One word? When seven would do…

See Ali turn this into something insightful
making lyrics up from my day
and rhyming coupleting all I say
there has been no further vomit
my day has had no bad bits cast upon it
it’s been a joy rather than a slog
let me blog, let me blog, let me blog!

It’s been a slow old day really, the illegal status of my car kept me from using it and the weather was dry for just long enough to encourage me to do three washes and hopefully hang out the first two before pouring with rain for the rest of the day :(. Which meant a walk was sort of out of the question really.

Davies seemed to have made a full and overnight recovery and so we all had breakfast and watched various vet-based programmes on various sky channels. I wandered off at one point to hang more washing out and came back in to ask what was on TV. Davies said ‘oh it’s this show where there is these people who are trying to help really fat people lose weight so they feel better about themselves’ and they were both sat watching it ahhing at all the touching tear jerking moments 😆 So I turned that off and put some Christmas music on for a while. Davies got a big pile of various magazines down from his bedroom – mostly Doctor Who and Wallace and Gromit ones and they sat together and looked through them doing the various activities and talking about the pictures and stories. I drank lots of tea.

They came to see what I was doing at one point and caught me using paint to put Mortimer bears in prison which they throught was hilarious and egged me on to cut the arms of the hug people are sending each other on facebook too. They were utterly delighted when Ali responded to me very quickly :). We all sat and played zoo tycoon for a while and then I went to make some lunch, most of which Scarlett swiped as she decided my cheese on toast was nicer than the peanut butter sandwiches she’d asked for :roll:.

Davies then wanted to do some Xboxing so he laid across the sofa with his feet in my lap and did that, I read the local parenting magazine that comes out 4 times a year and annoys me every time I pick up a copy but never manage to just not pick one up in the first place. Scarlett was doing some drawing but then asked if she could draw on my jeans instead. She does this a lot and it usually washes out after a couple of washes and almost all my jeans are on the tatty side anyway so I let her – actually they both have a few pairs of pants and vests which I bought Tesco value packs of so they could use fabric pens to draw on them too, they love drawing on clothes and now they’re old enough to know that it’s ok to draw on some but not on all I really like some of the designs they’ve done. It was only when the telltale pear drops smell drifted to my nose I realised she was using a permanent marker pen for her drawing, so I now have a very well written’ SCARLETT’ across the left knee of my jeans and beautifully coloured in pictures of the four of us down one thigh 😆 – customised clothing is cool right? 😉

Ady had been hoping to get home for about 3pm ish to finish some work from home so I could take his car and get the food shopping we were so desperate for but his day didn’t pan out quite like that and in the end he pulled up with moments to spare before we left for swimming in a car relay tag team style. I’d not suggested to Davies that he not go to swimming as he seemed fine and had eaten plenty but about halfway through the lesson he quite clearly started to flag and at one point started coughing a lot which had me about to leap to my feet and shout ‘everyone clear the pool, avoiding the lumps in the water!’ but he seemed to have just drunk too much water! He carried on admirably but just about managed to climb out of the pool at the end and then sort of slumped, bless him. I helped him get changed and we drove home with me fairly convinced he might be ill again but he was cheered up by getting his 5m badge tonight and dashed in to show Ady and Scarlett it. We continued with the tag team idea with me dropping Davies off with Ady and heading off again to Sainsburys. Apparently he didn’t manage any dinner and although he was still awake when I came home just before 8pm he was asleep well before 9pm which is pretty early for him.

Sainsburys was fairly quiet. I’d started to feel a bit crap too but it’s since passed but I really struggled to summon enthusiasm for shopping. I popped into Boots next door to get a few Christmas present and birthday present for Scarlett bits (and that sparkly eye liner that girl had on Friday night too Ros – I got it in green and silver and it was only £1 something a tube :)) and then in Sainsburys I managed to get Christmas presents for 3 out of the 4 children other than my own I want to buy for and a load of stocking presents for D and S from their £1 3 for 2 offers on tat :). I got home and we unloaded the shopping and put it all away. We had posh chicken nuggets and posh chips for dinner while watching Keeping Mum which was quite good.

Tomorrow is MOT day – please keep your fingers crossed it doesn’t need anything too expensive done to it for me.

I remembered just as I got into bed last night that I’d arranged with my Dad for him to call round this morning on his way to dropping his van off to be MOTd so that I could follow him and bring him back here for the hour or so they had it. The MOT place is on an industrial estate near us but in the middle of not a lot else with nowhere to kill an hour. So I set my alarm and was up if not dressed and downstairs when he arrived. He and I drank tea and coffee while the children breakfasted and got dressed and I suddenly realised I don’t remember MOTing my car any time recently so went to dig out the MOT certificate and yes, indeed, I have been driving round for nearly 6 weeks without one 😳 😳 :oops:. Over the years we have managed to get our car tax, insurance and MOT at different times of the year so we don’t have any one big expense – the downside of this is that it requires me remembering to MOT the car in October, which I will henceforth be refering to as MOTober to remind me. So when I took him back to collect his van I booked my car in for an MOT on Wednesday. I did use the car to go to MM today but won’t use it tomorrow or indeed again until Wednesday when I take it to the garage and feel quite horrified with myself for the oversight.

Dad seems to have really taken on board my comments about not seeing enough of him and coupled with incidents like Davies ringing him last week to announce his swimming achievement and coming to see him at the carol concert yesterday as well as yet another birthday party he sat through this weekend where the children ran round clearly happy, normal and well adjusted with wide friendship circles I think he is feeling better in his own way about what we are doing. He’ll never in a million years accept that Home Education is right, certainly not that the way we are doing it anyway but if I can get across that we are not doing any great damage I will be happy ;).

Given the vast quantities of festive foodstuff in our house I piled up all the remaining cakes and biscuits from Scarlett’s party to share at MMs, which seemed to go down pretty well :). It was a good session today – there were some ace snowglobes to put your own picture in so all three of us had a go at them. It was a quietish session anyway and Davies had told me before we went that he was going to try really hard to stay away from any trouble, which aside from a row with Scarlett about who should count first in a game of hide and seek he pulled of beautifully. I thought I’d resolved the hide and seek issue too with a coin flip but Davies lost the call and stropped anyway 🙄 I enjoyed chatting (and singing!) with the adults and am looking forward to the Christmas party next week.

We’re a bit desperate for normal food at the moment – I’d normally have done the months food shop this weekend just gone but obviously had other stuff to keep me busy so despite the vast array of cakes and chocolate we don’t have an awful lot else, but knowing full well I’d managed to drive around in the car for the last 6 weeks without incident but I would be bound to have some dreadful happening now I know it is illegal to be driving I decided against going out to do food shopping this afternoon. Instead we did a bit of fimo-ing. I made Homer Simpson, Davies made several characters from TrapDoor and Scarlett made a pink horse. I then baked them for nearly 4 hours having totally forgotten about them. 😆 They are fine, slightly on the suntanned side but fine anyway :).

The children had tea and watched Beat The Boss and then we walked Davies round to Beavers. Scarlett and I played on Starfall for most of the hour he was gone and were still doing it when Ady came back with a very poorly Davies cradled in his arms. He’d started to feel ill not long after arriving and had sat out for most of the session before vomiting everywhere just as Ady arrived. They’d been looking out for me and despite it being Ady who collects him most weeks and has gone on plenty of trips with them they’d just been looking for ‘Davies’ mummy’ and ignored him while he stood blissfully unaware that Davies was copiously redecorating the hall :(. We stripped him down and got him in the bath and his clothes in the wash. I stuck some dinner in the oven for us and then got Davies installed on the sofa with blankets, bowl and hot water bottle. Scarlett got back out of bed having declared she wished she was sick too so she could stay up and watch The Simpsons :roll:. She finally went to bed late, Davies was sick a couple more times but seems to be over the worst now having kept water down for the last couple of hours. We had Evan Almightly to watch on dvd so as it was a pg rating we stuck it on anyway and he watched with us; cue much chatting about religion, Noah, God and so on. No idea whether he has the bug that is doing the rounds, has eaten too much party food the last 48 hours or my threats about not going to sleep until 1030pm every night and being up again by 7am making him ill have come true but I guess the planned quiet couple of days at home have come at just the right time. 🙂 He and Ady went up to bed about half an hour ago so hopefully he’s asleep now. Tomorrow we have a whole pile of films we could watch and unless he is way better he won’t be swimming so I can catch up on finishing writing Christmas cards and other such home based stuff.

Your Karaoke Theme Song is “I’m Too Sexy”

You’re a total goof ball and a bit of a nut job. You don’t take yourself seriously at all. And while you may not be the greatest singer, you’re the first to volunteer for karaoke. You have a wild and unpredictable sense of humor that always gets people cracking up. Irreverent and rebellious, your humor knows no bounds or limits. You enjoy shocking people. You might also sing: “Like a Virgin,” “Ice Ice Baby,” and “Hey Ya!” Stay away from people who sing: “Sweet Home Alabama”

The results of this assessment show that Davies’s learning style is 42% visual, 42% auditory, and 14% kinesthetic.

The results of this assessment show that Scarlett’s learning style is 42% visual, 50% auditory, and 7% kinesthetic.

The results of this assessment show that your learning style is 33% visual, 53% auditory, and 13% kinesthetic.

We’re not big on the kinesthesis round here then!

cos it’s passworded so did it for Monster & Teeny instead

Get a Cash Advance

Your Teaching Style Test Results

The results of the evaluation you just took added up to a score of…

47

Please refer to the table below to see what kind of teaching style may best be suited to your homeschooling needs.

