In At The Deep End

K’s birthday seemed barely to have passed when it was L’s and then this Saturday was J, followed by A on Monday. Should have been 2 February babies and two March, but somehow we ended up with 1 just in January and 3 in March, or 2 in Jan, 3 March and 1 April if you count Bob and me as well!

Anyhow, the bigger ones have been begging for a party for ages and having been foiled last year by baby about to arrive and impending house move we decided his year would work better. I was not up for multiple parties in quick succession, however, so we took Easter weekend coinciding with J and A as a good start point and did a quadruple celebration then. Having a bit more space, we were able to invite a few friends from further afield (although not as many as we’d have liked really) and make a weekend of it

There were a few intense discussions as to theme: space came a close second and I quite liked the idea of making cakes to scale for the solar system but in the end Superheroes won out, with the opt-out clause of coming in plain clothes disguise for those who preferred not to dress up

Then we had to decide on cakes - apparently there had to be one each and each child wanted something different. So K chose chocolate cake, L white carrot cake, J a plain Victoria sponge (although he ended up with Madeira as it holds together better for decorating) and A had no choice, as there was a Christmas cake we had neither decorated nor eaten at the appropriate time! I decided to take the easy option for decorating and just go for a word on each cake, rather than doing fancy shapes or colours: Cowpow! for K, a Supermoo fan, Meow for L, who was Super Cat Girl, Bam! for A and a last minute decision for J to have his cake decorated as high explosive!

Costumes - another easy option, I’m afraid, using fleece to avoid needing to hem, then stitching on little shields with initials made of felt for emblems Looked pretty good though, especially A’s cute little mask - shame she didn’t get round to wearing it for the party!

We made a list of games the children thought would work well or could be adapted to fit superhero training. Top of the list was the chocolate game, which they have wanted to play ever since I first described it to them We also assembled some suitable craft activities, thinking that those would do to take home instead of a goodie bag full of sugar and tat I found some scratch art masks which proved to be very effective and also some little wooden peg pals to decorate and add magnetic strips to for sticking secret messages to the fridge. Just enough to keep every one busy in the pauses…

The Rainedrops having arrived early and helped with some “emergency tidying” - I didn’t realise it had a name, but it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones who do it! - we were pretty much set up by the time Monster and Teeny arrived, closely followed by Porticos and SOTP crowd. Hot soup proved to have been a good choice for lunch, given weather (hail, snow, wind…) and we all decided to drive to the hall rather than walking as planned! In fact, I ended up driving Bob plus stuff down there first, so he could collect the key and set up, then returning for children and remaining stuff, which made the beginning of the party a little disjointed, but we seemed to recover okay. Nic ad brought lovely food to add to our supplies, including Superbiscuits and there was plenty for everyone, but not so much that we will be eating it for weeks to come! (Even the cake has now gone, apart from a last remaining slice waiting for someone to be rude enough to eat it without sharing ) TV’s Adrian Goddard made a cameo appearance as a villain, appearing alongside Brian, but was swiftly subdued by a large crowd of children with toilet roll…
We finished the party with a few karate moves, which we practised first before attacking a balloon full of chocolates (bravely held by Chris) which was taking the place of the pinata which we had not managed to get dry in time. Each child had a couple of goes and we were just starting to worry that it was an indestructible super balloon when a Portico kick did the trick and it burst in a very satisfying way, scattering chocolates all over the hall Then we took more balloons, each containing at least one chocolate, out into the field (sunny by now, thank goodness!) and let the children get on with it while we cleared up the hall.
Came back to a convivial evening, with lots of playing, chatting, eating and so forth Eventually rounded up remaining children and read them stories before tucking them up into bed, then adults played Blokus and ate cake The Babyfoot proved a definite hit (don’t need a pub, as long as we get some beers in ) but sadly had to be abandoned once children were sleeping in the annexe - there’s always next time, Chris

