One word? When seven would do…

We’ve been out with Mel, Liam and Lily today. Last time we met up with them I had an utterly miserable time as we were penniless and she was flush with tokens for her two in the amusements, getting them a gift in the shop afterwards and paying for a round of mini golf. Oh and we were trapped there as Ady had taken us over and was coming to collect us again later. It was really busy there and I just had a crap time.

This time we met later and we managed to be not just on time but slightly early :). Although we are again penniless we did have nice picnic food as a result of post-Christmas food mountain and I did lots of preparing D and S for precisely what they could have (£1 worth of tokens or £1 worth of 20p pieces each to spend in the amusements and nothing else).

So we had a walk through the Planet Earth bit with the children as always picking out different things to take note of as we went – Davies and Liam were into the bones, Scarlett wanted to know all about mummies and tombs. It was really interesting watching Liam today and realising that all the stuff I’ve been moaning about Davies doing this last week or so (not the tiredness related stroppiness, he’s also been doing a lot of general silliness – talk of poo and bums and other such nonsense which just irritates the hell out of me) is actually pretty normal kid behaviour. Infact if I’m honest I do recall boys (and yes it was normally boys, the girls were busy being snooty and disapproving as I recall) doing very similar way back in my own schooldays. Liam was full of it, utter nonsense, laughing at not remotely funny things and just being generally silly. Felt quite reassuring, if irritating to be around.

Mel and I chatted lots about schools – Lily started reception in September and goes full time from next week, Liam is in year 3 and has been in junior school since September. It sounds dreadful! She was telling me how they have this reward and punishment policy with lots of certificates awarded including the ultimate prize of ’20 minutes with the headmistress’ which aside from soundly faintly kinky Mel said is because she has a PS2 in her office :shock:! But the punishments sound way worse, they have some sort of card system similar to football where a yellow card means a loss of 10 minutes of playtime where you have to stand in the school hall with your face to the wall 😯 😯 and a red card means exclusion (nice to have something to aim for eh?!). Liam apparently got yellow carded which also means Mel got called into the school where a meeting with her, Liam and the teacher takes place. The teacher goes through why the card was issued which in Liam’s case was because he told her to ‘shut up!’, but Liam then said it was because she called him a ‘crybaby’ which as Mel said, probably explains him telling her to shut up really!

Mel is a really good school parent, she helps out loads at the school, is really active and has put loads of thought into which schools to choose for Liam and Lily, got them really involved with the extra curricular stuff the schools offer, helped out at school fetes, gone in to do classroom assisting and so on, but she seemed pretty disillusioned with the whole system today really, which was a surprise as although she has always been very supportive of our HEing she is also very pro-school and very positive about the education system normally. The more I hear about school the more I realise HE and school are increasingly incomparable entities really. We were saying what an amazingly difficult job teaching must be given how tricky it can be to balance the needs and behaviour of two children let alone a whole classroom full of them. And then to teach them stuff too! Who knows how Davies and Scarlett would fare in school but I know I’d be a dreadful school-mother! 😆

We had lunch and a play in the amusements followed by another walk round outside and play in the outside swings and slides. I was feeling really cold by then (I’m still not 100% well and Ady has kept us both awake for the last two nights coughing and coughing. I can cope with going to bed late and waking early but interupted nights’ sleep totally finish me off) and Mel was promising Liam and Lily sweets and a toy from the shop so I thought we’d say goodbye there rather than watch them making their selections. It was a nice visit though, the children got on well and Mel and I managed lots of chatting. We’re seeing them again for Liam’s birthday party next weekend.

We came home via Matalan as I am still on a black skirt for Scarlett hunt but with no luck. Once home I rang the swimming pool and managed to get Scarlett booked in for the same lesson group as Davies 🙂 this is fab for all sorts of reasons, not least it means I don’t have to entertain one child while the other swims twice a week. Also it spells the end of me needing Ady to get home by 5pm so I can leave a child behind with him while taking the other one somewhere now as D’s Beavers is just round the corner, they’ll do swimming and Badgers together and then S’s Rainbows is just round the corner too :). Feel very positive and happy about all those things lined up for them both and they are both looking forward to doing the stuff together too :).

Ady got home, the children had tea and then played with the ELC dancemat that S got about 3 Christmasses ago and has suddenly made a comeback and then they avoided sleep for many hours, with Davies re-appearing for the last time at 10pm and sitting down to watch QI with us :roll:. Ady is in bed coughing so I’m putting off going to bed as much though I adore him, love him and feel terribly sorry for him and his cough related suffering I also have to restrain myself from smothering him with his pillow when he has now been coughing for a bloody sodding fortnight!!!

This morning Ady and I caught both cockerels and held them up so we could all decide which one to keep. The decision was unanimous and we still have the more golden-y of the two – the one to the right in yesterdays picture. The other one has gone to a very good home where he will have free range of a big garden and about 15 hens to keep him company.

I went off to work as Ady was going to a nearby supplier first today which didn’t open til 9am and it’s nice to get into work slightly early sometimes as I am normally scrambling in the door at seconds to nine am (not I hasten to add the fault of anyone looking after D and S (well unless it’s my Mum, just cos I am crap at getting anywhere on time, I am late when Ady is home too and I’m not waiting for anyone to arrive). I was very warmly welcomed into work as two people had phoned in sick and the place was chaos! I helped do the banking and then followed an actually quite busy day. My Christmas display in the junior section was annoying me at still being up so I suggested an ‘as seen on TV’ display to go in it’s place, the idea being that if children see their favourite TV characters are also in books (and yes I know, many of them started their lives in books long before they made it to TV land) it might encourage reading / help them relate to books / bring the books to life / make them something it is easier for adults to sit and read with them. That all sounds very patronising to me written down like that but I know it is what libraries, particularly ones in areas of social deprivation (which is what Lancing is classes as) are all about for junior borrowers. Plus I got to spend time looking for Charlie and Lola books and then playing with the colour photocopier, making 3D images of books with scissors and sticky tape and then prancing about with staple guns and rolls of coloured paper. I was pretty pleased with the result – the photo doesn’t do it justice as about 2 / 3 of the books are standing out from the wall at various depths and some of them have stuck on bits of some of the pictures bringing them out further.

I got home about half an hour before Ady, Dad was here and passed on the message that the swimming pool had rung about Scarlett’s lessons and he’d said I’d call back tomorrow, so hopefully I can get her on the same day / time as Davies, which would be excellent. Dad has offered to pay for that too :).

Davies and Scarlett have had a nice day apparently, they were full of what Richard and Rebecca had got for Christmas (a baby annabel and a sonic screwdriver seem to have been the mentioned gifts) and said they’d had fun playing. When I got home they were totally immersed in a game with some toy animals while Dad looked on.

I did their tea, we chatted a bit, Ady came home and I packed them off to bed early as Scarlett had been awake in the night – she wasn’t the only one, Ady woke up coughing around 3am which woke me up and kept us both awake for nearly an hour :(.

I’ve listed a few books on amazon marketplace, more to get shot of clutter than in any hope of making money (cos you don’t really, on amazon marketplace, most of the titles I’m listing are at a penny!) but surprisingly 3 have already sold.

Tomorrow we’re off to get together with Mel, Liam and Lily before they go back to school on Monday, so the children are looking forward to that.

Ady was back to work today. I always like the idea of him being home more and I’m sure if it was a permanent arrangement it would be great but on a temporary basis, especially with Christmas in the middle of it all I quite like the line him going back to work draws under last year and lets us get on with this one.

Davies is being tricky at the moment. He’s not sleeping at all well, often still awake way past 10am but still up again at 7am which is clearly not enough sleep for him as it leaves him fragile, pale and stroppy. He is prone to great drama anyway which I try and keep on top of with a combination of sympathy, time and attention and a hefty dose of not letting him wallow. He’s been teasing Tarly lots today, which she never responds well to and just being a pain generally. We made up at bedtime though and we have plenty planned for the next couple of weeks so hopefully it’s a blip of too much festivity, not enough sleep that we’ll overcome pretty quick.

Davies has X boxed, played with plasticine, painted a thermometer from a Christmas kit and played with some magnetic letters than were in the childrens’ stockings and are currently adorning the fireguard. He’s been doing lots of number noticing the last few days – pointing out ’99’ to me yesterday at Drusillas (not a big deal I know, but equally not something I’ve ever actively shown him) and messing about with magnetic numbers today he did some sums and I realised he knows the signs for plus, minus, times and equals, what they are all called and what they mean. Again not a big deal at all but still surprising that he somehow picked that up without being told anywhere along the line. He did the first of the only two thank you notes I’m insisting on – for the Thank You Neighbours, not even out of politeness really, just because it amuses me to keep the whole ping-pong match of thankyou notes alive really :). I’m also insisting they do one each for the neighbour who lives on the other side of us and gave them a small Christmas gift each too.

Scarlett has done her thank you notes using a fairy writing set she got for Christmas, also X boxed, rather surprisingly at her own request and doing it all herself she set up the x box (which involves plugging some cables into the tv and changing the av channels, I’m not sure I could do it :lol:) and played Barbie Wild Horses or whatever it’s called for a while. She gets very cross with the ponies when they don’t do what she wants them to and keeps up a continuous dialogue with them coaxing or chastising accordingly :lol:. She also played with the magnetic letters, painted a thermometer and her and I planted up her Grow your own Venus Flytrap plant kit too.