Score Teaching Style
26 – 52 Unschooling or Child-Directed
53 – 78 Combined Parent and Child Directed
79 – 104 Teacher Directed
105 – 130 Traditional

Unschooling or Child Directed:
Parents who choose an Unschooling or Child Directed teaching style base their approach on the interests and natural learning patterns of their individual child. This style avoids use of textbooks, reviewing, quizzing, or even formal testing. The child’s natural curiosity and interests are the key to the daily activities. There is a large emphasis on imagination, nature, art, music and almost no formal curriculum is used. There is no use of lesson plans, a defined “school” time, or even any type of grading. The child’s environment, though controlled, is used as the bases of learning. A great curriculum choice for this type of teaching style is Unit Studies. Unit Studies allow the child’s interests to control the basis of study. this bit made me laugh a bit though!

Get ready, get steady for my next 23 days of posts having Christmas song lyrics as titles 🙂

A lazy morning of tv watching, being on laptops and me and the children making their advent garlands. These were kits with bags of chocolate buttons to melt and pour into moulds, then decorate with writing icing before putting into little silver bags numbered 1-24 then attaching with mini clothes pegs to a ribbon to hang up. The idea being you open the relevant numbered bag each day in December and eat your decorated chocolate. The kits were only £1.29 each which I thought was excellent value – and the moulds (and I guess even the bags and pegs and ribbon) can be used again too.

So we melted the chocolate and poured it into moulds and started decorating them. I helped with the melting and they did the rest. In the waiting around bits we danced to the Macarena, as you do :lol:.

Ady brought down the karaoke machine so Davies could practise for the carol concert with a microphone which naturally degenerated into noisy nonsense and then it was time to get ready for the church. Davies wore Badger uniform, Ady wore a suit and tie, I wore a skirt for the second day running and Tarly was dressed up with ribbon in her (brushed) hair and smart shirt and trousers. We had a moment of feeling overdressed when all the other Badger parents were in jeans but when all the other attendees arrived either in SJA uniform or Sunday best we were pleased we’d made the effort. It had been blowing a gale all morning but there was a brief lull in the wind and rain for the whole couple of hours we were out, starting again shortly after we got home and continuing still now. We’ve had several power surges here which have knocked the power out and tripped the fusebox and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to come. We’ve put torches beside all the beds just incase.

Davies went off to join the Badgers at the church and my parents and Granny arrived and came to sit with us. The church is the one which I sang carol concerts at during my senior school years being just down the road from my old school which was a C of E school and properly attached to the church. It is a lovely church, big with massively high wooden ceilings and beautiful stained glass windows and holds a good couple of hundred people – it was packed out today with all SJA people as Worthing is the county district headquarters. The six of us (me, Ady, Dad, Mum, Tarly and Granny) filled a pew and Scarlett moved all the way up and down between adults during the course of the concert. She did really well actually, enjoying most of it, particularly the Badgers bit that Davies sang in which she joined in with, word perfect all the way through. She got bored towards the end and I whispered most of the readings in her ear following them in the Bible which kept her quieter and she liked the carols of which there were many. She did proclaim, right in a quiet bit just after the reading about Jesus being born to save us all that ‘I am REEEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLY bored Mama!’ with a big heartfelt sigh which gave me the giggles. The elderly couple behind us with all their SJA medals on told her and us how wonderful she’d been at the end though, so brutal honesty aside I was proud of her. And she was very proud of Davies 🙂 And desperate to be up there singing with him next year.

Davies did great – he sat with the other Badgers for the whole couple of hour quite contentedly – he waved quickly to me when they assembled themselves at the front but otherwise was totally professional and sang loud and clear – there were 7 of them and they sang Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, When Santa got stuck up the chimney and We wish you a Merry Christmas. He carried a lantern as a prop. At the end when everyone was filing out Scarlett and I dashed over to collect him and he put his hand out on Scarlett’s arm and said ‘here Scarlett, you can have this’ and gave her the lantern. Which made me cry 🙂

Home to continue the advent garlands which are now pinned up on the lounge door looking very festive. The children had their tea and I made a snowball for myself as I was feeling festive and they had a (very weak) one each too with their dinner:

I went off to make the first batch of mince pies of the season which Scarlett came to help me with once she’d finished eating. They went off to bed, we had roast lamb and I’m ending the weekend way more tired than I started it! Just as well we have a pretty quiet week (birthday aside) lined up this week.

We’ve been doing some thinking the last few weeks about our social engagements calendar in the new year. For now I think it has forced the conclusion that we need to take a break from Magical Mondays for a while at least. We are on the waiting list for another Home Ed group, closer to home, which has a couple of members we either know now (from MM) or have known from Home Ed groups in the past. It is on a Thursday so we’ll only be able to go every other week as I work every other Thursday but actually I quite like the idea of a fortnightly attendance; weeks seem to go so fast that it feels like Monday comes around at least three times a week and I think we have enough other stuff going on here to keep us going socially.

What has spured this decision on is less a feeling that we’re too busy – I think all four of us thrive on being busy, being with people and dashing about generally; Ady and I have never been ones for sitting home all day and the children get that ‘wet play syndrome’ feel to them if we don’t leave the house at least once in any 24 hour period and start getting all riotous and giving the cat a hunted expression – but a feeling that we are not investing our time in the right pursuits. I think time is a fairly precious commodity, as is money and MM takes most of our Monday along with about a tenner a week in petrol and subs, but more than that I have had low level discomforts with the effect the environment had on Davies. I was going to blog about how the environment we’re in has an effect on us which can in turn lead to us altering our behaviour to be like that more of the time, but realised I’d said something pretty similar to that over on Monster & Teeny a while back so I won’t bother saying it again. But I’ve been pretty shocked at the side of Davies that MM has brought out. I’ve been feeling he’s at yet another leap forward sort of stage, with the gap between him and his regular playmates getting stretched lots again at the moment. He has long been cast in the professional big brother role, spending a lot of time with younger children. I think he does very well at this almost all of the time and has become expert in suggesting games, leading play and generally being ‘in charge’ followed most of the time by adoring and compliant younger children. I’ve always wondered if and when a backlash might come about and I think what he had failed to realise was that in suggesting and leading play he also has a bit of a responsibility to ensure it is working for everyone else. I won’t suggest whether the play is fair or not as being an issue as I don’t really buy into the whole ‘fair’ thing but I have talked to him about ensuring everyone is happy – which I think is slightly different and way more important. An example would be the regular games of Doctor Who he plays with various groups of friends which have always gone along the lines of him saying ‘Let’s play Doctor Who – I’ll be the Doctor, you be Rose, you be Sarah-Jane and you be K9’ and running off in character with the others happily running along behind. Suddenly he’s faced with children who want to have a go at being The Doctor aswell, or are hitting phases which are felling their loving parents let alone a 7 year old boy in managing to deal with their irrationality or fickleness. Coupled with that the fact that he is also a child and prone to bouts of irrationality or fickleness of his own and you have a recipe for occassional tits up all round really. One of the things I have been working to impress on him is developing better listening skills – and as anyone who has ever attended a management training course will know there is a world of difference between the ability to hear and the ability to listen – Davies is getting there with hearing others over his own rather loud persona and working on listening too. The MM environment has been a greenhouse for this with him thrust into a position that seems to be rather running away with him and bringing out behaviour in him that has shocked me, and I think, shocked him too and certainly hasn’t been demonstrated anywhere else.

The whole how to deal with this debate has gone on long and hard here and led to discussions on bullying and situations and relationships generally. Davies most certainly hasn’t been bullied and he hasn’t been bullying anyone else either but I can see that there is a bit of a hotbed situation arising at MM which could potentially go in that direction. My gut instinct and my now long and considered reaction to this is to remove him from the situation. Ady struggled rather with this idea and perhaps if there had been a more specific incident or happening I would not be so quick to just run away without dealing with it but I’ve been pondering more about the idea of the best way to deal with these sorts of situations for the last couple of weeks and surprised myself with my conclusions. There is a widely held belief – when I saw widely held I mean within society, I know my Dad thinks it and actually it is something I have heard said often and indeed has been alluded to on one of the lists I read just recently – that children need to learn that life is a bit crap, that people are sometimes horrid, that you can’t get on with everyone. I know I have heard stories of children in schools who were dreadfully bullied and how they ‘couldn’t let the bullies win’. I have heard stories of bullying in workplaces and how people have suffered for months or even years to hang onto a job in the face of a truly miserable existance.

Way back in my career in retail management I was at a position where I was considered to be very good at my job, talk of rapid promotion and promising career paths were discussed and I was on track to do well. Then my direct manager moved on and a new manager took their place. Within just a couple of months I’d gone from being flavour of the month to underperforming. I’ll never know quite what happened to change that and certainly by the end of what was easily the most miserable period of my life I was underperforming terribly as all of my confidence in my own ability had been eroded away to nil until I was every bit as crap as I was being held up to be. Retrospectively I can see that whether or not it was entirely in the imagination of that new manager or whether there was truth in their claims from the start I was indeed the victim of a workplace bullying incident. My life was made a misery and I would have easily had grounds for tribunals and constructive dismissal claims if I’d wanted to go down that route. But I didn’t. What I did do was size up the situation, consider whether what I’d lose by removing myself from the situation was worth more than the cost to remaining in it and leave. I left without a job to go to because I considered that my own personal happiness, confidence in myself and my ability and indeed the other relationships – like my marriage – were worth far more than a salary, a job title and a fight I would probably never win. I walked almost straight into another job (I had one week off) and very quickly recovered and knew I’d made the right decision on all levels. There are things I would never walk away from without a fight but they are few and far between and only because that equation of the cost of walking away versus the cost of staying balance the other way.

