One word? When seven would do…

Happy Birthday to Kirsty 🙂

I’ve spent the last two days with really itchy eyes blaming early hayfever and this morning I woke with a runny nose and streaming eyes. I think I might be suffering with hayfever and the kids’ cold. 🙁 Oh and it’s mooncup time again too. Ace! 🙄 Have also been yawning all day despite having an OK night’s sleep (both kids dosed up on Medised made for 12 hour stretches of sleep for them both 🙂 ) I could have crawled back to bed at any point during the day and gone straight to sleep the instant I closed my eyes. So I think I will be doing just that very shortly.

First thing I got out a make up kit I’d had stashed away for Scarlett so she sat and did my make up for me and a construction puzzle kit thing for Davies which I sat on the floor and helped him with (while having lurid green eyeshadow and very pink blusher applied). It was excellent actually, made of a sort of plasticky cardboard which you pushed out and then followed numbered instructions to fold and slot together to make a digger truck. Then using a plastic screwdriver supplied you used plastic nuts and bolts to hold it together. He wanted cheerleading rather than actual help and I did plenty of ‘so what number did we look at last, what number should be do now? Which bit of it do you think that picture is representing?’. The kit only cost a quid and frankly the half an hour of making it was worth loads more than that but actually the digger itself is pretty good and of course he is very proud of it and has brought it everywhere with him today. 🙂 Must see if there are any more in the same range and get them. Ali and I were speculating abolut meccano for him the other day watching him create stuff with some giant brio meccano-a-like stuff Freya has . He likes k’nex and lego and stuff but the appeal of actually bolting stuff together seems to really do something for him and he loves either following instructions or using his own imagination to create something. Looked on ebay and it is still holding it’s price and I checked in Woolworths at it today – must keep an eye out at car boot sales.

I’d originally planned to go to Brighton today with Mum and the children for a Primark and H&M run. I had various clothes and shoes purchases I wanted to make. With our current financial situation it is actually easier to stick to our monthly budget by making a list of things we need prior to needing them and factoring in the purchases in advance. This coupled with the fact I still love shopping even if it is just for childrens pants and socks ;-). But they children are still fairly snotty and not on top form, Mum didn’t want to be too far from home so wasn’t up for Brighton so I decided to go to Worthing and she came with us in the end.

We had a really successful day. Davies got doodles, sandals (he’d had a meltdown about me putting some outgrown Spiderman shoes on ebay last week so I’d promised if we saw any more Spiderman shoes I’d get them for him and low and behold, there in Woollies were Spiderman sandals, hurrah!), cheapo black shoes for Badgers and then he asked for jelly shoes to wear in the beach / in the sea and cited Kessingland as the example for needing them. For £1.50 I thought his sales pitch was good enough (even without the PowerPoint stylee illustrations and plasticine models of himself wearing said jelly shoes I know he would have worked up to if I’d said no) so he got FOUR PAIRS of shoes today! 🙂 In fairness this was for the same price as a usual Clarks pair in total though, so not too scary, just watch him grow a shoe size in the next fortnight.

Edited to add – And I’ve just checked reciepts and realised there was a 3 for 2 on shoes so the jellies were actually free 🙂

Scarlett got doodles and sandals. She didn’t want jelly shoes as they only had blue ones in Woollies, she liked some pink ones in Mothercare but they were a fiver so I said we’ll look out for some for her over the next couple of months until the time she might actually need jelly shoes anyway. It was after all still snowing only about 2 weeks ago so we are possibly slightly premature in such comprehensive summer stocking up anyway 😉

They both got a pile of new pants and socks, Tarly got a couple of pairs of £2 each summer pjs and as they both already have sufficient shorts / lightweight trousers / skirts from last year which still fit them I got them both enough cheap T shirts to last the summer which completes their wardrobes until the Autumn. Oh and got Davies’ £3 black school trousers for Badgers too. I also sent Davies across from the clothing concession bit in the Co-op where I was buying T shirts to the normal tills to pay for a french stick. I could see him and he could see me, but he was still really bold and confident, chatting away to the checkout woman and being all polite and charming. I’m dead proud of that boy you know. :-).

While out we saw a poster for Joseph & the technicolour dreamcoat which Davies was asking about so we talked a bit about as much of the (Bible version) of the story as I could remember and promised to tell him the rest when I’d looked it up. This led to further debate on God and religious belief, which he then followed by seeing a poster of Elvis and saying ‘oh look, Elvis’ in a really casual way followed by saying ‘I look a bit like Shakin Stevens today Granny, I’m wearing a denim jacket and jeans’ out of nowhere, which he followed up with ‘actually I’m wearing jeans, Mummy’s wearing jeans, Scarlett’s wearing jeans and you’re wearing jeans too Granny. That’s a coincidence’ which just made us laugh loads. Strange boy with all his observations, combination of the very deep and the very inane and his little turns of phrase so far beyond his age!

Retail therapy, frugal shopping and new clothes for kids, sorted! 🙂 Came home and have piled up another batch of stuff ready for ebay too which I’ll try and get listed this week cos if I’m thinking about buying summer wear then I guess other people will be too – and I’m fired up on ebaying again having transfered £50 from paypal to my account from last weeks sales. 🙂

We went back to my parents for a late lunch, where Dad had arrived home too and I spent some time setting up a few bits on Mum’s new laptop for her. They have just had wireless broadband put in so she’s learning all sorts of new skills and I’ve trillianed and flickrd her up which she’s slowly starting to get to grips with. After about an hour the children, who it has to be said were not really on best behaviour all day started to get snapped at by my parents for various crimes such as trailing crumbs on carpet, banging doors and making ornaments wobble and getting their feet on the sofa (honestly – well where did you think my thing about indoor toys came from eh? 😉 ) so we came home.

