just another morning here

We started with cleaning, music practice, etc. today. Followed that up with some reading and maths workbook pages for Abbie while Anna did some more division with remainder practice on the Eduss maths software.

Mollie is in that better but still spotty phase of chickenpox so she came round for most of the day today, and all the kids did hama beads together for ages, we baked, did some more of our weaving, and then took Anna to cello lessons and played in the park. I spent a while gathering Ancient Greek links and (ahem) shopping for resources – ordered the Horrible Histories ‘Groovy Greeks’ on CD as well as a couple of other things.

This evening has been frustrating – I have some random spammer commenting on the blog, and the party plan online ordering system for FF seems to be broken. I’m giving up and going to watch Wifeswap (well, okay, that was the plan all along …!) .

“You know I really love that word, gargantuan. I so rarely get to use it in a sentence.”

I guess you might have had to be there, but I liked that line from tonight’s cinema experience – went to see Kill Bill Vol 2, and loved it, thought it was great. There were some other good lines in it too, but that was the one I remembered. Comes highly recommended by both of us – probably only if you’re a Tarantino fan and can cope with the style though …

Anyway, since we got home we’ve scoured today’s property paper just in case, but there really isn’t anything else out there for the price. Okay, it’s definitely not my dream home, but the space is much better than what we have at the moment, it’s in a good location, and doesn’t stretch us too far out of our price range. I guess we’ll just have to wait a while for the dream house … I can definitely see us living there, and it’s modern enough that Ikea furnishings won’t look out of place like they do here! So we may well put in an offer, watch this space.

oh, and on the HE front … the girls did lots of work on fractions today – played a pizza game with Steve which involved swapping pieces of pizza for other pieces of pizza – equivalence is probably the word I ought to use (!!), then used Eduss and did all the fractions exercises up to year 5 together. This was all off the back of real pizza cutting conversations at teatime yesterday. Steve and I were particularly amused that Abbie cottoned onto things much quicker than Anna – the question was “you each had a third of the pizza, and Daddy cut your pieces into three, so what fraction of the pizza is each small piece?” Abbie said “a ninth” before Anna had finished counting the pieces on everyone’s plates! Very funny.

And they started the next science kit, at Anna’s request – which involved water and floating/sinking experiments – we shelved it then because it was teatime so there will be more to follow. Art and craft, not to mention handwriting practise, happened today in the form of card-making for cousin Caleb’s 1st birthday. And Abbie read another whole book really nicely before bed tonight. Good stuff

Still time to blog though ;o)
We (well, I) had a dentist appointment this morning so we talked about teeth and their structure after that … quickly printed off an Enchanted Learning sheet and ta da – we’ve covered that little topic. The next tooth that falls out round here is going to get dropped into a glass of coca cola, I think.

Anna sat and did some typing practice while Abbie worked on Eduss maths for a bit this morning. She can easily manage all the level one maths, so I’ve upped her to level two on it. Josiah played with his letters and numbers this morning too … he can recognise all the letters in his name now although putting them in order is slightly more dubious. Numbers are all okay apart from 6 and 9 which get muddled up.

This afternoon Anna’s gone off to school. We all had lunch there, then the little ones and I popped into town to post parcels and do banking, before coming home to play Eye toy and cook dinner – it’s Girl’s Brigade night so I had to get organised in advance, we have friends coming over for dinner tonight. I’m doing Pecan Crusted Salmon with cheesy mash and purple sprouting broccoli. Sounds posh, anyway.

Now off to make phonecalls … Steve and I have decided to go househunting while we have the day to ourselves at the weekend – well, why not?! It’s something we both enjoy doing, we’re kind of maybe thinking of moving one day in the not too distant future, so why not go and look at some houses while we have some time to ourselves. At least we won’t actually spend any money, which would be the risk if we end up in town (well, I’d like to end up in town at some point anyway!).

I’ve just finished the 4th coat of paint in the bathroom and I’m absolutely knackered. Might get another coat in this evening, if I can be bothered. We’re going to go out this afternoon and shop for a new shower curtain and toilet seat, to keep up my motivation!

Don’t know what to do with the floor, any suggestions? At the moment it’s cork tiles, they’re okay if a little worn – we were going to just put some lino down instead but I’m wondering about painting them and then doing something original on top. Can you paint them? It strikes me that it might be the easiest and nicest thing to do, although a bit impractical to do – it would mean taking a while over it and finishing it off late at night because the bathroom has heavy traffic in this household!!

Joe’s been out today, meanwhile the girls have done some Eduss, some crafty things, then watched Words and Pictures on video. After that they switched to Disney videos but I didn’t mind relaxing the TV rule today. Abbie is a bit bunged up with cold so she needed to relax anyway, and it meant I got more painting done. Anna has a dance class in a bit so we’re just looking at the latest Mr Bean mag before we go.

We’ve bought a new washing machine, today, too. Why does all this expense come at once – and just before Christmas?! Actually, this one’s okay, it’s from a local shop who are really nice about their credit, so we’ll be paying it off over the next six months. It’s very shiny (now just need a shiny new kitchen to go with it!!)and takes a 6kg load so that should help a bit. It’s arriving on Tuesday – the main reason for buying a new one was that they’d come and install it, and take the old one away – thus saving Steve and whoever he could get to help out a whole load of time and hassle!