One word? When seven would do…

Arrived last night to a rapturous welcome from Elinor, wine and beer from Chris and a guided tour from Helen. The house is simply gorgeous – a real dream home and the peeps out of the windows this morning look it to be a lovely little village too.

The children ran around until at least 10.30 last night with Scarlett initially being shy and wanting cuddles and pjs but soon joining in with Davies and Elinor – who took one look at each other and ran off into the depths of the house somewhere! There was a mad frenzy of playing, dressing up and drawing before they were finally persuaded into bed.

Chatted, ate curry and drank wine until a fairly respectable (for me) 1.30am ish before heading off to bed.

Today the weather is lovely again, the children refuse to get out of pjs and having eaten many croissants from the bakery across the road I think the inclination is to laze about for most of the day 🙂

As threatened here I am again 🙂

Finished my cvs and emailed them across, so that’s my internet supply paid for the month in an hours work 🙂 (tip from one of the frugal sites is to work out how many hours work it takes to pay for stuff and then decide if it’s worth it – sadly although there is potential to earn a high hourly rate there is not the work available to earn it with). My two remaining tasks are printing off directions and a route finder and packing – off to do them shortly as well as packing some food for the children for the journey.

Granny came over and quite shockingly and impressively for a woman in her late 70s totally grasped the idea of autonomy and child led education. She even said she could see exactly how it would work as she spent some of her school years in a mass class of 8-14 year olds, mixed gender being taught by the headmaster of the nearby boys school drafted in to run the school where lots of London children were evacuated to during the war. She has mentioned this teacher before as inspirational and able to draw the best out of each and every child depsite the mix of ages, abilities, backgrounds and everything else going on around them. She sat looking at the pictures of the Halloween party remarking on how happy all the children looked and how well they all appeared to be mixing. D & S sat talking to her about various recent adventures such as Legoland, The Eden Project, trips to Reading and Sheffield and all their various friends around the country which obviously helped!

We then had an hour or so of autonomy in action while we sat chatting. The children got out the geomags and built all sorts of weird and wonderful things, chattering as they went about magnets and shapes and how many sides and corners they had, Scarlett counted up to 7 for Granny (which is actually not the top of her range but Granny was impressed, she then decided to build a square and a triangle, told us she was going to and then did it. Then she got totally absorbed in a pattern of two rods, two balls, a panel (threaded onto a rod) and repeated in a big long line – which as I said to Granny would have easily been a pattern you would be asked questions on in a maths GCSE test. Davies meanwhile was building people, robots and fireworks with some more rods.

Then we heard a sound outside so Davies went to investigate by standing up at the window watching. It was a mini roadwork repair which two men stood either end of with STOP GO signs so the traffic could go past, so Davies stood and gave a running comentary and read the STOP and the GO (ok he was probably guessing based on colour and the fact that it was a road sign but he did it without hesitation!) signs as they were revolved. I also realised that Davies is able to ‘read’ the difference between Annie and Clarabell on his Thomas carriages – I’m sure he couldn’t read the words out of context but he knows which is which between the two when looking at the words on them.

So that was all good 🙂 I love it when people ‘get’ what it’s all about and don’t leave the conversation blatantly disagreeing with you but not having the balls to say so. Granny left quite evangelical about the idea herself. Go Granny 😉

Right, Ady has just arrived home super early so I really do need to go and pack now so we can set off while it’s still daylight – see you in a few hours Beans 🙂

It’s a beautiful winters morning here again today. It’s been a really cold and frosty night so everything is twinkling in the sunshine as it melts, the sky is deep blue, the remaining leaves on the trees and bushes are beautiful burgandy, burnt orange and red hues, glossy red berries have sprung up on the holly (and other plants I don’t know the names of!), the grass is bright green and there is that air of excitement and anticipation that this time of year puts in the pit of my stomach. I once read somewhere that you tend to favour the season you were born in – which sort of makes sense as when you were a child I guess looking forward to your birthday made you like that season most. For me, born in January all of my Christmasses and Birthdays, New Years Eves and so on came together in the space of a fortnight so it *was* the most wonderful time of the year (ironically I have associations in December and Januray for both children now as Tarly was born in Decemeber and I found out I was pregnant with Davies in early January). There is always that new year, new start mentality anyway and for us at the moment there are all sorts of possibilities and outcomes as to how our life might pan out next year. Some of them might be painful but all of them will involve growth, change and ultimately positivity.

I’ve just been gazing out of the window daydreaming about living different lives and then Ady rang to chat while he was driving to a meeting so we talked about wild and wacky things to do. Sometimes the scariest thing is when there is nothing to stop you going and grabbing a dream… Might blog about this more, or somewhere else or might just keep it to bring out and play with myself for a bit 🙂

So far this morning we’ve watched some TV together (Big Cook Little Cook, which I cannot watch without getting giggly now thanks to Richard Herring, Backyardigans (which I confess to not actually watching and checking my emails instead!) and Dora. Ady finally found the lead for the portable dvd player so Davies has been selecting a pile of DVDs for the journey to The Beans later today. We’ve done some puzzles – Davies did a market stall one by himself and Tarly did a house one with some matching colours and textures pairs despite protesting that she couldn’t do it by herself – she did!

Davies then did a world map one (100 piece ELC) with what felt like a lot of assistance but probably wasn’t really – he finally seemed to click on some sort of process of tackling it, which is one of Davies’ biggest things to overcome – once he finds a system he can tackle anything but finding that system often seems to elude him for far longer than it should. I think reading is the same for him actually. He is like a detective, he needs to crack the code of doing something and then it seems to unlock something in his brain, all the pieces fit together and he is capable of flashes of genuis. Maybe I’ve just described the way we all do stuff but somehow it seems so much more *obvious* when observing him that that is how he does everything. He is very reluctant to invest time or energy in something unless he is confident of the outcome i advance. I’m guessing he won’t make much of a gambler 😉 Safe, steady and slow – he would probably pack a flask and some sandwiches with a first aid kit to walk to the local shops if I allowed him to – so his father’s son! Also reminded that I meant to blog about Davies’ mood yesterday. He tends to have times every so often (usually before or after he’s been ill or when he is very tired) when nothing seems to go his way, he gets really stroppy at the slightest little thing and I would probably best describe as moody. He huffs and puffs, sighs and stamps his feet and sulks for ages. My Mum is like this and so is my brother; both of whom have been treated for depression. I recall my Mum spending ages cajoling Frazer out of his sulks with all sorts of bribes, treats and silly behaviours and he is still like it now at nearly 30. Aside from not being one for having much time for other people’s fragile egos I really want Davies to be able to be responsible for his own happiness and able to pull himself together without me fawning all over him. I offer cuddles and keep Tarly away from him to give him his space to work his way out of his stroppiness himself. While he’s feeling like it what he wants and expects is the world to revolve around him and me to pander to his every whim – when he comes out of the other side (he was fine by the end of yesterday and perfectly happy, sunny and back to himself again to day) he will tell you himself that he’s been stroppy or was ‘having a moment’. I was talking to Julie about it yesterday as she commented on him being a bit miserable so explained and she said that as someone married to a man who is still like that and still expects everyone else to try and make his day better when its going wrong she wishes his mother had done the same with him (although of course Chris’ mother who is also Ady’s mother stuck them in a children’s home instead while she had her own mental breakdowns so I guess she couldn’t be accused of molly coddling him!). Anyway, it feels slightly heartless but I think I’m dealing with it in the right way for now.

