One word? When seven would do…

I was a mistress of efficiency this morning, getting loads of washing on, getting everyone breakfasted and dressed and making playdough before the Wonderpets had finished. But – disaster – we only had a dribble of salt left (key playdough ingredient) so as we needed to pop to Sainsburys to get money from the cashpoint and petrol we left slightly earlier to get salt too and took the rest of the playdough making ingredients with us.

It was not very busy in Sainsburys but for some reason it was really noisy, which meant the children spoke REALLY LOUDLY to fill the space :roll:. We’d looked at the magazines to see if the new W&G one was there as Ady had told Davies it was due out this week and he could have it. It wasn’t there but the 1st episode of the new Shaun the Sheep comic was so Davies chose to have that instead of W&G and Tarly chose a Barbie one. I used to buy the kids loads of magazines (along with the loads of everything I used to buy 😉 ) but stopped as they are about the same price as a book. However as an occassional treat I don’t mind as they do really get value for money out of them, doing all the puzzles and mazes, colouring in and getting Ady and I to read them cover to cover for them, any posters get carefully pulled out and stuck on their bedroom walls and it really has become about the magazine rather than whatever cheap and nasty novelty is stuck to the front page with tape that will rip the front page in half when you try and remove it.

So they were content with their magazines, we’d walked round and got all the bits we needed, we’d chatted about things but as I say they were being noisy, not naughty or disruptive, just noisy. I saw the checkout woman size them up and decide they were probably old enough to have gone back to school after the Easter holidays today so I was waiting for some sort of question, but aside from a slight narrowing of her eyes at me when she asked if I was collecting Active Kids vouchers for schools there was no mention of anything. 😆 On to get petrol and then to collect Lucy, Rebecca and Richard.

I did lots of not very coherant starting sentences and then being interupted by D or S, or needing to concentrate to turn left and then forgetting what I was about to say but Lucy seemed capable of normal speech and didn’t try to convince me that children of 4 could be living in extreme locations in some parts fo the world today, so that was good :). MM seemed very quiet althouh I realised as we left that was mostly because everyone else sat outside in the sunshine. That was fine though because it meant Richard and Rebecca got to see everything as shown round by Davies and Scarlett without too many other people about. I made some very illfated playdough which mostly got crumbled until I swept it up at the end (ah well!) , there must be something in the altitude of the hall because I’ve yet to make playdough there which doesn’t come out at utterly the wrong consistency :lol:. The children had a good time and Lucy and I got to chat a fair bit too.

We came back here where the toy animals and some plastic click together toys were got out and played with and then Ady came home. He has a hospital appointment for an ultra sound scan for a testicle lump which we’ve both been worrying about for about a month since he first found the lump. Lucy had offered to stay here with D&S so I could go with him. We drove to the hospital, found a parking space, walked into the radiology department (having washed our hands with the special Layla foam on the way in they have there with big red signs for everyone to use to stop the spread of superbugs :shock:), barely sat down before they called him in and I got to smile smugly at how cold the gel is they squirt on you for ultra sounds :lol:. After lots of moving the scanner thing about the sonographer pronounced it NOT cancer and in her opinion something connected with the vasectomy (again!). So nothing further to fret over. Phew! We were back at the carpark paying machine and had been so speedy that we didn’t even have to pay as it allows you 15 minutes dropping off / driving round to find a space time before you are charged. Hurrah for the nhs eh?!

We came home and Davies was very keen to hear the prognosis. He’d wanted to know where we were going so I’d told him, properly. Scarlett didn’t question us going out or pay any attention to what I was telling Davies but he had lots of questions and I have a firm policy of answering anything he asks as truthfully as I can. He had obviously been really worried while we’d gone as he came dashing over to ask about it and asked again later tonight too. I assured him that I would tell him if there was anything to worry about and that I promised there was nothing wrong. I hope he believed me and I hope the answering questions policy gives him confidence to trust that I am telling him the truth…

I ran Lucy and co home while Ady fed the children, then Davies got changed and I walked him round to Beavers before plugging my headphones in (Jamiroquai and INXS) and going on a brisk walk. I stopped midway for some shopping so I was weight bearing for half the walk too and I shall walk into work for Reading group tomorrow night too so I’ve made a good start on getting walking again already. 🙂

Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow yet. I’m up for a day out somewhere but if the children are happy to then we’ll stay home and laze in the garden. Or of course there is always the beach….;)

It’s the sabbath day, the day of rest, the sun is shining and you are of British stock. So obviously you need to wear as few clothes as possible whilst crisping your shoulders to a burnt frazzle you need to be off at a car boot sale before heading back home for a barbecue, possibly going via a garden centre :lol:. We came out of the house this morning to find a huge gathering of neighbours – the Thank Yous were taking the people three doors down off to the local market, Keith the attractive builder was looking quite scared and was very relieved when we exited with the children which instantly created a diversion of all the neighbours coming to coo over D&S. He got in his van and was away! I quite enjoyed crossing the road and giving an exagerrated wave and a cheery ‘How diddly doo neighbours’ but I think they are all too infirm and hard of hearing to have noticed. 😆

We did do the car boot sale bit of that ourselves. I love ’em. I love the poignancy of people selling once treasured Christmas and birthday gifts of children long since left home, I love the pretend cockney market stall holders who even wear money aprons and call people ‘darlin” as they try to see you cut price batteries or pound shop blister pack toys for two pounds. We went to a huge car boot sale at Fontwell Race Course today, it was seething with people, the road was all ground to a halt with people getting in and out of the car park and there were people everywhere carrying other people’s unwanted junk!

We spent just under £4 and got a Barbie puzzle, 4 Barbie books, a Barbie dress up designer toy, a huge box of toy plastic animals including loads of sea creatures and a really cool kangeroo with a joey that comes out of it’s pouch, a little Gromit bag, a Wallace sitting on an armchair, a peg doll making kit and a coloured peg puzzle game. A good haul 🙂

We came home and the children played in the garden with the slide, a green rowing boat filled with sand and another filled with water and various toys we dug out of the garage, while Ady and I cleared the whole garage out onto the drive, divided into ‘Crap which needs to go to the tip’ ‘Crap which probably should go to the tip but we can’t part with it so we’ll shove it back into the garage again’ ‘Crap which should probably go to the tip, won’t so should at the very least be shoved back in the garage but for some reason we think we might use it so we’ll bring it into the house for a few weeks before it gets put into the cupboard under the stairs which is a sort of holding bay for things which will find their way back into the garage again’ ‘stuff to sell on ebay’ and ‘stuff we genuinely do need and does actually belong in the garage’. We went through all the camping stuff and I’ve made a list of things we need to replace / get this year and then we put it all back in again with the stuff for the tip near the front for us to feed out bag by bag into the normal rubbish collection each week or actually take to the tip if one of us can summon up the energy to queue up there (there is always a massive queue for our local tip). I say ‘we’ but of course Ady did most of the work. The garage is full of things like mice and spiders and dust and although I was able to contribute in a supervisory manner (I am pretty ruthless about not keeping stuff, Ady is a total womble) I didn’t really like getting my hands dirty so I made lots of drinks and lunch and shouted at the children a bit to appear useful :lol:. Then I stopped bothering and sat and read my book chatting to Ady while he washed both the cars.

We came in and I did the kids’ tea while they watched Barnyard. What a pile of rubbish that is! Even Scarlett noticed that the male cows had udders which upon googling appears to have been quite a talked about thing. I didn’t really watch and I think there was some good music in it but certainly not one to recommend or watch again.

They took forever to go to sleep tonight, infact I fell asleep on the sofa for a while waiting for Lost to start and I think Davies might still have been awake :roll:. Ady cooked a lovely roast beef dinner and now I’m about to go to bed properly.

I really really didn’t want to go to work today. It was just such a nice day and I could think of at least 47 better things to be doing here with my family instead.

