One word? When seven would do…

Late yesterday Davies told Ady that he *really* wanted to go and see Flushed Away and that he wanted to go and see it with me so Ady had said he’d check with me and see if that was feasible to do today. Due to both of us being paid really early for Christmas we are fairly flush at the moment but I fully anticipate not being able to eat anything other than pasta by the second week in January so in the spirit of ‘living in the moment’ and of knowing full well that if Davies got taken to the cinema Tarly would be (rightfully) pissed off and having also realised that actually Ady has never been to the cinema with the children I checked film times at the two cinemas in Brighton and discovered that you can buy family tickets at really quite reasonable prices. And being one of the few families I know where we only have two children 😉 a family ticket would indeed be suitable for our family at a reasonable price (infact close to the price of a dvd) so we decided to do it.

This morning there was much playing with various Christmas gifts then we left the house around 11am to go to Brighton. We had a quick trip round Asda to purchase fizzy drinks and popcorn at about a fifth of the price it would cost in the cinema (and Tarly and I checked out the clothing sale upstairs – she’ll make a great shopping companion that girl, she picked out a lovely jumper I couldn’t afford for me, which I reluctantly put back on the rail) and then headed to the cinema. The cinema itself was pretty busy but Flushed Away was showing in a screen room which the heating had broken down in which may have contributed to it being really quite empty.

I thought the film was quite good, Ady and the children loved it and thought it was excellent. It was clearly an Aardman production, from the face shapes of the main characters to the references to W&G I spotted at least two of and the Very British Humour, with all the gloss of a Dreamworks production – I enjoyed Hugh Jackmans voice and having image googled him I can see he lives up to that voice 😳

We left Brighton and visited Sainsburys and Tescos on the way home picking up lots of ‘luxury’ food all reduced to 50pence as it’s best before date was up but we bunged in our freezer for future use during leaner times (so those last couple of weeks of January will see us eating bite sized nan bread loaded with chicken jalfrezi, brie in breadcrumbs and the like :lol:). Dinner for the children including the novelty of their Christmas present Big Kids Cutlery.

I’m working in the morning (can it really be Thursday already?) but only for 3 hours due to a pro rata bank holiday time off type thing and am hoping for loads of people hiring out exercise videos, borrowing Atkins diet books and cabbage soup diet manuals in order to satisfy all my stereotypical new years resolutions ideas about people. 😆

and what have we done?

Christmas Eve, which I think might even be my favourite day actually, it still has all the anticipation, but all the fun still ahead of you. The children painted a plate for Ady’s present and then we headed over to Chris and Julie’s for lunch. The children were all in a state of excitement – Davies and Scarlett even more so than Jack and Maisie, but we managed to infect them too 😆 Julie’s Mum is over visiting from Germany for Christmas. The children begged to go and play outside, so thinking any excess energy they could run off would be a good thing they donned coats and shoes and ran around outside for ages. Davies and Jack were out there for nearly 2 hours!

We had lots of picky bits of festive food to eat and listened to Christmas music. The children finally came in and played for a while before it was time for us to go.

We started a tradition a few years ago that the children each get one gift to open on Christmas Eve just before bedtime. It is always pyjamas although I don’t know that either of them have realised that yet 😆 So as soon as we arrived home from C&J’s they were desperate to get to bedtime so they could open their presents.

I did some baking – mince pies, jam tarts for the children, neither of whom like mince pies and then my parents arrived. The children had tea and we listened to the carol service from Kings on tv. It was finally time to open their gifts so that was done and then they put their new pjs on and dashed around the house in darker rooms looking at the flashing rudolph noses on their fronts.

Finally they left out mince pies and brandy for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph and then it was allegedly bedtime. I read them The Night Before Christmas and the last few books in the Christmas Carol advent calendar set.

Of course the general level of excitement meant that it was a full two and a half hours later that they actually went to sleep. but never mind 😆 Davies eventually went to sleep using my patented childhood trick from Christmas Eves gone by of snuggling down and cuddling your favourite toy while pretending to be asleep so that FC still comes. Scarlett fell asleep with me singing Christmas songs very slowly and lullaby style to her.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve Indian takeaway dinner with my parents before they headed off around 11pm. We gathered all the various Christmas presents from their hiding places aound the house and assembled them under the tree. Ady ate the carrot and mince pies, drank the brandy and went to bed. I sprinkled flour round my DM footprints from the hearth to the tree to make snowy Santa prints, saw in Christmas morning midnight with Ali online and then headed to bed myself.

Within about 20 minutes of me getting into bed Davies appeared asking ‘is it time to get up yet?’ 😆 We persuaded him it wasn’t and he got into bed with us. He seemed to be awake every half hour through the night though asking if it was morning yet, Ady gave up and went and slept in his bed, while I managed to persuade him it wasn’t morning and he should sleep a bit longer until giving up just after 7am. This has been his first Christmas that he has been totally overexcited about, he had a list of things he was desperate to receive and he just couldn’t wait to see if FC was going to bring them for him. Cute but rather exhausting! 😉

We all got up, Davies went to wake Tarly and they launched straight in to the piles of presents.

They opened about five gifts each and we had a pause for making drinks. Ady noticed a small card from Sussex Police had been put through the door in the early hours of the morning to say that there was a crime number relating to acts of criminal damage during the night. If any damage had been done to our property then we should contact them. So I went outside to look round the house, garden and cars to check for damage. We have a very small low fence across the very bottom of our garden which was always a temporary measure to stop the children climbing over the low wall onto the pavement while a lavendar bush grew tall enough to remove the fence. It had either been kicked or fallen into and pushed down but that appears to be the only damage we’d suffered. Further down the road lots of For Sale and Sold boards had been yanked down and replaced in other ‘comedy’ locations. Simple Christmas Eve drunken high jinks I suppose. Certainly not something we’ll bother contacting the police to pursue.

Drinks made and damage checked for we resumed present opening for about another hour.

The children were delighted with everything they’d been bought, Davies had everything on his list and more. I feel like we really struck the right balance this year – what we could afford, what we had space in the house to accomodate, what the children are interested in and enjoy doing and of course what we want them to have ;). Plenty of disposable crafty type bits, more xbox games, more Barbie stuff, more W&G things, a camera for Davies with a remote control to film his own animations and various activity based bits and pieces. All of which sounds costly but actually most of which is ebay, charity shop or pound shop purchases. All the ebay purchases were funded by ebay selling and Ady’s charity shop finds are subject to whatever loose change he has lying around in his car.

I’d got Ady a load of Laurel & Hardy dvds which he loves and a memory stick card for his phone to increase it memory. Unfortunately despite thinking I’d done sufficient research on it I managed to get the wrong one, so that’s been put back on ebay and the correct one purchased on a BIN ready to arrive later this week. He’d got me a cd I wanted, alcohol, chocolates and a handpainted mug from the children to take to work as my ‘special mug’ (they all have one there!).

At midday we packed ourselves up with the children choosing two presents each to take and headed over to my parents for the rest of the day. It always seems rather cruel to me to give a child a load of new toys and gifts and then drag them away from them but we simply don’t have the space to cater for lots of people for Christmas dinner and they have acres of space over there so that’s where we went. We arrived for another round of gift exchanging. Frazer had got Davies and Scarlett some geomags (pastel ones for Tarly and some orange and black ones for Davies) which went down very well. Mum and Dad always get them £100 premium bonds each for Christmas and birthdays but had got a few small gifts for them each too. Davies got a tripod for his new camera and a Wallace and Gromit watch, Scarlett got various more Barbie bits and pieces (due of course to me either buying them for them and getting the money back from them or reserving things online for them to go and collect :roll:).


I helped Mum get dinner sorted (we had turkey and Nigella’s gammon in coke, several trays of roasted potatoes, leeks, carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips) stuffing, bread sauce and yorkshire puddings. Always amuses me that someone who spent 15 odd years owning restuarants and catering for funerals goes to pieces when faced with five adults and two children to feed. I guess mass catering is a rather different science to home cooking maybe. We ate about 4.30pm and very lovely it was too. 🙂

We sat around awhile before having Christmas pudding – it’s the brief moments of just sitting there while it just so happens to be Christmas Day that I like the most really at Christmas.

More playing with children’s gifts and then we left there to come home around 7.30pm. The children fell asleep very quickly (unsurprisingly). We had a bath – I used my bath bomb which had arrived from Ali along with one each for Ady, Davies and Scarlett. Mine was lovely – it was all pinky and orangey, smelt gorgeous, covered me in glitter and came with a little note buried inside wishing me all the best for 2007 and enclosing a single laminated lentil for emergency use. 😆 We did wonder whether it was made with couscous but assume it was safe for carnivorous use. 😉 Thanks Ali, it was lovely. 🙂

We watched Little Britain – well Ady did, I fell asleep on the sofa, where I dozed on and off until about 11.30pm before staggering to bed.