Sunday morning found the garden thickly blanketed with snow, which certainly helped to get the children up
Barbara would like it on record that they left within one minute of the time they had said
Breakfast, snow, play etc all happened and we all left the house at much the same time: Monster and Teeny going home (and hoping not to be held up by bad weather) while J and J came with us to church. The service was all age and communion and actually very good. The children all helped to tell the Easter story (ours were mostly angels, but J was a very memorable guard, including falling down in a dead faint when he saw the angels) and we decorated a bare cross with flowers to make something beautiful out of something ugly. We shared communion in our seats, which was nice for a change, and stayed for tea/coffee afterwards while the children played in the back room
By the time we got back and had lunch the snow had all gone so we were able to do a seasonal search and then Jan and daughter entertained us with a piano accordion and handbells duet (we have a video - just not sure where to put it for viewing) before they all set off home.
Early night - the house seemed rather quiet somehow!

CHEF sports today
Shame we didn’t get there until halfway through, thanks to hideous traffic on the A14 Should have gone the other way, but it looked clear right up until we hit the queues…

Anyway, we still managed to chat about plans for Latin etc and L enjoyed playing with SB and E, then we went to the park with Gina, E and J for a bit more chat (adults) and running around (children)

By the time we got back here L was sound asleep, to the extent that I transferred her from car to bed without waking her and she had a good forty winks while the boys pootled and we got lunch ready (leftovers from yesterday ).

J decided he wanted to make a cake for Bob and me, and we happened to have a Victoria sponge complete kit (just add eggs and butter; even jam included) I bought last time he said that so I pointed him in the right direction and let him get on with it All I did was to put it in the hot oven and take it out when he told me the time was up. We haven’t tasted it yet, but it looks great - it’s even iced and decorated with “Best M and D”

While he was busy cake making I made up some cheese straw dough, because they all went yesterday and the children felt cheated then while the cake was cooking J made cheesy letters - he’s learning to multitask! Meanwhile K did maths (slow because the current exercises have lots of reading to do too) and L did poissonrouge.

I had a chat with the children this morning about Melrose and they decided they want to go so much that they are willing to have token Christmas presents so that we can afford it, so a quick chat with Bob later the form and bank transfer were winging their way Now we just need to plan a journey in easy stages to make it bearable Still wondering if it should be just the children and me to preserve some of Bob’s holiday, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t just hide away all the time then

L has a new Bilibo, which is good for spinning around in and doing all sorts of other fun things with. It is of course pink, and is a nice accessory to one of her dresses - see Flickr. Katy and I have both read the last Harry Potter book and so no longer have to live with the shame of having not read it. We were going to wait till it came out in paperback, but someone who’d finished her copy of the hardback gave us her copy as, unlike us, she isn’t a hoarder. It wasn’t the best book I’d ever read, but worth the effort.

This weekend was Monster’s birthday darn sarf (even relative to us) - there’s not much sarfer than the MonsterTeenies though. Despite an acute lack of sleep all round and hence bouts of raging grumpiness on Sunday it was a very nice trip away. Thanks to Nic and Ady for their hospitality and amazing party preparations, Monster for giving us his bedroom for the night, Babs for the loan of cash for chips (we still owe you), T-Bird for lovely flapjack and everyone else for nice company.

Flickr should give you a better idea of the fab Doctor Who cakes and biscuits, life-size papier-mâché Dalek, the kind donation of so much paper and colour printer ink from Ady’s work, children running about like loons enjoying themselves, amazing face painting and general nice time had by all. Monster looked dashing and grown-up as Doctor Who.

After the party we retired to Nic and Ady’s with most of the other guests. More children and adults than most people would consider feasible squashed into their front room and ate X + chips, unexpectedly successfully given how many small people there were around and the large potential for wine / ketchup / vinegar related accidents or squabbles over unfair distribution of fried food. When the boys were supposedly sleeping up in Monster’s room, L came and cuddled me on the sofa and we both fell asleep. After a bit I woke up, took her upstairs and fetched our grown-up sleeping bags from the car without waking up too much, so that I could go to bed too. I left Katy and A downstairs with the rest of the adults, who eventually came to bed really rather late indeed.

