One word? When seven would do…

feels like this morning was about a week ago…

Up early this morning to go and fetch Lucy, Richard and Rebecca before Ady went to work so as not to have to drag Davies and Scarlett out too. I managed to have a bit of a chat about how Davies feels about me working with him later today and he is very happy with Lucy looking after them so that’s good. It seems to have not caused too many ripples at all my working but I am conscious of our weeks filling up rather too much and want to retain as much of our time at home, alone with just the three of us picking up things to do as we go along as possible as that is what I consider our most important aspect of Home Education. Socialising, groups and being out and about are very key too but at least one full day a week needs to be free to fill as we see fit on that day.

Work this morning passed very quickly. I’m still struggling with the different levels of urgency and customer focus than I was used to for so many years in retail but I’m sure it will become more natural as time goes by. Loving all the order and cleanliness of the processes though. 🙂

I was home for lunch which felt rather like walking into feeding time at the zoo with lots of demands for food and drink, crisps everywhere and a potty training toddler – got my dose of busy-ness that I’d been missing from work though ;). Our shoebox swap from America finally arrived today – a mere 2 months after it was posted so we looked at the various bits and pieces sent to us from there and ate the sweets. It is an excellent idea that but definitely something for when the children are a bit older and can participate more in the actual sending of the box too.

Lucy & co left and in a fit of efficiency I went upstairs and went through all my clothes dragging out things for ebaying. I came downstairs and got dinner on in the slow cooker (bolognaise). Davies & Scarlett were watching the directors commentry on the dvd extras of Ice Age 2 and semi-playing with various toys still out from earlier. Scarlett started to fall asleep so I took her in the kitchen to help me get their tea cooking then we cleared up and they ate while watching the normal Ice Age 2 film.

Ady got home, Davies got changed into his Badger outfit (new trousers, he’d finally outgrown the old ones 🙂 ) and we went to new Badgers in Worthing. A really good group on first impressions, much more children, a far bigger range of ages, three adult helpers all of whom seemed excellent with the children, who seemed a nice bunch too. I chatted with the leader (Julie) for a while and then sat at the back for about 10 minutes to check Davies was alright. I’d sort of deliberately not heard when one of the helpers took him off to put his coat away and he’d gone to get me to go with him which meant he started chattering away to her instead. I love watching Davies talk to adults – he does it so unself-consciously about the fact they are grown ups, he does a great line in small talk :lol:. I felt a little like I was too much of an audience so I crept over to Davies to tell him I’d be in the car and then went and sat outside with the heater on full blast reading my book. He said it was good and had already learnt a couple of the other children’s names so that all seemed pretty easy too. 🙂 We don’t get home until nearly 7.30pm so that will be a lateish night each week but worth it as I think he’ll get even more out of this group than he did from the Lancing one, it seems very well run and organised with the older Badgers having specific responsibilities and helping out lots, several older boys there too which is so what Davies needs. 🙂

This evening I have photographed and listed all the clothes on ebay – took bloody forever but at least it’s done now. 🙂 Hopefully it will be worth it. Davies has been doing more drawing and writing in bed, glad he’s getting some educational stuff in somewhere but feel the need to rearrange his timing somewhat so he is doing more sleeping in the evening and more stuff which he wants to show me during daylight hours! 😆

It currently comprises five suits, three jackets, several skirts, a couple of jumpers, two dresses. I’ve also got D & S’s old car seats to list so hopefully the sensible spending only fund will be healthy. 🙂 Just got to photograph & list it now.

And saved at the last minute from getting far to close to the old normal too!

Ady went back to work today so once we were all up and dressed I decided to go into town and browse the sales. I was getting all itchy about wanting to spend some money and had a mental list of things I’d like to get. Neither of the children wanted to go out and I’d already exchanged texts with Lucy asking them round later in the day. Then I came to my senses just as we were putting our coats on about how actually we might have a bit of cash now but we won’t have by the end of the month, there is nothing I actually *need* and the kids would have been totally miserable being dragged round the sales while I tried to get some sort of fix like a desperate junkie falling off the wagon. So we all took our coats and shoes back off again, I texted Lucy to say they were welcome any time and the children continued playing while I made myself a cup of tea and settled down with a book. Close one that…