Back to processes, Tarly on the other hand is much more into her leaps of faith, haphazzard doing stuff without thinking it through and working out what she’s going to do next as she goes along. I’ll let you complete the rest of this paragraph for yourselves! 😉 She has also been doing some fuzzy felt pictures and when I came down from getting dressed she’d made a really good tap a shape person picture complete with legs in two pieces so they could bend at the knee.

They are now eating their fourth bowl of cereal each while looking at the world map puzzle and talking about the North Pole and the compass which is pictured on the bottom of it.

My Granny is due to visit this morning, I’ve got my CVs to do, I need to pack for the weekend and the floor is covered in fuzzy felt. Also have more daydreaming planning to be done…

Did some productive financial stuff this morning, feeling quite smug about my ability to live far more frugally than I’d ever imagine possible with no real feelings of hardship so far. Which could of course serve to make me feel shamed by living otherwise previously, but hey, we enjoyed it while we had it! 😉

I’ve been spending time signing up to all sorts of lunatic frugal living newsletters and browsing websites. There are some fairly hysterical ideas, hints and tips out there if you dig around. My favourite so far is using vinegar as a deodrant – aparantly it doesn’t stop the perspiring but it does stop it from smelling, presumably because you smell like a pickling jar! Had a bash at making newspaper logs last night which was also faintly surreal – and hopeless – I just ended up with very inky fingers, fifteen minutes of my life I will never get back to live again gone and a brickette which caught fire and turned to ashes quicker than you could say ‘think of the money it’s saved in coal!’. Tim, I feel another website idea coming on 😉

Anyway, while I was doing all this Davies was playing Cat in the Hat and erm, Cat in the Hat on the playroom pc. I think he zoombinied too 🙂 Scarlett sat for ages with a pair of scissors and a piece of paper snipping it into confetti sized bits – so fine motor skills and hand/eye co-ordination ticked off there, oh and probably arts and crafts too 😉

Then we headed off to the local soft play to meet up with Julie, Jack and Maisie. They were nearly an hour late and as for once we were actually on time I sat and blissfully read one of the magazines donated by Ros while the children went off and socialised making friends with random strange children (they are actually really good at this and take great delight in coming back to report that they have made a new friend, sometimes dragging the new friend with them as hard evidence!) and Davies stage managed various very noisy games (but if he can’t yell and be bossy there where can he?!). I passed the magazine onto Julie afterwards so cost cutting and recycling lives on in another home 🙂

The children started to flag after a couple of hours so we took them into the cafe area and fed them processed, deep fried food (well I did mine, obviously Julie’s children had nutrionally balanced, healthy food instead!) which gave them the energy to go back in again for another hour afterwards! Tarly was so funny when we finally dragged them away and said ‘Oh Mummy, I just want to have a little bit more fun!’ holding her hand up to demonstrate what a little bit looked like (can’t imagine where she got such habits from!!).

Julie and the twins headed for home we walked across the road taking advantage of free parking at the soft play to go to the main library. I’ve not been there since college when I used to spend hours cosily tucked up there reading teen fiction and political reference books so we wandered round the children’s area and gathered a few books including a couple of enormous classroom style versions of stories for reading aloud to groups – you could have one per ticket. We got the Giraffes Can’t Dance one as previously mentioned by Heather once which I’m looking forward to reading with them tomorrow. Thanks to Joyce I am seriously into Jodi Picoult but so it seems is everyone else in Sussex and there were none of hers there to be found 🙁

Came home to find a couple of CVs which need to be back for Sunday – which means they need to be back tomorrow as we’re away for the weekend had arrived in the post, a phonecall from Dad for cat feeding rota sorting in our absense and I finally sewed up Davies’ cuddly Peter Pan toy which I made him a couple of years ago and a combination of being much beloved and not that well sewn in the first place meant he was losing stuffing from several places. Did a couple of other sewing mends while I was at it while Tarly played with all the cotton reels sorting them into colours and sizes and stuff. Then they had sandwiches while watching Backyardigans (which they adore!) and I chucked some red wine, garlic, onions and oxo cubes in the oven with some stewing steak for dinner – which of course means there is the other half a bottle of wine which really needs using up tonight as we’re away, so having thoroughly enjoyed the mid week ban lift by drinking a whole bottle of white myself last night I am now enjoying a nice glass of red too 🙂 It’s OK this teetotalling lark!

Right, bath, dinner and the new series of Little Britain. Not sure how much I’ll be around this weekend although I am home most of the day tomorrow as Ali has cancelled due to ill health our visit over there tomorrow so I may well be blogging as we go!

In summary a rather good day although it was not without it’s moments.

First thing was TT for Tarly who was in some sort of minx mania mood and refused to sit when she was supposed to, take turns or go where she should be. When she did as she was told she was excellent as always and tbh I think it is probably more that she is simply ready to move up to the next class now. She is the oldest in the group, some of them are literally just 2 and she is only a few weeks shy of her third birthday – and the year between 2 and 3 seems to be a long one! She gets bored waiting for the slower ones to execute stuff infront of her and given my children will not have to get used to being as slow as the slowest in the class I have to admit to struggling to watch her being ‘held back’ too. She dashes round doing her climbing, balancing and jumping at top speed and with real agility but then gets stuck behind a toddling toddler who takes forever to climb across something so she loses interest, buggers off and bounces on the trampoline instead. I’m sure there is something to be gained in learning patience and turn taking but frankly she gets her turn taking practise at home and in other situations, patience is not one of the virtues I possess in large amounts and I think it can be highly over rated anyway (although I would of course now fall firmly in the camp of waiting til one can afford something and not being impatient about spending any more 😉 ) and whena child shows a wanting to be the best and do stuff in a competitive manner I am disinclined to prevent them from doing so really. Of course if it were my child being the slow one I might feel differently 😉 ! Anyway, she moves up in the new year so she only has about 5 more classes in this group and I think she will really enjoy the challenges of the next class up.

Davies also kept appearing in the room which was a distraction for me and he does this thing of just hanging around and talking in a real baby voice, which given his obvious tallness in the room of 2-3 year old marking him out as of school age really pisses me off. I just have no patience with him babying himself really, particularly with an audience who I am aware all know he is Home Educated and probably look at us curiously.

