One word? When seven would do…

Sorry Joyce, I left you to cope with it single handed yesterday. In my defense there was a blog post started but it was interrupted by vomit which along with the dog ate it, I had my period and I was at my Granny’s funeral surely qualifies as a proper excuse?

So yesterdat then… we spent some time at our rather neglected allotment. In fairness there are no crops being neglected as such, just general tidiness. I won’t blog about what’s happening up there over here I’ll do it over there instead. To be fair Ady’s was the conscience that was prickling the most and he was motivated more by the excellent view of Shoreham airport from which the annual RAFA airshow was happening this weekend than woe on behalf of the carrots!

We had a fairly slack morning for getting up and finally were ready to go at about 11am. Davies was still sitting on my lap – more about observations Post Camp (PC) later – and decided he wanted to walk up to the allotment, while Scarlett was dressed and raring to go with Ady in the car. In the end we actually left at exactly the same time – them in the car with picnic and us walking. I suspect Davies wanted some one to one time with me. He decided to read every word we came across on the way and surprised me with how good his reading is getting. His spelling is still on the ‘creative’ side but he really seems to have taken to reading. He tells me he did some practising with stuff last week while at camp!

We talked about various things along the walk, which is about half an hour I suppose (nearly 2 miles but we walked quick) and it was nice to have my boy back and still my boy if that makes sense.

Up at the allotment the kids varied between doing stuff on their plots, sitting under umbrellas to shelter from the sun, watching the planes, heading off into the woods and fields a couple of times for ‘adventures’ and making friends with the various wildlife. Ady and I did loads of weed clearing and we all paused to watch the impressive planes coming over every now and then. I managed to get a narrow strip of sunburn in the gap that showed between the top of my jeans and the bottom of my t shirt when I was bent over weeding! 😆

At about 315pm Davies and I headed off to the newly opened Asda to get some meat for a roast dinner. We had £10 and ended up with 8pence change as we got free range chicken, reduced carrots and bread and a notepad and some fancy pens each for the kids from the back to school range. They now each have an ‘Adventure book’ in which they draw, write notes and stick things in from their various adventures :).

We went back to collect Ady and Scarlett from the allotment and ended up going back in to watch the vulcan as it came over before heading for home.

The kids played in the garden doing stuff with their adventure books, Ady cooked dinner and I spent some time with the chickens. I’ve been enjoying watching some old photos on my old laptop recently and whilst I suspect they are already on flickr somewhere they are not in sets or tagged so I re-uploaded some of them at the same time as copying them onto our new external harddrive. So now you can all enjoy walking through memory lane with me just by looking at my flickrstream of when Scarlett and Davies both had short hair and non-grass stained clothes, my hair was longer and my eyes had less lines around them and the backdrops were all northern.

My parents appeared while the children were in the bath and stayed awhile. We did offer to split our dinner but they’d not long eaten. It all seemed fairly sociable but they did beat a rather hasty exit – not sure why really. We had dessert (the crumble S and I made on Friday) and finally the children went to bed. Scarlett took a fair while to get to sleep but Davies really struggled which I was surprised about given the late night on Saturday. He asked me to sit with him for a while at about 11pm which I did and then as Ady went up to bed around midnight he came downstairs complaining of a stomach ache. He was in the loo for ages and then suddenly called me to say he’d been sick.

Thankfully my role was limited to some back rubbing and chucking some bleach down after it – despite being very rarely ill (as in vomit ill) both Davies and Scarlett are very good at self management in that respect and I’ve only ever had to flush toilets or empty bowls, unlike my poor Dad who often had to scrub carpets. My mum is very, very vomit phobic so Dad always had to deal with us being sick when we were little. I suspect her phobia rubbed off actually and made us deny we were feeling sick until it was too late to make it to the bathroom, hence lots of hallway accidents. I’ve always tried to be very relaxed about sick with my kids and they are both fine with it when it does happen, actually probably far better than I am.

Davies was fine afterwards although a bit pale and wobbly and wanted to be with me so we went up to bed. I woke Ady and gave him options about where to sleep (in bed with Davies and I but running the risk of infection / disturbed night, in bed with just Davies although Davies wanted me or taking his pillow and going to Davies’ room which was his best bet for sleep really) – he wisely evacuated our bed for Davies’ and Davies was soon asleep peacefully. He slept right through and is fine today so it must have been too much sun / accumulation of not enough sleep / too much apple and blackberry crumble / something else not very serious.

Today was supposed to be the return visit of our new friends coming to our house but I emailed her last night to say Davies was unwell and even if it proved not to be a contagious bug he was probably best off having a quiet day at home to rest and recover so we’ve rearranged for later in the week.

Davies was actually up fairly bright and early at 8am. I chatted to him awhile and then turned over and went back to sleep for a bit. When I got up and the kids had breakfasted we debated what to do with the day. Davies was fine, happy to go out for a bit and as both of them were claiming to need new crocs