Today has been a perfect Boxing Day. The children have played with their presents. Davies has xboxed on Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Cat in the Hat and had a go on Tarly’s Hello Kitty game, Tarly has painted her wellies, we all had a go at their pom-pom animal kits and Davies’ ballon fun kit including balloon modelling (thanks Lucy 🙂 ). Ady showed Davies how to use his new camera and tripod and he took a load of self timer shots using delayed timer shots and the remote control – see those over here. They made me laugh actually as aswell as highlighting how alike Ady and Scarlett look and how alike Davies and I look, the ones of Davies and I have the same expression on our faces on almost every one.

Tarly has played with her massive box of make up, Davies has played with his W&G playhouses, we’ve watched classic TV and eaten loads of lovely food. My Christmas cake has been cut into and is delicious, really proud of it. 🙂 Tomorrow we have more of the same planned.

I had a plan to be blogging slightly more tonight, but the fact is, it’s just chimed 12 and the right place for me to be is in bed.

So here is a picture taken today of four very excited Goddard children on Christmas Eve.

I’ll be back with more as and when, but in the meantime:

A very, very, very, Merry Merry Christmas 🙂

Very festive day here today, with a soundtrack provided by The Pogues. Ady picked their album up at the library yesterday and the children have gone mad for them so we have been listening to ‘Irish Rover’, ‘Fairytale of New York’ and ‘Fiesta’ ever since.

Today we did our round of driving round delivering all the local Christmas cards, some of which we knocked on the door and exchanged festive tidings with the recipients and some we shoved through the letterbox and ran away from 😆 Then we found a parking space and walked round town for an hour or so. I wanted to get one last Christmas present for my brother and then happened upon some really cool paint your own wellies kits, so picked up one each for Davies and Scarlett. We wandered around for a bit soaking up the atmosphere, popped into Bhs where I took great pleasure in messing up a towel display and laughing slightly maniacally (oh what dreadful memories I have of my two Christmasses working there) and then we came home.

This afternoon the children watched Chicken Little (again from the library) and ate popcorn and I made some chocolate ginger truffles for my Dad. Then we marzipanned and iced the Christmas cake and made some decorations to go it. I made a Santa, Davies made a snowman, Ady made a penguin and a Christmas tree and Scarlett made a very pretty but fairly unidentifiable lump of icing. Looks pretty good – just needs a ribbon to edge it and then I’ll take some photos.

The children took forever to fall asleep tonight, reckon tomorrow night will be no different 😆 I’ve wrapped the last of the presents except for two things still to put finishing touches to making tomorrow.

Really looking forward to the next few days – seeing Chris and Julie tomorrow and have Mum and Dad over tomorrow night for traditional Christmas Eve takeaway and presents under the tree assembling so no guarantees I’ll be around much.

Ady and Davies went off Christmas shopping this morning together. Scarlett was pretty engrossed in Barbie.com for ages but finally decided to put on her 12 Dancing princesses film for us to watch and we settled down to make Christmas cards for Ady and Davies. She copied letters to write inside hers to Davies and I was slightly surprised to realise that despite having still fairly unformed letters she does indeed already have a handwriting style. I would be able to pick out hers or Davies’ letters and it definitely a style thing rather than a maturity of letter formation thing. I guess it will change over the years but I will keep her card to Davies this year and see if the future echos of a handwriting I glimpsed today do indeed come to pass. She drew a Christmas tree, with candy canes on it and a star.

Davies and Ady arrived home soon afterwards, me and the children painted a mug for Frazer’s Christmas gift from them which was a collaborative effort – Davies painted ‘Frazer’ on it and Tarly did lots of embellishing (our new favourite word round here 🙂 ). We had lunch and then I got all libraried up and they dropped me at work for the afternoon.

It was rather busier than it has been with most of the sections being crammed full of books (particularly the children’s area) and the large print and spoken word being very empty with lots of older folk who are clearly going to be alone for Christmas stocking up on things to read / listen to. Bit tear-jerking that. I spent quite a lot of the afternoon on the counter and really enjoyed talking to customers, bantering and wishing them Merry Christmas. I’d almost forgotten that actually one of the main reasons I did so well in Retail is that I am indeed a ‘People Person’ – a phrase I have always loathed but is probably really quite accurate in describing me, I do enjoy dealing with people, building relationships and enjoying the company of others. I am also a self-confessed people watcher, so the great mix of folk coming through the doors of a small town local library is people-watching fodder galore :). I am enjoying being more and more competant on the counter system too and being able to be helpful rather than dumbly scanning books in and out. I am also finding, to my utter surprise, that having previously always avoided small children while at work, I now actually do know how to deal with them. Plenty of the books and films they are borrowing are ones I have read with D & S so I am able to chat with them about them when they return them and even recommend other titles. Yesterday a small boy and his mother returned Were-Rabbit so I was able to say that it was my son’s favourite film and ask him what bits he had enjoyed. While he was in the library choosing more books someone brought back another W&G film so I was able to tell them that when they left and pff they went to get that out too. Today I had someone ask me where to find books about cats because she has been ‘adopted’ by a cat which has moved in with her. She found her book but when I checked it out for her we chatted some more and I suggested that the children’s reference area would be equally as good for ‘beginners guides to cat ownership’. I’m really enjoying the being new at the job but being able to offer advice already aspect to the job. 🙂

I am also starting to find my feet a bit more with my colleagues. It is always tricky to know quite where to pitch oneself in a new job and particularly in this one I have struggled somewhat with striking the right tone. I am getting customer service advice off people who have dealt with about 1% of the volume of customers I have done, and I am learning, to my relief, that many of the other staff are far less well read than me. Today we talked a bit about my previous career in Retail and I think I rather surprised the woman who is nominally in charge of Lancing library with some of my career history. I have a huge amount to learn from my colleagues but as the women who interviewed me said I may well be able to teach my colleagues a few things as we go along too. 🙂

At about 4.30pm I decided that my feet were aching way too much from wearing high heeled boots and spending 2 hours putting books back on shelves including going up and down the stairs countless times and two hours stood on the spot behind the counter to go shopping after work so I rang Ady to ask him to bring my jeans and my DMs but he had just pulled up outside the library! So he brought the children in to choose some books for the last 20 minutes of so of my shift. They were so well behaved, I was really proud of them :). They chose a film and a couple of books each, Ady chose a cd and when I finished I went to grab my stuff. I came down with my bag and coat and the children were all disappointed as they’d wanted to see where the behind the scenes things were so I took them back up to the staffroom and showed them my locker, where I hang my coat and where I have my teabreak. The staffroom is full of chocolates and treats at the moment, so they got introduced to my two bosses who happened to be in there and offered a chocolate biscuit each. 🙂

We left there and headed to Tescos. We are Home Alone on Boxing Day and had already promised the children that if Ady got a Christmas bonus then we’d take them to the supermarket and we’d choose lots of lovely food for Christmas (we’re at my parents on Christmas Day for lunch etc.) so tonight was the night to do that. It was really busy and the children – well actually Scarlett, were not terribly well behaved (influence of Daddy being around I reckon, she’d never behave like that with just me) but we selected all sorts of lovely luxury food and drink then I took them next door to McDonalds for dinner while Ady queued up to pay. I had a McFlurry (probably the only thing in McDonalds I would willingly eat!) and they had a Happy Meal each. Davies did really well as picking out a large amount of the words on the Happy Meal box (Flushed Away at the moment) and then we met back up with Ady in the car park.

By this point my feet were at the burning pain point of eyeing up the slippers for sale in Tescos and deciding that actually walking barefoot in December wouldn’t be that unacceptable! We arrived home, put the shopping away, got the children to bed. We had a bath and watched Torchwood with me cooking pizzas during the less action packed clips.

We have about 6 card which need delivering locally tomorrow, one of the recipients emailed me tonight to say they are expecting their second child which is fabulous news so they might well be one we knock on the door to deliver rather than shoving it through the letterbox. I have some mince pies to make, a couple of very low key home made gifts to make (bath bombs for my Mum, chocolate ginger truffles for my Dad) and our Christmas cake to ice (I’m going to give Davies a load of the ready to roll icing in various colours to make some cake topper models to go on it, he’ll love that 🙂 ) and we have been invited to a party tomorrow night but I really don’t think we’re up for it. And that’s about it. 🙂

I’m really tired today. I could do with a really early night followed by a nice long lie in but that’s not on the cards any time soon. I have a last few Christmas cards to deliver which I might get done in the morning, if not we’ll drive round Saturday and do it. All presents have been despatched other than the family one’s we’ll be seeing on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and I just have a couple of home made gifts still to finish off which I can do tomorrow or Saturday. I’ve got a last few of Tarly’s presents to wrap which I’ll do tomorrow night when she’s in bed and some final mince pies to make which I’ll do Saturday or Sunday. It’s been a fairly stress-free preparation this year, mostly due to having been planning the children’s presents for months which has really helped. 🙂

This morning we went up to Halfords and got the children new car seats. Scarlett has outgrown hers and been moaning about it being ‘a baby seat’ for months. Davies’ was still OK but very scruffy and not very comfortable being one of the cheaper, non-padded seats. Given how much time they both spend in their car seats as we gallivant all over the country and how often they are swapped between mine and Ady’s car we decided getting him a new one the same as whatever we got Tarly would be a good idea.

