One word? When seven would do…

It’s really not.

Apparently it’s me as Totty, dancing to KLF! 😆

Except I’ve moved on to Nina Simone now and am counting megabloks ready to list on ebay.

Ady is doing something to do with ring tones and MP3 downloads on his laptop, the children are playing with lego and toy animals, I’m sitting on the floor in the playroom surround by outgrown childrens’ clothes listing them all on ebay listening to a variety of music very loud on the cd player including Elton John, Billy Joel, Beautiful South and other singalong stuff I loved years ago, singing along at the top of my voice and occassionally getting up to dance too if the song demands it.

Earlier I told Davies I wished he was old enough to go and make me a cup of tea – he came back a few moments later with Tarly in tow and requested that I show them both how so as soon as they are ‘older’ they will be able to do it. So I did – he did the putting the kettle on, stirring the tea bag around and pouring the milk, we looked and smelt various of my hippy tea teabags and I snipped open a cheapo normal tea bag to show them the tea leaves and told them about tea plants and making tea with loose leaves.

The sun is shining in through the windows and this afternoon we’re off to Colin and Lucy’s for a barbeCue.

If I could only find my Carpenters cd to listen to next it would all be pretty much perfect. 🙂

Oh and Pete was lovely 🙂

Ady worked from home today which initially caused additional stress as the children were constantly trying to leap on him, get him to run around after them and shouting across us whenever we tried to talk. And we fell out over me ‘helping’ him with what he was working on 😳 But we eventually settled into it.

I forgot to mention earlier in the week that Tarly is suddenly into sticker / puzzle books. I have about half a shelf of 3+ ‘workbooks’ largely unused that I bought when we first thought about HE. Davies has never been a workbooky sort of child and I had pretty much reached the conclusion that I was not a workbooky sort of mother really but Tarly is loving them. She’s done some match and sort style mathsy ones although they are very much of the spot the difference, link the pairs, odd one out style rather than anything involving maths as I consider it. Seeing Tarly head bent over a book, getting a bit of attention and support while doing it has sparked a bit of interest in Davies so he has been looking at books like Dinosaur atlas sticker books which have loads of stickers all numbered which you have to put on the right part of the world to show which dinosaurs lived where.

Today Tarly grabbed a first 100 words book so we sat matching stickers to that for a while and I showed her how to match the word printed on the sticker to the word printed on the book and how that word was what the picture was etc. Then we looked at the picture and spotted things in it and did some counting up of stuff too. All very early years education really and something I am so not in the habit of doing I found it nice but odd all at the same time.

Davies came over and started ‘helping’ with the words until I asked him to read ‘hen’ off one of the stickers and he threw a complete looney at me. I would have maybe let it pass but Ady was sitting across the room and waded in with the ‘if you can’t read at home then maybe we need to send you to school’ type chat. Which I am more than guilty of pulling out of the hat myself at times despite having very little intention of seeing it through, or indeed being particularly concerned about his reading. I just hate the attitude he displays sometimes about things which I know he is utterly capable of and get really pissed off when he would rather make a huge drama about it, cry, sulk and stamp his feet while riles me up instead of just doing it, getting the praise and feeling good about himself. Kids eh? I sent him to his room as he was being really arsey and then after a few minutes I followed him up there and we had a chat. I then asked him to choose a book for us to look at together – with the aim of restoring some of his confidence by showing him he *can* do it and feeling good about reading rather than leaving it as a sore point. He chose some of the Usborne Ted in Bed, Big Pig type books and we looked at Big Pig. He did really well actually although I helped him with the sort of where, when, there, shows type words which we’ve never covered before. We did about five pages before we both got bored and stopped but he redeemed himself in Ady’s eyes and was all positive about what he can do again so that was mission accomplished. 🙂

They then got the Happymais out and Davies was playing quite happily with that but being interupted and annoyed by Tarly so I took her off to do some baking with me instead. We made chocolate brownies and rice crispy cakes together and chatted lots about what we were doing as we went. Tarly broke up the chocolate, did some stirring of the hot pan, greased the brownie tray, tipped the nuts, sugar and flour in, did some more mixing and put it in the oven. Then she assembled paper cake cases for the rice cripsy cakes, tipped the marshmallows into the pan and then wandered off again.

I returned to the lounge to find Davies making all sorts of stuff with Happymais, Tarly looking at the Big Pig etc books and ‘reading’ to herself making it up as she went along looking at the pictures – she sat and happily did that with all six books. I do sometimes wonder what would happen if you applied the ‘raised by wolves’ approach to a child like Tarly and didn’t help AT ALL. Would she learn to read eventually just be working out what individual words meant by spotting them against various illustrations in various books? She constantly surprises me with her wide vocabulary and expressions and it is actually very rare she asks what a word means like Davies still does sometimes, she just seems to note it’s use and context once or twice and then starts to use it herself.

Ady had awarded himself a break and found a website of ring tones with loads of old children’s TV shows and 70s / 80s adverts, so we happily played ‘name that kids show of your childhood’ for a while which was cool. 🙂

And then, imagine my surprise (said in best Viz voice) when I spotted Ali and Freya walking damply past the house. So the children let them in and then kept them coralled in a very small area in the hall while they brought them various things, returned borrowed items and bombarded them with X box questions as they tried to remove shoes, outerwear and change soggy hemmed trousers. When we eventually allowed them inside the rest of the house there was a brief period of craziness which was solved by packing Davies off upstairs to eat his lunch in the company of Ady who had scarpered upstairs when they arrived due to not being fully clothed, needing to go and put his boots on to be in Ali’s company and knowing full well I would deputise him to look after and entertain all the children so Ali and I could chat! 😆 Wise man!

Which meant that Tarly and Freya played really nicely together with occassional interjections from Davies when he re-joined us. They did stuff with make up, Polly Pockets and liberated toys from Davies’ bedroom. And then Davies realised that actually it would be far better to hang with the laydeez in the lounge than try and infiltrate the beauty parlour in Tarly’s room. So he sat firing quick fire questions at Ali about W&G X box games and talking us through every stage of his Happymais X box related constructions. He really made me laugh when Ali was out of the room by confiding in me that he’d ‘accidentally said bugger’. 😆 I repeated it to Ali when she came in but stopped short of what he’d said and turned to him to say ‘what did you say Davies?’ He thought for a moment and then said ‘I can’t tell you, but it’s a friend of ‘Oh My God!” 😆

Inbetween chatting with Ali I did manage to suggest and support Davies with creating tartan slippers for a Happymais Wallace, persuade Tarly to paint nails over newspaper and threaten shouting as a punishment for repeated offences in turning lights on in Tarly’s room. Then I escaped for an hour by taking Ali and Freya home.

I came home and Ady had fed the children (easily my least favourite task of the day), we watched the quarter final of celebrity Masterchef with Davies making all sorts of hilariously adult and astute comment on it before trying to get children to sleep. Tarly had mislaid both her remaining (very old) dummies and seemed fairly ‘unbovvered’ about it so I was prepared for this to be ‘it’ and was sitting in her room with her while she kept getting out of bed to look at books, brush my hair, lie upside down on her bed picking at her woodchip wallpaper telling me convoluted and complicated stories until she fell asleep when Ady arrived with a dummy he’d found in a holiday holdall. So she took it and was asleep very speedily afterwards.