So by the time I was trying to get Tarly’s tights on with Davies messing about I was heard to hold my hand up to Tarly with a very small gap between finger and thumb and warn her ‘I’ve got THIS much patience today Scarlett. Use it wisely’. Which her and Davies took as the open invitation to open the door and run down the corridor towards an open door to the street where vans drive up and down like lunatics while I was putting my boots on. Dashed after them, yelling as I went. Caught up with them in the foyer (I don’t actually think for one moment they would have gone out of the door, but…) and lectured them before getting them into the car and explaining, at high volume why that was not acceptable behaviour. Unfortunately I did this with the car doors open and I had an audience of mothers arriving for the next TT class which is for 6-12 month olds. So there was I, yelling in a very attractive way at my two small people, for all to see and hear while these mothers with their little baby bundles all looked at me in horror. I was barely a breath away from turning to my audience and finishing off the rant properly but ran out of steam in the end. The children apologised and we came home.

And along came Ros, bringing with her children to entertain my own, soup and proper branded bread for them to eat, cakes and a new way to cook supernoodles for me and best of all a stack of the trashy celebrity magazines which I have been getting withdrawal symptoms from ever since we started economising. (I know, I’m shallow, but I can’t help caring if Jordan is blonde or brunette, whether stars from Big Brother have lost so much weight you could play a tune on their rib cage and who has been spotted where wearing what!) Lovely couple of hours gossiping and catching up on each others news in person – thanks 🙂

Mad dash to get everyone out again for Davies’ Gym Bobs session. He did really well today. Last week I talked to one of the women helpers as they do this warm up type game at the beginning where they have to run around the room in a certain style (like a bird, or a tiger, or a giant or something) and then when they blow a whistle they have to stand really still until they call the next style out to run around in. Davies never participates, he just stands at the side of the room while all the other kids do it. I asked her why and she said he just doesn’t seem to understand why they do it so he doens’t see the need to do it. Which to me makes perfect sense actually! And infact is one of the things that makes Davies so Davie-y really! So today I explained to him why they do it, to warm up muscles so that you can climb and stretch and jump and so on without hurting yourself and so on. And so off he went to join in with it quite happily! The woman actually said to me she thought it must be to do with him not going to school as they have a couple of other HE kids at different groups and apparantly neither of them like doing that bit either!!! So because the lemming reflex has not been installed in him to mindlessly do as he’s told without a logical explanation and a reason he is already starting to be a bit different. He’d already be used to not asking questions and just accepting everything if he’d been ‘in the system’ for a year or so but he still requires a purpose for doing things before he goes ahead and does them.

While he was doing his class Tarly and I sat together and did some drawing and colouring. She is getting very good at drawing very recognisable things – she did an excellent picture of Ady without any guidance at all which is not far off of the one Davies did earlier this year. I don’t know if maybe she’s bypassed a developmental drawing stage perhaps but I think his drawings are pretty good and hers are not far behind them. Which is a bit scary actually as I have no idea how to guide them on anything artistic other than cartoons and caricatures. Davies also made a very very good Peter Pan model with some plasticine today too which Tarly came and picked up and said ‘oh look Peter Pan’ about when she came in the room afterwards. Ah well, makes up for the maths I guess! 😉

Got home to find Ady already here so he sorted their tea while I whizzed round and tidied up, they are now both asleep, Ady’s cooking dinner, Lost is on tonight and we have our midweek alcohol allowance too 🙂

Nice day today with plenty of child led learning happening hither and thither. Due to a communication issue (i.e text messages which stacked up and then all came through at once despite being sent about 2 hours apart – why we didn’t just ring each other I don’t know!) we spent most of the morning at home. We were supposed to be meeting Lucy at the park but it was raining and horrid so she text me to say should she come here or we go there. Curious to see her new house and ready to get out of the house even if it was just to go to someone else’s I text back to say we’d come to her and what was her address? Having not heard from her for about an hour an a half during which time Davies Zoombini’d some more and Tarly did some geomagging and general flouncing I text again to say it had cleared up a bit did she want to meet at the park after lunch. Four text messages came back from her all at once with her address, directions on where to park, asking if we were lost and saying OK to the park but we were very welcome there still!

Gathered up the small people and shot over there. Thoroughly embarrassed myself with my dreadful parking skills by attempting two different (but in fairness quite tight) spaces on the same street and failing to reverse park into either. The attempts were seperated by going round the block, but as I drove away from the second space the laughter which I heard even inside the car from two blokes standing chatting in the street led me to believe the whole thing had been witnessed by them! Parked in the next road in a nice easy drive in – able space and kept my head down whilst wearing an impromptu disguise of a drawn on moustache with an eye liner pencil I found in the glove compartment so they didn’t recognise me when I walked past them on the way to Lucy’s. 🙂

Had an interesting couple of hours there, Rebecca took a while to warm up to playing with Davies and Scarlett who were embarrassingly both squabbling over Baby Richard’s toys (sigh!) but they got there in the end. Lucy and I had some interesting chats about HE. The party was very reassuring for her on several levels – that all the children just got on with it and played so well together, that the older ones had such care for the younger ones and were so quick to ensure that pass the parcel had everyone winning a prize and so on. Her main observation however was that it was a party for ‘everyone’ – she was amazed at how many of the adults had dressed up and then participated fully in the whole day. She’d been expecting me to be the one running around organising all the games when I’d said that there would be lots going on. She said that it was apparant that a lot of us knew each other but she had mainly expected parents to be sat round the edge of the room with glazed expressions rather than actively joining in and making it ‘our’ party too. Something which tbh had never really occured to me but is actually very true, certainly in our circle of Home Educators – both myself and my children have our best friends in the same families and we do our socialising as families rather than independantly – something to cherish I thought 🙂

She’s a bit of a thinker is Luce, so she had stored up lots of observations, questions and posers for me about HE and parenting in general so we had some interesting chats about all sorts of things, leading with both of us deciding that we wouldn’t start going down the route of speculating on mass brainwashing, social conditioning and conspiracy theories! Deep stuff 😉 Lucy and I tend to chat very little about day to day stuff and much more about bigger picture stuff, she’s not really a gossiper (and of course she doesn’t know anyone I might know gossip about anyway!) so it was quite refreshing not to be rehashing various topics and talking about positive and life affirming stuff 🙂

Her husband came home and as his day starts at about 5am (he rides out horses) we cleared off to give him some ‘peas and light’ and went for a walk along the beach, which is at the end of her street. It was still slightly drizzly, but mild and the tide was just going out. Davies, Scarlett and Rebecca went straight down to the sea and played, collected various ‘treasures’ (which my pockets are now filled with and I must remember to empty out before putting my jeans in the washing machine!) and then my two played for about 20 minutes with some sort of rusty old iron pulley thing (it was obviously used to pull boats or other such heavy stuff and although it has long since gone it would have had a chain round it which a series of four cogs turned by a handle would have wound and unwound). Davies has a current fascination for cogs anyway due to a fridge magnet at Ali’s house so I showed him how they all turned each other as a result of the handle turning and explained a couple of possible uses. Him and Tarly then set about combing the area for other ‘stuff’ driftwood, large stones, a bit of crate which said ‘castrol’ and so on and in the style of Wallace and Gromit created some sort of machine. Wish I’d had the camera really – Home Education in motion!