We had a grand trying on session of all the new clothes and shoes, they had a big bowl of strawberries each for tea, I took reciept of a praisefilled email from CV lady about a particularly challenging one I’d completed yesterday (and another 3 arrived in the post this morning – keep ’em coming!) and I hastily and about 7 hours later than planned shoved a bolognaise sauce in the slow cooker (well it had a good 4 hours or so).

And now, I will retire for the evening.

Is what I’ve got. Davies has been developing his for at least two days but Scarlett has come through to an early lead with hers today. We had planned to spend the day with my parents but they rang early to say their cat who has been having some sort of seizures for a couple of weeks had taken a turn for the worse and they were going to the emergency vets with her. She is back home again now but I think her days are numbered, so all very sad over there. 🙁 So with poorly kids and worried grandparents we felt the mix would be a bad idea and stayed home instead.

I got some CVs done and made some choux buns, Ady did some child avoidance tactics until I had a mini-rant about spending more time with the children at the weekends and trying to build individual relationships with them both. He is an excellent father but still retains the sort of novelty value of a favourite uncle at times rather than a particular relationhip with each child. We had a bit of a chat about it and having taken on board some of what he said to me about being crap at letting him get on with it and not interfering they spent a lovely afternoon doing stuff like playing on websites together and generally talking. Result 🙂

I took Madagascar back to Blockbusters and popped in to see my parents to administer cuddles and choux buns for half an hour or so and then home again to get a roast dinner cooking. The children had a bath and an early night and we’re sitting watching Planet Earth.

It’s been a lovely Spring day here today, washing dried and the drive into town along the seafront was very cheer inspiring with the blue sky reflected in the sea and making the promise of Summer ever more imaginable.

*how* guilty would you all have felt! 🙂

Told Ady that within moments of posting it people had started to laugh at me for even trying to fool them and started to be all righteous about how seriously I must be taken as a Home Educator, how much people must hold me up as a model HE Mom, committed to my children, a paragon of the one try path to autonomy and childrearing and the epitomy of stay-at-home-ness and he just gave me one of his looks and said ‘A – they know you would never hold a job down and B – you could not possibly get up in the morning to get to work anyway’. So one way or another you all know me I guess 😉 😳

This morning the children were rather tired and emotional and for some odd reason wanted my company rather than Ady’s ? so although I wanted to get a couple of CVs done for a deadline tomorrow I couldn’t concentrate and gave up and watched Madagascar with them again instead while Ady cleaned the oven 🙄 but also :-). Then in an effort to carry out a cunning plan I hatched with Ali yesterday to make better use of our many ‘resources’ and toys instead of them playing with the same stuff day in day out I suggested they got out their toy animals and saw how many of the animals from the film they had. We were sadly lacking in anything other than a couple of giraffes, an out of proporionately small giraffe and a lion which had been a Happy Meal giveaway during the Narnia craze (so that’d be Alsan then).

Scarlett wanted to do painting so she did a picture of me and Davies drew a page of ever decreasing squares inside of each other in loads of different colours. He asked me what I thought it was and I said it reminded me of the staircases at Melrose when viewed from the top. We all agreed it was very like that but Davies then wanted to know how people would climb the steps when they were just squares. So I explained about how art is open to interpretation and that it is a representation of something rather than a carbon copy of it. I got him to bring me some paper and a green and yellow pen and drew some lines, triangles and squiggles and asked him what it was – he correctly guessed it was the vase of daffodils on the mantlepiece but also got what I meant when I said it was not an exact replica of them and if he’d drawn it then his picture would not have looked like mine. To further illustrate this I drew two rectangles, one with a rectangle topped by a triangle with a circle above and the other with a rectangle topped by a square with two more offset rectangles above it. I asked him what he though it was. He thought the first rectangle was a church with the sun above (precisely my intention as it happened) and the second reminded him of a ladder. What it actually was was the chimney breast with the fireplace and the clock above it, the TV cabinet, the TV and two pictures on the wall next to it. So we chatted about how that worked and how that was the beauty of art and as he showed quite a bit of interest in that theory we got out ‘Come Look With Me’ which has been on the shelf untouched since I decided at Melrose 2005 that we simply *must* have it. We looked at the first two pictures and talked about them a bit, including a question on how the poem under one of the pictures tells the prince how he should be like his father so in what was was Davies like his parents? He started to lose interest again at that point, mainly due to the Move It, Move It bit coming on the TV again on the film so we left it there, but I’m pretty sure a fair bit went in. 🙂

I left them all to it then to collect my watch which for the first time in nearly 2 weeks is going again – I’ve still worn it every day and have been surprised at how little I missed the telling the time aspect of it actually. On the very infrequent occassions I have neglected to put it on in the morning I have felt very lost without it but I am starting to think that is more the feeling of it on my wrist than the time telling use of it. Having an inherant feeling of what time it is is one of my skills along with knowing which direction we are headed (N, S, E or W) when travelling so maybe I should try and develop that further and lose the watch once a week or something.