Now we are drinking alcohol, watching music channels on TV and playing ‘guess the song title, artist and year first’ while Ady has cooked possibly our latest ever dinner of home made burgers and chips. The mince and potatoes were both supplied by Chris and Julie – the potatoes from their garden and the meat from a friend of Chris’ who had an Aberdeen Angus slaughtered for their wedding reception (pre the event I believe rather than as part of the evening entertainment!) and supplied Chris with various cuts of meat for his freezer from the remnants. The cow was called Pete and we have enjoyed him very much 🙂

Lots of socialising planned for this weekend so I might not be back til after the break. 🙂

Up, organised and out by 9.30am today, complete with two loads of washing out on the line. Days like these I can realise how people manage school 😉 Of course I did forget at least two things and needed to pop home unplanned in the middle of the day, but it was a good start.

We headed off to Brighton to see Hoodwinked as part of Film Educations screenings. I had not told the children we were going but billed it as ‘a surprise’. We arrived at Brighton Marina and Davies said straight away ‘is the surprise that we’re going to the cinema?’ in a really hopeful voice, so it was fab to be able to say yes. 🙂 We headed into Asda first to buy chocolate, popcorn and fizzy drinks at approximately a quarter of the price we would pay in the cinema – I do like to rot my childrens’ teeth and feed them additives in a frugal manner 😆

We were not first in the cinema but Davies and Scarlett still like to sit in the very front row, which most other cinema goers are not so keen on so we still got their favoured seats. I was impressed that Davies pointed out we had gone to a different screen last time. We settled down with our food and drink and a cinema employee came to introduce the film – he talked about evacuation procedures and film performances. When he’d finished Tarly leant over to me and said ‘he used a lot of long words!’ 😆

The film was excellent – I really enjoyed it and it would have been good to have another adult there to watch it with. I thought it was well written with a fast paced script and original and funny takes on the well known characters of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. I’d have been very proud to have written it. The animation was good too – Red reminded me of Betty Boop – I quite like the return to old fashioned very obvious cartoony style characters. Davies sat glued to it and Tarly just got a tiny bit restless about an hour in, but was easily quietened again and whispered lots of intellegent questions to me. They were far better behaved than the group of about 10 eight year olds who sat in the row behind flanked by a teacher at each end of the row.

We left there, blinking in the sunshine and headed to Lucy’s via a post office on the way to send a couple more books I’ve sold on Amazon Marketplace – my un-read parenting manuals are selling a storm ;-). We loaded Richard, Rebecca and Lucy into our car and we popped back to my house so I could collect luncheon vouchers, take sausages out to defrost for dinner, get changed to suit the beautiful weather which had come out while we were in the cinema and collect Lucy’s sunglasses she left with us yesterday. Then over to Chris and Julie’s.

Julie had arranged an Activeo event to celebrate Jack and Maisie’s fourth birthday this weekend but actually there was only one other HE family there in the end. A really interesting woman I’ve met twice before with two daughters, aged 3 and 1. The 8 children had a ball playing in the garden with virtually no intervention while the adults, including Julie’s Mum who arrived this morning and her boyfriend enjoyed plenty of chatting on all sorts of diverse subjects including parenting and education of course.

We left there around 4.30pm and ended the day via McDonalds. I had pinecone research LV to spend so had planned to end the frugal treat for my two with a final junk food top up. They ate in the car and clearly the way forward for peaceful journeys with uninterupted chatting for Lucy and I is to feed them McDonalds in the car 😆 We went in with them for a final cup of tea for me, a further play in the garden for the children and to finalise arrangements for getting together with Ady and Colin too this weekend.

Ady was already home when we arrived and the children were both easily asleep by 8pm having been worn out by two days of being children all day long. Lovely dinner and I’m planning an early night myself.

This week started with a couple of really crappy days but has been turned round with a lovely couple of days. Having listened to myself talking about TCS, reward and punishment and general parenting today I am feeling slightly ashamed at how little I followed any of what I believe in and hold true at the beginning of this week. Less time spent trapped home all day with no fresh air or exercise for any of us does not make for a happy HE home, so I’ll learn from this week and try and work on not repeating some of those errors again for a while.

Had a really good day today with loads of stuff falling in our laps to talk about. Lucy was due to arrive at 10am – and Luce, really, promptness has gone from being a trait I admire in a friend to one which I could happily live without, so don’t ever rush 😉 – and I was actally well on schedule. The children were dressed, I was dressed, I’d put away three baskets of washing, hung two loads out to dry, persuaded the children to play with the non-messy option of plastic dinosaurs, had a plan to make some snickerdoodles to take on our picnic and had finally tracked the camera down so I could film the children singing Happy Birthday to Lulah. One of our fallings out yesterday was about making and writing in a card which I was going to post on the way to reading group so it would be with her this morning, but Davies wrote an ‘e’ instead of an ‘a’, Tarly got pen on the carpet when she was drawing a pink space rocket and I lost my temper with them over it. So they sang Happy Birthday and I taped it on the camera ready to upload to youtube and blog.

Then Ady came home again. His car was in for a service and as he is due a new company car in the next couple of months he had borrowed a Touran as a courtesy car and brought it home to show us. I don’t like his Golf anyway, I far prefer big cars (like my Sharan, or a BMW for exampled 🙂 ) but it is so not practical for the out of work hours stuff we use it for like camping. So he was going to ask for an estate but decided instead to go for a people carrier – perfect for using to ferry friends or relatives about in for days out and with loads of space for putting seats down to load it up with tents and portapotties – which was sort of why we bought the Sharan 5 years ago. Love the Touran anyway and he’s had it OK’d this afternoon as his next car. Hurrah! 🙂

All of which opening glove boxes, pushing all the buttons on the dash and trying to fold seats down threw me totally off schedule. So I bunged the snickerdoodles in the oven and was battling with my computer having realised that it hadn’t managed to use flickr uploadr or ebay turbolister the last couple of days either so clearly had some sort of uploading issues.

Lucy arrived just as the snickerdoodles came out of the oven, further reinforcing my muffin status in her eyes, I made a quick picnic and off we set.

We went to Tilgate Park, which we had planned to go to at least once before and been rained off of doing. Today was a perfect day weatherwise if slightly windy for our picnic and Tilgate is fab. With only minor detours due to us chatting and not looking out for our right turning properly and only minor yellings at children on the way we arrived. We headed straight for the animals bit and had a fab hour or so wandering round looking at them. There is a Discovery Centre bit there which has loads of small animal and bird skeletons, talks about reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish etc and has odd small live exhibits too like tree frogs and lizards. Davies was really into it and we walked round the whole thing lifting every flap, answering all the questions and talking about everything there. He impressed me by remembering all sorts of snippets such as dolphins are mammals, alligators are reptiles, nocturnal means you are awake at night etc. We looked at the skull and teeth of carnivores (dogs), herbivores (sheep) and omnivores (humans) and talked about the differences, we looked at barn owl and pigeon skeletons and learnt (me too!) about the different types of feather – flight, contour and down. We looked at a time line of the population explosion of people and the decline and often extinction of other creatures. Tarly veered between interested and insightful and downright annoying because she wasn’t getting full attention all the time. She came out of it quickly enough when we entered the yard with various animals including pigs, cows, sheep, goats, deer, wallabys and a wide variety of birds. Davies and Scarlett happily ran ahead and were having a great time observing all the animals and chatting about them to each other and swapping knowledge. It was like a working model of how autonomy can work. 🙂

We stopped for lunch, Lucy very kindly bought me a cup of tea and despite claiming to be starving it wasn’t long before the children had abandoned their food in favour of running around and exploring some more. We did the maze, with Davies fondly remembering the one at Longleat from this time last year and walked through more themed gardens before heading off towards the water. There is an enormous and very picturesque lake with lots of water wildlife which we walked alongside before heading to the playrgound.