Davies had moaned yesterday that I don’t ‘do stuff’ with them enough so I offered various things they’d got for Christmas but in the event they were both happily self entertained so he declined. I cleared the table in the playroom of all the festive food, did several loads of laundry processing, spent some time outside taking photos of bantams, read quite a bit of my book , ate quite a bit of posh cheese and posh German Christmas biscuits, assisted in Xboxing pony control, painting thermometers and planting up venus flytraps and bolstered by our monthly statement from the CCCS did a blogpost over on Money Can’t Buy Me Love. I spent some time tracking down an old newsgroup I used to post on lots and tried to track down a couple of the other regular posters with no luck. Oh and we all watched The Simpsons Movie. Again.

We had to go to the butchers for our meat for January so about 3pm we headed out to do that. The children were delighted to see Mick the Butcher and engaged him in conversation for the duration of our visit. Scarlett asked such questions as ‘did you have a good Christmas?’ ‘Do you live here in the butchers?’ and ‘what are your pyjamas like?’ and is now in possession of plenty of facts about Mick that I imagine most of his other regular customers don’t know :lol:. Davies speculated on what meat a lion would go for first should it come to the butchers (prompted by the recent news story about an escaped lion, not just apropos of nothing!) and put to Mick the idea that he should add a ‘No Lions Allowed’ sign to protect himself from this eventuality alongside his ‘No Dogs Allowed’ and ‘No Smoking’ signs on the wall. Mick explained that lions don’t read as well as dogs so Davies now has plans for an illustrated sign to take there for Mick on our February visit 😆 I’d like to think we brightened his day ;).

Late this afternoon while the children were eating their tea a bubble lamp came up on the local freecycle list so I replied, rang in reponse to the givers email and Ady collected it on the way home from work. It is currently bubbling away prettily in the lounge although I think it is destined for Davies’ room eventually – need to get some distilled water for it though as apparently tap water grows algae pretty quickly in it.

I’ve spoken to the Rainbows leader and got all the information about Tarly starting there although they are not back until 18th January. It is from 6-7pm which is far better than the 5-6pm I thought it was as it will mean I will be home from work to take her myself rather than Dad having to take her every fortnight when I work Fridays. She is fine with me staying until Tarly is happy there and very laid back about her coming along for a few weeks to decide if she likes it before forking out on uniform or even paying subs so that’s good :). I think she’ll really enjoy it. I’ve officially left Magical Mondays with an email to say goodbye and organised a few get togethers for the rest of the month to keep us busy. Ady has two QVC appearances lined up, which we may be able to go up to London with him for and find something to do while he’s busy with that. He is also away for four nights on his annual B&Q trip (we had Merry to stay last year and Babs the year before so if anyone wants to come and keep up the tradition please shout and we’ll get it arranged :)).

I’m off to work tomorrow so after a series of late nights for me too I better get to bed myself otherwise I’ll be being stroppy, childish and dramatic tomorrow too ;).

one of ’em is off tomorrow! They are the two cockerels and for their own safety (it’s cruel to keep them both in a confined space) one is going. A workmate of Ady’s has bantams already and his wife has always wanted a cockerel. I emailed the above photo to Ady at work today and tomorrow she’ll be getting her wish. I *think* we’ll keep the one to the right and they can have the one to the left but we’ll make a final decision in the morning based on something scientific like which one is easiest to catch!

Yesterday we’d managed to leave ourselves with a couple of things to do due to the bank being closed on Saturday when we’d driven there and me putting off the month’s food shopping for feeling too drained to trek round the supermarket for an hour or more. So, when we eventually got ourselves together and out of the house we went into town and parked up. We did the bank, wandered round looking at a few things in the sales but didn’t actually buy anything other than a very cheap artists pallette for Tarly who has been coveting Davies’ so when I saw one in WHSmiths for 75p I got it for her and 10 cards for a quid from the cheapo card shop so we have a stash of cards for people’s birthdays.

We’d parked right on the seafront and got back to the car with 20 minutes or so still to spare on our ticket so walked down onto the beach for a quick explore. We found a big fish being picked over by a seagull and lots of different seaweeds. We love the beach 🙂

We then went to Asda where we got Davies’ blue trousers for Beavers and a new jumper for him (he has suddenly, finally grown and is desperate for new tops) in their sale. Then on to Sainsburys for the proper food shop. I think we’d all had enough by then really so we missed loads of things off my shopping list which I’ll have to pop out and get later this week, coupled with Sainsburys having no bread or milk 😯 but we got the bulk of the food and three more tops for Davies in their sale so he is clothed up again :). Just need a black skirt for Tarly for Badgers now.

We got home, had the unenviable task of putting away a whole months food shop (I hate putting food shopping away 🙁 ) before finally settling in for the night. We all had baths and then followed a nice relaxed evening with cava, lots of nice food, music, DSing and no guests :). Scarlett guzzled some cava, danced with me to Amy Winehouse and then fell asleep about 1130pm – she goes from wide awake to fast asleep in literally moments that child :lol:, Davies danced with me to some Take That around midnight and then went off to bed after wishing my parents Happy New Year on the phone.

Today was a lazy start, certainly for Davies and I at least. Ady is back to work tomorrow so we felt we should try and do *something* today and getting out of the house always feels good so by the children’s request we went over to Drusillas. We had a late breakfast of pancakes (as did various other families I think :)) and watched The Little Vampire first so it was nearly 1pm by the time we got there. We had a walk round all the animals, Ady and the kids posed at all the designated photo shot places and we went into their little sideshow of endangered species stuff where the man staffing it leapt upon us (it was very quiet there today, I think he was desperate for company!) and showed us elephant tusks, snake and crocodile and alligator skins, various big cats, zebras, chinchillas and even a grizzly bear skin. Davies amazed him (and me, if I’m honest) by butting in when he stared to tell us the difference between crocodiles and alligators and telling us himself (it’s to do with their teeth and the shape of their noses) and then again by knowing what rain makers are made out of (cacti with the spikes removed from the outside and put inside the hollow middles) :shock:. I was very proud of him, as was Ady. Perhaps more so at his utterly unfussed about how amazing general knowledge and delivery of the facts 😆

We finished up at the play area and I think Ady was all set for helping up rope ladders, pushing on swings and so on but Davies just said ‘race you to Monkey Kingdom Scarlett!’ and off they ran! We sat and watched, I went and got us hot drinks from the cafe and then Scarlett made friends with a little girl called Lucy, who was ‘four and three quarters’ and they played together on the see saw and the swings while Davies headed off and palled up with someone called Angus who was ‘just seven’ in a wild game involving the fire engine there. We could overhear some of Tarly’s conversation and it was so cute and funny to listen to them bonding. They talked about their favourite colours, what they got for Christmas, what their friends were called and various other little girl trivia. We exchanged smiles and odd words with both their parents respectively and fortunately all seemed to be ready to head off at about the same time so no one got dragged away leaving anyone else behind. It was really nice :).

We finished up with a ride round on the train and then came home via my parents to drop off an anniversary card to them (36 years today!) but they were out and their house was deserted.

Once home we took down all the Christmas decorations so the house feels almost big again now. All the presents have made it out of the lounge now, just need to sort the playroom out but thanks to not too many presents there isn’t that much to find homes for thankfully. I’ve kept out a couple of things to do with the children tomorrow. Although we planned an early night it was about 8pm before the children finally went off to bed and Davies was still awake at 10pm so I think a fairly quiet day here is in order for me and the children while Ady returns to the real world once more.

January saw me turn 33, which all felt very grown up, a visit from Merry and her girls and some snow!

Oh and Davies started at both Beavers and a new Badgers in Worthing after the local Lancing one had folded late in 2006. I got stuck into my new library job having started in December 2006.

February was wonderfully welcomed in with celebrating Kirsty and James’ wedding

There was the whole running out of tea incident, I went on a bus and really groundbreaking stuff had a Girls Night In which was also my first ever night apart from Davies and Scarlett. It was wonderful 🙂
marred only by Joyce not being there in person!
oh and I discovered that there is not enough time on a Saturday morning to get a months food shopping in before getting to work on time.

March We had a NicCamps at Hunstanton which was fab :),

me and the children had a Perfect Home Ed Day and we did lots of Spring Walks!

April saw us watching lambs being born which was probably most awesome for me, the children were more enamoured with the haybales to jump from


. Meanwhile back at home we were embarking on our second attempt at incubating chickens eggs after our first had given us a zero percent success rate. This time we were more diligent about regular turning of the eggs and maintaining humidity levels in the incubator.

We had a trip to Legoland where S was old enough to go on the driving school for the first time
and D was finally tall enough to go on the big rollercoaster for the first time (thanks Si :)).

We had a few Spring Walks including a lovely Bluebell walk

and then I think we spent the rest of April on the beach looking at my flickr pictures!

In May Davies won Badger of the month for the first time (he currently holds Badger of the Month for December too :))

We did our annual photoblog day
, had visits from Layla and Si Ady had a birthday, we went to Adam’s birthday party, Eve and Rei’s birthday party. we went to the beach some more and the eggs hatched! We had five new lives which was enchanting, magical, amazing and wonderful. Of course we went on to lose one to a fox, three to a farm as they were cockerels and we ate one! But back in May it was all about the cute little hatchlings 🙂



And shortly afterwards it was all about me scavenging for old pallets, breaking them up and building a chicken run with my Dad’s assistance!

