I have spent far too much time in a car today. Going to blog backwards here … 3hr towing lesson this afternoon. Manically hoping that if I were that awful and doomed to fail, the instructor wouldn’t be letting me sit the test on Wednesday but I’m not really that sure. Still, apparently these photos are going to end up on his website (towing page apparently under reconstruction at the moment). And I can highly recommend Taylor Made Driving, although if, after Wednesday, I never have to sit next to Mr Taylor in a car again, I will be very happy!

Before that I was driving home from Birmingham, where I spent a happy night escaping from reality with one of my best and oldest friends, we saw Nanci Griffith in concert (loads of nostalgia there as we used to spend hours listening to her earlier stuff in our teenage angst years together), and chatted until the early hours in the basic but perfectly adequate Etap hotel. It was a great night, and we will have to do something similar again next year. Perhaps a whole weekend rather than just a fleeting night!

Going back even further then. Over the weekend we had Caitlin and Riona with us, their company was pleasant as always even if it did make things somewhat messier and noisier than average (but only a little ). On Friday night we watched Superman Returns, which Steve and I really enjoyed. Nods to the original films in all the right places!

We did not very much on Saturday other than a picnic lunch in the park; then in the evening went down to a campsite near Plymouth where our friends Stuart and Liz were camping. The children had a swim in the pool, we all had a delicious Cadac (still want one of those) meal, lots of chatting/playing, etc.

Sunday had a slow start; Anna went off to look after Robyn for the day – I hope Aunty Emma found it as useful as we did! Then in the afternoon I set off for Birmingham. On the way I had a sub-mission to pick up the 3/4 size cello that I bought on ebay last week, found the house easily enough, was very worried that it might not be a 3/4 size (it is though – only a couple of inches different to the 1/2 size). It sounds much much nicer than Anna’s 1/2 size one – it’s old and a bit battered but that has obviously added to the tone of the instrument. Now if she can just learn the newly spaced fingering she’ll be well away.

Back to today then, oh and some random home ed from Friday, too. When I got home I found Josiah had been doing lots of map stuff with Steve; discussing directions and making compasses, and drawing maps to find ‘treasure’ on ‘Downstairs Island’. He’d obviously had lots of fun doing it. Friday’s education was helping the plumber install a new tap in the kitchen, the old one had been dripping since February, and I finally got annoyed enough to do something about it!

There, up to date. Tomorrow has another towing lesson in it, the last before my test. I am incredibly stressed out by the whole thing, the injustice of it all still annoys me immensely. However, as an aside but on the same subject, Steve and I have a small bet on. He thinks that he can pass the towing test without any tuition, because he’s such a great (and humble ) driver. So we are paying the aforementioned Mr Taylor of Taylor Made Driving an extra hour or so, to give Steve a mock test. This will cost us approximately the same as a good night out on the town, but give us far more entertainment value which will last a long time to come, whatever the outcome! Watch this space for results of both in due course

Oh, and just for a laugh, here is Josiah’s giant Balance (Sainsbury’s own Special K) flake. It was as big as his ear, which was hilarious, apparently!

We all had a lovely weekend away chez Portico, it was great to relax, do practically nothing, but catch up face to face for once. None of the children wanted to come home on Sunday.

Yesterday Joe and I had a relatively good day at home despite a few things taking longer than they should have. We got through violin practice and some maths/music workbooks before going to Sainsbury’s. I think I could almost give Joe a list and let him do the shopping for me while I have a coffee in the cafe, perhaps I’ll try that next week

In the afternoon he played a bit of Wii and then we looked at some maps and atlases together; we are trying to plan where to go in the summer, having booked a Dover-Calais ferry crossing. Belgium is a hot favourite at the moment but none of us can really decide! Opinions are split between coast and cities, and we have time to get down south if we wanted to, just can’t make up our minds!

Abbie went to play with a friend after school while Anna came home and took ages to pack her bags for her school residential. She’s staying at the Courtlands Centre until Friday.

This morning everyone was up bright and early and got music practices done first thing; Joe and I went off to work while Steve took Anna (and her kit bag) and Abbie to school. Our work was pretty fruitless as the DVLA staff were all on strike! Still, we ran a few errands before coming home.

We’ve worked through a few more science kit experiments, still on the subject of forces, demonstrating Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws. Not sure if this information will be retained, but we’ve had fun anyway

And finally, I am tired of usedcarspecialist. No hidden messages in there, honest Even Steve has dumped the usedcarspecialist tag at work, and I’ve been annoyed with it for a while too, so I’m dumping it as well. It was just the first thing we thought of when signing up for stuff and it’s a rubbish ID, especially as it’s always been mine not his which is topsyturvy really!