There Lucy and I managed to sit and chat for a while, despite R and another small girl taking it upon themselves to cart R up and down the climbing frame and slide – he loved it, Lucy and I were less keen! D & S went running off and got caught up in one of their own world games – about Wallace and Gromit I believe. Other children came and went and joined in a bit (Davies told me he had made a new friend when we left). They all appeared to be loving it so much they’d have stayed for hours longer but we managed to shepherd them out without a fight and the drive back home was lovely and quick too. A definite ‘we’ll come again’ vote there, infact I might try and arrange a HE gathering there with an educational talk for anyone near enough to be interested – will post to early years about it though.

Once home, Lucy, R & R came in for coffee and further playing. The shapes and sticks set was popular (can’t find a link) and as Davies made something he claimed could ‘tell you where north is’ I ended up doing a quick diagram of a compass and explaining south east and south west etc and even north north east too. Ah so much education :lol:.

Ady got home and Lucy, R and R headed off for home. I was getting increasingly cross with the computer so Ady sent me upstairs with it to swear in peace and I eventually got it sorted out and working again.

Tomorrow we have film education seats booked to see Hoodwinked, which I think looks pretty good. The children don’t know we’re going and I’m planning to take them to the Asda next door to the cinema first to buy drinks and popcorn there at about a quarter of the price of the cinema, so I wonder how quickly they’ll guess what’s going on?

A couple of days at home here with lots of not a lot going on.

Yesterday there was lots of X boxing, geomagging, Tarly did some painting and I got loads of washing done. My Dad came over in the afternoon and sat with Tarly while I took Davies to Badgers. He and Tarly have a really nice relationship, very similar to that he and I had when I was a little girl and she has now gotten used to his teasing and either teases him back or just tells him to stop talking rubbish rather than getting upset like she used to.

Davies went in to Badgers on his own again with my just seeing him across the road. I still sat outside in the car but as I’ve mentioned before I am actually quite keen on this idea as I like sitting in utter peace and quiet reading my book and people watching passers-by from the hiding place of my car. When I went in to meet him he was having a great time and is so clearly part of ‘the gang’ there now after a full term and a bit. They are doing Communication Badger work this term and had been writing and learning various ways to say ‘hello’ in different languages. Davies had done some really nice copied writing which he had illustrated with a picture of Gromit (naturally! :lol:).

Ady had been to Birmingham for the day for a trade show and arrived home around 7pm so it was a late night for the children. We watched Shaun of the Dead, which I think we were probably the only people I know who had not already seen it. Thought it was a pretty good film actually. Our two months free dvd rental is drawing to a close but we have definitely made full use of it watching at least 3 films per week.

Today has been a very shouty day, which retrospectively was probably far more about me being intolerant and impatient than the children doing anything particularly wrong. They played with geomags and happymais and a new version of their long running holiday game. For about 2 years they have played a long and drawn out imaginary game where they pack their bags and go on holiday. This used to take the form of them packing clothes, toys and food up, sitting on the stairs while one of them drove before arriving at their hotel where I would be called upon to be the receptionist and issue them with a room key. As our lives have changed from the days of travelodges and hotels so their game has evolved. They now pack up their clothes, toys and their tent and sleeping bags, drive there and then set up a tent to camp in for their holiday. Their tent is created from cushions and fleece blankets draped around the furniture. They have been requesting a ‘sleepover’ in a tent created in Davies’ room so they have been promised that on Friday night.

I had some parcels to send so we went to the post office where we waited in the queue for ages. Our little local post office is also a newsagents, sweet shop and sells cards, stationery and various convenience store essentials too – very similar sort of set up to a few post offices we looked at the possibility of buying a couple of years ago. It has two counters – one for post office business and one for everything else and is frequently a bit chaotic in there with a massive queue at one or other counter and no one at the other. Today the couple who run / own it had their 10 month old jack russell puppy there which enchanted Scarlett and interested Davies who kept a safe distance away while urging Tarly to cuddle and stroke her. Tarly adores dogs so I know I have managed to shield her pretty effectively from my phobia. Davies however has either picked it up or inherited it and is rather more cautious of them. We left there and whizzed to Sainsburys where I finally made my first purchase of economy toilet rolls. We have always bulk bought from Costco the more expensive quilted brands when they are on special offer and had well over six months supply stashed away in our wardrobe. It ran out this week and we are not in a position to buy anything other than the value brands to replace it. Actually I never realised quite how cheap the cheap stuff is – 80 pence for 12 rolls! 🙂 And it’s not so bad…

This afternoon I spent ages fighting with ebay’s turbolister. After two uninstall and reinstalls I gave up. I have tonight realised that flickr uploadr is having the same problem of not recognising and being able to hook up to my account so I wonder if it’s something about my computer which is playing up / has the wrong settings perhaps. Consequently I had taken pictures of a whole pile of clothes ready to ebay but they are all still sat in a pile unlisted.

Davies had made a baby elephant from Happymais last week which he realised looks a lot like the baby elephant from his Wallace and Gromit Project Zoo X box game. So today he made a cage for it from Happymais with a long vine to hang it from. And a Gromit. (Merry I have photos, will download them and add to your group as soon as I get flickr uploadr sorted again).

By the time Ady got home I had had enough of being anyone’s mother or wife so to quell the urge to just yell at everyone to ‘fuck off and leave me alone!!!!!!’ I set off for the library an hour earlier than I needed to be there for book group. Borrowed a couple of very easy read chick lits and settled down in a quiet corner to start reading one of them. Bliss. 🙂

A deaf and rather elderly woman who comes along arrived first so we had an odd conversation with me having to face her directly and shout – which makes it odd to put inflection into your voice somehow and I end up really shortening what I want to say and how I say it (I know, surprising isn’t it that I can be concise sometimes 😉 ). She was under the impression I am a teacher – although retrospectively she may have just been confused as one of the other women is a teacher, and when I said I was not she asked what I did do then? I’m quite pleased to have come across as someone who does ‘do’ something at least 😆 so I bit the bullet and explained that I am sort of a teacher as I home educate my children. We started a conversation about it which was cut short as the others arrived but I suspect given the volume I was talking at so she could hear me that most of them heard enough as they came in that my cover is blown :lol:. Ah well, the anonymity was nice while it lasted!

The book being discussed was ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ on my own recommendation, which was good. It opened up all sorts of really interesting debate and view points. Particularly from the older generation who clearly blamed the mother, a couple of us who believed people can be ‘born evil’ and the men who far from blaming the mother feel that mothers generally take and accept blame and guilt rather than have it forced upon us by society. All really interesting stuff – I could have stayed debating all night quite happily.

I was surprised, for some reason at just how dark it was outside – it was about 8.15pm and already completely dark. Our town is not particularly rough but I am pretty cagey about walking anywhere alone after dark. So I walked very briskly debating with myself what I was most scared of the propsect of – a lone man with dreadful sexual assault acts in mind, a mugger after my watch and wedding ring and bag containing my purse and mobile phone, a gang of youths, armed with video phones ready to capture my ‘happy slapping’ to text message to all their friends or one of the dogs which people seem to walk loose off the lead after dark and feel that saying ‘oh he won’t hurt you’ as their canine friend leaps up at you like some sort of reconstruction of Cujo will reassure you. I decided the dog fear was the most real but in the event I made it home unscathed by any such dramas.

