One word? When seven would do…

Back to the vets with Malice again today. She’s going in first thing tomorrow morning for a full X ray and investigation for the head vet to determine whether he thinks that she is likely to recover from yet another operation and go on to be fine other than blind, or whether we are just prolonging her life for her to suffer through countless operations (and further costs!).

This is good in that it was sort of be someone else’s -medically based – decision, rather than one made from sentiment.

If he decides she has used up her last life he will not bring her round from sedation but I’ve arranged to collect her body to bring home as the children want to bury her with various drawings etc. If he thinks it is worth just one more go at fixing her then he will remove the gammy eye, re-sew the already removed one which is gaping open again and then we wait to see if she starts to recover or not.

The vet we saw today is lovely, he is the one who performed most of the early surgery on Malice and is clearly first and foremost an animal lover. He is compassionate and caring and I am very pleased that Malice’s fate rests with his decision making tomorrow. Now we wait…

Yesterday was a bit of a blur really. I was very tired from the stresses of the day before, had a headache and the children are going through a real sibling squabbling phase this week which is generally unpleasant to be around.

We went to the park for an hour or so and met up with Lucy and Julie, both of whom are on very healthy diets which they spent lots of time talking about which I confess to zoning out. We’d taken the childrens’ bikes – Tarly decided she didn’t want to ride hers anyway and Davies informed me he can’t pedal on grass as it hurts his legs, so he pushed it all across the green and cycled round inside the tarmacked playground bit instead. Tarly had two of her ‘moments’ – one because I wouldn’t push her on one of those infant trikes with a parents pushing handle which are designed for one year olds but Julie pushes Jack round on and one because Davies was playing a game and said she was the ‘Scarlett Monster’ and she didn’t want to be the Scarlett Monster.

Do I sound weary? I feel it…

We came home and had a continued noisy afternoon.

This morning we gathered together library books and I read a couple to them, got the dinner cooking, refereed a couple more squabbles and ended up telling them that if they couldn’t live together peacefully then Daddy would have to move out and take one of them with him and the other would stay with me. They surprised me by saying which parent they’d go / stay with 😯 – both at their choice and that they took me seriously and then both wailed and clutched each other saying how much they loved each other and didn’t want to not live together. 🙄 Another great example of sensible parenting eh!

Round to Lucy’s where we parked and then walked together to the library for storytime. Davies insisted he’d heard the story before so we sat in the corner and read another book together. Actually storytime is not really much of a thing for D & S really – the librarian reads a couple of stories (without much passion it has to be said) and they sing some songs – and I confess right here, right now to loathing children’s action songs / nursery rhymes such as wind the bobbin up (see, told you I was cheery!), which for my children somehow actually seem a bit patronising and something they ‘grew out of’ years ago really, and then do some colouring. Chose some more books and then went back to Lucy’s for a play and a chat and some lunch.

Lucy and I managed to chat, D & S behaved fairly well and R was having a bad day of irritating Lucy and not behaving terribly well, which selfishly always makes you feel better somehow, or at the very least demonstrates that actually all children are like that sometimes and it is always worse through a mothers’ eyes than anyone elses.

We came home and Davies and I looked at various coins from his money box and talked about how they are worth different amounts and how some add together to make the same value as just one etc.

After lengthy discussions about birthday presents, X boxes and so on with Davies we have a plan. He and I are heading off to Toys R Us tomorrow to look at potential gifts while Tarly stays with Ady who is WFH. In the afternoon Mum and I are taking Malice to the vets.

I’ve got a susumama order to coordinate – so if anyone else does want anything please do let me know asap, I need to sort out Beachwatch properly, I’ve got further birthday party planning to organise and I got a reminder letter about tax credits which I’ve not even looked at yet this morning.

Oh and I plan to be a bit sunnier 🙂

As tagged by Kirsty (I answered the Homeschooling one tagged by Katy over on MonsterTeeny)

Things that scare me
1 – Predictability – that this could be ‘all there is to it’
2 – dogs
3 – Tarly’s lack of fear

People who make me laugh
1 – Stewart Lee
2 – Victoria Wood
3 – my Dad

Things I hate the most
1 – not being able to pay my way
2 – not getting enough sleep
3 – public parenting!

Things I don’t understand
1 – the mind of a 3 year old
2 – pretty much any language other than English
3 – people who don’t know how to count their blessings. Don’t have any issue with them, just don’t understand them!