June saw fit to make up for all that glorious beach weather we’d had in March and April and rained a lot. Mostly during the week we were sleeping in a field :(. We did manage The South of England show
, an Open Day Farm visit and Spring watch day and plenty of strawberry picking on the fine days inbetween showers;
and Davies participated in a Beavers It’s A Knock Out competition too.
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The last week of June was Kessingland, which managed to be very wet, very windy, very miserable for much of the time, punctuated with a crap tent, a night without Ady, glasses or contact lenses or make up, run ins with small children for me and a general total sense of humour failure. It also managed to have high points; all of which were to do with the people rather than the venue or the tenting but sometimes you have to take the rough with the smooth!

July was lots of end of term type stuff for Davies at Beavers, Badgers and Swimming. More fruit picking and Summer Walks. I did some end of the school year type pondering here. We had various out and about stuff happening once everything had broken up for the summer including a trip to Nuneaton for me and the children to camp in the garden of some internet friends for a internet gathering which was ace 🙂 We renewed our membership to Drusillas so had a trip over there, met up with Chris and Helen a couple of times on their trip to Sussex camping including a visit to Fishbourne which was great and followed the next day by a big gathering with Chris and Helen, Ros, Ali and Lucy all coming here to get together. We also had a great time at The Beans’ Castle Day

The children and I had a very cold wet afternoon at the beach (in JULY!!) which necessitated hot chocolate and saw Davies’ first solo trip into the shop to buy squirty cream to go on top of it – milestone moment! 🙂

We enjoyed the whole Hokey Cokeyness of Freya’s birthday celebrations (in – at Monkee Bizniss, out – at Spring Barn Park Farm!) with added haybale craziness and communal wearing of J’s hat 🙂

and we had a nice visit from LovelyEm, Eve and Rei :).

Right at the end of the month we met up with The Clarkes and The Scream Team at a localish Science Centre for a good day out where the sun finally decided to shine again. And there was zaniness..

August was a real landmark month here. Yes we went camping, yes we had day trips to London for concerts, yes we were in local media but mostly it was a big deal because Davies lost his first tooth!.

But to get back to the other stuff, we had a fab day out at the beach doing rockpooling crabhunting type stuff with The Rangers 🙂

Davies had a very big moment at the Wallace and Gromit day at Drusillas when he got to Hug A Hero 🙂

We had a lovely week’s camping in Dorset, which spelled the end for the Crap Tent but was a real test of camping, living on a very small budget, surviving yet more Great British Summertime weather and our first ‘just the four of us’ holiday in years. It was great! 🙂

Another highlight this month was the Noisy Kids concert in London. Again it was blighted by crap weather but I think we’d sort of got used to being wet by that point in the summer and it was a great experience nonetheless.

Also in August was the Green diggers event that the children and I went along to at a local garden centre.
We had a fab time there with both Davies and I being interviewed by the local radio station, Davies winning second prize for his pot painting, both children being much photographed by a photographer which later ended up on the front page of the local council paper and learning loads about planting, seeds, types of compost etc aswell as impressing various people with what wonderful children I have 🙂

September saw Davies turning seven, which suddenly seemed to be Big Boy Territory! He lost another tooth, had another big production of a birthday party (who could forget my dalek!) and even seemed to grow a bit 😉

There was the Shoreham airshow which had the tragedy of the pilot losing his life and effected us quite deeply, I don’t know that we’ll be watching the airshow again with quite such anticipation and of course that pilot will never be taking to the skies again. RIP Brian Brown.

We took our hands on biology lesson of incubating eggs, hatching chicks and raising them to adulthood one step further – infact about as far as you can take it. Ady slaughtered and prepared Rhonda the cockerel and we had him for Sunday dinner!

I enjoyed the second of three writers retreat days I’ve been to this year. I’ve not written much about them but they have been very special, cherished days. It’s been great to consider myself A Writer and spend time in the company of other writers, sharing work, praising talent and doing something that was entirely selfish, just for me and very enojoyable. Sharing them with Ali has added to that 🙂 x.

Jack and Maisie, Davies and Scarlett’s cousins turned five and Julie organised a group trip to the Natural History Museum to mark the occassion which we went along to. It was my first time taking Davies and Scarlett on the underground and made it a very different journey to previous London excursions. We had a great day and pledged to get up there more often :).

October we made the most of it being Autumn with two Autumn Walks to the same venue in the space of a week!

Ady was on telly!

We had a nice weekend in Reading for Lije and Lulah’s birthdays with a fab swimming party and a night at Layla and Si’s 🙂

We had a fab trip to Legoland, just the four of us, as a delayed birthday treat for Davies and it was excellent!

Davies and I went on everything, Tarly and Ady went on everything she was tall enough for (which was pretty much everything but the biggest rollercoaster), we went on Pirate Falls and River Splash many, many times, all got utterly drenched and just had a great day 🙂

We had a great time at Fishbourne Roman Villa at their Roman week where Davies and Scarlett learnt latin writing, fulfilled various Roman Soldiers tasks and were awarded their pay of one roman coin at the end of it.

We went Sheffield way to celebrate Ben’s birthday with him, which had the added bonus for the grown ups of a very nice evening with The Babs & Chris, Bob and Katy and Karen and Dom :).

It being October we had the usual Halloween pursuits including pumpkin carving, a Magical Mondays Halloween party and a Spooky Night at the local park.

November started with a bang (boom, boom!) with fireworks at Chris and Julie’s

It progressed apace with NicCamps Sussex which was a great week, we all really enjoyed it. Despite being so very, very close to home we actually quite enjoyed walking the downs, eating chips on the beach and sharing the good bits of where we live with so many friends 🙂

Davies cracked swimming and achieved his 5 metres badge :). He’s looking forward to getting even further with that in 2008.

The rest of the month was fairly quiet with rather less gallivanting and rather more home-based or local stuff happening. We did plenty of walks, visited places like Highdown Gardens, Paradise Park and Slindon. We spent time at regular stuff like Magical Mondays, Beavers and Badgers for Davies, with Jack and Maisie and The Rs.

We enjoyed a birthday party for our friend Lula which had quite possibly the craziest party game ever 😆

We kicked December off with Tarly’s birthday party which I think was universally considered a success, but most importantly was utterly about and 100% enjoyed by the party girl herself.

The following day we all gathered at church for Davies’ SJA carol concert which he joined some other Badgers in singing some Christmas songs at. It was lovely 🙂

Scarlett turned five and we celebrated on the day with a trip to the Sealife centre at Brighton and yet another enormous cake 😉
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It feels slightly odd to be rounding up stuff that’s happened within the last three weeks but December has passed in the way that it usually does with end of term stuff (Davies won Badger of the month again :)), Christmas parties (Badgers, Magical Mondays, Ady’s work one!). We had a good Christmas, blighted though it was by illness as seems to have been the case for many people.

We’ve managed several beach and woodland walks these last couple of days and are planning to see the old year out and the new year in just the four of us. Davies and Scarlett are staying up with us, we’ve got lots of nice food and drink, the fire it stoked up, the music is playing.

It’s been a good year, 2007. We’ve managed to fit loads in, lots of trips, visits, get togethers, camps, breaks away. I’ve settled into my job, Ady’s job remains ever changing but exciting with it. Once again (and this was the highlight of last years round up) we end the year with less debt that we started it. We have plans for 2008, big plans, maybe life changing plans. The children have had a fabulous year, another chunk of their childhoods has passed, new memories have been made, history has been written.

I don’t do NY resolutions, if I think something needs changing then I tackle it there and then. 2008 is sure to bring new highs, new lows, new challenges and tests, fresh ideas, maybe new friends and opportunities. Thanks for sharing 2007 with us, look forward to 2008 in your company.

I’ve been very busy drafting a 2007 round up (which predictably doesn’t round the year up at all, just kind of verbatims it all back again!) and now it’s 2am and I’ve only got to September and I need to blog today!

I had a very late start to the day. Ady brought me a cup of tea upstairs around 8am, replaced it untouched with a new one around 9am and when I croaked that I thought I really needed some more sleep he went off again and I finally woke around 10am when Tarly came slamming into the room, put all the lights on and went for a wee in the ensuite bathroom! I did feel loads better for it though (and have probably ruined all the good it did me by staying up late now :roll:).

So a lazy day was in order here really. Davies was keen to investigate an Incredibles X box game he got for Christmas, both children played with the plasticine and their DSs, Scarlett did some drawing, I went through my clothes and gathered some stuff for ebaying, photographed and listed it all while Ady cooked roast chicken for lunch.

We ate around 2pm, started watching Surfs Up but deemed it rubbish so gave up on that and had half a plan to go and walk our lunch off at the beach but then got caught up watching some art programme on tv and were inspired to get the watercolours out instead. We all had a go, including Ady and if I remember I’ll photo our efforts and add them in tomorrow. Both children are enjoying the different effects and learning lots by experimenting with colours. I was painting on normal white paper and the difference between that and the proper watercolour card that is in their pads is amazing – am very tempted to get myself a watercolour pad too. 🙂

We degenerated back into DSing / laptopping and then my parents arrived while Ady was in the bath. They stayed a couple of hours, both had a go at Brain Training, the children had baths, we all ate Christmas cake and then they left and the children went (late) to bed. Ady stayed up til midnight watching Band of Brothers on one of the Sky channels (apparently he’s ‘in training’ for tomorrow) and now I really must go to bed as we have loads of stuff to get done tomorrow so I can’t be laying in bed til 10am again!

