just another morning here

Comes round quickly, Sunday night, doesn’t it. Must go and cook tea then fold the washing so that they have school uniform ready for the morning.

It has been a beautiful day here; bit gutted that we haven’t managed to make the most of it, but there we go. I had the annual Memorial Service for babies lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death to go to this afternoon, and Steve had to go in to work to let someone test drive a car, so it was always going to be a non-starter of a day, really.

The children have played out a fair bit though, with Mollie and Ruby in the close, Josiah is out there still in his pyjamas, and Abbie is in her sunsuit! Just couldn’t be bothered to insist on anything today.

Abbie spent the first part of *her* morning on a hamster hunt, she did admit responsibility in having accidentally left the cage open yesterday, so I think she breathed a huge sigh of relief when she found him in her dolls’ cot.

Anna has dossed around, but came with me to the service this afternoon. Her comments were that it was a short service, and that she was surprised at how much crying there was. Doh. My feelings on the whole thing are pretty much the same as last year and the year before that. I can’t quite decide if it’s good to give time to feel stuff all over again, or if it’s just a strange sadistic thing to put yourself through once a year. I am really considering stopping the support group, and if I do stop it I don’t think I’d go to the service, which leads me to think that it is just me getting emotionally carried away by the situation rather than any real grief of my own. Obviously I did and occasionally still do grieve, but the service itself doesn’t help in that for me personally, I don’t think. Still, having said that, someone read a very powerful poem today which I might post one day.

We had a lovely night out (at Harry’s) yesterday, too, which deserves a mention – we were celebrating a decent month of sales at the garage, so it was a works’ do – felt like a proper one for the first time ever though as it included our mechanic and his wife as well as Steve’s parents and us. We might even manage it this month as well, if we’re lucky

Mooch, mooch.

Persuaded everyone including Steve to be here for lunch, although neither Joe nor Abbie touched theirs – a sure sign that they are really not very well. Abbie’s gone back to bed now, and Steve’s whisked Anna off to EO group. She thought it was a great adventure to go ‘on her own’ but Louise is keeping an eye on her really (thanks again, Lou, it was a huge help today), nice for her to be able to do dance/cello even though the others weren’t well enough to be dragged out.

I thought I might be able to get Joe to have a nap too as he’s almost as croaky and groggy as Abbie & I, but no, he’s perked up and has spent the last hour constructing various circuits using the electronics kit. He loves that thing, it’s amazing how hard he concentrates when he’s playing with it. The other day I caught him on Education City doing the circuits activities there too (Yr 4!). It’s just nice that his education is not restricted to what is normal/average/the set ‘taught’ curriculum for his age. Now we’re playing Anatomix, just the two of us, so lots of chatting going on about bones, nerves, muscles, and organs in the body. Think I can tick science for him today then

Miscarriage support group tonight, which I’m struggling to find the grace for, it just seems so depressing. Still, I have charity christmas cards to distribute this evening so the show must go on.

edit: forgot to mention the other educational moment of the morning; kids (those who’d made it out of bed) were watching Cbeebies, which had lots of Diwali related stuff going on, so Anna came into the kitchen and made Rangoli patterns out of rice, kidney beans, herbs and spices. I don’t know much about Diwali so we looked it up on the internet together and talked about it a bit. TV can be a really useful jumping board

Somehow I’ve managed to lose the photos I took of the van today. Ah well.

First thing this morning was Stage by Stage, meanwhile I took the younger two into town and picked up some black shoes for Joe, plus raffle tickets for the fundraising effort today.

After picking Anna up we went and met up with a friend from the Miscarriage Support Group and stood around for the next four hours collecting money, selling raffle tickets, etc.

To be honest (that was especially for Neil ), I don’t think it did much good in terms of raising awareness as no-one took any of our local leaflets or asked about the group – not even sure how much we raised but it was only about £50 I think. Felt like a bit of a waste of time, but there we go.

The children were complete pains for most of the time too, I’d taken loads of stuff for them to do in the van and they just wouldn’t settle down to do any of it, so it was all a bit stressful. Still, it’s done for this year, would be nice to be more organised about Babyloss Awareness day next year, which might make it all more worthwhile.

This evening we’ve had Junior Film Night Mark 1 (Anna’s), which has been pleasant enough, she really enjoyed it. It included four friends (should have been five, we missed Chelsea ), tea, a dvd, and then some playstation afterwards – all relatively grown up and civilised really

Junior Film Night Marks 2 and 3 have been promised, so at some point Abbie and Josiah will get to invite friends round for a film night too.

Only just getting round to watching Casualty on Teleport so no more clues, Joyce, please!

I went back to work afterwards, while Steve and the children drove up to Dartmoor, went for a walk and to skim stones in a stream somewhere, *and* they made lunch in the van (ooh, the novelty ). I did book our first proper holiday in it, though, we’re going to Honeybridge Park at the end of the month

My trial run in it is tomorrow, when the kids have the dubious honour of having it as their base for a few hours during the day while I sit and sell raffle tickets to raise money for the Miscarriage Association/Babyloss. Photos will follow tomorrow, Steve failed on that count today I’m afraid.

The kids have had Friday Fish this evening, and now the excitement for our Friday night is watching The Final Cut, will have to pass comment on that later as it seems like an interesting film so far – then again, we’re only 15 minutes in!