They had two left so we dragged them to the tills and bought them, they I fitted them in the carpark and we drove off with the boots filled with old car seats and cardboard boxes. Tarly is delighted, never known a child so pleased with such a practical gift – she looks so grown up and can strap and unstrap herself in it which although I need to check for now is going to be great. 🙂 Davies looks far more comfortable and hopefully he’ll be able to sleep more easily on some of our long journeys now. So hurrah for that – financed by Christmas and Scarlett’s birthday present cash except for a fiver I chucked in. Normally we’d either bank that money or give it to them to spend, but actually given how chuffed they are with the seats I don’t feel remotely bad about it and we couldn’t have afforded eighty quid on car seats. Going to try and sell the 2 Britax Eclipses we had (both belonging to Tarly, one in each car) and raise some cash from that too. 🙂

We went round to Lucy’s from there for lunch and a play. The dynamics between the four children seem to constantly change and although the best two playmates between them seem to be Davies and Rebecca there are scuffles of jealousy between the girls who are both rather protective of other people playing with their brothers – I’m sure the more time they spend together the easier it will become and it is still a little surprising that Scarlett and Rebecca are not bigger into playing together but sometimes I guess being the same age and gender just isn’t enough :lol:.

Davies spent a lot of time playing on a space hopper which reminded me that actually the reason I bought D& S space hoppers either last Christmas or the Christmas before was for indoor bouncing during the winter to help use up some energy when it was too cold to be outside. I’m pretty sure both our space hoppers are in the garden somewhere so I must find them, clean them up and bring them back indoors again. Davies was on top form with his imaginative games, often drawing the others into his world and making me laugh. They got a cardboard box out of the recycling and made a helmet with it, which they then cut a hole out of. Davies then asked to do some drawing and they all sat round drawing things, including an excellent Christmas tree from Davies complete with a star, candy canes and baubles.

We left there and at their request I brought the car seat boxes in from the car. Davies drew on his and folded it in a certain way to create a car with lots of details like wing mirrors and indicators.

Scarlett mainly scribbled on it and cut large chunks out but seemed to be doing it according to a plan. 😆

Starting to feel really festive 🙂 And yes I know I have been feeling festive since about August, but now I can feel festive and justified! 🙂

I worked yesterday morning, it was pretty quiet but I was only there for three hours so that was fine. It was mostly standing checking books in and out and wishing everyone Merry Christmas. The library is a real part of the community in our town and lots of the people come in really regularly and are on first name terms with the staff and vice versa. So plenty of chocolates, biscuits and other treats are being handed in daily for ‘the staff’, which meant we did all the checking books in and out whilst scoffing Roses and Celebrations. A far cry from the ‘not accepting gifts from customers’ and ‘no eating on the shop floor’ and ‘get those 24 roll cages and pallets of clothes all marked down ready for the sale starting on Boxing Day’ of Christmasses gone by in retail. I think the only job I enjoyed at Christmas before was Clinton Cards at about 4pm on Christmas Eve when we were all but sold out of everything and we managed to flog all sorts of dross to the desperate slightly drunk men who came in having bought nothing for their wives yet despite the high street closing down around them. I even sold a £100 Forever Friends teddy to someone that day which was actually slightly shop worn having lived on my desk where I would use it for target practise when I was having a bad day (I hate Forever Friends!).

Came home and was overwhelmed with children – Davies wanted to show me his Cake Store made with geomags (he’d written cake store on a large piece of card with fairly minimal help), Scarlett wanted me to read her books, Rebecca was hovering to see which would be more interesting – me reading or Davies’ cake show and Richard was using a torch as a microphone and wanted the rest of us to join in with yelling into it. 😆 Lovely chaos! Lucy and I had a pretty failed attempt to drink hot chocolate and chai lattes and chat but the children stole our drinks and talked over us.

Colin came and collected Lucy and the children and Davies & Scarlett played for a while then tidied up while I drank another cup of tea in more peaceful conditions. Then Ady arrived home to take us to Ros’ Open House. We arrived just behind Alison & children. Davies disappeared straight away into the depths of the house where he watched films, or played xbox or did something similar with Adam and Lije. Scarlett spent about two hours walking round the house with Kessie with Lulah following a safe distance behind. Scarlett finally seemed to realise that if she wanted to play with Lulah she’d need to lose the scary accessory so Kessie was allowed to return to her cushion and Tarly and Lulah were only to be glimpsed occassionally playing with horses together.

I proceeded to get even more rowdy (and possibly offensive to all but total strangers now I soberly think about it, but I’m sure Ros made the necessary excuses for me! :lol:) having drunk sufficient red wine to be fully infused with Christmas spirit. We did singing with all the children, then they all went and hid again 😆 then Tony came home bringing with him some real proper musicians with musical talent and everything. Did lots more singing including making the poor magic fingered piano-man play all sorts of things for us to sing along to. Ady dragged me away at around 10pm when Alison left and once the cold air outside hit me I realised quite how much festive spirit I had consumed 😆

Children went straight to bed and I was not far behind them. Thanks Ros, it was lovely. 🙂

This morning we’ve had a lazy start but I’m about to motivate us all, get everyone dressed and we’re going car seat shopping before heading round to Lucy’s. Me and Mum are going food shopping later tonight too. The Grumbling Postman (have I blogged about him? I must, he’s hilarious!) has just brought Ady’s last Christmas present (phew!) and a card from a friend listing a second child I didn’t know she’d had in her Christmas card – must get in touch with her and find out more about that! 😯 Right, things to do…

Ah too late, I watched Notting Hill and snivelled all through the last ten minutes. I am such a sucker for happily ever after :).

I had a really long to do list today, most of which was revolving around reading 150 pages of a frankly quite boring book for Reading Group tonight. I managed it though, and got a load of washing washed and dried, and made various components of a home made Christmas present, and 60 mince pies (36 with my own mincemeat and 24 with some emergency last minute shop bought stuff that was suitable for vegetarians) and drank lots and lots of tea. 🙂

Davies and Scarlett spent ages playing on Barbie Xbox, then Tarly moved onto Barbie.com, they helped with the fimo part of some gift making. Davies and I fell out which ended with me sending him to his room and telling him he would be starting school after Christmas. I openly admit to ‘threatening’ school at times. I totally believe in Home Education, I am utterly committed to autonomy but there are times when enough is enough and I feel the need to remind Davies, particularly, that this is a chosen lifestyle which needs to suit all of us. As usual it didn’t last long – he crept back down to tell me we had 24 bannisters – and he was right. 🙂 Then I suggested he do some drawing while I finished reading my book and he drew a stick figure inside a red triangle and a stick figure breaking out of a triangle – the school sign and the EO sign and brought it over to show me and said ‘this is me if I don’t behave’ pointing to the school one ‘and this is me if I do’ pointing to the EO one. 😆 Guess that sank in then! He did it all with good grace too, which was good as it appeared to be something which had sunk in rather than a threat. Then he wrote ‘og’ which he told me said ‘go’ so we talked about words being written left to right instead of right to left and he re-wrote it.

Ady arrived home and took over dinner for the kids while I finally finished the book, Tarly and I did some more present making together and then it was time for me to head off to Book Group.

The book was a fairly boring one which none of us had liked much so we rubbished that for a while, which degenerated into a discussion on whether actually the whole thing was a spoof, taken one step further with speculation on whether we were all actors playing the roles of people who went to Book Group :lol:. In the middle of all this lunacy my new boss who leads Book Group announced to everyone that I now work at the library :lol:.

A flurry of goodbyes and Merry Christmasses in the middle of which I got an invite to an open house at someone’s house which I’d like to go along to but will either have to do alone (not very appealing) or get Mum and Dad to have Davies and Scarlett – will have to see.

Home again for goodnights to the children who were both still awake, bath, dinner, more present making and now I’m about to be off to bed ready for work in the morning. 🙂 Oh how I am loving typing that!

Watched some Discovery Kids first thing including Mega Mutts which is just mad and then Cre-8 which is a fab show with loads of great film making type ideas. Tarly wanted to play Barbie.com but I peruaded her to play her Barbie x box game instead. It’s really quite beyond her and her xbox controller abilities but we managed a team effort before she’d had enough. Then we played KerPlunk (Davies’ request).

We went to Lidl first thing – I’d had their offers coming up email last week and spotted at least 3 things that I wanted for presents either for my own two or for the couple of other children I’m buying for this year so we headed off there and got everything I wanted plus a couple of other bits. 🙂 Then off to Lucy’s.