So what’s my point? That I think the idea that teaching children that some things in life are crap and have to be endured isn’t a great one. That they might be better served by teaching them that equation and letting them work out what is most important. That letting the bullies win is actually a load of bollocks and not a good enough reason to stay somewhere that is making you miserable. If a woman was in an abusive relationship and getting beaten up by her partner we wouldn’t dream of advising her not to leave because ‘that’s what he wants, you’d be letting him win’ we’d be there, packing her case for her and getting her the hell out. I’m not saying life isn’t sometimes crap – it is. I’m not saying we should instill the reflex of running away from everything in our children – we shouldn’t. I’m just thinking that maybe we’ve gone too far the other way in making the whole bloody thing one great big endurance test. Surely life is for enjoying not enduring, surely the bits we will remember – the good bits, the ones we enjoyed, should be the ones we spent the most time doing, not the little bits squished in between great chunks of crap. I’m not saying never try anything a bit tough or don’t waste your energy, just decide what it is you *really* want to invest your energy in and then totally throw yourself into that rather than dealing with day to day shit and using up all your reserves on just being. There are things worthy of the fight, big things, ones you are passionate about and then there are the ones which on balance it’s fine to walk away from. For us MM is one of the latter and I don’t think there is any negative message being on passed on by that decision other than we’ve chosen our fights wisely.

She wanted pink, blue and silver decorations, food in shapes with lots of sugary adornments, a teddy bear cake, lots of music, not too many party games, pretty goody bags to match the decorations and to share her birthday celebrations with some of her very best friends.

I reckon we pulled it off :).

This morning was sandwich making which she helped with; we had star shaped ham ones, heart shaped peanut butter ones and square shaped marmite ones. I decorated the mini cake for the teddy to hold, painted Tarly’s nails scarlet red (naturally) and they got all dressed up and ready to party:

We got to the hall just after 11am and dealt with probably my only error which was to not have arranged for Davies and Scarlett to be somewhere else while Ady and I set the hall up (next time!) but with shrieking and threats to ‘never have another party ever again!’ we got it all done. We set the table up with food to be sat and ate at (tables are a novelty round our parts so sitting at them for party food is perfectly acceptable and indeed adds to the air of festivity ;)), arranged about 100 photos of Tarly from bump and first pic at moments old to ones taken just a couple of weeks ago and everywhere inbetween. I spent a quiet ten minutes somewhere in the middle of the party getting all misty eyed looking at them all and thinking what a fab little girl she is and how well all the photos summed her up – of course if we continue at our current rate she’ll need to hire a fucking big hall for her 18th to fit in all the photos :lol:). We had table confetti, ribbons and streamers and balloons and lovely LovelyEm brought some disco lights along which really made the party :).

We had an hour or so of face painting (thanks Ros xx), some party games including one with Smarties just to get some token Nestle products in there, a bit of parachute play games and general milling about before sitting down for food. I reckon the food was about right, we brought home a bit but not stacks and I’d rather bring home a bit than run out. Scarlett ate LOADS, she stacked her plate up with several of everything that was passed round and left almost nothing on her plate :). Then we turned the lights down, the disco lights on and the music up and there was much dancing and running around to a novelty number 1s album which seemed to go down very well indeed. Scarlett spent the entire 3 1/2 hours with a massive grin on her face, running around holding hands with her friends, dancing and generally just having an absolute ball 🙂

She was utterly delightful at the end going round giving out goody bags to everyone as they left and thanking them so much for coming. I think I gave her one prompt of ‘make sure you say thanks for coming’ as I sent her off with the first one and the rest all came from her – not out of politeness, but because she really was chuffed they had all come :).

The usual team swung into action on Operation Tidyup for which we put on Lovely Em, Eve and Rei’s pressie of a mix-tape compilation cd which Tarly just adores and made us play in the car on the way home and again in the house – that will be amoung the first things to get put on her MP3 player I reckon :). We all had to stop tidying to dance to Macarena and then get down (literally) for Oops Up side your head before finishing off 🙂

Massive thanks to all for coming, it was excellent 🙂 Extra special thanks to LovelyEm for disco lights, Ros for face painting and hoovering and a special mention to Si for having 3 children but still making tea and helping tidy :). Those who didn’t make it for various reasons were missed by me certainly, but I don’t think there was anything or anyone that would have made it any better for Tarly than it already was :).

I totally overslept this morning and was woken, just after 9am by the doorbell ringing and the sound of my Dad’s voice. I scrambled out of bed and downstairs but the house was a tip with a half empty wine bottle still sitting in the middle of the lounge floor, kids in pjs, Davies on xbox and me very clearly just out of bed. So that will have been stored away to be used against me no doubt :oops:. While I was tackling the kitchen and making tea for me and coffee for Dad the children came dashing in to ask when I was going to work and why Grandad was here so early to look after them! I explained I wasn’t working today and Grandad was here for social reasons and they wanted to know if there was anything else I could go out to do instead :lol:. We compromised and instead of kicking Dad out so we could go into town to the bank and then to the supermarket he came with us, which meant he could stay in the car with the children outside both banks meaning I didn’t need to try and find parking spaces. He also came to Sainsburys with us on the understanding that he got to stay and have lunch with us so Davies and Dad stayed in the car while Tarly and I whizzed round. It’s a pleasure taking one child to the supermarket when you’re used to doing it with two :).

Back home Davies and Dad chatted while Tarly helped me with the cheese scones and then Tarly went in the lounge with Dad while Davies and I made rice crispie cakes – by accident rather than design. I keep alluding to stuff going on with Davies and I will try and record it properly but it’s not much more than a combination of great tiredness and some sort of developmental leap coinciding I think. But he is struggling to get to sleep every night and regularly still awake at long gone 10pm, awake again by about 7am and looking more and more zombie-like daily :(. He gets more and more annoying, I get less and less even tempered with him and then he ends up all fragile and self-flagellating. Had a bit of a chat with him over rice crispie cake making but I think he needs some serious investment of my time next week and is struggling slightly with all the birthday fuss around Scarlett. And then because he knows that’s not fair when such a big fuss is made over him on his birthday he feels bad about having struggled and beats himself up over that too. Poor kid :(.

We all had lunch together, Dad left, the children stuck Happily Never After on that I’d got on dvd from work (it was the ill fated film week film that we never saw so we’ve been awaiting it’s dvd release eagerly) and I baked a cake – the very last one, which has had two circles cut from it to be sandwiched together and made into a miniature cake for Pink Teddy to hold. Tomorrow.

Scarlett’s scarlet red sparkly shoes had a mishap with a button coming off. She’s not officially been given them yet and not worn them out the house but can’t resist trying them on most days and prancing around in them for a while and during todays prance the button came off the strap. And couldn’t be fixed. Which meant a slight shoe emergency for tomorrow so we mercy-dashed to Tescos, fully expecting to not get a replacement. Not only did they have another pair I got Davies to choose a new top to wear to the party as he is rather lacking in smart clothes at the moment. They have 20% off clothing at the moment so due to the checkout girl refunding the shoes at full price and then sticking the jumper and replacement shoes through at 20% off we ended up paying just £4.20 for an £8 jumper 🙂 Hurrah!

Dashed home again and the children watched Shrek 3 while we all ate warm cake from the offcuts and cuddled up together on the sofa. Then I went off to get changed and as soon as Ady came home headed off over to Brighton. The weather was awful and standing right on the seafront in pouring rain and tearing wind isn’t anyone’s idea of fun but Ros had gotten there really early and was right near the front of the queue in with all the teens, making friends ;). The whole queuing thing was made a bit of a mockery of by a free for all to exchange tickets for wrist bands and dash up the stairs and a trip to the bar was foiled by them opening the doors but we managed to get standing spaces just four people deep back from the stage. I think we were standing there by about 645 and the support act came on at 8pm by which time our feet were already hurting and we’d started to lose our spaces as people pushed forwards. Also there had been two sisters, both Very Tall just infront of us and one left to collect a third who had just arrived and was even taller (must have been getting on for 6ft) so we had the Three Tallest Women In Brighton stood right infront of us. They were decked out with sparkly nailvarnish and fluffy whistles but I don’t think the one infront of me even shuffled from one foot to the other let alone put her hands in the air like she just didn’t care 😆 We needed emergency supplies of water, chocolate, mints, a shorter coat that I could have tied round my waist instead of having to hold over one arm and midgets infront of us but all was forgotten when Mika finally came on stage around 9pm and played for an hour and a half one of the best concerts I’ve been to. He was a real showman, excellent live and being so close to the front we really felt like part of the show, screaming up at the mike when he thrust it into the crowd. It was ace :). The finale was Lollipop which started with a shadown puppets show and ended with giant balloons dropped into the crowd followed by confetti and streamers. Oh the camp-ness of it all, pure pop and fantastic with it!

There was the usual massive queue for the paystations in the carpark and then the gridlock to get out of the carpark at all so I finally got home around 1145pm. Ady, bless him, had run me a bath, poured me a glass of wine and cooked dinner and waited for me so I had a quick soak, removed confetti from my underwear, gratefully downed my wine and troughed my curry. 🙂 Thanks Ros, it was a fabulous evening xxx

I’ve managed to burn a cd of all Scarlett’s current favourite requested songs and all that remains to do in the morning is make sandwiches and ice the mini cake before heading to the hall to set it all up. I’m looking foward to it; Davies’ parties are always a triumph of organisation and weeks of fretting with a focus on crowds and hype, Scarlett’s seem to be more personal with less for me to get involved in on the day. And not having any houseguests afterwards may well be a very welcome change too much though I enjoy having people the idea of collapsing infront of X factor tomorrow night is rather attractive :).

940am – waste precious moments of the day compiling a blog post about plan for the day while kids watch Brainiac – took longer than expected as, in my usual manner, I got carried away with how much I wrote!

950am wrap ebay parcels, there are only five and labels are already written so shouldn’t take long – did it, but we didn’t leave the house til about 1015am in the end.