Things I’m doing right now
1 – watching a B&Q delivery man and van across the road and trying to decide what is in the box the neighbours are taking delivery of
2 – cuddling Malice
3 – keeping an eye on the clock and mentally portioning my remaining time before I need to leave the house to the following tasks – getting a chilli on in the slow cooker for dinner, getting the children some clothes together and organising them to get dressed, collecting up library books to take back, a quick tidy up before we go out. And knowing I’m never going to manage it all 😆

Things I want to do before I die
1 – Travel. Lots.
2 – Live somewhere totally different, just not sure where yet
3 – see my children grow up to be happy people

Things I can do
1 – write
2 – enjoy myself
3 – admit I’m wrong

Ways to describe my personality
1 – positive
2 – confident
3 – protective

Things I can’t do
1 – remain serious or upset for very long
2 – exercise moderation 😉
3 – touch my nose with my tongue

Things I think you should listen to
1 – your heart
2 – your children
3 – sad songs to make you cry

Things you should never listen to
1 – the promise of a child to ‘never do it again’
2 – the devil on your shoulder
3 – empty promises

Favourite foods
1 – curry
2 – roast dinner
3 – stir fry

Beverages I drink regularly
1 – wine
2 – tea
3 – water

Shows I watched as a kid
1 – Jamie and his magic torch
2 – Grange Hill
3 – Rainbow

People I’m tagging
1 – Chris P
2 – Layla
3 – Alison (although I bet she won’t do it!)

Joanna 🙂 Have a fab day xxx

Right, I’ve had an order from Em, but I know various others of you were interested in ordering too. I am planning to place the order next Wednesday to give me time to get it here for Davies’ party the following weekend ready to dish out to anyone coming or anyone who can deliver orders to other people. I will need payment upfront as Susumama operate that way for initial orders so that gives you a week to email me what you want and sort out sending me money too.

Monday night we returned home from our lovely time away and discovered that Malice’s remaining eye was infected as the other one had been a couple of weeks ago. I got a vet’s appointment for yesterday afternoon but had spent the morning convincing myself that this was probably the end for her. We obviously can’t afford the further vets bills to have the second eye removed and I had to ask myself why we were keeping going and whether Malice actually has any quality of life remaining.

After talking with my SIL on the phone for a while I had pretty much decided that I would take her to the vets and request that they put her to sleep and end any further suffering for her. I spoke to the children about it and explained about euthanasia and that it is not right to keep an animal alive when they are in pain or dying when there is the option to let them go with dignity. About how it is the duty of a responsible pet owner to make those sorts of decisions sometimes, however uncomfortable the concept of ‘playing God’ might be. So that was crap 🙁 Nothing like trying to find the balance when the two worlds of pet ownership and parenthood collide. Yes I can make it better for my children by responding to their pleas for their beloved pet not to die but am I just prolonging the suffering of an elderly, blind cat who is in pain? Or I can do the decent, loving thing by my pet and take on murdress status in the eyes of my five year old son who sits sobbing on my lap begging that I don’t take her to the vets to die.

We talked it through more and I gently explained it in more detail eventually deciding that if she didn’t come back from the vets alive I would come back with her body and we could bury her in the garden with some pictures and letters from the children. I got my Mum to come over to take me to the vets and Ady to come home to look after the children and they all said goodbye to her.

But I’d not reckoned on Malice’s nine lives at that point.

The vet examined her, agreed that yes the eye does indeed need to come out, giving her no-eyed status and cosmetically making her even less of a showcat, the eye removed last week has split open above the line of stitches so you can now clearly see into the cavity where once was an eye, that will need to be attended to. But he then checked inside her mouth to see how well her jaw had set as she is still not really eating other than rice pudding. And he found a large absess / ulcer on the roof of her mouth. Which rather changes things apparently.

This could suggest some sort of infection generally – which would explain both eyes getting infected. It could be coincidental but would certainly explain her lack of appetite or it could be an unrelated to the accident but likely terminal indication of a tumor.

So we’ve been sent away to consider the options. If we decide to proceed the first course of action is an x ray of her skull to determine what the ulcer relates to. If it is something treatable then the eye will need to be removed, the other eye will need to be sewn back shut and the bill will pretty much equal what we’ve already spent. Or we can end it now, but as the vet feels there is still chance of recovery to a high level despite blindness.

So we came home again to discuss it further with my parents. The final decision needed to rest with them as they would have to fund any further treatment. Their decision is that we have come this far and she deserves every possible chance all the time the only consideration is financial they are prepared to continue. So Mum and I have an appointment on Friday with the chief vet to discuss the x ray option with a view to going ahead and seeing just what we’re dealing with.

All of which made for a fairly traumatic and tiring day really. 🙁

Mum and Dad stayed for dinner, which once we’d got past difficult decision making was quite a nice evening, the children struggled to get used to a proper bedtime, let alone a proper bed after nearly a week under canvas.

Today we are off to the local park with Lucy and Julie. I’m taking the children’s bikes and a picnic although it is threatening to pour with rain any moment so quite how long we’ll be there I don’t know.

I have various other things to blog so I’ll be back later 🙂

It’s been a while!