We finally persuaded them away from there and took a walk along the pier. There is a sort of ramp type stage area leading off the pier pavillion which they climbed up onto and put on a show for us on with singing and dancing! Davies was thrilled to see the posters there for Shakin Stevens so we had his rendition of Green Door with Tarly as a backing singer, much to the amusement of a couple of pensioners!

Came home where Tarly went into meltdown mode due to been awake since about 4,30am (Ady had got up with her at ten to five, having looked at the heating timer which never got changed when the clocks went back and thought it was ten to six!). She stropped about everything finally ending with tears because I cooked her pasta with cheese which she last had when Lulah was here and they’d shared the bowl and she wanted Lulah to come and eat it with her. Tried to explain why this was unlikely to happen and then Davies started sighing about wanting Lije to be here too! Nearly phoned them so they could have a little love in chat between the four of them but then Ady arrived home and distracted them. They did eat the pasta and then were both asleep by 7pm.

Did at least two things off my job list!

Sort out life insurance to get cheaper price;
Get wet washing in off the line and drape around the house;
Find TT T shirt for Tarly for tomorrow (is it clean, is it dry, is it still screwed up in the bottom of the TT bag like it was last week necessitating a quick squirt of febreeze and a hasty stretch back into shape!?);
Put away clean washing languishing in each child’s bedroom;
Find out when my phone is due an upgrade;
Chase up some CV writing work.

Davies is playing Zoombinis (again) and has already commented on how nice I am being today when he comes to fetch me to help him through tricky bits (yesterday I just snarled at him every time he asked for help!) and Tarly is strutting round the house in high heeled dressing up shoes, having played with the geomags for a bit and then stood watching Davies in awe as he played Zoombinis!

Right off to get everyone warmly dressed for our trip to the park in the drizzle!

Alls well that ends well then really.

After my decluttering frenzy this morning I managed to go and finish what I had started after lunch, threw all the broken shoe boxes that were doing a very sorry job of containing my many pairs of shoes away in the recycling, put a bin liner full of rubbish in the bin, (finally) got the children dressed and headed out to the clothes bank to drop off all unebayable clothing, drop the keys and payment off for the Halloween hall hire (I know, two whole weeks late!), post the letters and then came back and photographed and listed all the ebayable stuff on ebay. 🙂

Children played apart and together, ate their tea (although Davies refused his own brand tomato soup saying ‘it doesn’t taste like normal’ well no it won’t darling, it’s not expensive Heinz I could have, but didn’t retort – child has expensive tastes and I don’t know where he gets ’em from! 😉 ) and then ate loads of fruit too (Tarly: Mummy, Mummy, I need more seaweed! (kiwi!)) while I did all this industriousness.

Davies has tonight asked me if I love him more than my computer. Of course Darling, so why do you spend more time on your computer than you do playing with me? Erm… this from the child who spent 2 hours on Zoombinis today, he clearly has the ‘if you can’t beat ’em…’ mentality sussed already!

Tarly shut the bathroom door yesterday and when Ady opened it again (she gets trapped in there as she can’t reach to turn the doorknob properly) she stomped up to him and said ‘leave it shut. I need my peas and light!!!’ which we eventually translated as peace and quiet! 🙂

Tomorrow we are out and about early to meet up with Lucy at the park (she was at the Halloween party, dressed in red with the cute devil baby for those who came and are able to get points of reference from my non blogging friends now!) for a bit, weather permitting, and then I suppose I might bring myself to do some playing with the children (who seem quick to forget that whenever I end up playing with them they quickly lose interest in me and bugger off to play by themselves again anyway!).

Going pretty well so far today 🙂

Davies has spent all morning on the pc – he played Cat in the Hat again, then loads more on the Nick Jr site and then finally he asked for Zoombinis. Earlier this year he drove me to the brink of insanity with that game as he wanted to do it but couldn’t so then he just wanted to watch me do it. All The Time!!! Grr! Somehow his skills have increased and he has done loads and loads of it this morning with no help at all 🙂 So that’s IT, Maths, Reasoning and Logic all ticked off.

Scarlett has played for ages with her girlie coloured sticklebricks (boot sale bargain!) building all sorts of stuff, some of which is pretty recognisable as what she was aiming to create too! The box of dinosaurs and animals was still out from yesterday and she has taken some of those out to play with too. I listened to her secretly for a while and she was doing all sorts of imaginative play games with them – so cute :-). She’s also done some aquadraw playing too.

I’ve done some more financial ‘stuff’ – need to walk round the post box in a bit (which means the kids need to get out of their pjs *blush*) to post some letters and also have a couple of phone calls to make too. The dust has settled a little on the whole thing and I’m feeling pretty positive about the future again – we still have loads of things to look forward to – this weekend at The Beans (featuring Merry) and Okehampton among the more imediate ones – check out my new motto ‘frugal is fun, friendship is free’ – hey think I’ve got a career in twee fridge magnet captions?! 😉 Any moment now I fully expect to find religion!

I’ve also done a start on my annual declutter and sort out in our bedroom. I’ve emptied out the wardrobe (completely – nightmare task!), tried on pretty much everything in there, sorted it into categories of ‘casual’ ‘dressy’ professional’ and hung it back up by seasons (spring/summer to the back, autumn/winter at the front) and colour. I’ve discarded anything which either does not fit, does not flatter or has no possible occassion to be worn. For once I will not be keeping any ‘just in case’ garments so in the happy event of me dropping 3 dress sizes, winning Asda’s Mum Of The Year competition, appearing on TV as ‘former career woman turned alternative Home Educating hippy’ with before and after shots, getting a hot shot lawyers job or an invitation to a fancy dress party with the theme being ‘I ignored all of Trinny and Susannah’s advice for a curvy and voluptuous shape with celtic colouring’ I will need to go shopping – or decline the invitation!

Some of the pile is for the clothes bank and some of it is probably worth sticking on ebay given how well I sold all my maternity clothes last year on there (clearly women of my size should not really be out in broad daylight frequenting Evans adn scaring small children while creating partial eclipses, we should do all our shopping on ebay, snapping up the discarded clothing of women who have either gotten bigger or have gone on to win Slimmer of The Year in Bella and can now shop at Top Shop instead!) so I might do that later – but first I need to clear it all off my bed and turn all the tried on and discarded stuff the right way out again!

The plus sides of this exercise are enormous – I can open the wardrobe without fear of death by tumbling toilet rolls (Ady bought in bulk from Costco and we currently have about 100 toilet rolls stashed in there, just as well as I think the economising means we move onto using newspaper once we run out!), I can see at a glance which of my many coordinated outfits will best suit the days weather and activities when I want to get dressed of a morning, I might make a couple of quid on ebay and I found 37 pence in an old handbag too 🙂

Just had an excellent evening 🙂

Went to see Michael Buble in concert in Brighton. Another of the tickets bought in a concert ticket buying frenzy back in the summer and without great thought really. I first heard him singing ‘Fever’ which is a song I love anyway when I got in Ady’s car one day and the radio was tuned to radio 2 and it was just on. I really liked it so I got Ady to get me the cd for Christmas last year and loved his voice. Then I bought his second album earlier this year and as the children loved it too it’s been played an awful lot in the car with all of us knowing all the words to all the songs (Moondance was their favourite record for ages!). I’ve never actually seen him on TV though so aside from the albums I know nothing about him.