I am finally feeling better! 🙂 🙂

This morning we whizzed into town to go to the bank only to find it closed 🙁 which means we need to do that on Monday instead. We popped to Iceland (where Mum’s go apparently :roll:) to get some shove in the oven food for NY Eve when we plan to eat lots, drink lots, let the children stay up til they fall unconcious wherever they are and drunkenly stagger outside around midnight to ooh and ahh over the neigbours fireworks. We also had a quick charity shop perusal and found a 3d Rubiks cube style Bart Simpson puzzle thing for Davies for 79pence. Home via Woolworths where we swapped a Disney Friends DS game that came for a tenner with Tarly’s pink DS so was worth buying but neither of the children were remotely interested in owning, for a Brain Training game for us :). Having scoffed at adults who have DSs in the past (and would still find myself totally unable to fork out a hundred quid for one for myself when I can swipe the kids’) I have to concede to understanding the appeal a bit ;). I think it would wear off fairly quick though, I have a short attention span for such things.

A speedy lunch and we were off out again to meet Chris and Julie, Jack and Maisie for a Winter Walk (UK) in our favourite woods. It is a rather different matter when accompanied by Ady and Chris, well specifically Chris actually as the children (his) are not really allowed out of his sight without being loudly summonded back every few minutes. It’s a very safe walk that the four children have been doing very regularly for years, there are no roads, no cars, no danger of pedophile abductions and frankly other than tripping over a tree root or meeting an over friendly dog there are very few risks so we tend to follow behind the children at a fairly leisurely pace when Julie and I go. They were late so we walked on to the duck pond and waited for them there before walking on. The males of their half of the Goddards were on poor form generally with Jack wailing for much of the walk about not wanting to go in the direction that the other three children had already run off in, crying at length when he fell over, not because he was injured by because he had got dirty knees (now I’m a slave to my laundry but even I wouldn’t shed tears over that one ;)) and Chris being stroppy which I later learnt may well have been for my benefit as I apparently upset him last weekend in proclaiming his mother a ‘Crap Mother’ when responding to her request, through him, to be allowed to buy Davies and Scarlett Christmas gifts. Julie fed me this information in hushed tones so defended my stance (given the admittedly limited evidence I have and my own husbands opinion I would gauge her to be a crap mother. But to be fair I don’t much care what sort of mother she is, I am not prepared to suddenly introduce a grandparent to D and S who may well turn out to fail them at the ages they are now. I am openly selfish about the people I choose to have in my / our life / lives and will only tolerate those who we gain positive effects from spending time with. My own relationships follow that pattern and all the while I am the one choosing who Davies and Scarlett spend time with so will theirs. Plenty of time for self-destructive relationships when they are having tortured teen phases :lol:).

Julie and I managed lots of nice chats though including some soul searching stuff for her about her NHS midwife – Jack and Maisie were a home birth with Mary Cronk so from a very radical first birth, with twins, at home with an independant midwife she is rather struggling with the expected difference in NHS care. In particular her stance on scans and other routine stuff (which I support if I don’t necessary agree with) is already causing some friction. Hopefully she will be able to get her head round it all and come to some sort of compromise that doesn’t involve her feeling she is not getting the pregnancy and childbirth she wants or having to spend thousands of pounds they don’t have on independant midwife care.

We went up to the pony they have part loan on after that as Julie needed to feed and clean up her field. Jack stayed in the car with Chris and Ady but Maisie, Scarlett and Davies came down with Julie and I. The appeal of the pony waned in comparison to that of the muck heap however so they spent a very happy half hour clambering to the top of that and jumping down again. They also found a pile of discarded sheeps wool which was great fun to leap in too. They would so love farm life those children :).

On the way home we stopped to take some photos of Arundel Castle at Davies’ request so he can do some paintings of them – he wanted lots of sky in the photos so I managed to accomodate that too. They were both in the car trouser, shoe and sock-less (infact Davies’ jeans which were old anyway, went straight in the bin when we got home) so were plonked in the bath when we got home, followed by hot chocolate (to drink, not to be plonked into), tea and telly. They both stayed up to watch Grand Designs with me after a church conversion episode caught all our eyes before they went off to bed.

Although I had a bad nights sleep with lots of coughing I feel way better today which is good, I’ve been fed up with feeling crap.

I worked today where the day felt like it had been stretched out into a week. I was too hot, very woolly of head, very snotty and coughy and husky and even simple requests like ‘can I borrow a book please?’ threw me. I probably wasn’t really up to being there but as all the other staff looked equally pale and wan and had tales of Christmas spent coughing and sneezing I was in good company and couldn’t really trump any of them as a better case for going home early!

I was complimented on my most recent display by the Big Boss who was in covering today and rather gratifyingly there were two big gaps where books had been borrowed from it. The reason for the display was that none of the books in that section had been borrowed for months so to have two taken out since Saturday lunchtime when the library shut at on Saturday at 5pm and didn’t open again til yesterday morning was pretty good :). I’ve got more ideas for other displays I want to do which I’ll chat about with my direct boss next week, so that’s all good. 🙂 Everything else sort of merges into a blur really although I know I also had a chat with the Big Boss about HE, which I imagine I made no case for whatsover being barely capable of stringing a sentence together :lol:.

I was pretty much ready to come home at lunchtime so I tried to revive myself with a wander round the charity shops and Woolworths. I seem to be wearing the same four or five outfits on strict rotation at work and all my jeans now either have holes in or writing on so I’m ready for a wardrobe sort out and declutter which usually leads to a load of stuff going and getting replaced by sale bargains once the decluttered stuff sells on ebay. Will try and get that sorted this weekend as I notice there is a 10p listing day on Sunday and I know there is stuff I could get on there if I’m organised enough.

The afternoon dragged, particularly when Ady and the children were early arriving to collect me and I could see them out of the window 20 minutes before it was time for me to finish – waving at Scarlett from behind the counter really wasn’t the same as going and getting in the car with them to come home.

They had had a nice day apparently – been to Argus to get yet more discounted bed linen, off to Tescos and M&S to get my birthday presents (I reminded Ady that it was an excellent chance for him and the children to have me out of the way today and he should make use of it rather than panic next Saturday night that he hasn’t organised anything!), made cards for me, did some watercolour paintings, watched the Simpsons Movie twice and generally bonded I think.

This evening has passed in yet another blur really. I’m really struggling to shake off this cold and wondering if tomorrow’s plans of going into town in the morning (need to go to the bank among other things) and then off for a woodland walk with Chris and Julie will be too much or help me to feel better for having been out and about.

you could stick my name down to do a good Bonnie Tyler Total Eclipse of the Heart, cos I’m dead husky and throaty at the moment. I can also do a darn good Rod Stewart (to be near you, to be freeeeee) or a Kim Carnes Bette Davis eyes but I don’t do that around the children, the whole Bette Davis thing confuses them :lol:.

Today we needed to venture out for proper food. We do this every year, stock up just before Christmas with all sorts of party food but utterly forget the essentials. It’s fine on Boxing Day to be eating cheese straws, posh cheese and smoked salmon but by 27th you really want real dinners again, not to mention essentials like bread and milk :lol:. So we went to Tesco where we also got Tarly her first pair of school shoes – not for school you understand, but she has to have black shoes for Badgers, and white socks (I know, Tarly in socks!). She’ll only need to wear them for the one hour a week and looks decidedly un-Tarly-like but then I was sort of expecting that. She needs a black skirt too and then she’ll get her tshirt and jumper from Badgers. I’ve told her she’ll have to have her hair tied back for Badgers too, the first day at Badgers picture will be amusing, I don’t think I’ll recognise her at all 😆

Home for a quick lunch and some Walking With Dinosaurs which we’ve enjoyed dipping into over the last couple of days and has prompted much talk of evolution, various ages, how things died out and so on. Then off to the circus! I was feeling a bit rough still so Ady made me take some Day Nurse which had me up for anything in half an hour :lol:. The circus was fab 🙂 I’d got tickets at the weekend when we got paid as an after Christmas ‘something to look forward to’. In previous years we’ve gone to the pantomime (Worthing usually has two) but tickets for the four of us were close to £50 so the circus with a discount code from the local paper (not even bought, I copied it from the copy at work, mwah-ha-ha-ha) made it very affordable.

There were several acts – the traditional clowns, which Davies adored and laughed long and loud at, some foot juggling with fire and everything which was impressive, some balancing, which was pretty good when done with a sword on her forhead but all the more daring when she balanced a table complete with three lit candles and two full glasses of wine, over a 20 feet tall ladder and back down the other side :shock:, there was lassoing and knife throwing, more clowing and then trapeze artists which Scarlett adored (and tried to replicate hanging off the barrier infront of us :lol:). We all really enjoyed it – good all round family entertainment :).

We came home via Argos where we’d reserved some new bedding in their sale online which I paid for with a gift card I’d got when buying Davies’ DS from there. Bath, tea and DSing for the children before bed, bath, dinner and Extras for us. I’m back to work tomorrow so glad to be feeling slightly better and hopeful to be even better (if still slightly husky) tomorrow.

So, not only is one of the guaranteed point of lay pullets (i.e. girls) bantams a boy, two of them are! 😆

I have always thought that two looked very different to the other two, like two pairs and turns out that’s precisely what they are; a pair of boys and a pair of girls!