Last week we were supposed to be going to Newgale for a long weekend, joining Chris and Alison, Sarah and Steve and Simon and Layla. The plan was to leave home on Thursday and make a day of the journey with Ady working as we went visiting all B&Q stores along the way. But on Tuesday morning his boss told him he needed to be in the office on Thursday afternoon and possibly Friday too which scuppered that plan somewhat. So with the options left being possibly not arriving until late Friday or even Saturday or leaving on Tuesday afternoon with Ady returning to work on Wednesday and then joining us as soon as he could later in the week we went for leaving there and then! So with great haste we packed everything up and were away by 4pm.

We raced the rain and had a good journey there, arriving at about 8.30pm just as darkness started to fall and getting our first real life view of the stunning shoreline seen on Chris’ flickr account so many times. Unfortunately by the time we’d located Alison’s tent and started to unpack the rain had caught up with us and by the time we had got the tent up we were drenched. 🙁 A hasty chucking of everything into the tent and getting the children settled and to sleep meant our plan of either heading out for fish and chips or cooking some of the food we’d brought with us were both out of the question so we dined on nice biscuits (with me realising after the third one just how much I really don’t actually like nice biscuits!) and went to bed ourselves.

Wednesday dawned very early for Ady who went off back to Sussex visiting B&Q stores as he went. The children and I had a more leisurely start to the day with breakfast, sorting the tent into some sort of order and catching up with the HEMUK children. Then we all headed up to Alison’s parents rented house for lunch, death defying clambering on a brick wall in the garden and very noisy jigsaw puzzle construction.

Back down to the beach again and Chris arrived. Tarly stayed on the beach collecting the biggest stones she could find, including wandering over the bank of the stones back towards the road and scaring us silly when we couldn’t see her suddenly. Davies joined us in the sea for a while and then got cold and wandered back up the beach to – I thought- play with the other children while Alison, Poppy, Tilda and I bobbed around jumping waves until we got too cold. We found Davies in a sobbing heap on the beach as he’d been unable to spot us in the sea and had convinced himself I’d drowned. 🙁

We headed up to Val and Clive’s for dinner which in a somehow quite fitting but surreal nonetheless way involved it being Christmas for the evening. There was the same Christmas cd playing that we listened to at Okehampton, lots of people round a long table with children sitting at a tacked on bit with an assortment of chairs from around the house at one end and a variety of joke telling after the meal. We had a log fire roaring away and all we were really missing were crackers! Scarlett ended the evening with a really quite spectacular meltdown just to add to the festive feeling 🙄 but it did mean so fell asleep almost instantly when we got back to the tents.

Thursday Dawned bright and sunny and brought Simon, Layla and Claudia mid-morning with rain following along behind not much later. It appeared to be a shower though and was sunny again after lunch. A quick phone call to Ady ascertained that he was still planning to join us that evening but his ETA was getting later and later so having agreed a skill swap with Chris I headed off with him to get supermarket shopping leaving Davies demonstrating very vocally why he would be so not suited to waving me off cheerily at the school gates each morning. The disappearance of Daddy coupled with the near-drowning incident of Mummy the previous day was clearly still very much in his mind and no amount of reassurance that he was staying with Alison, Layla and Si and assorted children was enough to comfort him. I believe chocolate chip cookies managed it not too long after I was out of sight however. We stopped at a garage where I found supremely bargainous wetsuits for sale. Davies and I had gone to the next to the camp site surf shop that morning and tried on a second hand one for him which was priced at £28 so I was delighted to find a not as good quality but who cares really brand new one for a tenner less at the garage. And it made a good guilt assuage gift too for the abandonment.

Once back at the site Davies tried on his new wetsuit and Si and Claudia went back to the garage to get one each for them following a classic comedy bin liner related wetsuit left behind situation rendering Si wetsuit-less. When they returned I tried Si’s on for size guidance and persuaded the ever-ready-with-a-lift Chris to run me back to the garage again to get one for me. Clearly they sell way more wetsuits there than they do petrol. 😆

Fully wet-suited-up we all went across to the sea for a bob about in the fast fading sunshine. Newgale is in a bay so the sea has land edging out in the distance to the left and right and we could clearly see a massive storm over the left with a black sky, loads of lightening and thunder rolling ominously round the bay while we still had blue skies and sunshine above us. Eventually we got cold enough to decide we should head back to the tents and cook some tea before the inevitable rain drove us inside again so we went back and had showers etc. Davies and Scarlett were naked under poncho towels in our tent while I was still prancing about in my wetsuit when the rain started in earnest. It was lashing down and filled the saucepans I had outside the tent in minutes. Our tent entrance was a bit flappy in the wind so I ducked out, still in wetsuit, to peg it down a bit more and was joined by Chris with his mallet who then spotted a break in the pole over our bedroom pod so we tried, in vain, to fix that as the rain drove ever harder over us, with thunder and lightening crashing and flashing directly above it suddenly turned to hailstones and was coming in clumps of four or five coupled with a strong wind blowing them almost horizontally. I ducked into the tent to check how the children were doing only to find them backed up into a corner with the edge of a flood lapping against their feet having got a good third of the way up inside the tent.

