Month: June 2008

Trying

No chance of catching up with all the weeks I’ve missed – I can’t remember what we did, although I should have kept records because I’m sure some of it was important, fun or useful!
Last Friday should have been a choir workshop, for which we had cancelled Friday Club, but unfortunately the teacher was ill 🙁 Since the room was booked anyway and we had planned to have lunch afterwards and do goodbyes for Susan and K, Gina suggested that we lead a singing session anyway, so she did piano and boomwhackers (not at the same time!) and I did singing and it was fun, if not exactly the workshop we had hoped for. The children made rice shakers too (ingeniously out of toilet roll tubes stapled shut at one end, then half filled, rotated through 90 degrees and stapled at the other end) and we used Gina’s wrap and mine for them to sit on so that we could do rounds with it being obvious where the split was 🙂 I need to sing more, I think; my voice is shamefully rusty 🙁
Afterwards we stayed and played for much of the afternoon 🙂

Saturday had lots of things we could have done and somehow we ended up not doing anything much. I went to Body Combat, we didn’t go to Strawberry Fair, we gave the Cirque Surreal a miss, the waste treatment centre open day appealed but not enough to tempt us out… I got a bit of sewing done and we pottered generally, ready for a busy day on Sunday (as blogged by Bob).

Monday was another pottering kind of day, which should have been a chance to get the house straight but actually just meant lots of washing (making the most of a good drying day) and then an afternoon in the garden, where the children made water squirters with their yoghurt tubes and generally had fun – pics and videos on flickr 😀 We also read some Asterix in French; we’re working our way through La Rose et le Glaive. I’ve been buying lots of French resources recently – I think Latin is going to take a break for a bit (it hasn’t happened for a while anyway for one reason or another) and then start again in September and in the meantime I’m going to work on getting the French going a bit more, hopefully setting up two distinct groups even if they end up working together some of the time. There are a couple of older boys who are interested and may be at Tots fortnightly so I think we’ll try a gentle pre-GCSE class with them and the Js on those weeks and see how it goes.

Tuesday was swimming, with a new teacher. She was there last week and K liked her, but J didn’t go in as he was still poorly/recovering so this was the first “normal” week with her. She got in the water with them, which I much prefer. K really likes her; she pushes them more than the last teacher (already) and he’s happy with this, but predictably J complained about her. He tried to get away with half-heartedly doing things, as he used to, and she called him on it – he was not impressed! I think it will do him good 🙂 Aware that it was Susan and K’s last session for a while we all went in, although A was a bit hungry and grumpy (she fell asleep in the car on the way and had to be woken to go in) so didn’t get as much out of it as I’d hoped. We were early as we’d tried to go to coffee morning at church on the way, only to find it wasn’t on this week 🙁 so had eaten lunch in the church car park (instead of the nice cheese scones we’d been anticipating) which meant we didn’t have any lunch for after swimming. So we went shopping instead. Headed off a couple of tantrums (bad idea to go shopping when hungry) and got nice things for then and also for next week, including “waking-up biscuits” for those early mornings when the only way to get your children out of sleeping bags and into costume is to dangle a chocolate biscuit in front of them 😆

Wednesday was, erm, today 😀
We went to B-a-R for our termly catch-up visit 🙂 and we picked K up on the way and took him with us so Susan could get a few things done and he and K could spend a bit of time together before their long break. It was good 🙂 We parked in the newly revamped car park and got the lift to the newly revamped shopping centre and it was all bright and shiny and disorientating! And expensive! Worth it for the shorter walk with so many children in tow though 😉
We got back with just enough time for them to go and play in the garden without feeling cheated before gymnastics – and this time K knew his mum wasn’t going to be there at the beginning so he went in happily 🙂 A was clingy but L played Cooking Mama on the DS and I managed to get a second napron made (still have tapes to sew on, but it’s all edged and hemmed 🙂 ) for L without stabbing A with the needle more than once, so I guess that’s good too. Rushed back to find Bob not cooking tea because he was sure there was no Cubs due to trip on Sat. I hope he’s right, because J missed last week through illness and will be missing next week for Kentwell and they get shirty if you miss three in a row…

The last few days

The last few days, in random order. Yesterday K was showing me how wobbly his tooth was (utterly gross seeing it bent over to that angle) and then it came out, with a minimum of blood. He was so chuffed that he hadn’t swallowed it (unlike the first one). He sang a happy losing a tooth song while bouncing on the tiny trampoline.