Given that we were in the very back row at the very top of the theatre I still have no clue what he looked like and could easily walk past him in Tescos (although I would picture him to be more your Waitrose shopped to be honest!) but man what a voice! A million times better than on the cds, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end for most of the show (not to mention the ones on my chest!), the last song he sang most of without a microphone, the band stopped playing, the audience fell silent and he belted it out just standing there. Excellent band, superb show of lights and set and a fab line up of songs: Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Feeling Good, Under My Skin, Fever, Moondance, Smile, You Don’t Know Me, Home, Save The Last Dance For Me and loads more of that style stuff. He also sang Maroon 5s This Love, a Michael Jackson song and some opera! And he was a top class entertainer too, coming into the audience to molest people, spending ages telling funny stories (ok we all know it’s scripted but he delivered the lines very well), changing the lyrics of songs to make them fit his jokes and so on. A top class evening 🙂

I’d had worried pangs that we would probably be the youngest people there but not true at all. We were sat next to people the same age as me, a group of four lads were infront of us, there were little old ladies, knicker throwing teens, plenty of other couples and even the odd child dotted about (which was unfortunate given some of the language used!!), really enjoyed it, probably the best concert I’ve ever been to.

Tomorrow’s arrangements have been cancelled so I’m planning a nice quiet day at home with the small people. Miranda sent Davies a toy car set and a pc game of Cat in The Hat (not the animated one similar to Green Eggs and Ham that we’ve already got, but one based on the film) which Davies and I have been playing this afternoon – his first real taste of gaming and he’s taken some time to get the hang of it but I think it might well be requested again tomorrow. We’ve all spent some time on the NickJr website today as well – at one point Scarlett and I were in the lounge with the laptop doing Dora, Fifi and Blues Clues colouring while Davies was on the pc playing the Lazy Town game. Now on days when Ady doesn’t need his laptop we can spend all day on seperate computers… 🙂

The other task for tomorrow is to clear out our wardrobe. Ady is a bugger for shoving things to the back of it (it’s a three door built into the eaves of our converted loft bedroom so it is huge and fairly Narniaesque) but the back has rapidly become the front and it is at contents bursting out when you open the doors stage and tonight when I tried to find some highheeled boots to wear out I had to give up, so it all needs pulling out and putting back in again. I also need to bring winter stuff to the front, put summer stuff to the back and maybe even dig out some of the never worn stuff and try to convince myself I’ve got *new* clothes! 😉

Is what we’ve got going on here just now 🙂 and very nice they are too!

This morning we watched some of the coverage of Remembrance Day on tv with Davies and chatted about the wars and various references to them he had already got. We talked about evacuation a bit, he knew more about it than he realised when we mentioned Peter Pan 2 and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, also my Granny was evacuated to Cornwall in WW2 so we chatted about that (he wanted to know why the Germans didn’t try and blow up the Eden Project when I was explaining about how London was the target and so children from London had to leave to safer places.) My Dad and his family also left London to return to Wales during the war so we talked about that. I read a book to him I’d got out of the library earlier this week (Virginia Mayo – Remembering, The Story of a Soldier) , poppies and why we wear them, what our lives might have been like if people hadn’t fought and died in the war for our country and our freedom and what it means to us to be British – language, currency, monarchy etc. All very low level and totally non-political and of course backed up by the huge crowds of people gathering on TV in London. I then pointed out a few famous people in the crowds (Blair, Thatcher, The Queen!) and the because there was something on with Prince Charles talking about the war we talked about who he is and how he will be king one day and who will be king after he dies. Scarlett got interested in this point but I realised quickly it was only references to princes which had captured her and when she was assured that yes, she is still a princess she went back to playing again ;-).

Davies then managed to observe the silence with us aside from a brief whisper about how he’d know when it had finished, having been told that Big Ben’s striking the hour and a cannon would mark the beginning of it! Ady is a real war buff, really interested in the planes particularly and has a fair few books and dvds around the topic which is is itching to share with Davies – don’t think it will be happening just yet but it was a gentle introduction to it all and obviously a mark of respect to those who died too.

They’ve played with the aquadraw mat for a while and I dug out some stencils which I don’t think we’ve really used before so they played with them too. I challenged Davies to draw a house just using a stencil of shapes and he did that really well (OK it’s just squares and triangles and a circle for the sun but it got him thinking about shapes around us!) and now they are playing a game with the box of animals and dinosaurs and a spiderman toy (which appears to be Spiderman, managed by Davies single handedly saving the world by fighting off a variety of creatures powered by Tarly!) and I’m blogging and watching Will Young in concert on TV!

It’s really cold outside today, it finally feels like winter is here and that gives me a festive glow really. I”m not doing the List Formerly Known As Muddlepuddle Christmas card exchange this year, partially because I’m no mail and partially because we just don’t know enough of the people onlist anymore to mean anything to the children when we get cards from them but I would like to exchange cards with everyone who reads this so if you could email me your address then we can put you on ‘our’ list 🙂

A very photo-y blog today 🙂

My turn to get up with small people this morning so my day started shortly after 6am – which is not such a killer really but my body just totally resists getting out of bed while it’s still dark. 🙁 I was somehow in a cheery mood just the same and the children and I were dancing round the house singing Jungle Book songs from first thing! Lots of cuddling up on the sofa and watching TV until Ady got up.

Before we left home Davies pretty much got the hang of skipping in a brief ten minutes in the garden 🙂

An ill fated trip into town followed with me trying (and failing) to open a new bank account without making an appointment first (WTF? I must have had bank accounts with all the main banks in my time and you always used to be welcomed with open arms and have a chair pulled out for you to sit in straight away if you’d come to open an account – today I spoke to spotty 16 year olds straight out of school who were saying they ‘could fit me in’ at 3pm!) left in disgust and will try and sort it via the trusty old internet instead!

Headed over to Chris and Julie’s where we sat and ate our picnic lunch of white bread sandwiches, crisps and chocolate biscuits while they enjoyed a home made soup! Oh the contrasts! It’s been a lovely day today, really mild and sunny so the kids all played round and about and inside and out while we sat and chatted and drank tea. Then at about 2pm we headed off to some woods to look for chestnuts.

It was lovely, if a bit muddy and we all came back with pockets full of chestnuts which we plan to roast tomorrow on the fire. The children loved it, the whole ‘treasure hunt’ appeal of searching for something and the running about in mud and fallen leaves. Really nice 🙂

Loads of pics on flickr but here are a couple of favourites:

Ady and the children came home and I nipped to Tescos for yet another in my new lifestyle of frugal food shoppin experiences! Tonight’s dinner has the beauty of being both frugal and delicious as it is pheasant caught by one of of Ady’s work colleagues and given to us for free, beautifully cooked in red wine and shallots. I love pheasant, one of my favourite foods 🙂

Tomorrow we are off to see Michael Buble in concert, one of the many things purchased back when we pretended we had money and still to be enjoyed (also have tickets to see Shakin Stevens (me and Davies are going!) and Little Britain all bought before the axe finally fell!) so unlikely to be around much as we have plans to drag out the Christmas decorations and maybe get the photo taken for this years Christmas cards of the children if they are in obliging moods.

