Soft play!
As part of my One Event A Month for local HEors today was a meet up at the local soft play place. I’d negotiated discount and we had a fair few people expected to come along although they all seemed to have 3 year olds!
Scarlett came and assisted me in getting a beef stew in the slow cooker (although I suspect more carrots were finding their way into her mouth than the crock pot and her stock cube sprinkling was a bit random), everyone was dressed and breakfasted with Davies having seconds of cereal while Tarly packed her knitty kitty rucksack full of two purses full of pennies that she insisted she wanted to bring along. As an aside I’m really pleased with the rucksack, very Tarly 🙂
I was planning on drinking a cup of tea and having a quick last minute check of my emails but the doorbell rang and it was my Dad. He wanted to borrow a petrol can (which I couldn’t find) and would probably have happily settled in for the morning but after a coffee and a chat with the kids (Davies told him all about something to do with Star Wars, Scarlett told him all about swimming lessons on Tuesday) we all left together which made us late.
We got to soft play and 3 lots of people were already there – one had gone in and the other two were waiting for us to arrive. Lucy and The Rs came, as did Tasha, Toby and Vinnie and we identified another family there too.
We had a nice few hours actually. Davies and Scarlett enjoyed it – playing with The Rs, Toby and an 11 year old boy. Aside from one brief spat which Tarly chose to run to me over rather than deal with by herself I didn’t really see them. They dealt really well with a little boy who was being really annoying to them and pinching and hitting them by going to see his mother. Unfortunately she chose not to deal quite so well with it by telling them off for telling tales 😯 – fortunately I didn’t learn about that until after the event as I may well have not been so calm about that. Grrr. Davies also apparently had a long chat with one of the members of staff about why they weren’t in school. He told me ‘I told her all about Home Education and how it all works and she thought it sounded really cool’ :).
We had lunch and Davies sat with Tasha and Toby, Tarly sat on the next table with me and a woman called Ina and her daughter. They were really nice and we’ve planned to meet up with them again. The children won’t necessarily get anything out of each other but Ina and I hit it off and she was interesting.
We left at about 3pm and walked down to the fabric shop to get some buttons for Tarly’s bag. While in there Davies asked for some material to make a cudddly Ewok. He chose some that was £30 a metre so I talked him down from that and we chose some felt instead.
Back at home we made the chocolate orange cupcakes they’d wanted to make yesterday and we’d got the ingredients for but not quite managed. It was a very collaborative effort, although I later iced them with chocolate orange buttercream. They are delicious :).
We then had a bit of a hiatus while I had a grumpy half an hour where I just wanted to be left alone to send a few emails and drink a cup of tea in peace, while Tarly wanted to show me every single frame of a DS game she was playing and Davies was nagging me to do something with him. Eventually I shouted and order was restored for a while. Davies got out some drawing stuff to make a picture of an Ewok to copy and Tarly managed to play DS quietly.
They had their dinner and ate two cakes each by which time I had calmed down and sent my emails.
Davies really wanted to do his Ewok and I’d said I was keen to get on with my knitting so he said he’d like to learn how to do it himself then. I helped him with the design and copied his picture onto the felt and cut it out. Next time I’d let him do that himself actually. I showed him a couple of types of stitch and we agreed on the best one then I threaded a needle for him and off he went.
I was actually really surprised at how fast and neat he was as he is not terribly coordinated with his hands. He turns out amazing art work but has only recently mastered using scissors with one hand so I thought sewing would prove quite tricky – not so! He’s asking for his own sewing kit now and claims to love it 🙂
He spent some time showing Scarlett how to do it and letting her have a go at a few stitches and then he sat on my lap and carried on sewing while we read some more chapters of Humphrey. Ady arrived home in the middle.
They went to bed, Davies appearing back downstairs a while afterwards with the Ewok sewn most of the way round so we turned it right side out and he’s going to stuff it tomorrow and then I’ll help him with finishing off and ‘decorating’ it to add features.
Bath, dumpling making (no tossing when at home, I save that for camp ;)), some Victorian Farm watching followed by the film Happy-go-lucky which I’ve really enjoyed (A went off to bed a while ago but liked what he did watch).