One word? When seven would do…

Happy Birthday in advance to:

Amelia / Pea of Screamteam – who is 9 on 14th September

And Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to Davies who is 5 on the same day 🙂

I would normally do a blog about Davies on his actual birthday but as we won’t be here I’ll do it now 🙂

14th September 2000 – he was born at 4.35am

14th September 2001 – we spent the day with my parents, he had presents and cake and then a massive party the following day with about 50 guests.

14th September 2002 – we were living in Manchester but we came down to Sussex for the week to spend his birthday with family:

14th September 2003 – we were still living up north and came down for the week before his birthday to see my parents, but went home again for a day for his actual birthday, before heading up further north for a week’s holiday in Cumbria, so the day was just the four of us:

14th September 2004 – we had moved back to Sussex and Davies’ birthday request for for a meal in a restuarant with Granny and Grandad and Great Granny and Uncle Frazer – so that’s what we did 🙂

With every year a child’s birthday becomes more a time to reflect back on the child rather than what you were doing x years ago when they were born and the same is true here – now I spent the time around his birthday marvelling at how he has grown since this time last year rather than being amazed at how many years it was since *I* was giving birth (although I do sneakily feel a bit of the birthday glory for myself 😉 ). So next week he will turn five. Five is a bit of a milestone birthday really isn’t it. He is totally a ‘boy’ now with no trace of ‘baby’ left about him. It is traditionally when children start school so that parent child bond starts to loosen and they become ever more their own person, I recall being given a watch for my fifth birthday – a quite traditional fifth birthday gift I think and one which is very symbolic in many many ways. Davies’ birthday gifts over the years have very much summed up who he is at the time thinking back – his first birthday presents included a sit in carfor him to be pushed around in, his second birthday present was a toy plane for him to play with himself, his third birthday present was a dressing up Buzz Lightyear outfit, his fourth birthday a Peter Pan outfit and lots of lego, his fifth birthday presents include a Willy Wonka chocolate factory, a wooden castle and some micro machines toys as well as some more educational stuff.

He has become a person in his own right this last year. He has aspects to his personality which he demonstrates in different environments. I have observed him when he is not with me and not aware of me watching and know that he is a different person again when I am not around, he plays differently according to who he is playing with.

He is popular with other children in groups and happily takes the lead and suggests games and activities, he is loud, confident and happy with himself. He is loving, affectionate, caring, considerate and feels love for his family very strongly. He is passionate, fair and loyal, he protects his little sister, he is kind to animals and smaller children and he sees no reason to stop him doing whatever his dreams propel him to do. He is funny, quirky, entertaining, good company, proud and self aware. He makes me proud, full of joy, irritated beyond belief, grateful to have him in my life and lucky to be loved by him. He surprises me every day with the wonder of how a tiny little baby can become such a full and complete person in just five short years, his thought processes and questions challenge and amaze me. He inspires and challenges me and gives me hope.

He is my son, the future, the continuation of my family name, the sum total of me and Ady and so much more. Happy birthday for next week Davies 🙂 I love you.

sub heading Viva Las Vegas

sub sub heading It Had to be You

Sub sub sub heading Happy Anniversary 🙂

It is currently 8.30am on 9/9/2005.

At 8.30am on 9/9/99 (Las Vegas time) we got married 🙂

Here is us at about 7am on that morning:

Here is us shortly after 9am on that morning:

I blogged about our wedding last year so won’t witter too much about the whole thing again but just wanted to mention what I loved about our wedding day and what I love about being married. Because, after all I am the Lynda McCartney of the blogring and just this one day a year schmaltz and sentiment is allowed! 🙂

Wedding Day –
* it was totally about us. We paid for it, we decided what to wear, what to say in the service, what we wanted in terms of the package and everything else about the day.
*My mum and dad and brother were able to come with us.
*Being in Las Vegas – a desert – in the summer we were effectively guaranteed lovely weather!
*The chapel we married in – The Little Chapel of the Flowers was lovely. In fairness you are on a conveyor belt when you get married at Vegas, but we certainly never felt like that. We had inadvertantly chosen the busiest day of the year for weddings in Vegas (due to the date) hence getting married at 8.30am but we still felt unhurried, special and important to the people involved. The minister bloke was fab – a complete ‘American’ who was all about true love and friendship and on watching back our wedding video he did a fab job of personalising our service and adding some very romantic wording.
* It was a very ‘Nic and Ady’ type day. There was a lot of humour in the actual service, which makes me laugh every time I watch the video – I remember two things about it more than anything else – one was that I was getting over a cold and had a very persistant cough which I didn’t want to do all through the service so I kept swallowing, until just after he pronounced us man and wife, when it echoes all around the chapel! Second was when he told Ady how fortunate as he was as ‘in just a few minutes, Adrian, you are going to be related to all four of the people in this room’ (as in wife, mother and father and brother in law) and I laughed and said ‘You poor man!’.
I had a scarf round my shoulders which fell off as I turned to face Ady for exchanging rings but is effortlessly caught by me and handed back to my Dad who is watching every part of the service with a faraway, sentimental expression, more so when we exchange rings as my wedding ring was his mother’s wedding ring and he was thinking about how many years ago the service was when that ring was exhanged for the first time for two people to become man and wife.
* I loved my dress – which Ros-style I might go and put on later and twirl about the house in for a while 🙂
* I loved the rest of the day aside from the wedding as we did loads of really cool, once in a lifetime stuff – after getting married we had a limo back to the hotel (Hilton, naturally!) – where everyone stopped us as we ran through the foyer dressed in wedding clothes, carrying a boquet and covered in confetti to wish us ‘Congratulations’, where we changed out of our wedding finery and headed to the airport in the limo where we were sat in a waiting lounge (very posh) with name tags for half an hour. We sat there totally hyped up and excited, twisting our new wedding rings on our fingers, saying to each other every few minutes ‘I can’t believe we’re married’ and calling each other Mr or Mrs Goddard at every given opportunity :-). Then we joined four other people in a helicopter to the Grand Canyon. They were a couple who had also gotten married that week – an old Texas cowboy type who was very ‘JR’ and wore a big cowboy hat and his very young, very pretty, oriental wife (who we speculated he had purchased from a catalogue!) twisting a massive rock of a diamond engagement ring, and a couple of blokes who we figured were gay from, of all places, Southampton (about 50 miles down the road) who also worked for B&Q!! We landed in the bottom of the canyon, had a champagne lunch, were toasted by all the other guests (there were at least five more helicopters worth of passengers there too), then flew back over the Hoover Dam and the Vegas Strip with commentary. A limo dropped us back at the strip and we wandered about the grandest hotels in the world still whispering to each other that we had just gotten married!