Lucy, Rebecca and Richard arrived shortly afterwards and I got my fix by running round the shop for a loaf of bread instead. At the risk of belittling other, more damaging addictions I do wonder whether the urge to spend money I don’t have will ever really go away. It was quite scary how the moment I felt I could pull off some covert spending cos Ady was back at work I was all geared up to do it with butterflies in my tummy and the anticipated joy of new stuff in new carrier bags ready to empty over the bed when I got home and savour the feeling of having acquired new things. The feeling has passed now though and I plan to ruthlessly go through my wardrobe, cull it right down and flog all the stuff I am unlikely to wear again on ebay. Whatever I make from that I can justify spending penny for penny on new stuff. I have got at least 10 suits which I can’t see me having occassion to wear any time this decade (not as excessive as it sounds – I did spend a good 7 years wearing suits to work and lots of them were purchased with 40% staff clothing allowance at Bhs, but they’ll still go for loads on ebay, larger sized stuff always does. 🙂 ) and enough coats to wear a different one each day for a fortnight so some of them could go too. Then it’ll be like swapping clothes rather than buying new ones right?

Anyway, Lucy arrived, the children got straight into playing and we had a really good catch up. Although we saw a lot of each other during December it seemed to be mostly childcare or chaos so it was lovely to reminise a bit and share a few stories from the past. The children played with a variety of things – marble runs, the musical instruments and some drawing. The drawing morphed into some other sort of game to do with a golden train for which you had to have golden tickets so there was lots of creating posters, train tickets and the like. Scarlett seemed to be odd one out for a while which created a bit of minor friction but then there was a long period when Davies and Scarlett played together and Rebecca entertained herself too so that all seemed to even out in the end. Davies and Scarlett obviously took in more of Superman than I’d realised the other day as lots of their games have involved superheros or super powers the last few days and that was the theme of one of the games that they all played together with them coming and announcing their various super powers to us.

Colin came to collect them around 4.30pm so I got the kids’ dinner on and they watched some tv and ate dinner. They are into a bizarre mix of viewing at the moment with some Cbeebies thrown in for retro purposes (mainly Charlie & Lola), Nick jr for only selected shows such as Wonderpets and loads of Discovery Kids. Davies appears to have fallen into a whole new sleep pattern and was still awake at 10.30pm – clearly the NYE late night is going to take a while to catch up on – I might pick up some story tapes from work tomorrow to see if that helps him drift off or at least relax a bit at bed time though as he has a tape player in his room.

He has been really into writing the last few days, either getting me to write things for him or asking me to spell words so he can write them. He did a lovely picture of a church today complete with stained glass window and used a ruler to draw all the straight lines which was a first (and totally unsuggested by me) then he took a notepad and pencil to bed and kept coming down having copied works and sentences from his books and posters in his room. He’d copied ‘best of British’ from a Wallace and Gromit poster so when he brought me that I made him spell it out and read it himself. He’s clearly on the cusp of something and his wonder at his achievements is lovely to witness – wouldn’t miss such lightbulb moments by forcing him before he was ready or shipping him off to school for someone else to see it for the world. 🙂

Scarlett is doing lots of letter spotting too – she knows the letters from her name now although she doesn’t know the names of all of them and can spot them all on a page of text. She also surprised me the other day when we were watching home videos of Ady’s 39th birthday by going up to the TV with a cake and candles saying 39 and pointing to them saying ‘look, three and nine’ cos I didn’t know she recognised numbers written down. It’s times like these that I really have to sit on my hands not to leap in and try and introduce a phonics system or have them start to learn the alphabet or do workbooks, but it’s also times like these that I am reminded that they do indeed learn these things all by themselves, because they want to, for their own reasons, when they are ready. I think I’ve said before that I believe Home Education is about listening to your children and hearing them ask, in whatever way they choose to ask, for whatever it is they need. Clearly children who are copying and spelling out words from the posters and books featuring characters that they love don’t need to be bombarded with workbooks featuring Lovely Lamp Lady and Uppity Umbrella. And the child who is getting joy from spotting the letters that make up her name is unlikely to get the same pleasure from wordsearches about things you’d find on a beach.

Tomorrow is work for me in the morning and Davies has new Badgers starting in the late afternoon. I’ve not mentioned it to him for weeks as I only realised myself that it was tomorrow when I looked in my diary earlier tonight and currently I’m more fretful about finding his Badgers polo shirt and ensuring he has a pair of black trousers to wear that fit him than how he’ll cope with the new group. I would be that mother drying school shirts with a hairdryer plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car driving them to school in the morning!

