Everyone up early today in honour of the MTP returning to finish off the boiler at an indisclosed time ‘after 9ish’, which turned out to be 930.
MTP did his thing which included drinking tea, a spot of tradesman style flirting (always well received ;)), finishing off the brickwork and most importantly making hot water come out of the hot taps and heat radiate from the radiators. Oh how I love him. Still not sure of the final cost and he has to come back next week to do something – once the heat had come back I stopped listening really – but he’ll sort out money with Dad and we’ll start paying Dad back accordingly.
I feel like a cat stretched out infront of a fire, you could smell the air heating back up in the house and the playroom which had been positively arctic as we’d not bothered to try and heat it at all is now part of the house again rather than a sort of cordoned off zone.
Davies spent a lot of the morning on his new-to-him x box games that Ady picked up 3 for a tenner yesterday while Scarlett and I decorated a little box from a kit of Arabic art. Well I say we, I mean she rapidly lost interest and I did most of it while she sat next to me playing her DS actually :lol:. Then they swapped over and Tarly played her Barbie horse x box game which always makes her really bad tempered, while I read the first 4 chapters of Great Glass Elevator to Davies. I can very clearly recollect reading that book myself for the first time and it felt quite strange both to be reading it out loud (kept tripping over all the Grandmas and Grandpas Georges, Georginas, Joes and Jospehines) and sharing it with someone.
MTP left and the kids had some lunch. In celebration of the hot running water and in getting slightly carried away with putting all the various pots and pans and cook books and other stuff we’d cleared from around the boiler back again I cleared out the food cupboards, washed down the shelves, got rid of some stuff and tidied up. I am quite embarrassingly chuffed with decanting all the stock cubes into an old pickled onion jar aswell as slightly disappointed I didn’t have equal amounts of veg., chicken and beef cubes to make the traffic light pattern I’d been planning 😆 I also dealt with the five rapidly dying bananas by making some (very unsuccessful) banana and nut bread in the breadmaker and some rather more successful banana and choc chip cupcakes to which I added a handful of scrapings from the tablet I made that have been in the fridge in a bag waiting for their chance to sweeten something as they were too much just crumbs to make it into the box to be eaten at the time. The results of that were delicious and more than made up for the bread.
Davies and Scarlett played with the toy animals while I did that and watched various stuff on cbbc – at one point I heard The Chuckle Brothers drifting through into the kitchen and was pleased not to actually be in the room. The Chuckle Brothers eh, what Trevor and Simon could have been… 😆
The kids had tea, followed by a very long bath and hairwash followed by stories – the second half of Magic Finger and most of which I stopped under the guise of coughing too much to carry on with when I reakised we were coming to a sad bit that wouldn’t be great just before bedtime for Scarlett at the moment. Will carrry on reading in the daytime tomorrow when we can talk it over and follow up with something cheerier to take her mind off it before bed. They were enthralled though – Morpurgo is amazing. I love how he never dumbs down his wording but the images are so vivid not knowing the meaning of each individual word is irrelevant, rather like looking at a beautiful painting and not needing to know the colour of the sun is called ‘burnt ochre’ as the feeling and the atmosphere created is enough to lift you above that. I remember half hearing Michelle reading to Chloe across a camping field and despite not being near enough to make out the words I knew she was reading Morpurgo just by the pattern and rhythm of the words.
As an aside I’m currently reading which is by no means without it’s faults but I am enjoying nonetheless as many of his basic philosophies are in line with mine. Worth a read if you happen upon a copy I would say.
We were supposed to be hosting the regular local Home Ed grown ups meeting tonight but I have postponed it to next Friday, knowing there would be far too much languishing in hot baths, putting the kitchen back together and enjoying sitting around without wearing coats indoors to be entertaining people as well.
Coughing continues and I have little or no hope of not being joined in bed by Scarlett at some point ‘current catchphrase ‘I just want my Mumma!’ but hey,it’s warm! 🙂
Glad to hear you have heat and hot water. Putting *fudge* in *cake* is almost obscene and I must try it.
Comment by Allie — 31 January 2010 @ 12:32 am
Hurrah to heat and hot water!
That’s a MOrpurgo we’ve not read. We do have “Running Wild” that C bought with birthday money on her shopping trip with Dad and Josie the other week. I’m not allowed to read it first and she’s working through these bloomin Heartlands books still. :-(.
If I could keep secrets I would read it secretly but I’m a bit crap at that.
Comment by Michelle — 31 January 2010 @ 9:47 pm