So if you ever want to IM me again please can you add my new yahoo id which is two_red_boots Or if you’re on gmail I’m now using tworedboots[at]gmail.com so can chat via that (usually better than yahoo as for some reason my yahoo messenger frequently drops out on the laptop), although my main email address is still the same. Just marginally annoyed that the flickr post bar can’t seem to find the flickr ID, it’s returning the error code ‘user not found’, any ideas anyone? I think the time is approaching for a new blog template too …

Life is busy, Steve and I have not been particularly well, so we’re just managing to keep heads above water this week it seems. Last night we cooked pancakes after tea but then chucked the kids into bed mainly so that we could go to bed early ourselves! No progress has been made on the front room and I’m slowly getting annoyed with the pile of junk which has accumulated in the hallway, but there we are, I’m sure it won’t be there too much longer (hint hint )

The children have all had a good few days at school – despite having enjoyed half term and made suggestion of being home educated again actually they’re all happy to be back. Josiah, surprisingly, was the most enthusiastic on Monday morning.

Anna’s been working hard on some geography homework about coastlines this week, yet another thing that I’ve been rather gobsmacked at. It’s been quite painful to watch the process (!!) but she’s persevered and has been searching websites for information about Devon’s coastline, local beaches, coastal types and the wildlife found around coastal areas.

Abbie’s just been pootling along, she is really happy and seems to come out of school regularly with funsize packs of something or other which they get as a result of good behaviour over a few days, I think (Or something. They have some weird system of reward going on which I haven’t quite fathomed yet, but Abbie obviously has, unsurprisingly ). The main thing she’s suddenly improved on is her recorder playing, and she’s been practicing a lot recently so it’s nice to see it paying off.

In fact they have all three been practicing music well, Anna is playing a few cello pieces that she really likes, so that helps with motivation to practice. Joe had a nightmare violin practice one day during half term but since then it’s been much much better.

Oh, and I had a parents evening (well, not sure if you can call it an evening when it’s at 3.30pm, but anyway!) for Joe today, which was slightly superfluous to requirements from my point of view, having seen his teachers relatively recently, but it was interesting to see his books. He’s loving the social aspect of school, it has to be said, and his teachers are still completely happy with him I was especially pleased to hear that they are making an effort to stretch him (eg in maths) when they get the chance, as they recognise that he is well above the usual Foundation level requirements. But what the hell, in some ways I don’t mind if he’s treading water academically as he is learning so much other stuff. Like how to be a boy Not sure if I really wanted him to learn that from other boys in the playground, but there we are!

Today was especially nice, they’d all had a good day, (so had we, sold a couple of cars ) there was that encouraging parents evening, Anna was chuffed to have got points during her pencil case check (!! what other weird things go on in schools these days, I don’t ever remember having my pencil case checked!), but most of all they were all in a hurry to get to the park to meet up with home ed friends and while Joe had his music lesson the girls played with their friends. The weather has been really weird here, we had sunshine and snow showers at the same time all afternoon, very funny!

Oh, and the girls have been wondering about bank accounts again, not that they’ve got that much money to put in them, so I’m going to have a look around later to see what the various banks offer children – does anyone else have a child’s account?

And in complete randomness, I’m still loving Wild World, it’s the first of March and that means all new butterflies, bugs and fish to catch. I’ve been amusing myself growing hybrid flowers and all sorts, it’s hopelessly sad I know, but there we are. While on the topic of timewasting, I spotted this link from Robin’s blog the other day, only got round to looking at it today though – it’s quite nice, amused me for a while at work today

Right, having said I had nothing to say, I’ve written plenty, so now I’ll shut up and get on with cooking some tea.

At home before school everyone was up, ready, breakfasted, sandwiches made, music practices done, all by 8.30am which I thought was pretty good. There is a fair amount of novelty value involved I know, but still. We walked to school with Mollie and her dad.

The girls just joined in with their classmates as if they’d been there forever. Josiah was a bit more wobbly; the class he is in has two teachers and he hadn’t met this one before – and we hadn’t really managed to prepare him properly for it as we hadn’t realised either. So leaving him was hard However, the January intake children are still on staggered times, so we picked him up just after lunchtime – he came out really happy, gave me a huge long hug, and said he’d really enjoyed it. Once home we sat and chatted over his leftover Hula Hoops, I heard tales of a friend called Ross, the letter ‘x’, and some other stuff besides.