Tomorrow we’re off out with Lucy, R & R which will be nice, so I really should go to bed as Lucy is easily my most prompt friend and is sure to be here dead on the dot of when I told her to arrive. I remember when I used to manage that…

Buttercup Lulah 🙂 Have a lovely 4th birthday darling, lots of love, Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

You know there are odd people who you meet through your life and for one reason or another, sometimes without realising it’s going to happen you lose touch and never see them again?

Most of them you forget quite happily but every so often some of them remain people you wonder about and you think of them from time to time.

I have various people who I sometimes think about or am reminded about and wonder whatever became of them. One of them was Lucy, who was a friend when we were 17 and I lost touch with, we tracked each other down again a couple of years ago though.

I have two ex-bosses who I got on really well with and retrospectively regretted not staying in touch with despite leaving the respective jobs. One of them was the area manager for Clinton Cards. He left about six months after I did, probably about 8 years ago now.

I was walking through Sainsburys with the children earlier today, having just told them off for playing with the checkout barrier thingy and walking at an angry pace with them clucthing a hand each to keep up when I walked past him. He looked at me, I looked at him, he looked at the children. And we both kept walking! So that was silly, but I know if I’d stopped in the middle of Sainsburys the best I could have hoped for would be a two minute ‘hello, tell me everything you’ve done in the last eight years in 30 seconds each’ exchange before I had to go and rescue the children from removing all the free gifts off the front of the magazines, or being trapped in the revolving doors. Or something.

So, who would you like to bump into from your past – without the encumbrances of two small children – for a half hour catch up to find out what the hell they have been up to since you last saw them?

Roslyn 🙂 Have a lovely day, lots of love, Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

Today started way, way, way too early at about 6am. 🙁 I’ve been so tired just lately and although I am managing to go for a couple of walks a week I am really lacking energy and enthusiasm for anything. We’ve been watching lots of films as part of the free trial on Tesco dvd rental and I don’t think I’ve seen the end of any of them due to falling asleep about an hour into the film every time. Last night was no exception.

So me and the children were up from 6am and we spent our time playing Xbox. I can actually understand why people are into gaming, it is quite addictive 😳 I’ve just won a Willy Wonka X box game on ebay and have bids on Cat in the Hat, Hello Kitty, Super Monkey Ball and Tetris too – all of which I’ll put away for Christmas if I win. Well maybe not the Tetris, that might be for me 😉 I remember spending hours playing on Frazer’s Game Boy years ago on Tetris. Oh and his Donkey Kong, BMX bandit and pacman games too. Funnily enough I never had my own, just used to bribe him with things to let me play his. 😆 We got a second controller for the Xbox – a slightly smaller one than the official one that came with it, which is better for Tarly but she is going to take some getting used to playing with it I reckon, and probably needs to do it when her ability is not being relied on by Davies when they are playing toegether.

Ady had his lie-in (which he bitterly missed last weekend 😉 ) and we headed off nice and early to the local car boot sale. The children were both up fairly late last night – Scarlett well past 9.30pm and so were tired and didn’t do well with the sudden heatwave we’ve had again this weekend (Davies actually has mild sunburn under his eyes :oops:) but we did have a successful day W&G wise with Davies getting a puzzle for 50pence and two books for a pound. Tarly pulled her usual cute blonde princess act and got a free bright pink poodle soft toy from some naive old lady who fell for it. Honestly, that child comes away with something free every single week! 🙄 We bumped into Colin and Lucy there, I was hailed by a lady who used to come to the original Home Ed group I ran with Jenny last year and Ady saw a couple of people from his old work too.

We left there and popped home to collect a picnic then headed up the downs to find a good viewing point for the air show. We started in one field which had a fab view of the sea and the far side of the airfield but after eating we explored a bit further and a ten minute walk netted us an even better corn field, filled with other people settled in with a full panoramic view of the airshow and the crowds who’d paid over a tenner each to get in below. We were there for a couple of hours, the children veered between happily running about, sitting on my lap and eating the picnic. We had a who can make a minstrel last the longest competition, Tarly did loads of drawing and ‘writing’ (Tarly style) in my diary and Ady sat oohing and ahhing, taking photos and video footage of the planes. Tarly and I had a chat about bombs, the world wars, how planes were used for fighting and evacuation of children from cities while there was a WW2 reinactment style dog fight and explosions, Davies and Ady had a slightly more indepth equivalent about wars just out of our earshot. The children were starting to get really restless at the end so we watched what we assumed (judging from what we saw and heard from our garden – about a mile away from the airport – yesterday) was the last couple of jets and then packed up to walk back to the car. We had got a few paces down the lane when our ears were practically blown off by a Mig jet so we headed back to watch that. Tarly went from hating ‘aeroflanes’ to deciding they were the best fun ever and that she wanted to ‘be the one to make them do crazy upside down stuff’ when she grows up (that’d be a pilot then 😉 ) while Davies just stood there with the craziest grin on his face and we were deafened by it roaring over our heads.

When it finally headed off again we started back towards the car. As we crossed one very recently mowed field we spotted a (dead) slow worm. I’ve not seen a slow worm since I was a child – they used to be everywhere, you could guarantee that if you dug about in any long patch of grass you’d find a couple. Don’t know whether they are rarer nowadays or I am just not so into digging about in long patches of grass looking for slow worms now. We had a tank full of them in the classroom when I was about 10 and they were hugely educational, shedding bits of skin and stuff. As we were investigating the slow worm we were spotted by Lucy who was also up there watching the planes with her Mum, R & R.

We headed for home, via a conker tree where the children had tea and early bed. We have had a lovely roast dinner and are drinking the bottle of champagne from Lovely Ros for our anniverary last week as it has been the first time we’ve sat down at a decent hour since then. Thanks Ros 🙂

Tomorrow is a day at home and then we have plans for the rest of the week. So I imagine there will be X Boxing! 🙂

I went through some of Davies’ clothes today to try and sort out what extra stuff he might need for autumn/winter and up the pile of stuff for ebaying too. I was actually more ruthless about deciding he’d outgrown stuff than I probably need to be simply because some of it has already done two winters and I’m sick of the sight of it.

We have a pair of camo print trousers that I swear I bought when we still lived in Manchester – I have picture evidence that he wore them at Melrose 2005

and Melrose 2006

and actually they are only marginally too short now. And because I was really quite excited at the prospect of them no longer residing in our house Tarly came along and tried them on and fell in love with them and has put them in her wardrobe now. She also appropriated various other outgrown Davies items including a pair of Christmas pjs which she wore all morning and had a fit about not being able to wear again to bed tonight until I dug them out of the wash again and several jumpers including the skull one Davies wore lots last winter which completes her new Punk Tarly look to perfection. 😉

I’m verging on being slightly concerned about Davies’ height, joking aside. He simply doesn’t appear to have grown much for well over a year. I am fine with the fact he is on the short side – his genes probably dictate he won’t make much of a basketball player but appearing not to grow from his own four year old height is a bit disconcerting. And I know there has been discussion elsewhere about kids clothes sizes being a bit of a law unto themselves but actually he is barely out of aged 4-5 clothes (and no, I wasn’t magically expecting him to start wearing age 6-7 overnight on Thursday 😉 ) . So I’ve googled children’s height and growth and will measure him in the morning to ensure he is into the ‘average’ scale at least. At then when he has a sudden growth spurt in the next few weeks you can all say ‘told you so’ 😆

We’ve done not a lot today really. It’s the local airshow which has meant there have been all sorts of noisy planes flying about overhead exciting Ady and the children. Ady has done stuff like defrost fridges, chillers and freezers and moved both freezers into our garage, I’ve cleared Davies’ room of various bits of tat and sorted his bookcase out – there is about half a shelf empty now – in the old days that would have sent me straight to the Book People website ;-).

