Was Friday really only the day before yesterday ago?

give or take an extra hour or so…

So Friday then. I worked all day. In the morning it rained really, really heavily just at the point I had to go to the bank to pay in takings. I did find a brolly from lost property to take but the bank clerk had a laugh at my expense anyway by asking if I was the ‘new girl’ being sent out in the rain.

It was Baby Rhyme Time and I had a medium sized crowd of 10 babies and 10 grown ups. I took requests and someone asked for ‘Five Currant Buns’ which I tried, and failed, to get some ‘audience participation’ for with the children calling out their names but they all just looked scared 😆

I managed to tick off another of the ‘dares list’ by changing the Senior Library Assistant’s 11am slot on the timetable to ‘see how I look in tights’ which caused general levels of hysterics 😆

The rest of the day passed in a blur of the usual checking books in and out, putting them back on shelves and other such library related stuff.

Back at home Ady had been here in the morning and done packing up the car ready for the weekend, my Mum had been here in the afternoon and my Granny had also come over to visit. Ady got home early to find Mum, Granny and the kids all sat watching Deal or No Deal 😆 Not sure what else they’d all been up to.

I chucked my change of clothes in a bag and we were off again by 530pm which was pretty good going. In order to get us and 3/5 of Salmon children in Sheffield for the 9am start of Ben’s birthday party on Saturday morning it was necessary for us to be there the night before. Katy’s Saturday morning job prevented them from managing this so we’d arranged to collect J, K and M on the way filling our car to capacity and slightly freaking both Ady and I out with the responsibility of 5 children!

We had a pretty smooth journey considering it was Friday night rush hour, M25 on the alleged busiest day of the year on the roads. When we set off satnav said 8.10, we actually arrived just after 830pm which I thought was amazingly good going. Dartford was busy and we hit a couple of other busy spots but kept moving the whole time.

Pick up complete we hit the road again and the second part of the journey was two hours and was equally as smooth. 3 DSs and 2 pairs of headphones for the dvd player were shared between the 5 children completely harmoniously with lots of collaborative playing and watching. Mostly Deal or No Deal on DS and Doctor Who on dvd. I had a very heartwarming moment when Davies, Scarlett, K and J started talking about Davies’ Doctor Who party and how cool it had been and how much they’d all enjoyed it, remembering their outfits and games they’d played. I love listening to children ‘chat’ anyway but hearing them talk about something over 2 years ago, particularly something I’d put a lot of effort into making happen was really nice to eavesdrop on :).

Ady and I had a chat about what life would have been like if we’d had a bigger family. We did only ever plan two children and they came along precisely as planned taking just 3 months to conceive each time but after we had Scarlett we did know several families with 3 or 4 children and did briefly talk about more. It was very brief as we’d always said we wanted even numbers so 3 would have meant 4. We concluded we were happy with two, decided the positives of a smaller family outweighed the positives of a larger family for us and have always been happy with that decision. I certainly have never felt broody but then I’m not big on babies but a car full of older children was actually quite nice :).

We got to Babs at 11pm, the five kids had been utter stars and remained being utter stars as J,K and M went straight to the room they were sleeping in, bid us goodnight and we didn’t see or hear any more from them. Davies and Scarlett were equally as good once we’d ironed out who was sleeping where – we had a triple sleeper bunk and a single air bed but both kids wanted to be in the proper bed and I didn’t think either Ady or I would want to be on the top bunk or the air bed so I persuaded them to share the top bunk and left them to it. They were equally as peep-free as the Fish children :).

Babs really pulled late night dining out of the bag with a steak fondue. There were chips, warm bread rolls and 3 (count ’em) home made dips all of which were delicious. Really enjoyed the meal, both as we were starving and as it was lovely :). I think we headed to bed about 130am which was early for us really but we were conscious of an early start in the morning and frankly knackered from a long day at work and a second shift of driving halfway up the country afterwards.

Saturday Neither Ady or I had slept well – I don’t like the claustrophobic feeling of bunk beds, both children are quite joisy sleepers and I always sleep badly when fretting about getting up on time in the morning. I was brought a cup of tea by Babs though and missed out on the bedlam that was feeding all those children croissants and orange juice downstairs before packing them into the two Touran convoy and waving off Chris and Ady to Laserquest. They didn’t have a smooth run of it as they both struggled to find both the place itself and anywhere to park but after a slight delay they were all in and laserquesting to their hearts content. Apparently it was fab, both my two loved it and would definitely go again.

Babs and I drank tea, ate crossiants, chatted at length (which was lovely, I could spent weeks on end with Barbara and never run out of conversation, wish we lived closed and could just hang out more),we did some maths, talked parenting and Home Ed and finally did what we were actually left behind to do and peeled and chopped some veg, cooked some pizzas and set the table up ready for the onslaught of 11 children hungry from questing with lasers.

Food was consumed, ice cream was delivered and birthday cake was candled, sung to, blown out and eaten up.