I also popped into the Wizard store to get a few bits – some clothes pegs as I was lacking in those, (although I bought 100 wooden ones for a quid and they are shite so I probably need to not be frugal with clothes pegs actually as you seem to get what you pay for there) and some plastic sheets for the childen to do their plasticine / playdough / painting on so that Ady and the Ady Machine get a rest ;-), a couple of cheapo craft kits to bring out when the children need entertaining and a couple of sets of plastic zoo animals which contained same size zebras, lions, hippos and giraffes for recreation of Madagascar for the children.

Then on to Sainsburys where for the very first time ever I was under budget 🙂 Woo hoo! and then home. The children were suitably impressed with the animals although slighly disappointed that I didn’t produce penguins too (unusre whether to be flattered at their confidence in me to provide or irritated at their ungratefulness for the rest of the creatures!) and Ady suitably impressed with my frugalness. He was still cleaning and the children had assembled all the various bits of their lifecycle of a frog animals for me to inspect (frogspawn, tadpole, froglet, frog) and then we looked at the real tadpoles too for a bit.

We had lunch, I hung out loads more washing with my substandard wooden pegs and then we went over to Chris and Julie’s for the afternoon. Had a lovely time there; the children played in the garden with Chris and Ady reminsicing on their childhood and supervising them, while Julie and I chatted.

Tomorrow we are over at my parents for lunch and I will be mostly feeling smug for having got my deadline of tomorrow night CVs already emailed today so not having any work to do. 🙂

But OMG Tony Slattery is on Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes!!!!!!

I’ve just had a letter offering me a full time office based CV writing job. The money is enough to make serious in-roads into our debts and pay for full time wraparound care for Tarly before and after nursery and Davies before and after school. The local school has a Kids breakfast and after school club and the nursery for Tarly is onsite, so I’ll be contacting them first thing on Monday about starting both children after Easter.

Guess I won’t have time to read all those books after all!

And still are even three and a half hours after usual bedtime. 🙄

Had a really nice day today, as indicated in my earlier post things are good for various Friday/payday related reasons anyway so that started the day on a cheery note.

The children played this morning while I parcelled up some ebay stuff and sent Ady off to the post office with it. He went off to work and I persuaded the children to get dressed and we went into Lancing. I had a couple of library books due back and wanted to renew a couple more. I also wanted to get a couple of ‘classics’ that I never seemed to have read at school like everyone else and wanted to see whether they deserved their ‘my favourite childhood book’ tag from so many people including a couple at my reading group. The local library didn’t have any of them so I ordered them in and the children chose a couple of books each. We dropped my watch off to get a new battery and called into the bakery to get some cakes to take to Ali’s.

We listened to Will Young in the car both ways, turned up really loud with the children doing a fine line in in-car seat car dancing and me beating time on the steering wheel :-). I found out that James Blunt is playing Leeds Castle in July on the same basis as me and Ady went to see Will Young last summer and had a lovely afternoon / evening at. It’s actually a very child friendly venue and drugs references aside the children love him too, so a couple of good months of CV work and I might well think about tickets for us.

Had a lovely time at Ali’s. I witnessed the opening of the brand new packet of pasta and watched all lunch preparations closely to ensure she wasn’t secreting chick peas in my pasta quills ;-). The children did lots of stuff as always proving any worries about educational development unfounded by barging in on a discussion in the kitchen about how physics would be taught to ask what some figurines were made of and whether they were china as Davies thought or metal as Scarlett believed. And why they might be so light if they were metal and happily accepting our explanation of paperclips being metal but also light. Also some discussion of size in relation to weight too.

There was chat about perspective, as mentioned already on Ali’s blog. In relation to the space hoppers at Ali’s which now we have our own, which are larger, appear smaller. I likened it to going back to infant school as a grown up and realising how small the playground really was after all, and when my Dad picks them up to his height and the world looks very different. It was them demonstrated by Davies who drew a picture of Wallace, Gromit and a car with them all inverted in size from their normal stature which he explained by the larger ones being close to us and the smaller ones further away. He then made me look out of the window to see chimneys on faraway houses to demonstrate further. I think he’s got that then! 🙂

Ali has blogged about the rest of the day there so I won’t repeat but it was lovely as always and there was lots of drawing, painting and writing went on. Also nice to see how Davies is so comfortable there that he speaks to Ali in the same way as members of our family with utter confidence and naturalness, he’s been the best of himself today. 🙂

We left later than planned so played Eye Spy on the way home to keep Tarly awake and when Ady phoned I passed Davies my ohone to answer and relay the conversation – lovely to have an older child at times like that! Davies announced today that he can count to 24 and then proceeded to count well into the 30s. He stumbled on 13 but after that was flying – he has previously not got anywhere near 20 🙂 I then listened to him in the back of the car teaching Scarlett to do it too.

After a tidy up session at home we went to Blockbusters which has changed considerably since the last time I went there (probably as a teen :oops:) and I rejoined. The children chose Madagascar as their film to watch and we browsed the shelves of 3 dvds for a fiver for a week for future reference (I normally pay £2.50 for one at the library every couple of weeks so this is a far better offer and a two minute walk from our regular soft play haunt so something we’ll probably do quite often I suspect). Then we came home via KFC where we collected a ‘Mum’s Night Off’ bargain bucket and came home to watch and eat. It went really well – Scarlett was possibly most excited about the pepsi (she adores fizzy drinks but they are a very rare treat) but Davies tried everything and loved the chicken. Then we all ate ice cream out of the tub with the supplied plastic spoons before the children got into their pjs and snuggled up on the sofa with me for the last bit of the film.