Davies managed to tread on his glasses in a comedy moment involving a daddy long legs and they are beyond repair so will need replacing. He doesn’t really need them but actually quite likes wearing them and Ady is pretty strict about ensuring he wears them for things like Xbox playing and they do quite suit him.

Ady and the children spent a couple of hours in the garden this afternoon, I read my book and enjoyed the peace and then went food shopping. I went with cash in my pocket rather than cards, forgot and went over budget so had to put stuff back. Embarrassing but a good reminder that actually I shouldn’t be forgetting about budgeting and really should only pick up what I went in there for. Had a quick flick through The Green Parent at the article Dani and Allie feature in though. 🙂

And that’s probably about it for today. Tomorrow we’re heading off somewhere high with a picnic to get a free good view of the airshow. 🙂

Today was The Day Of The X Box (TM). For one day only constant Xboxing was allowed. So that’s pretty much what we did.

So Davies and I learnt how to use the controls – at length. We alternated between W&G Project Zoo and W&G curse of the were-rabbit with me desperately craving something without the words ‘cracking’ anywhere in the dialogue – but not desperate enough for Halo mind you 😉

Tarly and I looked at books for a while, I got out the Bob books but although she knew all the sounds for the first one (m, a, t and s) she couldn’t get her head round stringing them together at all. Slightly torn as to how to proceed with her on this really. I’ve happily accepted autonomy for Davies and reading – he knows all the letters and the sounds and knows how to blend them to make words, so aslong as a word if phonetic he is fine and he is gradually recognising more and more words by sight anyway. But Tarly is still right at the beginning and she just wants ‘to read’ by the quickest and most painless method I can offer. Erm…. I so don’t want to miss the boat or fail her here but at the same time I want to offer what works for her. Watch this space!

We listened to the jets and other noisy aircraft coming in to the local airport in preparation for tomorrows RAF annual airshow. We have gone along for the last two years but this year finances, my own honesty that actually I have little or no interest in WW2 aircraft and the children not being remotely bothered about going means we won’t be attending. I’ve told Ady to go on his own as it is so his ‘thing’ so depending on the weather I might push him a bit more tomorrow.

When Ady got home I went on another of my hour long walks, this time taking in the hall where the party was and posting the keys and payment back through the letterbox. I very foolishly wore flipflops so I now probably qualify for invalid status with the sore bits on the bottom of my feet, but hey, I’m getting fitter! 😆

And that would be about it for now.

Sentimental. Obviously. 😉 Haven’t done a Blogthings or Quizila quiz on it and don’t know if there is one, but that’d be the answer I got. I like being sentimental, I like reminsicing, talking about what I was doing X years ago today. And I like balancing out all my yelling, stropping and feeling fed up with people with sometimes celebrating what I adore about them too. Let’s face it, I spent 18 months managing a card and gift shop where we sold cardboard sentiment with it’s own envelope for three quid a shot for people who didn’t have words of their own to tell people that they loved them, they wanted them to have a happy birthday, or they were glad they had stayed married to them for so many years. And believe me, those cards with the long soppy verses, the declarations of undying and forever love were easily the best sellers – followed closely by those dreadful Forever Friends teddy bears (which I used to beat up and torture in the managers office for fun!). Anyway, yesterday marked the end of my big emotional sentimental week each year so I’ll be back to normal again now. 😉

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa watching a film which utterly failed to capture either Ady or I and staggered to bed sometime around 2am, so Davies waking for his birthday to start sometime very soon after 6am would have been far less received on any other morning. Scarlett emerged not long afterwards so we had present opening – a couple of X box games (ebay), a Wallace and Gromit T shirt (also ebay, but new), the latest two W&G comics (too expensive to be bought for occassions other than birthdays), Feathers, Preston and Wallace soft toys from charity shops, a Wallace and Gromit board game which I’ve never seen before also from a charity shop and Cube World – which he saw in ToysRUs and has seen on TV ads and was the only thing he kept on about getting for his birthday. That was a joint pressie from Layla and Si – so expect him to be thanking you profusely for that next he sees you L & S :-). Oh and a hologram dinosaur book, also from a charity shop. Somehow he ended up with as many presents, probably with as much ‘as new’ value as he has ever had but all at bargain prices. 🙂

As part of our (much discussed 😉 ) practise of a small present for the sibling Tarly got two Barbie videos (also both 50p from charity shops).

Ady headed off to work leaving Davies playing Cube World, Tarly watching Barbie in Fairytopia and me icing the birthday cake.

I’d planned to do whatever Davies wanted in the morning but he was pretty indecisive and came up with a variety of wild and wacky suggestions including going to Centerparcs, going to Devils Dyke and going swimming. Swimming I was prepared to accomodate but in the event he was not that bothered and far happier to play at home instead. We did one of the plaster of paris dinosaur moulds that had been a present from the party (Alison, I think) and then they played with geomags. I joined in and tried to make a 3d dinosaur but gave up. Davies took over and did a pretty good job of it though. 🙂 I also spent some time online and found contact lenses at less than half the price I have been paying. They have arrived this morning, complete with four days free trial ones to try first to check I am happy with them before opening the paid for ones. Next day delivery very impressive and so far, so good. 🙂

Ady arrived home and we headed off to my parents for birthday lunch. My Granny and brother were there too so we had a pleasant couple of hours with Davies opening his XBox (my parents and brother paid 1/4 each and we raised half by selling a few bits including outgrown toys on ebay. So it is 1/2 Davies’ birthday present from them and 1/2 the ‘family x box’ as I didn’t want it belonging to him solely, both as it is too extravagent a gift for a 6 year old and because it could cause arguments if it belonged to ‘him’ when and if Tarly gets games to play on it.) He got a cheque from my Granny which will go straight into his bank account and a globe from my parents too which replaces the one he had which used to be mine and got broken a while back. Tarly was given a couple of tins of sparkling jewelly from my Mum so she was very happy with that too.

Birthday lunch followed by birthday cake followed by Davies teaching all the adults (except me :lol:) how to use his cube world.

We left there as Ady had promised Davies a McDonalds for dinner so we headed over there. It is in a complex with a Tesco and an M&S so I went and got a few bits from Tesco while Ady sat with the children in McD’s. Davies got a crazy frog one of those music thingys and Tarly got a The Faders one. Never heard of The Faders before (which probably makes me either really sad, middle aged and out of touch with the youth of today, or the mother of young children rather than teenagers perhaps? 😉 ) but she is utterly in love and has learnt all the lyrics to the song snippet on there. She walked all round M&S with it clamped to her ear dancing along to it and has played with it this morning too. I found The Faders website and played her a couple more of their songs which she also loved so maybe I can dilute the pink fluffiness of Barbie before it takes a complete hold after all. I guess it could be black nail varnish for her fourth birthday after the pink glittery one for her third 😆 We drove around a couple of electrical retailers looking for a second XBox controller but as everywhere has stopped selling XBox stuff in favour of the 360 stuff we gave up. Loads online though so if Ady doesn’t get one at Game today we’ll get one off ebay or somewhere instead.