The two cockerels have begun to crow and fight with each other, as indeed they would. They are also, judging by the bald patches on the hens doing other cockerel type activities.

Fortunately we can either take them to Bruce’s farm where Wobble, Freddie and Punzel now live or we can take them to Tom’s who is the bloke who bought them from the auction for us. We are very tempted to keep one actually – their crowing is nothing like as loud as the chickens was and is literally a five minute thing when they are first let out of the coop in the morning. The current plan is to get rid of one of them and then try and get another hen or two with the possibility of letting them breed a few chicks so Davies and Scarlett get to see babies with their mummy rather than incubator births. Once the weather improves a bit we’ll sort out their run properly too and spend some time out there with them taming them up a bit. We’d also quite like some ducks but I think the idea of hatching those is nice – little ducklings in the house for a while is a very tempting thought (and if we get boy ducks then yes, we might well do the crispy pancakes thing :lol:).

Came through the door earlier today. It is special for so many reasons:
a) It says Thank you three times
b) It is special festive thank you paper bought for the sole purpose of saying festive thank yous. This would be cute if any one of them were under ten years old. As none of them are under 40 years old it verges into rather different territory. Mind you I’m not altogether sure of the age of ‘Annette’ who this is signed from rather than ‘Jeannette’. Infact where is our thank you card from Jeannette actually, we specifically addressed the biscuits (or as they are calling them ‘bisciuts’) to Joyce, David and Jeannette. That bloody Annette is a biscuit (bisciut) thief!
c) I love the sandwich of the thank you, the bit of trivia about them and then the final thank you.
d) They are so well brought up, mind you I guess if you are still living with your mother well into your 40s you would still keep your manners. Maybe when she eventually passes away David and Jeannette / Annette will totally go off the rails 😆

A rather later start this morning but Davies and Scarlett were straight to their DSs to carry on where they’d left off yesterday. The sun was shining though and I insisted we all go out for an hour or so to get some fresh air / exercise / break from things with plugs and rechargers.

So we took yet more battery operated gadgets to the beach! 😆

We’d got D and S a metal detector each so we headed down to the beach to try them out. A bit of research back home shows that although they are probably fine for at home in the garden the loose, wet terrain of a beach requires something a bit more sophisticated and aside from Ady’s steel toe caps and a rusty lump of metal lying on top of the pebbles we found nothing with them. However, the very act of walking along slowly, nose to the ground meant we did discover all sorts of other treasures. We found all sorts of pretty shells, two fossils, loads of washed and tumbled glass, crabs claws and a clam with a clam still in it and a mermaids purse with an unhatched baby dogfish still in it – both of which we put back in the sea before seagulls feasted on them.

It was gorgeous down there, the sun was shining, the sky was bright blue, it was really mild and the sea was just starting to go out after high tide. Walking along made us realise how much we definitely want to remain close to the coast no matter where we end up living; this year we have spent a lot of time at the beach, we’d all miss it a lot if it wasn’t at the end of the road.

We pretty much had the place to ourselves just after 10am but by the time we left just before midday there were tribes of people out testing new bikes, kites, skates and scooters and walking dogs.

Home for lunch and Davies and I started on an airfix model my Mum had given him yesterday of Wallace and Gromit. It was a pretty tricky one with 100 odd pieces, very fiddly and Davies kept coming back to it and then wandering off again. He helped to paint it (and I even managed to leave it looking like it had been assisted by a seven year old instead of obsessively painting over everything to make it perfect ;)). It does look pretty good actually 🙂

Inbetween he and Scarlett flitted about with DSing, including having a go on each others’ games for a while and then Davies got out some of his art stuff. I’d got him a set of tubes of watercolour, a set of nice paint brushes and a pallet, a set with various charcoals, pencils, tortillions and an artists dummy (I’ve had one for years and it’s one of the few things I’ve not just given to the children but retained as mine and said they are not to just have to play with), a proper pad of watercolour paper and a proper pad of pastels paper (as he got a set of pastels from Babs for his birthday). Scarlett got a new set of (nice) watercolour blocks in a tin and a smaller pad of watercolour paper as I don’t think she is ready just yet for the moderation of not squeezing out the whole tube if I gave her watercolours like that :lol:. So he broke out the watercolours, Ady helped him choose a few colours and showed him which brushes to use, he sketched out his picture with pencil and then used watercolours, blended and mixed with water and using different brush strokes to create his planned picture of a swan on a lake against a sunny sky:

For a very first go I thought he did really well and was clearly trying to put some of the stuff we’d talked about into practise. We’ve been looking at the sky a lot lately and talking about how many colours we can see in it, particularly with some of the stunning early sunrises we’ve had the last couple of weeks colouring the sky pink, red, orange and yellow along with the blues, greys and white and he’d clearly tried to bring some of that into his picture.

Scarlett had a go with her paints and was more just testing out how they worked on proper paper and how much colour to load on and how much to dilute it with water and created this:

which I also really like.

Davies then had a go with his pastels and tried a technique we’d seen in a story book illustrations recently of drawing in pencil then colouring roughly in the lines. It had also been used on the menu cards at the place we went to for lunch on Christmas eve although that was ink drawings with one or two colours picked out. Again, for a first attempt at a style I think it’s pretty good:

There’s more than a bit of the Charlie and Lola about it I think, with the lines being very simple and the colour being scribbles rather than solid – the drawing itself isn’t great, he can do much more detailed and accurate, it’s deliberately cartoony – and of course is of me and Ady :).

And finally, because there was a bit of paint left on the pallett (and because I was dying to have a go!) I did a quick one of trees against a blue sky – not very ambitious or fantastic but as Katy recented said there is such a difference to using *nice* materials instead of the cheap and crappy ‘kiddie’ ones that the joy of art is far more accessible to you when you work with them:

We tidied up, the children had tea, lots of TV was watched (mostly Simpsons I think) and then we had this mad plan that they’d go to sleep early so sent them off at 7pm. I think Scarlett was asleep by about 10pm, Davies is hopefully asleep by now (11pm) so that was a roaring failure :lol:. I’ve been veering between feeling ok and feeling crap. I felt better for having been out and about and being busy but just sitting around had me feeling rubbish again, just generally cold, blah and ready for bed. The others all seem to be over it, coughs aside, so hopefully I’ll be on the up tomorrow.

Very early start – Davies came into our room at 6am brandishing stuffed pillowcase and sat on the end of our bed opening and exclaiming over everything. I’d put in stuff like chocolate orange and chocolate coins, plasticine, colour changing rubber ducks, a slinky, a grow your own venus fly trap, some magnetic letters and so on – they both had identical contents.

Ady went downstairs to put the kettle on while I carried on laying there with my eyes closed carrying on a conversation with Davies until he snuck off to go and wake Tarly as I’d told him he wasn’t allowed downstairs to open presents until she woke up. By 630am she’d arrived, looking very dazed and confused, in our room with her pillowcase and we were all downstairs long before 7am.

As well as the piles of presents from us there were also gifts from the Thank You Neighbours (actually there were two each; one signed with love from Joyce, Jeannette and David and one from Joyce, Annette and David – this coming out with all the personalities is great for additional cards and gifts :lol:), Lucy and The Rs and Chris, Julie, Jack and Maisie. Oh and the neighbour on the other side of us too. Davies and Scarlett were model recipients, being grateful and pleased with everything they got and discovering their DSs about half way through the present mountain. Scarlett was way slower than Davies who has a rip the wrapper off everything first, look at it properly later type approach to present opening, while Tarly likes to peruse every gift fully before opening the next one. Davies was very pleased with his art stuff but the main event for him was the DS. On the advice of a friend I’d already charged them up so he was able to get playing straight away and that was pretty much how he stayed all day until late tonight when we pried it from his hands after an hour in bed 😆

Scarlett was keen to explore all her gifts more fully and we stuck the stickers on her ponies truck from Lucy, put batteries in her whizzy toothbrush so she went off to very thoroughly clean her teeth, twice! We stuck the hair on her make your own rag doll kit, looked at her new diary, put some of her glittery make up on and finally she got round to her DS. She played a bit with Purrfect Pals, choosing a kitten and naming her Scarlett, a bit with Nintendogs although we can’t seem to get past the naming bit on that but the big hit (thanks for the recommendation Em :)) is Cooking Mama, which I only got cos it was on the BOGOF deal and we’d already got the Purr Pals on that one. She was also really into the chatroom feature and spent ages writing and drawing messages on that.


We had croissants and bucks fizz for breakfast and gradually we all got dressed before heading out around midday over to my parents. Surprisingly Frazer was up and my Granny was already there. Today she picked on Ady’s weight rather than mine, Dad chose to tease Tarly rather than me and I was left pretty much alone to wallow in feeling increasingly more crap with my cold :(. I spent most of the time snuggled up to Tarly playing her DS games with her. Mum did cook a lovely lunch which everyone enjoyed with D and S eating loads before scrambling down to go and play with their DSs again. By pure fluke Mum had bought The Simpsons Movie for Ady which was the one late request from Davies that I’d not managed to get as a present, so all very pleased we now have our own copy of that. I felt very antisocial although Ady assures me I was just quiet and that was totally explainable that I was feeling (and looked like) shite so by about 6pm when I really had had enough we came home.