Some of the children left and the remaining ones either played some game which must have involved jumping off the bed given the thudding it created downstairs (that’d be Rachael and Scarlett then) or sat and watched Doctor Who (that’d be everyone else including Ady, Chris and I), then Babs lured me away with the promise of cider and it wasn’t long before Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex arrived so Kirsty joined Babs and I, James joined Chris and Ady in the lounge to watch football and the kids joined the rest of the kids inside and out being rowdy or quiet depending on whether they were playing with sticks in the garden or DSs in the bedrooms. The reunion between Alex and Scarlett was touching and emotional ;).

We left at 5pm as my parents weren’t around to deal with the cats and chickens this morning so we wanted to get back to be home to do it ourselves. We were also conscious of the drive and a second late night for the kids plus it meant we vacated a space for the remaining half of the Salmon family, who sadly didnt make it there before we left but I imagine probably crossed us on the other side of the M1 at some point along our way.

The drive home was uneventful and the satnav predicted 4 hours although we prolonged it by stopping at Sainsburys for some food supplies so arrived home at 930pm. We decided to put all the clocks back an hour there and then to make ourselves feel better 😆 The kids had some toast and then went off to bed, we had a curry, Ady went to bed, I tried to stay up and blog and watch the repeat of X Factor but fell asleep over my laptop and woke up at 2am very cross with myself :(. Staggered to bed, fell asleep straight away and managed to forget to take my contact lenses out so woke this morning with that ‘I’m cured!’ moment of believing in miracles and then suffered cloudy vision for the rest of the day!

Sunday A lovely sunny day here today. Davies and Ady spent some time looking at Xbox games on ebay and amazon while Scarlett did some painting. She’s really into her painting at the moment and her typical subject matter is animals. I remembered we had a book showing how to draw various things step by step which I thought was on Davies’ bookcase. He went off to look but came back saying he couldn’t find it which led me to peer at all the bookcases in the house getting increasingly pissed off at the state of all of them. A task for the coming week I feel as it’s still bugging me now. She did some very good giraffes, rhinos and pelicans though. I think I need to pick up on this a bit really as I know when Davies showed inclinations towards such things I was very hands on about it and suspect I don’t pick up as quickly with Scarlett. Which doesn’t seem to have done any harm it has to be said and I believe her motivation is strong enough with her alone but I don’t want to miss a chance to encourage or assist.

I needed to take the rather overflowing kitchen waste to the composter at the allotment and we’ve been rather neglectful of the plot of late so I wanted to cast an eye over it too plus we needed something to roast for dinner so Scarlett and I headed off out. Ady spent some time with the chickens – they need new chipped bark but it always slighty freaks them out so we decided to rake up half of the existing bark to the area we have to walk on and leave the other half to dirt for now. We don’t need to walk on it and the chickens prefer it as they can scratch around for worms and bugs in it. All seems to be well in the coop with no real politics happening in there at the moment. The new chicks seem to be fitting in just fine and the hens all seem nice with the second cockerel seeming as good natured as the first. He’s yet to start crowing though so that could be a deal breaker for him depending on pitch and frequency.

Davies had delcared it a pj day for him and spent most of it gaming of some description.

The allotment was fine, I’ll blog about that in the relevant place soon. Scarlett and I headed off on a mission for free range chicken. My preferred supermarket is probably Co-Op as I like their ethics and they actively promote British Food and Fair Trade so we went there first. I did get some bargains on fruit and veg but no free range chickens. We tried Asda next but no f/r there either 🙁 So I dropped Scarlett back home and headed to Sainsburys for the chicken.

Back home again Scarlett a carried on with her painting, Davies went to sort out his bookcase (and did a fine job of both that and tidying up his room a bit too) and Ady tackled the playroom, specifically the cupboard under the stairs. I also filed some paperwork and got out my car insurance documents as my windscreen has an ever increasing crack in it which needs replacing before the MOT in December so I wanted to check the excess for that (£60 boo 🙁 ).

I decided to cook dinner and while I was in the kitchen for a couple of hours poured myself a glass of wine and decided to make full use of the oven being on. I found some apples in the fruit bowl that were dying and beyond eating so grated them for the basis of mincemeat for mincepies and muffins at Christmas. I then make two Christmas cakes and called everyone in the kitchen to have a stir and make a wish as it out tradition. We’ve been talking again about making rather than buying bread so I decided to bake a loaf (we don’t have a breadmaker and are trying to decide if buying one is a worthwhile investment so decided we’d bake bread for a while and see if it gets eaten / moaned about). Dinner was delicious – I catered for everyone’s whims so we had roast chicken, roast and mashed potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots, peas, sweetcorn and broccoli, stuffing, yorkshire puddings, gravy and cranberry sauce. All four plates contained different combinations :). All four were empty at the end and everyone had loads of vegetables too :).

We ate dinner while watching episodes 1-4 of which we all really enjoyed. We have disc 2 to watch another time.

Then it was time for Total Wipeout which I can’t stand so I went off to have a bath. Davies and I had an interesting conversation about things needing to educate, amuse or entertain and if they didn’t achieve that then they were of no use and how that was an individual, subjective thing. I didn’t tell him the phrase ‘neither use nor ornament’ but I should have done as he’d told me the definition of it all by himself.

The kids went to bed, I watched X Factor (which many, including residents of my own household deem as tripe as Total Wipeout ;)). I think an early night is in order for me too.