Monday I have a job list for each of the remaining three weeks and I’ve already more or less finished this weeks :). Yesterday I spent the morning making phonecalls to notify various places of our moving date. I’ve cancelled Sky, broadband, BT, council tax, water, house insurance, TV licence, got quotes for landlord insurance and found out the procedure for final meter readings and so on.
I’d listed various things on freecycle so did some coordinating that and then dropped off a toy car to someone who wanted it but had no transport til later in the week. We nipped into town to post an ebay parcel – I’d listed a childs’ kilt without thinking about Burns night and someone had asked for a buy it now price over the weekend and if I could get it sent first class on Monday so they’d have it in time.
Back home we had lunch, I stuck several loads of pizza dough on for dinner, the kids got Davies’ bedroom ready for a sleepover and moved stuff out of the way that they didn’t want touched, I did some laundry and then we all did some playing PvZ which we have now completed (some mini games left to play) and the kids played with the Playmobile.
Em & co arrived but the kids were not hugely compatible as D&S had been home most of the day waiting for friends to arrive and were rather over excited, particularly Scarlett, whereas E&R had already come from a 24 hour visit at Alison’s and a late night so were rather less in the mood for full on craziness :(. They watched most of a film together and had dinner, then Davies and Scarlett went off for a sleepover together in Davies’ room, while Em’s 3 all slept in Tarly’s bedroom. Em and I chatted into the night 🙂
Tuesday: not such a late start as my reputation might have one believe ;). D&S woke my chatting in Davies’ room and when I checked the time I decided I might as well get up, it was about 830am. Breakfast and the kids all got dressed and went and spent time adoring chickens, D&S introduced E&R to the three hens they have taken to give a new home to. We had a chicken based hiatus mid morning when a couple of them flew over the fence into the front garden and one made it all the way across the road. They had obviously been spooked by something, I suspect a seagull had landed to eat some of the food that had been rather scattered around the place. I dashed across the road and after some comedy chicken chasing managed to herd it back across the road again, fortunately traffic stopped both ways so the chicken was able to run and I was able to chivvy it without either of us getting run over. So there you go, the chicken crossed the road to get back home again because I was chasing it. 🙂
We let them all calm down a bit and the kids played some game to do with oragutangs which they nearly fell out over as they decided the group needed a leader and I could hear Scarlett insisting it should be Davies as they would have a male leader and the others disagreeing. In the end D, S and E all wanted to be leader and one of them came up with the suggestion of a vote. E won the vote but they came down to ask us to vote too. As none of them had any sort of political manifesto or could tell us what great things they would accomplish as leaders we refused to vote 😆
The kids went back out to the chickens again and as Em wanted to get home before dark to settle chickens in we boxed them up and waved goodbye. A very nice, if very brief visit :).
We had some lunch, dropped a bike off to Tasha’s that I’d put on freecycle and she’d responded to, the kids put the bedrooms back together again and Davies did the washing up. He’s being super helpful at the moment and said he had observed how much work there is involved in having friends to stay when we had guests over new year and as he enjoys having the guests company as much as we do he feels he should pull his weight in the extra work too. Such his fathers son that boy, wish I could claim he gets his thoughtfulness and kindness from me but sadly he does not. 😉
We looked at the beach picture website Zoe had linked to and talked about doing it and a link some people had put on facebook about turning a flight of stairs into a giant piano and then they got back to their plasticine and playmobile game. Davies had gotten very upset when a plasticine model he’d made was discovered broken into five pieces in his bedroom. We can only assume it was not put up out of reach for Os and he’d gotten hold of it 🙁 A real shame as it was one he was proud of but he definitely learnt the lesson about putting stuff up high I’d been trying to get across to them yesterday afternoon.
I made the kids tea, put the chickens away who seem to have adjusted to their reduced numbers and then Ady came home. We did bad, good, learnt (since Sunday as we missed yesterday):
Davies:
Bad: Plasticine figure broken
Good: chickens have gone to a good new home
Learnt: There is a level on PvZ where you can play as Zombies
Scarlett:
Bad: Feel a bit sad about saying goodbye to chickens
Good: Mumma completed PvZ
Learnt:there is a Worldwide pebble display exhibition
Ady:
Bad: Government selling off forestry commisssion to people
Good: Good day at work
Learnt: HMS Victory is still a commissioned warship owned by the Royal Navy.
Nic:
Bad: So many cancellation charges for stopping things – phone, internet etc.
Good: Several steps closer to heading off – services cancelled, chickens rehomed, stuff freecycled etc
Learnt: Why the chicken crossed the road! 😆
We read a Ladybird version of Robinson Crusoe before bed which they enjoyed.
always smile when reading your blog. gonna miss reading updates so regularly 🙁
Comment by michelle — 27 January 2011 @ 1:00 am
Thanks for having us. Felt excited and a bit sad to be driving your chickens away. Shame the kids didnt find common ground this time.
Comment by em — 28 January 2011 @ 8:47 pm