Davies was allowed to watch a film in bed as the end of his birthday and chose Willy Wonka so he was still awake at about 10pm. I cooked dinner but suddenly felt really ill so served Ady his and went off to bed instead. Watched Mock the week which I’d not seen before and found very funny and was asleep before 11pm.

Today Davies intends playing Xbox ‘all day long’ which for one day only I’ll allow, I need to try and clear the laundry mountain inbetween showers of rain and I still have to return the keys and pay for the hall from Davies’ party. Hopefully Ady will be home in time for me to walk there as my second walk of the week. Oh and I want to try the Bob books with Tarly who insists she wants to read but is clearly expecting it to happen at a far greater speed that 100EL is going to allow 🙄

I can’t quite believe it’s six years since you were born. In many ways the years have raced by and the memory of sitting looking into your eyes for the very first time and saying hello to you feels like it was just this morning. In many other ways it feels as if you have always been here, like I’ve known you forever.

Davies, you were the very first person I loved from the moment I met you, the very first person who’s life counted for more than mine, for whom there is nothing I wouldn’t do. The first person who made me want to be the best, do the best, make you proud of me. You have changed me in so many ways, not all of them positive, but all of them necessary and to be celebrated.

Your life is celebrated in the photos that adorn the walls of the house, the hours worth of home videos stacked in a box, the storage box sitting on top of your wardrobe filled with the cards sent to Daddy and I when you were born, the one or two outfits over the years I have not been able to get rid of, your hospital bracelet, your drawings pinned to the walls, how I know so much about dinosaurs, educational approaches and how I am so familiar with each of your passions – Wallace and Gromit being my best example. It will probably surprise everyone to learn that actually I have never sat and watched any of the films myself, yet I spent most of last week creating the props to turn your birthday party hall into a shrine of all things Aardman!

Your marks are left physically on me – I have the first silvery stretch marks on my tummy – later joined by the fresher ones from Scarlett, emotionally on me from the tears I shed over the difficulties of motherhood to the laughter you bring to my every waking moment and spiritually from where I hold no religious beliefs but do believe in the bond we share, your ability to take everything I can offer you, add to it and take it soaring far past where I could ever go.

I’m aware that you and I have an intense relationship, we spent many hours more together than plenty of other mothers and sons of similar ages. The closeness we share has the inevitable downside of too much time in each others company at times but I hope that as you grow older we will spent less time together perhaps, without ever losing what makes us Mummy and Davies.

Davies I am so very proud of you, as I watched you running surrounded by friends this weekend and you stopped as you dashed past just long enough to share with me ‘it’s hard work being the birthday boy, Mummy. Everyone wants to talk to me’ with a look of delight on your face. As you stood infront of your birthday cakes with the candles blazing, a room full of people who travelled to celebrate your birthday with you singing Happy Birthday to you, as you quietly told me later in the day what a wonderful party it had been and how much you’d loved it. When I kiss you goodnight and watch you slip back to babyhood as you go to sleep. When I hear once more from another adult what a lovely person you are.

Have a wonderful birthday darling, enjoy every moment. I love you. xxx

This morning we loaded up the software Davies got from Ali for his birthday. My old laptop – the one which died after being knocked off the arm of the sofa and was replaced on the house insurance by the lovely little one I am using to post this – has not got a working disc drive but having realised recently that the external disc drive Ady has for his work laptop would probably work and tested it to find indeed it does, so we were able to set it up using that. The software looks to be one of those which despite coming with full instructions – both in leaflet and onscreen – is easier to work out by just playing and fiddling. So with an occassional audience of Tarly that is just what he did. I didn’t actually see any of what he was doing but he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself and I’ll have a better look at it myself soon. So that was a Hit. 🙂

I baked some brownies to take to Lucy’s house, tidied up a bit and managed to be on the way to Lucy’s arriving a mere half hour after I’d planned and slightly before Julie. As ever we had a very nice time there, the children just get on with it and Lucy, Julie and I enjoy chatting about all manner of things, tossing ideas into the forum and generally enjoying each others’ company. Today there was some party post-mortum chat to be done and topics as far reaching as reusable, washable toilet wipes, cruel to be kind ‘breaking in’ children to situations they initially resist and more.

Davies was in the frame of mind where he seemed to be ‘looking for trouble’ – which is where him and I so often clash. He is not ‘naughty’ as such and the instant I tell him not to do a specific thing he will stop, but I feel as thought I spend the whole time nagging him as he stops doing one thing and moves straight onto another. All the while celebrated by his younger posse of followers as some sort of junior superhero. 🙄 Today I had something of an epiphany as I realised that actually what is bothering me is not what he is doing, but my fear of what other people will think and how they will judge him. I am able to see that while it is very frustrating to steer him constantly away from antics such as collecting sticks, finding muddy water, exploring how he can cover a table top in mud using only a stick to paint with or mixing together toilet roll, soap, toothpaste and shampoo in a sink full of water (an example rather than something he did today, I hasten to add!), it is actually not him being deliberately naughty at all. I put quite a lot on Davies and when I look back into the past at what five (or as it has just struck midnight now six) was like it was a time of wonder, of not ever thinking in advance what the consequences might be for actions, of exploring, investigating, of having an idea or notion and carrying it out straightaway. Of wondering ‘what if?’ and just going right on ahead and finding out. Of actually nobody expecting you to know any better because after all you were only six and how would you ever learn unless you did it and found out anyway? So while I still won’t be letting him paint friends’ houses with ash mixture, dig up prize flowers by the roots, block up their plumbing with plaster of paris down the sink without a ‘What were you thinking?’ Go and say sorry right now!’ maybe I’ll try and give him a bit of a break on the whole assuming it was all premeditated and done just to piss me off side of things. Perhaps we’ll work more on the listening to what I say rather than the expecting him to have such a strong sense of responsibility and take it from there.

Julie left with Jack and Maisie so Lucy and I decided to take the remaining children out for a walk. We chose the beach over the park on the basis there is a small playground area there too. Davies and Scarlett pretty much imediately kicked their shoes off and headed for the sea. I started to protest at Davies going into the water but actually it was a really nice day, warm and sunny and we were headed straight for home afterwards anyway so I gave up and let him do his thing. He clambered on rocks, paddled, splashed, waded and crawled around in the sea and had a whale of a time. He has utterly fallen in love with the ocean this summer and given that I too have been in the sea this year having not done so since teenage years I can quite see the attraction. Tarly spent some time digging and building using a shell as a scoop / spade which she then brought over to show me and explain how she’d used it. I told her about how cavemen used things like stones and shells as early tools and then sent her to find a bit of driftwood, a sharp edged stone and some seaweed to lash it together and made her a little axe type tool. The seaweed was very brittle and didn’t really hold it all together, so we plaited it to make it stronger like a rope. It still didn’t really hold but I showed her how much tougher it was to pull and break a plaited thread than a single strand and we talked about that. We also looked at how the tools might have worked and what they could have been used for and I told her that if we’d hit two stones together in the dark we might have seen the sparks created. A lovely little impromptu education session 😉 Then we made anklets from the seaweed before she ran off to play again. All the while having a conversation with Lucy about Home Education 😆

Eventually R had had enough with us not agreeing to her request to go to the park – although in fairness I imagine if we had gone to the park she might have been upset about not having been at the beach – she had reached irrational levels of tiredness as 3 year olds are so often prone. We walked back, Davies stripped off to sit in the car and we came straight in the house for them to have a bath while I cooked their tea. Ady arrived home while they were still there and I was still cooking so I made Davies’ cake too ready for icing in the morning.