On the way down we popped in to see some of A’s godparents (like the others, she has two sets) for a too brief but much needed cup of tea / feed / play on the computer / play with Barbies. On the way back J’s wobbly tooth finally came out and we stopped for a late lunch at Ikea. (Lateness partly due to me forgetting a bag of stuff and so having to return to Nic and Ady’s :oops:) This turned into shopping and by the time we got to the queue to pay it was gone 4 o’clock. I waited in the queue for at least half an hour with very tired but still just about acceptably behaved children, and by the time we were through the check out and organising things ready for carting to the car they closed the bits beyond the check outs that sell ice-cream and boxes of biscuits. This caused fairly universal sense of humour failure - it was actually a couple of minutes before 5 o’clock (Sunday closing time). The people still in the queues would be handing over their money at the tills after 5 o’clock by the time they got to them, so it was weird that we couldn’t do the same in the food bit. Grrrr… Grumpy email will be sent.

The house warming already seems ages ago, so time for an update.

The Raine Drops stayed with us after the house warming and we tucked them away in the guest wing ;-). One advantage of the new house is enough space to have people to stay without it being a major hassle, particularly such lovely company who bring such yummy chocolate brownies. A week of extended playing happened, which was great for everyone.

We carted most of the RDs off to church with the promise of the band and Sunday School but neither happened (Sunday School is on school holiday). The children gathered at the back colouring, doing word searches etc, and no-one seemed to mind the extra noise or the smaller ones going to find Mum and coming back (lots of times!). During coffee after the service lots of v. smartly dressed people started to mill about, whom I hadn’t seen in the service. It turns out that the Anglican church just across the road has nowhere to chat over tea and biscuits, and so wander over and they had had a Sea Service, so lots of mayor-types and current and former service personnel with impressive uniforms and/or ironmongery on their chests.

On Monday the local Home Ed. group had organised a trip to Duxford for a workshop on flying which apparently was very good, followed by a mosey around the museum. The other day of doing stuff was a 3 museum trip (Arch and Anth, Earth Sciences, History of Science). The History of Science Museum has improved since the last time I went there, and B & J sent Morse Code to each other and tried to make their own Zoetrope. After all that they weren’t too tired, so we introduced the Raine Drops and our children to punting - no-one fell in and B, B & C were very good.

One evening they introduced us to Risk and our marriage has survived so far We did the full grown-up evening and tried the local Chinese takeaway for the first time, which makes very tasty and interesting stuff indeed (tempura veg )

It was C’s birthday while he was with us and so an unusual cake was baked for him (that still involved chocolate and so was consumed quickly), which was just about big enough for all the candles ;-).

Then of course there was the Beans’ Castle party. Cue a nice garden and sunny weather, fancy dress for the children, and many photo opportunities for the parents - so much so that I thought that a camera was a requirement for being let in. Much lovely food and drink, children having a whale of a time, and adults having a relax in nice company. Thank you very much Chris and Helen. A had a long and involved chat with Jax, and giggled over Karen (which I managed to capture a bit on my phone’s crummy video camera).

We still hadn’t managed to evict the Raine Drops this morning so it was off to church again, this time with the band (v. good) then back home for lunch and the Raine Drops headed off. Only a few hours later the Frabjous Days posse arrived and the two blokes went off to be manly hunter-gatherers (at the local chippy) followed by fantastic cake (you know you can come again without providing yummy calories - but it is always appreciated!). A tried out her Bumbo for the first time, which went OK, but she won’t be zooming around the house on it any time soon!

We left Kentwell later than we’d hoped, and so didn’t arrive at the camp site for Muddle Puddle until 10.30! It was dark, raining, very windy and generally unpleasant. Fortunately Merry was about doing her pot-holer impersonation with her head torch, rounded up Nic and between us we tried and failed to put up a couple of small tent’s of Merry’s that we thought would be easier than putting up our big tent. No, I managed to rip one fatally, so Merry took further pity on us and put up a party of refugees from 1584 in her lovely cathedral of a tent.