1005am – leave the house. The Thank You Neighbours are bound to be outside (I swear we ‘bump into them’ at least 50% of the times we go out or arrive home) so there will be hellooooing and avoiding the cuddles of David Thank You who has crossed the to the wrong side of the friendly line since catching me half naked in the hall that time. They were curiously absent. If I were the paranoid sort I’d conclude from this that they’d read my blog and realised I was on to their sneaky ways, but then I’d also need to conclude they’d read this bit too and in writing it I’d be creating a situation where they knew that I knew that they knew that I knew that they were indeed professional stalkers masquerading as ordinary neighbours and I’m way too scared to admit to that suspicion so I’ll pretend it was all mere coincidence.

1015am – arrive at party hall to collect keys – did it and hurried on our way

1025am – drive to post office to post ebay parcels and Christmas card to NZ. Exchange banter about post office closing, selling on ebay, indulge the post office ‘girls’ (they are both well into their 40s) guesses about what each parcel contains and discuss the horrible weather (it’s raining). All done. Oh how we chuckled over her wrong guesses about the ab curl gizmo and laughed even more when I made a crack about how obviously I’d never used it gesturing at my untrained midriff and how it made sense to pass it on to someone else who could also never use it!

1035am – drive to Sainsburys while praying to the Lord of Petrol that we have enough fuel to make it. We’re playing end of the month petrol chicken today.

1040am – fill up with petrol. Or start walking along the side of the road with two small children in the pouring rain to buy a petrol can and walk back to the car along the side of the road with two small children in the pouring rain to put said petrol in car before driving back to the petrol station to fill up properly. All subsequent timings rely on the first scenario rather than the second.

1050am – Go to Sainsburys to buy potatoes, cream and cheese (FFS how did we run out of cheese? I don’t think we’ve ever run out of cheese before) for dinner tonight. Oh and garlic.

1105am – Go to Argos to collect black DS lite for Davies that I managed to reserve online last night. Hopefully the children will be distracted by Argos catalogues so I can be slightly discrete about it.

All done, the petrol held out, we got french bread as well for lunch which meant the children ate early and Davies was 100% aware of DS lite purchasing which I don’t have an issue with as I think once the belief in FC has passed there is as much fun knowing what you’re getting and anticipating having it to be had, which is were he is right now.

1115am – arrive home. Put chicken in slow cooker for dinner. Make biscuit dough and cake mix and start batch cooking before embarking on further battle with pink teddy icing. Swear, get impatient with inevitable interuptions from children at crucial moments. Either reach an appearance I can accept or give up on the whole thing.

Well the kitchen currently looks like this:

The cake looks like this:

and because I am still not entirely happy with it around the middle (maybe it could have done with that ab curl gizmo) I’m going to make a miniature birthday cake with five candles for it to be holding which solves the candle issue too. Tomorrow!

1pm – Lunch with children. In my happy place I like to imagine this takes place when the kitchen is filled with perfectly formed cakes and biscuits ready to be iced while the teddy cake sits looking like it is something I bought at The Bear Factory and draws gasps from all along the lines of ‘it’s edible!? I thought it was a toy!’. In my realistic thoughts it may well be 2pm before we eat, the children will be weak with hunger and sobbing at the swear words they have overheard me shrieking while the teddy sits no more than a pile of pink iced cake crumbs where I completely lost my temper with it and chucked the whole lot at the kitchen wall. I intend returning to update blog at this stage. I imagine you will all be waiting on tenterhooks. 😉

I’ve eaten lunch, the children are drawing and we’ve just stuck Elf on as a festive film to watch while we make the letters. I’m running just over half an hour late but I reckon that’s not bad at all. Cake is still in one piece and my patience, temper and sanity all remain surprisingly intact. So far…

145pm – get out coloured paper, glue and pens and start to create the Merry Christmas letters for work display. Happily allow children to give input and assistance and commend them on their use of large quantities of glitter while smiling indulgently and saying things like ‘oh doesn’t that make the carpet look pretty!’. By now it may well be 4pm though and we could actually be in Tescos buying a ready made Disney Princess cake and me saying things like ‘Fuck the library display, it’s not even bloody December yet anyway!’

There was a cake related incident when Scarlett drew my attention to the fact it had slumped. It is now pushed against a box of rice crispies with more buttercream and a couple of extra cocktail sticks and I’m hoping for the best tomorrow when I take the box of rice crispies away in the style of someone whipping away the tablecloth while the fully laid out crockery remains in place.

3pm – take photo of Merry Christmas letters and pack them up ready to take to work with me. Go and make rice crispie cakes and depending on time maybe start icing cakes and biscuits. Make potato gratin for dinner and put it in fridge ready to go in oven later.

The letters got finished. Davies helped with some suggestions of ideas for letters and did some glueing together of a couple – one of the ‘M’s is his. Scarlett did lots of cutting, glueing and glittering and made something that she insisted be part of the display, and infact, because she is my daughter and I can get away with it, despite the fact it is neither a letter nor particularly relevant to the display it is now part of it and she got to stick it on herself :).

I decided to postpone rice crispie cake making until tomorrow on the basis that it is not very time consuming but does require lots of kitchen space which I am lacking in even more than usual just now. I did ice and decorate the cakes and biscuits though and Davies and Scarlett appeared midway and helped too:

430pm – get changed ready for work including Santa hairslides and Christmas tree earrings purchased last week to add to my air of festivity. Ady should be home by 5pm so I can head off to work. If the rain stops Ady and the children are planning to walk round the shops, see the lights switched on and come into the library for the crafts and games we’re laying on.
Ady was running late so he didn’t arrive home until 530pm. I got changed, did indeed adorn myself with santa hairslides and Christmas tree earrrings, fed the children toast and they dropped me at work at 550pm and went off to look around the town before returning to spend the evening in the library. It was me, the senior library assistant, the library supervisor, the country area librarian and a librarian so I was in good company :). I quickly stuck up my letters and was commended on them lots and asked if I’d like to get more involved in the displays (well, yes! And furthermore mwah ha ha ha!) and then I mostly manned the drinks table. There was cheery banter aplenty and it all lived up to it’s name of ‘Festive Fun at the Library’ what with it being both festive and fun. I made everyone a tea or coffee towards the end which they all were most effusive about (library folk seem easily pleased round our way ;)) and I said ‘well I’m an asset to this library is what I am!’ and they all agreed with head nodding aplenty, so that was heartwarming. :). The children had a great time; Scarlett sat with Abi, the librarian and did endless cutting and sticking craft activities. She sat there for the best part of two hours making owls, robins and chattering away to Abi, I could hear her voice as she gave a running commentary on what she was doing. She’s funny like that, Scarlett, she takes to some people so completely with no real obvious reason whereas other people she is so rarely herself with I think they probably don’t know her at all despite having met her countless times. She was on top, charming, form with Abi though and said to me on the way home ‘I liked her, I got used to her very quickly’ which is probably her little way of saying she felt comfortable with her quickly which sort of makes sense for that early feeling of deciding you like someone, I can think of friends I ‘got used to very quickly’ and others it’s taken far longer with. 🙂 Davies did a bit of crafty stuff but I think it was a bit too directed for him with no real room for his own stamp so he and Ady cuddled up on the bench seat and read stories – about ten of them apparently. And various other small children crept closer to listen too. Louise (country librarian top woman) asked if she could take some photos of D & S which made everyone else laugh uproariously and point out the picture of them on the wall posing with their pots from the Green Diggers event and explain that they are indeed the poster children for all West Sussex County Council Events 😆 So she got pics of Scarlett and studiously doing crafts, Ady and Davies sitting under my Christmas display reading stories and later pictures of Davies and Scarlett standing infront of the giant tree which was supplied by Breathing Places and decorated with the owls and robins. Not sure where it is due to be used but they did us proud with their eager Festive Fun expressions ;). Davies also came over to the refreshments table and talked to me about recycling the rubbish. I showed him we had stashed a recycling box and a bin under the table to seperate different rubbish into but he kept coming over to monitor it. He’s learnt about recycling at both Beavers and Badgers and is very consciencious about it, bless him. It did make me laugh seeing him rummage in the rubbish pulling out disposable cups and holding them up saying ‘are you sure this polystyrene isn’t recyclable?’ infront of all the old dears come in from the cold for their free cup of coffee and mince pie though :lol:.

840pm – get home, bung potato gratin in oven to cook, have bath, drink some fizzy wine, but not too much. Eat dinner, update blog and flickr with evidence of Happy Successful Day.
We did indeed come home, I did indeed bung the potato gratin in the oven, have a bath, drink fizzy wine, eat dinner and am currently doing the blogging and flickring as promised. It’s been a good day I reckon. I’ve spent a large amount of it kitchen-bound but have also managed some baking and some crafting with the children and Scarlett has kept coming out into the kitchen and gasping with delight and saying things like ‘Oh Mummy! I just love everything you are making for my party!’ with such genuine thrilled-ness that it’s been well worth every moment. Tomorrow is looking to be just as busy with party games preparation, a trip into town, a spot more baking (rice crispie cakes and cheese scones), shopping for sandwich fillings, bread and drinks followed by my Big Night Out which I am giddily excited about :).

Already running late – it’s 10am. Arse!

is my command Liza 😉
Very much a work in progress:

will try and get an ‘after’ shot of it in a more satisfying state!

I worked this morning. Due to Richard being poorly yesterday (hope he’s much improved today Lucy and none of the rest of you are suffering x) Ady stayed home to be with Davies and Scarlett. I carried on with my display from Saturday and other than something to fill a strip along the bottom which I want to do some letters spelling ‘Merry Christmas’ for but ran out of time it’s all done. I said I’d do the letters at home and D and S can help then which they’ll love knowing it’s on public display :). Actually we have a largeish display space in the library which you can book and I’ve been pondering booking it for Davies and letting him display his artwork in it next year. We get a variety of stuff on it, the local amdram group uses it to advertise their productions and we often get things like voluntary work recruitment for one thing or another and we have one or two local artists who put up displays of their art. Ady is bringing Davies and Scarlett into the library tomorrow night so I’ll show him the space and see what he thinks.