That ended two hours ago and despite it being 9pm and Scarlett being very tired we honoured our promise of sleepover in Davies’ room. Ady has been threatening to bring her back downstairs to her own room as they have each been down at least four times for toilet or drink breaks, there has been much giggling and stamping about – plenty of it in relation to move it, move it! – and lots of general horseplay. But I have insisted they be allowed to see it through and if they are tired tomorrow then so be it. If we don’t let it happen this time then it will be all the more fraught with nonsense next time. I am now sitting on the floor between them, Scarlett has gone to sleep in seconds and Davies looks to be not too far behind – not very surprising given it’s gone 11pm now – but at least we might be in for a lie in in the morning I guess! 🙄 So Family Film Night – the first one a success and about to be introduced as a first Friday of the month regular feature – and all for around £15!

and if you share the dips then you should probably share the great big uppy bits too.

It’s Friday 🙂

It’s Payday for Ady 🙂

It’s Payday for me too 🙂 🙂

I’ve earned enough this week to pay for the food shopping for the month of April 🙂 🙂 🙂

We’re off to The House Of Lentils 🙂

I made nearly £30 on ebay selling outgrown kids clothes on auctions ending yesterday and Ady has just come back from the post office having gone to post items I’d charged £18 p&p for having only spent a tenner 🙂 (which I would feel bad about but I think packaging materials and going to the PO is fair enough to add 50p or so to each for, and given some of the items only sold for their 99p reserve I’m quite happy to have made a bit extra on postage anyway!), so that’s £40 altogether 🙂 🙂 🙂 With the couple of cheques I’m waiting for as well it will pay for the Kessingland pitch. 🙂

That’s all!

But I’ll say it anyway! 😉

A good morning, I finished my 3 CVs on a deadline for today and just as I emailed them across the post arrived with a further six in it 🙂 So hurrah for work!

Ady’s presentation was today and went very well, he impressed the people he need to impress and was all bouncy and happy about it. 🙂

My Mum (the other person who’s ‘work’ I had helped with) also had her training session which went well too. She’s been tasked with some crazy hypothetical taking on the renovation of a delapidated hotel with a budget of £0.6m next which I imagine I will get called in for assisting with. I think someone at her workplace has been watching too much The Apprentice tbh!

I told the children I would do something with them this afternoon if they let me work in peace this morning so they did some geomags, some drawing and I got out a kit for making 3D pictures by colouring in the background and then adding die cut animals using little cardboard tabs. Davies did well on it but was after constant cheerleading which was slightly wearing when I was trying to get into the mind of a 23 year old who wants a career in the music industry on the basis of 3 years unemployment after a 3 year career as a kitchen porter but did a week’s work experience in a record company when he was 15 🙄 Crazy thing is he’d probably do well and earn more than I ever did. Had a freaky moment too when I recognised the name of the consultant who’d assisted the candidate in completing the application form only to realise this was because I’d written her CV for her 6 months ago. I looked it up and discovered she’d had personnel experience so she obviously got taken on by the Working Links people as a result of going there looking for work.

We walked round the shop to buy milk and I read Scarlett a Poppy Cat book about six times (luckily a board book with only five pages!) but I never did really do much with them today as I got sucked back into making a head start on the next batch of CVs. I also had a very lengthy phonecall with the lady who is starting a load of lessons and bought in tutors of HE children locally. Julie is getting involved and although I have said it is not our thing I had agreed she could contact me to talk through some of the information I got last year about fundraising and grant applications. It was a long phonecall and she is inspirational in her belief in what she is doing and her full on committment to her children and their education. I’m not entirely sure I agree with all she was saying, particularly in relation to autonomy but she was so passionate it would have been crazy to debate it with her really. And she is not wrong, she is just not saying the exact replica of what I believe. She did make me feel slightly guilty about not being very available today though, particularly as D was desperate for me to do drawing with him and I didn’t. I’m torn between wanting to offer the best to the children and not wanting to sit on the floor ‘playing’ with them all day either, infact rarely if at all! I amjust not a sitting on the floor playing kind of person. Anyway…

This evening I went with my Mum to a Health & Beauty evening at the big conference centre along the road from them. It was really good actually, cheap entrance of 3 quid which included a goody bag with loads of trial size beauty stuff and a free ‘relaxing Clarins hand treatment’. Mum talked to the people on every single stand and booked a chiropractor appointment adn everything. I enjoyed being too poor to be tempted into expensive make up and body creams, crystals and tarot card readings etc and just soaked up the girlieness of the atmosphere and the man playing the harp (I kid you not!), oh and the glass of wine Mum bought me when we had a mid point sit down. 🙂 I got stopped by two people who knew me, one from school (was it really 17 years ago!!!!) and one I worked with about 10 years ago which was kind of nice, kind of sad that I am still in the same town and kind of odd as I would never go up and tap someone on the shoulder after 17 years and say ‘Hello, do you remember me?’ but there you go.

Tomorrow we are going over to Ali’s for naked spacehoppering and lentils aplenty and in the late afternoon / early evening we have a first for the Goddard’s planned in the way of a ‘Family Film Night’ – we’re planning to go and rejoin Blockbusters – I have a card but it is very old and in my maiden name, to show Davies that it is true about places with even more dvds than the library, get a film or two out, get a KFC bargain bucket, pop some popcorn and watch films together. Then the children have begged for a sleepover in D’s room so we plan to see how that goes too. So I may well not be blogging and hidden under a pile of Kentucky Fried Grease watching Mrs Doubtfire or Bambi or something. If I’m not back by Saturday send a St Bernard! 😉

I don’t watch a lot of TV really (Nick jr excepted) but among the shows I do like to watch it has come to my attention that two of them will be clashing from next Wednesday at 9pm.