First thing Scarlett and I had a massive trying on session with all her clothes. That’s clothes from last summer to see if they still fit, new clothes I’ve had put away to see if they fit yet and things like trousers and skirts to see whether they will be worth putting away for the winter or whether they will be too small by then. She thoroughly enjoyed it, dancing in and out her bedroom to go and show Ady and Davies all her different outfits. So I have a big bin liner ready for ebaying and her wardrobe is all tidy and hung up nicely. My mother has bought her loads of really pretty pretty dresses over the years, none of which are really very Scarlett and none of which I’ve ever felt were right for just wearing for normal days but as this will be the last summer for most of those such items if she liked them then we kept them and she can just wear them whenever rather than the whole saving things for best notion which means clothes get kept unworn until she outgrows them altogether. Today she wore a very pretty pink and white polka dot dress for pottering around in the garden but she looked very cute and enjoyed sweeping around the place. 😆

Davies and Ady were playing all sorts of games in the lounge including a butchered version of hangman and some sort of racing game – nice to take Tarly out of the equation and hear them really enjoying each others’ company in the other room. 🙂 Then Davies wanted to try on his summer clothes too. He has a load of new tops which I bought in the sale at the end of last summer but as he’s still not really grown he also has all of last summers tops too, so he has an embarrassment of tops and will probably take to having three changes of clothes a day just to get wear out of all of them 😆 Last years cropped trousers are still a fine fit round his waist and are now properly cropped rather than just a bit short so he is fine for clothes too.

We then all went outside. Ady was using a wire brush borrowed from my Dad to rub down the camp kitchen I got from freecycle last week and then the children and I painted the top section with some donated by Dad white hammerite. It’s not covered it very well and I desperately want to jazz it all up with some different colours and maybe even some stick on jewells. I really like the idea of making the camp kitchen as camp as possible! Ady is torn between thinking it might be quite a fun idea and knowing full well it will mostly be him actually stood behind it doing cooking so feeling a bit cautious about the idea of that on a public campsite! 😆 We’ll see ;).

I had some lunch, got changed and headed off to work leaving them all to it. Actually the walk to work was nice, I listeded to some Sheryl Crow on my phone which has a built in MP3 player which I don’t often get to use. Work was very slow and quiet – the odd person who did come in said the town was dead but there was a huge queue to get into the carpark for the beach. Walking home again (listening to Oasis and Jack Johnson but also walking along reading a book too) the air was filled with the scent of a hundred barbecues.

I found Ady, Davies and Scarlett still in the garden pretty much as I’d left them 4 and a half hours previously having had a lovely afternoon playing. We needed a few bits of shopping so I popped up to Tescos and came home with choc ices for everyone, a new sunhat for Tarly (cowboy style white straw, so far she is wearing it!) and a packet of Tesco value coloured pencils each for the children. They are both taken pens and paper to bed with them each night and drawing / writing and I’d told them I didn’t want pens and felt tips in their beds so I’d get them some colours just for bedtime. Must get them some cheap notebooks too rather than them taking loads of paper to bed.

We all sat in the garden for a while longer, I’m on a not-drinking-as-much-as-I-have-been kick so I was mixing wine with schloer in an effort to only drink half as much alcohol, so that was very pleasant to be drinking sitting out in the garden. We came in, the children had a bath and then went off to bed eager to use their new pencils. We taped and watched Dr Who while eating dinner and now, as it is my turn to get up in the morning I’m off to bed.

Oh it is the season
when I wake and I start sneezing
and my eyes are really, really itchy too
I have mascara streaks
running down my cheeks
and all that people say to me is ‘bless you’
I like the warmer weather
and I really would never
wish the summer over before it’s even here
but I really wish the sun
didn’t have to come
with all these side effects which give me quite severe
sneezes, itches, runny nose
and I don’t suppose
I look at my best all reddened by the sun
so I’ll drink my pimms and sigh
long for summer to pass by
and wash it down with loads of piriton.

another piece of junk mail from Park Resorts. I must get at least two pieces of mail from them a week trying to sell me a static in one of their parks from the time I book Kessingland each year until the end of the season. This has happened for the last three years – considering they only get about 50 quid a year from me they must spend about a quarter of that on sending me glossy leaflets and letters and postage!

I worked this morning – extra hours (hurrah about £30 bonus money -that’ll pay for Africa Alive!) and Ady WFH to look after D&S. It was really busy for the first couple of hours which went really quick but then it really dragged from about 11am-1pm when we had all of about 5 people in for the whole five hours. I spent most of the time ordering cds and dvds in for myself and choosing a couple of films for the weekend and then wandering round the shelves browsing the books. When it is only for an hour or so I can’t really think of any nicer working environment to not have much to do, but a whole day really drags when it’s quiet and I start to miss the children and think of all the things I could be doing at home.

I popped into the CoOp after work for a few bits and pieces and as there was a huge queue for the cashpoint I used my debit card. We’ve not had any plastic for the last 18 months at all but recently our bank sent us Visa Electron cards which have instant authorisation and will only allow you to spend funds available in your account there and then. I’ve only used it a couple of times for things like buying contact lenses online or for small purchases under a tenner when it is better to spend 6 or 7 quid on a card than to withdraw £10 from the cashpoint and waste the change on frittering it away. Except my card was declined. This was (to quote the Wonderpets) ‘sewious’ as I’ve been dead careful with money this month and thought we had about 40 quid left. The cashier tried it again with me having hot and cold flushes and feeling sick at the thought of having cocked up our finances somehow but it wouldn’t go through so I slunk out of there and dashed home. Ady went off to work and I checked the online balance to find we have nearly 80 quid in there so I’ve been even more careful than I thought. Not sure why it got declined but very relieved it is not because direct debits have been bouncing or anything like that.

The children were out in the garden when I got in. Our garden goes all the way round the house as we are a detatched house on a corner. It doesn’t have a back or a front garden and is fairly equally spaced all the way round but with all sorts of differing levels as the house is on a slope. This is the first year I have let the children out there on their own to play as plenty of the garden is utterly exposed to the street, road and passers by which has worried me wrt to snatching, reporting of school age children in the garden during school hours as well as general hideous accidents from all the dangerous split level bits and pieces. But of course all that makes the garden dangerous to an adult is what makes it exciting and adventure packed to a child, with things to scramble over, climb across and risk life and limb over. They have a couple of slides, a mini trampoline, a sandpit and various garden toys (outside toys obviously, not the indoor ones 😉 ) and they have been out there loads this week and really enjoyed it. With the front door and windows open I can hear them playing anyway and I check them every so often and it’s been lovely to have them outside enjoying it this week.

Lucy, Rebecca and Richard came over and the children mostly left us in peace to chat with some indoor and outdoor play. We had some good chats and mutual clog admiration with Tarly bringing hers to join in which was all very lovely.

They left and the children finally came in from the garden and wanted to do some drawing with an oil pastel set I’ve had for ages. Davies wanted some ideas of what to do with such an array of colours so I showed him how to do scribble pictures. He managed to do and colour his own and Tarly got me to do one for her to colour.
mine
Davies’

Then I showed them how to do a design based on something else with the example being my name
and we talked about how art should be individual with no two people’s productions looking the same. Davies is actually quite good at replicas of things – for examples his Wallace and Gromit pictures and models and I can do a passable image of most things in 3d or paper given a bit of practise but actually I think real art is in creation rather than imitation and I was trying to show that from random scribbles with the same colour pastels we still managed to produce differing end results by way of colour selection, how hard we pressed etc. I think creativity is too underrated and wish more had been made of my creative streak in childhood, whether it was drawing or writing and whilst I have massive respect for the applying the certainties of mathematics and science I personally probably place more gravity on creativity of individuals. I was reading Gill’s blog the other day about writing before one can read and that made perfect sense to me – both of my children are far more interested in writing than reading and it seems utterly logical that they would place more value on getting their own message out there than receiving other people’s. Reading is great but when the choice is reading ‘Peter likes the ball, Jane likes the ball, the dog likes the ball’ and committing your own ideas to paper be they words or pictures for me it would be my own work every time.

Then we snuggled up and watched Wonderpets together. I’d watched most of it before I went to work this morning but watched it in entirety tonight as it was a special feature length episode. Oh it was lovely, I wiped away a tear ;). Then pjs for the children and I read some stories. I’d borrowed a children’s book about Anne Frank which I read to them and a book about Creation and one about a trampolining superstar. We all enjoyed all of those and Davies asked loads of questions about the Anne Frank one which I’m sure will lead to further discussion at some point, but took in geography, history, religion and several bits of language when I explained certain terms to him. Ady arrived home then and we finished the children’s days by dancing around all four of us to a Chas and Dave cd I’d brought home from work so the kids could hear such music, specifically ‘Rabbit’!