We had pictures taken of us stroking a baby lion cub at the MGM Grand, we went to the top of the Eifel Tower at the Paris hotel and watched the fountains display to music infront of the Belaggio hotel. It was a magical, wonderful day.

What I love about being married to Ady:

I wanted to get married for several reasons – some shallow and some deep and meaningful 🙂
The shallow ones were: I wanted to have a better way to refer to him – I hate ‘partner’ as it always infers either a business relationship or possible same sex coupling, I dislike ‘other half’ as he’s not, boyfriend smacks of teenage stuff and ‘bloke’ is a bit impersonal (I have recently witnessed someone refering to their spouse as ‘my hunter’ which I found very disturbing!); I also know you can get a far better selection of greetings cards for Christmas, Birthday and Valentines Day for ‘Husband’ than for ‘One I love’ 🙂
My deep reasons were:
we were on the verge of thinking about starting a family and I wanted us to all have the same name, I loved the idea of having a day and an occassion to celebrate being together and loving each other, although I hold no religious beliefs so don’t feel ‘joined in the eyes of God’ or anything like that I do believe in marriage and knew I was with the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with so wanted to ‘make it official’ and ‘show the world’.

I love, specfically being married to Ady because he is my best friend, he makes me laugh and be happy and thankful we have found each other every day, he is a kind and caring partner, he treats me like a princess and makes me feel like I deserve it, he is a fantastic father, he supports and cheers me on with my hopes and dreams, we share the same visions for the future, we are a great team, I have grown up with him, he knows and understands me and all my quirks in the same way as I do him, there is no one in the world I would rather spend time with and of course the LI is bloody fantastic 😉

So there you go, Happy Anniversary to me and Ady 🙂

The thankyou card saga continues….

Davies’ glittery creation was drying off on the window sill while we made cakes. While the cakes were in the oven cooking I was hanging out washing, then while the cakes were cooling we were planning to get the children dressed, then we were going to decorate the cakes to take over to Ali’s house.

Didn’t quite happen like that of course 😉

We did the cake making and got them in the over, I hund the washing out and the kids came out in their pjs to run barefoot round the garden and just as I was herding them back into the house Jeannette and David appeared at the gate. With a birthday card for Davies!!!

So Davies excitedly dashed into the house to get them his thank you card for the pressies and we stood talking to them for bloody ages. I heard the kitchen timer go for the cakes, started to smell the cakes burning through the kitchen window, got invited round for tea and coffee and the children to play in the garden with the ball which used to belong to their cat that died, then their mother came over too to tell me about her trip to the chiropedist yesterday, then they started asking about our back garden (which was clearly a ruse to be invited round there), shared with me their plans for the day (Bognor Regis – dreadful place!) asked about mine (Lewes to see Ali) and finally buggered off with promises of going over for a coffee still ringing in my ears in time for me to dash into the kitchen and rescue the cakes before they caught!

Fuck! This means I will have to not only take them up on their offer to go round for coffee (which I don’t drink!) while my offspring play with the toy of a deceased moggy (and the resulting thank you card for their hospitality!) it also means I will have to return the invitation and have them in our house. This means I will have to offer them sherry and probably some sort of bakery product from Mr Kipling – which I will have to go and purchase specially, and then ‘keep in’ for when they might call in unexpectedly (but I could get that when I go to buy the Thank you card). Anyway the birthday card is all festooned with stickers on the envelope so they have already stepped up a gear with their greetings cards, I’m glad we used lots of glitter on our thank you card!

I’m thinking of a postcard to them from the kids while on holiday too although I suspect it will spark off a new wave of card exchange with them sending us one daily as they enjoy jaunts to places such as Bognor Regis and erm, Worthing town centre!

I guess there is plenty of comedy value mileage in there to compensate for the amount of cash I’ll be lavishing on greetings cards and my time in catering for them visiting me or over at their house looking at their holiday slides from 1997 or similar!

Anyway, obviously the master plan went somewhat to pot after that so we got the children dressed, hung around to wait for them to all get in their car and go off to Bognor before getting in ours and picking up provisions on the way to Ali’s. Pondered slightly about offending Ali’s vegan sensitivities by bringing cadburys mini rolls into her home but she was having a day off so it was fine 😉 Also picked up the Funny Bones magazine issue one for the kids which Davies has totally got into and he sat in the car both ways looking through the magazine astounding me with how much he already knew, how much he was getting from the illustrations and the questions he was asking – thinking about signing up for that for him and also possibly for the Dora one which I’ve seen advertised with cdroms for Tarly too…

Had a lovely time as ever at Ali’s. Children were delightful playing inside and out, bieng noisy, messy and shouty at various times but also engaging in a fair amount of imaginative play too. Ali gave them water to play with which of course became mud within moments and they also got very sandy at one point so we did a sheep dip style shower hose down in the bath with them production line fashion!

We talked about all sorts as usual – relationships past and present and other peoples’, Home Ed, parenting, life history swapping, breaking up being hard to do, a potted blog summary as she can’t read mine at the moment, police, criminal records, fear of authority, flutters for other people and home ed groups.

We also had a couple of moments of near hysteria brought on by various things. One was brought to us in association with The Fimbles as I got buried under a Fimble and child mountain and managed to escape by singing, one was Bodger and Badger inspired which if you have ever seen the show will need no further explanation and the last was a combination of Davies singing a song about not being able to see (it went, I can’t see, can’t see, really, really can’t see!) and Scarlett suddenly calling Ali ‘Freya Mummy’ all day and bringing us in a varierty of dead creatures including very amusingly a beetle which Davies threatened to put in my bag to bring home with us, coining the phrase ‘Freya Mummy’s bug cemetary’ as the new name for Ali’s house.

An excellent few hours without even the aid of alcohol – thanks Ali 🙂

Came home which was an epic due to Tarly deciding she needed a poo at the last minute (Tarly does lengthy poos and cannot be rushed…) and me struggling to gather together various items of clothing and so on which had been strewn around the place (not mine, obviously!!) but we arrived home only shortly after my Dad who had come to mind the children while I went off to the dentists for a hygienist appointment.

I like the hygienist. I like her personally and I also like going cos she had this great whitening machine which gets all the tea stains off my teeth and makes them all shiny white and receptive to wearing red lipstick for a couple of days and smiling widely at all and sundry! She is about my age and has a 7 yo boy and a 4 yo girl. The girl started school this week and the boy has just changed schools. He has been diagnosed with epilepsy and she has moved him to a really small village school with 8 pupils per year group and 45 pupils in total. She is very interested in HE and always asks loads of questions although she does tend towards wondering what work books we are using!