Do I choose The Apprentice or Grand Designs?

On the way to Highdown Gardens we listened to Labi Siffre Something inside so strong on a cd. When I was at school my favourite teacher used to take us for dance and she would choose one of her own favourite songs and then the whole class would work together to create a dance routine to go with it, or we’d work in pairs and then all show the rest of the class at the end. I used to love those lessons and one of the songs I have really clear memories of choreographing a dance to is this one. Davies really likes it too – it’s on a compilation album we have and always tells everyone who’s in the car who is singing it. Today he listened to the lyrics a bit and asked about how something inside could be strong? So I spent the car journey explaining about emotional self and physical self. I explained how there are some crossover traits and then we mentioned various things like ‘bored’, ‘hungry’, ‘tired’, ‘sad’ and so on to decide whether they were emotional or physical. He quite liked this and we talked about how you could be physically or emotionally strong or weak and I have him some examples of people we know who are one or the other and how you would demonstrate them. Scarlett appeared to be listening too and then suddenly asked ‘Mummy? What are you two talking about?’ which made me laugh.

We then talked a bit about racism. We’d watched something on Class TV fairly recently about racism through history and briefly touched on it then, so I reminded him about that and then said that Labi Siffre was talking about being oppressed and held back and considered not good enough but that whatever people thought he was strong inside, emotionally, and would show them he could do it anyway. Then we turned it up really loud and he listened to it again to see for himself. All deep stuff! 🙂

Then we arrived at Highdown so they spent a happy two hours playing and running about. They did join in with two other little boys for a while but the younger one was pretty rough and was chasing the rest of them with sticks and spitting. Davies did bait him rather and he only looked about 3 so I think he was imagining it was all part of a game really, but when he really started laying into D with a stick I did shout ‘Oi!’ at him. His mother yelled at him and dragged him off 🙁 I did try and catch her eye to say it was OK and I didn’t think he was entirely to blame but they disappeared. So we then had a post mortem about behaviour and what was naughty and what was not and how Mummies should deal with it! Ah, nothing like parenting advise from a 5 year old! 🙄

They inspected worms, looked at fish, ran around, all fell over and got muddy at least once, sniffed flowers, ran screaming from the first bee of the Spring (isn’t that supposed to be the first sign of Summer or something?), they clambered and balanced on rocks and generally enjoyed being out of doors.

More on flickr. Got some really nice ones of Tarly today. 🙂

We left there when two out of four children had had enough and the other two were fading fast and our fingers had started to numb slightly. Very nice to see all the spring flowers and hear birds calling for a couple of hours though. Before we’d left Davies had been all excited about going, which quite surprised me as it must be getting on for six months since last we went there and he said all casually that the sun dial wouldn’t be working as it was cloudy today! Which really amazed me as I didn’t think he’d paid much attention to the sun dial there last time we went. He asked how they worked and I explained about it being a shadow cast by where the sun was in the sky and that shadows were formed by something being between the sun and the ground, such as people, casting a shadow. He nodded throughout and looked at me as though I was telling him something so basic he’d known it for ages, which I suspect I might have been actually! 🙂

We came home and he asked me to divide a page into boxes so he could do a story board to use his plasticine characters for, apparently it is ready now but I said it would have to wait for tomorrow now. They played a rousing game of running in and out of every room in the house, scared the cats silly and had a bath. Davies is still awake so clearly nothing is going to wear this child out. 🙄

Ady came home so we spent some time working on his presentation for a big meeting tomorrow and now he is reheating a curry and making rather lovely smelling bombay potatoes whilst waiting for me to go and do the rice so I’ll leave it there except to update that our frogspawn has hatched to tadpoles and some are already showing little buds where their legs will soon be forming so great excitement at life cycles in action going on here. 🙂

love was such an easy game to play… Actually that has nothing to do with yesterday but having used the title I couldn’t help continuing the lyric! 🙂

Had a really nice day yesterday, one of those one’s where you are so thankful for being a SAHM and being able to drink tea and eat cakes and chat instead of having to go to work! 😉

The morning was a bit of a blur as despite being up at about 7am and thinking I had ages to do everything I wanted to do we ended up being about an hour late for going to Lucy’s and I had thought I had enough time to stop in Lancing and get my watch battery replaced but I didn’t! I did manage to get two loads of washing out, two baskets of clean washing put away, two lots of frozen stew out to defrost for dinner, a couple of batches of chocolate chip rock cakes made (as promised to the children who were all upset about having to take the cakes made on Monday to Badgers instead of keeping them here and eating them all! :roll:) and the first load of emails sent out to advertise the new HE group.