Earlier in the day, Katy had the children out in the back garden in a little paddling pool. Frozen tubes of fromage frais turned into water squirters and much fun was had by all. The camera somehow stayed dry, and so there are photos and video (gasp) on Flickr. Video was easy-peasy on Flickr – excellent.

We now have a modest crop of strawberries from the plants that Mum and Dad brought. Nowhere near the bounty of The Beans or the Off The Path crowd to be sure, but immensely good nonetheless. J and K want us to grow lots of things, and maybe get an allotment. Given the state of the garden, having extra land to worry about sounds like a hassle rather than a good thing.

On Saturday we all tried sushi for the first time. Katy thought it would be slimy or otherwise yuck, and I thought it was always fishy, but there were some packs reduced to 30p in the local Co-op so we tried it and we all think it’s fab.

Yesterday we had another power cut. We’ve had loads since we moved in, and I’ve complained to EDF and got a sorry letter back. Normally it’s just our phase, so our neighbours are unaffected which is weird. This time it was the whole town, plus the two neighbouring towns and made the local news. Fortunately it was over in time for a not-too-late tea.

Sunday was interesting with people being at the right place at the right time. J went to Duxford with cubs (for free), so needed to be at the school the cubs meet at for 9.30. We then were aiming to go to the church we used to go to, but we were running behind and so slipped the children straight into Sunday School and then stayed on for coffee. It was the golden wedding anniversary of a very nice couple in the church, so there was cake and general nice feeling. We met up with Big Alice, went via another friend’s house to pick them up (we should have given them a lift, but our car was so full of stuff that Alice very kindly helped out) and finally onto another friend’s house to be Tudor to local home educating families.

Katy, K, L, A, Big Alice and I all changed and Katy talked about some food she’d made. This was pottage (vegetable stew), posh bread and not-so-posh bread, soft cheese and chive balls, soft cheese balls rolled in chopped apricot, and frumenty. This last one has also cropped up on the excellent Supersizers Go… on TV, and M, who is married to a Kurd said “Oh that’s 23904rwo;ijfa0w3ur” (I’m afraid I couldn’t catch and so have forgotten what she said, but I guess it was Kutia).

We’d brought all our spare bits of clothing, and so there was lots of trying things on, the adults chilled out in the garden, the children watched excellent juggling from one of the dads or disappeared playing, steam tractors pootled past every so often (in a pleasantly slow and noisy way). We had a fantastic authentic soundtrack of Dave, Gina and friends playing Tudor tunes on hurdy-gurdy and recorder, although as Dave was busy mending their house and Gina was busy with S it was on a CD rather than live.

Part-way through I had to disappear off to pick J up, as we wouldn’t be home in time for him to be delivered. I chickened out and half changed back to modern clothes (I also didn’t want to be the embarrassing dad in front of cub friends). We all had so much fun that it was much later than planned when we finally left; the kids had a late tea and then off to bed. J stayed up till gone 10 reading, the irritating thing, and so was crabby yesterday.

K seems to be developing a skill for dropping glass containers on the kitchen floor, which in case you’ve not seen it, is hard tiles. The containers have so far always still contained things – a full bottle of olive oil the first time, and a jar of stuff from the fridge today. With A crawling about it’s even more tedious than usual.

At work, it’s one step forward and two steps back where it comes to doors. There’s a door between my area and the nearest kitchen. For some reason, from one side you need to press a button to get through, and from the other you need an electronic key. This is even though we have a security card about 20 metres away, and there’s another locked door (locked with a different electronic key) between the first door and the outside world / security guard. Today we finally had the lock taken off, so I have less hassle when I want a cup of tea.

The two steps back are the new locks on other doors. If you keep one of these doors open too long (about 10 seconds!) a loud alarm starts. It’s got to the point where we all give it a Paddington hard stare when it goes off as it’s so frequent and loud enough to derail your train of thought. A colleague of mine uses crutches or a wheelchair, so we’re hoping to use disabled access as a fairly strong reason to get the 10 seconds increased to something sensible like 5 minutes.

I caught some of a TV programme where one of the Dimblebees was going on the Trans-Siberian railway. I hadn’t realised that Lake Baikal was so big – bigger than all the US great lakes combined, over 20% of the world’s fresh water.