Got home to find my grandmother here baiting my dad, she left and was replaced by Ady and then my Mum for an hour or so and then they left as we started to get the children to bed.

I had grand plans to wrap up Davies’ remaining birthday pressies tonight but that might end up being put off til tomorrow in favour of lounging around and getting excited about our HOLIDAY 🙂

Davies has just announced he wants to make a thank you card for David and Jeannette for the remote control car.

He’s added glitter and written ‘Thank You’ and ‘Davies’ on it (quite well actually).

I think this steps the whole card exchange up a level 😉

Woke this morning from a dream filled sleep brought on by watching Marion, again for the previous two nights – very good and very disturbing. I almost wished I had not started watching it last night but had to carry on to see how it ended! 😉

So first thing I spent too long chatting to Jenny on the phone so ended up just having time to get me and Tarly dressed before dashing out to Tumble Tots. Dad had arrived in the middle of all this and so I left him, Ady and Davies quite happily doing bloke stuff.

Tarly did so well at Tumble Tots today – the best she’s ever done. Not sure whether it was a morning session agreeing with her more than an after lunch one, the lure of Davies doing stuff like colouring and reading books in the next room being more attractive than doing TT or whether she has just had enough of a break from it over the summer to start enjoying it now she’s slightly older. Whatever – she sat down when she was told, thrived on getting so much positive attention from me, charmed the helpers and was generally delightful. On top of that she stood out as one of the more able of the group in terms of her physical ability. She is really very agile and adores all the climbing, forward rolls, running, jumping and clambering which goes on there. 🙂

So we left, with me telling her again how proud I was of her and what a good time we’d had. We’d come in Ady’s car which we tend to use whenever possible as it is considered a perk which he gets heavily taxed on as he has a petrol card to fill it whenever for his own use too.

Since having children I have always unlocked the car then chucked the keys on the drivers seat while I faff about with car seats and selt belts so I did just that while I got her settled into her car seat. I vaguely registered a click as the door bumped back into my bum but thought nothing of it as I merrily slammed her door shut and walked round to the driver door which would not open.

I ran round the car trying every door and the boot and of course none of them opened. I tried to persuade Tarly to do the opposite of everything I have ever taught her and either undo her car selt restrainer or slip her arms out to try and reach the door handle. She looked very doubtful, tried, failed and started to get upset.

I rang Ady to tell him what I’d done, get him to send Dad out to me and get the details of our RAC membership for me to ring.

Meanwhile I stood in the very hot sun alternately trying to get Tarly to undo her seatbelt and then calming her down from getting upset.

At some point a man appeared from one of the nearby factory units (TT is on an industrial estate) with a parasol to hold over the car, I was offered a cup of tea, use of a phone, someone to hose the car down to keep it cool, suggestions to throw a brick through the window, get her to undo the doors, call the police, get a spare key and so on.

My Dad arrived just as I started to gather a real audience from all the surrounding units and Tarly started to visibly perspire and get quite distressed. I had already rung the RAC who said they had me as an emergency priority call but it could take up to 45 minutes so I gave in and rang the police. The woman on the phone said they would only smash a window but at that point I was starting to panic slightly myself.

Ady was at the other end of the phone stressing about his car, Tarly was doing OK but clearly not in the ideal situation and I started to wonder how long it would be before she announced she needed the toilet or a drink or something else I couldn’t provide.

That seemed to galvanise the crowd and suddenly I had four men in boiler suits plus my dad wielding an assortment of lengths of wire, crowbars and other assorted car theft accessories. Just as the police pulled up they managed to get into the car and hook the keys out!

I cancelled the RAC, told Ady we were ok and profusely thanked all my heros while cuddling my brave little girl very hard and apologising for getting her locked in.

The crowd melted away til it was just, me, Dad and the policeman. Despite not actually getting involved in the getting back into the car he said he needed to file paperwork so me and Tarly went and sat in the squad car while he took a few details from me.

Distressingly I had only been looking at Tarly earlier at TT in her little T shirt and shorts and thinking what a battered child she looks at the moment. She has two scratches on her face which she has been picking at, a big bruise round her eye where she ran into the sofa, bruises up and down both legs as usual and a blister on one foot from wearing her shoes with no socks the other day which bears more than a passing resemblance to a cigarette burn 🙁

So having made my usual throwaway comment to the copper about how it had happened because I was a neglectful and awful mother, he threw me a little by explaining that he needed to file paperwork as although he could tell I was clearly not a mother who was in the habit of abandoning her child locked in a car on an industrial estate he needed to ensure it was all present and correct. I was so thrown by everything else that I sat there in his car with Tarly cuddled on my lap pointing at all the cop car type gizmos and gave him my name and date of birth, address, Ady’s full name and date of birth, Scarlett’s details and he had just asked whether I had any more children and was probably about to get Davies’ details too when one of the boilersuit clad heros came with a glass of sugar free lemon squash for Tarly so he was distracted (thank fuck D was not with me actually although I am sure he would have managed to get the car open if he’d been inside if he’d have been locked out with me we’d have had the whole ‘and why aren’t you at school today then young man’ type thing too…

I’m assuming that will be the last I’ll hear of that as I think the only other time I have given my details to the police was at the BB gun shooting incident earlier this year – so gangland playpark shooting warfare and locking my child in cars then inciting middle aged men to break in to it aside I would hope I am not flagged up anywhere as a Bad Mother 🙁

Dad then left and the last of my audience shut their office windows and ‘returned to their lives citizens’ and home we came. Tarly appears really rather unflustered by the whole incident. We termed it her Big Adventure and she said it was a little bit scary and I was a silly Mummy for locking her in the car and not being able to open the doors but I have somehow reached novelty status for such an exciting morning with her, so that’s interesting.

Home for a brief time so Tarly could tell Davies all about her adventure – Ady could stress about his car (grr!) and I could pack up some lunch for the children and some bits for home ed group before heading out again.

Group passed in a bit of a haze TBH – there were four new families and I made a real effort to talk to them all but suspect I came across as rather distant. Davies played with a boy who I was not altogether sure about as he was a bit handy about shoving the smaller ones about but I was reassured by D that he was quite happy and not being pushed into anything he was not happy with. I did a bit of catching up with people I’ve not seen all summer, a bit of chatting to new people, made tea and then ran off early to complete the final leg of bedlam Wednesday!

