Rahh!

I am finally feeling better! 🙂 🙂

This morning we whizzed into town to go to the bank only to find it closed 🙁 which means we need to do that on Monday instead. We popped to Iceland (where Mum’s go apparently :roll:) to get some shove in the oven food for NY Eve when we plan to eat lots, drink lots, let the children stay up til they fall unconcious wherever they are and drunkenly stagger outside around midnight to ooh and ahh over the neigbours fireworks. We also had a quick charity shop perusal and found a 3d Rubiks cube style Bart Simpson puzzle thing for Davies for 79pence. Home via Woolworths where we swapped a Disney Friends DS game that came for a tenner with Tarly’s pink DS so was worth buying but neither of the children were remotely interested in owning, for a Brain Training game for us :). Having scoffed at adults who have DSs in the past (and would still find myself totally unable to fork out a hundred quid for one for myself when I can swipe the kids’) I have to concede to understanding the appeal a bit ;). I think it would wear off fairly quick though, I have a short attention span for such things.

A speedy lunch and we were off out again to meet Chris and Julie, Jack and Maisie for a Winter Walk (UK) in our favourite woods. It is a rather different matter when accompanied by Ady and Chris, well specifically Chris actually as the children (his) are not really allowed out of his sight without being loudly summonded back every few minutes. It’s a very safe walk that the four children have been doing very regularly for years, there are no roads, no cars, no danger of pedophile abductions and frankly other than tripping over a tree root or meeting an over friendly dog there are very few risks so we tend to follow behind the children at a fairly leisurely pace when Julie and I go. They were late so we walked on to the duck pond and waited for them there before walking on. The males of their half of the Goddards were on poor form generally with Jack wailing for much of the walk about not wanting to go in the direction that the other three children had already run off in, crying at length when he fell over, not because he was injured by because he had got dirty knees (now I’m a slave to my laundry but even I wouldn’t shed tears over that one ;)) and Chris being stroppy which I later learnt may well have been for my benefit as I apparently upset him last weekend in proclaiming his mother a ‘Crap Mother’ when responding to her request, through him, to be allowed to buy Davies and Scarlett Christmas gifts. Julie fed me this information in hushed tones so defended my stance (given the admittedly limited evidence I have and my own husbands opinion I would gauge her to be a crap mother. But to be fair I don’t much care what sort of mother she is, I am not prepared to suddenly introduce a grandparent to D and S who may well turn out to fail them at the ages they are now. I am openly selfish about the people I choose to have in my / our life / lives and will only tolerate those who we gain positive effects from spending time with. My own relationships follow that pattern and all the while I am the one choosing who Davies and Scarlett spend time with so will theirs. Plenty of time for self-destructive relationships when they are having tortured teen phases :lol:).

Julie and I managed lots of nice chats though including some soul searching stuff for her about her NHS midwife – Jack and Maisie were a home birth with Mary Cronk so from a very radical first birth, with twins, at home with an independant midwife she is rather struggling with the expected difference in NHS care. In particular her stance on scans and other routine stuff (which I support if I don’t necessary agree with) is already causing some friction. Hopefully she will be able to get her head round it all and come to some sort of compromise that doesn’t involve her feeling she is not getting the pregnancy and childbirth she wants or having to spend thousands of pounds they don’t have on independant midwife care.

We went up to the pony they have part loan on after that as Julie needed to feed and clean up her field. Jack stayed in the car with Chris and Ady but Maisie, Scarlett and Davies came down with Julie and I. The appeal of the pony waned in comparison to that of the muck heap however so they spent a very happy half hour clambering to the top of that and jumping down again. They also found a pile of discarded sheeps wool which was great fun to leap in too. They would so love farm life those children :).

On the way home we stopped to take some photos of Arundel Castle at Davies’ request so he can do some paintings of them – he wanted lots of sky in the photos so I managed to accomodate that too. They were both in the car trouser, shoe and sock-less (infact Davies’ jeans which were old anyway, went straight in the bin when we got home) so were plonked in the bath when we got home, followed by hot chocolate (to drink, not to be plonked into), tea and telly. They both stayed up to watch Grand Designs with me after a church conversion episode caught all our eyes before they went off to bed.

Although I had a bad nights sleep with lots of coughing I feel way better today which is good, I’ve been fed up with feeling crap.