I had an email from the tent seller today to say our tent has been despatched. Well actually it didn’t say that precisely as it was in German but babelfish translated it for me and that was the gist of it so hopefully it will be here soon. We’d had a mad idea about heading off somewhere local for a nights’ camping when I get in from work tomorrow if it had already arrived this weekend as we’re planning to dig all the camping stuff out of the garage in the morning and see what we need for this summer so I guess that won’t be happening but we have a car boot sale with our names on it on Sunday morning anyway and a long summer awaits with the promise of much camping ahead. 🙂

I worked all day today – the days I work always seem sooooo much longer than the days I don’t – possibly because I am actually up earlier but this morning feels a million miles away.

Ady left at some ungodly hour as he was in Peterborough (or as he calls it Merryland) today and wantd to get back at a decent time, so I was woken at 626am after he’d already gone by Tarly. Fortunately she made enough noise to also wake Davies so he went downstairs with her instead :lol:. I was having a very odd dream in which I was doing some sort of storytelling from memory of a story of my choice to a wide audience of children at work, except work seemed to have morphed into some sort of Home Ed camp so I knew all the children who would be attending. It was all a bit Apprentice-style too with one of us going to get fired for not being good enough so there was fierce competition between me and the other storytellers with us all having to choose a classic tale (I’d chosen The Hare and The Tortoise but had really wanted The Three Little Pigs but someone else had already chosen it) and then tell it from memory with our own interpretations. I wasn’t worried about that and had some good comedy asides up my sleeve including IIRC a song and dance routine and plenty of audience participation, but then I realised some of my colleagues had made masks and decided that would complete my story to perfection as I could nominate audience members to play the roles if I had masks, so I was trying to covertly make masks but kept getting interupted – for real, by the children coming to ask if they could eat Easter eggs and the alarm going off on snooze every 8 minutes. All rather surreal :lol:.

I managed to get us all breakfasted and dressed and a load of washing done and hung out before we headed off to collect Lucy, R & R and then drop everyone back here before going on to work.

Work was really busy and I enjoyed knowing what I was doing and being busy. The admin and organisation side of the job really appeals to me, as does the constant flow of people when it’s busy and today was one of those days. I had a bit of training and enjoyed feeling part of the team on one of those early summer days when everyone is feeling spring in the air and on good form. It was a nice working day. 🙂

I’d worn a jumper which I was baking in for the morning so was very delighted to find a linen top at the charity shop on my lunch break which I changed in to in the shop. I also found a box of metal puzzles for Davies for a quid which went down well when I got home.

Lucy, R & R came into the library in the afternoon which was nice. I love it when people I know come in 🙂 and I gave Rebecca the same training session D&S have had to enable them to zap their own books – unfortunately the security tag on one of the books wasn’t playing ball so a colleague had to come and sort that out which rather ruined my expertise :lol:.

I got home and Ady had already been home an hour or so and cleared up from Dad being here all afternoon, fed the children and done the washing up, so that was nice not to have to come home to (although less nice I suspect for him to have to come home to having left at 530am!). I’d got out a load of book and cds for Tarly which she fell on with delight but decided not to listen to tonight in favour of a story with me. Davies and I did some of the metal puzzles and then the children went outside with Ady who was mowing the lawn and cutting the hedges while I sat inside and sneezed and started reading a book for reading group next week.

The children came in and washed, cleaned teeth, got in pjs and we snuggled up and watched Wonderpets together with them both on my lap. I brushed Tarly’s hair (she’s still loving that!), Davies brushed my hair (not quite so gently!) and then I read Tarly some stories and Ady read some to Davies.

The children were full of tales of what they’d been up to today and I do really miss them when I am at work for a whole day, a half day is so much better. But on the flip side I think that whole day off from dealing with squabbles, getting food and drink whilst doing grown up stuff and being a person other than Mummy actually does me the world of good once a week. Like so many things that have cropped up mostly unplanned in the last few years it seems to have panned out pretty well. There are always bad days (I had one just last week!) and there could of course be tweaks in the arrangements but certainly today they had a great morning with Lucy and co and a good afternoon with my Dad and Ady was home in time to feed them tea at a decent hour followed by time with him in the garden and cuddles and stories with me at bedtime. Not how I’d want us to be spending every day but certainly a nice way to spend one day a week at least :).

I should have stayed home today. Well actually I shouldn’t because the children had a good day and ‘retrospectively’ it wasn’t as bad a day as I felt it was being during parts of it but I was in a very impatient, intolerant and ranty mood and am probably best kept away from people at such times.

We went on a ‘Bluebell Walk’ organised by Julie for some local HE folk. We did the same walk, but a month later than this last year (please note picture of Tarly surrounded by bluebells in picture from last year). I left on schedule, having first packed a picnic, hung out washing and got to the petrol station before my car ran out of petrol having been going on fumes for the last few miles. We chatted and sang songs on the way there and then promptly got lost, just like last year, ending up at Bignor Roman Villa which if nothing else reminded me that we really must go there and it is nearer than I remembered it being (which I imagine is more to do with my addled brain than the remains of a centuries old villa upping and moving east 😉 ). Julie rang and gave me some better directions and we were there within ten minutes.

There were two other families joining us, one was a mother, grandmother and two daughters (both under 2), one was a mother with 3 children (7yo boy, 4yo girl, 2yo boy), both of whom I’ve met before. I shan’t rant, although I could at length but I found fault with everything about them all today and I’m perfectly aware that was me being arsey rather than anything they were doing but it all felt like they’d been specifically lined up to rub me up the wrong way with their appearance, dietary choices, educational approaches and so on.

We stopped for lunch where every child seemed to spend the whole time shrieking about bugs until I actually said ‘you know what, if you keep looking for creatures, given we are sitting in the middle of the woods, the chances are you’re going to keep seeing them!!!!’ because I did feel like I was sitting in the middle of that Catherine Tate sketch with the woman who screams at everything. Then Tarly managed to break her shoe and lose the rivet off the strap, which I was really pissed off about, and meant it kept falling off for the rest of the walk (I think I’ve sorted that by ordering some new rivets so hopefully they’ll be fixable).

But the worst thing, the thing which annoyed me the very most was not that it was a long way to drive for a not particularly fantastic walk, not the people, not the shoe and most certainly not the weather (which was glorious and having caught the sun on my arms today I realised it is time to get some sun cream out now). No, it was the fact that there wasn’t a single arsing bluebell (to pinch a phrase 😉 ) to be seen. Last year there were carpets of them, they literally made you ooh and ahh and wonder at the magnificence of nature. No one’s fault of course but very bloody annoying. 🙁

We left around 3pm and had had a good long walk so came home. I told the children that they had to leave me alone for a while so I could be grumpy and irrational on my own and went to get dinner on. They bonded over this and spent ages getting out loads of Barbie stuff which ended up covering the lounge floor. They did play really nicely together and did indeed leave me alone though. Then Davies found a bug inspecting thingy – a little magnified container with compartments for putting insects in to observe them. He was all enthusiastic about it so I sent him out into the garden to go and find some bugs, Tarly went with him so I tidied up the lounge and got their dinner ready, calling them in to eat and to apologise for being so cross all day. Children are always so forgiving (or wise and know the right things to say) and assured me that I hadn’t been horrid all day at all, and both gave me some of their chocolate to make me happy again 🙂 before eating every scrap of their dinner and having a peaceful and non-splashing bath together. Davies was full of chatter about ants so I showed him some pictures of Antworks which he fell in love with and has added to the list of things he might want for his birthday. They do look pretty cool actually, I’ve been coveting one for a while ;).

I popped out to Sainsburys and then came back and read Davies several bedtime stories and then watched The Apprentice which allowed me to remain cross and shouty to end the day :lol:. Working all day tomorrow and again on Friday morning and again on Saturday afternoon so the calm and quiet atmopshere with either soothe me or annoy the hell out of me I guess!

last night, so didn’t finish my IM chat with Lucy (sorry Luce!) or write a blog post. I can only assume in the way I’ve been hoping all the outside stuff and fresh air would tire the children into early nights (it hasn’t :roll:) it has indeed done it for me as I seem to be tired lots at the moment.