So here it is 🙂

With full credit to Chris P 🙂

Yep, got my baby back 🙂

Long story and I may well be without it again at a future point but today I drove through the wind and the rain to collect my lovely laptop rather than wait for them to come deliver it on Monday morning. I simply couldn’t face a whole weekend without it so I have spent the last hour stroking it lovingly, looking at all the sites I couldn’t remember the usernames and passwords for as they are all saved as rows of ***s and I’ve long since forgotten what they all were and emailing replies to people who had emailed me while I was AWOL.

So, a pretty good day today actually. This morning I sat on the floor with the children and we did some drawing – Davies did some fantastic pictures actually, I must photograph and flickr them – one of all of us in London on the London Eye – which was instantly recognisable, one of children playing in a park on swings, slides and climbing frames and then I talked to him about drawing outlines and colouring them in (although he always does grass and sky he rarely colours in the rest of his pictures) so he did a couple of the Dreamieland characters beautifully – he also wrote his name and age on all of the pictures in an ever more confident hand :-).

Then I got out the hama beads which are a very underused resource in this house (sorry Merry!) I bought lots when we first started Home Educating mainly cos everyone on Muddlepuddle told me they were essesntial HE items along with a laminator and a NT membership (got the laminator, still lacking the NT membership 😉 ) but Davies only ever made the car maxi bead pattern over and over again so once we ran out of black beads to do the tyres he was offended at the prospect of having a car with any other colour wheels and refused to do more, Tarly always just scattered them around the place and I have been made very cross with the mini beads on more than one occassion when I have sneezed a pattern away or the cat’s tail has swished it across the floor! So they were neatly stacked in a box, all ordered and tidy but basically unused!

Dragged them out today and Davies started to make a teddy (maxi again, he could not be persuaded to try midi), Tarly started to create a pattern with some pastel beads on a square board, which half way through Davies decided looked like a duck and came over to help her put grass and sky on the board to create a picture. They worked really nicely together on it actually with them giving each other loads of compliments and Davies asking for various colour beads next and Tarly finding them and passing them to him (similar in style to a nurse handing scalpel, scissors, needle etc to a gowned up surgeon I thought!) all excellent for team work, creative artistry, colour recognition and so on :-). I started to make a house adapted from a picture in a book but confess I got bored and tried to persuade Davies to finish mine too but he refused and went back to his car.

Tarly then wandered off and brought back some Incredibles figures which they started playing with instead so all the beads ended up tipped back in the box, but I think we might bring them out again soon – it was a great success.

My Dad then appeared to look at a dodgy radiator and to offer me money for food shopping (bless him 🙂 ) closely followed by Mum with stuff for lunch 🙂 :-). So we all ate together (very well, Mum buys nice lunch stuff!) and then a bit spur of the moment Mum and I headed off to Redhill to collect the laptop while Dad stayed with the kids. It was actually very nice, Mum and I had a good chat and she said some lovely, complimentary things to me which made me quite glowy 🙂

Home again to find Ady had arrived shortly before us and Dad had already headed off (this was good as whenever Dad has the kids they always empty out ALL their toys and Dad never thinks to either tidy up himself or direct them to do it, so Ady had already sorted it! 😉 ), hooked back up to the internet and showed Mum some of Chris P’s photos which I had been telling her about (would link to them but that would be very vain, it’s a particularly lovely one of me and Davies I had wanted to show her!). Kids have finally both gone to sleep (it’s taken about an hour) and I’m off to crack open the wine. I will be toasting a family who have had some sad news today with my first glass and hoping it is not too long in the future before we are able to toast them with happy news.

I have to admit to noticing that the lack of ease in accessing the net in the lounge has made me slightly more inclined to interact with the kids and actually it is only a brief period of my attention they seem to want before they take themselves off and play together instead anyway, but in a better and more inspired way as a result of the positive attention in the first place. Lesson to be learnt and time to be invested a little more wisely in the future perhaps. I have also been spending evenings chatting to Ady and going to bed before the next day is already chimed which has also been very nice and I will be aiming to do a bit more regularly – but never fear I am unlikely to be disappearing off into my real life without a backwards glance just yet! 😉

Just been watching Jungle Book and listening to Baloo’s song about Bare Necessities (although I suspect it’s probably called Bear Necessities I can’t be bothered to check!) which resonated a fair bit with me. All about finding what makes you happy and enjoying it, not searching for stuff which you can’t find and therefore not feeling as though you are lacking anything.. or perhaps it’s just a big fat cartoon bear who can’t resist a good beat and is too lazy to find anything other than what drops into his big old paw – whatever, I know which version makes me feel good today :-).

So today me and The Boy went up to The Smoke 🙂 Ady was able to work from home in the end so he stayed and had a nice Father Daughter day with Tarly (although apparantly she missed me and Davies lots – missed her too actually and spent lots of time talking about her in glowing proud maternal fashion!). They dropped us at the station at 9 and we caught the train to Brighton, then got a cup of tea and a cake for me and a banana for Davies (I know, weird choice when stood at a cake shop concession on the station but who am I to argue! Rare treat to be spending two quid on tea, cake and banana anyway but what the hell, we claimed it back on expenses!) and then got on the train to London Bridge.

So nice to be just Davies and I and be able to give all his questions and observations full attention for once. We chatted about London Bridge and it falling down (inevitably!), looked at stuff out of the window and talked about that, Dreamieland and the stories and the whole TV thing. He also worked his way through the little packed lunch Ady had made for him despite it being 10am!

We arrived in London, found a taxi and hopped in, chatting about general stuff all the way and arrived at the studios to find Miranda already outside. The PR agent arrived shortly afterwards and we went in. I’ve not actually been to a TV studio before but it was exactly as I would have expected with trendy young things running around with clipboards dressed all in black, snake hipped and gelled haired camp blokes calling everyone ‘Dahrling’ and glossy receptionists who already knew who we were before we announced ourselves (which always makes me wonder exactly what description they have been given to make me so instantly recognisable 😉 )

Davies was a total superstar, talked to everyone, was effusive with his pleases and thankyous, sat and drew some beautiful pictures and then described them to everybody in great detail and was just utterly charming. I had my make up done and enjoyed being told my hair was ‘already perfect’ – it wasn’t but clearly in my role as ‘Busy Mum, Nicola Goddard’ I looked suitably harrassed with it all over the place! Also inevitably someone asked Davies how old he was and when he answered 5 he was asked ‘no school today?’. I was having my lipstick done at the time so Davies expertly fielded it himself and then I took over. I’m semi expecting a phonecall from them now actually, so interested in it were the researchers although the channel is really for pregancy to preschool so it’s probably slightly out of their remit. The make up girl was really into the idea and very quickly grasped the concepts of autonomy and child led as opposed to structured school at home.

