just another morning here

The New Fundamentalists – anyone else see this?

And found on the discussion forum afterwards, just putting it here for my own interest really – an article from the Guardian on ACE curriculum/schools.

I have really enjoyed reading a set of posts on Tall Skinny Kiwi today – Losing My Religion in London – start here and read on through, there are four in the series plus one extra on Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle which I also appreciated. Just interesting, and appealed to me on a number of different levels.

Otherwise life is back to boring humdrum carry on … with one highlight for Josiah – this week he is the ‘special person’ in his class at school. This caused rather huge excitement over the weekend as he gathered together bits and bobs to take in to school. I failed to produce a photograph though, just don’t do paper photos any more – they’re either good enough to be on the wall in a frame, or they’re on the computer, nowhere inbetween, and I don’t have a printer! Ah well.

Being ‘special person’ apparently means you get to stand at the front of the line every time the class lines up for something, take the register back to the library, and on Friday they get to do show and tell about their stuff/photos which has been sitting on a table all week.

Perhaps it would be worth adopting this approach at home too; less arguments about who should push the coffee down, sit in the front of the car, have the first bath, or choose which game to play!

We stopped in the park on the way home so Joe came home all muddy and I made him strip so that I could wash his uniform. He refused to put any more clothes on to go and play outside with the girls, so he and I spent a happy hour hamaing together, having been inspired by Merry’s flickr pictures.

He chose a pirate pattern to follow, from one of the pattern books. Swords do it every time

I don’t think he’d ever really bothered following a pattern before, only followed the shape of a board, iyswim, so I showed him how to count it, and we did a pretty good joint effort. He’s really pleased with his pirate, and I’m thinking of taking it to stick it up on the ‘special person’ board in place of Joe’s photo tomorrow!

More for me to keep than for anyone else to be interested in … makes me quite happy that communication skills and keyboard skills are all coming along perfectly well in this household Who needs a dinner gong when you have Yahoo Instant Messenger?! Reproduced with permission

usedcarspecialist: hello Anna – what are you doing up there?
cheeky_monkey_anna: playing on my computer
usedcarspecialist: what are you playing? anything interesting?
cheeky_monkey_anna: Neopets
usedcarspecialist: is Joe there with you? What would you both like for tea?
cheeky_monkey_anna: is there baked beans Joe says
usedcarspecialist: no, sorry, we haven’t got any baked beans and anyway you had baked beans for lunch!
cheeky_monkey_anna: OH!
usedcarspecialist: Can you think of anything else you’d like? Otherwise it will be sandwiches and fruit!
cheeky_monkey_anna: That sounds nice mmmmmmmmmm
usedcarspecialist: So what would you both like in your sandwiches?
cheeky_monkey_anna: joe would like cheese on tos
usedcarspecialist: tos?!!
cheeky_monkey_anna: sorry
cheeky_monkey_anna: i said sorry!!!
usedcarspecialist: what for?!
cheeky_monkey_anna: i was going to write joe would like cheese on toast not tos
usedcarspecialist: What would you like?
cheeky_monkey_anna: peanut butter & butter please
usedcarspecialist: Okay, can you come down in five minutes then please?
usedcarspecialist: I’m making it now
cheeky_monkey_anna: thanks

Unfortunately the kissing smileys Anna included after her last line haven’t come out in the blog!

Have had a fairly boring and rubbish day here, as we had to deliver a car over 2 hours’ drive away. All was fine until we discovered (almost there) that the windscreen washers were blocked and not working at all, of course we were powerless to do much about it by that point, so it felt really bad to hand over a car in a less than perfect condition, as we really do try our best to have things perfect usually. At the moment work is so quiet, it seems that all we’re dealing with on a day to day basis is expensive warranty claims, so it’s a bit depressing all round really.

Highlight of the day was meeting some home ed friends at Moors Valley Country Park (loved the place, shame we didn’t have time to explore it) – we managed to meet up in time for lunch together in the restaurant, wish we could have stayed longer afterwards but we had to rush back – another time maybe

Day 4 of the Jesse Tree – the story of Noah’s ark with a picture to match. Huge excitement here as the children have opened the plastic wrappers on their advent calendars (a now traditional pressie from Grandad and Nanna Lorraine) in preparation for tomorrow and I’m wondering how long they can resist the temptation of raiding them …

Day 2 of the Jesse Tree – a picture of the world, representing Creation, coloured and hung by Abbie – who’s nearly learnt the Isaiah 11:1 verse, if she can say it again this evening without having just read it (!!) it will count Josiah keeps getting stumps, roots, branches and shoots muddled up, but he’s nearly there.

He did a really good violin practice before I went to work this morning, and as I left the girls were doing piano and cello practice as well. Joe did wonder who created God and Jesus, while we were talking about Creation, but those are big questions for 8 o’clock on a Monday morning, so I answered by saying that nobody really knows, and that they were just there in the Beginning, and that satisfied him, for now at least.

Had a quick meeting at work this morning then Steve went off to do a supermarket run followed by swimming lessons for the children. I’ve actually done a tiny bit of work here today but it’s still deathly quiet. We took a few photos of the cars (which desperately needed doing!) and moved a few of the cars around while the Chinese Takeaway people are closed on a Monday (otherwise we get into trouble for driving over their car park ), but apart from that it’s been as dead as a dodo.

So quiet, in fact, that Russ has disappeared to get new tyres on his own car, and I decided to look in the History folder on the work computer, just for fun, of course – this one caught my eye - very interesting, I could be persuaded, although where (and why?!) Steve looks to find these things I really don’t know!!!

Then got visited by some LQF sales reps. I love it when people like this phone up or come in – they ask for Steve, and settle for talking to me, because I’m the only one here, or ‘Steve’s not in the office today’. Then half way through the conversation I drop in that I’m Steve’s wife and business partner, and their whole attitude changes – very funny to watch the transition from ‘I’m talking to a girl in reception’ to ‘I’m talking to the boss’s wife’!! Anyway, I will let Steve have the honour of telling them nicely to go away, as I can’t see him being interested, or it catching on, myself.