Lucy was very rightfully tired and I am less justifably but no less impatient as a result tired today as well. I’m never sure whether this genuinely makes children louder and more annoying or if you are simply less tolerant of it but Davies in particular seemed very trying to me today. We had a discussion about it tonight with me explaining that coming down to the level of the 1, 3 and 4 year olds he is playing with is not what I expect of him. Probably a bit harsh but I can’t bear full on silliness from him, particularly when it is so loud. 🙁 Anyway we ironed that out and I’m planning to do something specifically designed with him in mind tomorrow (don’t know what yet, just feel like we’ve not done anything he likes to do for a while). Other than that I suppose they probably played quite nicely really, I read some stories to Tarly, was honoured with cuddles from both Richard and Rebecca 🙂 and Lucy and I did manage a fair bit of chatting and catching up.

We left there just before 4pm and Davies played xbox while Tarly snuggled next to me and watched. They had chosen a box of cereal each in Lidl’s as they love the bizarre and seemingly exclusive to Lidl selection of breakfast cereals available there. So having snacked all afternoon, eaten bananas and carrots when we got home and therefore not being in the mood for any sort of proper cooked tea they begged for cereal instead – and polished off 3 bowls each! 🙂 I gave them a bath as it was cold tonight and a bath followed by warmed on the raditator pjs is a lovely way to start a night’s sleep.

Once they had gone to bed we set about digging out all the various presents from all the various hidey holes round the house and I balanced out all their gifts to ensure there are about the same number of things to open on Christmas morning. To them it will not matter how much the gifts cost or initially what they even are but they need to finish unwrapping at about the same time so I wanted to ensure there was a similar number of items each. All wrapped up and ready for ripping open and stashed back in hidey holes again.

Tomorrow I have some vegetarian mince pies to make to take to book group, need to finish reading the book we’re discussing and after an unsuccessful attempt at making a present I need to redo that. I’ve got book group in the evening but other than that we’re not planning to go out all day. Looking forward to it. 🙂

We went to a party last night – a 60th birthday party of a friend we worked with at B&Q years ago, I recall us going to her 50th and I don’t think we were both still working at B&Q then. In those 10 years it feels like we’ve done rather a lot, moved to Manchester and back again, had two children and so on. Thing is, most of the guests who were at that 50th and again at the 60th are still in pretty much the same place as they were ten years ago. So we felt rather claustrophobic, itchy to move on and stand and shout ‘we’re not like you, we’ve moved on!’ at them as they stood around recounting anecdotes from 12 years ago with a wistful ‘remember when’ look in their eyes, harking back to the ‘good old days’ which we feel as though we enjoyed at the time but were happy to leave behind and view as a stepping stone to better days ahead. Of course this could also have stemmed from the fact that actually we had more money to buy drinks at that 50th than we did last night. And whilst in all our current social circles we are quite happy to come clean about why we don’t get involved in buying rounds or stay propped up at the bar drinking glasses of wine which cost one and a half times what a whole bottle costs in tescos all night we couldn’t bring ourselves to admit that last night. But we went, we wished Happy Birthday to the birthday pensioner :lol:, we showed people pictures of the children on our mobile phones, exclaimed shock at how old the children of friends are now and did lots of ‘I just don’t know where the years go’ with everyone else, promised insincerely to catch up properly in the new year with at least three sets of people and when the party really started hotting up around 9.15pm I drank someone’s abandoned white wine and we snuck out while everyone was dancing to High Ho Silver Lining. 😆 So we were home before 10pm!

The rest of the day had been slow but nice enough. It was my lay in in the morning but I didn’t get back to sleep after Ady and the kids got up around 7am, instead I laid in bed and finished reading the end of a book I hadn’t quite finished the night before. Written in a similar style to Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series but with a central character who is a kleptomaniac shoplifter – cheap chick-lit tat in many ways but a real page-turner just the same. A laid back morning when I finally got up and then I walked into town, did a quick charity shop trawl (got a jacket for 3 quid which I can’t decide whether pulls off cutting edge cool or just makes me look like a mad hippy. I was looking for a long black velvet skirt but had no luck) and then into the library to work.

I met the two Saturday staff, both quite colourful characters, who I will no doubt be mentioning further in blogposts of the future 😉 but I mainly worked with an older lady I have met before but not really talked to much. She must be about my Mum’s age and has a daughter and son the same age as me and my brother and a 10 year old granddaughter. Inevitabely third question in came my answer ‘oh, they don’t go to school, we Home Educate’ (Q1 do you have children? Q2 how old are they? Q3 which school do they go to?) and off we went with the whole question and answer rounds. I spend so much time in the company of other Home Educators that I genuinely forget that we do something odd and different most of the time. These questions were a mix of the usual ones combined with a sort of envy / admiration and a real interest in the whole thing. One of the best conversations I’ve had about HE in a long while actually. Everyone at work so far has been very interested and supportive of the whole thing but I guess they can’t be anything but really can they? I imagine me and my bizarre ways are the talk of the staff room on the days I’m not working though, particularly as I’ve been very upfront about what we do and how we do it, refusing to take the easy road of agreeing that I do indeed ‘teach’ the children.

It was really, really quiet yesterday making for a very s l o w four hours, which all the staff were at great pains to assure me is not normal at all for a Saturday afternoon, so I look forward to the January rush on returning and borrowing books as everyone’s new years resolutions are to borrow pilates videos, go on a low-carb diet or increase their literary education. 😆 I did catch up with Pamela, someone I worked with at the job I did when I was pregnant with Davies, stayed in touch with for a while afterwards and then lost touch with when we moved away. She was intending to go travelling and then study theology at university last I heard of her. What she’s actually done is 3 years volunteering in a project in Canada, lots more travelling, some working with excluded from education children and is back in Lancing again for 6 months before heading off volunteering again to Canada. She spends lots of time in the library accessing the internet so I imagine our paths will cross plenty more times in months to come but she was another person on my list of folks I wondered what became of so it was nice to have a brief catch up with her.

Ady and the children picked me up and we sat reading books for ages before I went to get ready to go out. My parents arrived to babysit and Ady and I headed off to our party, returning again within 3 hours. I was tired (standing in a library for four hours with not much to do followed by standing in a pub for three hours with even less to do if you have no money for drinks and are too young and sober to dance to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ is pretty tiring work frankly!) so I went to bed.

Today was my turn to get up but due to both children going to bed late, Davies appearing in our bed mid-way through the night having had a bad dream (he has a bad dream every single time we are not there to put him to bed. One day, when he is about 22 he might end up having a whole night away from us, until then if we’re not there til the bitter end then we will be there in the middle of it!) it was gone 7.30am before they were up. Watched TV with them then they moved onto Xbox and Barbie.com. I nipped to Sainsburys arriving shortly after they opened for various bits and pieces and home to make some cheese scones for lunch, the next batch of mince pies and mull some wine. Ady went off to collect logs with Dad and arrived back home at the same time as Jan, Jonathan, Catie, Megan and Jasper arrived.

Hence followed a lovely couple of hours. Catie and Davies disappeared almost at once, Megan and Scarlett with a little bit of work from Ady and Jonathan played in Scarlett’s room with all things pink and fluffyfull while Jan and I had a mini-catch up and Jasper stood spotting all the various ‘star’ s in our house (which is rather a lot actually at this time of year :lol:). We had lunch, drank mulled wine, ate mince pies, chatted, dressed up, played and made a mulled wine, milk, cheese scone crumb and squeaky toy plastic crocodile toy potion which both Tarly and Jasper seemed to consider delicious but the rest of us declined to try. 😆

They headed off and the rest of us returned to computers and xboxes – Davies played project zoo for a while and then got interested in the blox game I was playing and showed a great mind for logic while Tarly did lots more Barbie.com-ing and typing her name.

I’d slowed down as I drove past the local (just round the corner) church this morning to check the time of their carol service and discovered it was tonight at 6.30pm so I’d asked the children if they wanted to go. I was in the school choir right through school and always participated in the carol concert usually held in one of Worthing’s big churches at Christmas. I adore carols and have been meaning to take Davies at least for the last four years or so. We’ve never actually been inside the church round the corner, I’ve been in the church hall for one toddler group once and various voting opportunities over the years (it’s used as a poling station). So we wrapped up warm and just before 6.30 we walked round the corner to the church.