I was a massive relief to be back home again actually. We all watched Doctor Who together then D and S went off to bed with their DSs, Ady ran me a bath and we shared a bottle of fizz. That combination perked me right up and we had cheese and crackers followed by slabs of my Christmas cake for tea which when followed with chocolates (not just any chocolates mind, these are M&S chocolates :lol:)) from the Thank Yous really made me feel all festive and Christmassy.

Tomorrow we have a ‘just the four of us’ day planned although my Mum was making noises about joining us :shock:. One of the pressies the children got were metal detectors (on special offer in Tescos reduced from a tenner each to about £2 each way back in the summer and bought and stashed away) so we’ve said if the weather is ok we’ll take them down the beach to treasure hunt, which would be cool. I’m really pleased with the mix of the kids’ pressies – the DSs are obviously big gifts but they did contribute towards them by agreeing to flog outgrown toys on ebay which raised the money for them, judging by how captivated by them they have both been today I think they will prove to have been good investments :). Their other bits are great too – a good mix of activities, crafts and disposable things to do along with some nice stuff like Davies’ art haul (which he really needs a box for now, he has some really nice quality materials which need to be kept apart from the cheap and crappy felt tip pens in the playroom for general use) and Scarlett’s crafty bits and bobs. I was pleased last year with the balance we achieved between what we could afford, what we wanted in the house in the first place and still giving D and S that ‘WOW!’ feeling when they first see under the tree on Christmas morning. I think we did equally as well this year and we have various nice festive things to look forward to the next week or so too. 🙂

Had a fairly traditional Christmas Eve here. This morning I made cards with D and S for each other and for us and for Mum and Dad. D did some lovely pictures and S did some great writing :).

We droppped a couple of last Christmas cards through localish people’s doors and met my parents for lunch at a pub. It was a nice enough lunch although the service was terribly slow which is always tricky when you are trying to entertain hungry and excited children, but they behaved very well considering. There were candles on the tables which Dad and I couldn’t help messing about with so we conducted a few experiments with flames and wax and paper :lol:. We left there and went to deliver the very last Christmas card to friends who happened to pull up in their car just as we arrived, so we went in for a cup of tea and quick catch up with them before coming home. Mum and Dad went off to do a few bits of their own while I mulled some wine and the children got out the fabric crayons to decorate the pillowcases I’d got them yesterday to hang up in their rooms as ‘stockings’.

Mum and Dad returned followed briefly by Lucy and The Rs dropping off and collecting presents. We roasted some chestnuts, watched some festive tv and drank more mulled wine. I started to feel slightly rough with my cold and intolerant of the combination of small house, exicted children, annoying parents so Ady ran me a bath and I disappeared for half an hour or so to restore myself somewhat. The children jumped in the bath after me, getting out to open their traditional Christmas Eve pressie of new pjs and watch the Shrek thing that was on. We all snuggled up to read The Night Before Christmas and then they went to bed. Of course they didn’t go to sleep – I saw with Scarlett for ages and then went and sat with Davies for ages more. He finally fell asleep around 10ish I think after I’d come downstairs for dinner.

Ady cooked a lovely curry after which I finally kicked my parents out at 11pm when several not so tactful hints about them going had gone unresponded to as I didn’t want to put presents out under their critical eyes and would like to be in bed myself while it is still Christmas Eve, plus we were only all sitting here watching crap tv anyway :roll:. So they’ve gone, stockings have been stuffed, the tree is afloat in a sea of gifts , Ady’s drunk the brandy, nibbled the carrot and snaffled the mince pie left for Santa and if I get six hours sleep I should probably consider myself lucky, so I’m off to grab what I can!

Have a good one everyone :).

In the full throes of the cold here 🙁 D and S are on the mend but have hacking coughs. Ady is moving from snot production and into cough territory with more updates and regular health bulletins than would be posted on the gates of Buckingham Palace should the monarch be at death’s door :roll:. I am still on day one and just feel generally throaty and cross and impatient with the whole world. So that’ll be a good few days of coughing in stereo from everyone I share living space with for me to look forward to then. Great. I do love coughs… 🙄

So it was a slow, coughy start to the day before we nipped into Lancing to get a few bits. I got a couple of cheap pillowcases for the children to decorate and use as stockings (an activity for tomorrow to use up some of that over excited Christmas Eve energy on creative pursuits), a new calendar for me as they were reduced to clear, the final present I’d overlooked yesterday for someone, plenty of drugs to ease cold and flu symptoms (decongestants, cocaine-filled capsules (yes I do means that :lol:), vicks sticks for shoving up noses and two bog boxes of nice soft tissues and a pocket pack of nice soft tissues for each of us), then a final dash around the supermarket for mulled wine ingredients for tomorrow during which I forgot again to get the nuts and mango chutney I’d also forgotten yesterday.

Home for me to wrap up the final bits, Ady to make lunch and the children to decorate the Christmas cake and then play with geomags before we headed over to Chris and Julie’s. It was a lovely sunny day so we went for a brisk walk with their dog round the field near to them. I wasn’t totally up for it to be honest, but actually with the sun hanging low in the sky and the children able to run off some energy and me having to concentrate more on not slipping over on the muddy bits of path that weren’t still frozen from a heavy ground frost last night my mind was taken off my wallowing in sniffles and I quite enjoyed it. Julie and I managed a good catch up chat too. Then it was back to theirs for tea, festive nibbles, chat and play.

There was a slightly sticky moment as Ady and Chris’ mother had passed a message to ask if she could buy Christmas presents for Davies and Scarlett, to which I replied a categoric NO!. For background – when Ady was 6, Chris was 2 and their sister Deborah was 10 their parents split up. The three children all ended up in care, seperated from each other. Both parents remarried – their mother went on to have another son and their father went on to have another son and daughter with their new partners. Ady, Chris and Deborah all lived with one or other parent at various times but spent a lit of time in care and childrens’ homes having far from idyllic childhoods. When I first met Ady he’d not had contact with either parent or either sibling for a fair few years. His sister tracked him down when we’d been together for a couple of years and we went along to a surprise birthday party for their 90 year old grandmother (his father’s mother) where I met his sister and his dad for the first time. It was all very strange though with his father’s wife and their two children there but all ignoring Ady and Deborah as though they weren’t stepchildren / half siblings. Ady and his Dad had a stilted conversation which was sadly to be their last as his Dad passed away a year or two later without them ever meeting again. It was the start of a sporadic contact with Deborah again though and I met her a couple more times. Sadly she too died (of breast cancer) just before her 40th birthday back in 2001. Before she died she’d persuaded Chris to come along to our wedding reception where he and Julie turned up (again, first contact between him and Ady in about 15 years). Deborah’s death and then the birth of Scarlett, Jack and Maisie so close together and our totally coincidental and seperate decisions to Home Educate have meant that since we moved back to Sussex in 2004 we have gotten close to Chris and Julie. The fact that Julie and I get on has obviously cemented it.

Chris and Julie see Brenda – Ady and Chris’ mother and her husband Jim. Ady has not seen her for many years. He was prepared to accept some contact with her knowing they would come face to face at Deborah’s funeral but despite sitting in the row infront of us she didn’t even look him in the face. Whilst I appreciate much of Ady’s take on the whole matter and him laying most of the blame for the marriage breakup and subsequent crappy childhood in care feeling unwanted is that of a child who wouldn’t have been in possession of all the true facts I do know that as a mother there is nothing either of my children would ever do that would cause me to lose contact with them, ignore them or stop me from wanting them in my life. I also know that having been Ady’s friend for 17 years, his partner for 14 and his wife for 8 that she is missing out big time on having a son who would make any mother so very proud to call her his own. It would seem that she might be starting to feel like that herself but I am of the opinion that it is too late. I don’t think you can repair relationships like that and I also don’t think that Ady would stand to gain anything. He is a happy, sorted, loved and loving man who has all the family and friends around him he could ever need. The very suggestion of contact with his mother sets him twitching and anxious and I don’t think anything positive would come of seeing her for him. I am also utterly convinced that contact with her would not bring anything beneficial to Davies and Scarlett. They know she exists; they know she is local and they know that Jack and Maisie see their shared grandmother. They have had age and comprehension appropriate explanations as to why Ady doesn’t see her and obviously as they get older and want more details they can have them but to actually introduce another granny into their lives at this stage, who shares no history with their father or mother and cannot tell them anything about his childhood or give anything other than some tragic explanation for why she didn’t play her role is something else I can’t see any gain for Davies and Scarlett in. I can totally appreciate that she would gain a hell of a lot from seeing her son and grandchildren but my respect for her feelings and compassion for her wellbeing is not something I am in possession of really. Ady and I have talked about it again tonight and as the whole situation leaves him jittery and he would simply rather not think about it at all he is more than happy to let me be the baddy and make the zero tolerance decision to not allow her into our lives on any level.

That aside, and Chris and Julie seemed pretty respectful of my emphatic no, they were merely passing on a message and can pass ours back as diplomatically – or not – as they like, it was a nice afternoon. Once we got home I rather slumped and Ady did the kids tea and wonderful things to a joint of pork for our dinner. I’ve had a lovely long email from my friend in New Zealand with all their catch up news and might try and ring her tomorrow for our annual chat, I’ve supported my mate Dayve by downloading his Christmas EP, had some medicinal wine and as everyone else is finally asleep and therefore no longer coughing as the fire flickers it’s last I am feeling nicely glowing, at peace with the world (Ady’s mother aside!) and ready to start Christmas!