At home Scarlett had been doing ‘Christmas pictures’ which mostly involved liberally coating paper with glue and then sprinkling lots of glitter on it, but she’d had fun and made pretty outcomes :). I abandoned them to the kitchen and I think they carried on playing with toy animals and the pens and paper but I didn’t come back into the lounge until I brought their tea in and they’d cleared everything up by then :). I spent a very unsatisfactory hour or so making pink buttercream and trying to ice Scarlett’s teddybear cake. The recipe and design I was semi-following called for piped on icing and I’d got a piping bag, however it was crap and all the icing kept coming through the seams of the bag so I quickly gave up on that idea and using (very clean) fingers I iced it by hand for the first coat. I’ve since done some googling and got instructions to make one from greaseproof paper so I’m planning to have another go tomorrow as it needs another coat of icing regardless. Scarlett, Davies, Ady and my Dad all assure me it is looking like a teddy though so I am reassured enough to keep going with it and not give up and insist she just has a round cake with five candles instead! 😆

Dad came over to mind Scarlett while I took Davies to Badgers as Ady had shot off to do a few appointments when I got home and knew he would struggle to get back in time. There are lots of things going on with my parents’ relationship at the moment, not all of which I am privy to full details on and plenty of which I am getting their own personal side of the story and cobbling together what I assume to be the truth in the middle – I pity my brother living with them more than ever just now. I have felt my relationship with my Dad has suffered the last year or so since he’s been looking after Davies and Scarlett and where he would often appear once or twice during the week he’s not just turned up for months other than the scheduled looking after the children visits and then always seemed very keen to dash off again. So today when he arrived nearly 90 minutes before I’d said I needed him to be here I was very pleasantly surprised and said so. He’s also made real efforts with Davies and Scarlett when looking after him the last couple of times as I’d mentioned how much Davies had enjoyed playing board games with him and he has done so every time since. So he was chatty, had a coffee and talked to the children while I finished in the kitchen and even helped them tidy up. Ady said he stayed for another coffee and further chatting when he got in about half an hour after Davies and I left, so that was good. 🙂

I think the whole of the Badgers session was practising for the carol concert at the weekend, the final dress rehearsal for which Davies will have to miss on Saturday but he’s been word perfect since the beginning it being three songs he already knew and I think he is very unlikely to get stage fright or nerves so I’m sure it’ll be fine. Next week is presentation night with badges and certificates handed out (and mulled wine and mince pies) so we’ll all go along for that and the following week is the last one before Christmas and they’re having a cinema night with a dvd showing and everyone bringing along a plate of food to share. Scarlett has been invited along to that to meet the other Badgers before starting back properly with Davies after Christmas. I sat and read in the car. It was cold and dark :(.

Tonight I’ve been making goody bags – so nice to have only about half the amount of children coming as came to Davies’ party :). Tomorrow is more baking and cake decorating, some party games preparation and the finishing of the banner for the display at work and then I’m working in the evening as part of the festive lights switch on late night shopping extravaganza in Lancing.

Well I got my lie in :).

Hence this morning was a slow start and while I was copying shopping lists for mincemeat and birthday cake ingredients out along with making address labels for ebay parcels, Davies was X boxing and Scarlett was curled up next to me doing writing (again!) and they were both still in their pjs. Ady suddenly decided to start panicking about the lack of pink DS lites available anywhere online last night despite us not actually having funds to buy the DSs til Friday and had gone to work and whipped up his colleagues about it too until one of them with a ‘contact’ at Woolworths managed to secure one for us. Said colleage then left work early to go and collect it for us as they could only hold it til the end of today and we’ve managed to scrape the money together to reimburse her tomorrow. So he was on the phone to me recounting all the ins and outs of this when the doorbell rang at about 11am and it was my Mum, looking very glam in her ‘going to the dentist’ outfit ten minutes early for her dentist appointment along the road from us so popped in for a quick hello. To find me on the phone with laptops and cookery books scattered all around me, kids in pjs and x box on. Bet that gets reported back to my Dad 😆 We took that as our cue to get dressed though but Scarlett tried on her three possible party dresses to decide which one she is going to wear on Saturday. We decided it needed a red hair accessory to pull the whole ‘look’ together, which prompted a sudden idea from Scarlett for a ‘Scarlet Red party’ theme, which aside from sounding a bit racey for a five year old would bugger up all the decorations she’d previously chosen so we scrapped that idea and said maybe next year. She flounced around for a while in her dress and sparkly shoes while I packaged up parcels and then she got dressed and joined Davies for a game of lego. There have been a few squabbles here today so I took the opportunity to have a bit of a chat with them about ways to behave, the upshot of which is Davies is going to try really hard to listen to other people a bit more and Scarlett is going to try really hard to remain calm and not lash out so quickly. Almost all of their spats are because he doesn’t pay attention to her when she is trying to tell him something, then she gets frustrated and hits at him. It seems to have worked better today although they needed a fair bit of reminding.

We went out to Sainsburys with our list where we had a really nice time. We did things like weighed apples – I don’t remember the last time I weighed fruit at the supermarket and the children had never even noticed the scales there before, we worked out how many lemons we’d need if we were tripling the recipe and it originally called for 2 lemons and then bought 8 because 2 packs of 4 was cheaper than 6 single ones, worked our way through the list and then the children loaded the conveyor belt and constructed a castle out of blocks of butter and dried fruit topped off with a sparkly red flag from the hair band we bought Scarlett. Trips like that remind me why I want to spend time with them and the good feeling is almost always because I let go a bit, don’t worry about getting round in a certain time and let them do slightly mad things like build butter castles regardless of who might be watching. 🙂 We went to the post office on the way home and they chose to wait in the car while I went in. More idle gossip in the post office about whether they will save it from closure – there is a big meeting on Saturday with local MPs and post office representatives – I reckon they are making enough noise to save it actually – really hope so :).

Once home I got busy in the kitchen while they amused themselves. They got out geomags, plastic animals, lego and then put it all away again and got out the pens and paper. They had a system where Scarlett was in charge of drawing locations and buildings and Davies was drawing the characters to go with them so we had Santa’s workshop from Scarlett complete with Elves, Santa and Reindeer from Davies. He also did an excellent robin perched on a branch too. They’ve been doing lots of cutting out and making snowflakes too so we have a big pile of Christmas inspired stuff made by them ready to be stuck up around the place when we put our decorations up. I called through once or twice to remind Davies about listening and Scarlett about being patient but they actually got on really well and were really working together nicely.

I made a massive saucepan full of mincemeat which made the kitchen smell like Christmas :), it can marinate for a couple of days and then I’ll decant it into jars to keep us in mincepies for the next month. I also baked the cakes for Scarlett’s birthday cake. I’ve been bringing home cake decorating books for her to look through for the last couple of weeks and she’s been loving it. Actually I think food photography is one of my favourite subject matters so I understand why she can happily sit for ages flicking through the pages. Her requested cake is a teddy bear shape so I’ve attempted it. The book suggests freezing cake and then ‘carving’ it to shape while frozen as it is easier to work with but actually I’ve managed to assemble a shape without needing to freeze it although it is all rather held together with skewers. I’m hoping all the skill will lie in the decorating and that tomorrow afternoon I’ll manage to work magic with it and have it looking worthy of a picture by the end of it.

Ady arrived home while Davies and I were looking at a great big DK childrens book of Architecture that he’d chosen from the library a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to take back. It is just filled with bog double page pictures of various very famous buildings from around the world with loads of facts and figures about them. Davies didn’t want to read or be read to but he did want to play ‘guess the country’ with the pictures and have me tell him when they were built and what they were built for. He impressed me by guessing most of the countries correctly, knowing quite a few landmark buildings or at the very least knowing of them (he didn’t know the name of the Taj Mahal or that it was in India, but he could reference it being in the Army of Ghosts Doctor Who episode :lol:). He really surprised me actually as he was far more perceptive than I would be about styles of buildings and his points of reference were quite diverse – he recognised some of the oriental buildings as similar to those in Spirited Away, guessed all the UK ones as ‘well that looks like it must be in our country’ worked out all the cathedrals and so on. Doctor Who was also credited with him knowing The Empire State Building from Daleks in Manhattan. I’d have not expected him to know much about any buildings as I certainly don’t and it’s not someting we’ve ever really talked about but he recognised loads of them and could tell me something about them and the rest he could make reasonable stabs at too. 🙂