The wind, rain and nice people pretty much summed up the rest of the week. The camp site turned into a bog in places, cars got stuck and tents submerged and so were lifted up and re-sited on drier ground. I still had no coat and so had to use my Kentwell cloak to Nic’s amusement. More than once during the week we thought “Let’s go home” particularly as this was by then our second week of camping and so we were all starting to fray around the edges. But then this turned to “We’ll leave tomorrow unless the weather improves” and we limped through the week like that - the bad weather being outweighed by the nice people.

There was the customary trip to Africa Alive, which was nice as ever (plus had the added attraction of being less boggy than the camp site). There was also the customary tie-dying (the weather held off just long enough) which was also good.

On a couple of nights the rain was joined by very strong winds. One of these nights produced a hole in the tent! We had a folding-up set of metal shelves to put food on, and the wind blew the side of the tent inwards so much and so hard that it impaled itself on a bolt holding the shelves together. The ever-helpful Beans produced a set of patches in the morning, which made us water-tight again.

The cabaret / talent show had the usual good efforts from the children. Our boys did some jokes, L sang Je Peux Frapper with some help from me and Jan sang a very appropriate song from Flanders and Swann (solo and a capella, which was very impressive).

We left a day early to avoid bad weather forecast for the final day, and fortunately the rain at the start of the day was blown off by the wind later so we packed a dry tent. There had been less milling about in a friendly sort of way by children and adults than last year, but it was worth enduring. Time for a better-drained camp site next year, I think though! Despite the weather we managed to take some photos - on Flickr as ever.

UPDATE: I added a bit to the title to make it more accurate!

So, we are now back (but not unpacked) from our first Melrose MuddlePuddle camp. We didn’t fancy doing the whole trip in one go, so we Stepped off the Path with Jan, Jonathan, M, C and J. Lovely company, lovely food - including Jan’s magic trick of producing more tins of scrummy cake than appeared to fit in the cupboards, nice cats, dry stone walls, shaggy cows, an impressive computer-filled office overflowing into the airing cupboard and a suspension-testing drive (home to the shaggy cows).

The music-playing pack of chewing gum and FM transmitter worked well enough, particularly when we realised that turning off the radio’s RDS would stop it trying to be too helpful. There was occasional interference from local stations, but just bumping the frequency up or down by a little usually sorted it. The battery lasted nowhere near as long as we were expecting, so we were glad we’d brought some spares and a charger. We’re solidly working our way through the Roald Dahl canon - Simon Callow reading the Twits and Geoffrey Palmer reading BFG were probably the best so far.

Melrose itself didn’t start well as K and I were both sick in the night, so we quarantined the whole family as no-one wanted a repeat of the nasty pass-the-vomit-bug of previous Melroses. Fortunately we had a room to ourselves and had brought the laptop with us (obvious thing to pack when youth hostelling ) so I had the very pleasant experience of snoozing on my bunk listening to the children laugh at something (The Incredibles) that I knew was completely suitable for them. We read books and played with plasticine and when the bouncing off the walls got too bad fortunately there had been no repeat performances and the weather was nice, so we headed out (avoiding others) for swings and a walk. We got a bathroom to ourselves for the day, just outside our room, which was a consolation, and all tummies were feeling robust enough to end a day of plain bread and water by enjoying some of the Beans lovely cooking for tea (courtesy of Merry’s room service ).

The next day was K’s birthday. We went back to plan A (celebrate on the day) rather than the plan B cooked up when we were poorly (postpone 2 days). So, cake baking and decorating (with help from J and L), J making some posters to let everyone know about the party (including a mysterious request for party-goers to bring a spare pair of clean socks) and preparation for pass the parcel. Katy wrapped lots and lots, and J wanted to help with the music. Laptop to the rescue again, and we chose some music together. Unfortunately at the party itself it didn’t go as planned. My laptop took aaaaages to boot up, I tried to get the MP3 player to start before all the usual start-up crud had finished and as a result it took even longer. The natives were sat in a ring, the parcel wasn’t being passed and they were beginning to get restless. We declined the offer of singing, but the kiddy-keyboard thing which I think belonged to the Beans came to the rescue with one of its pre-cooked tunes. Eventually the MP3 player was ready but even at full volume could not compete with a roomful of excited children. I fast-forwarded to the noisiest track we’d chosen, that I’d thought probably too loud, and this was only just loud enough.