Dropped Tarly off home with Ady and then headed off with Davies for his TT2 session. He has gone up to the third level called Gym Bobs which is for 5-7 year olds and is fairly structured. I enjoyed sitting for an hour reading a magazine with ocassional peeping at him through the window and a bit of chatting with the other mothers who normally ignore me as I am tied up with Tarly. I was pleased to see at least 4 other Tarly aged children in the waiting room so hopefully she will have plenty of company when she has to come with us again. I had a bit of a chat with the leader who was full of how well Tarly had done this morning too 🙂 and said Davies had managed fine. He tends to be slightly disruptive in that environment but as she said he is unlike all the others who are either already used to or getting used to the school type environment of having one adult ‘in charge’ of a group of children and them having to listen to and pay attention to the adult without questioning or interupting 😉 Actually for the sum total of one hour a week I think it might do him good!

Got home to a rather big Book People order so we opened that, shared it out and did some of the stuff in there – read them Hansel and Gretel which I was amazed to realise the other day was a story that Davies had never heard when I made some reference to it. Tarly was delighted with a Dragon book with flaps to lift, which Davies later spent time looking at too. Davies started working his way through a cat in the hat sticker book and Tarly and I did a jigsaw sticker book together. I put away a couple of activity books to take on holiday for boredom relief moments and travelling.

Ady bathed them and used my massage bubble jet mat with bubble bath in so created a sort of Ibiza foam pool party for them which they loved 🙂

Davies has struggled to get to sleep tonight and even came downstairs for a while and watched some of Super Nanny with us and tried some curry – not a habit I want him to get into too often (the coming down, the watching Super Nanny or the eating curry!) but quite nice every so often.

I have a couple of CVs I really should get done tonight as I am pretty busy tomorrow and have promised to bake cakes in the morning before we head over to Ali’s so won’t really get a chance in the morning. Off to do them…

You’d think from the amount of posts I’ve done today that I hadn’t actually been away from the laptop but I have 😉

First thing I got two loads of washing on – one of which is dry, the other of which is still in the machine but will dry overnight. That puts me back up to date with washing so tomorrow, in between running around like a loon (which is the new pattern of Wednesdays for us!) I plan to get the spare set of loose sofa covers clean and dry to swap them over so we leave a clean house – will also aim to get all the beds changed and bedlinen washed before we go away too. Before doing that I built a massive brio track which the kids played fairly nicely with while I did the first bit of pc stuff.

I tried to raise someone at the advertised Badgers sett to get Davies’ name down to start when we come back but failed – will try that again tomorrow at some point.

Kids have played with geomags, glitter and glue, drawing, beads and more.

At 10 ish I broke off an IM chat with Ali to get Tarly dressed, clear away the brio, hoover the crumbled playdough, dash round the shops (I say dash, I mean meander at toddler pace stopping to sniff every flower, avoid every crack in the pavement and discuss every sound of course!) to get bread and crisps for lunch. I also placed a Book People order for some really exciting looking books which should be here tomorrow 🙂

Just about managed to be ready for guests arriving at 11 with a fairly tidy house 🙂

Lucy, Rebecca and baby Richard (my long lost teenage friend who is HE curious) came round for chats and lunch before we all went to the toddler group in the church round the corner.

Interesting chats interupted continuously by children but mainly about HE, how it works, LEA, what autonomous means, what an Ed Phil is and so on. Hard to get continuity when you are trying to explain a difficult concept and keep losing your thread but I think she is gradually getting the idea. I get the impression she listens to me and goes away all inspired and keen to do it, then gradually that wears off and dwindles until she next sees me again. She mentioned today what a huge responsibility it would be and whether in 20 years it would have actually made a difference. I explained that I *have* to believe it will otherwise I would not be doing it, but that it is certainly not for everyone, or the easy option, or without sacrifices and a lot of soul searching. I’ve promised to send her some links and other bits to ponder a bit further over so we’ll see. She’s joined EO yahoo list and been fairly put off by all the extreme cases she’s read about over there so that probably has not helped 🙁

The toddler group was, well it was a toddler group really! I’ve never been much into them as I don’t really struggle to meet and make friends anyway, I dislike the church hall environment and any references to the other purpose of the location always make me feel a little uncomfortable (the first song in the sing song was about thanking the Lord for stuff the children chose, random example – we thanked the Lord for oranges with much clapping and exagerated hand circles to represent oranges – not really my thing! And my two looked very bemused by it all too!) and the toys are always dusty, crappy and broken.

But, the children actually quite enjoyed playing with the various stuff – they had lots of pretend food, various sit on toys and cars, a trampoline, musical instruments and dressing up stuff – all of which was serviceable if slightly tired. They interacted with the other few children there and I got to sit and chat to Lucy and drink tea someone else had made for me with posh biscuits – and all for a quid!

I guess it is better to see Lucy there every so often and be able to walk away from the mess than have them round here and try to make the tea, keep managing the children and have to tidy up at the end of it. It does clearly state 0-5 but there were a couple of older girls there who I think were not at school because it wasn’t starting until Thursday or something so D didn’t stand out today, I’ll give it another try as and when and just see what we get out of it each time. At least we can walk there in a couple of minutes and I don’t think they will try too hard to convince us to attend Sunday services 😉

We left there and came home to jaffa cakes and geomags, I did a bit more on the laptop while the children played, then tea, Ady arrived home, bathed them while he hoovered (again!) and they are now in bed.

I’m cooking tonight, so I need to have a nice long bath first and I probably should make an effort to put some of the huge pile of washing away – oh and I really must do those CVs tonight too – they are not due back until Thursday but I am attempting to create an illusion of myself as organised, reliable and speedy so a day early would be good 🙂

Tomorrow looks to be bedlam with TT2 for Tarly at 9.30am (must find her TT T shirt), group from 1-3pm (theme not back to school party) TT2 for Davies at 3.30pm (necessitating break neck speed dash across town 😉 ) and as Ady is taking the day off to work from home which should mean I can take them both to TT2 without the other one) he will no doubt have some typing up he wants me to do for him in the evening.

On Sunday 18th September we’ll be going to Windsor / Reading area for the day. Not sure what we’re doing yet but we will be staying somewhere up there and having an early evening meal. We’ll be celebrating Davies and Amelia (Scream Team)’s birthdays from the previous week and Ros’ birthday the following day.

On Monday 19th September we’ll be going to Legoland for the day.

Ros and co will be with us, Layla and co will hopefully be joining us and we have invited the Tooth and Price’s if they are free.