I shoved them into Alison’s awning while Chris and I battled with brushes and saucepans to try and clear the water, while moving all our stuff up to the back of the tent. All the while laughing at the madness of the situation and with Chris pleased that the stove was staying alight to get some tea on. He asked Alison for a saucepan only to find she was in the tent, flanked by six children, using all available receptacles, saucepans included, to bale out the water that was flooding their tent too! 😯

Layla and Si were in similar straights so we saw the rain out and had a quick look around the site to see which area was not ankle deep in water ready to stake a claim to a different part of the field. I was still in my wetsuit! 🙂

Having identified a suitable area we moved a small tent for the children to be grouped into and then set about emptying all the tents out, moving them across the field and repitching them, then filling them back up again all with the threat of more rain likely. Out of the woodwork came an army of helpers from all corners of the campsite and we had ourselves organised and set back up again really quickly thanks to the lovely other campers who even offered us tea when they’d finished humping our stuff across a field. Darkness fell, I finally got out of my wetsuit and by about 10.30pm Steve and Sarah had arrived followed very closely by Ady. 🙂 Some time was spent eating hastily boiled food like noodles and pasta, drinking wine and recounting the story of the Great Flood of 2006 to the new arrivals.

Friday Ady had to do some local garden centres and as everyone else had plans and the children – not to mention me! – had missed him so much we decided to go with him. So we did a circuit of some of the nearby garden centres, stopping at Pembroke Docks for lunch and to feed the hoardes of swans that swim along. It continued to be a ropey day weatherwise and we headed back to the campsite around 5pm to find the others preparing for a beach barbecue and campfire. We headed over to the beach where Chris was in charge of catering, Ady went off with Davies and Scarlett to look at rockpools and I enjoyed having none of my family anywhere within hearing distance and several glasses of red wine with my friends. 🙂 As darkness fell we lit a fire, toasted marshmallows and sang songs. A perfect evening. 🙂

Saturday Oh how it rained. Again. The prospect of a day trapped under canvas with so much else to see drove us out again with the plan of seeing an advertised ‘massive’ garden centre for Ady to tick off his list. Once back at the campsite the rain eased a little so we went back to the sea, this time having a go at bodyboarding.
In the evening we gathered in Steve and Sarah’s awning, I managed to cook what had been the most ill fated stir fry in the world finally. And I also managed to cut my finger open whilst washing up. The washing up room has two large sinks side by side and you have to wash up in a bowl. I was standing doing my washing up chatting to the man stood next to me with a young daughter and I plunged my hand into the soapy water filled bowl to feel a rush of pain and see the water start to slowly turn red. For some crazy reason I didn’t want to draw attention to it so I carried on chatting away, did my washing up as quickly as possible (not very well clearly given the water was bloody) and then wrapped the dishcloth round my finger and hotfooted it back to Ady to inspect the damage and play his qualified first aider role to perfection. He banaged me and then applied a plaster when it had stopped bleeding. And kissed me better ;-).

Sunday The best day of the week weatherwise easily. And a fantastic day all round. We all joined the Price / Tooth family on their annual trip to Oakwood Park. Excellent place with loads of rides to suit everyone. The children loved the tamer stuff like kiddie rides, Davies and Scarlett who are on the thrill seeking side anyway adored the scarier stuff like the Treetops coaster, the Snakefalls water rides, the Bobsleigh and Plane Crazy (can’t even type that without feeling a bit queasy) and as we’d gone off with Layla, Si and Claudia, Si and I became ‘Coaster Buddies’ and did a couple of the scarier ones together. We rejoined the others and went round as a group for a while including Si, Alison, Sarah, Anna and I all going on Speed together which was amazing. 🙂 We did some more of the kiddie rides including the Bob Sleigh (which Tarly and I managed to turn into a white knuckle ride anyway ;-)), Brer Rabbit, the pedalos and various other tame ones. We waved goodbye to Layla and Simon during the afternoon while most of the children were watching a magic show. A stop for dinner and then Alison, Poppy, Sarah, Anna and I (can’t wait til my children are old enough!) went off to ride Megafobia in the dark, followed in Anna and I’s case by Speed and Bounce completing the triple. Alison joined us for Speed and Sarah for Bounce before we dashed back to join the others for the grand finale of Oakwood of a singing and dancing show finished by dancing fountains and a firework display. Looking round the tired but very happy faces of all the children, held in parents arms and lit up by the fireworks was the perfect end to a lovely day. And I have very impressive bruises across both thighs from the ride bars on all those rides. 🙂

Back to the campsite where all the children who hadn’t already fallen asleep on the way went to bed very quickly leaving the remaining adults to sit round some burning candles chatting and enjoying the last evening.

Monday A leisurely breakfasting with lots of chatting made for a slow packing up of the tents with us finished around midday. Davies and I had a last swim in the sea while Ady and Tarly walked the beach looking at stones and rockpools and then we decided to get going to get home in daylight, finally arriving home around 7.40pm.