I worked this morning. It was nice actually, everyone (staff and borrowers) were in festive moods and calling Merry Christmasses to each other hither and thither. Yvonne asked me to do a display first thing of the RAW stuff so I changed shelves around, backed the wall with bright yellow and did arty things with posters and leaflets. She was very enthusiastic about it and how well I’d done so that was nice :). Karen, who used to do all the displays had her last day yesterday and as noone else seems remotely interested in taking that role on and the couple of things I have done have been so well received I am fairly confident that will become my little thing – which is great, if I could have chosen any area I’ve been itching to get my hands on since I started it would be the displays and arty stuff :). I’ll also be doing Storytime fortnightly and Baby Rhyme Time fortnightly too – neither of which are particularly my calling in life as such but certainly ring the changes and add positive work experience to my CV – if life events conspire to keep me working there I reckon this second year there is going to be rewarding and enjoyable for me :). I also spent a happy hour on the enquiry desk which given the library was very quiet meant I got to browse fantasticfiction for most of the time and pre-order all the interesting looking books coming out over the next couple of months, securing me reading matter of the crisp brand new, first person to have read that copy to make up for not getting a pile of chick-lit as Christmas pressies from anyone :).

Ady picked me up at 1pm and we headed into Worthing to get the Christmas shopping. Aside from the DSs and a couple of other bits I’ve picked up over the months we didn’t have a great deal for Davies and Scarlett. They’d both requested two specific DS games each so they were top of our list. We found a parking space really easily and went straight to Game. They had various offers on there including some games on buy one get one free and some on buy one get one half price. Davies wanted The Simpsons (which was on BOGOHP) and Crazy Frog (which I’d already got pre-owned from ebay) and Scarlett wanted the Dalmation Nintendogs (in stock but not part of any offer) and ‘anything to do with cats’ – which was sorted with a BOGOF offer on Purrfect Pets. Except that meant we had one full price and two on two different offers which didn’t seem to be making the most of the bargains really. Ady stayed there browsing while I dashed round to Gamestation and Woolworths to check their offerings, neither of which remotely compared so I returned to Ady and he’d found a Harry Potter game also in the BOGOHP offer. Cooking Mama has been highly recommended by other parents as a good one and that was in the BOGOF deal so we ended up getting Simpsons and Harry Potter with one half price, the Nintendogs at full price and Cooking Mama and Purrfect Pets on BOGOF. We also got a Simpsons DS Lite bundle thing each for them for £12.99 each with a case, couple of game cases, spare stylus’ and emergency charger and headphones. For £130 we got five games and the 2 bundles so that was a bit of a result and means both children get an extra game they aren’t expecting :).

Next we decided we were hungry so walked down to the bakers for baguettes and I finally got my watch strap replaced. We walked round ELC and were astounded to realise there wasn’t anything in there we’d buy for either child even if we had the money which made us feel quite old :lol:. We went to the Works and got various bits and pieces – a book for my Mum, a fairy writing set for Tarly, a big box of pink and purple crafty bits for Tarly and then across to the cheapo card shop for Christmas cards for family who won’t be satisfied with the picture cards of D and S that everyone else has got and loads of rolls of wrapping paper (3 for a quid and I’ve wrapped everything now with still a couple of rolls leftover meaning I spent less than £3 altogether on paper :)). Our time on the meter was nearly up by then so Ady took the bags and went back to the car while I went to Woolworths for a sew-your-own-doll-kit for Tarly and then the other The Works (we have two The Works shops – one seems to specialise more in the art stuff and the other more in the books) where I got the bulk of what I wanted – two really cool interactive atlas books with stickers and magnetic bits and stuff, a set of nice watercolours in a block with proper watercolour paper for Tarly, a set of tubes of watercolour, some nice brushes and a pallet, a set of charcoals and an artists dummy and pads of watercolour and pastel paper for Davies who spends so much of his time creating art work these days that the old wax crayons and value felttips we have really are not up to the job anymore and I like the idea of respecting what he’d doing enough to give him the proper tools and materials to do it.

I walked back to the car and we went off to Dad’s to collect Davies and Scarlett who had been there with him and Frazer for the afternoon. Both of them have this cold which Ady woke up with this morning and this evening my throat has been tightening so I suspect I will be nursing it too by the morning. Coupled with that and my Mum letting them stay up til some ungodly hour last night they were both rather delicate and were both in tears all over me within five minutes of us arriving :roll:. They did manage to pull themselves together sufficiently in the end and, as planned, we headed off to Sainsburys. As we’re going to my Mum and Dad’s for Christmas Day we don’t have any real need to buy special food but like the idea of having nice stuff around so we do a free rein, buy all sorts of luxury items shop with the children when we say ‘yes’ to as many food requests as is feasible – we also stock up on alcohol :). We’ve got Mum and Dad here for curry on Christmas Eve so we needed bits for that and we have Boxing Day to ourselves and plan to sit around DSing, watching TV, burning lots of logs and eating lots of nice food all day so most of the supplies are for that.

As promised, for being shunted around a bit today and being good all round Sainsburys and indeed because they too have tolerated the money-less month we’ve just had we bought McDonalds for the childrens’ tea on the way home which they sat and ate while watching The Simpsons while I had a long bath. I put together pizzas, the children went to bed and then I wrapped most of the presents and ensured we had about equal volumes for each child.

I’ve inevitably thought of various little bits and pieces we could do with so we might pop out in the morning for those and we are going over to Chris and Julie’s tomorrow afternoon for our pre-Christmas get together. But for now, it’s been a very long day and I am ready for my bed.

And Nic is way too pissed to think of a clever Christmas song lyric to sum up the day. Hell I am barely able to type legibly and now I am seriously doubting that legibly is the correct spelling but can’t be arsed to check.

This morning started with a cockadoodledoo, or at least the early croaks of one as one of the bantams is either a) a cockerel b) top of the hen pecking order and asserting herself in a very obvious way c) undergoing some strange chicken phenonmena type transgender sex change type affair d) having a bit of a laugh e) about to start laying eggs f) practising it’s cockerel impressions for the Goddard Bantam Christmas Caberet Event. Not at all sure which of the above it might have been but it was quite categorically the early signs of crowing :lol:.

Me and the children sat around drinking tea and messing about online (me), playing with geomags (them) and watching a zoo program about a newborn giraffe that was rejected by it’s mother and then died and then a programme about watercolour art techniques for painting landscapes (all of us together, with much discussion on all counts). After having listened to the news Scarlett asked me about suicide bombers too so I covered the very notion of suicide, why people might do suicide bombing and how yes, it was indeed very sad but that most people would have something they believed in strongly enough to die for.

We then watched the Doctor Who where Mickey stays in the parallel world with Rose’s Dad and they say goodbye to each other having defeated the cyberman army with the Doctor talking about humans and Planet Earth and all our failings. We discussed how you wouldn’t know how it felt to be rested until you’d been tired, happy until you’d been sad, satiated until you’d been hungry and so on. How what makes us human is our imagination, dreams, hopes, strivings towards stuff and how homogenousness and sameness and utter sameness would wipe out all that is amazing about individuality. It was all very deep and very basic all at the same time.

Then my Dad rang and in a similar manner to me ringing him yesterday to ask ‘What are you doing right now?’ he asked me and requested I go over and jump start his van that the battery had died on. We were moments away from leaving to go to Ali’s anyway so jumped in the car, declined the offer of deicer from David (thank you neighbour with just the one known about personality who has seen me semi naked and always tries to invade my personal space) and headed over to my Dad’s. The children were most interested in batteries and jump starts so having manouvered my car infront of my Dad’s and popped the bonnet they both hopped out to see what the jump leads were all about and how they worked. We got Dad’s van started and then followed him to his mechanics to get the dodgy battery sorted out. On the way we talked about the purpose of a car battery, which points along the route are potential stalling hotspots and some basic car mechanics.

We left Dad there getting his van sorted and headed on over to Ali’s, listening to James Blunt at Scarlett’s request but singing the triangle song over Your’re Beautiful anyway.

Had a lovely time at Ali and Freya’s. Both D and S made Christmas cards for Ali (they both adore Ali, she is one of their favourite people :)), Davied and Freya xboxed which was good as Davies gets little or no opportunity for mulit player gaming and Scarlett did lots of baking with Ali which she loved :). Ali and I managed some chatting which was ace and it was a nice visit :).

We left to come home and spent most of the journey talking about the sky, sunsets and painting. I’m sure I’ve missed something else we chatted about but I can’t recall it now. Oh must also mention Tarly getting together a small lego or similar doll and telling me very seriously ‘this girl has gone out by herself’ to which she got a usual ‘oh right’ type answer so she expanded with ‘but she hasn’t looked across the water’ (Valerie, Scarlett and my favourite song atm) complete with full explanation about why she hadn’t looked across the water and everything!

Home for roast chicken for D&S and a bath for me and A followed by mum arriving t0 babysit. We got all dressed up where we had a nice enough meal and pretty OK company. There were enough people there I’d met once or twice before for me to feel not completely out of water. We left fairly early and were home not long after 11pm. A chat and cup of coffee with my Mum before she left and then off to bed for us.

So the loo roll held out. Just. But that was more by way of a series of unfortunate events leading up to nearly a full roll (well as full as value rolls get anyway) falling into the loo and ending up sodden, waterlogged and fished out and put in the bathroom sink.