Davies and I went off to his swimming lesson. He told me on the way he was going to try really hard to do well today – and to make special efforts to listen – and I said maybe he could focus on getting as far across the pool as he could without putting his feet down. The lesson was slightly disjointed as three children were late, one of them got sent out of the pool for repeatedly talking and then the swimming instructor leader woman came and observed for a bit. Davies was doing his usual struggling to get across the width without putting his feet down at least 4 times when suddenly she sent them all across one by one and as he got past halfway I realised he’d not put his feet down yet. He took it pretty slow and there wasn’t much in the way of style (although you couldn’t call it doggy paddle either particularly) but he was suddenly there at the other side 🙂 🙂 :). When I went over with his towel at the end of the lesson the instructor was handing out a couple of 5m certificates but said to me ‘I’m going to wait until he just gets his legs out a bit straighter before I give Davies his’ which I was fine with – we didn’t bother buying the level one badge even cos I resent paying 2 quid for it when we pay 60 quid a term for the lessons and I don’t quite know where we’d sew it anyway. But Davies came bounding over full of utter delight with himself saying ‘did you see Mummy, I did it, I swam all the way across without putting my feet down at all!!!’ and she suddenly said ‘oh go on then, you did do it!’ and wrote out a slip for him too. 🙂 He was thrilled at the idea so I’ll get the badge next week and chattered all the time he was getting changed about it. It wasn’t until we were outside that I realised he’d not equated what he’d done with meaning that he can swim. So I explained that yes, getting from one side of the pool to the other without putting your feet down means you are swimming across and whilst there is plenty of work to do on style, technique, swimming greater distances etc. essentially he can now swim. So he was thrilled anew 🙂 and as it is my Dad who is funding the lessons and as I felt the need to let my parents see something positive and achieving about my children we rang them from my mobile and Davies announced to them both in turn that he had got his 5 metre badge. Mum was pleased and gushing, Dad was quieter but actually said, and I strained so I could hear too ‘Well done darling, I’m very proud and impressed with you’. Which is huge, he never told either me or Frazer he was proud of us, so it made me cry to hear him say it to Davies :). Swimming has been the first specific thing Davies has expressed a desire to learn and as far as I’m concerned is one of the skills which you can’t just acquire as there is a certain ‘right’ way to do it, although I know others have different views on whether lessons are necessary. So it’s cost my Dad £120 which isn’t a lot more than a trip there once a week anyway and if I or Ady paid to go in with him it would already be more per trip than one lesson works out as, it’s been something that hasn’t come easily or been a natural skill but he’s stuck with it, remained cheerful, optimistic and prepared to work at it consistently and really enjoyed every bit of the process. So hurrah! 🙂

When we got home Davies had his tea and then he and Ady watched Harry Potter whatever the latest film is – 5? Scarlett had already said she didn’t want to see it so her and I had a long bath together, with mud packs and hair washing and back scrubbing and then I read her a big pile of books in bed until the film ended and Davies went off to bed too – bet he dreams of swimming tonight :).

My Dad used to sing this to me when I was a little girl:

1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

I googled it because we painted little boxes at MM today and I’ve had it in my head all day but all I could remember was ‘little boxes on the hillside…. and they all look just the same’. Odd how fitting the song is though eh?!

I’ve been runnning on very little sleep today – I didn’t make it to bed til gone 2am and then got woken before 7am by Ady and Scarlett being noisy about weetabix and then couldn’t get back to sleep. I did lay in bed for about an hour reading a book but then was forced to get out of bed for reasons I won’t go into for consideration of my more squeamish readers. Davies played x box while Scarlett got a pen and notepad and curled up next to me writing out streams of letters and asking what they said then getting me to tell her letters for various words she dictated. She had a fairly random selection of words such as ‘Tesco’ ‘I love you’ and ‘tooth’ 😆 I tried to write a few words out and see if she could work out what they said but she was nowhere near ready for that or indeed remotely interested so I let that pass pretty quick.

We headed off to MM with the intention of only staying for 2 hours today. It lasts for 3 hours which can seem too long for the children sometimes and generally when things go wrong there for them it is during the last hour. We’d arranged to meet up with Lucy and The Rs at the park on the way home so my plan was to engage them in the craft activity and then head off. I’ve hinted at us changing our week around a bit and one of the things we will be altering after Christmas is a break from MM. This is for various reasons really. The chief one is time – we’ve found ourselves in the situation of being overcommitted and perhaps not getting as much out of everything as the time and money we need to put in. I like the idea of Beavers and Badgers (and for Scarlett Badgers and Rainbows both starting after Chrismas), swimming lessons continue and that means 4 out of 5 week nights have something happening. Added to that my day and a half a week working and we start to have very little time that isn’t squeezed into little boxes or windows rather than stretching out ahead of us lazily allowing us to let the wind blow us somewhere. Ali and I have a plan to do something group-y on a semi regular basis and I’m thinking about trying a closer to home Home Ed group once a fortnight so we ‘keep our hand in’ but it will mean the end of the week is taken up with my working but the beginning of the week becomes ‘free time’ again to allow us to just relax at home, go to Drusillas or see mates, do baking, do crafts and so on. There is also the cost issue. With petrol and subs MM costs us most of a tenner a week which would pay for soft play or lunch out or just be £40 a month back in our pockets which would be nice. We have all got loads from it for the year plus we have been attending and we are not turning our backs on it forever, just recognising that the time is right to take a break for a bit so after the next two Christmassy sessions we will reclaim our Mondays for a while. There is some stuff going on generally with Davies which I will blog about later in the week when I’ve thought it through more but MM wasn’t necessarily the best environment for him at the moment either which has brought it altogether in a timely fashion.

So today Allie had done a Baker Ross shop and procured some fab little wooden boxes and some gorgeous pearly acrylic paint in beautiful colours along with some sticky gemstoness to adorn the boxes. The children all got stuck in and lavished great volumes of paint on them which had all the adults desperately trying to persuade them to appreciate the individual beauty of the shades rather than create brown, until we all seemed to realise it was fruitless and actually the paints were that lovely even the brown was all pearlescent (is that a word?) and lovely :). I adored both the boxes and the decent paints and have vowed to make a baker ross order one of the first things we invest our saved MM funds from in the new year. 🙂 Once the children had done their boxes, run off and come back again having got involved in the less desireable underbelly of MM they were persuaded to come and sit with me again and use the paints on paper this time. Davies and I did some printing with our fingers and cotton buds and made some Christmassy things while Scarlett did a very abstract picture of herself. I managed chats with various adults – some of whom I’ll miss lots, some of whom I hope to see still, all of which was nice and affirming 🙂 before we headed off as planned to meet up with Lucy.

We went to a great park next to the airport with quirkly play equipment like inverted slides with twizzling ladders. For once the children were totally taken in with it all, and set about creating some imaginary game to occupy themselves for well over an hour while Lucy and I chatted and Richard sat in the car. I started to get cold and fed up before anyone else so invited them back to ours for warming reviving hot drinks and a play. They all settled into drawing while Lucy and I continued our chat.

They left, D and S tidied up then watched the Sarah Jane Adventures while eating tea before we dashed Davies round to Beavers. Apparently they talked about composting and recycling tonight. While he was gone Scarlett and I sat and sang Bicycle Race and she did more writing while I perused brown knee high boots on ebay. I’ve sold another £50 worth of stuff this weekend so have another load of parcels to get wrapped and sent tomorrow.

Also tomorrow begins the start of preparing for Tarly’s party at the weekend and given it’s half midnight again already a lie in might be nice.

I’ve mentioned maybe once or twice 😉 how Scarlett is picking up the bones of learning to read and write without reading schemes, alphabet learning etc. At risk of repeating myself again but in order to make of it properly what I think I’ve been getting at with passing references I’ll try and put it all a bit better.

Scarlett is very much the product of handsoff education. Possibly because I used up my rather short attention span for ‘teaching’ on Davies in a burst of early enthusiasm for the sitting down at desks, colour coded timetable type of home ed, possibly because we seem to have better things to do with our days (which is no critcism of people who do follow such things) and most probably because she is the child least likely to do anything like that anyway! 😆 In much the same way as Scarlett has been very good at being the second child because she is very able to snatch one to one time when she needs it by coming and finding me when Davies is otherwise engaged she is also very good at announcing her wish to ‘know’ something, which she goes about finding out and then considers it ‘known’ and carries on about her business. Whereas Davies has picked up his passions and interests by them being things I have consciously focussed on and guided him towards from an educated ‘I think he might like this’ mentality and mostly getting it right Scarlett has very much forged her way and claimed things as her own. She has some innate sense of knowing when something might be interesting to her and appearing alongside my elbow taking it all in. An example of this is baking which we probably do together at least once most weeks, never announced, I will just go off and start and she will suddenly be there in the kitchen with her stool ready to grease a pan.

Davies and I sat with 100EL for a fair few hours and we had Letterland flash cards and he learnt all the sounds of the alphabet via that. It didn’t get him reading though. What appears to have been the catalyst – although we are still in infancy stages – is lying in bed on his own looking at books and desperately wanting to be able to read them to himself. Spending time trying to decode the words and make sense of sentences – in observing how he turned off and we fell out over trying to get him to read Bob books compared to how he strives and thirsts for being able to read a Wallace and Gromit comic book or a Doctor Who story the motivation for him has become clear. He doesn’t want to read particularly, but he does want to be able to read certain things. I reckon there’s a difference. It’s like not being arsed about being rich but wanting enough money to affford a specific car if that makes sense. If there is a proper goal in sight, something he actually wants then he can make the effort, but just being able to do something for the sake of it holds no real appeal. It needs relevance or purpose.

Scarlett is appearing to be much the same, but without the initial meddling on my part of introducing the idea of ‘learning to read’. I ebayed those Letterland flash cards the other day, along with a parents guide to Letterland and the Letterland ABC book and had a quick flick through as I listed it. The idea of Lovely Lamp Lady being relevant to Scarlett made me laugh. L to Scarlett is a letter in her name so she is aware of it, and on Friday she found out it is also in the word ‘love’ and ‘Lula’ when she wrote both words for a birthday card. Letters like ‘b’ which don’t appear in any of our names are as yet not worth knowing as far as she’s concerned. This is a pretty unconventional way of approaching reading as far as I know but seems to be the one that works for her. She told me the other day that David Tennant was a good choice to play The Doctor because lots of the letter sounds were the same and went on to say that Davies and Daddy were also the same sound at the beginning. She often comes up with rhyming words and tells me what sound it is that rhymes in them and the next time she is doing some writing or looking at letters she might refer to those words again. Just like Davies Scarlett is more interested in writing that reading. They both seem to place more importance on their own output than the words of others.