Since getting home we’ve embarked on a whole other rollercoaster but I’ll save the telling of that for the morning. Photos are on flickr and we had a truly lovely week. Newgale is beautiful, the company was great and massive thanks to Chris and Alison for everything. 🙂 xxx

It’s been one of those days.

But I did get some of this from Tesco and I think I’m in love with it! 🙂

I’ve now camped without the portapottie, during mooncup time, in wind and rain, pitched the tent in the dark, taken it back down again in the wind and rain, rethreaded an unthreaded elastic bit from two poles (performing basic tent maintenance!).

Now aside from pitching on the near vertical side of an exploding volcano, carrying the tent on my back to previously untrodden on by human feet soil in distant and unfamiliar lands or tenting underwater please could I get my ‘Camper’ badge now 🙂

It’s because it is quite stoney and without appropriate footwear it hurts! 🙂

We’ve had a lovely, lovely weekend at Jan and Jonathan’s fab house in a very lovely part of the country with very lovely company. 🙂

Friday
Ady WFH’d in the morning while I took Tarly to Sainsburys where we bumped into a friend I’d not seen in a while and stood catching up with her for ages. We came home and I made various baking products to take as our contribution to the party food and packed up things for the weekend.

We got away after lunch around 1.30pm and made OK time considering it was a Friday afternoon in the Summer holidays with a journey taking in large parts of both the M25 and the M1. I think we arrived around 7pm and we had had a couple of stops along the way, so not so bad.

We were greeted with food and tea for grown ups and shrieks of ‘Davies’ and ‘Scarlett’ for the children which was all very nice. I’d origininally bottled out of pitching the tent after all as it was getting dark and the rain was on and off but I was shamed into reversing that decision by Chris French, single-handedly remembering poles and arriving later than us and still heading into the field to pitch so we changed our minds and with assistance from Katy we got ourselves pitched and ready in the dark after all.

Most of the house dwelling children were off to bed at a semi-respectable hour but we struck a deal with Davies, Scarlett, Elinor, Marcus and Alex that if they were quiet they could stay up later. They didn’t of course manage the keeping quiet although Tarly was entertained by a princesses bingo puzzle type thing for a while (washed down with a few sips of wine :roll:) before we all headed off to bed together sometime after midnight. Of course the instant I finally got comfy and cosy in bed I realised I was desperate for a wee and having not brought the portapottie I was forced to bare all in the pitch dark outside the tent round a corner instead (or trek back to the house!), which meant I never did get warmed back up and spent at least 2 hours lying in the tent feeling cold but not cold enough to rummage for more clothes. Foolish virgin camper! 😆

Saturday
A lovely breakfast of pancakes with some of Katy’s special chocolate sauce which Babs has amusing video footage of Tarly getting the most out of (I think she’d even choose it over pink wine!) and everyone scattered to various corners. Children played outside in different combinations – some more succesful, peaceful and friendly than others ;-), a feast of a lunch was served and we found various pockets of people in various rooms to have chats with which was lovely.

After lunch Jonathan organised a literal field trip down to the stream and pump house, so taking first prize for most unsuitable footwear to step off the path in (flipflops with little beaded bits!) we all slipped and slid down the slope, chancing DIY vasectomies as men stepped over barbed wire fences to the stream at the bottom. I’ve still not quite worked out how come Beth and Catie walked across and it barely touched their pants as they held their skirts aloft but somehow my calculation that my knees were about level with their pants and as such rolling my jeans up to above my knees would suffice was incorrect. Also I’ve not quite worked out how come no one told me we weren’t all going to paddle across the stream and actually I was the only adult who did – while all the rest congregated on the bank taking photos and pointing and laughing! 😆 My main concern was not for wet underwear, loss of dignity, pride or the overwhelming photographic evidence of Nic being a loon yet again, it was not that I only had an already slightly damp pair of cut off jeans as my only spare change of clothes, it was not even that I had a small child clutching each hand and if I went I’d take them both with me – it was that if I did indeed do what everyone was anticipating and slip over on the very slimy, frog inhabited rocks that made up the very uneven surface of the stream my phone which was in my pocket would probably die!

I managed not to slip and actually got across to the other side to join the annoying drier than me children congregated on the other side and the adults and other children who had simply walked along the bank on dry land at the other side, only for Jonathan to return and tell us we were all trespassing anyway. So I paddled back!