We got to Lucy’s about 11.30am and it is a new rented house that they are thrilled with. It is quite lovely actually, about five minutes (child pace) walk from the beach and five minutes in the other direction from a nice park, quiet cul de sac road and a nice big lounge with patio doors to a small enclosed garden with patio and lawn area. Although it is smaller than our house and some of the layout is a bit odd I did find myself being very envious of the garden accessible to children without supervision aspect. Our garden is arranged all the way round the house (we’re on a corner) and if it were all grouped together in one patch would be a nice size but it has slopes and walls steps, and can be seen into from the road most of the way round so there is no way the children could be out there without me for a few years yet. As I am really not an outside in the garden type of person this is wearing for them and me. Our original plans for the house included changing the garage into a kitchen diner extension or even a conservatory, losing our current drive and making it a more enclosed ‘back’ garden which would have given us that but it is unlikely to happen any time in the next 82 years! 🙁

So I sat there happily recommending she get pavement chalks for the children to draw on the patio, some sort of child safe water feature so they can wash it off again, a sand pit and so on. Love planning other people’s houses for them. 😉 Davies and Scarlett happily set off to explore Rebecca and Richard’s bedrooms. They have both had birthdays in the last week so there were plenty of new toys to acquaint themselves with too. Rebecca although she seemed to enjoy having them there was not really playing with them as such but they can be an akward duo to infiltrate sometimes. We had lunch and they played a bit more and then Lucy suggested we walk to the park for a play.

It looks either newly kitted out or rarely used as there was a distinct lack of grafitti and broken glass kicking about. The equipment was a couple of sets of swings and one of those challenge type set ups where you have to get round all of the equipment without touching the ground. Davies was very good at the balancing and the using ropes and bridges to get around but couldn’t do the heights or the leap of faith type jumps. Tarly was excellent at balancing and risking big leaps and heights – so different those two! I had a go at a couple of things too and hurt my hands with the stupid monkey bars, which I couldn’t negotiate as a very slight and skinny school girl so why I thought I could hulk my weight across it now I really don’t know, but it was funny! 😀 We enjoyed a windy but sunny hour there and I gained a pocketful of daisies picked by Scarlett then we headed back to Lucy’s for tea, cakes, play and chat for a bit longer. We were both surprised to realise it was nearly 5pm so we headed for home where the children had strawberries for tea and carried on some game with plasticine.

Ady arrived home followed closely by my parents who were over for dinner, Dad and Ady put the children to bed while Mum and I finished her training preparation for her session tomorrow and drank wine. 🙂 We had dinner – the first time my Dad has eaten stew since he left home 50 years ago having sworn to never eat it again (apparently he pretty much lived on stew as a boy made either from rabbits which they caught or old non-laying chickens). He did eat it all and said it was ‘alright, not bad’ but I don’t think he’s about to start having it on his five week meal planner anytime soon! 😉 We watched a taped couple of episodes of ‘The Way We Were’ which led to long discussions about who was the little girl in the Birds Eye advert where the ‘pod went pop!’ with me insisiting it was Patsy Kensit and Mum insisting it was ‘the woman on the TV’ who we eventually worked out was Julie Peasgood. Much googling ensued before deciding as they both seemed to be credited with it in various places we were both right.

They left around 11ish and we went straight to bed.

This morning the children have played with the megablocks and still are doing so in their pjs. I’ve got a couple of loads of washing out and watched some TV with them. We watched a cartoon version of Mr Bean which prompted some discussions about art galleries, baddies, statues of nudes and trying to work out what might happen next.

I’m about to persuade them to get dressed and sort out some lunch and then we are going to Highdown Gardens to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie and have a couple of hours walking round / getting fresh air / burning off energy so they’ll sleep!

I’m a Genuine Director!

About You:

As a DIRECTOR, you combine an unusual openness and passion for beauty and style with confidence and a down-to-earth sensibility that allow you to realize your vision.

You are practical and pay attention to the details that others tend to miss.

By focusing on what is real and concrete, you achieve more than those who always have their heads in the clouds.

When it comes to what really matters in your life, you are confident in your ability to succeed.

Having beautiful things in your life gives you pleasure and satisfaction – you have a keen eye for style.

Even when problems present themselves, deep down you know you will overcome these challenges.

When routines get too familiar, you become bored and start looking for ways to spice things up.

You are open to new types of experiences – you are not afraid to take a risk on something new.

You have a highly developed sense of taste – you know what looks good on you, in your home, and in the world at large.

Your independent streak allows you to make decisions efficiently and to trust your instincts

You have a strong sense of style and value your personal presentation – friends may even seek your style advice from time to time.

Generally, you believe that you control your life, and that external forces only play a limited role in determining what happens to you.

How You Relate to Others:

Your outgoing personality, your preference for order, and your cautious appreciation of others makes you GENUINE.

You aren’t afraid to occasionally be the center of attention. You are comfortable and confident in social situations.

As a charismatic kind of person, you tend to be energized by other people and enjoy their company.

When other people are upset, you are able to think about the situation rationally, without getting too caught up in their feelings.

At times you find it difficult to understand where other people are coming from, and wish they could just see things the way you do.

You are a strongly principled person who believes in right and wrong. This helps you make decisions easily when it comes to moral issues – you don’t have to waste time hedging on important values.

In your experience, people tend to get what they deserve. Because of this, you work hard and try to follow your principles in your day-to-day life, knowing that you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Well I got it all done. I did the CVs and had confirmation of safe receipt and promise of more on the way. I made fairy cakes but decided black and white stripey icing was a touch ambitious and if not instantly recognisable as badgers could go very wrong, so I went with yellow buttercream sprinkled liberally with 100s and 1000s. Very popular they were too. 🙂

We went to the Wizard store and got some plasticine which amused the children for ages. I think D has gone as far with making W&G models as he can now – I guess the next stage is to try and get some of the wires used underneath the plasticine and arm him with a camera and editing software! 😉

The rain stopped in the end too. It’s been really, really windy here today and it blew the clouds away. Washing is still flapping wetly on the line but at least two of the three days worth of continual rain must have been whipped out of it by now.