An early-ish night for the children, allowing me to make a card for Davies, Ady to blow up several balloons, presents to be unearthed from hiding places and wrapped up and a heap assembled on the lounge floor ready for the morning. Tarly made a card in bed for Davies and did some very nice writing inside – no real concept of what she is ‘writing’ but she copies letters very well and is good at forming them in a ‘proper’ manner rather than the series of sticks and lines that Davies, despite being able to form all the letters still does (e.g circle, then lift the pen from the page before going back in to make a tail to form an ‘a’ giving it more of a capital Q like appearance).

And now, with thoughts on my mind of the agony I was in this time six (SIX!!!!) years ago right now I am off to bed. Scared myself today to realise I will have a five year old again by the end of next year, except it will be Tarly. And if Tarly will be five then Davies will be seven!!! 😯

Amelia also known as Pea – have a lovely 10th birthday with lots of love from Ady, Nic, Davies and Scarlett xxx

Back to Badgers last night for Davies. And in true Back To School fashion I was the mother sewing on the Global Badger badge he was presented with at the end of last term onto his jumper moments before he was putting it on, while he was stuffing his tea down and hopping around trying to change into his smart trousers. I was also trying to locate his other black shoe and take his pink nail varnish off from the weekend 😆

On the way there I asked him if he was ready for me to not wait outside any more – I had a plan to go for a walk for an hour but leave the car there if he was cool with it, but he said he still wanted me to wait outside and it wouldn’t be for much longer but he would tell me when he was ready!. Instead of taking him in this time I just saw him across the road though and he went in with just one backwards glance and a small wave through the window to me about halfway through the hour. I sat and read. Inspired by that Homeschool Meme of last month about resources and books I looked on my bookshelf last week and have been reading this and finding it reassuring, inspiring, challenging and interesting. I’m finding loads in there to continue pushing me toward autonomy at a time when I feel almost guilty for not feeling guilty about our approach somehow. Probably have more to say about that but it will have to keep for another time.

Once home I got changed ready for my Mum to arrive. Way back earlier in the year we had planned to go out for a meal together – can’t even remember what the reason was now it was so long ago. Anyway every year since Ady’s sister died of breast cancer I have made a purchase from the Asda Ticked Pink range – perfect for me it combines shopping, clothes and charitable giving in one nice easy hit. For the last couple of years my Mum has bought something in the range too so we’d arranged to go to the Asda in Brighton together to look at the range and go for a meal afterwards. My selection was obviously far more frugal than in previous years when I have been inclined to have ‘one of everything’ but I did select two tops, while Mum (and now you will understand where I get it from) did indeed have pretty much one of everything! She also wanted to buy her and I a bracelet each but they only had one left, so she was planning to try the other local branch to try and get a couple there later this week.

We then tottered – I had worn stupidly high heels again for the second time in 3 days and my feet had not yet recovered from the first – down a very steep slope to enter this Chinese restuarant. Mum was in a very cheery mood and we ended up totally overordering and ladening the table with lovely food. Of which we left a fair amount but thoroughly enjoyed what we did manage to eat. 🙂 It was a nice evening although I still struggle to see my Mum as someone I can sit and chat with for any length of time without anyone else around so I did rather more listening than talking – which is slightly out of character really :lol:.

Today I had promised Davies we could play with some of his presents and the only other thing I had to do was parcel up and send various ebay sales. First he chose a digging out a dinosaur kit. We’ve had various of these over the years but this was easily the best one in that the clay to dig the bones out of was not rock hard and he was able to dig most of it out, using the hammer, chisel and brush before he got bored and I finished it. I left him to wash the clay dust off of the bones while I went and got dressed. I was tidying up some clean washing when the doorbell rang and my Dad arrived. Scarlett and I did some of 100EL first thing as she had said last night she’d like to learn to read. Mostly refreshing stuff we’d done before and it was only about 10 minutes before she started to mess about so we ended it there – might try her with the Bob books actually and see if they grab her.

Davies had then cast aside the dinosaur bones – which he did later go back to and we made up into a stegosaurus – in favour of the Happymais. Now we’ve had magic maize and the ELC equivalent before and it’s sat in the cupboard for years with only brief forays into using it – generally for the flat pictures rather than making things although we did make a few festive bits either last Christmas or the Christmas before which kicked around for a while. But today he was inspired by the illustrations on the box, the serated edge knife and the slightly brighter colours and he made a baby elephant, the sun, a lake (that’d be lots of blue joined together then :lol:) and a couple of other things copied from the front of the box. He did make me laugh lots by wanting to know what it was made from, being very interested that it was the same basic ingredient as some of the crisp-like products he enjoys and then coming up with his first pun which he repeated regularly ‘it’s a-maize-ing!’ – the marketing bod in me was oh so proud ;-). Tarly went and dug out the magic maize so she could do some cutting up with the serated knife too – which was all she was actually interested in doing with it :roll:. Meanwhile I chatted with Dad, made lunch and started to parcel up clothes ready for the post office. The children put all the various mais / maize away and then we loaded all the parcels into a big bag. Davies and Scarlett had already run into the garden and were chatting away to our opposite neighbour over the garden wall – I’m still slightly torn between loving the way they can chat to any adult and will talk about all sorts of things and ask questions and worrying that I am not cautious enough with them talking to strangers. Ah well, at least they know this neighbour well, but I do think I need to have some sort of warning chat with them before too long – wonder if there is any childrens books available on the subject to ease it into a conversation rather than just scare them rigid…

Davies begged to ride his bike so as part of my giving Davies more physical exercise and letting him ‘be a boy’ as much as possible I agreed to that and we set off. We go to the local post office a fair amount and the children veer between the most angelic and well behaved model children out to the sort of children that would make it onto a Disney film with an evil stepmother – or Supernanny! Today was a mix – they accidentally, and it was an accident, knocked down a spinner of ‘pocket money toys’, but were really apologetic and helped put it all back together again and then they charmed an elderly man waiting in the queue behind us. By about ten minutes in they had gotten bored and elicited a tsk from another woman in the queue as they started to play a game with some pens on display. I guess if you are from the children should be seen and not heard era then curiosity, loud observation and constant questioning could be seen as not ideal child behaviour though…

We walked back, chatting about the world around us as we went. Once home Davies requested to get out his make an electric buggy kit – we used to sell these kits at Dreamieland and I could never wait for him to be old enough to have one so I was thrilled when I saw someone had bought him one of those for his birthday. He needed a fair bit of help, and sadly Tarly was also wanting to ‘help’ which meant we didn’t get quite so much educational mileage as I might have hoped for out of ut. We managed all the basic construction before deciding to put it aside for completing another time when we were all still interested rather than me doing it and him not understanding what was going on in relation to the electric bits. Finally he selected a magic sheep kit to do. We’ve done similar ones with Christmas trees and things before so we chatted a bit about crystals – might dig out the borax and do some more crystal-y stuff if they show more interest in that tomorrow.