Jonathan then conducted a three children at a time, very interesting and informative talk on the purpose and method of the pumphouse. Clearly if I had the pumphouse on my land I’d be selling commemorative T shirts, pencils, fridge magnets and postcards of it and ensuring you left the stream via and overpriced gift shop, having had a motion sensored digital camera take a snap of you with an ‘ooh argh!’ expression as you encountered the slimy bottom of the stream with a bare foot, to be sold in a souvenier wallet bearing the legend ‘I stepped off the path’. And then we all walked back up the hill again. 🙂

There was then a ritual kidnapping of all males over 18 to go to the pub which Ady got swept up in 😉 There were womenfolk doing handicrafts in the house but as my repertoire does not extend beyond sewn cartoon characters with scrapstore offcuts of material I stayed in the garden pushing children on swings and generally overseeing Davies’ degeneration into overtired and slightly obnoxious boy. Fortunately he was in good company in the overtired stakes so the work of a mediator was called upon a fair bit! 😆

Further food was unveiled in the evening, with more people arriving which was lovely. Ady and I took our two very tired little people to the tent around 9pm and they were asleep within minutes freeing us to return to the house for further chatting, eating and drinking. Ady retired before me and I enjoyed a very pleasant evening in very lovely company. 🙂

This morning we woke later than planned so amended our plans to be away by 10am and went to the house to join everyone else for breakfast. The great search for missing belongings then began in earnest while Ady and I dismantled the tent and repacked the car up. All stuff except a small camera case which Tarly had filled with stones recovered we said our goodbyes and thankyous and headed for home. I think we were away around 11.30am in the end.

We had a brief lunch stop about halfway home and we were slowed down lots by huge storms on the M25 but made it home in good time and have enjoyed very deep, very hot baths all round, Charlie and Lola arrived from Tescos DVD rental so that has been watched several times already, they were both alseep looking very comfortable in their own beds again by 9pm and we’ve enjoyed a roast dinner while flickring some shots from the weekend.

Thank you so much to Jan and Jonathan for opening their lovely home to us and to everyone else who was there for their company. 🙂

When Nic first met Ali it was all about Home Ed
‘You do, I do it, let’s meet up’ Ali said
‘Come to my house for a visit, the kids should all get on,
we can talk about John Holt and the LEA, what could possibly go wrong?’

But as time went by and we met up more the truth began to dawn
we were very different people but a true friendship was born
despite the fact Ali was a lefty liberal and Nic a true, true blue
despite Nic eating dead animals and dairy products too
While Ali, the crap vegan ate cheezely, soya milk and tofu
aswell as milk chocolate, honey and probably lamb chops too 🙂

So Ali, Happy Birthday mate, hope your day is filled with as many amusingly named fake festive foodstuffs as can be, may your wine be red and very alcoholic, your birthday presents be just what you always wanted and heres to buying replacement twin swimsuits this time next year 🙂 xxx

Ali 🙂 Have a great day with lots of love from Ady (in boots), Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

Mostly I’m sure due to being with Ali today when that is normally a ‘Friday thing’.

Forgot to mention yesterday so I’ll mention now that Davies was playing with the xylophone yesterday and picking out the W&G tune he’d learnt on the piano on Sunday including carrying on and learning the next bit. He did that all by himself and it was only when Tarly commented on it I realised it was coming from the next room pretty much note perfect. 🙂

So this morning we played a bit more set and I tried to persuade Davies it was perfectly possible to play alone but he was having none of it! Tarly was playing with some letterland letter flash cards which I had dug out ready to go on ebay and have been played with – having been previously ignored for about 3 years – ever since! I did a few loads of washing which had built up with the rain this week and we were out of the house shortly after 10am.

We had a lovely few hours at Ali’s with much turn taking on the Leapster ;-), some playing with Gears!Gears!Gears!, lots of chatting and some Xboxing for Davies and Freya. The children managed their usual trick of interupting every conversation so all topics were covered in a stop, start manner with us spewing out as much information as we could in short spaces of time. 😆

We managed to leave promptly despite Davies and Scarlett viewing Ali’s house as some sort of library where every item is up for borrowing 😉 and only came away with a Barbie Nutcracker dvd 😆 Ali, I can only assume you are building up to asking for a really big borrow of something at our house in return – Ady perhaps? 😆 He comes with accessories including Ady machine and boots!

We took Malice to the vets for her post-op checkup and came home for a premiere viewing of the Barbie (ack!) film.

We were supposed to be going to a local-ish big park today with Lucy, Richard and Rebecca. But it rained. And it rained. So via text Lucy and I decided it would be A Bad Idea to drive all the way there in the rain and then walk round in the rain and then drive home in the rain. So instead they just came round here for the day.

And it was very nice actually. The children all played really nicely and Lucy and I talked non stop about the widest variety of things I couldn’t even begin to recall now, but it was lovely. 🙂

After lunch when the rowdiness levels got a little two high and the rain had stopped and given way to sunshine again we walked to the local park for a while. Davies rode his bike there and back and around the park a bit in the middle too, doing really well up and down hills, using brakes and being very sensible about the road and appearing to have complete control of the bike using steering and the brakes in a very coordinated manner – which is a big deal considering how inept he was just a couple of weeks ago! Tarly wanted to take her bike but I was not confident enough in their abilities to try and watch them both so she got a piggy back instead!

