternoon a week when he’s supposed to be looking after them! 😆

Frazer arrived home soon after so we clevely concealed the half of the cake we’d eaten, put the candles back in again and sang again with Frazer in the photos and video footage 😆 The original plan had been for me and Mum to go out shopping for her present this afternoon but they were off out tonight with friends, I was flagging fast and time was getting on so we came home and have planned to go out tomorrow instead.

We got home with time for Ady to continue his online tent research – the little tents have gone back after he found horror stories of no waterproofness at all to them even in light showers. Treehouse – as raved about and twittered often by LovelyEm – arrived in the post so Davies and Scarlett and I had a game of that and then they spent about 3/4 of an hour playing a game with the pieces which involved them being Mummies, Daddies and Babies in a very complicated plotline. Honestly I have no idea why my children have so many toys, they can occupy themselves with a bit of knotted string and a handful of leaves :lol:. Then it was time for Doctor Who. I thought it was brilliant, Davies and I watched it cuddled together, Scarlett dipped in and out and was delighted to see K9. I won’t spoil it for anyone who’s not watched it already but my best bit was Captain Jack’s line towards the end 😆

I booked Wickstead on Thursday and the bumph has come through so we’ve been looking at the details of the park and the rides and looking forward to that very much :).

Last night I went to bed about 1am. This is about normal time for me. Twice a week I have to get up at 8am to be at work, the rest of the week unless we need to be somewhere I get up between 8 and 9am. My hour or so (usually 2, sometimes 3) when everyone else, including Ady has gone to bed is really precious to me. The house is silent, noone wants to talk to me or have my attention in any way, make any demands on me. It’s bliss and I need it. Much though I am sociable, love spending time with my children and thrive on human contact I also really enjoy my own company and always have and when I don’t get that time to myself I miss me, who I am when noone else is around making me be who I am in their company ; Mumma, Nic, Nicola, whoever.

Anyway, I had just got into bed, picked up my book and snuggled into Ady when Scarlett suddenly yelled for me. I went flying back downstairs and she was in bed looked terrified saying she’d had a bad dream. I gave her a cuddle and then she said she was thirsty.I got her a drink and she took a mouthful and snuggled back down asking me to find her ‘a perfect toy’. I produced a cuddly Fimble which was one of the three we’d bought her before she was born thinking Fimbles would be the Next Big Thing and were her Christmas presents from Ady, Davies and I on her very first Christmas aged a couple of weeks old. Then came a request to ‘sing to me Mumma’. In my currently very croaky voice I sang Que Sera Sera to her which is her favourite song to be sung to sleep with, her little rosebud mouth moving in time with the words, a blissful smile playing over her lips, her eyes squeezed tight at first and then relaxed, her gorgeous long lashed making shadows play on her rosy, freckle sprinkled cheeks. I looked tenderly down on her as she drifted back to sleep, my heart melting at her perfection and loveliness. I brushed against her cheek with my lips and whispered ‘I’m going back to bed darling’ in hushed tones. She sat bolt upright, then stood up on her bed, put her arms out and said ‘I’ll come with you then!’.

So she did. And wide awake now she chattered to me and stroked me while I tried unsuccessfully to read my book and eventually turned off the light. She moaned a bit about it being dark but finally around 230am I got to sleep. She woke me again at about 5am to tell me ‘Daddy’s gone downstairs to my bed Mumma’ to which I believe I replied ‘wise man that he is’ and went back to sleep again until the alarm shrieked at 8am to get me up for work :(. How the hell did we exist with nights like that every single night of the week forthe five years between Davies being born and Scarlett finally sleeping through the night reliably aged 3?

So off to work I went, spring in my step and excessive amounts of make up painted on me to create some semblance of being a person. I kicked off with an hours training with the Information Librarian who is every bit as ‘thrilling’ a person as his job title suggests. He is a lovely and great at his job bloke but will never be described by anyone ever as ‘a riot’ or ‘fun’. He has just had baby number 3 and looked similarly sleep deprived to me which meant we were both stifling yawns (while sniffing and coughing in my case) while he trained me in the online mapping service we have at the library.

Then it was teabreak time where carefully timed consumption of a chocolate digestive gave me sufficient sugar high to pull off Baby Rhyme Time. I started off by telling them I was very croaky today and had considered a rhyme time made up of Rod Steward, Bonnie Tyler and Kim Carnes songs to fit in but we’d be doing Incy Wincy Spider as normal after all. I was relying on them to sing up if my voice failed which they assured me they would but actually later when I blanked on the words to Teddy Bear Teddy Bear they all stopped with me! Crap backing singers the lot of ’em! 😆

One of the mums who has 9month old twins collared me afterwards to tell me she has an extra couple of verses to Row Row Row your boat which I jotted down and promised to introduce to the group next time. This brings that song to 6 verses now and I did suggest we could actually pull off a whole half hour rhyme time just singing about 50 verses of that song. That led Yvonne and Frankie to spend a while coming up with rude verses and my idea of a Row your boat rhyme time after dark with wine and nibbles for over 18s. I think it might be a winner! 😆

I came home for lunch to find Ady about to head off to work after a chaotic morning at home, Dad already arrived to look after Davies and Scarlett for the afternoon, and Em,Eve and Rei here on the way to Dorset dropping off EH cards (and various left behind items too unintentionally ;)). Ady left, Em and I managed a brief catch up chat in the kitchen and then I went back to work. I think Em and the girls headed off half an hour or so later and by the time I got home again after work only Ady remained just as when I’d left for work in the morning.

