We did sleeping til we woke up this morning. And yes we all always sleep til we wake but we don’t necessarily wake naturally.
We breakfasted, packed sandwiches and checked addresses then headed off to Brighton to do Lookering. Nine sheep all fine, the water needed topping up so Tarly did that from one of the containers on site. She asked me how long and how often we’d be doing the whole lookering thing and when I replied ongoing into the future but certainly at least once a week throughout May she was delighted :).
We left there and headed over to Olivia’s. We’ve been meaning to go at least twice before. It’s a regular weekly get together at Olivia’s house which at best we could only manage fortnightly as I work every other Thursday but I’ve long looked at and thought Davies and Scarlett would love. Today seemed equally ill-fated given we were running late and there was a road closure diversion which utterly threw my scrawled directions from google maps into disarray, let alone me not knowing the house number anyway. We drove around for a good half hour before finally happening on it. I rang Olivia to say ‘we’ve come to your house, now what number is it?’ and were there :).
They have a very cool living space but a super cool garden including fab treehouse (pretty much full size shed) which is above a trampoline for dare devil leaping onto, free ranging chickens, bottle fed lambs (aswell as gerbils and degus and a gecko inside the house) and fab features such as a mound with a concrete tunnel. Davies and Scarlett disappeared straight away and didn’t come back til I called them to go home a full 3 hours later :).
Ben (Olivia’s husband) was there doing all sorts of cool woodwork with interested parties, Magdalen (another HE mum) was there doing belt pouches with leather scraps. I made one each for Davies, Scarlett and I for fire steels and penknives. Scarlett was in her element bottle feeding the lambs twice, holding gerbils and generally soaking up the animal-tastic atmosphere. 🙂
I enjoyed sitting around chatting to various other grown ups before finally coming away just after 4pm when I was aware we’d hit serious traffic on the way home if we didn’t. We got home at 5pm having gotten slightly lost again coming out of their village and having decided to drive over the downs rather than risk the usual traffic hotspots.
Back home we were expecting ducklings as two of the eggs were pipping this morning. Not a lot of progress had been made though which has us all slightly concerned as I had timed it with precision for leaving ducklings with my Dad to look after rather than eggs still hatching…
A busy evening loading my car up ready for the weekend, Ady got the brooder ready for ducklings-to-come, the kids got their bags packed for the weekend. I cooked dinner and Ady and I watched Outnumbered (so brilliant that show). Am now feeling tired and aware of getting up for work in the morning as well as wanting to stay up to watch eggs and election results.