It was certainly not full and I would imagine that tonight was a far larger congregation than normal but we were warmly welcomed and despite twinges of ‘we shouldn’t really be here’ guilt I felt good at that least we boosted numbers, boosted the collection at the end and gave both the children a real first taste of what religion can be about. It wasn’t a great service but it was probably ideal for taking two fairly restless children to. They were given tea lights in glass jars to hold and then bring to the front and lay infront of the nativity scene which they enjoyed, they both liked the carols but were very restless during the readings. I think if I had had just one of them with me I could have managed them better as by explaining that the readings were people telling the story of Jesus’ birth got them listening again but they were faintly squabbling over which one of them I was talking to and Ady was only really shushing whichever one I wasn’t talking to at the time. It was nice enough though and there were several very uncooperative children there which made our only slightly restless offspring seem just fine. Tarly did give both Davies and I the giggles at one point by listening really nicely to the reading about the baby Jesus being born in the stable which was punctuated by a small child in the congregation wailing. She asked who was making the noise, I whispered back that it was a baby to which she asked in a very loud voice ‘is that baby Jesus crying now then Mummy?’. Not quite as good as her saying ‘that’s not a real baby!’ at the Pennywell nativity last year or calling out that ‘three wise men’ is a song by James Blunt but enough to have me and Davies trying really hard not to snort with laughter just the same. 😆

Tomorrow we’re looking forward to catching up with Lucy, Richard and Rebecca, it feels like I have not actually seen Lucy properly for ages and I know we have loads to talk about, both being employed women and all now.

The children and I have spent most of the day on the verge of hysteria today, mostly due to possibly the most over-embellished song I have ever heard.

This morning was quiet with the children doing some geomagging and then we popped to the post office to send Christmas cards before heading over to Ali’s.

On the way we put on one of our Christmas cds and track one is ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’. I must try and find a way of getting it online so everyone can share in the hilarity, but basically it is just so messed about with that although the basic song is there somewhere it is totally buried under a pile of vocal whoa-whoa-ing and baby-baby-ing. We listened to it about four times, singing along even more outlandishly ourselves and then turned the music off and tried to over-embellish nursery rhymes in the same style. I did Twinkle Twinkle (twinkle, twinkle , tiny) Little Star (gonna spend the rest of my whole life wondering what the hell you are), Davies did a rather good Humpty Dumpty and Tarly mostly laughed a lot with a few ‘oh baby’s’ added in for good measure. We enjoyed it so much we took the cd in to share with Ali and Freya too and infected them too (bet you’re still whoa-whoaing!).

Lovely visit as usual – there was the cruel subjection to us of a pink and fluffy film, xboxing, pesto pasta and peanut butter sandwiches made in about four different preference styles and bread colours.

We drove home listening to the Wallace & Gromit soundtrack cd which Davies adores, spending the whole time not actually listening to it as such, but giving a full running commentary on which bit of the film it is the music to. Honestly – when I was a kid I used to fantacise about being an actress or a dancer or a singer. Davies is practising being the director and talking over films for the dvd extras! 😆

We called into Tesco on the way home. That’s the All New Tesco which has Been Reopened After Substantial Refurbishment. It was pretty busy and because nothing now lives where it used to, or indeed where you might have temporarily gotten used to it being during the work it was full of people wandering about looking for tinned soups, cat litter and low fat fromage frais. We did a fair bit of that too, in particular spending time searching for ginger wine. I did feel really quite ashamed of that really, like I’d let myself down infront of my children by not being able to track down any given alcohol within a two minute time frame :lol:.

Ady had already gotten home before us, so we did the kids’ tea and then sat watching tv and chatting. Continuing the theme of general hysteria I organised them to bed by way of an empty toilet roll loud hailer all of which probably contributed quite heavily to neither of them falling asleep very quickly. We caught up on 3 mini books from their Christmas Carol advent calendar (it has 24 little books telling the Dickens story which you hang on the tree as you read) and all hid from some carol singers because we didn’t have any change to offer them 😆 Ah happy days!

Happy Birthday Abbie!

Hope you’re having a lovely day 🙂

Love, Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlett xxx

First slight bit of work related fall out with the children today. Entirely my own fault unfortunately although of course Ady pointing that out was rather unwelcome! 😆

I got up later than I’d meant to which meant I only really had time to get dressed, gulp down a mug of tea, gather together some clothes for the kids and spent maybe 10 minutes with them. The last time I really worked was pre-children and I was never out of bed any earlier than half an hour before I needed to leave the house. I can’t be doing with sitting around waiting to go to work, I’d far rather have just enough time to get ready (and make up and getting dressed takes 10 minutes at the most), have a cup of tea and go. But I clearly need to rethink that a little and do a bit of spending time with the children before heading off. Despite the fact I am a permanent fixture – or maybe because of it – when I suddenly become a sort of limited period only type offer I have small people clinging to my ankles, blocking the front door and sobbing with grief at my abandonment – Ady never has such troubles!

I did make the grave error of a bit of emotional blackmail to try and get them dressed before I left for work which utterly backfired and was what pushed them both into wobbly lip, tear streaked faces. But in much the same way I suspect – no actually I know, that they were employing the self same emotional blackmail tactics right back at me. I left them composed, if wobbly and went to collect Lucy, Richard and Rebecca while Ady stayed behind with them, spent the whole time talking at Lucy rather than asking about her training last night and arrived at work flustered having feared I was cutting it fine time-wise but actually arriving in plenty of time.

To give the above the happy ending, I had promised to come home for lunch if they wanted me to, rang and chatted to both children on my tea break and been assured they were both fine and didn’t need me to come home and then rang again during my lunch break and again chatted to them both. Very odd talking to your children on the phone. I’m sure it will be something I get used to but having never done much of it it is very strange to hear how grown up and mature they both sound. 🙂

So, work :). I covered lots more training-y bits and pieces. I adore the order of the procedures there – the whole numerical order for reference books, alphabetical order for fiction filing on shelves, the paperwork heavy working practises but above all I am utterly loving the people watching opportunities. In colleagues, customers and the whole community in general I am seeing constant examples of people and my fingers are itching to type all about every one of them. I have at least three potential subjects for a book I’ve always dreamed of writing, access to some of the most fascinating characters I’ve met so far in life and frankly sod the money, the having a bit of a break from the children, the lunchtime reapplication of lipgloss and the ‘nipping to the supermarket during my lunchbreak for a few bits’, you can keep the name badge, the need for grown up work clothes and even all the no more library fines or charges perks of the job, what I am loving most of all is being someone none of you lot know, someone even Ady doesn’t know let alone the children, I am being Nic At Work and it’s quite some while since I saw her in any mirrors. I’m enjoying watching my colleagues faces as they realise that not only am I likely to be pretty good at all the (let’s face it fairly mundane) work tasks they set me but actually used to be someone in a career a million years ago and that period of exploring and learning about who the new girl is. I am loving dealing with customers again, getting to know the regular faces, learn a few names, exchange banter and become a face people associate with a certain place. Of course the children are in the back of my mind – when I was tidying up the children’s books today I was browsing and gathered up a couple of books for them to bring home with me, today I ‘came out’ as a Home Educator to another 2 workmates and discussed NC with another one and of course I rang and spoke to them twice, but I am not aching for them in the way I fretted I might, I am confident that they are fine and are getting as much out of not being in my continual company as I am.

I’m feeling liberated and although I had tears rolling down my face this morning when Davies was crying and Scarlett’s bottom lip was all wobbly, I learnt a lesson about managing this whole new era properly and I’m confident that this is all going to work out really rather well for all of us. 🙂 All due respect to Lucy for her massive part in this of course. I can’t think of many people I would be quite so happy about leaving them in the care of – infact I could probably list on one hand the people who I would not only feel confident in the ability to be with my children with but actually feel like they are gaining something from being in the company of. 🙂 Hopefully my parents are going to gradually work up to spending more time with the children as a result of all this too. Dad has done two afternoons with them but he tend to take on the role of supervisory adult rather than actively doing stuff with them. It remains to be seen whether my Mum steps up to the challenge of actually doing any of the childcare – I hope she does although I think it will indeed be a challenge, but I think that she will come to regret the very small amount of time she has spent with them in their early years as time goes by if she doesn’t make the effort now.

I arrived home with a big pile of books (I have the entire catalogue of Jodi Picoult that I’d not already read 🙂 ) including several for the children so we sat and read three of those, with a further couple for bedtime reading. I think Ady is planning to bring them to the library on Saturday afternoon while I’m working to choose some films and books. Whilst I don’t want them to be a menace while I’m working the library is already somewhere they are very familiar with and I want them to get to know it as my workplace too over time. Lots of cuddles and declarations of love from them both tonight, which was lovely. 🙂

And now, because of course there is indeed a downside to working I am exhausted, a good two hours before I normally consider it bedtime, my feet ache from total lack of standing up in faintly unsuitable shoes all day, I am planning to go to bed.

Oh and I am also pondering on this years Christmas blog. Two years ago it was my nativity, last year I bottled out and this year I am debating a panto featuring blogring characters or going the whole hog and creating a Stars In Their Eyes Christmas Special with everyone singing rewritten customised lyrics to popular songs. 🙂

Up early this morning with Tarly, so we sat and snuggled on the sofa watching tv together. Davies got up and we sat altogether cuddled up. Lovely 🙂

The children asked to play with the wooden train track today so when I went upstairs to get dressed I brought it back downstairs with me and they sat and set up a track. Lucy arrived with Richard and Rebecca, who both dove straight into the train track playing while Lucy and I stood in the kitchen and I iced some biscuits.