We were heading over to Ali’s yesterday and Ady offered to take us and pick us up to save petrol, which as it also meant Ali and I could have a glass of wine in the afternoon which we missed out on at Hunstanton seemed silly to refuse. So he dropped us off earlier than we were due at Ali’s as he had to get to college for a mock exam. We went to Ali’s local corner shop to get crisps and wine. They had a special offer of 3 bottles for a tenner (or a fiver each) which was too good to refuse so I got three bottles of wine, some pringles and Davies spotted the latest copy of the W&G magazine on the shelf there. We bought the first few copies of it as it was before our Financial Crisis (TM) and he has had subsequent issues as and when we have had a spare £2.60 (:shock:) and always really made the most of them, with the middle pages poster displayed on his wall, the stories inside read to him over and over and the puzzles etc all completed. As I was managing to justify a tenner on wine for me it seemed a bit mean to refuse £2.60 to him and he was being nicely pleading rather than annoyingly so I caved. Which meant I needed to get something for Scarlett too. In the corner shop, which was quite a feat unless she wanted a Ghostbusters dvd, a tin of peaches in syrup or some frozen findus crispy pancakes. Retrospectively she would probably have been happy with one of the bottles of wine, but she chose a bag of fizzy cola bottles instead :lol:. Which she proceeded to share with Davies and I.

Then we headed off on a walk. We’ve done part of the walk with Ali and Freya before so lots of the ‘landmarks’ were already tagged with names including ‘Echo Tunnel’ and ‘Poo Lane’. The children were picking dandelion clocks for me and each other to blow while making wishes which then all magically came true (most of them were ‘I wish for a cuddle’ or ‘I wish for another one of Scarlett’s cola bottles’ but still, the magic of the dandelion clocks is truly a mystical and wonderful thing :lol:). We walked past the goats and alongside a stream (where I was remarkably calm given how close they kept getting to the edge and how discinclined I would have been to leap in after them to save them if they’d fallen, finally ending up at a plot of allotments. We walked around them admiring the well tended ones, identifying lots of the veg growing on them and for me at least, being all wistful at the chairs sitting on some of them thinking about the idea of sitting there on a sunny afternoon in relative peace and quiet. Some of them were very family-like with a couple of swings, a stick and canvas wigwam and a small pond on one. My friend Dayve keeps chickens on his allotment and I have been toying with the idea of one for a while even going as far as checking out details of local ones on the local council website a few weeks ago, so it was coincidental that we happened to end up there yesterday. I explained the idea of them to the children who really liked it and were very keen to assure me it would be something they’d like to do so I have since got our names down on the waiting list for our local plots (it first looked like there was no waiting list but I’ve been emailed back today to say there is one and my name is now on it:) ). We walked back retracing our steps and taking a different turning at the end to walk along the lane behind Ali’s house. As we were almost parallel with the back of her house she rang to say they were ready for us so we finished walking that lane, went down the Incredibly Steep Concrete Steps at the end and arrived at her house.

Ali has already blogged our visit most ably so I shan’t rewrite that except to add that it was lovely and faintly surreal in places, particularly the operatic parts when everyone only communicated in song to each other. Ali and I had a chat about fitness and health which consolidated some feelings I’ve been having anyway but probably deserve a seperate blogpost. Then Ady arrived to collect us.

We came home via the supermarket for supplies for dinner which we’d forgotten to take out and defrost and a load of half price muffins and crumpets which I’ve filled another freezer with. The kids had sandwiches for tea and then ended up in the garden with Ady when I was intending to pack them off to bed. They came in and had a bath instead so were late to bed, which meant we were late for dinner, and then I fell asleep.

And now, I am 15 minutes over the time I’d allowed myself for blogging so I need to get a move on or we’ll be late for today’s activities. Anyone care to guess what that might be? 😉

seen at Making It Up

January 6th

3 events
1066 – Harold Godwinson is crowned King of England.
1929 – Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin a legacy of work amongst India’s poorest and diseased people
1907 – Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.

2 birthdays
1412 – Joan of Arc, Roman Catholic Saint and national heroine of France (legendary date) (d. 1431)
1955 – Rowan Atkinson, English comedian and actor

1 death
1969 – Daisy and Violet Hilton, British conjoined twins (b. 1908)

Holiday or observance
Epiphany

to be sung to the tune of King Of The Road 🙂

My Mum has apparently been ill for day although I didn’t actually learn about this until Friday. She was well enough however to go out yesterday 😆 so when I spoke to her last night she was adamant she was seeing us today and asked me to think of something for us all to do. Ady is working and as everywhere is heaving along the coast I would have probably chosen some sort of walk somewhere (Dad doesn’d do beaches 🙂 ) but she rang (‘first thing’ – 10am?) and suggested us all going round to my Granny’s taking some lunch with us. I suggested picking her up after she’d done her regular pilgrimage to Sainsburys – honestly, the woman goes there daily! as I didn’t want to drag the children round the supermarket but she was adamant she needed me incase she had to lean on someone to make it round every aisle (she is very weak apparently!) so I arranged to be over at her house in half an hour. She asked me to make it 45 minutes as she wasn’t dressed yet. I would like to pretend that it was going to take her 45 minutes to get ready to leave the house because she was so ill she needed to move slowly but actually my mother is utterly incapable of getting out of a house quickly anyway – Dad always says she perish in a fire because she’d still be checking the gas was off, the TV unplugged and reapplying her lipstick while everyone else was assembled on the other side of the road and the fire brigade were already tackling the blaze! 😆

So I finished making the blown eggs with the children – Davies had some stickers and little plastic chassis with wheels on to make vehicles and Tarly had some 3D stickers of flowers, bugs and butterflies to stick on hers, got us all dressed and put away 2 baskets of clean washing before heading over to my parents. The plan had been for D&S to go in their house and wait with my Dad while Mum and I went to Sainsburys but Tarly refused insisting she wanted to come with me so in the end we all went. Well actually we didn’t – there was a queue off the main road just to get onto the slip road just to get into the car park so I decided that on my deathbed I’d kick myself for having wasted about an hour of my life in such circumstances so I swept across 3 lanes and we changed direction to go to the CoOp in the town centre which is just never, ever busy instead. Indeed it was not busy, we got all the bits we needed for lunch and went to my Granny’s.

Now as regular readers will know my Granny annoys me frequently. She is my Mum’s mum and they are very alike and have a real love/hate relationship with each other which I have always strived to keep well out of. She is big on emotional blackmail and guilt trips and used to make me feel very uncomfortable as a small child by gushing over me almost non stop while pretty much ignoring my brother. She is always bordering on rude to my Dad, which he is big enough to rise above but pisses me off and does that really annoying thing of talking to people through the children. I love that the children see one of their great grandparents – they are light on relatives generally with only my Mum and Dad for Grandparents and only Granny as a great grandparent so I am keen to foster that and I think they get lots out of the stories of when Granny was a little girl, let alone the stories of when Mummy was a little girl but I recall spending time with her when I was little and her ‘feeding’ me and Frazer with things which we’d then talk to my parents about – lots of snidey little comments. She is just not a nice person to be around for long periods of time and very neatly fits the mould of a bitter old woman left alone because she was horrible to people who tried to care about her. Anyway. I’d said to my Mum that I wouldn’t put up with any nonsense from her today so at least twice I pulled her up on some rubbish she was saying to the children which was putting me in a generally grumpy mood.

We got there and as soon as we arrived we went into her garden where there was an ENORMOUS box with a MASSIVE red remote control car (a quick google reveals it to be this exact one) for Davies. He was utterly overwhelmed, as indeed I would expect him to be – way too extravagent a gift for no particular reason and given with no real explanation other than ‘it’s been here waiting for you to come to my house and see me, but it’s been so long’ FFS don’t put that on a 6yo and don’t entice them to visit you with the sort of gift they wouldn’t normally even get for their birthday! It took about 15 minutes and a screwdriver to liberate it from it’s packaging only to discover it needed to be on charge for 5 hours before first use which sort of diffused it a bit thankfully. Then, almost as an afterthought Scarlett was taken into the house and presented with a giant polar bear soft toy. She did a grand job of being grateful but said quietly to me ‘Granny shouldn’t have bought me a soft toy really, I have already got lots’ bless her. It did seem rather incomparable a gift and perpetuates that favouritism that both Granny and my Mum have demonstrated moving down the generations – both of them utterly dote on Davies and largely ignore Tarly, openly describing her as ‘difficult’ 🙄

There were further fractious moments over lunch but I tried really hard to be reasonable and rational and spent a lot of time just talking to one or other child or my Dad. Scarlett and I did some drawing and writing together (I’d got both children to pack a small bag with some stuff to take with them as I knew there’d be no toys there and they’d both chosen to take a notebook and some pens). Tarly is doing this ‘pretend writing’ thing at the moment where she’ll draw loads of lines and shapes on a page and then tell me what it says. She wrote me a message and read it out ‘to Mummy, you are so pretty and I love you so much, lots and lots of love from Scarlett’ which she got all giggly about reading out and finished with a big kiss – made me melt :). I then drew some pictures – a cat, a house and a fairy and wrote the words out for her to join to the pictures. She didn’t just draw a line between them, instead she copied my writing next to each picture. A bit later on Davies and I played noughts and crosses, then a version Davies made up with H’s and A’s instead and a bigger board, then boxes and then as I couldn’t think of any other pen and paper games other than battleships – too long or hangman – requires reading / writing skills. So I wrote out some sums for him which he did instead. I totally expected him to scoff and not want to but he’s been doing lots of chatting about numbers generally lately so he took that really happily and sat doing them. I popped to the loo with Tarly while he was still working on them and when I came back out Mum had taken over and written a few more for him too – hopefully she didn’t make too much of it and ruin his interest.