So after a full morning at work there I was, poised infront of the cashpoint, safe in the knowledge that access to real proper cash was at my disposal. Clutching my parcel of fudge ready to send, knowing I had barely enough petrol in my car to get me to the garage, fully aware that back at home there would be a loo roll situation just waiting to happen, not to mention we had no bread, no cat food, very little milk and Ady has no bow tie to wear to his staff do tomorrow night (I did offer to ‘knock him one up’ using a pair of Davies’ old pyjamas appliqued with the corner of one of Scarlett’s old t shirts and adorned with a hama bead but surprisingly he refused :lol:).

I’d prepared Lucy for me being slightly late home. I had a plan to get cash, go to the post office, send the fudge, look in two charity shops for bow ties, get loo roll, cat food, bread, milk and come home via the petrol station, fully sorted. I then did that really stupid poking a weeping sore to see if it still hurts type testing exercise of thinking to myself ‘hey what if you forgot your pin number?’. Now I sort of know my pin number, in much the same way as people know some phone numbers as is they can dial them but if asked to recite them they stumble over the order of the digits. I can tap it into a cashpoint or a chip and pin machine but I’m buggered if I can actually summon it to mind. And then of course the four numbers it is comprised of – which start with a 2 – began to do this sort of Fantasia style animated leaping about infront of me in a taunting ‘you can’t remember what order we’re in!’ type manner. And sure enough, no I can’t. I try once, with a certain amount of confidence. It is wrong. A ha I think, then it must be this combination. Nope. At which point I totally forget both of the combinations I tried before and do a sort of a blind stab at a third attempt at which point it spits the card back at me with a sort of ‘ha-ha!’ type attitude and tells me to ‘go contact your card issuer. Loser’ (well maybe it didn’t say loser exactly but it hinted at it. Not very festive or season of goodwill to all men cashpoints are they really?). I did a sort of flappy panic thing and then galvanised myself into a ‘come on Nic, you can do this, you know your pin number’ show of bravery only to have it dashed before I got as far as entering it by the cashpoint adopting a ‘Listen Buster, I told you to go and contact your card issuer. Now stop shoving the card into me and hoping I’ll be too busy making a list and checking it twice and panicking about whether I should buy more brandy snaps ‘just in case’ to remember that you forgot your pin number, take your card and GO AND SPEAK TO YOUR BLOODY CARD ISSUER! Oh and Seasons Greetings.’

Duly chastened I slunk back to my car and drove home.

This put me in rather a situation. First of all the fudge really had to be sent today. Also we really couldn’t have gone much further without loo roll. Either that or I’d need to start cutting old clothing into strips to make reusable stuff which is a frugal step too far I reckon. And we needed milk and bread and cat food and I don’t think any of those foodstuffs can be effectively recreated with old clothes. I needed to go into my nearest branch of my bank to draw out cash over the counter so I could do / buy all the things I needed. This posed a couple of issues: 1) the whole petrol thing 2) the bank is in the middle of town. To get to it I’d need to find a parking space and then buy a ticket to display in the car window /take a bus / catch the train. All of the above require money, of which I had none.

Fortunately in much the same way as Scarlett can get Ady to do stuff for her after I’ve said no and even sometimes after he’s said no too, I was able to ring my Dad and he came to the rescue. Lucy very kindly said she’d stay at my house with all the children and I went to collect my Dad, drive into town and he sat outside the bank in the car on double yellows ready to move on if a traffic warden came along. I got some money out, explained the whole forgotten PIN to the cashier and got a new one on it’s way and then dropped Dad off home again, popped to the post office, where next day guaranteed delivery of rather heavy fudge cost more than the budget for the secret santa (note to self, make LIGHT home made goods next year and post on bloody time!) and was regaled with Christmas greetings from semi-celeb status post office workers before coming home again.

Had a very nice couple of hours chatting to Lucy with various interjections from children. I’d brought home some art books for Davies which he was really pleased with and flicked through a couple with me – he’s really into the idea of ‘drawing in the style of…’ and I’d picked up about 6 books of very different styles of artist so he’s chuffed with them. I also showed him to do shading and blending with pencils tossing in a little anecdote about being shown the technique by John (the one who died and I did that speech at his funeral) when I was about D’s age, which he took to and has used in various pictures this afternoon. And then we had a me using the term et cetera / etc. which Davies asked about the meaning of and having told him ‘and so on’ I remember the dictionary so got it down from the shelf and looked it up and introduced Davies to dictionaries. He loved the idea and we looked up various words he came up with ‘hello’ which led to ‘informal’ which led to a discussion on how putting in/im/un infront of some words causes them to mean the opposite with various examples.

Lucy and The Rs left and Davies who had been itching to do so all afternoon showed me how to play X box. He put on Super Monkey Ball and we had a play for that for half an hour or so while Scarlett did some colouring and gave me helpful advice (things like ‘try not to die Mummy!’). I scrabbled together some tea for them and then Ady got home. I whizzed off to get petrol, loo roll, bread, milk and etc. while Ady gave them a bath and then we all watched The Simpsons together when I got back.

I am now feeling particularly warm and fuzzy having consumed much alcohol and all that remains tomorrow is the bow tie saga. Even if I find one in the first charity shop I happen upon you can bet there will be more to say about it than that! 😉

We had been due to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie today for a Winter Walk but sadly Julie rang to cancel as Maisie wasn’t very well so she thought she should keep her in, in the warm instead. It was a bit of a shame really as Ady went to Somerset today and we’d probably have gone with him if we’d not had the arrangement with Julie, but never mind.

After a full day inside yesterday I wanted to get out with the children today though so we decided to go out to the park after lunch. They really wanted to go to Drusillas, which would have been great but I didn’t have enough petrol in my car to get us there and back so regretfully had to say no to that one. They’d been particularly wanting to go to a certain park in Shoreham but then remembered that the see-saw roundabout type thing they wanted to go in is also at our local park too so changed their minds to going there instead.

We spent the morning very companionably doing various things. Davies went off and played in his room with his Doctor Who stuff for a while, Scarlett sat with me and had a go at sewing (I was denim bag making still), cutting out a green scrap into a triangle shape and using different coloured threads to ‘sew’ baubles onto it. I must get her a few bits actually, might try and do so as a Christmas present and sit with her and show her some stuff properly, maybe one of those sew your own doll kits that we could do together… They both gave lots of input on ideas for the bag and in their usual way were very encouraging about how ‘brilliant’ it was :). We flicked through sky channels watching a few documentary type things and then listening to Christmas music. Finally they got out a load of paper mats which lay out to create a town with roads, farms, carparks and so on. I think it originally came from the South of England show or similar and was probably a booklet that needed unstapling. That and the toy cars kept them amused for ages together.

We had lunch and then dressed up in many layers to go to the park. As we pulled up and parked Davies exclaimed on how it was empty and we had the place to ourselves and off they ran, whooping with joy at being in the sunshine with a whole park to themselves, a week before Christmas – it’s good to be a child 🙂

They both went on the zipwire, which Davies has really quite recently decided he likes. He’s watched older children play on it and obviously stored up tips and today worked out how to scramble onto the platfom by himself so just needed the handle handing to him and off he went doing stunts like jumping off onto the opposite platform and stuff 🙂

Scarlett managed to climb up the first couple of times, showing in her usual manner that far from being two years behind her big brother she is normally only a couple of paces before deciding she couldn’t do it after all. She is not totally comfortable with being 5 just yet and still maintains she ‘misses four’ and does a bit of regression of speech and behaviour every so often to remind us all she is ‘still the baby’ – today at the park I obviously made one comment too far about ‘what big children I have’ and got an ‘all the better to act like babies with’ type response! She did however jump off by herself with a real leap into the blue type attitude which she didn’t do last time we went there so I suspect she will get over her babyness again next time and just get on with it.

They then went on the roundabout, seesaw type thing for ages getting maximum enjoyment out of that before it ticked towards nearly an hour and we all started to freeze. Lucy and The Rs had joined us at the park so they came back and joined us at home afterwards.

Once I had established, reiterated and finally gotten through the ground rules about running screaming into the lounge every 30 seconds we managed a chat and they managed to play – it finally settled into Davies and Richard playing with a balloon while Tarly and Rebecca drew and that seemed to work just fine. I sewed while I chatted and finished off my new bag which I am very pleased with – not bad for a load of old offcuts from clothes that were residing in the rags bag under the kitchen sink to be used as dusters and I like the idea that I’m carrying round bits of D and S’s old clothes with me too :).

Lucy and The Rs left, Davies and Scarlett had tea and watched a bit more tv – Blue Peter was on because we talked about BP badges and liked the choir and loathed the two girls singing Santa Claus is coming to town at the end. Then Newsround which both children like watching – they love the news. We chatted a little bit about weather forecasts and how they can predict what the weather is going to be like which I think I gave a fairly vague answer to (and might present another gift opportunity, I’m sure I’ve seen weather kits / station stuff cheap in The Works!). Then we watched some Simpsons. Ady was late home so we snuggled up on the sofa once they were pj’d up to play mental blocks on facebook together til he came home.

Tonight I have constructed a box for my fudge, tied it very prettily with gold ribbon, written a nice poem to go with it and it’s all wrapped up and ready to go to the post office on guaranteed next day delivery tomorrow.