Had a really nice evening to see in the New Year. Scarlett suffered at the hands of my teasing father and intolerant mother and was very ratty for the last hour before she fell asleep but said this morning she was just sleepy. She made it until 11.30pm before falling asleep on my lap but I kept her in my arms to see New Year in asleep so she still got kissed by everyone anyway. 🙂

We had loads of picky food, lots of cava and listened to music all night, mostly The Pogues before putting the TV on for the fireworks around 11.30pm. Davies stayed up until Mum and Dad went home and we went to bed just after 1am, he joined us in our bed though and said he’d had a wonderful sleep this morning when he finally got up around 10am. I didn’t so I hope he isn’t planning on making a habit of it :lol:.

The final picture above is of Davies on the phone. He got two Wallace and Gromit open out playhouses for Christmas with figures from ebay. They were made in the 90s and one is W&G’s house, the other is the exterior of Wendolene’s Woolshop and inside is the factory from A Close Shave. On the front of Wendolene’s wool shop is a phone number and Davies had worked out what it was and wanted to ring it. I really didn’t expect him to fall for it but Ady disappeared without him noticing, Davies read out the number to my Mum and she dialled Ady’s mobile then passed Davies the ringing phone. Ady obviously managed a passable Yorkshire accent and disguised his own voice sufficiently as you can see from the delight on Davies’ face that he truly believed he was talking to Wallace. He asked about Gromit, they discussed Christmas, wished each other a happy new year, told each other a bit about where they lived including swapping addresses and then Davies said ‘I’ll pass you over to my Mummy now and you can arrange to come and visit us soon or we can come and visit you’ and gave me the phone! They said goodbye and wished each other Happy New Year again. Definitely the highlight of Davies’ year 🙂 He is now convinced that Wallace and Gromit are in fact real, that the films are just based on real people and their likenesses made from plasticine for that purpose while the true W & G go about their business at a now disclosed address in Yorkshire. 😆

Today we were all up rather later than normal 😆 and had to eat something egg based for breakfast – boiled eggs or pancakes – Scarlett had both which has cleared the egg mountain. Then Ady went and cleared out and hoovered both cars, filled my tyres up with air (one was all but flat :oops:) while I took the Christmas tree down along with most of the decorations. We’ve left up Christmas cards and outside lights and a few odd bits of tinsel which will come down on Friday but it’s lovely to have the lounge back to it’s normal size without the tree blocking the light from one window. Spurred on by that I went and cleared out both bathrooms which seems to be an annual job. I went through all the various bottles of lotions and potions and threw out almost a whole bin liner full of ‘stuff’, cleaned mirrors and the sinks and bath and generally made it feel tidier and less cluttered, putting nice new bath bits and pieces we’d had for Christmas ready to be used. I did a surface tidy in the playroom, which needs a proper tidy soon as do the children’s bedrooms but that can wait awhile longer. I also did a couple of loads of washing too, so that all felt very virtuous. 🙂

Davies has xboxed all morning playing W&G, Cat in the hat and some Barbie for Scarlett. Tarly did some Barbie.com and then they spent ages half watching Superman while playing with My Little Ponies (Scarlett), two Happy Meal toys Flushed Away characters and a game loosely based on what’s happening on Superman :lol:. The geomags have been out today too with Tarly making geomag jewellry for herself.

We’ve got a roast beef dinner shortly, eaten at the kids’ dinnertime so we can eat up more of the snack food later tonight for supper while watching TV after they’ve gone to bed (hopefully early). Tomorrow Ady’s back to work and I’m working on Wednesday morning so everything slowly starts to return to normal. 🙂 A massive thunderstorm has just started so our newly clutterfree room with the fire lit, dinner on the way and good tv lined up feels like exactly the right place to be with each other. 🙂

Predictably my parents rang earlier and have invited themselves over this evening. Hopefully their mood will be cheery rather than maudlin.

In the style of people using up food before lent we have a huge amount of eggs about to go out of date, so we used up some sausages and bacon too and had a lovely cooked breakfast this morning – I’m planning on doing pancakes tomorrow to use up some more eggs. No point in baking this time of year, we are already brimming with mince pies, Christmas cake and tins of chocolates so cakes wouldn’t get eaten.