He’s also desperate to do some animation software which was a pressie from Ali but I haven’t sorted the other laptop out for him yet – must do that in the morning.

Ady started his college course this afternoon so he was home early but with a head full of new information, he seems to think it will be a fairly challenging course. I’m actually quite envious.

I took the opportunity of him being home early to head out for a walk – to the library to return some books, ‘fess up to having lost one – I now have 3 weeks to find it, replace it with a new copy or I can pay 75% of the cost of it instead. Grr. I was very reserved in my borrowings and only came away with 3 more books – walking home carrying them is a good motivator for not going crazy! I popped into the supermarket for a few bits to weigh down my other side equally and walked home again.

And now I am sitting here watching the rain absolutely pour down. Tomorrow I’m off to Lucy’s house, I need to make a birthday cake for Davies (he wants chocolate this time), Scarlett and I need to make birthday cards, I need to wrap presents and there is one remaining present to purchase, although I’m hoping Ady will take care of getting that one. Oh and of course write and post one of my sentimental, schmaltzy posts about what was happening six years ago ;-).

And what a weekend it was.

Friday In the morning I did some last minute food stuff while the children played with geomags. At lunchtime Lucy, R and R arrived with Em, R and E. We had lunch, Davies and Em’s R either remembered each other from camp or were struck by adoration at second sight as they were pretty much inseperable with Davies genuinely quite upset that they were not staying here for the night and were returning to Lucy’s instead. 🙂 We persuaded them outside with the bribe of ice lollies, tested whether Lucy’s R could carry off a pony tail in his long hair and Lucy attempted to perform non surgical cosmetic enhancement to him using micro tape, much to his big sister’s dismay and upset!

They left and the children and I had a quick whip round tidy up in preparation for the next lot of visitors. Chris arrived with SB and BB about half an hour before Katy and Becca so plenty more playing and chatting carried on inside and outside with BB almost but not quite able to join in with the older ones – won’t be long though 🙂 Ady arrived home and somehow we managed to get children asleep and adults fed. I think we were all in bed by about 11.30pm though.

Saturday Seemed fairly unchaotic in the morning actually. All probably due to Ady being so fantastic at just staying in the kitchen meeting everyone’s food and drink needs before they are even aware of them themselves ;-). Lucy arrived with Em and her two and I had made the last few bits of food (sandwiches) so Lucy and I did a couple of trips to the hall to set it all up with food and decorations, I dropped her home to collect her children and headed back to the house. Si, Layla and Claudia arrived, Ady, the children and I got changed and we headed off in convoy to the hall. We kept the children outside on the grass while we made the last few preparations to the venue, then we allowed them all in.

I lasted in my unfeasibly high heels for all of about half an hour and I spent most of that sitting down. 🙂

We had a complete guest list, which for a couple of cases where I’d been convinced people wouldn’t come was a very pleasant surprise. There were obvious gaps though and various people were missed 🙁 Davies seemed to spend most of the first hour and a half opening presents – I long since lost track of who gave him what and he appears not to have a clue either, but he does have a fantastic haul of ‘stuff’ so thank you very much indeed for all his gifts. 🙂 They are mostly still residing in Ady’s boot due to there not being a spare inch of house to cram them inside during most of the weekend. We’re planning a full day of exploring them properly and playing with them tomorrow. 🙂

With possibly only two exceptions none of the children seemed particularly interested in playing party games, so given I am an autonomous home educator it seemed a bit out of character to suddenly become anything other than an autonomous childrens’ party host. And to be honest, much though I have really enjoyed planning, organising and preparing for the party I am not really that keen on the being in charge once everyone is there – not to mention having totally the wrong disposition to deal with children – my own included – upset by not winning musical statues, judging who sat down first on musical bumps or being the one to stop the music in exactly the right place to ensure every child gets to unwrap a layer of pass the parcel. So ably assisted by Layla as judge and chief hand-over-your-eyes-spin-you-round person I managed possibly the worlds longest game of musical statues to the Wallace and Gromit music – interupted by a phone call from Ady :lol:, a pin the bow tie on Wallace game and a game created by Ady and I when drunkenly panicking about not having enough themed party games called The Wrong Trousers. We didn’t bank on quite what a mixed age and ability range we’d have, quite how many of the littler children would all want to be in Davies’ team and just how tricky it is tp count 21 participating children and organise them into 3 teams however so the setting up of the game lasted way longer than the game itself, but I do think it was a fair sequel to The Popcorn Game from Halloween. And it did spawn many a photo opportunity 😆

Ali then brought on the bubbles, which were such a hit at Freya’s party and I think may have gone down even better at Davies’. Thanks for that Ali 🙂 Ros did sterling work, assisted by Chris F the Milk Fetcher in providing second rounds of tea and coffees and there was a veritable army of helpers for tidying up the hall and returning it to it’s usual ‘glory’. Top mention has to go to Bob and Katy’s Libby for her carpet sweeping :-).

I think anyone who didn’t live locally came back to our house, the children made full use of the garden, those who got there first made full use of the limited sofa seating, various men were sent out for alcohol and made lots of drinks for people, Ady returned to his rightful place in the kitchen and produced a steady stream of toasted sandwiches, leftover party food and Katy’s baking. When darkness fell a beauty salon appeared to have been set up in Tarly’s room, with a parade of beautiful little girls made all sparkly, glitterly, sticky and scented. Oh and Davies, who appeared to have been the modern day equivalent of the Girls World head and shoulders model I wanted for Christmas when I was about 7! Must take that pearly pink nail varnish off him before he goes to Badgers later tonight! 🙄 😆

I confess to having a quiet hour closeted away with Layla and Kirsty while we got Tarly to sleep and chatted as I was pretty much hostessed out by that point. Then as wherever you sat in our house on Saturday night you were in ‘someone’s’ bedroom we all headed off to bed.

Sunday A lovely lazy morning with lots of chatting and enjoying the last of Katy’s baking as we waved goodbye to Katy and Becca, then Barbara and co and then Bob and Katy leaving just Kirsty and James with us. Despite the temptation to just sit around for the day being very strong we roused ourselves and drove down to a local beach. Slightly further than the one at the bottom of our road but slightly prettier and with the added attraction of a lagoon. The children played on the rocks, got wet and enjoyed the last of the summer sunshine, Ady and James also played on the rocks and took lots of photos, Kirsty and I sat on the pebbles and chatted – and looking at the photos I mostly frowned ;-), then we had an ice cream. 🙂

Home again via the local airport where we’d hoped to play football and watch some planes and helicopters, but lack of green area (all being used by the fairground which is due to set up ready for a massive airshow next weekend) and very tired children, drove us home again. Pizza for the children’s tea and then they defied our predictions that they’d all fall asleep really quickly and were awake for ages, I cooked a curry, which the other three complimented with Bob and Katy’s chickpea and veggie dish, we watched a US musicians show on one of the cable music channels which had us all reminiscing and laughing about childhood and teen years before turning in for yet another early night.

Today Ady was up and off to work long before any of the rest of us surfaced and we had a leisurely morning with Davies, Scarlett, Marcus and Alex playing and watching Charlie and Lola. They all left late morning headed the same way as at least one other set of houseguests – in the direction of Ros’ shop. The children have played with geomags, watched films and done plenty of tired whinging while I have done several loads of washing, attempted to exercise patience and caught up online. Davies is back to Badgers again today and I am going out for a meal with my Mum this evening (bad timing really, as I could do with a quiet evening and an early night far more!).