Once at the park I relented from my usual ‘No Pushing Children On Swings’ rule and Tarly had a small swing before deciding daredevil antics on the climbing frame would be preferable. Davies came running over and I told him I’d keep pushing him for as many pushes as however high he could count. And with really rather minimal assistance he counted to 100!! For the first time ever! 🙂 He needed prompting rather than help with the tens but for the first time grasped the patterns – we talked about what the numbers looked like written down and he grasped that after 29 comes 3 – 0 and then after 39 comes 4 – 0 and so on. So that was rather good 🙂 This week we seem to have managed reading, writing and counting along the way!

We came back from the park and sat in the garden for a while with ice lollies chatting and then Lucy went off home and we came in for the childrens’ tea. I had 3 CVs which had a deadline of tonight and I’d ignored all week so as soon as Ady got home I took myself off upstairs for an hour or so and did those while Ady had bathed the children and put them to bed. I finished them off while Ady did some gardening and we finally sat down around 10pm with dinner and the first of our Tesco DVD rental dvds – War of the Worlds. I admit openly to being a total film-know-nothing. My favoruite films include When Harry Met Sally and Four Weddings and a Funeral (which is where Tarly’s name really comes from, rather than the grander beginnings of Gone With the Wind!), I used to watch lots of horror films in my teens but now can’t bear them, I don’t like violence and I don’t like war films – which sort of limits my viewing choices really! 😆 I’d heard enough about WOTW to know it was based on the story of the cds me and the children listen to in the car and was expecting it to be that story exactly. Infact I’d actually got it with the intention of vetting it first and then letting the children see a visual interpretation of the music they love.

Well, it wasn’t quite that, and I won’t be letting the children see it, but I really enjoyed it. It had me with my hands over my mouth and on my cheeks (Home Alone style) for massive chunks of the film and the obligatory ‘happy ending’ and that’s good enough for me. 🙂 So that was a nice evening.

Tomorrow we’re off to Ali’s and Malice has a post-op check up at the vets. She apppears to be brighter again today and is jumping on and off the sofas very competantly so I am fairly reassured by that. And now, once again it has gotten very late and I really must go to bed.

Jules – have a great day 🙂

Monday
Vet’s first thing to take Malice back. As expected she had to have her eye removed. It was a straightforward procedure and they unwired her jaw at the same time. She now looks very beaten again as she was shaved around the eye, under the chin and on her leg for various tubes and injections and she has stitches in the closed eye. She returned home slightly sorry for herself but in some ways a bit brighter than she’s been (which given the level of infection must have been causing her pain is probably no surprise) with a rather large invoice which my Dad has had to take care of on our behalf.

Malice dropped off the children and I popped into town where I had a couple of things to do including filling some forms in at the bank, which I bribed the children to be good and quiet while I did with the promise of sweets from Woolworths. This is not really a tried and tested method for me and tbh 9 times out of 10 when I do attempt it it doesn’t work anyway! But this time it did 🙂 So they got their sweeties. We also had a quick look in the charity shops and netted a W&G toy rabbit for Davies and a little wooden box complete with pink sparkly bead bracelet and heart shaped ring for Tarly – for the princely sum of 30 pence each. I also picked up a couple of videos. I have embarked upon a weight loss challenge with an online friend for which the only intended effort to succeed is no weekday drinking of alcohol, smaller portion sizes of our usual meals and ‘some’ exercise. My planned exercise is to dance along to patronising teenagers teaching dance routines to Britney, S Club 7 and Kylie songs as taught on ‘Wow! Let’s Dance 6’ purchased for just 50pence and to follow the advertsised ‘fun dance-based routines’ on Anne Diamond’s ‘How I lost four stone’ video – also 50 pence. So if in just ten days you wonder who that svelte willowy woman is showing up on my flickr photostream it might be me (or one of my skinny mates!). 😆

Once home I was generally impatient and ranty, the reason for which became clear later 🙄 but putting that aside Davies did some spelling using some magnetic letters placed on the fireguard. He spelt ‘man’ ‘vets’ and the beginning of ‘went’ which was where I lost my temper so we stopped there. 🙁 We then looked at the last lesson we’d done in 100EL about a year ago and he was reminded that he ‘can’ read, he just needs to put a bit more thought and effort into it than he somehow expects to have to. Anyway, let’s leave that there as it was only a tiny part of the day and was pretty much all me being intolerant rather than him being anything other than a five year old, for which I believe he has adequate excuses! 😉

We had a play with some papier mache but all quickly lost interest in that and then I went and did some more tidying up in the playroom. I now have a good pile of stuff ready for ebaying but as we are away from next Thursday now would be a bad time to start a listing, so it will have to wait til we get back home again.