Anyone else wanting to come along for any or all of it would be very welcome – let me know 🙂

From Saturday we are away for a week with no internet access 🙁

Clearly this will be as tough for you as it will for me 😉

Therefore I have A Plan!

Before I go I will post seven posts with the day of the week.

A team of carefully selected volunteers will be sent a text message from me which they then put in the comments for that day 🙂

Depending on how many volunteers I get the messages may be a round up of the day in one sentence, three words to sum up the day or if there are enough of you I will send one word to each and see if you can puzzle out the message between you once you have all posted your comment 🙂 You will of course have the chance to interpret my text in your own fashion if you want as I won’t be around to delete it 😉

I have one volunteer so far – any one else want to put themselves forward for the job?

Not that I had a sweet sixteen in September, what with my birthday being and January and me not being in an american teen movie and all, but it is the lyric pertaining to September in calendar girl which is what this post is about…

September has been a big month for me at various points in my life. Lots of us have been thinking about September as a Big Month for one reason and another and it certainly is for us.

So, in this week 26 years ago I started school. I remember it very clearly. I wore a little pinafore with a big zip up the front, a little green tie on elastic and a big sticker with ‘Nicola’ written on it so that I could be easily identified. Unfortunately there were four other Nicola’s in the class so I quickly became not just Nicola, but Nicola Davies. I also became very aware of ways in which I was different from the other children – hair colour, height, whether or not you could read, what siblings if any you had and so on. It was all about comparing and contrasting and measuring.

This week in 1986 / 19 years ago (oh my god how did that happen?!) I started senior school. I was really dreading it as I didn’t want to go to that particular school – it had a bad reputation, was an all girls school, we had to wear red berets, most of my friends were going to a different school and I knew we were going to have stuff like homework and detentions to deal with. We were put into sets of academic streaming and sat in alphabetical order. I wore a too long skirt and shirt with dangling sleeves which I was supposed to ‘grow in to’. It was also a time of change at home as my parents had started building work at their house to turn it from a bungalow to a house.

This week in 1990 – 15 years ago I started at sixth form college. Very exciting and liberating this one. I got to decide who I was going to be and went out in advance to buy clothes to help me ‘be’ that person. I had started working evenings and weekends at B&Q and was loving it. I was very excited about my A levels.

This week in 1997 our friends Pauline and Jim got married. Their wedding day was the day of Diana’s funeral which made for an odd feeling all round. The night before the wedding Pauline and I were up for hours doing all the catering for the next day and ended up totally losing my temper with the bride to be and yelling at her – oh I’m a crap friend sometimes!

This week in 1999 – six years ago Ady and I flew to Las Vegas (six years ago tomorrow to be precise) and on 9/9/99 we got married. I wrote about that last year so if you want to read about it then go here and do so!

This week in 2000, five years ago I was very very pregnant – 8 days off giving birth with Davies but I was still actually working as I didn’t start maternity leave until the 10th. If you want to read about me having Davies then go here and I will no doubt be doing some sort of birthday post about him next week, but here is last year’s one.

This week in 2001, four years ago we were in Manchester finding somewhere to live for when we moved up there in November 2001. We found the house we ended up renting for 2.5 years and on the way home we heard about 9/11 on the radio. Our cat nearly died of poisoning from kitchen cleaner and we had a massive we’re leaving / first birthday for Davies party.

This week in 2002 – 3 years ago I was visibly pregnant with Scarlett.

This week in 2003 it was becomming clear that Dreamieland was not going to make it and we had decided that we were going to Home Educate.

This week last year we were living back here again.

This week my son didn’t start school.

We have often had our annual two week holiday in September which sort of delays that inevitable ‘let’s get on with it’ feeling that September can bring until the end of the month when we are getting back into life after our holidays. There is no point in starting new regimes when we will be away next week but I am feeling in the back of my mind that we will be doing some stuff somehow differently once we get back. Watch this space…

A very strange day today. I’ve had an odd feeling all day which I just can’t shake and Ady says he feels the same.

Today would have been Davies’ first day at school. I know technically he wouldn’t have had to start until January but he is 5 next week and as far as I know defered entry until the term after a child is 5 is pretty unusual.

So today we would have dressed him up in his school uniform and taken pictures of him in it which would have remained forever in the family album in the same way as the picture of my first day at school is in my parents’. He would have gone off clutching his new book bag or rucksack or lunchbox.

He would have been entrusted to the care of some other grown up who would have been the first in a succession of other grown ups than me who would see him through the next 11 years. Today would have been his induction into that process. Good or bad, happy or sad memories to follow today would have been a day which he would have always remembered. First Day At School – a rite of passage, something we all have in common, a memory we call upon throughout the rest of our lives and a day which marks a transition from being our parents’ child and part of our family to part of society and part of a class and in the system and tagged with a number and reported on and graded and compared and found lacking and measured against every other child who falls within a year of your birth.

Davies won’t remember today. For him it has not been marked out as different to any other day. He woke up this morning and had breakfast, ended up not getting dressed until about 10.30 because he was playing. Ady and I were working on a report so he played and butted in as and when he needed us. He drew a person and tore round it because he couldn’t find any scissors then wanted to laminate it. I got out the laminator and pouches and he did it himself. I then suggested that he did a life cycle series to cut out so we debated butterflies and frogs and he chose frogs. So with no help he drew frogspawn, tadpoles, tadpoles with legs, little froglets and fully grown frogs, then a picture of him, Ady, Scarlett and me looking into a pond with a lily pad with the frog sitting on it. I also got out the sharp scissors for him and he used them really well.

Him and Scarlett also watched some Discovery Kids on monkeys which sparked discussion about what mammals are and how they differ from other creatures and how we are mammals too.

I then headed off to the post office to send loads of ebay parcels, some birthday cards to our friends in NZ and various other bits which have been sitting around waiting to be sent too.

I came back to find Davies and Tarly playing one of their regular games where Scarlett is a puppy called Rocky and Davies is her owner – always seems a bit of an odd one to me but they both love playing it!

I made them lunch and then my Dad arrived to look after them while Ady and I headed off to trek round his three work sites. From the utter chaos and bedlam we came home to I can only assume they continued to play all day and had a great time – apparantly they made tents in the bedrooms, watched Willy Wonka and role played it, the THANK YOU neighbours had called in with a toy car and a doll for them (why? not at all sure but it clearly warrants a thank you card!).

So if you tick off what he has covered today and what he could have been doing today I certainly think the case so far rests with HE 🙂

In other news, off I went with Ady to look round three massive nursery sites (thats nursery in the horticultural sense, not the childcare one!) and double check his H&S findings. Nice to spend a whole afternoon just the two of us, nice to be introduced to people in a sort of professional capacity without having to worry about what the children are up to and nice to use long words and technical terms and be taken seriously!