After a hearty breakfast we joined the neighbours gathered in our road gossiping about a fire in the block of flats on the next corner – it had totally burnt out a whole flat, which must have been a really crap end to someone’s year :-(. Did get to find out the name of hunky builder neighbour though, he’s called Keith. This has put me right off him! 😆 I just don’t buy that whole ‘that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ stuff. There wouldn’t be anywhere near so many baby name books on the market if that were true!

We drove to Highdown Gardens for our planned meet up with Chris and Julie for a walk only to find it all locked up and closed. 🙁 Fortunately Highdown is perched atop the downs so there was plenty of open space behind it to walk about on instead. We were far from alone up there and bumped into loads of people walking their dogs and children! The children were desperate to run in open spaces rather than into the sofas and shout into the wind rather than each others faces so it did them the world of good. It was very windy and very cold but the rain held off so we considered it bracing rather than miserable :lol:. Loads of photos on flickr but a couple of my faves here:

An hour or so was long enough so we wished each other Happy New Year and headed home for hot chocolate and toasted muffins.

The wind and rain is set in for the night now so we’ve drawn the curtains, lit the fire and I’m about to mix my first snowball. Davies is looking forward to Christmas You’ve Been Framed and is sitting predicting what ‘hilarious’ clips might be shown (‘Mummy, I bet there is one with a Christmas tree that falls down, one where a Christmas decoration falls from the ceiling onto someone’s head and maybe one to do with lights on a roof’). We’ve told them they can stay up as late as they like tonight – be very interesting to see how long they last. 🙂 We’ve got loads of picky food we picked up reduced to clear from Sainsburys and Tescos the day after Boxing Day because dates were up and we filled our freezer and we’re expecting my parents very soon.

Happy New Year to you all 🙂

Been reading the roundups of the year on other blogs and went and looked out my one from last year too. Enjoyed reading that as so little and yet so much has changed.

I did an educational round up last year, to be honest although I could do one this year I have started to see little point in seperating education from life generally. I don’t wear Home Education like a badge quite so much as I used to, it is simply one of the things we do. It is only in recently starting work and therefore meeting a whole new set of people that I have realised ‘oh yeah, we / I do something a bit different don’t we / I?’. I’ve watched Home Educating friends stumble, sometimes falter and either give it up or carry on but as yet we have never doubted this is the right path for us. We are very new and shiny still, the children are very young, we have yet to hit our first crisis of faith and I guess I’m mostly of the long may that continue mentality about it really.

I am confident that if for whatever hypothetical reason I can come up with the children did have to go to school they have not been hampered in any way by not having been already, I remain utterly convinced that this is the right thing for both children, individually, and for us as a family. I can see that they have both made progress in leaps and bounds in 2006 on so many levels but holistically as people rather than specifically in terms of education. If forced I could certainly start to quantify reading, writing, maths, science, history, geography, art skills and they daily offer myriad examples of how they are learning and growing so I guess my sentence summary for education is Home Education continues to be successful for Davies, Scarlett and the Goddard family.

This has been a great year for Davies, his passion for films has been well and truly indulged. We have seen loads of films at the cinema, made good use of a free dvd rental service for three months during the year and are already taking full advantage of the free dvd rental from the library as one of my employees perks. We have started to look at the ‘science’ that is film making, helped along the way by watching many dvd extras and plenty of experimentation into film making of our own. Christmas gifts of his own digital camera complete with remote control and a tripod should continue to make film making one of his pasttimes moving forward.

Davies’ other great interest this year, certainly since September, has been his x box. We have been amazed at how quickly he has grasped the idea of the games, watched in embarrassed grown-up-ness as he wrestled the controls from our clearly inferior grasp and showed us how it was done. This has in no small way brought his reading along too and probably eased his path in peer groups along the way ;).

I never really got used to Davies being five and now he is six. This seems like a funny sort of inbetween age somehow. Four and Five is definitely ‘little kid’ still, when you hit Seven and Eight it seems much more ‘fully fledged child’ but six seems to be in the middle. One of the highlights of Davies’ year was definitely his sixth birthday party. From attending Adam’s Madagascar themed party back in May he started planning a Wallace and Gromit themed birthday party for himself. Although I certainly did all the facilitating (oh, how I facilitated!) the guest list, games ideas, food ideas, hall decoration and goody bags were all his own ideas. Watching him play the role of ‘Birthday Boy’ with such utter enjoyment during the party surrounded by friends was certainly a real high point of the year for me.