I have no real idea how different what they are doing is to other children and in fairness I don’t much care, comparison isn’t of much interest to me. I do talk a bit about what we’re not doing because I think it is very relevant. In deviating from the norm in the first place by Home Educating I am very used to explaining why we do what we do and justifying the differences. Most other Home Educators I know, whether autonomous or not mention some sort of method of assisting with reading and letter learning from sewing textured letters to reading Bob books. I can’t ‘celebrate’ the ways in which Davies and Scarlett are moving towards reading and writing in their own ways without mentioning the difference in how they are getting there to how most other people seem to, it is relevant in our lifestyle because we are doing something different to others. For me, for us, the way life, education, autonomy, whatever, is working is by Davies and Scarlett finding relevance in things and moving from not knowing them to knowing them, collecting knowledge if you like and then deciding how to use it. I think that is probably how all education and learning happens it’s just that this is far more random, 100% personalised and yet, despite this lack of structure or framework it is somehow all meshing together anyway. It’s all a bit like a giant Rolf Harris or Tony Hart picture that looks like a random collection of lines and marks with no way to ‘tell what it is yet’ but then suddenly, gloriously, it all makes sense and comes together as one.

Of course there is every chance this long way round approach is crazy, that at some future point Scarlett will come to me and ask why I let her go round learning individual letters at various unconnected points when there was already a perfectly good alphabet all in order with it’s own theme tune and everything, or that she’ll discover the Jolly Phonics system and wonder why I let her muddle through the wilderness like a lost person without a compass when she could have just learnt it all in one go but Davies had a go on the short cut path and took this long old detour back round a different way and it’s even more interesting to watch Scarlett doing it her way, without a parachute.

I drank too much fizzy wine last night and slept really badly and woke with a headache. Also Ady had had a bad night’s sleep and unusually (I normally sleep through anything) had disturbed me lots. Coupled with hormonal stuff making me stroppy anyway I’ve probably not been the best company today. Which means spending 4 hours sitting in the car wasn’t the very best place for me to be really :lol:.

I ordered our Christmas cards online last night, about 930pm ish on Costco’s order today, collect tomorrow advert fully expecting it to be not actually the very next day if that was a Sunday and you weren’t ordering until late Saturday night but thought I’d get warning of that part way through the ordering process and be able to cancel. I didn’t though – just got a confirmation email to say they’d received our order and would email us when it was ready. Which I fully expected not to be today so I emailed them to request that order be cancelled as we were going to Costco today and would just order them there and then. But I got another email at 9am today saying they were working on the order and when we arrived just 10 minutes after the store actually opened at 11am the cards were sat there ready and waiting. I guess they don’t check their emails cos they’re too busy working – what a quaint concept! 😆

Costco is right next to the big wind turbine in Reading so we stopped to have a proper look at it. There is a little information point with some bench seats which I assume they give proper educational talks on so we looked at that and stood right underneath it listening to the swoosh as the sails turned and talked a bit about how it works and how it harnesses power. It had a digital readout telling us it was gathering enough power for 214 homes which sort of makes you visualise one at the end of every few streets in years to come. I like them, there is a sort of grace and beauty to them, but then I also like the bit of the M25 where it meets the M4 with Heathrow airport and about 8 lanes of traffic meeting, flyovers and bridges, planes and towers and massive illuminated roadsigns (normally decreeing a 40mph speed limit :roll:) cos I can see a sort of grace and beauty in those too, particularly when there is a spectacular sunset happening as a backdrop and sheep grazing alongside the motorway. There is all the workmanship of a beesnest or birds nest, albeit a rather more environmentally damaging and less natural element to it but it’s a feat of a species nonetheless.

We managed to combine a speedy visit to Chris and Alison at the same time by virtue of being just along the road and also returned the tent which fingers crossed we won’t be needing any more as we are ever hopeful the Outwell will be ok. Davies has been talking and asking about time and numbers lots recently and spotted the pattern in number bonds to 10 today while we were talking. We also talked about plus, minus and times which seemed to make sense to him and he played with a bit. I tried to explain the pattern of number bonds repeating up the numbers (eg 8 minus 7 is 1, so 18 minus 7 is 11, 28 minus 7 is 21) but he struggled with that a little. I think it might make more sense written down. We have posters on the wall in our playroom (from Joyce :)) which I discovered Scarlett standing on a chair looking at yesterday, counting things up and checking the numbers next to them. Both of them seem to be going through a bit of a learning spurt at the moment. My Dad apparently has been talking to Davies about fractions and less than whole numbers and trying to teach him to tell the time too, all of which seems to have gone in and gets brought out every so often, usually as an apropos of nothing type statement (such as ‘the little hand on a clock is called an hour hand and it takes one hour to go all the way round the clock’ which he turned to me and said while we were watching TV last night, then turned back to the TV again :lol:). I was talking to someone at work this week about having a five year old and a seven year old and how odd it feels having children who are now ages I can actually remember being myself – and how I can also recall thinking and *being* those ages, how I was aware of things and had comprehension and thought about stuff. I can see, particularly with Davies how those processes are starting to happen and how he is starting to surprise me – both good and bad, with some of his unexpected reactions to things lately. His grasp of some things seems to have come suddenly such as numbers and time but actually I’m sure it’s just been a gradual procees I have missed happening until it’s being shown to me. Odd to think he would have been at school for two years and a term already and would be one of the very oldest in his class when I still think of him so much as a baby and still so reliant on me. Actually I am coming to realise he is far less reliant on me than I think he is and he is taking great leaps towards independance that I am struggling to adapt to far more than he is. I guess that is the right way for it to happen though – in his time and on his terms, rather than an enforced process just because he has hit age 5. It’s good though, as I get my head round it I am liking it, it’s just getting my head round it at his speed rather than mine. He’s doing cold turkey rather than gradual weaning :lol:.

We got home and the children carried on with what they’d been doing first thing this morning – Davies drawing and Scarlett cutting bits of pink paper into shapes. She made me a heart and lots of snowflake style ‘Christmas things’. Davies was like some sort of drawing machine, outputting well drawn, fully coloured sheets of paper every few minutes like a possessed person. It’s like he takes mental snapshots throughout the course of a day and then feels the need to download then to paper later to free up space in his mind again. We had Christmas pictures, airplanes, robots, all sorts. Oh and because we were watching Dreamer at the time there was a horse picture in there too. I wrote some Christmas cards but didn’t get very far because I was too busy snarling at everyone and crying at the film and moaning about my headache really. I’ve since had some painkillers, the end of the bottle of fizzy wine and a long bath and am feeling much better. I’m about to serve up roast beef and planning an early night to ensure my frame of mind is better tomorrow.

When I was a little girl amoung other career aspirations I also briefly numbered an ambition to be a hairdresser. This was based solely on the lovely noise that proper sharp scissors make in the air when they snip through hair. I thought waving scissors about in a snippy manner all day might be quite a nice way to earn a living. I also wanted to work in the post office so I could stamp things which has since been satisfied by my library job and as Davies allows me to snip at his hair sometimes I guess pretty much all my dreams have come true ;).

I worked this morning. It’s a nice vibe on Saturday mornings and despite loathing working weekends it is sort of something I am used to after having the bulk of my career to date in retail and actually there is something about Saturday morning working which is sort of nice in an odd, indescribable way. This morning Jan (a colleague, don’t think I’ve really mentioned her before, she’s lovely and along with Brenda the Assistant Area Librarian and myself is also married to someone called Ade/Ady) was putting up the library Christmas tree and festooning the counter with tinsel. I expressed my love of all things festive and was offered the chance to do the junior section festive wall display, which of course I leapt at. There was an air of silliness this morning, helped along no doubt by the tinsel, that Saturday feeling I mentioned and the quaffing of a box of chocolate liqueurs that a borrower (we don’t call them customers) brought in for the staff yesterday. I was asked by Yvonne if I liked them and when I shared my utter adoration for them I was plied with them and even brought the last one a bit later :). Yvonne and Jan call them ‘brandy buttons’ though which I’ve never heard them refered to as before but as it is easier to spell than liqueurs which I always harbour the suspiscion I’m spelling wrong and it’s quite twee I think I might adopt as my name for them from now on too. :). Having done my time on the counter and a spot of shelving I was let loose with the various coloured paper, staple gun and a blank wall. I only had an hour and didn’t get as far as I’d have hoped but did achieve a Father Christmas in a sleigh piled with presents, three reindeer (one with red nose) against a dark purple night sky backdrop flying over black sillouette cut out rooftops complete with chimneys smoking trails of leftover hallowe’en cobwebs and some yellow windows. My plan is for stars, a moon and peep through windows complete with Christmas trees and stuff. It was very well received anyway, Yvonne hugged me she was that overcome and everyone else came and gathered and oohed and ahhed 🙂 Yay!

I left work and went straight to the hairdressers where I had my haircut and blow dried and straightened and flicked. It looked very nice too although I have since washed it so now it just looks slightly shorter and tidier but not at all flicky or straight any more.

I came home where there had been bathroom tidying going on and we all got ready to go out. We needed to get a nice Christmassy photo of Davies and Scarlett for our Christmas photo cards so we went to a nearby garden centre which always has loads of lovely tacky decorations and sure enough got the perfect festive snapshot of them. From there we went to Tescos where I managed to get my parents’ Christmas present (digital photo frame) and a few more bits for Scarlett’s birthday.

Tonight Scarlett and I have been chatting about her party and planning games and food. I was writing stuff down but she took the pen and pad from me, climbed onto my lap and insisted I tell her the letters and she would do the writing. So she has. She has very tidy writing actually, and a fab pen grip and is getting pretty good at knowing letters. It’s amazing to see the more organic process of her learning to read and write without any reading schemes or fretting about the alphabet. It is totally Scarlett-driven, always when she decides she wants to learn about something and she is easily as advanced as Davies was at a similar age.

And I probably have more to say but I’m the wrong side of a bottle of cheap cava and inspiration is a little thin on the ground ;).