The afternoon was good – always better to have late lunch and therefore shorter afternoon :). I spent some time chatting to Abi about just how exactly being a librarian works. I’m still not altogether sure I get it 😳 but I don’t want to be one when I grow up anyway so it’s not serious. Frankie is trying to think of a career now all her children are at school and we were debating becoming spies when we read about a nearby county council spending £82K last year on private investigators for various things including recovering overdue library books. We felt it could well work alongside Home Ed 😆 We also discussed Honey Trapping as a career choice but felt that wouldn’t work quite so well with children in tow as it would be more of a niche market hit rate 😆 Maybe I won’t grow up and have to get a proper job just yet after all!

I dealt with various enquiries including joining a 36 week pregnant woman with her first baby who had popped in before a midwife appt next door at the health centre and wanted to come back and get some baby books because ‘I guess I better learn what to do when the baby comes, I’ve got no idea at all at the moment!’ which reminded me very much of me about 8 years ago and I told her so! I tried to impartially suggest a range of books from Gina Ford to Continuum Concept but I suspect my views came across a little ;). I chatted to a couple of slightly older than Davies girls who were on an inset day off school and wanted to know how our date stamps work – I love curious kids who want to know how things work and why, I’ve got all the time in the world for them :). And I did some work on my latest display for the Summer Reading Game.

I got home in time to nag Tarly to get changed for Rainbows and choose something to take to show at circle time. She dismissed all of my suggestions which included makeup, her camera,her pink MP3player, a talking dragon toy, some photos of the camping holiday, a Bear Factory bear which Ady and I got her for her 1st birthday and has a recording of us saying ‘happy first birthday Scarlett from Mummy and Daddy!’ in jolly tones recorded in one of their little booths when you squish it’s tummy. She held me hostage in her bedroom while I made endless suggestions all of which she declined until finally she chose a small purple cat :rolls:.

We met Lucy and Rebecca at the top of the road and off they ran together (the girls, Lucy and I walked ;)). The activity was something to do with bubbles outside in the back garden so Lucy and I didn’t need to sit out and watch and could sit in the little anteroom and chat instead which was rather nice :). They came back in all happy and bouncy so that was good :).

We got home and Davies came out to greet us with the news that David and Annette / Jeannette of Thank You Neighbour fame were in the house drinking tea with Ady. They had been to the fair and won cheap cuddly toys and nasty sweets in cone shaped bags for the children so had come to give them to them and whilst Ady claims to have happily invited them in for tea I suspect he was preyed on by them in a weak moment of my absence. They didn’t stay long and then we had bedtime stories of a selection of books I’d brought home chosen specifically for their nice illustrations and minimal cough-inducing text.

Tomorrow morning I’m working again and then as it is my Mum’s birthday we’re going over there for lunch and then her and I are going out to choose a present for her in the afternoon. Despite sounding rough and being rather tired I am actually really lots better today which is a relief :).

I had a really crap nights sleep and was woken horribly early by noise children but then couldn’t get back to sleep again for coughing and runny nosing. I did stay in bed reading for an hour or so though, I like being in bed in the morning with the curtains open for daylight to come in.

Davies and Scarlett are back to full health and spent almost the entire day in the garden going out there as soon as they’d had breakfast to play with the chickens and tear round the front garden being rowdy :). I did a load of washing as the threatened dreadful weather and rain for this week has yet to put in an appearance and it’s been beautiful blue skies and sunshine all day. I also started on a bakefest making cheese scones, chocolate chip rock cakes and putting a crumble topping on some rhubarb I cooked yesterday. Most of it has already gone, which is the perfect way to have baking – fresh and still warm from the oven :).

Lucy and the Rs arrived around 11am and as Lucy commented towards the end of the afternoon the day that we’ve been waiting about 3 years for finally happened today with the four children playing together, almost without incident outside while we stood in the kitchen chatting while I finished my baking and then sat in the lounge drinking tea. It was lovely :).

The children played various games, inside and out but all pretty harmoniously and when Richard got hurt (fell over and grazed his knee) towards the end of the afternoon the other 3 came in and got the musical instruments out and made up a get better soon Richard song, which was heartfelt and charming if not exactly tuneful ;). Richard was flagging by that point so Lucy took him home while Rebecca stayed and finished off the game she was playing with Davies and Scarlett of putting on a puppet show. Davies cut out characters for Scarlett and Rebecca to colour in and then he drew some scenery.

Lucy came back and Ady arrived home just as Davies and Scarlett’s tea was ready so they ate that and then had a much needed bath.

It’s been a bit of a lost week really with me and the children either or all feeling rough for most of it and as I’m working all day tomorrow and Saturday morning I don’t think we’re going to get much chance to catch up with each other really.I do feel as though they have missed out rather on my time and attention so we’ll have to try and make up for that next week.