Scarlett has continued to assert herself and make her voice heard this year. Her interests in all things stereotypically girlie somehow sits alongside her strength of character, independance and grubbiness! Totally capable of having silver sparkly nail varnish on her nails and enough mud to plant potatoes in under them :lol:. This year Scarlett has started to strike out on her own and make real proper friends aside from Davies, in a crowd she is not always to be found by his side any longer.

She adores books, creates fantastical imaginary worlds with her soft toys, Barbie dolls and the geomags. She is a massive fan of the barbie.com website and has learned to type her name on it much to her delight. She is slower with actual writing although when she does try her letters are very neat. She has been showing lots of interest in reading this year and things seem to be falling into place for her to move forward with that in the coming year. Similarly her birthday party where she got to play hostess to nine other little princesses was a real highlight for her and hopefully something she’ll remember for years to come.

By the end of this year, reading back over blog posts, listening to my parents and looking at pictures I came to realise that Davies looks like me and acts like Ady, while Scarlett looks like Ady and acts like me. Not sure which is the better combination really :lol:.

Ady is working really hard on his college course. He has found it a challenge and whilst it is not one he is keen to ever repeat he has learnt a lot and if he passes the exam in 2007 he will have a qualification which would be a great addition to his cv and open lots of career doors should we choose to pursue that sort of path next. He is doing lots more office based work and lots less driving which I openly confess to being mightily relieved about. I hated him driving so many 100s of miles and whilst he is still clocking up far higher mileage than most people it must have been halved this year.

I remain very happy with my lot. I experienced something of an identity crisis earlier this year wondering who precisely I was when you stripped away being a Mummy, wife and Home Educator. I swiftly concluded I needed a plan, developed one and fairly quickly afterwards managed to get an interview and subsequently a job at the local library. It’s very early days and I’m only working 11 hours a week but so far it is meeting all the needs I identifyed myself as having (time away from the home, time for the children to be with someone else, the chance to put on grown up clothes and be someone not identified by the two children holding my hands, bring some money back into the home, get some career skills again, possibly find something which as years go by could grow into a career for later years and so on) and comes with some great perks (pension, holiday pay, overtime potential, free dvds and cds rental and NO MORE LIBRARY FINES! Oh and I get a badge and a locker too :lol:).

This has been the year I have gained an enormous amount out of having female friends, have felt more comfortable with who I am, grown and learnt loads and got a real feel of what my ideas, hopes and dreams might mean.

For the first time in at least 15 years we will end the year less in debt than we started it. The debt is still there, it is still fucking huge, but it is being managed, reduced, controlled and in a small way dealt with. I have slipped and cocked up along the way this year but I am starting to feel I really might have a handle on my spending. For the very first time I am actually living the ‘spend less, earn more’ mentality that should be applied to people with money problems. I feel like I have accomplished both this year, it has been a hard won battle and whilst it is all relative I mighty proud of myself for what I have managed to achieve. We ended the year on a very high note for frugality with the children getting everything they wanted – and we wanted them to have – for Christmas pretty much entirely funded from selling things on ebay, charity shop hauls or car boot sale finds. Again, I am very proud of that. 🙂 I have no idea what 2007 will hold for our financial situation but I’d never have dreamt I’d be sat here without any of the threatened court action having happened a full year on from the first defaults so I can only hope that it either continues with token payments or whatever is thrown at us is managed without too much heartache.

Highlights of the year include the Home Ed camps we attended – Melrose, Kessingland and of course the first of what I hope is many NicCamps, Halloween camp. We have enjoyed the hospitality of many friends including those we visited on our Tour Of The North (including Scotland), Helen & Chris, Babs, Merry, Layla & Si, Alison & Chris, Kirsty, Joyce. We have enjoyed the various social events including Davies and Scarlett’s birthday parties, Adam’s birthday party, Freya’s pool party, Elijah’s birthday party, Chris and Helen’s belated housewarming and officially home educating party, Jan and Jonathan’s party weekend, Ben’s The Gruffalo birthday treat and Ros’ Christmas Open House. It has been an honour to play host to so many of our friends over the year ; Chris & Helen, Alison & Chris, Layla & Si, Babs & Chris, Bob & Katy, Katy, Kirsty & James, Em, Jan & Jonathan and many more.