Also very strange was at the second site which is the head office Ady introduced me to someone without actually saying I was his wife. Most of the people we came across I have met at some point at staff parties and I have enough distinguishing features that when seen stood beside Ady I am probably instantly recognisable as his wife if you’d met me as such previously. But as I was there today with a view to eventually getting some work out of it, or at the very least aiding Ady’d credibility as someone who knows about H&S and has done it before he was introducing me as ‘having worked with me doing this before so coming round to give a second opinion to my findings’. We have worked before together and whilst not exactly hiding the fact we are married certainly not refering to it as such either so we are fairly proficient at remaining professional when we have to.

So he introduces me to this – I have to say, very attractive – man who insists on shaking my hand despite him being filthy as ‘she might like her men a bit dirty’. I confess to playing along, in a flirty manner, feeling quite safe that I was stood beside my husband and finding it quite amusing. Ady seemed a bit oblivious really until half an hour or so later just as we were about to leave the bloke came back to find us and he suddenly stepped a bit closer and did a bit of a ‘you looking at my bird?’ type act when he seemed to sense that the bloke clearly had not realised the relationship and was getting close to creating a potentially very embarassing situation. Quite amusing, pretty flattering and as I say, he was very attractive! 😉

I’m feeling a little torn this evening though. When we got home the children had had some tussle which resulted in a bruise on Tarly’s cheek and Davies being shouted at and sent to his room by my dad. Tarly fell asleep OK but has been restless, Davies was still awake at gone 9pm wanting me to stay with him because he’d missed me today.

It felt really good being Nic again today and not Mummy for a while. I didn’t really fret about them at all while I was away but I am now feeling bad that on a day when I am spouting on about how HE is the way forward instead of school I was not actually around for over half of it, I am made aware once again of how hard I find it to let go of them and be away from them not knowing what is going on with them every moment and the effect on them of me not being around too.

I guess it reinforces what we are doing but I am aware that several of the bloggers are having their own work / HE balance readjustments or ponderings I am certainly made aware that for us at least, for now at least, we are not ready for me to let go of them or them to let go of me. Early days though, early days…

so will ponder further on some stuff before blogging, and possibly not at all here anyway…

Non deep stuff aside we’ve had a fairly laid back day. Another baaad night with Tarly (who appears to be completely recovered today, to my relief) and Ady didn’t get up until gone 10am. I rang my parents to invite ourselves over for lunch, nipped to Sainsburys to get stuff for said lunch (oh yes, it was bring your own! 😉 ) and some food for the rest of the week and then we headed off over there.

Nice lunch and then my parents took the children to the local park for an hour or so while Ady and I used their vax thingy to hoover out the car ready for going away. We cleared the whole car out, moved some of the seats around to make more space and got rid of two carrier bags full of rubbish (oh the shame, I always think my car is fairly tidy!).

The others came back and we sat in the garden for a bit before I got cornered by my mother for a ‘chat’. We did some holiday planning and left about 6pm. Ady got the dinner on, I parcelled up some ebay stuff and the kids had their tea.

Tomorrow Dad is coming over to look after D & S while I go to Ady’s work to do some H&S stuff with him. The cunning master plan is that eventually I get some paid work from there too. This is stage one of making the plan come together 😉

But the rest of it was a bit wobbly!

Early Saturday mornings (i.e. before 9am) are never my strong point but I stagger downstairs dressed before 8am this morning to throw away a lovingly cooked sausage sandwich which I just could not face (don’t really do breakfast and if I do then I need to have been up for at least an hour first) before heading out before 9am to the airshow.

We parked, made the trek across the fields to nab a good spot to arrange our stuff and ask the kindly looking old geezers with their radios and folding chairs if they would watch our stuff (they certainly were not going anywhere!) while we took a look round the stalls. The kids were not on best form really after a long day yesterday and both were suffering from strong attacks of the ‘I want’s’ so we returned to our chairs and sat for a while, taking in the arrival of the Red Arrows, who were supposed to do a few stunts before heading off to Biggin Hill but actually just flew by the once due to some low flying seagulls or other such aviation specific version of leaves on the track.

Davies and I headed off to the craft tent where we recalled from last year you are able to purchase some rather good fudge and were on our way back having admired people’s wood carvings, leather goods and coffee with irish cream flavouring type produce when my phone rang and it was Ady with a very loudly sobbing Tarly in the background asking if ‘we could come back NOW please’. Did the closest approximation to running I ever do back to where he and Tarly were and found her hysterical, him not far from it and a story about the umbrella (being used as parasol) hurting her and Ady’s theory about a wasp stinging her. She was then convinced by this theory and wailed even louder about a naughty wasp. She got so hysterical that people all around were starting to look at us to work out in what way exactly we were ritually abusing our child to produce such extreme crying so Ady took her off to the St Johns ambulance to get her ‘seen to’ and returned with an ice pack which seemed to do the trick in calming her down and eventually sent her to sleep.

She then had about half an hours restless sleep during which time Davies and I headed off again to buy some ear defenders from the army surplus stall. When we returned Chris and Julie and the twins had arrived but decided we were sitting too close to the tannoy to come and sit with us so went off to find their own pitch.

Tarly woke up and was still crying and yelling so Ady walked round with her, spent some time with C&J and paid another trip to the St Johns before I decided enough was enough and took her home.

I had been feeling that she was pretty much ok and while certainly hurting somewhere was putting a lot of it on for effect for Ady’s benefit. Sure enough we were not five minutes away from him and Davies before the wailing, incoherant child who a stranger would decide needed to go to hospital imediately metamorphasised back into my girl and we were talking happily about the chenook helicopter putting on a display and planning to make one when we got home from sticklebricks.

I debated taking her back in but Ady was really looking forward to the air show and was getting no peace at all with her there, I was not desperate to stay really and I thought some one to one with Davies and Ady would not go amiss so I took her home and we had a very pleasant couple of hours with sticklebricks, playdough and other Tarly directed activities.

As I left I walked past Chris and Julie and saw them talking very seriously to two policemen. It turned out that Jack had been whacked by a falling sign at one of the stalls and was eventually taken to hospital (another trip to St Johns – Goddard will be listed there three times today 😉 ) with a suspected chipped bone in his arm 🙁 So they left early too.

