One word? When seven would do…

First things first I’d like to say a very big indeed THANK YOU to Bob for getting my blog back. I’m not at all sure you know how much it means Bob but let me assure you it is a big deal and I am hugely grateful :). Thanks also to Chris P for various additional tech support during my 48 hours in the dark place of no blog too. Top men, both of you xx

So, other than blog related angst what else have we been up to since Wednesday then? Well…

Thursday was a working day for me. It was nice to be back after 2 weeks away, very busy and chaotic. There is the final flurry of SRG attendees, most with their last 2 books of the challenge but a few on the 3rd and 4th books. This year has been a record year both for people signing up to do the challenge but also for people completing it, which quite aside from my opinions on the initiative generally is still a good and positive thing.

I’m feeling very sorry for my direct boss at the moment as she has had a pretty tough year at work (and at home too actually which I’m sure hasn’t helped) with a parade of people leaving, new people starting and needing training, loads of relief staff to deal with, several really crap volunteers for the SRG and very little support from above. It makes me shudder to remember how I struggled in several of my jobs under similar conditions and feel glad that I don’t have to deal with that level of responsibility at work any more. I’m not at all sure I’d manage it so well now and I’d definitely have problems with not losing my temper if I was back under that sort of pressure.

Ady was at home in the morning with Davies and Scarlett and they turned the downstairs of the house into a shop, which was all still set up when I got home. There were magazines displayed on the stairs, a paying and bagging area (complete with toy till and a load of cloth shopping bags) on the table in the playroom, a gaming area on the lounge windowsill with DSs, DS games and Top Trumps (we have several sets), a greetings card section on the fireplace complete with ‘to a cool 7 year old’, ‘It’s fun to be 4’ and ‘now you are 2’ cards they’d dug up from various places. The dolls houses had been turned into shelving units for pretend playfood and there had possibly been more that had been tidied up before I got home.

My Mum was here in the afternoon and she and Davies had played draughts while Scarlett played with her Barbie laptop. We got it at a carboot sale a couple of years ago for £2 because Davies had a similar one (I think they are V tech or something similar, proper screens and keyboards, a mouse and a load of preset games with an educational slant). She has been playing with it a lot lately and I suspect she is teaching herself to read and spell with it as I often hear it saying ‘well done’ or ‘great job’ to her in it’s American accent. I’ve always thought Scarlett will just suddenly announce she can read one day without any input from me and I think Barbie might help her 😆

I’d brought home masses of books – 2 weeks worth of reserved books, films and cds had trickled in but I’d also gone through the books for sale trolley and hand picked 30 of them to bring home too. And that was me being reserved and choosy! I had a great selection of mostly reference, all junior books including a couple of biographies, one being Helen Keller who I remember learning about at school when I was about six, some about weather and natural disasters which will go well with the various Raging Planet dvds we also have at the moment about earthquakes and tornadoes. There were various science and nature ones including a book we fairly recently borrowed all about British Mammals and one about Big Cats which Scarlett fell on in delight :).

We looked at books, they had tea, I killed my blog…

Ady had gone up to London for a meeting in the afternoon so was home late and they were in bed but far from asleep when he finally got home.

Friday We went to Pulborough Brooks with Lucy and The Rs. We were later arriving than planned due to a very long and very disorganised queue for petrol at Sainsburys. People are idiots when faced with coordinating a queue aren’t they, especially when great big metal lumps of cars are involved :rolls:

We had a really good walk round, all the children had spotter sheets and we chatted loads about the various things we saw. Davies came over very nature spotting serious and both girls got loads out of it too. Richard did remarkably well but didn’t quite stave off tiredness or hunger for as long as the rest of us. They all handed in their sheets and got a pack of RSPB stuff in return then we had our picnic lunch in the play area.

They all played really well for another couple of hours, teaming up with another few children in there for a game for a while and then going back to playing tag together again. I booked us into a Halloween event there and Davies and Scarlett are joining the Young Wildlife Explorers group there from September which meets once a month for nature related games, crafts and activities. I think they’ll get a lot out of that. I like Pulborough Brooks lots; it’s a nice size to walk round easily, the visitor centre is staffed with volunteers who are friendly, helpful and love to chat and share their knowledge, they are always great with the children. It is pretty much all weather suitable providing you have the right clothes and shoes and the changes of the seasons are really clearly marked through the differing landscape and wildlife. We get a lot out of our less than a fiver a month membership to the RSPB :).

We came home and Lucy and The Rs came in for coffee and prolonged playing which inevitably wasn’t as harmonious as they had been playing while we were out but it was a lovely day which we all enjoyed lots. 🙂

Lots of bedtime stories – they both kept begging for just one more and I kept giving in and then Davies and Scarlett went to bed. Ady and I had a late dinner in honour of it being Friday night and got cheerily inebriated before eating and watched St Trinians. I was expecting to hate it but actually quite liked it. It reminded me of Summerhill. Ady said we must be sure never to let Scarlett see it as she will be desperate to go to school if she thinks that’s what it would be like! 😆

Saturday
I worked this morning. It was quiet and I felt old as I was working alongside two girls who got their GCSE and A level results this week. Both are super intelligent and got A and A* for everything. One of them said she’d heard they results were the best this year since 1989 and I was saying I thought that must have been the first year of GCSEs when they took over from O Levels because I did mine in 1990 and I was sure we were the second year to take them. She replied ‘you’re asking the wrong people – I was 2 in 1989!!!!’ 😆

Ady and the children had been tidying the playroom. They’d apparently been debating going to a car boot sale and then decided to get rid of stuff from our house rather than add to our crap volumes by buying stuff from someone else’s house 😆 Very commendable! When I got home Ady carried on and tidied out all the kitchen cupboards, making room for a Kenwood Chef we have had for years and never used (and I suspect still won’t but at least it’s getting an airing ;)) and then tackled the understairs cupboard.

Davies and Scarlett sat side by side on Ady’s laptop and my old laptop having a Zoombini fest. Scarlett calls them ‘Ribenos’ which is what she also calls albinos. Davies sat and played his game and oversaw hers – she was playing the one with the characters (Nerfs?) who you have to feed and they say things like ‘nobody here wants milk’ and ‘the people eating fish are not sitting next to the people who want a sandwich’ – it was very interesting listening to Davies explaining logic and elimination to Scarlett. He then played on Blobs for a while which was a birthday present (last year, year before?) from Ali.

Davies then decided to take an old camera to pieces and as we had two old cameras Scarlett decided to do the same.Inspired by Bob, who was I believe inspired in turn by someone else we’re trying to let the children loose on old not working technology to take it apart, see what’s inside and maybe get some understanding of how things work. We took an old mobile phone apart a few weeks ago and it really is fascinating seeing what happens inside behind the scenes when you press buttons on the outside. The cameras were even more full of interesting looking bits including screen, lense and loads of PCBs. Davies managed to put the casing back together on his which was no mean feat as it sprung apart when the screws came out. Scarlett managed to cut her thumb on one of the sharp edges on hers but was very cheerful about it.

Then Davies got out the x box dance mat and had some fun using it as a controller to play a W&G game – each square is also a button so you can technically dance around and control things on the xbox – very energetic :). That degenerated into a game of Shrek superparty which had them getting stressy with each other so I chucked them in the garden to play for 15 minutes while Ady cooked their tea.

We watched X Factor and then they went to bed, which meant for a late bath and dinner for us again but I don’t care about any of that because I’ve got my blog back! 🙂