Family and trees

No chance of catching up, but if I don’t start putting things down soon then I’ll forget everything!

Tuesday last week was the first of the slinging coffee mornings at Truly Bumptious since I got my babywearing teaching qualification. The day started badly with a bump from a bus in a hurry to get along a road made narrow by parked cars. Slightly shaken and not as early as I’d hoped we nevertheless made it with 10 minutes or so to spare (and a witness phone number) and enough time to settle the children and look at stock before my first consultation – a 5 months pg buddhist GP 🙂

It went well, I think; certainly I enjoyed it and given that a) we overran and b) she bought a Hoppediz and went away to practise saying she’d come back next time to learn a new carry I think she did too 🙂 It was good too to try out the full presentation, which includes a fair bit of physiology and evolutionary background, on someone who was able to tell me it sounded right 😉

Thursday was a rather fraught Tots, followed by a trip to Denny Abbey, where we had hoped to do some of the organised activities, including pottery, but ended up arriving quite late and, after a quick gallop round the Abbey, spending time catching up with friends instead.

Excellent news for J as his recorder Grade one result came through. Having only just scraped a pass in grade 3 theory he was chuffed to get a distinction this time. PMM!

I was preaching on Sunday, so much of Saturday was spent on service prep. It ended up being a family service in the sense that we all took part, with the children acting out the OT reading while Bob did his usual excellent job on intercessions.

On Monday we had hoped to go and see Auntie Norma and Uncle John, but were stymied first of all by having to get the car checked out and then by my aunt having an unexpected booking which gave her extra work that day, so ended up going on Tuesday morning instead. Tuesday afternoon was spent at the park with the children’s second cousin, playing football and then in the garden playing badminton. A nice relaxed day 🙂

My uncle said that he wanted to take us to Bewilderwood, which the children all thought was an excellent idea 🙂 They had already taken SC there and thought at the time how much fun it would be to have our lot there too, so on Wednesday we set off there with Uncle John, Auntie Norma and SC. We arrived at 10, opening time, but already there was enough of a queue for the boats that we decided to walk round to the park itself, a decision which later left the children feeling cheated as they hadn’t been squirted by the crocodile – must remember that for next time! K and L had a fantastic time and J made a valiant effort at some things well beyond his comfort zone and managed to have lots of fun too. A pootled happily most of the time and wore herself out quite effectively. Uncle John proved to have a talent for den building 🙂

We decided it was worth waiting for the boats on the way back, which turned out to be a good decision as it meant we could find the last two boots on our treasure hunt and so earn a small (chocolate) prize 🙂 We also discovered that the author of the Bewilderwood books was there doing book signings, so bought a couple of books and got him to sign them. That’s bedtime stories sorted for a few days 😉

On the way back we stopped off to see Grandad, taking a picnic tea with us. The improvement in him is incredible now that everything is more settled. My dad is expecting to stay with him now as long as he is wanted, whether that turns out to be months or years, which has given him lots more stability – and company; he is a very sociable man and I think has felt very cut off in the past few years. I need to think about how Daddy gets breaks though…
Going to see Grandad is always good for my ego! He spends a lot of time saying how lovely the children are and what a good job we’re doing – must go more often!

After a late night it wasn’t easy to get everybody up and about this morning, so we took breakfast with us and ate it at Tots whilst doing a few normals. It was a much quieter and calmer session than last week and included a visit from a family who used to be regulars but have now moved abroad. K was particularly pleased to see Sanjay, who used to do occasional science sessions with them, and begged him to do science again today – which Sanjay, bless him, did – cue an impromptu experiment session in the kitchen! We had thought of going to Denny again (kite-making this week) but I was too tired to hurry the children along so in the end we went to the closing down sale at our favourite shoe shop and picked up good shoes for J and K at reasonable shoe prices then came home, the children placated by Big Alice coming round for tea and taking them out to the field to fly kites in the rain 🙂