We left there at about 4pm, dropped Mum and Dad home and came home. Davies played some xbox and Tarly did some more drawing before tea. Ady got home and while he was brushing Tarly’s hair before bed (honestly the new hairbrush has changed her life, she is up for having it brushed as often as one of us will do it :shock:!) he told her that I had a tool which could ‘engrave’ her name in it which of course meant she wanted it done there and then. So he dug out my pyrography burner and I burnt her name and some flowers onto her hairbrush, which then meant Davies wanted something burnt onto something too so I burnt his name and (quel surprise!) a Gromit face on the back of his wooden chair. I would probably have carried on quite happily but I leant across the machine and singed a load of my hair which meant I had to call a halt to it so I could go and wash the stink out of it. I’d forgotten how nice a craft it is though so I might resurrect it again as I already have the kit. 🙂

Scarlett woke horribly early at 6.20am this morning. I staggered down to her room and tried to persuade her to let me into her bed to snuggle up with her a bit longer but she was having none of it, so together we crept into the lounge to see whether the Easter bunny had been. He had indeed and she spotted a little cuddly rabbit that the Thank You Neighbours had included in the piles of stuff they’d brought over for the children so she was happy to come back to bed and bring that with her.

But not for long 🙁 By 7am we were all up and the children were gathering together the various hidden eggs from around the room.

We had breakfast and then the children did some colouring amd mask making from some Shaun the Sheep printouts Ady had done for them.

Then we got out some egg decorating kits I’d got for them which required blown eggs. That’s not quite as easy as it sounds is it?! 😆

We mixed up the dye and dipped the four we’d managed to blow ready to do more with maybe tomorrow
(note viewing choice in the background 🙂 ). And all this before about 9.00am!

Then we headed off out car boot sale hunting. We went to the one in Tesco’s car boot sale – I think Tesco’s all over the place were holding boot sales in the car parks today and this one was massive. We got loads, most of it to be put away for presents including loads of jigsaw puzzles, an X box game, more construction toys and some Polly Pocket stuff. I also in the last few moments spotted a bag with a Barbie duvet cover and pillowcase and a set of curtains. We recently got Davies some W&G bedding on ebay and Tarly has been angling for some Barbie bedding ever since. She also had curtains which had been Davies’ up in Manchester in her bedroom too. It was marked up at a fiver but he took £2.50 for the lot and chucked in a lampshade too, so her bedroom is well and truly Barbie-d up 🙂 Not where I’d like to be waking up each morning admittedly, but she loves it 🙂
.

We had lunch (roast lamb, it was lovely 🙂 Davies spent some time asking me why the mother sheep didn’t protect her lambs when people killed them so we could eat them, but in a very interested rather than emotional way and then he complimented me on how lovely the lamb had been after he’d eaten it all :lol:. That’s my boy! 😉 ) and after a brief interlude in the garden with some rather raucous water fights (that was just me and Ady actually, the children cheered us on rather than got involved!) we loaded Davies’ bike into the car and drove down to a different stretch of beach. It was really busy down there but Davies managed a bit of a run on his bike and should easily manage to get the stablilizers off this Summer I reckon 🙂 Tarly walked along a very high wall holding my hand.
and then we parked the bike and went down to the sea where predictably the children got wet, took their clothes off and got wetter, played in the sea until their teeth were chattering and then we had to dress them in an odd variety of clothing (Davies – wearing Ady’s sweatshirt as a dress coupled with his shoes but no socks) / be piggy backed back to the car (Tarly – which meant my back got all wet from her soggy clothes.) but they did have a ball 🙂

We came home and the children had a hot bath to warm back up and then I used up the remaining blown eggs (I’d made yorkshire puddings with some of them at lunchtime) to make pancakes. The children had them with easter egg chocolate melted on top. Then I popped out to collect a camp kitchen from a freecycler. It is very in need of attention but a good going over with a wire brush and a coat of hammerite should fix it and coming from freecycle it was well within our budget ;).

There was a mammoth car boot sale on the localish green today so we headed over to that first thing. It was almost too big with no logic to the layout or organised rows or anything – car boot sales and the like should always be organised by people like Helen who like to categorise and order, in neatly formed rows, by type of merchandise on offer with clearly marked prices and so on. 😆 Scarlett and I went off together and Ady went with Davies as it is just not feasible to walk in a foursome round such bedlam. Tarly got 3 Barbie books including another annual which hasn’t been filled in at all so she’s been enjoying putting that right. Then we spotted a Barbie laptop (very similar to this one) – Davies has a V Tech one that my Mum got him from a charity shop ages ago and it’s one of those toys I’d have never bought him but have been surprised at how much he plays with it – often in bed at night or bringing it out in the car. The woman was telling me how she didn’t know if it even worked and how it had been in her garage for ages and then opened it up to find it did work and decided she wanted £3 for it. I offered £2, she refused and held out for £3 so Tarly and I started to walk away. She came chasing after us saying she’d take £2 after all. 🙂 It looked pretty grubby so I was thinking I might have still paid too much but when we got it home it cleaned up perfectly and she loves it, and they cost loads more than I’d realised new so that was a bit of a bargain – wish I’d kept it back for Christmas or birthday now! She then decided we needed to get something for Davies next so with her eagle eyes she soon spotted a Trapdoor annual and we got that for him – again totally unmarked so he has already filled out his own name in the ‘this book belongs to…’ bit. Grand total of £3.50 spent by Tarly and me.

Ady and Davies had got a free Shaun the sheep rucksack because Davies convinced the stall holder what a fan he was but Ady refused to shell out any money for it (we already have one at home in our ‘collection’ and it was very grubby. It’s been through the wash and is now drying on the line looking pretty much like new :). And two identical Wallace and Gromit alarm clocks, bringing our Wallace and Gromit alarm clock count up to 3 now 🙄 and a W&G air freshner too. Their grand total spend was £3.00 so bargains galore all round :).

We then popped into Sainsburys for a few bits and pieces, Boots where Tarly and I went and chose a new hairbrush each. She has suddenly decided she enjoys brushing my hair and as we were previously a non-brushing household (Ady clearly doesn’t need a hairbrush, Davies doesn’t need one either, I have never really bothered and Scarlett has always been averse to brushing) all of our hairbrushes were either cheap and nasty hair pulling ones or novelty pink plastic ones. Lucy has a lovely soft hairbrush which Tarly always likes to use on her own hair when we go round there and it makes it all shiny and glossy too so we invested in a couple of nice proper hairbrushes. :). We also popped into the next door shoe shop which sells real proper crocs rather than the cheapo imitation ones Tarly and I are sporting just to check what the difference is. The real ones are far more shoe-like, clearly better quality and maybe slightly heavier, but I’m still very happy with the ones we have in terms of price. 🙂

We came home for lunch and to make some rice crispie cake chocolate nests with mini eggs in them. I made the nests and Scarlett was in charge of putting out the cake cases and putting mini eggs in each nest. Then back out again to drop Easter eggs off for my parents and Frazer. My Mum is ill – some sort of flu bug which is laying her very low and she’s not someone prone to illness or giving in to it, so we won’t be seeing them this weekend. Dropped their eggs off and collection a couple from them to the kids, kept my distance from ill people and then we went over to Chris and Julie’s.

The children played in the garden, Julie made little Easter baskets which they all decorated and then we sent them inside the house while we hid loads of mini eggs round the garden before letting them out to find them. 🙂 We ate some of the crispie nests we’d taken over and I would have pictures but my camera appears to have died. Ady is convinced it is due to me keeping it in my bag /pocket rather than a proper case round my neck coupled with it going to the beach 3 times this week – I am more convinced it is just retired. Fortunately one thing we are not short of in this house is digital cameras, which is just as well as I peeped on ebay with a view to replacing mine and they still go for loads of money :shock:.