Steve went back to pick the girls up and they have both had a great day. I’ve told them that if I ever ask what they’ve done at school and they reply ‘nothing’, I will deregister them the very next day!! So they are being really good about talking about their day, just to humour me, I think

All I can say is that if *I’d* tried to get Anna to do all the things she says she’s done today, it would have been a battle from start to finish. She actually learnt something! Told me all about the River Exe, where it starts and finishes, etc. She has homework already – they have to look at the moon every day for a month and record what they see. I am very pleased for her, I think she will thrive at school. Not that she wasn’t doing fine at home, but I think school will suit her really well.

Abbie’s day was good too, her highlight was a computer session where she played a game with a dragon (not sure what it was called!) where she had to answer maths questions in order to progress. Her teacher had done some reading with her and was pleased, apparently – the reading book hasn’t found it’s way home though She seems very happy as well – when asked what rating she would give her day, out of 10, she said 10

I guess we’ll thrash out some after school routines over the next few weeks, but tonight we just had chatting, a game of draughts, Shoebox Zoo, and tea. Early nights all round, as well, as school seems to be very exhausting – this could be a plus point!

Although in lots of ways I personally am not finding it easy at all, in other ways it is really nice, and once we all get used to it, it will be as good for us as home education has been. I am incredibly proud of them all for embracing a change and throwing themselves into it as well as they have

We’ve had a good day so I’m blogging quickly, then off to nurse my sore throat and make some wedding tiaras. Steve worked my day at the office today (phew!), although still not sure who got the easier day, but I was pleased to be at home anyway.

Morning started with loads of tidying up/sorting out/gaming … followed by Joe’s violin lesson at 10am. Violin is a moveable feast, thankfully Mr Featherstone is flexible as we’ve moved lessons for one reason and another over the past five weeks now!

Despite not wanting to go and throwing a wobbly about it beforehand, Joe pulled himself together, changed his attitude, and did really well in his lesson, so he got to choose cookies in Sainsbury’s for elevenses While he and I were at violin, the girls sat in the van – I’d filled their bookbags with activity stuff of one kind or another and asked them to do whatever they wanted, my only request was that they had something to show for their time.

When I got back to the van I was really pleased; they were sitting together doing a sticker flag atlas thing but they’d also spent most of their time writing and illustrating a poem together. Nothing earth-shatteringly amazing in terms of poetry, but they’d had the idea together and carried it through, and obviously made loads of effort, all of which is relatively unusual, so I was thrilled. The handwriting (Anna was the scribe) wasn’t bad, and spellings were pretty good all round. And they were pleased with themselves; they’re now going to write more poems this week apparently!

Went to Sainsbury’s and stocked up for the week, then came home for lunch, more sorting out, music practise for the girls, etc.

The afternoon was completely taken up with swimming and hanging around waiting, but again, it was productive. I did some work with Anna on percentages/fractions, and rotational symmetry, just from one of her workbooks. Abbie did a bit of addition practise which was fairly simple and easy. Joe and I read some Flying Boot books together, and we generally had a nice relaxed time as well as the swimming lessons – chatted to their teacher for a bit as well, and she is pleased with all of their progress, so that was good.

Got home at 7pm to find Mollie and Ruby from our close trick-or-treating, Ruby looked absolutely gorgeous dressed as a pumpkin with matching orange & green stripy socks, irresistable. Chatted to them and their mum for a while, which was nice too, haven’t seen Emma properly for ages.

Baked potatoes and various bits for dinner, kids are just in bed (Monday is such a late night!) and I’m trying to make a list of stuff to do this week – house exchange (this weekend coming) is a great idea but it does mean you have to go away and leave a tidy house, which feels like a bit of a pressure. Still, I’m glad in a strange sadistic sort of a way, as otherwise we’d never tidy it up properly! Feeling fairly naff still, sore throat is a killer, but never mind. Must fit some Animal Crossing into my evening too, as Halloween is a special occasion there I think!

Joe made a new friend, which was lovely to watch – one of the older boys had brought a toy roulette set in, and after the big boys had finished playing with it they left it out on the table, and Josiah started playing with it, along with this other little boy who is a very similar age – they made up all their own rules and were spinning the roulette then giving one another money, loads of mathsy stuff going on, from what I could overhear.

Afterwards Anna had cello and then her chamber group practise as well, then in the evening a friend came round for tea (the tuna burgers were scrummy, by the way), and to test Turkish Delight recipes, among other things!

Today we have read a couple more chapters of TMN, only one to go now (edit: and we read it over dinner). Josiah and I did some more reading together, just some library books. The girls both did music practise, which I helped with for once, and then they had an hour of schools’ tv – Words and Pictures (air and ow sounds), followed by Primary Geography then Primary History.