Ironically the people who were on the show after us were a hypnotherapist who specialises in pain free labour, baby signing and all that jazz and one of her satisfied customers who had her twins with no pain relief and also just so happens to be a sleep training expert too. Both very, very into extended bfeeding, cosleeping, EC and overall APing – one has 4 girls and the other 3 boys. I didn’t speak much to them directly as lots of what they were talking about was either stuff I have a fairly good basic knowledge of or agree with in principle but have not done myself but Miranda was getting very twitchy just being in the same room as them. the funniest moment had to be when we were leaving though. The mother of three who co-sleeps all five of them in a bed (her and her DH and the 3 boys) and was by far the more evangelical about the child being part of your body pre birth and not being cast aside after birth and how society has it all wrong with our parenting seperating our children from us too early and so on stopped me as we left and asked if I was ‘Home Schooling?’ (a term I loathe for some reason anyway!) when I replied yes she said ‘oh we thought about that but decided not to do it in the end and sent them to school!’ Just tickled me somehow. 🙂

The actual interview went well – the set up was that I vaguely knew Miranda through mutual friends and use the website to read the bedtime stories to my children who love them. We pulled it off pretty well, I did my caring Mum bit, Davies butted in to show how much he knew about all the characters and Miranda did her hard sell bit too. Davies had noticed the screen to one side showing the camera angles so spent some of the time he wasn’t being talked to pulling faces at himself or waving the soft toy around but monkey infront of a mirror impressions aside he did well! 😉 It’s scheduled to go out a week on Monday I believe, I’ll update as soon as I know more and it will be on sky channel 285 – more info about the channel here.

We then headed off for lunch where the PR woman (pregnant with third child) quizzed me loads on HE (apparantly she’s been dying to meet me ever since Miranda mentioned me a while back and was expecting some awe inspiring, earth mother type – not sure whether she was disappointed or relieved at the reality! 😉 ) so the word was spread yet further. She, along with Miranda was most amazed at the idea of someone who could have a career choosing to give it up (this is Miranda’s biggest issue with the whole thing I think, but TBH I think she has always overestimated my ‘career’ and its potential anyway! 😉 ) but I think I put across that it is not a forever side effect of Home Ed and that indeed I still feel that somehow a business opportunity will arise as a result of it somehow.

Taxi back to the station and trains home again to be back for 4pm ish. The journey home was equally filled with questions and observations – Davies asked me ‘what’s the very last number?’ which I actually recall asking my Dad as a child. I think I probably gave him the same answer as I got which is that there isn’t one – you could keep counting to infinity and still keep going. Not at all sure I answered it properly and indeed I suspect there is a sort of last number named (might attempt to google it actually just to get my own head round it) but I told him that if for example the last number was a gazillion then you could carry on counting with a gazillion and one, a gazillion and two and so on… I think he grasped the idea if not the magnitude of what it meant.

I’ve been fairly ranty since getting home, partially because the laptop bloke called to say it’s pretty mashed and although I could still access the wireless network using a USB adaptor (or something) really it could still go kaput and I probably need a new motherboard. He’s getting in touch with Evesham for us to get a price on that which I will then take to the insurance company and see whether it’s worth getting fixed or if they’ll cough up for a new laptop if not… so that will be a delay one way or another anyway, and man am I feeling bereft without it!

Tomorrow we’re spending the afternoon with my Mum, which will either put me in a good or bad mood depending on how supportive a mood she is in. But let’s think positive and hope she will be angelic and maternal and lovely 🙂

Happy Birthday Claudia 🙂

Hope you’re having a wonderful day darling, lots of love from us (and some for your Mummy and Daddy too!) xxx

So you know that I haven’t been repossessed and the children posted up on ebay more than because I’ve got anything much to say.

Loads of stuff going on in cyberworld at the moment, none of which I am going to get involved in. Aside from not being emailable I am no mail on all lists anyway and will probably remain that way for a while. I know I was heavily involved in the beginning of all the crap but I am removing myself from any further part of it. I love blogging and will carry on doing so but as someone said to me recently we all have lessons to be learnt from what has gone on and mine is to stick with the friends I know and quietly withdraw from the rest. While all the playground stuff continues I have a real life to be leading, with real life grown up problems to deal with, real life family to be spending time with and real life friends to be socialising with. I am all the more aware of how ridiculous it all is given the real life traumas and problems I know several of my close friends to be going through currently. I am very aware of what a life crisis really is and what it quite clearly isn’t.This is not directed at anyone, if I have a problem with someone then they know about it directly and without audience so please no one get paranoid about anything I have put above, I just wanted to issue a general bulletin about my stance on the whole thing as I imagine somehow somewhere my name is still being trailed through the mud and it does not deserve to be. I never did do anything wrong and I still have not.

So, the laptop. Well another lesson learnt there really. Well two actually – one for me being Do Not Leave Your Laptop Balanced On The Arm Of The Sofa. Tarly’s lesson being Do Not Loll About On The Sofa When Stuff Is Balanced On The Arm Of It!

I shouted, she cried and was very very sorry (and yes it was partially her fault, although it shouldn’t have been there I had just specifically told her NOT to get on the sofa because in a moment of premonition I realised what would happen if she pulled her usual trick of leaping into my chair the moment I exited it!).

So down it fell, landing on its side. The side with the wireless network card sticking out, which very quickly was sticking out no more. The laptop itself seems fine although the card is not working and when I tried to wiggle it about the screen went all funny and it turned itself off 🙁 It is covered on the house insurance and a man is coming to collect it shortly. He has told me hopefully the connection is bent and can either be straightened out or a different method of wireless connection sorted, but worst case scenario something inside is damaged irrepairably. As I say the house insurance does cover it – although there will be an excess to pay which we can ill afford at the moment 🙁

So yesterday was a fairly crappy day really. We were home all day but instead of the delightful happy family day I had been planning we went far from that trail . We did build the city but with lots of infighting between the architect and the surveyor. I withdrew and tidied up the playroom – we cannot find the main adaptor / charger for our portable dvd player which is driving Ady insane. Did get rid of one bag for the charity shop and one bag of rubbish from there though which was good (not sure how really, we’ve not bought anything new since the last time I sorted it out so why did I not see fit to lose that stuff before?) and also uncovered at least four things for each child which have either been given as pressies before and forgotten about in the excess of previous Christmasses and a couple of things which I had bought and stashed without actually ‘giving’ to them (a really nice art set each which I think I bought before we went on holiday once and decided at the last minute to not take) so they have been put aside to wrap for Christmas 🙂 – to quote Heather environmentally friendly and economically frugal 🙂 Win, win!

Mum came over late afternoon and went through the Argos catalogue and the ELC website and I showed her the bits and pieces I had been planning to get for Tarly’s birthday and Christmas (we’d already got most of Davies’ pressies already for some reason) and she is going to get them from her instead. Not ideal as of course they won’t be ‘from us’ but at least she’ll get them and that’s what really matters.