We watched our Spider video and sang along to the songs.

My Mum called round and arranged to come to dinner tomorrrow night so I can help her with that training prep. ready for Thursday.

Ady got home early enough for him and Scarlett to come to Badgers with us. It was the end of term and those who’ve been there all term were presented with their badge and a certificate for passing ‘caring badger’. Davies was given a certificate for ‘being a good badger and joining in nicely’ which he seemed suitably chuffed with. He had to join in with ‘parade’ (lining up!) and I bought his uniform ready for next term. You pay £19 and get a polo shirt and jumper and then as they grow out of it you just swap it in for the next size up, so that’s not too bad. He will need black trousers and black shoes though. This would have been more of an issue as they used to only wear their uniforms once a month but it was decided tonight (with a little prompting from me and Ady :oops:) that they should wear it every week. So I’ll be getting D some cheap black, once a week for an hour wear shoes and a pair of black trousers too. We’ve agreed that when he goes back after Easter I will wait in the room next door rather than going in too so that’s a positive start in getting him happy to go in alone (and means I get to sit and read a book in relative peace for an hour too 🙂 )

Tonight we’ve watched Phone Booth. We got it free with something else once and have only watched it once. I quite like films like that – lots of tension but no massive amounts of violence (and yes, of course I know there was violence but nothing dwelt on or dramatically enhanced it).

And now, I’m off to bed!

There I am. Gone!

Had a very nice, people filled weekend. Saturday morning I was out early to get some food in for the weekend then when I got back Dad and Ady went out for logs. I did a spot of baking 😉 and got some washing hung out – which clearly cursed the weather as it has literally not stopped raining since about half an hour after I did so and is still raining now.

Then Alison, Chris and children arrived for the day. Reading went up, the children all disappeared but I know they watched W&G, Care Bears and Drop Dead Fred and that they made mothers day cards and dressed up, played with Floam and painted lots of nails. Ady did cooking, me and Alison roamed the house to find child-free spaces (spending about an hour in Davies’ room before we were flushed out!), there was a rather hilarious weigh-in and it was all very nice. 🙂 Thanks for coming guys!

They left and we changed all the clocks and decided to adpot BST slightly early so went to bed!

Yesterday morning I was woken with a cup of tea, a pile of celeb gossip magazines (the only thing I am really missing from my old extravagent lifetime), some chocolates and a couple of home made cards from the children. Then they all trooped back downstairs and I laid in bed for about half an hour reading. I used to love doing that for hours pre-children, being awake but just staying in bed. Now I don’t get to stay in bed enough asleep, let alone awake! 😉

I lazed around for most of the morning and then got myself and the kids dressed up to go out for lunch. We went to one of our favourite restuarants in Brighton Marina, which on a lovely sunny day is a great place to be. The traffic getting into Brighton was dreadful and it took an hour for a 12 mile journey 🙄 We took the top road which is high and was dense with fog which amused the children, it crosses Brighton racecourse at one point and there must have been racing as the turf had been laid across the road which was odd to drive across – by the time we drove back it had been removed. Mum and Dad had driven in along the seafront where the traffic was even worse so we were all late getting there.

We had a lovely meal, the children behaved well, the food was nice, we got free wine and although the tables are very close together so you can’t avoid getting slightly involved with the people on the neighbouring tables the atmosphere in there is good enough that it feel more like a big party anyway so the loss of intimacy is fine.

We’d planned to all go back to my parents’ for the afternoon but their heating has packed up and their house is freezing even when it is working (big rooms, high ceilings) so they ended up coming back to us. They had my granny with them too, so Ady continued his host role making teas and coffees all afternoon. I made some air drying clay characters with Davies and did some drawing with both the children Dad dozed on the sofa and Mum and Granny spent ages playing with google earth on Ady’s laptop 🙄

I’d been rather looking forward to a quiet evening and we’d planned tea of a roasted chicken to make into hot sandwiches having planned to leave my parents around 7pm to get the children home to bed. I did get some peace by sitting first on Tarly’s bedroom floor while she went to sleep and then going upstairs and doing the same in Davies’ bedroom, by which time it was 9pm and clear they had settled in for the evening. Mum had brought some cakes over with her so we opened a bottle of champagne, ate tea and all watched Planet Earth. Then we put on one of the earlier episodes we’d recorded and then we watched Globe Trekker and finally after lots of theatrical yawning from me and Ady they all left at around 11.30pm.

Today I have a couple of CVs to do which if the children do as promised and leave me in peace to do (they are currently watched W&G for the second time already today and playing with geomags) then I’ve promised to take them to the Wizard store and buy them some plasticine to make characters with. I need to get dinner on (bolognaise planned to cook in the slow cooker) and rustle up a ‘plate of food’ for Badgers end of term party toda. I have a half formed plan of fairy cakes with some sort of stripey icing to look badger-esque, will photo them if they turn out well – or indeed eat them all myself if they don’t 😉

Should probably get on with it really…

To you all 🙂

Eagle eyed readers this morning might have caught a post about ebay before I decided what to do and deleted it. Basically I listed 5 pairs of Scarlett’s outgrown (age 2-3) knickers. When I wrote the listing I felt strange about describing them as ‘worn’ but put it down to my own paranoia and went ahead. Last night I got a potenial bidder question asking if I could email more photos of them. This struck me as slightly strange – after all it was five pairs of pants for 99p, your basic toddler knickers, described fairly comprehensively and I wonder what’s to look at really, so I checked them out a bit further. I found they had been a member for a couple of weeks and their feedback showed they had previously purchased two items from the same buyer. Both were cds of digital photos of ‘busty 18 year olds in their school uniform’ about which I will not air a judgement, and of course it is possible that someone who ‘uses’ such items would have a toddler in need of pants but I just felt rather uncomfortable about the possibility that they didn’t. So I’ve ignored the email and pulled the item off sale.

