A very lazy morning at the campsite with showers all round, watching dvds, online stuff and various other sitting in the van type stuff. The weather has truly turned and it has rained all day today with added blustery wind just to prove the point. We even had a couple of bursts of thunder and lightning in the night.
At 3pm we declared it time to head off so with everything fully charged we left, collecting our clean washing from the garage attached to the campsite on the way. I just grabbed it and shoved it in the van quick as it was pouring with rain but noticed once we stopped that although it is indeed clean and dry it also has the unmistakable aroma of cigarette smoke. Yuck! The worst affected is a fleecy sleepsuit of Scarlett’s, it seems to have soaked right in, there is no way she can wear that again until it has been rewashed :(. I’ve seperated all the stuff that didn’t smell and put that away but all the tainted stuff is now stashed seperately with sheets of tumble drier fabric conditioner inbetween which will hopefully air the smell out.
We drove about 15 miles before finding a suitable layby and then spent ages getting the van level including a rather dramatic roll over and off the chocks by Ady who was trying to do it by himself because I was ranting about the smelly washing and sorting that out. I really yelled at him and so then had to deal with him feeling crap about himself too. Sigh.
I got dinner on and then helped Ady find a fix for his phone camera which was not working properly (thanks doctor google, it turned out to be the geotagging thingie trying to find his location and failing so not taking a picture). It was incredibly cold in the van, I even put socks on and the first fall of snow is now covering the very tops of the high peaks around us. So straight away after dinner we all got into pjs, put the bed down and sat in sleeping bags drinking hot chocolate. It was like a giant sleepover 🙂 We have thermal underwear, hot water bottles and many more layers of clothing to put on before we start to fret about temperature too much, I suspect the condensation will prove more of an issue than the actual cold.
Davies and Scarlett have decided Scarlett is going to learn to read and Davies is going to teach her which is fine by me. I was just starting to edge towards fretting about her and reading. She will be nine in a matter of weeks now and thus far has shown no interest at all, infact had been utterly resistant to the very idea. She appears to be excellent at blending and working out what words say, less confident which what sounds each letter makes, the total opposite to what Davies was. He had all the sounds sorted by used to do that ‘ker ah tuh, ker ah tuh, dog?’ thing. He does now appear to be fairly fluently reading which allows me to rest a little easier that our approach does work given time and hands off. Would be nice if Scarlett hit the end of this year with some interest in reading though and a bit of ability.
So the kids did a few pages of a Dora book we happen to have in the van and then I read them a couple of short stories from an anthology of funny tales from various childrens authors we picked up at a charity shop.
Now the weather has changed and we have run out of money I guess the days may pass a little slower living in Willow and I don’t want the end of this bit to feel boring or rubbish so I’m hoping we’ll find somewhere to have a walk tomorrow.