Ady rang every half hour for an update bulletin and we went to collect them at 5.30pm. They had had very nice time making friends with another lone dad sitting close to them with his two children who Davies had played with. Tarly is a real minx for winding Ady round her little finger and Davies hardly gets a look in with him when she’s around so it was nice that they had that time and they are planning some more father/son stuff while we are on holiday, which will be good for them.

Not sure what we’ll do tomorrow as we have some ‘work’ to do – CVs for me and H&S report for Ady (well me actually!), would quite like to see my parents and also want to ensure the children do some running around getting fresh air type stuff too – we’ll see what sort of night we have and how inclined or disinclined we feel to do anything at all in the morning.

Crap night last night with the Minx – we’ve lapsed with letting her creep into our bed in the early hours and are paying the price again. Unlikely to do any sort of hard work on it as we are on holiday in a week’s time so her ‘routine’ will go to pot anyway so will deal with it when we are back from holiday and Ady is back to work.

There was some sort of dramatic jack knifed lorry incident on the M25 this morning so our planned departure time of 7,30am was put back somewhat to about 9am – allowing me to do some ebay invoice sending – the pile of clothes dragged from the kids’ wardrobes and earmarked for Julie if they didn’t sell has so far netted nearly 30 quid so that’s good considering it is all so washed and worn I would have been ashamed to offer it free to a friend! (Fear not, I have been totally upfront and honest about the condition of stuff on my blurb)

Today was the first run of the in car dvd player for Davies and it went down really really well 🙂 His travel sickness was not mentioned and he sat glued to it without asking even one silly question 🙂 Tarly was less well behaved and Ady was a bit cross with her for being rowdy when he was trying to take a work call on the hands free in car phone – oops!

He dropped us off at Lakeside (shopping mall mecca for the finest chavs in all of Essex!) and headed off to do some real work 😉

We pottered round buying various bits and bobs – I got a replacement pair of sandals for the ones which had died (infact I chucked them and started wearing the new ones straight away), a new top, loads of stuff in Lush – where we spent ages and the children charmed all the very attentive staff, some hair bits in Claires (some for me and some for Tarly who now occassionally allows slides and things in her hair) some Spiderman stuff for Davies in H&M (a hat, a wallet and a sweat band, will get a pic as he looks dead cool!), and a handbag and purse and a Dora cutlery set for Tarly. We had lunch and then thought we had time for a quick last browse before Ady picked us up he rang me to say the M25 was shut and he didn’t know how long he’d be 🙁

Fortuntately there are worse places to be stranded 😉 so we went to ELC and bought a couple of colouring books and a story book and decamped to Costa for one of their icy chocolate drink things and some biscuits, a read aloud story and some colouring. We seemed to attract a fair few induglent smiles as the kids were being very cute. Ady then arrived sooner than expected in the end but it was at a tricky time to start the 90 min journey home so we went and got the kids some tea, Ady had coffee and then we bought then some pjs and changed them into them before heading for home.

Tarly fell asleep as soon as we got in the car, Davies stayed awake watching Nemo all the way home and we called in to Asda on the way back to get a couple of things from their Tickled Pink range (Ady lost his sister to breast cancer so we always support it as it gives money to the cause and I get to do shopping 🙂 ).

I have now had three glasses of wine (and no one will be surprised to learn we have big glasses here!), taco and tortillas dinner, Ady is snoring on the sofa and I’m about to wake him up and go to bed.

Tomorrow we’re going to the RAFA Shoreham Air show and Chris and Julie will be meeting us there at some point. Next week has panned out with something happening every day, I have 2 more CVs on their way for writing and this time next week I’ll be in a state of wild excitement about HOLIDAY 🙂

We have an odd collection of neighbours around here – infact one day I really must write about them all in all their delightfully, charming and mainly harmless lunacy but the cream of the crop is David and Jeanette – a brother and sister who are both well into their 40s and live opposite us with their mother Doreen. They all used to live in London (not sure where) but their father died, their mother was mugged and the ‘final straw was when the road started to fill up with ‘darkies’ buying all the houses’ (their words obviously, not mine) so they moved down here to Sunny Sussex by the Sea.

None of them work, although I would imagine that at least one of them is getting some sort of carers allowance for Doreen and they seem OK for money so they spend every day loading themselves into their silver Mondeo (David always but always drives, perhaps the other can’t drive actually) and heading off to country fairs, village walks and cream teas around Sussex.

They are all very sweet, adore D & S and regularly bring them things like cuddly toys David has won at country fair hoopla stalls and sweets.

Anyway the other night as I was unloading Tescos shop from the car David and Jeannette were off out for an early evening walk (not too far, the heat knocks me out and I have a pile of ironing this big (hand held up to shoulder height) to do when I get back) and mentioned it was Jeannette’s birthday the next day.

We duly waited until they were all out – not too keen to get past neighbourly chats on the lawn and into going in for sherry and voluvants or anything like that – and I headed across the road to shove a birthday card through their letter box. Ady (hilariously he thought!) took a photo of me running down their drive having done it 🙂 But it was safe, they were all out and not hiding behind the sofa waiting to catch me having parked the car up the road to trick me (which would have been really hilarious if they had as they would have seen me running (an odd sight) and Ady photographing me and wondered why!).

Got home yesterday to find a thank you card from Jeanette. It has a little picture of a teddy holding a card up saying ‘Thank You’ and inside (in gold pen!) is a thank you for my birthday card message, followed by a brief round up of what she did on the day (went out for a meal to a Tapas bar) and signed with lots of love.

It is the first time I have ever had a thank you card for a card. I am so inclined to send one back thanking her for her thank you card and see whether I can start a communication through the ‘power of the thank you card’ which could go on for years. I have the message planned already:

Dear Jeannette,

Thank you so much for your lovely thank you card. It is on our mantlepiece where we admire it several times a day.

I am particularly keen on the teddy picture – it is sooo cute and I also really like the square design – a refreshing change from the usual rectangle shape of such cardboard greetings products.

I would of course send this in a slightly bigger card than she sent us, perhaps one with glitter or a foil effect. She would then return with something with dangly home made feel bits on, I would then start to add a small gift such as an individual chocolate to my return, her’s would come with a hand tied posy of wild flowers, mine would graduate to a larger box of chocolates, hers would come with a small bottle of champage, mine would come with a helium balloon in a box which floated out when you opened it, hers would come with a larger box containing a gorillagram, mine would contain the keys to a new car tied with a red giant ribbon like the Bully’s special prize on Bullseye, her’s would have tickets for a luxury mini break, mine would have tickets for a round the world cruise…. oh, it could be so much fun!