Then it was time to collect Malice so we went back to the vets and waited for about half an hour in a really busy waiting room. It looked just like a jigsaw puzzle I once had of a vets waiting room with all sorts of shapes and sizes of animals including a tortoise in a carrier, a couple of dogs and various cats, rabbits and so on. I think we have now read every single book in the waiting room, complete with comedy regional accents depending on how busy it is and how much of an audience are also there pretending not to listen.

Once home Davies wanted to play a game so I suggested Set which we’ve had in the house since Jax did the initial co-op buy of them but I’ve never actually played. Davies loves ‘spot the difference’ games so I thought it might be his sort of thing. And it was 🙂 He loved it! Tarly was our dealer, putting more cards out as requested and randomly shouting ‘set!’ for amusement. Davies did really well though, totally got to grips with it and was easily able to explain why sets were sets. So we’ll be playing that again I reckon. Far rather a game like that than monopoly or snakes and ladders!

Today
Ady came home last night and announced he was visiting Reading store today so a quick check with Alison that she was free and we arranged to go and visit her while Ady worked. So up at horrid o’clock this morning and we arrived mid morning with her. The children all went off and played, just coming back for food and drink and to offer lateral thinking questions as and when inbetween playing, leaping about in the paddling pool and watching TV. A lovely day :-).

And now, I really, really, really need to go to bed and catch up on some sleep!

This rather wonderful company sell fab and funky kids clothes. If I get a big enough order they will sell to me at wholesale (which is half price) plus p&p.

Anyone interested in ordering anything? Have a look at the website or even request a catalogue. Julie has loads of their stuff for Jack and Maisie and it washes and wears really well. Chances are I’ll be seeing you or someone who lives near enough to you to pass stuff on at some point or I can post stuff to you.

My Dad’s birthday today. He is 68. That sounds terribly old – even to him, he tells me. I think he had a nice day. We’d wanted to go over to them today really – it’s just so much easier, there is way more room, we get to go home when we want to rather than having to wait for them to leave and there are things like tables to sit and eat at 😆 Dad actually said he’d rather we went over there for a change too.

This morning I was up hideously early. Tarly appeared in our bedroom at just after 5am. She was persuaded into our bed for an hour but she didn’t actually sleep, so neither did I. We got up just after six and I baked a birthday cake for my Dad (not one of my best) and having been tempted by the promise of a chocolate and ginger cake on a forum I frequent and bought the cocoa and ginger in preparation only for it to not be posted I googled and came up with a Nigella recipe instead. My Dad adores chocolate ginger so I’d promised to take it over with us if it turned out ok. It was lovely 🙂 Will post my slightly different interpretation to Nigella’s recipe over on indigestion later.

Davies and Scarlett made birthday cakes for Dad – Davies made an enormous one which he did lovely writing inside and the most fantastic picture with the whole page coloured. Tarly did a fairly interpretive picture but also wrote ‘Grandad, Love Scarlett’ really nicely with lots of kisses.

We’d got Dad a cd and a dvd he’s requested both by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, whom I’d never heard of but Dad enthused over. Having listened to them today whilst not the same I was reminded of The Barron Knights who my parents liked when we were little kids. We even went to see them in concert as a family. Retrospectively I wonder how much of an influence their work has had on me given how much I love to rewrite comedy lyric versions of songs 😆 Wonder whether they are looking for a female youngster to carry on the good work?

Great Granny (Mum’s Mum) arrived and we had a lovely lunch with the birthday cake to finish off. Davies decreed that everyone address Dad as ‘Birthday Man’ all day which was very funny, particularly when we all had to sing Happy Birthday again to get it correct. Granny and I had a bit of a set-to over lunch about a really trivial thing which really put my back up but seemed to blow over quickly enough – unusually it was nothing personal about her or I (she generally has a pop at me about my weight whenever possible) which probably helped.

Then Ady, Mum and I went to the nearby park with the children on their bikes for an hour or so. Davies rode really happily and easily all the way there and back aswell as all around the park. Tarly struggled a bit riding there but having cracked it again whilst in the park and rode all the way home again by herself – considerably slower than Davies but he couldn’t have ridden at all a year ago so she’s still doing pretty well. 🙂 Davies rode way ahead of me, waiting at each junction for me to catch up so we could cross together – I spy easier times ahead for walking to places with him a bit more mobile like that. Might even be persuaded to get a bike of my own from freecycle or a carboot sale!

We came home again for chocolate gingerbread and Ady sat doing a jigsaw with Tarly while Davies and I went and played on the piano for a bit (results of which can be seen below). The Tarly came in and he ‘played’ some music for her to do interpretive dancing to and I talked to them both about handstands and headstands and made a vague promise to show them how when I was more suitably attired and less scared that it is about 25 years since I last did any 😆

Tomorrow Malice is back at the vets first thing where I imagine she will be admitted for an eye removal operation and we have a pile of library books I’d quite like to read and get shipped back to the library – also further playroom sorting if the mood takes us.

Karen B 🙂 Have a great day!