I think I surprise nobody more than myself by taking to tenting as well as I did. There seemed to be a criteria which I had to meet before being considered a proper camper. Having survived and actually really rather enjoyed the Kessingland week, I went one step further in Jan and Jonathans field before fully earning all my tenting wings during a wonderful week in Newgale in August. Having the tent under inches of water necessitating a complete move across the camping field – as LONE parent, along with Chris & Alison and Layla & Si made me, I believe, as real a camper as they come ;). I also gained my ‘coaster wings on that holiday aswell as my new wetsuit making it rather a groundbreaking week for me. And one I’d repeat tomorrow (well maybe not tomorrow, the weather forecast is grim!).

And finally no round up of the year would be complete without the B,D & M section. So a massive welcome to Jasper, certainly the most eagerly awaited baby I didn’t birth myself that I’ve ever known,
a toast to our friends Bruce & Paula who are coming up to their first wedding anniverary
and a very sad goodbye to Malice, who went to sleep earlier this year for the last time. I hope her dreams are sweet and I miss her every time I sit down and realise she is not upon my lap.
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To 2007, I wish you all a wonderful one with health and happiness and fully intend to be enjoying it to the full myself. 🙂

which is really rather a nice word to roll around the tongue I think. 🙂

Started today with the dash to Brighton to the bank. We were expecting a traffic filled journey with problems parking but in a bit of a surreal Dr Who where have all the rest of the people gone fashion the drive was speedy and we parked outside the bank no problem. Very odd. Back home for a very early lunch for me and then I headed off to work for the afternoon leaving Ady and the children behind to xbox, be very noisy and make me birthday presents (I’m nearly 33 you know :lol:).

Work was good – quiet again but I felt like I got to know the two Saturday staff a bit better today and shared a few laughs with them both, also spent a bit of time with my immediate boss there who had swapped Saturdays with someone else so that was good. Due to the quietness she gave me a few different jobs to do – all very clerical / adminny but actually for brief periods of time I am more than happy with that sort of task so I really enjoyed that. There are more hours available due to someone leaving and I was tempted to put myself forward for another 4 or so hours a week but with January looking like something of a childcare nightmare (my parents leave on 13th for a months holiday and Ady is away for five nights) it is not the right time to ask for extra hours so I’m sure the opportunity will arise again when the time is right. It would also put me above the threshold for tax free earnings too , making the hourly rate rather less attractive so is something I need to do some maths on first too I think.

Ady who is a wonderful househusband had got the children sitting down to their tea with a bath already run for them by the time I got home so I poured myself a drink and enjoyed the last Saturday night of the year in a happy relaxed state. 🙂

The weather is, as predicted, starting to whip up a storm so I am unsure as to whether our planned walk with Chris and Julie will go ahead tomorrow afternoon but we plan to go walking anyway as the children are ready for some outdoor yelling into the wind instead of each others faces and some running around outside rather than from room to room in the house. If it’s not too crazy we might go down to the beach which is always very exciting and invigorating in windy wet weather – before children Ady and I often used to go down there in extreme weather just for fun. Nothing like getting wet and blustered about by the elements to make you feel alive, worry free and happy just to be here, not to mention the joy of getting dry and warm infront of a fire with hot chocolate again afterwards. Hey I’m almost hoping C&J do cancel now 😆

We’ve promised the children they can stay up as late as they can manage tomorrow night, we’ve got loads of buffet style bung it in the oven to heat up type food, plenty to drink and a load of board games to play so if I’m not around to see in the new year online tomorrow evening I wish you all a very happy new year now and I’ll see you on the other side. 🙂

The last day of it being not really a special day but not a normal one either was today. Monday is New Years Day so that will feel a bit ‘special’ and then from Tuesday Ady goes back to work and all starts to return to usual again. I love Christmas, but I love the novelty ending and real life starting again afterwards bit almost as much.