Then it was time for Tarly and I to head over to the doctors to meet our HV for her 4 year development check. Our HV, Jenni, is lovely. I first met her when I was pregnant with Davies and she was pretty much everything you could ask for from a HV for a woman who had never even held a baby let alone changed a nappy or fed one before having Davies. I didn’t have family around to help out or offer advice and Jenni was great with lots of non-judgemental, helpful and sensible advice. She came to HV work from midwifery and between her own children and fostered ones has raised about 10 kids. I know that she is fantastic in being supportive of the young, single mothers in the more deprived areas of the town we live in and although I have heard many horror stories about HV generally I think she is a genuinely nice person in the job for all the ‘right’ reasons. So I last saw her shortly after we moved home for Scarlett’s 18 month and Davies’ 3.5year checks and we had a good old catch up, I sometimes see her to smile or wave to when we’re out and about in Lancing and infact the Health Centre where she is part-based is next door to the library so I imagine we’ll bump into each other there. I was in two minds about the development check really. Partially because I knew we didn’t ‘need’ it, I have no concerns about Tarly’s development, I know the check is mainly a pre-school preparation one so rather irrelevant to us and I remain cagey about the fact we are not known to LEA etc and feel that any contact with anyone could be what flags us up (and I’m not being paranoid, I know of at least one realife case where a well meaning HV refered a family to the Home Ed LEA bod) and clearly however lovely Jenni might be she is part of ‘the system’. But similarly I know I have nothing to hide as such and would rather have gone along and allayed any doubts or fears than prompted non existant ones by not doing so. I still took up Lucy’s very kind offer to stay with Davies while I took Tarly over there on her own though so as to not parade my six year old infront of her and also to ensure it was all about Tarly rather than their usual double act.

So we set off across the road (literally) just before the appointed time, queued at the reception and spoke to the receptionist who gave us a series of blank looks, kept scurrying off to confer with someone else and eventually came back to say there were no developement checks booked in, Jenni wasn’t there today and was I sure I had the right day and right place and right time. I bloody hate doctors receptionists, having had many a row with them over the years so I confess to having something of an attitude back to her and standing there for just a while too long to ensure she had to apologise for the mix up and suggest I ring Jenni rather than just dismissing me without a word as appeared to be her intention. I dashed back home, fished out the letter asking us to attend and rang them. I spoke to another HV who assured me that yes, we were booked in, yes Jenni was on her way to the doctors and that she would ring the surgery and tell them I was coming back over again. So we put our coats and shoes back on and stomped back over the road again. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to the receptionist apologise for the confusion and being all magnanamous and saying ‘oh that’s ok, it wasn’t your fault’ all sweetly to her (which it wasn’t – it was her attitude which pissed me off, not the confusion about the appointment.) and then we sat in the waiting room and looked at books until we got called in.

Jenni opened the meeting with ‘well we don’t normally see children at this age anymore, but I just realised it would be the last chance before I stopped officially being your health visitor and I wanted to see you!’ so she did the checking type stuff in a cursory manner, asked loads of questions about HE, asked after Davies to the degree that I almost wished I had brought him (cos actually, although she has many a baby through her care and clinics she clearly remembered so much about us and all sorts of little details that I think she’d have probably liked to have seen him), appeared reassured at my explanations and ideas on how we do things, seemed interested about the whole national curriculum bashing I did and left me with ‘well that’s it really, but you have my number, so as you won’t have a school nurse please do ring if you ever have anything I could help with’ and that was that. 🙂

She did ask me if I ever get cross. To which both Scarlett and I laughed but it appeared to be a genuine question and she said that in all the years she’d known me I just always appeared so carefree, calm and happy that she couldn’t really picture me losing my temper. I assured her that I do, regularly and Scarlett backed me up that I do indeed shout lots, but ‘I always know Mummy loves me’ :). So either she’s heard me yelling at the kids from across the road into her office and was checking up on it all or she genuinely has only ever seen me on my best behaviour! 😆 Scarlett was looking at a book while we were chatting and kept interupting to either point something out or ask a question and I was stopping my conversation with Jenni to talk to Tarly a lot so I guess I came across at quite patient and child focussed, which I do strive to be most of the time but I’m equally capable of telling them to shut up interupting me when I’m talking and just wait!

Back for lunch and some rapid tidying of train tracks before Colin fetched Lucy and co for Lucy to go and start her new job 🙂 and we wrapped up warm and headed out to meet up with Julie, Jack and Maisie at Highdown Gardens. It was mild and not too windy so we had a nice couple of hours with the children running round and us following at a slower pace and chatting. Although we see each other every week we were saying that it is mostly in the company of other people too which means conversations take slightly different turns rather than our previous cosy sister in law chats, so we caught up properly which was lovely. 🙂 Julie’s also supposed to be staring a small part time job in the new year so although it means our regular get togethers with Lucy might get pushed about a bit hopefully the 3 of us will continue to manage weekly meets and catch up on our new topics of the world of work again. 🙂

Maisie and Scarlett managed to scare us by double backing on themselves and hiding in some bushes. I think it got slightly out of hand from being a little joke which they’d intended to jump out on us with to us fretting that they really had got lost and suddenly we had a full scale search going on for them. There were lots of gardeners in the grounds so Julie and Jack went one way while Davies and I went the other yelling the girls’ names as we went. It was probably less than five minutes but felt longer before I heard Julie yelling ‘I’ve found them!’ and there they were. They had been barely out of sight the whole time and I think as our voices got more frantic they’d started to feel too scared to come out. First time I’ve thought I’d lost Tarly really though, that’s a bloody scary feeling isn’t it?

We left them and came home again. I offered to do Christmas hama bead patterns with them but they turned me down in favour of playing with the geomags together instead so I left them to it.

They both fell asleep really late tonight – gone 9pm. Davies was lying in bed playing with a vtech laptop thing he has typing his name in. He did ‘Davies’ but wanted to know how to do his middle and last names so I showed him.

Off to work tomorrow for the whole day – looking forward to it 🙂

A bit of a mixed day really, mainly due to my own impatience and the childrens’ tiredness rubbing against each other at times. First thing we sat and did Davies’ Christmas scene stickers. I offered to sit and do the Christmas jewellry with Tarly but she wasn’t interested and wanted to play on barbie.com instead. She loves that site and has learnt how to type her name and navigate all around the site from it. She wanted to type ‘unicorn’ today so I wrote that out for her and she did that. She also spotted that the C and the R were also in Scarlett. I should probably dig out some of the software Davies liked playing when he was about her age but I think it is the all things pink and girlie which is captivating her about the barbie site rather than the novelty of ‘playing’ on the computer.

Davies played with the geomags and Tarly kept coming and going between the geomags and the laptop and then Lucy arrived, finding both children still in pjs :oops:. It took some persuading but I talked them both into getting dressed and then as Tarly was being stroppy about anyone watching her on the laptop and Davies was asking to play Zoombinis we swapped over and Davies played Zoombinis with Rebecca as an audience with Tarly and Richard and Rebecca veering between the two playing with toy cars and at being pussycats. We had lunch, Ady arrived home and Colin came to collect Lucy, Richard and Rebecca.

We had some laptop time after Ady went off to college with Davies Zoombini-ing, Tarly Barbie-ing and me catching up my monsterteeny blog which is very boring to write so is probably boring to read. I do want to record our day to day stuff trying to seperate the education and have a record of what we do do as autonomous Home Educators but I’m struggling to keep it even weekly and am sure it is more of a list and far less capturing what we actually do and what gets learnt and lived. Not sure what to do about that really, will ponder further.

I had some biscuit dough left and wanted to make some more mince pies so Tarly and I did some baking and Davies continued on Zoombinis before moving on to X box. He did come and join in with baking for a bit doing some cutting out, greasing tins and putting boiled sweets in the middles of biscuits but soon got bored and went back to his x box! I forgot to mention that Ady gave him a diary yesterday that he’d got free at work and Davies instantly started to fill it with all sorts of drawings and snippets of writing. He called me up to his bedroom to show me some ‘inventions’ he’d drawn last night. Both the children are at really interesting, but very different stages at the moment and I can’t help feeling slightly torn between them, spending time with one always feels like compromising the other as neither of them are interested in the same thing as each other – need to find a way of apportioning my time between them better so they both get the one to one they want at least some of the time with me.

So Tarly and I did lots of baking. For once it really felt very educational indeed in very obvious ways today with lots of counting, adding and subtraction, practical skills like rolling, cutting and filling mince pies. Julie rang at one point so I was in and out of the kitchen a fair bit and Scarlett did really well at just taking over what I’d been doing and rolled out pastry, cut circles and started to put them in a tin before apparently remembering she is only four and starting to stick the pastry brush and a knife in the remaining lump of pastry and making shapes with it instead 😆 Scarlett is a very interesting companion to work side by side with. Davies tends to engage very much in conversation and really spending time in his company is like being with another adult much of the time with lots of observations, anecdotes and on topic chatter. Tarly is rather more random, prone to all sorts of apropos of nothing statements and lots of declarations of love and affection, often in relation to what we are doing. ‘I love these sweeties Mummy’ ‘I like them too, they’re yummy’ ‘I love these sweeties more than anything in the world. I love them millions’ ‘that’s nice’ ‘but not as much as I love you Mummy’.