We left there around 6pm ish to get home in time for Dr Who (not to watch it, we did that later while eating dinner, just needed to get home in time to tape it) and bed for the kids. We’ve laid out the eggs they’ve had from various family / friends topped up with lots of hidden mini eggs and now we are actually without any arrangements tomorrow which is lovely. I think we’ll probably eat lots of chocolate, maybe have a roast dinner at lunchtime (lamb, just to complete the circle of life from earlier this week 😉 ) and then maybe walk down to the beach :). Had a very funny conversation with the children about what the Easter Bunny has got to do with Jesus and all his hokey -cokey dead alive shenanigans but managed to liken it to Jesus / Father Christmas without actually explaining anything. I think the lure of presents / chocolate is probably sufficient reason not to worry too much about all the politics of the season for your average 4 and 6 year olds really. 😆

you couldn’t see how….

Oh how I have loved today, it has been the most cherishable of days, the most held in high esteem, lauded, honoured and most splendid of days. 😆

You’ll never guess where we’ve been. Really, you just won’t. Well ok maybe you will actually. Maybe you’ll have looked at my flickr account and seen that although the scenery is the same the childrens’ clothes have changed, maybe I’ve even become predictable (perish the thought ;)) or maybe you just know me well. And let’s face it, if you don’t know me by now, etc.

So this morning started with Wonderpets, as all good morning should. I really like the Wonderpets (and yes, I did have to go back and amend the description of my emotions towards them there 😉 ) but you know, I’ve been similarly entranced with children’s tv shows before so let’s not dwell on that (I had a favourite Wiggle once and I can still talk with eloquence on why I don’t like Sarah Jane from Tikkabilla as those at NicCamp will atest). The children were playing with wooden blocks and geomags so they tidied them up and got dressed while I hung washing out (hurrah for the weather which means although we get home all sandy and salty each day I bung clothes straight in the machine as we walk through the door and they are ready to wear again two days later 🙂 I erm, really like it ;)) and chucked lots of picnic food in a bag.

We headed over to Lucy’s where the children instantly went out to join Richard and Rebecca in the garden allowing Lucy and I to actually talk. 🙂 Well actually Davies went out in the garden, Tarly sat and played with a necklace machine but she did it quietly. They came back in to play with playdough (but in the kitchen so we continued to talk) and then we had lunch. They all went back in the garden for a while and then we walked across to the beach.

Having learnt my lesson about the child abuse that is taking kids to the beach and forbidding them to actually go in the sea we were appropriately togged up for it and they spent a mostly happy hour or so playing on the rocks. The rocks which have big signs saying you should not climb on them but attract my kids like magnets and despite them both having rock induced injuries currently would still be the first thing they chose to clamber on at the beach so I am considering to be enhancing all sorts of skills such as climbing, judging danger and peril, spacial awareness and as Lucy said some children their age live on rocks 😆 !!

They then stripped off to play chase the waves, built some sandcastles with their bare hands and generally had a great time. It was ace 🙂 Obviously there are photos on flickr ;). As we left the beach there was an older boy doing impresssive stuff like riding down the steps on his bike and performing stunt-y type tricks so the children stood and were impressed by him for ages before we persuaded them to leave. They ‘played bikes’ on the way home and in Lucy’s garden when we got back. Scarlett was very funny – I told her we had to go home and she said ‘but we’re playing bikes and we need a big area ‘ to which I smiled and she elaborated ‘we can’t play it near the road that would be dangerouser’ – adore, erm, love, erm, quite enjoy that four year old expression and vocab :). Davies had copied ‘PUBLIC TOILETS’ from a sign yesterday using chalk from the stones on the beach onto the concrete path so he was pleased to see it was still there and I admired once again how clear his letter formation was – I know it was copied but it’s interesting to see how he now copies up to 3 letters at a time and actually says to himself out loud ‘t, o, i’ before looking down to write rather than referring back each time to see how the letters are formed.

And that was it. I’m sure I’ve forgotten loads of incidental conversations or nuggets of information but mostly it’s just been a lovely week. The children have had their absolute fill of sea air, played with their friends and cousins, enjoyed the sunshine, learnt stacks, been wonderful. I’ve worked a couple of mornings which has felt perfect as it’s not interfered with our afternoons out but has earnt money and given me some time other than being Mummy. And I know it’s been the Easter holidays so they wouldn’t have been in school / nursery this week anyway but every time Ady has rung me from work to ask where I am and my answer has been ‘on the beach’ I have sat and watched my children having the time of their lives and thanked once again the fact that this is not just a brief two week window out of our normal routine, school based life style, this is actually what we do each and every single day if we choose to. And you know what, I’ve really rather ‘liked’ it. 🙂

On Wednesday evening Ady was tidying a shelf in the playroom and came across a cd and book from Usborne which had come in the starter pack when I joined as a rep to get loads of cheap books ;). Scarlett was desperate to have it so while she got the kitchen scissors out and set about liberating it from it’s totally OTT plastic wrapping Ady got the cd walkman thingy for her.

She then sat utterly transfixed with it and listened to it twice over, all the while following the words with her finger. I’d thought she was just randomly turning pages (although it must have some noise on the cd to tell you when to turn) but she did indeed seem to be following it properly. When I was little my Mum got us the Storyteller magazine and tapes which I so looked forward to and sat for hours listening to and following the stories in the magazine (having just googled that I can’t believe I would only have been 8 then). We’ve a good selection of books and cd stories in the childrens’ section at work, I must pick some up for her 🙂

and I would like to take single handed credit for any revival the Proclaimers are about to enjoy, I almost single handedly discovered them 😉 after all!

I worked this morning, having already done a fair amount of chasing about before actually going to work. My Dad is without his van this week so he asked if he could have my car this morning which necessitated picking him up (with children) and taking us all back home in time before Julie, Jack and Maisie arrived to look after D&S while I was at work, Dad taking me to work (I drove) and then having my car for the morning before coming and picking me up at 1pm when I finished work (he drove that time). But we managed it 🙂 I don’t often see such hours of the morning and even more rarely do I venture out into them fully dressed with fully dressed children (of course we frolick naked on the front lawn on a regular basis 😉 ) but I adore this time of year so it was lovely to be out in morning fresh air with the children off to collect Grandad. We were singing the Pink Panther theme tune on the way and Scarlett declared ‘Grandad is the pink panther!’ when he got in the car which led to a faintly surreal deconstruction of why Grandad cannot possibly be the Pink Panther as he is neither a Gentleman, a scholar or an acrobat. which led to full and much discussed explaination of the term ‘scholar’ to which Scarlett justified her belief in Grandad as the Pink Panther with ‘well he is a builder’
Me, Dad & Davies ‘ye-es?’
Scarlett ‘well he has a hammer!’
😆
I do get all my flights of utter fantasy from my Dad so to have he and I in a confined space along with a six and a four year old also prone to utter nonsense for prolonged periods of time is a recipe for the construction of an entire alternative universe, which we’d managed before we got back to my house. 🙂 When he’s on form there is no better company than my Dad :). I updated him on all things CCCS when we’d regained our composure and then Julie arrived so Dad took me to work.

It was busy again this morning – I quite like working mornings actually, aside from the nightmare of logistics that is childcare in the mornings as I am forced to get my lazy arse out of bed long before The Wonderpets is on and I am home shortly after 1pm which still leaves loads of the day to do ‘stuff’. I had a nice morning, finally confirming that I won’t have to do a mercy dash back to work on the last Friday of Kessingland 🙂 and having great fun doing the de-brief from my last training session (the one with the chaotic parking!). I also sat in on storytime this morning – the half an hour or so every Thursday that is dedicated to under 5s coming in for stories, singing and colouring in type stuff. I was introduced in the style of a TV presenter as ‘my friend Nicola’ by my colleague and I sat on the floor cross legged and sang along with Ten Fat Sausages and the Wheels On The Bus. It was ace 🙂 I’m due on a training course to learn how to do it properly but frankly if I can be paid my hourly rate for sitting cross legged on the floor talking to 3 yos about power rangers and singing Incey Wincey Spider I have totally fallen on my feet :lol:.