I’ve been feeling a bit crap over Christmas but in waves – I think I have either the residue or the start of a cold and the vast amounts of alcohol and not proper food probably haven’t helped matters, but I have also felt amazingly tired too. So I had a long lie in this morning which really seemed to help and then I went off to do the food shopping for January. I offered both children the chance to come with me but Davies is currently in xbox heaven having tried out all of his Christmas presents games (Charlie and the chocolate factory, Cat in the Hat and Super Monkey Ball) and loving all of them, Scarlett is enjoying having Ady home so much so she didn’t want to come either. So I had a island of calm in the storm that was Sainsburys – it was chaos with old people aplenty. The car park was heaving, there were hardly any trolleys left and every aisle was packed. Fortunately they had every till open so I didn’t have to queue. Got some bargains in the reduced to clear meat so managed to get all organic without seeming to spend any extra money too. 🙂

Home for lunch and then Ady went off to get some logs, Davies painted some plaster Wallace and Gromit badges from a kit he got for Christmas which involved lots of colour mixing as the kit only came with red, yellow, blue, black and white paints. Scarlett wanted to do a fairy finger puppet kit too which involved lots of tracing patterns and cutting out felt so I did all the tricky bits then she did the glueing and assembling and glittering of them. We made two and very pretty they are too.

They then played with geomags and Barbies for a while – I love the way their games evolve and grow to encorporate new toys over time :lol:. They had tea while watching Ice Age 2 and then were both asleep fairly early tonight. We’ve had dinner and watched Bruce Almighty on loan from work (ok but nothing special – I’m so not a Jim Carey fan and this film did nothing to change my mind).

Tomorrow we have to drive into Brighton in the morning as I foolishly forgot to pay some money into a bank account that needs to be there by the end of the month and there isn’t a branch which opens on Saturdays between here and Brighton 🙄 and then I am working in the afternoon.

I worked this morning, only for three hours. The children have been going to sleep later lately which is finally having the knock on effect of them waking later. I’m sure when Ady goes back to work next week and is up at 6am with the TV and radio and all the lights on they will go back to getting up with him again but this week they haven’t been rising until nearly 8am.

So I got up with them this morning and then headed off to work. Julie and I had been talking about ragging hair on Christmas Eve as Maisie had been saying she wanted her hair curly and when I saw Sarah’s pictures of Anna and Abbie with their hair ragged for Christmas I wanted to do Scarlett’s. But she wouldn’t let me so instead I did my own last night. Although I’ve never done much with the colour of my hair and it’s always been shades of long length I have experimented with varying degrees of straight and curliness over the years and I prefer it curly really. But maybe not quite as curly as I made it with over enthusiastic ragging! 😯 No pictures I’m afraid but Ady couldn’t look at me all day without sniggering. So I raked it all up for work incase people asked me if I’d had a bad perm experience with a pitying look on their faces!

Work was the busiest it has been since I started and the 3 hours went super quick. I spent half the time on the counter, mostly on my own, chatting to people bringing books back and taking them out and getting to grips with a few more of the admin tasks. Really enjoyed it. 🙂

Back home again for lunch and then as our toilet seat had broken I took Tarly off with me loo seat shopping. We went to Homebase but there was nothing suitable so we left there. We drove through Shoreham and happened to find a parking space on the high street so parked up and hopped out to have a quick peep in Woolworths and a couple of charity shops – picking up a Barbie jeep for £1.50 in one of them. 🙂 Then we went to B&Q where we got a loo seat and a cheap tool box to keep geomags in. Our previous geomag containers were too small to house the new load we got from Frazer so they are now all well organised in a new container (which is *very* heavy!). We were out for about 2 hours altogether and it was really nice. Even nicer now she is in her new car seat and can do up and undo her own seat belt. 🙂

We came home to find my Mum had arrived (in a post Christmas depressed state :roll:) shortly after we’d left. But as she was horrid to Tarly before she’d even said hello and I snapped at her for it she didn’t stick around long after we arrived. Feel slightly bad actually that I probably wasn’t very friendly generally but as I think she’d only come round to moan anyway I guess I saved myself listening to her cataloguing all that is dreadful with her life. She did moan to Ady that she’d gone to M&S sale shopping and ‘all I could find to buy was a handbag’ so clearly her woes are huge. 😉

I tidied Scarlett’s bookcase up this evening and managed to clear about a third of the books which are now too babyish for her so I’ll draft some of the story books from Davies’ room into her bookcase and maybe overhaul some of the books from the main bookcase in the hall too. I’m loving getting rid of clutter, I really enjoy that after Christmas. And I can’t wait to take all the decorations down and enjoy the brief illusion that the house is big for a short while. 🙂

Monster was playing with his new camera and perfectly the art of the self timer as is Goddard family tradition.
He took the following set of photos, which I know I linked to yesterday on his flickr but I want to log here as well as I was looking through them again just now and they all make me smile as they just so sum up Davies so well 🙂

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.