Ady arrived home, followed by my Mum on her way home from work. Davies, who has the beginnings of a cold and has nowhere near caught up on tiredness from the weekend was starting to struggle with being nice to be around. They had tea, I cut Davies’ hair long, long, long overdue) and they had a bath, which raised his spirits a little again.

Tomorrow Tarly has a 4year development check at the health visitors which I have mixed feelings about but having always really quite liked my HV and feeling quite definant about having nothing to prove I am going to attend with her and weather permitting we’re meeting Julie, Jack and Maisie for a walk in the afternoon which will no doubt do the children the world of good if they are wrapped up warm.

started with getting up late

On the 11th of December things that went wrong for me;
Tarly ate tree decorations
and I started with getting up late

On the 11th of December things that went wrong for me;
children wouldn’t get dressed
Tarly ate tree decorations
and I started with getting up late

etc.

One of those days today. I woke up late, Tarly had been eating the biscuits and candy canes off the tree 🙄 and I had a list of things I needed to do before leaving the house and on the way to Home Ed group. I managed to get a wash on, drape wet washing round the radiators (we are in danger of being either taken over by the dirty laundry pile or simply running out of clean clothes here – my usual laundry obsession abates totally in the winter, particularly now my tumble drier is broken – it’s the line dried freshness that gets me going during the warmer weather :lol:), bung a beef curry in the slow cooker, clingfilm cold pizza and mince pies to take along as our contribution, get hold of Ali, persuade the children to get dressed and then dig out a couple of small Christmas presents to wrap up for the children to be given to them at MM. I had a couple of small gifts in mind so having managed to find them from the various pressie stashes around the house and even managed to unearth some wrapping paper with robbins on from last year (not bought this years yet) I went looking for the sellotape. Now I had a brand new roll of sellotape in my hand last night, I’d found it in Tarly’s room when I was doing a post-houseguest mad weekend tidy up, put it inside an unturned footstool along with various other things that shouldn’t be in her room and bunged the footstool in the playroom ready for putting all the bits and pieces in their proper homes later. The footstool was still in the playroom, but the right way up and with no sign of the various bits and pieces from inside it. I rang Ady to check if he’d put the sellotape somewhere, checked with the children and drew blanks all round. Then I remembered that we did have a second roll of sellotape (sellotape and me have a funny old relationship, a bit like other people and busses. When I don’t need it then rolls of it seem to haunt me, falling off shelves, turning up in unexpected drawers and cupboards and generally making a nusiance of themselves. When I do have the urgent need to afix something using single sided tacky clear tape is there ever any to be found? Nope!) – I knew I had taken a roll to Tarly’s party, ready for sticking tiaras together, I even recall using it. Some of the last remaining bits from the party were still in the back of my car waiting to come back into the house so I went and rummaged through all of them looking for the sellotape. Nope, not there, clearly kidnapped by some evil sellotape baron and being held hostage. Maybe somewhere there is someone with a parallel problem except with scissors or drawing pins, maybe I have what they want and I’ll suddenly start to get small pieces of sellotape sent to me in the post along with ransom notes (made of letters torn from newspapers – they can’t cut them out, they have no scissors – and attached to paper with sellotape asking for unmarked scissors to be left in a briefcase in a phone box and my sellotape will be returned unharmed. Which leads me to wondering whether the only real purpose of phoneboxes now is for dropping off ransoms and teenagers doing sordid early sexual acts to each other, cos surely nowadays everyone has a mobile phone anyway and doesn’t need to use phoneboxes for actually making phone calls). I did find the smallest mini roll of parcel tape during all my rummaging though and sparingly used the last few centimentres of that left on the roll to wrap the Christmas presents.

Then we drove to Brighton, in the pouring rain, listening to Christmas carols played at top volume while I sang all the descant versions :lol:. That restored spirits somewhat and we had a lovely time at MM where we had a Christmas Party. Parachute play, lots of food and Christmas music, the hall decorated with the bits and pieces we made there last week and lots of general festiveness. Saying to people ‘see you in the new year’ when we said goodbye made me feel quite Christmassy too. 🙂

Things went back downhill again from there though really. 🙁 We drove home fine, listening to Stop The Cavalry on repeat because both the children love it (have to say it reminds us all far more of Newgale and the children marching round a table with the Price children in August than Christmas but never mind :lol:), once home I spent ages trying to track down various dvds I’d sold on ebay but the kids had nicked back from the ebay pile. Gathered them all together and started to try and pack them but of course I have no sellotape. I managed an ok job although at least one enveloped needed sticking closed but I hoped the nice lady at the local post office would notice it and stick it shut for me.

The children had strewn their pressies out across the lounge floor ready to be played with when we got home – Davies got a make a Christmas scene kit with various sticky bits and Tarly got a make Christmas jewellry kit with plenty more small pieces. Rather than bother with coats and shoes I carried them out to the car shoe-less and they planned to stay in the car outside the post office while I nipped in with my parcels. I stopped outside the cashpoint to get some money to pay for the postage but it was out of order. So drove to the next cashpoint and got money out there. Then to the post office, where customers were queueing out the door 😯 I sat in the car with the childern for a while but although the queue was moving more people were coming into the post office so in the end I decided I’d have to go and join the queue. I did so but hadn’t been in it for more than a couple of minutes before the children, who could see me through the window, had got out of their car seats, wound the car window down and were shouting at me, drawing loads of attention to us all. 😳 I abandoned the queue, went to find out what emergency it was that was prompting such behaviour only to discover there was no emergency other than they’d been squabbling and wanted to report each other :roll:. Lost my temper completely, in full view of all the queuing post office customers, threw all my parcels in the car and drove to the next post office yelling at the children all the way. 🙁

Arrived there to find the same thing – queue out of the door, but a shorter one cos it’s a smaller post office (the one at the end of my parents road where they have known me since I was four and we moved there and my mum used to go to every week to collect her family allowance with me in tow) – again left the kids in the car outside (no shoes, remember) in full view of the post office under very strict instructions to behave and went and joined the queue. By now the unstuck parcel was very unstuck indeed, particularly having been chucked around by me so I had to buy some sellotape to stick it down with. I asked why all the post offices were so busy and having gotten my lecture about supporting them rather than going to another post office first anyway (I don’t live at the end of the road anymore!) she said it is the busiest day of the year for the post offices – apparently there is one Monday every December which is always bedlam and this is that Monday. 🙄

Having now been out for well over an hour with various cashpoint and post office related incidences we were out of time for doing anything with the pressies other than tidying them up and I had no chance at all of making any food to bring along to the Badgers Christmas party. Ady arrived home, having made a special effort to be there to come along too but ended up having to stay behind doing some emails for work (which made me slam doors and stomp about even more). Me and the kids left the house about 10 minutes late, with Davies having labouriously written a Christmas Card to Lisa, the Badger leader (although he did ask if 2 the number after 1 was spelt the same as to as in ‘to Lisa’). We pulled up outside the hall and found it in complete darkness. 🙁 No idea whether we were the only ones and having been late they’d already given up on us or whether Lisa simply decided not to bother but there were no messages on my mobile or the home phone so I was pretty pissed off about that. Fortunately the kids were not too upset, having already been to one Christmas party today, I was relieved that I hadn’t had time to make a load of food and Ady was most surprised to see us back home again five minutes after I’d slammed the door on the way out.

In the end all was redeemed as I made their tea, Ady finished his work and did all the tidying up while I sat and IM chatted with Lucy and calmed down a bit. Really looking forward to not leaving the house at all tomorrow, we’ve got baking to do, making the christmassy bits, some other decoration making, a possible visit from Lucy, R & R and a generally peaceful day planned. I reckon we are all long overdue it.

Oh and that new roll of sellotape I bought at the post office? I’ve put it in a brand new dedicated sellotape designated area which only I know about. 😆

which is something of a novelty at my house so I’m enjoying the peace 🙂

We’ve had a lovely weekend, Kirsty & James arrived on Friday evening, Saturday morning was filled with making heart shaped sandwiches and transporting all the party stuff over to the hall. I spent a slightly hysterical hour in the hall surrounded by all the various stuff, an empty hall and no real idea of what I was going to do with it all. I faffed about for at least 15 minutes wandering between the kitchen and the hall before finally plugging in lots of fairy lights, arranging a table with chairs round it, turning a very handily available high backed chair into a throne for Princess Scarlett with lots of pink velvet and silver sticky stars, laying out the food and drink and folding napkins into goblets.