That was followed by Carrot & Almond soup, set to become a family favourite, I think.

The afternoon was taken up with a couple of science kits at the kids’ request – plenty of enthusiasm today – we are doing them in desperation as the cupboard was getting full up! Number 23 was another electronics one, pretty crummy actually, and because we’ve had an electronics kit about for a while, the stuff in it was fairly rudimentary, apart from a simple electromagnet experiment at the end.

Number 24 was on magnetism – reviewing poles, attraction/repulsion, and then looking at magnetic fields using iron filings. This was hugely exciting for all three and Anna even made one of those funny face things with iron filings in it …

By this time Josiah had got distracted from the science kits but had got into the electronics kit and was building circuits by correctly following instructions in the book, which I thought was quite impressive. He was really pleased with himself anyway. And so absorbed that he wet himself, but I’ll let that pass.

Home after a quick cuppa with Ruth (thanks – was lovely to see you ) to give the kids tea and get them sorted for bed before the babysitter arrives, we’re off out tonight to celebrate a friend’s birthday, so that should be a fab evening.

Thought the whole place was utterly amazing, and the kids want to go back in the winter when the ice rink is there.

Anyway, I’m tired, it’s late, photos are on flickr

Josiah got our Mr Bean Encyclopedia folders out first thing this morning, so everyone spent half an hour or so finishing off sticking stickers into the Sticker Atlas and looking at the magazines.

We gamecubed, and said goodbye to Max, Merry, and their girls …

Then Joe went over to Mollie’s, so I took the opportunity to make a start on Narnia things with the girls. We read the first chapter of The Magician’s Nephew, they drew pictures, etc. A very short, gentle introduction. However much Anna says she’d like to do projects on things, when it actually comes to doing any ‘work’, she becomes strangely reticent! As one of the things I enjoy doing is fiddling with blogs, I decided to set up a new one, which will be reserved for Narnia stuff – I think it may end up being a slowly ongoing background thing, and as I’ve got particularly bad at categories here, I thought if I kept it separate then I’d have a good record of it somewhere else. No, actually I just wanted another blog. Some people are so greedy . Many happy hours to be spent tweaking that one, text colours being next on my hitlist …

Pizza Hut came home for lunch; Steve took the girls shopping and they bought pizza, pasta, ice cream and dolly mixtures. Why we couldn’t have gone to Pizza Hut I don’t know, it would have made less mess in the kitchen, but there we are.

This afternoon we watched Ella Enchanted – a perfectly watchable family film, quite funny in places. If I hadn’t just got going on Narnia stuff I’d be tempted to print out the Film Ed. resources for that one and throw it in front of the nearest 8yo, might still do that, in fact.

Anna & I have done more music practice together, too.

Right, must be off, I want to get another chapter or two in if I can round up the children …

But our Puddlers Home Ed group went well today, the theme was ‘France’, and we had French flag making, Monet lily making, and some French army game going on outside Anna took some fun photos too, hopefully she might get round to blogging a couple of them at some point.

The good afternoon just about made up for the crummy morning!

We spent a nice hour in the World Cultures gallery with the activity box there … the children all enjoyed themselves and paired up in different combinations at different times. And I enjoyed Jules’ company too – although it was strange because we don’t have to catch up on the ‘what have you been up to?’ type stuff because of the blogs, we still found plenty to talk about. Then we took a trip to WHS because we needed rulers. Don’t know where they go to in this house, but every time recently that I’ve wanted a ruler I’ve had to turn the house upside down for one. So I bought three, one for each child – and a couple of set squares and a protractor as well.

After saying goodbye to the Pollards we went further down town to the hardware shop for picture hooks and a gravy separator (which I did need, but actually only bought to get the total spend above the £5 credit card limit, which then turned out to be broken so not much use and a pain in the neck because now I’ll have to go back into town and change it), then on to Venture to pick up our artwork. Which wasn’t altogether successful either, one of the frames had a splinter coming off it and I was very picky and asked them to send it back to be mended – if I’d pulled the splinter off it would have left an un-stained mark on the frame … well, they were expensive so I didn’t mind being picky – at that price I jolly well expect to get a perfect frame!

We’re chilling out here this afternoon before Fri’D Fish (our kids’ club) and then this evening I’m off out to do a Formative Fun party. Must go and give Abbie a cuddle, she’s asking for one – don’t think she will be going out this evening, she’s still a bit under the weather, especially by that time of the day …