Dad picked me up and came back for lunch. I made all the children tidy up on the basis that I hadn’t played with any of the toys strewn around my house so I shouldn’t have to tidy them up and then I dropped Dad home again before coming back and leading the way to the beach (again!). Julie and I sat in a sheltered bit while the wellied up children had a whale of a time clambering on rocks, playing chase the waves and generally getting utterly drenched. Scarlett jumped down some steps on the way back to the car and we were all hysterical when the water sploshed out of the tops of her wellies as she landed! 😆 Pics on flickr – I tried to sort out the easy way to blog them but failed miserably and am now in a huff with the whole thing 😆 While I was at work the children had all been doing loads of Easter crafts as supplied by Julie who is just the children’s activity queen bless her 🙂 So Ady spent ages hoovering up bunny and chick shaped confetti tonight :lol:.

The kids are so enjoying the beach and all our regular outings to it. There is no denying that the main attraction is the sea itself – they adore teasing it and chasing the waves which I recall loving myself as a child. They enjoy climbing on the ‘danger, do not climb on these rocks’ rocks and daring the sea to splash them :). Last week while we sat on the beach Ady said to me ‘and this is why our house is worth so much money’ and I guess he’s right. It’s not the nicest beach in the country, possibly not even the nicest along the south coast but it is where 1000s of people choose to spend their hard earned money on a two week holiday every year so I guess it must have something going for it. We are here, we did miss it when we didn’t live so close and now that I can actually sit from afar and watch them enjoy it rather than be there holding hands the whole time it really does seem to be offering ‘fun for all the family!’.

We finished off tonight with me reading The Easter Story as borrowed from work which still didn’t answer Davies’ question about why it is ‘good’ Friday if Jesus died but at least gave me a slight edyoocatin’ buzz 🙂

yesterday, that I had the annual review with the CCCS last night. Full details over on buy me love for anyone interested. 🙂

I worked this morning but it was super busy and the four hours flew by. I got home to find very happy children and Lucy still ploughing her way through ‘The Naughtiest Girl in School’ :). Davies was thrilled to have gotten to the next level on his Were Rabbit X box game (he’s not played X box for a couple of weeks but picked it back up again this week, mostly to play Monkey ball with Scarlett but as ever when he leaves something alone for a while, when he comes back to it he has somehow improved). I got changed (Lucy ordered me to – she insisted she wanted her friend Nic back rather than library woman :lol:), had something to eat and drink and then we headed off out. Scarlett’s croc-a-likes had arrived so we gave our shoes their first trip into the world together.

We went up to the farm doing lambing – I think I linked to it earlier in the week – and Lucy, R & R came too. It is just the other side of the downs from where we live. At first glimpse it looked like it might be a disappointment as there was only 3 sheds – one with cows and a couple of calves and two with sheep. But we paid our £7 and ploughed on in anyway. Frankly they are coining it in for not a lot but actually we more than got our money’s worth. There were two sheds set up pretty similarly – in larger pens were pregnant ewes and in smaller ones there were individual ewes with the single, twins or triplet lambs she had birthed. There were two large pens in one of the sheds with 5 or 6 lambs each in for you to climb in and pet and play with which all the children loved. There were lambs being born hither and thither with lots of ewes inbetween their first and second lambs being born, plenty wandering round with amniotic sacks hanging out and lots of newborn lambs with their umbilical cords still attached. We’d been there a while before Davies and I managed to be in just the right spot to watch one being born though. It was the first live birth I’ve seen of any creature so I just thought it was magical 🙂 Davies asked lots of questions and learnt (whether he liked it or not) about waters, contractions, labour, birth, transition, placentas and why the birth might smart a bit but the bleeding afterwards is not painful. I found myself telling him in a loud enough voice to make myself shush a bit how the blood is similar to monthly menstrual blood in that you are not bleeding because you are hurting or injured. 😳 He really loved watching it all though and looked at me with eyes shining when the lamb came out with the final push and slithered to the ground to be licked clean by it’s mother.

The children also played on the haybales and generally had a great time. Davies’ favourite animals are sheep (partially due to Shaun the sheep and partially from way back when we went to the South of England show when he was four and he fell in love with one there) so this was his dream afternoon out really. 🙂 Pictures on flickr – I might edit some in this post tomorrow.

We had a quick wander up to the little church next to the farm where the children had a poke around, Lucy and I admired the 11th century wall paintings and Davies wanted to ‘play churches’ before some more people came in so I ushered everyone out incase they wanted to view the church in peace. We dropped Lucy & co home and came home ourselves. Ady pretty much followed us in and was an able assistant in the kitchen as I made quiche for our dinner and the kids tea. The children had a bath to wash the straw out of their hair and then I took Davies up to bed.

As promised I brought my laptop and asked him to dictate his Velveteen Rabbit sequel. That needs some editing but he also dictated a story about a fish and then I got him to dictate a guest blog post for Monster & Teeny, which was an interesting exercise as I literally just typed without any prompting him so it was intriguing to see which bits of the day he pulled out as worthy of note. 🙂

Apprentice watching this evening for real shouting at the TV stuff – love it 🙂 Tomorrow I’m working again in the morning and then doing *something* as yet unplanned with Julie & co in the afternoon. Busy, busy, busy. 🙂

By pure coincidence I’ve done a lot of trawling through memories the last couple of days. Yesterday I was trying to find a disc containing some writing I did about 10 years ago. I didn’t find it but I did come across loads of discs of photos from 2001 – 2004, many of which were previously unflickrd. So I sat and did that, smiling at the chubby baby that was Davies, the practically hairless toddler that was Scarlett (oh how that has changed!) and remembering all the happy days of years gone by with very little children through looking at their images.

Today I was thinking about those first months when we started to think about Home Education. I knew I would be able to chart it by finding archives of the newsgroup uk.people.parents where I’d been posting since 2000 and first met Alison, Chris & Helen and various others who are now real life friends. So I spent a very happy hour finding my early postings from there when I had a newborn Davies, again when I had a newborn Scarlett and a toddler Davies and finally tracked down my first questions on there about Home Education, which led to me finding Muddlepuddle. And the rest as they say…I was actually looking so I could do a post on Monster & Teeny about how we found out about HE, which I did indeed do, but I got more caught up in a trip down memory lane about the things which concerned me 4 and 6 years ago, the toddler years, the potty training, the sleeping and so on. Now of course I have my blog so I can go back and see what I was pondering on this date two years ago or whenever but it’s nice that actually all of the children’s lives are charted by images and my words at the time right from the very beginning.

I’d wanted to do *something* with the children today, having been working for a day and a half last week followed by all of Saturday away and then Davies out on Sunday I wanted to grab some time with them again before I am back at work again tomorrow. There is a localish farm advertising Lambing which we’d talked about taking Tarly to see when Davies was bunny hunting but the shoe hunt meant we didn’t so I had that half in mind depending on the weather for this afternoon. The children played Xbox first thing while I was doing my online stuff, then Tarly played with her Polly Pockets for ages and Davies and I planned to get out his potters wheel (birthday present from Em which we’ve been meaning to do something with for, well six months :oops:) but it needs batteries so that was written off until we get some. Davies had a plan to make bowls to collect easter eggs in on Sunday (we always hide loads of mini eggs around the house for them to find in a drunken Saturday evening annual tradition the night before Easter Sunday :lol:) so I’ll try and remember to get some batteries for it so we can have a go at that maybe tomorrow. So he got down a mecchano kit (another birthday present we’ve not got round to looking at before) and we did that instead. Bloody fiddly stuff that isn’t it?! He did a good job of following the pictorial instructions and gathering the right bits and putting it together was a collaborative effort based on whether it required strength, dexterity or littler fingers in order to do each bit 😆 Scarlett finished with her Polly Pockets and did some more colouring and drawing in her princess book. It was an activity book she chose with her world book day token (I think I put another quid or two towards it) but it has been out pretty much every day since. She has syphoned off her favourite pens and crayons from the playroom and keeps them in an empty chocolate box which she takes off to her room every night to sit and colour and ‘write’ in bed and then brings into the lounge every morning to continue through the day. She is constantly forming letters, writing her name and copying words from things. I’m really enjoying watching it all from such a relaxed viewpoint as with Davies at that age I was still fretting about pen grip, whether he was starting a letter in the ‘right’ place to form it and so on. Her colouring is really tidy and she is constantly amazing me with how many letters she knows and that she knows all the numbers past 10 written down.

Then we had some lunch! 😉

In the afternoon the children wanted to play with the wooden train track and it had clouded over and infact did rain very briefly so I put the lambing plan on hold and had some laptop time while they built an enormous train track round the lounge and shared out all the trains and people.