Despite these technical difficulties it went OK, and then we had a properly loud and frantic game of Tidy Your Room and the mystery of the extra socks was solved. Through to the other room for cake and other nibbles (see Flickr).

The only other fixed things were a trip to Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh and swimming in Galashiels. Dynamic Earth was nearly thwarted by poor signs in the City Centre - the SatNav crew got there on time and the rest of us had a bonus tour of the streets around Holyrood with complimentary extra stress. It was almost very good - lots of good content in a nice setting, but just too full-on. The exhibits competed with each other in flashing and/or volume, rather than building on each other. The soft play area was great, and L impressed us with her confidence on the climbing wall.

Swimming was also shortened by poor signs, but still very enjoyable and featured nice staff and interesting rocket pack style floats.

Apart from that there was lots of children playing somewhere or here (doing Fimo, playdough, Hama, dinosaur or boat building…), lots of parents chatting, and it was very nice.

The trip back was broken in York and godparently fun was had. Lots of playing with train sets and bubbles (including some nice bubble mountains by J). More yummy food and lovely company, and for once not being late with presents for my godson

Today was a very good family service at church which included doing sign-language actions to one of the hymns, and then a mini birthday party at the Grad Pad with K’s godmother Hannah - someone I ought to make an effort to see more. Unpacking still looms, and work tomorrow :).

As requested, I’ll actually get us up to date for once, with no mention of phone networks either.

We had a pleasantly hassle free journey up north once we’d actually packed (:oops:) to my room mate Paul and family, gradually gave T all the birthday and Christmas presents we’d not got to him (:oops: - although the rocking elephant would have been tricky to post!). It’s all a bit of a blur, but there was much wooden railway, lots of great food, a stomach bug (unrelated to the food!), swings in the rain, bubbles and bird feeding in the back garden, a few pieces for accomplished pianist with under-5 orchestra (dancing while playing optional but encouraged), trying to explain Quicksort to an obliging linguist and bemused wives using T’s set of alphabet books even though sleep deprivation had addled my brain, J exploring Uncle Paul’s tripod and the timer on our camera, and generally having a wonderful time as usual. After a bedtime story from Auntie Carol it was into the car in pyjamas and heading in the direction of home but stopping first with the Raines in Sheffield for B’s party.

We finally met Chris and the identity of the mystery ex-MethSoc Kate who knew both Barbara and us was revealed: Kate who did Japanese. Barbara kindly extended her culinary repertoire to include a very nice veggie savoury crumble and then we did the obligatory staying up late chatting and hoped that the the children wouldn’t be up too early the following morning.

The day started far too early given how late we’d stayed up talking, although much less full-on than it could have been due to children’s TV. I was treated to the impressive sight of R eating a large fraction of her body weight in Weetabix, then everyone bigger had a very pleasant breakfast, hurried dressing and off to church for most of us. This involved a lot of questions about the bells and smells, which weren’t the non-conformism that our lot were more familiar with. But they all behaved very well and an educational experience (R.E.: tick) was followed by a theological discussion with J on the way back to the car, about how different styles of worship stress different aspects of God and our relationship to him, and all the mystery of God is best communicated through something like a Catholic Mass.

Back at the ranch we gained some more children, shuffled seats between cars, built a dinosaur, watched more children’s TV and then headed off to Nottingham. Nice conversation with B and his mate T about B’s new watch, steel, and why Chesterfield church’s spire is twisted (as it passed by on the M1), and I was given a long list of things that people apparently didn’t have in the olden days.