Or maybe I’ll end the madness right here right now before it gets out of hand. These things can escalate you know 😉

Those of you who give a monkeys will note that I have ticked every single box under edyoocatin today. TBH as I was saying to Barbara at the weekend I probably could most days really depending on how my ability for spin is doing that day but today is genuine.

We took delivery of a Brightminds order first thing (I was still in my nightie even!) some of which has been squirreled away for birthday gifts but the Dr Seuss trio of cd roms was broken out now and has gone down very well indeed. Davies played it but Tarly showed a fair amount of interest in it too. They did Cat in the Hat on my laptop while I was getting dressed and then Green Eggs and Ham while I hung washing out. Davies is back there again with GE&H now and loving it. Which obviously ticks off reading and IT – oh and resources for me 🙂 Whilst I write this Tarly is demonstrating her precocious ‘thing’ for the day and using her knife and fork while giving me a running comentary on what she is doing ‘Mummy, you put your knife there and Mummy you put your fork here and then you…’ very cute and clearly a potential Home Educating parent in the making 😉

We set off for Ali’s for once arriving pretty much dead on time and on the way we listened to the Monsters Inc soundtrack and Davies named some of the instruments playing and then some Mozart for Minors – all of which we have forgotten the names of the pieces so need to dig the cover out again and refresh myself on that. I forgot to mention yesterday that Davies requested War of the Worlds on when we drove to Drusillas. Before when we’ve listened to it they have just enjoyed the drama of the music but this time Davies started to listen to the actual story so that sparked off loads of discussion about life on other planets, beliefs and led onto religion. We did get really into music and related stuff earlier this year and it’s slipped in favour of pop jr cd and a bit of James Blunt so we must get back into that again on long car journeys.

At Ali’s the children played in various duos and occassionally a trio in all sorts of games including (but not an exhaustive list) making Christmas outside and inviting us out to see it with Davies sliding down the slide and dancing on the steps, Tarly and Freya doing simultaneous trampoline bouncing while they all sang ‘Merry Christmas’ and everything was decorated in chalk ‘snow’, lots of play with the dolls house, water (and mud) play, drawing, Tarly and Freya disappeared upstairs for (I imagine) girly dolls type play while Davies pottered outside happily for a bit, then recreated a life cycle of a turtle which had been in a book we looked at recently by getting a large soft toy turtle to come out of the sea (using blue and yellow rugs to determine the sand and the sea) to lay an egg (a large stone which he remembered lives at Ali’s and went off to find specifically) then went back to the sea. The egg hatched into a baby turtle (one of the fimbles – the blue and purple one – Florrie?) and returned to the sea herself. He then told us turtles are amphibians and with a little guidance told us that frogs are too – bless! They also all played Superheros, did lots of running around and some sharing, negotiating and turn taking all took place too. Who needs school eh?!

Meanwhile Ali and I had lots of deep chats about all manner of stuff including personal growth and development, socialising, learning styles, Home Ed planning, local groups and other extra curricular stuff, relationships, online stuff, real life and so on. I found myself articulating a few things which I hadn’t even realised I was thinking until I started talking about them so that was interesting and I intend to take action on a couple of things as a result (thanks Ali :-)).

I’ve arrived home to discover I’ve sold most of the 21 items I put on ebay so that’s good in a dual purpose fund raising and clutter clearing way but does mean I need to find the brown paper and get some parcels sorted out and on their way to the post office.

Tomorrow we’re off to Lakeside with Ady as I need a few holiday related bits and as I have just worked out 12 birthday cards for this month so might as well do a bulk buy at Clintons there for those too. Davies has been promised a trial run of the new in car dvd played we’ve bought which will hopefully distract him from his travel sickness a bit and help me from feeling murderous thoughts towards him when we travel somewhere as a family and I attempt to talk to Ady instead of answering his constant stream of questions.

Right, off to tidy up a bit and then chuck kids into the bath to wash off Christmas chalk and mud from Ali’s garden before Ady gets home.

Sunday afternoon barbecue at the Raine’s

Lego play

Bizarre chocolates – not as strange as sweet cheese mind you 😉

A healthy diet northern style!

Cave dwelling (see me being demure!)

There was about a half hour wait for going underground into the cave so the kids ran about and bit and provided queue entertainment of sorts for everyone else waiting (either that or they annoyed the hell out of them but no one tried to push us off the boat once underground so am assuming they were deemed cute rather than irritating!)

It’s been a good one 🙂

We’ve been to Drusillas with Ros and co today and had a lovely time. Tried to text Joyce but no signal on mobiles 🙁

We pulled up in the car park and having parked about four miles away from the entrance in the furthest field we debated turning round and going away again as the weather was lovely and everyone in Sussex had clearly had the same idea of making the most of the last week of the summer holidays by going to Drusillas so the place was heaving. We ventured in and positioned ourselves by the pool before it got too busy there.

On the way through Tarly drew my attention to a dinosaur (a pretend one obviously!) ‘look Mummy, a dinosaur’ I asked her which one not for one moment expecting an answer but got one anyway ‘a triceratops Mummy!’. Blimey!!!! That’s her early years Ed put on the back burner again for a while, no issues there then 🙂

Kids changed into swimming gear, Ros stripped down to bikini top and I sat wondering why I’d worn quite so many clothes on such a nice day. The kids had a whale of a time with Davies particularly enjoying getting right in the middle of it all and splashing anyone who came near him, while Tarly was happily holding hands with anyone who came near with a similar aged child to her (floozy!).

Then we adjourned to the cafe for chips and caffine. Then a further hour or two sat in the sun in the playground listening to all the annoucements for lost children going out and trying hard to watch all five of our own most of the time. Tarly walked into the path of the zip wire and got knocked down, Pea brought Davies back once having found him about to tell someone he was lost, but that aside they had a great time!

After ice cream we suddenly realised it was 4pm and probably a good plan to get going so we said our lengthy goodbyes (well it will be at least two and a half weeks – no cheap travelinns in Exeter for Friday night 🙁 so that’s not a plan after all) and headed our seperate ways. Within a couple of miles we had hit serious traffic so singing very loud songs to keep everyone awake we did a country lanes detour and managed to avoid the worst of what looked to be a very long traffic jam caused by an accident and closing the road both ways – it did make our journey a good half hour longer than it should have been though so I was very proud of Davies and I for keeping Tarly awake all the way home.

Ady had beaten us home and got the kids a bath run and some tea cooking so they had them (and in that order – they were filthy!) and then they watched Pippi Longstocking cartoons while I ordered a new laptop battery online and Ady did some work stuff.

Just finished watching Lost and about to post a few pics up from the weekend and then off to bed. A good day 🙂