Be sure to wear some flour in your hair!

Had to be done eh Ali :).

Had a great day today. Ady was working from home so Davies was able to stay home with him while Scarlett and I nipped out to Argos to collect a new answerphone I’d reserved online. Way, way back in the olden days when our very first answerphone (that I believe was a Christmas present from my parents circa 1995) died we were living in Manchester and had two salaries and money to burn (well credit cards anyway) and a house with three floors and so many rooms we had to make up names for them (drawing room, sketching room, colouring in room, parlour, that sort of thing) and we bought a full telephonic system with five – count ’em five – handsets including one that was a clock radio type thing. We had one in the lounge, one in the kitchen (which genuinely was so far away from the lounge you’d not have heard the phone ringing from room to room), one for upstairs, one for the basement and one for the middle room which we used as an office when either of us was working from home. When we moved back here we laughingly did set them all up but actually wherever you were in the house the ringing of five phones in stereo deafened you as you could hear them all so we dwindled to just one upstairs and one down. But actually they are a bit crap. The answerphone doesn’t have a speaker so you can’t hear it to screen calls, you have to play the message back after the person has finished leaving it. My Mum, bless her, has never quite got the hang of this and still thinks we can hear her if we’re home so every message she ever leaves is ‘Hello? Hello. Helll – ooo – ooooh! Can’t you hear me? Are you there? Hello. It’s Mum. Nicola? Are you there? …….. No? Are you there? No then. Ok. Well. Erm. Hello?……’ But the phones are crap other than that, they are really quiet handsets so it’s tricky to hear the person you are talking to, the rechargable batteries in every handset have died so within five minutes of a phone call they are beeping the low battery warning at you. So Argos had a special offer answerphone and one additional handset and we’ve got them. They’re lovely. All slimline and silver grey. And they have polyphonic ringtones and speaker answerphone (we’ve been playing with it by going into other rooms and ringing ourselves on our mobiles) and everything. Love ’em. :).

So Scarlett and I went to collect the phone and also to the shoe shack place to try and find her some Birthday Shoes. Tarly currently owns a pair of pretendycrocs which are now her ‘chicken shoes’ that she slips on to go and visit the bantams and her knee high burgandy boots. Which are cool and look great with jeans and skirts and solve the not wearing socks or tights or other foot based underwear issue but are unlikely to look gorgeous with a party dress really. Also she has been hankering after a pair of sparkly red shoes for ages. Not just any red either, it has to be ‘scarlet red’ (oh that felt odd only giving it one ‘t’). And the sparkles, they’re quite important too. So I said I’d get her some for her birthday and as she’d need to be with me to try them on anyway she could have them as an early present to wear to her birthday party (like Davies had his sonic screwdriver early for his birthday party. I tell you this, dear reader not because I think you are remotely interested but because it has been uttered every single time the idea of an early birthday present of red shoes – sparkly scarlet red shoes – has been mentioned we have had to justify why she is ‘allowed’ to get them early) so we went to try and find some today. Now the shoe shack place had indeed got sparkly shoes, in pink, white, black, gold and silver. But not in red, let alone scarlet red. They did have the most hideous pair of very sparkly pink Bratz shoes with, I kid you not, a 3inch heel. And they started at a size 7. Which is approximately what Tarly was when she was about 3 years old. Fucking mental!

So we came home. We’d already made birthday cards for Lula (not Lulah as in Buttercup, our other friend Lula who despite having blonde curls and brown eyes and being called Tallulah really is a whole year older than Lulah and doesn’t have an h) and Davies had been left designing a front cover for the local HE newsletter for a competition entry. So I dropped Tarly home to do hers, collected my 24 parcels and headed off to the post office. They are all starry and celebrity-like at the post office now and could barely tear themselves away from their manicures and protein shakes to serve me but we managed to have a chat and I kindly wrote out my own proof of postage to save ruining their nails before they’d dried and of course being no stranger to the celebrity lifestyle myself (did I mention my husband is on telly) I had a lot to chat to them about. Came home, collected Davies and Scarlett and Lula’s cards and pressie, cooed over Scarlett’s picture, bunged them both in an envelope and got them posted off and we were off. On the way we called into Matalan and Asda on the sparkly scarlet red shoe hunt but had no luck. I did get Tarly’s birthday pressie from Davies though (a pink watch with cats on it), her Christmas Eve pjs, a couple of Doctor Who figures that they’d wanted and promised to try and pretend to forget they’d seen me buying and some novelty hairclips and earrings for me to wear to work for the Festive Fun night next week (but oh, I won’t spoil hearing about that until next week ;)). Then we went to collect Ali and Freya.

Ali managed to navigate us to Eira’s where we discovered that it was all permit parking only for many miles around (well at least the first couple of streets) and Ali did a slightly convoluted charade of knocking on their door before reappearing with a permit. We went in and a good time was had by all. The children did some playing outside for a while – there was Lula and Tialys (her brother) and another little friend Mai who Scarlett and Davies play with lots at MM so it was a nice little group. We were supplied with copious amounts of tea and I got to be nosy at looking at someone’s home which I love doing – lot’s of nice things to compliment Eira and Ade on and even the vegan food was very nice (clearly I had raw pork chops in my glove box to knaw on straight away as we left to compensate). The children wandered back in when they were hungry and after assuring Davies and Scarlett that the food was indeed food, just not as they knew it and in unfamiliar guises I think they both ate something :lol:.

There was then a fairly crazy game which inspired the post title – mounds of flour with smarties stuffed in which the children had to get out to eat with their hands behind their backs. All six on the same tray. Which of course meant that there was an initial nit exchange moment:

followed by much sneezing and consumption of Nestle products

which fairly inevitably degenerated into a flour fight 😆

They were ‘calmed down’ with a riotous round of Simon Says followed by cake 🙂

Then the plan was they all sat and watched BFG. I got totally distracted by the fact the BFG was voiced by David Jason in full on voice over Dangermouse voice and couldn’t really get past that to believe in him as BFG. Also the animated version of Sophie looked rather a look like Velma from Scooby Doo – ginger bob, glasses which had me thinking it was the same animated actress 😆 which got Ali speculating that Dangermouse and Velma had met in a cartoon bar (we decided on Moe’s Tavern from The Simpsons) while neither of them had a current project and deciding to get together on the Roald Dahl classic adaptation. Davies and Scarlett wandered off fairly quickly and Eira set them up with some craft activity. Eira is fab, really great with children and they seem to naturally flock to her too.

We left there around 4pm ish I guess, complete with goody boxes made by the birthday girl herself and containing all sorts of treasures 🙂 It was a lovely afternoon. To keep the children, specifically Davies, who is being A Bit Tricky this week, occupied we had a singsong. We took requests from the back seat and started with Twinkle Twinkle. Davies wanted ‘American Wine’ which we realised was American Pie so Ali and I sang a few verses with the children joining in at the chorus (or in Scarlett’s case the line ‘this will be the day that I die!’ which is the only bit she knows :lol:). Then we did some Christmas songs with lots of embellishing and fiddly bits. Oh it was fun :). Once they got out the car Davies told me I am always more silly when I’ve been with Ali :lol:. We put music on in the car then and listened to some Ramalamadingdong which happened to be what was on the disc in the cd player.

We called into Tescos on the way home. We’re clubbing together with my brother to get my parents a digital photo frame for Christmas and Tesco had one on special offer yesterday. They’d sold out of them but we did get a fine pair of scarlet red sparkly shoes (yay!), some equally sparkly tights to wear with them, some PJs for D’s Christmas Eve pressie and some bits for dinner tonight. Also I’d promised a McDonalds for dinner if they behaved which I think Davies lost about four times over but redeemed himself sufficiently for on the way home and all round Tescos. No never means no in my house, it means ask me again later when I’ve calmed down from shouting and you might get a yes after all :lol:.

A fairly quiet evening, children ate their McD infront of Simpsons and went off to bed, we watched QI and ate pizza and now, as I am working in the morning, and because I want to lie in bed looking admiringly at my new slimline silver grey bedside telephone I’m off to bed myself.

But I have sat and packed up 25 parcels of ebay sales tonight, which netted me over £100 so that has indeed paid for one of the kids’ DSs for Christmas. Hurrah :).

I worked today, it was quite slow and dragged a bit really, can’t quite believe I will have been there a year next week. There is still tweaking to do with making me work ideal for all of us but Ady and I have been talking about that tonight and hopefully we can make a few changes to get it smoother. I’d been planning to email a Home Edder I know who also childminds just to find out a bit more about childminders for HE children but given she knows noone suitable locally, certainly who wouldn’t end up being the route by which we became known and also the charges for two children would pretty much equal my hourly wage that isn’t going to be an option really. Ah well new year always brings about change doesn’t it, we’ll see what changes the coming one has in store.

I’ve also been pondering our weekly activities set up the last few days and trying to decide if everything we do works for us and if not what could we do to change that too. Again, I’ve a few thoughts which I’ll chat through with Davies and Scarlett and try and come to some conclusions, but life’s been feeling just a bit too full and harried this last few months and I want to make sure that remains a good thing rather than becomming something that characterises our days too much and starts to get in the way of just living. Scarlett is due to start 2 evening things a week after Christmas which will only leave one weekday night a week that we don’t have a committment for, which seems slightly excessive somehow. When we factor in my working too it begins to limit the time we actually have for doing all those wild and free things that for us at least, home education is supposed to be about. Recently I’ve been struggling to fit things in with any less than about 3 weeks notice in advance and there is a balance between busy and just crazy which I think we are maybe not striking quite right at the moment.

So there you are, a blog post which managed to be about pretty much nothing and probably raised more questions than it answered. Which quite probably describes my state of mind fairly well atm. Weekend coming up, that might help.