We arrived in Nottingham, bounced around the centre for a bit playing hunt-the-car-park and then were completely underwhelmed when we actually found it due to the long game of hunt-the-space, followed by bonus games of hunt-the-working-ticket-machine and hunt-the-change-machine and also hunt-the-pizza-hut.

Barbara started down the slippery slope of baby slings, Chris showed R how to adapt the eating-a-large-percent-of-your-body-weight trick to pizza, and then off to the theatre to see The Gruffalo. It was excellent - everyone enjoyed it. It was lovely to see J, K and L all laughing and smiling, plus Katy and I liked it too. 3 extra MuddlePuddle families arrived for the theatre bit and it was great to see them too. Given Nottingham was on our way home, we headed straight off from Nottingham (although not before Barbara had tried a different sling) and put three tired but happy children to bed.

It’s been another terribly busy week, with CHEF activities (sports on Mon, drama on Wed, P&T [not officially CHEF, but heading that way!] on Thurs), research project (the boys helping out with the development of a video to help autistic children to learn about emotions) on Tuesday, followed by a visit to the Museum of Earth Sciences and meeting up with E, O, M and F (J decided this even took precedence over his beloved French club - I hope you feel duly honoured!) and then on Friday a (fairly - not quite enough advance packing done ) early start and a drive up to York to stay with Bob’s old room-mate from Uni and his family. Hopefully Bob will blog more about this as I spent much of the time almost catatonic with tiredness - L enlivened this somewhat by being sick in the night for no apparent reason, which then left us wondering what to do about the rest of the weekend, when plans had included going to Sheffield straight after lunch on Sat to spend a little extra time with Barbara and co before going to see the Gruffalo on Sun. In the end we decided to wait until evening to see if anyone else succumbed (fortunately not) and then travelled with children in pyjamas ready for immediate transfer to bed to avoid contamination for as long as possible!
We had a lovely surprise when we discovered that the mysterious “Kate who thinks she used to know you in Methsoc, but doesn’t expect you’ll remember her” turned out to be someone we knew, liked and remembered very well and that she was there for dinner and chat on Saturday evening, then stayed up far too late talking - something which seems to happen regularly when we see Barbara! - and got to bed rather later than we should, especially given that the children decided to go in for an amusing array of nocturnal disturbances, from J turning R’s crying into a bad dream which woke him up (so of course he had to wake me up too!) and meant he had to be touching me to get back to sleep (not enough room in the bed, so had to hold his hand as he slept on the floor next to me = good recipe for a dead arm) to K, disturbed by J and we think also seeing Barbara’s shadow as she walked past our door, shuffling his sleeping bag towards the wall (like an enormous cuddly inchworm ) muttering “I think there are wild animals on the landing!” all the while about 90% asleep and then L, disturbed by all this action and by coughing fits, standing up, tripping over J and throwing herself onto the bed so that she could scrabble up and demand “Mummy milk!” in a hoarse but nonetheless loud voice! Ah, the joys of motherhood - and why on earth did I let Bob sleep near the wall, leaving me next to the children?
Time has caught up with me again, so Bob will have to blog about Sunday!

I have been meaning to write about last week since we got back, but first I had to set up this blog, upgrade our Flickr account, go to work a bit and so on.

The simplest thing to say is that I had a really good time. About 45% of this is due to the fact that the children enjoyed camping. Our only previous experience of camping with them did not go well, and so this was a big unknown. Fortunately the kids loved it, which meant we could enjoy it too, and we can do it again in the future. Another 45% or so was the other adults there - normal people, who accepted us as we were and who didn’t panic when we talked about home education (as you’d expect for an HE camp!). What the other 10% was, I don’t know.

I was trying to think why our local HE group hasn’t produced warm fluffy feelings as much as MuddlePuddle camp did. I think there’s nothing wrong with the group, but I haven’t done many activities with them, and each activity is for half a day or less and so all the normal stress of logistics and child shepherding mean that I’m so busy with all that so I can’t get much out of it myself. Maybe I should do more, like the Beans?!