Then tonight I get another question. This time in relation to a brand new pack of pampers swim nappies. Never been opened and listed in full with size and the weight guide printed on the packet. The question?

‘will the item fit my 3 year old son?’ 🙄

Ady suggests I should email back with a fact finding question such as ‘what colour are his eyes?’ I am inclined to suggest they refine their ebay search to a set of bathroom scales to weigh their child. Any other ideas? 😀

I was doing something online the other morning and got totally sidetracked by something that popped up and did an IQ test. It was one of the tickle ones where you get a taster and then they try to get you to buy the ‘full report’. Which of course I didn’t (I’m frugal now, y’know!). So today I got an email saying ‘our sponsors want to pay for your full test results. Click here’ so I did. And guess what, for casting my eye over the page and not ticking any of the boxes to say yes please and heading straight for the no thanks box I got my full report. And it says I’m clever! 🙂

Pretty good day today. There was enough of a hiatus in the middle to hopefully ward off the evil curse of a crap day tomorrow (breath a sigh of relief oh visitors 😉 ) but maybe it was retribution for such a poo day yesterday. 🙂

Ali has very handily passed me a bit of work which she will no doubt laugh hugely at me for saying but I actually quite enjoyed doing so I got some of that done first thing, opened the post which contained a letter from a creditor to say they are stopping interest and charges, for now anyway and 2 CVs to be written. Reminder to self – BUY A LOTTERY TICKET FOR TOMORROW, YOU’RE ON A ROLL LOVE! ;-), I booked the hall for the new Home Ed group and took a phone call from someone who is definitely coming along to the first one with his two boys so I will get cracking on getting that publicised next week. I’ve joined a local group leaders yahoo list as recommended by June somewhere and been getting some good advice and ideas from that – not to mention being slightly star struck by direct dialogue with Mike F-W! 😉

I forgot to mention how into make up Scarlett is at the moment. She often sits with me in the morning when I ‘put my face on’ and either helps me with mine or puts stuff on herself (which I do have a rumbling bad feminist mother feeling about in some ways but I do keep correctly her when she says ‘now I am pretty Mummy’ after applying eyeshadow that actually she was pretty if not prettier before without it :oops:). Anyway I returned a previously confiscated box full of nail varnishes and hair mascaras to her yesterday so she sat while I was doing my ebay listings painting my toes for me – about five coats all different colours 🙄 and she added a further two coats to them today. So I now have mermaid tail style irridescent toenails (with glittery stars) and she spent ages putting purple sparkly streaks in my hair too! :-).

We popped out with a list of stuff to do, return a library book and get a few new ones – slightly scuppered by me only taking my ticket which already had about 12 books out on it so we had to put about half our selected pile back, get a new battery for my watch which has been working on a very intermittent basis all week – except I hadn’t put it on my wrist so couldn’t do that, get something for my Mum for Sunday – failed!, get some cotton wool and redeem a Boots voucher that’s been kicking about for ages for some new nail varnish – managed that :-), go to the book shop to get some of the WBD books as the library had a pile of the vouchers to take – I got the Harry and the Dinosaurs one and a Viking one but that was all they had left. I tried to get a couple of Dora colouring books but they were 99p each and the tokens can only be used on books costing £1.99 or more. Davies did get a W&G sticker book though and we got the £1 off that. I needed a few householdy bits from Woollies so we got those (oven mitt and some rings with pegs on for drying things like kids socks) and then we came home. I managed to barely contain them round the shops and in the library using a combination of that tried and tested behaviour modification – bribery, threats and whispered angry voice! 🙂

On the way home they redeemed themselves and once back in the house they put W&G on TV and sat doing the activities in the sticker book together – things like spot the difference and so on. Davies has been counting everything today and verbally playing with numbers so autonomous numeracy and literacy have ruled here for him this week 🙂

I did the rest of the work for Ali and then made a very half hearted start on one of the CVs by which time Ady was home. So we all sat together and watched all of W&G disc 2 with all the extras, story behind the characters, interview with Nick Park etc which Davies really enjoyed. I sat and read them a load of library books – Tarly was more into ‘That’s not my dolly and got restless with most of the more interesting ones but she did join in with Quentin Blake’s All Join In which was nice. I love Quentin Blake books 🙂 Davies recognised that the pictures looked the same as one of his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books so we chatted a tiny bit about illustrators – I have one of those Come Look With Me art books which I think he would enjoy stashed on a bookcase, must get it out next week. We read The Paperbag Prince, which Davies loved and spent ages spotting things in the fab illustrations, Slam which was a real success; it’s a book with virtually no words all about consequences and you sort of follow it yourself – I think he might sit with that one a few more times actually, and an Eric Maddern (who I adore) book about The King With Horses Ears which he retold to Ady after only one listening.

They went off to bed and I relaxed in a bath with a glass of wine and Upper Forth At Malory Towers and now I’m allegedly cooking dinner but secretly blogging in the kitchen! 🙂 I now have an ebay rant to compose so this will soon be knocked down the page! 😉