I created a cake table on the same tatty wooden table on wheels that held Davies’ cake(s) with lots of pink netting and drapery, put beads into bowls and secretly did some prancing around the place cos I do like to show off in big open private places, particularly ones with a stage that has real stage lights 😳 :).

Tarly arrived first with Ady, Kirsty and Alex

She did lots of present opening and meeting and greeting her princess guests, someone made the first round of tea (Julie I think) and when all but one princess had arrived I could hold them off the food no longer so they all sat down to feast – including a toast to the birthday girl using their jewelled goblets and pink fizz!

Food finished we did various things included Ali’s pefume making, Alison’s beaded braclet making, tiara making (with very carefully controlled glueing ;)) and a not as carefully planned as it might have been making a fairy to stick on a scene for Scarlett to keep forever (cos you know, she might end up being the sentimental type! 😉 ). It was all very civilized and gracious and Tarly really loved it 🙂

Ady and James arrived with Davies and Marcus in time for blowing out the candles

and demolishing!

The princesses were persuaded to line up for a photoshoot

before turning into loons with the addition of two boys and playing a very rowdy chasing game for the last hour! 🙂

Some of the party continued back to our house for xboxing, film watching, further running round like loons, cooking and eating several small pizzerias worth of pizzas and plenty of drinking and baby worship too. 🙂 Oh and some singing of course. A lovely, lovely day 🙂

Today was slightly quieter with a slightly later start. Kirsty and James stayed til just after lunch (cold pizza! :lol:). Davies and Scarlett get on so well with Marcus and Alex, it’s a really nice foursome of children to have around :). They left (with a doggy bag of pizza for the journey!) and we swung into Goddard Christmas Countdown With A Vengence TM. Ady went off to get some logs while me and the children moved sofas around to accomodate the tree and hoovered all the previously hidden by sofa floorspaces that were suddenly exposed :oops:, we got the tree up very quickly but spent ages trying to get some fairy lights working before giving up and swapping some of them for the ones on the kids’ trees. This year we’ve gone for an almost completely edible tree (Davies amused me lots by announcing it – I didn’t know he even knew the word edible!) with candy canes, chocolate baubles and once the tree was up I made some window biscuits with boiled sweets in them. Ady put all the hanging decs up, the children covered all available surfaces with tinsel and then Scarlett cut the ribbon, Davies threaded it, I knotted it and Ady hung the biscuits on the tree while watching Oliver! So very warm and fuzzy 🙂 Davies and I meant to set the camera up on a tripod and do shots at various points to make a youtube offering but we forgot.

Early night for the (very exhausted) children, lovely long bath, relaxed roast dinner infront of the fire and a couple of glasses of wine for us followed by a rather experimental dessert made with the bread and butter offcuts from the star and heart shaped sandwiches at Tarly’s party, two nearly had it but saved from the brink peeled and sliced cooking apples, a tin of custard all constructed lasagne style in a glass bowl with nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top. Really rather lovely. 🙂

A slightly quieter week coming up – Christmas parties at MM and Badgers tomorrow – I have pizza to bring as my food to share offering :lol:, I was going to a FP meet up in London on Tuesday but we’re all too exhausted from such a mad week and I can’t really afford the train so I’ve decided not to go after all so that should be a nice quiet day at home, regular get together with Julie and Lucy on Wednesday morning, work on Thursday and hopefully another quiet day on Friday.

Thanks to everyone who came for Tarly’s party and for all her lovely presents (yes Ali, even those bloody ponies 😉 ) – do you know, I reckon it completed her birthday for her. 🙂

with pink fluffy fairy lights! With apologies for using the same song again!

Party Preparation Day today, so my poor neglected, mother went out to work two days this week children got to play xbox and watch films all day with occassional fob offs of lickin the bowl or getting some microwave popcorn while I did mammoth amounts of baking. The oven went on at around 10am and didn’t get turned off til we had dinner around 9.30pm.

I made jam tarts, heart and star shaped biscuits, pink cheese scones, lots of mince pies and a fairytale castle birthday cake. The cake has been something of an epic really. Scarlett said she wanted a castle cake so I checked in some books at the library (where I am often to be found nowadays) and got a great idea for covering cardboard tubes in clingfilm then making an icing tube around them and slipping it off to make turrets (and she’s specifically requested turrets) so I’ve had icing and cardboard tubes in various states of drying and hardening on my worktops since Tuesday. I made the actual cake bit this morning, jam and buttercreamed it together and attempted to mix some icing to cover it. Which is where is all becomes a bit Classic Nic Trying To Achieve Something Saga – esque really, but I’m not in the mood (Too drunken!) be bothered with such recounting so suffice to say that had to be put on hold til I got to the supermarket for icing supplies.

Dad came over mid afternoon to mind the children while I went to the dentists for a scale and polish – so I’ll be expecting compliments on the whiteness of my teeth from all those of you seeing me this weekend ;). I popped to Sainsurys afterwards to get more icing sugar and Ady and I arrived back home at the same time so he did the chatting an eating mince pies with Dad while I tried very hard to construct a castle. This is my final effort working on the less is more principle and using more cake decoration than Jane Asher on a frenzied day. Its okay – my perfectionist streak could pick a million holes in it but Tarly’s face lit up, it is after all a castle, it has her requested princess peeking out of the tallest tower and it has her name on it. 🙂

We got Tarly to sleep but Davies was still awake when Kirsty and James arrived. I was in the bath talking to a friend on the phone who is having a life crisis for at least the first half an hour they were here. We had curry and watched music channels while the children very s l o w l y wore themselves out. Everyone else is in bed now and I’m about to head that way myself.

First full day at work today and I LOVED IT! 🙂

I had a ‘proper Mum’ spell first thing this morning of trying to get D&S dressed while drinking tea with one hand and checking emails with the other and persuading them to eat toast – and that was with Ady here too! Lucy lives about a five minutes drive from me in one direction and the library is less than a five minute drive from me in the other (I will walk to work when the weather is better and the children are totally OK with me being away and I won’t need to be able to get home in moments). So I collected Lucy, Richard and Rebecca just after 8.30am, dropped them off back here and then went on to work. I arrived with a good five minutes to spare and wouldn’t have wanted more really, but living so near means you almost have to cut it fine which runs the risk of something happening to delay me. All fine this morning though :).

I did lots more basic training stuff – some working on the counter and talking to real customers – didn’t realise how much I’d missed that actually, it was lovely 🙂 and lots of tidying shelves and putting books back. Learnt some more jargon, discovered where various other things are kept and got the hang of a few more behind the scenes type processes such as transfering stuff between branches and so on. Also discovered that not only do I not pay fines any more I also don’t pay charges for reserving or ordering in stuff or the lending charges for films and music – hurrah! Spent a very happy half hour tonight reserving loads of books, films and cds through the website and brought home a film for the kids today. 🙂

At lunchtime I nipped to the Arts centre where Tarly’s party is being held to collect the keys for the hall, browsed the local charity shops, had a celebratory sausage roll from the bakers and did a bit of food shopping for party food. Working in town is going to be great for getting the extra food bits and pieces each week and will mean I can use a greengrocers for fruit and veg rather than the supermarkets :). So nice (and yeah ok, shallow) to be doing the lunchtime reapplication of lipstick before returning to work and hearing the workmate banter between the other staff knowing that it won’t be long before I’m one of them and joining in with it all. 🙂

I focussed on getting to know some of the other staff a bit better today too. I realised pretty quickly on Tuesday that although they are certainly not unfriendly they are not great at putting the big effort in to start conversations about stuff or doing much other than smiliing at me a lot. So I got chatting to one about Home Education, another about her upcoming wedding and just asked them lots of questions about them to get them talking to me. Felt like I made some inroads so that was good. 🙂

The weather has been just awful here all day with the wind howling and the rain lashing (although obviously we didn’t make the news for tornados like they did 50 miles up the road!) and it’s still blowing and blustering out there now.

Lucy stayed til lunchtime with the children, I rang and spoke to them both. Scarlett sounded so grown up I asked her if she was being a good boy as I was convinced I was talking to Davies. That earnt me a ‘It’s me Mummy, Scarlett!’ 😆 😳 but they were happy and obviously in very caring and capable hands. 🙂 Dad came over and took over after lunch and Ady and I arrived home within moments of each other. They’d been eating Monster Munch when I got in so weren’t remotely interested in tea so they had a bowl of banana custard each, Dad left and Davies and Ady played a car racing xbox game together while Tarly and I did some bead threading. I am relieved, thrilled and so happy that they are so unbothered about me working so far. I’m sure there will be times when it is not so smooth but early indications are all very positive. 🙂

Tomorrow I have all the last minute stuff to sort out for the party but I have all day to do it in and I’m looking forward to an at home baking day and even more looking forward to the party on Saturday. 🙂

Happy Birthday Alison, lots of love, Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxxx

ps, do let me know if you want a sentimental post about how I first met you, lots of slushy detail about our friendship and how wonderful you are 😉