Another feature of today was Scarlett brushing my hair. She must have done it for a couple of hours in total, spraying it with anti tangle spray and sitting brushing it for ages at a time, then coming back an hour or so later and doing it all over again. I *adore* having my hair played with / brushed so I was in heaven 🙂 I also spent the day wearing my new shoes to check how comfy they were and because like a little kid with new shoes I had to keep looking at them and smiling. 🙂 I’ve wanted some crocs ever since Layla and Claudie got their’s last summer but haven’t been able to afford any. Lucy’s SIL has a lovely green pair which I’ve been coveting having seen her twice in the last week so I looked on ebay and found some very cheap copies so ordered them 🙂 I’ve no idea how they actually measure up to the originals but I’m loving them lots. 🙂 Tarly also fell in love with them so I ordered her a pink pair of copies which should be here tomrrow or Thursday hopefully. 🙂 We’re the pretend croc girls 😆

Ady came home with some ladybird books (we seem to be collecting them – really must sort the bookshelves out around the house properly. I’ve swapped a load of story books over between the children’s bedrooms so they both have some new bedtime story material but I really need to clear my chicklit shelf once and for all, get shot of all the board books and sort the shelves out properly. I feel some spring cleaning coming on :). Scarlett and I sat and looked at a very basic book which had very little writing but lots of interactive stuff like showing four pictures and asking you to tell the story. She really liked that. :). I took Davies up to bed and read him Mr Nosey, a book about a treemouse in a forest which I’m pretty sure we’ve also had a version of from the library (it was a Book People special offer one in a set of 6 such tales IIRC) and then as he was being so lovely and I don’t read him stories anywhere near as often as I should I went and grabbed a load of the books from Tarly’s bookcase and chose The Velveteen Rabbit to read him. I’ve never actually read it myself although I know it’s a bit of a classic. Our version is from M&S (originally, I picked it up in a charity shop somewhere over the years like pretty much all of our books – either book people, ex library or charity shop 🙂 ) and the illustration of the rabbit is all but identical to his current favourite soft toy rabbit (which he’s been taking everywhere saying it’s the Easter Bunny – now it is the velveteen rabbit 🙂 ). He sat enraptured for the whole story, despite the language being very flowery and some of the words requiring me to explain them. He was so taken with the story he has already started speculating what could happen next (he wants the boy to realise that the bunny he sees was indeed once his toy) and he is also intrigued at the idea of an illness called scarlet fever 😆 so I suggested he could write a sequel if he wanted. He is planning one called The Velveteen Rabbit Comes Back and he is going to tell it to me while I type it out, then we’re going to print it off and then he’s going to illustrate it apparently. So that’ll be a nice thing to do. He went to sleep still muttering about plot lines with the intention of dreaming about it so he could get some ideas in his sleep :).

We’re going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day, we’re not scared.

Etc.

Davies had a bunny hunt to attend today run by his Beaver group at a local scout campsite. There were loads of local Beaver groups there, so about 50-60 little boys in all. Loved the fact that another small mammal was introduced into the day’s agenda. 😆

This morning we went out to a newly opened local farm shop, on the hunt for good prices and quality for our free range / organic meat other than at the supermarket. This month I’m aiming to do our food shopping even cheaper and by doing some shopping around – hopefully meat from the butcher / farm shop, fruit and veg from the greengrocers etc. just making use of the supermarkets for the cheaper bulk value lines. We’ll have to see how that goes, but we didn’t get anywhere with the local farm shop anyway. 🙄

Then we went to the big shoe shack type out of town shoe emporium as both children have been complaining of rubbing shoes this week and at the beginning of March when I took them to be measured they told me to come back in a month. We walked in and managed to attract the attention of one of the assistants who came and confirmed that yes, both children needed new shoes and then put them on the spangly measuring machine which by the power of the footrprint comes up with their shoes size on a magical screen after they’ve trodden on it for a few seconds. Unfortunately being mid season all that was on the shelves was half price fur lined boots or sandals. Or trainers. Tarly really dislikes trainers – I’ve previously bought at least three pairs over the years that she’s reluctantly agreed to in the shoeshop but once home has refused to wear, fur lined boots while a bargain at half price are not the thing to be buying in April when the weather is looking promising and the sandals were a little too premature when we were still having hail storms last week.

So we came home and had a grand shoe trying on session. Tarly had one pair of My Little Pony flip flops which came free on a magazine which fitted and that was about it. Davies had a pair of purple DMs with silver stars which he has finally grown into, his trainers which still fit and his black Badger shoes which he will still be fine in for the sake of one hour a week. Davies’s feet haven’t actually grown in shoe size, just in width so currently his sandals from last year also still fit. So I’m hoping he’s on the verge of a growth spurt and will hold off buying him anything else until he hits a size 12! 🙂

We had lunch, Ady got the roast dinner on for later and we headed off to drop Davies off for his bunny hunt. He was really confident about it despite Ady and I both remembering (not within his earshot) about how nervous we’d have been as children about group things like that. When we got there he quite happily went off with a leader (not one he’s actually ever met before either) before spotting his pack of Beavers and dashing off to join them. Apparently they did some hunting in the woodlands for chocolate eggs to bring home (he had quite a haul in his little plastic bag, which he shared with Tarly with only a little parental encouragement 😉 ) and plastic ones to win points for their team. We arrived back early and watched him dashing around with the others looking like he was having a whale of a time. 🙂

Meanwhile we took Tarly off on a shoe hunt (we’re going on a shoe hunt, we’re going to catch some size tens, what a beautiful day, we’re not scared’ etc.). We tried Tescos, we tried M&S where they had lovely shoes but too narrow for her feet and we drove to the nearby big Woolworths which also only had trainers, dressing up shoes or fur lined boots. Finally with a mere half an hour to go before a) the shops shut and b) we needed to go and collect Davies we stopped at a Peacocks (cheapo store selling high fashion items at bargain prices 🙂 ) and got her a pair of bright pink sequin covered baseball boots in the style of Lelli Kelly shoes but for a tenner reduced to £2! And a pair of pink flowery toe post flip flops too. 🙂 And a new swimsuit each for her and Davies – all for under a tenner 🙂 Result!

We collected Davies and came home for dinner. No idea now what happened to the rest of the day, it all seemed to blur away somewhat.

Today we had to go into town first thing to move money about and amazingly for us were out of the house dead on time. We parked and walked to the Halifax where we joined the many other mothers with young children getting asked lots of questions about everything. The difference of course being that everywhere around us I heard tsking and people exchanging dismay at it being the Easter holidays. You know I hate this trend for openly telling strangers infront of your children that it is a nightmare to be spending time with them and you can’t wait for them to be back in school. I can’t think of anyone I know that I would make a comment like that about infront of them without seriously hurting their feelings. Why the hell would you want to do that infront of your children? Why the hell would you feel like that anyway? 🙄 And I’d far rather be standing in a queue in the building society with them, talking about the ‘cashier number X please’ sign and guessing which it will be next, talking about how a cashpoint machine works, explaining why there were lower down counters with pens for people the same height as them (no, they aren’t for children, they’re for disabled people) etc. than standing there alone. We went to the other bank and popped into a couple of shops for various things before getting back to the car with moments to spare before our parking ticket ran out.

We went round to Lucy’s where her SIL and nephews were already and the children played out in the garden. After lunch we debated what to do next and decided to head over to the beach. I did ask D&S *not*to go too near the sea and they did listen for a while but the lure of the ocean proved too much and eventually they walked out on the row of sea defences laughing as the sea came flooding in below them. They got braver and started to swing on the poles until Davies slipped in and drenched one leg / foot. They both got splashed until eventually they were wet up the knees and it became no worse to just paddle in the sea. I let it go as they were having a great time and it does seem pretty cruel to take small children to the beach and tell them not to go in the sea which is sort of the main attraction. But I did lecture them on the way back to Lucy’s about listening to what I’d said and that their shoes probably wouldn’t be dry tomorrow, so they were both remorseful at least. And they did have a really good time 🙂 We had no spare clothes (really must sort my car out ready for summer pursuits with spare clothes and towels and suncream) and they were far too soggy and sandy to stay dressed so we headed for home where they spent ages playing X box monkey ball together and then did loads of drawing.

Ady got home late and I went out to do the food shopping which made for a very late dinner.

Hatchwatch is now at day 22 which is somewhat concerning for eggs which are supposed to have a 21 day incubation. I candled them again tonight and I reckon there are at least a couple which still look promising along with several more which look very unpromising. We’re going to keep candling them each day and see how they go this week.