Still going to London tomorrow although that is proving something of a headache too. I’d downloaded loads of stories to read today to Davies about Dreamieland but they are all on the illfate laptop – so we’ve had to improvise and chat about it all instead. He currently insists he’s not going to talk to the TV people anyway although he does want to go and is looking forward to it! Ady was supposed to be working from home to look after Tarly and now he probably can’t which means yet another favour asked of my Dad to be here tomorrow (taking money off him and preventing him from going out to earn it in the first place – such a great daughter! 🙁 ) and I havn’t even considered what to wear yet!

We’ve been to Tumble Tots for Tarly this morning where she did really well and we’re home for lunch, laptop collection and Dad coming over to sub me money for the train tomorrow (which I will get back at least!) and then we’ll be heading back out to Gym Bobs for Davies. The sun is shining and I am feeling positive again after a crappy day yesterday. Which of course means the TV is bound to blow up just as we settle down to watch Lost later 😉

Will blog properly tomorrow but for information, due to a mishap with the laptop I don’t have email access atm. I can access my blog and probably will do again in the morning but any emails sent to me after about midday won’t be read until the laptop is back up and running -hopefully by the end of the week.

I seem to be doing a big old life shake up at the moment. Brought on by the whole finances thing I have decided that a policy of honesty and doing what is right for me, Ady and the children is my top priority. Not sure it’s ever been anything different really but I have been a bit dragged under by real or imagined obligations which needed shaking off.

Last night I sat planning what to take to Home Ed group with the same Sunday night, back to school in the morning dread I thought I’d left behind years ago. This morning I woke up and realised that I don’t have to go to group, we don’t have to stick it out til the end of the year at all if we don’t want to. So I rang Julie to pre-warn her what I was about to do and headed off to group to tell them that it would be our (as in me, Davies and Scarlett’s) last week. As I sat there trying to pluck up the courage to say it Vickie whispered to me that her and her husband had been talking and felt it was pointless just running for the rest of the year eating into the small kitty which remains to pay for a hall which no one comes to so I told her what I was about to announce and when I did Hayley imediately said ‘well let’s just call it a day today then’. So that’s that. I started the group and I finished it 🙂

We all agreed that it would be sad to lose touch and not give the children the chance to continue the friendships so we’ve made an informal plan to meet at the local soft play every other week and maybe various other free or very cheap locations on an ‘if you’re there, you’re there’ type basis. Feel very relieved 🙂

The group, thanks to Hayley, was the best one we’ve had in a while an excellent craft idea. She’d loosely based it on Diwali and using the sticky side of self adhesive vinyl floor tiles we put a coloured card border round and then used coloured rice to create pictures. The rice was just uncooked rice with food colouring shaken in it and left to dry and we made some lovely pictues with really bright colours. Might try it at home, particularly liked the idea of the self adhesive tiles – no mess sticking is always a winner for me! 🙂 Hayley also baked some scones with the older children (Davies included) which we then ate with butter and jam and the smaller ones played with various stuff including our parachute which I bought way back last year and had never taken out of the box before. Not sure when it will have another outing out of the box really, but it went down really well with all the children and has excellent arm workour potential 😉

Back home the children have pretty much been left to their own devices this afternoon while I went through various paperwork and made some phonecalls. They dragged out a box of random toys this morning which included some rod and shapes snap together toys, the sticklebricks, some cuisenaire rods and some threading cards and they have found sufficient in there to entertain them all day.

Tomorrow I have just planned with Davies that we’re going to build a city. We’re going to use the wooden train track, the various blocks and lego to build houses and stuff, the toy cars, the plastic animals and no doubt various other stuff as we think of it. I also really really want to sort the playroom out (again!) as I know there is stuff which could go over to my parents for spare toys over there, there is stuff which could be ebayed / charity shopped and new stuff which has probably not been looked at since it was presented to them last Christmas!

Which was kind of nothing like the last one. On account of not having any parties or houseguests and only the two of us for Ady to produce a roast dinner for tonight!

We’ve spent both days at my parents house as Mum was off yesterday and so was Frazer. So we’ve been fed lovely lunches, Ady’s got to sit and watch Sky Sports with two other people who do give a damn about football results, the kids have enjoyed having additional playmates in the shape of Mum, Dad and Frazer and played the toys over there to pieces. There is a selection of stuff which we didn’t have room to keep over here and some of mine and Frazer’s old toys (playmobile, Fisher Price play people, duplo etc) and loads and loads of space to run around and put on shows and stuff over there so they’ve been in their elements.

I’ve spent most of the two days in the kitchen, drinking endless tea, enjoying the peace of not seeing the children for hours and just administering occassional cuddles when they come and demand them. I’ve been a little vague about it but we are in the middle of a bit of a financial crisis which has been a long while coming really. I won’t say any more only that hopefully it is in hand and my parents are being very helpful so a lot of this weekend has been ‘crisis talks’.

Yesterday Davies and I snuggled up with the computer for a while and I showed him some websites about Bonfire Night and the Gunpowder Plot – which ended up encompassing various other conversations including Catholics and Protestants, Parliament and cellars! Later at my parents I tried to show off and get him to re-tell them what he’d learnt. I asked him what the man had been called and he said ‘James’. No not James said I, Yes actually Mummy, King James – that was who Guy Fawkes wanted to blow up! :-). Ady and Davies spent about an hour in the garden last night watching fireworks and this morning he made loads of pictures and drawings of them and then him and Scarlett did some lego creations too. So plenty of learning through play and general chit-chat ed too.

This week is looking fairly quiet – we’ve got the ill fated WAG tomorrow – I’ve totally decided I’ve had enough and will not be continuing after Christmas – we’ve got an evening meeting on Wednesday night where I will tell the others and I would imagine that will spell the end for it really. I know Julie won’t bother anymore which only leaves 3 of them. Vickie I will arrange to see fortnightly or similar as I really like her and Davies and Scarlett really like her little boy Andrew and the other two I will stay in touch with and maybe try and set up a monthly soft play date or something. That will make our only committment Tumble Tots on a Wednesday which leaves the rest of the week free for various get togethers with friends (Ros, Ali, Vickie, Julie, Lucy, Rachel, Mel) and more time at home doing stuff which I have a bit of a hankering for at the moment anyway and certainly through the winter I think the children will enjoy. They are both showing signs of being ready for something more than unstructured play and I think some more crafts and stuff would be ideal – first project will be handmade Christmas gifts for everyone! 😉

Aside from Tumble Tots the only other thing planned for this week is a trip to London on Thursday for me and Davies. We are going to TV studios for a new Sky channel called Sky Baby to be part of an interview Miranda is doing about nightnight.com. We have to pretend to be one of the first subscribers to the stories and Davies will do his little bit about how much he loves all the characters etc. I’ve not told him yet just incase it is cancelled last minute (as these things so often seem to be with Miranda) but if we go it should be a nice little adventure and great to have a day just him and I. Miranda has also said she’ll buy us lunch which is never something to turn down 😉 and of course if the website really takes off there is always the chance of work for me too 🙂