Steve’s dad is on holiday for a couple of weeks, and Terry our mechanic is ill with a horrible inner ear thing that means he can’t stand up, so we were awfully short staffed today. Meant that we had to give up on the home ed group trip we were meant to be going on but hey ho, that’s life.

Once the girls had gone to school, Josiah and I ended up at the office for the day, which was fine – we chucked a load of stuff in a box and de-camped there quite instead (as long as I have internet I’m happy!), the phone didn’t even ring until 11am so not too strenuous.

Joe did violin practice and then some of his Roman lapbook project; today he wrote out a few vocab words for a flappy thing in the lapbook, and we learnt about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius too – looked at lots of pictures online. The whole Roman thing is making Joe want to go to Italy, he keeps saying that would be a good Home Ed trip to go on (the Roman Baths not good enough!). Went home for about an hour to scoop Abbie up then back to the office for the end of the day.

The full set of photos is here

Today was slightly less frantic, but not a lot! We started off getting violin, maths and music theory out of the way first thing, and then went for a trip into town. We had some leftover book tokens and vouchers for Christmas so decided to use those to facilitate our project – found some nice books in The Works and a cool looking space model kit as well, even though we are NOT doing a project on Space.

Went home via the garage where we picked up the trimmer and laminator to make these Solar System info/game cards, and trimming/laminating was a huge hit, as was the game that followed. The down side was that we also found out that we needed to cover the garage this afternoon so we’re now sitting here wasting time together (Joe on the Nasa Kids site and me blogging) while trying to hold the fort at work.

I wanted to get the compasses out to start drawing circles, as my friend Liz sent me a useful email last night, having just made a scale diagram of the solar system herself (details to follow when I actually manage to make it). Then realised I was scuppered as Josiah had removed the maths set from my bag just before we came out We amused ourselves reading the book we bought this morning instead, and then Joe did a solar system drawing which wasn’t exactly a work of art but did demonstrate that he’s already managed to learn the order of the planets and some of the important things about each one. He finished it off with a completely out of scale but still quite lovely picture of himself in a rainbow rocket exploring space, which we’re going to put on the front of our folder (not a project folder, obviously, as we’re NOT doing a project ).

We had to pop in to the office today to help out with a couple of errands … and ended up staying for lunch. Some people even did some work!

Look, it can happen! Steve *can* put plates on a car! He really wanted to leave them all for you but I said that would be taking the mickey

Not sure we’ll manage to get through taking photos as well but we’ll do our best!

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
grey: all other tags

I liked this, spotted on a friend’s photostream … and fun to watch the java applet creating the thingummy in the first place

There are lots on flickr, really interesting how different they all are, some of them are really pretty … And yes, work is interesting as ever

Create yours here

This morning I’m wondering if I’ve finally made it to looking like a car sales person, not sure if this is a good thing or not! I had to go to the DVLA office for some tax and a cherished plate transfer thingy. The queue was so long down there that they had an extra member of staff going round the waiting room asking people if they needed help filling forms in, and for some reason they didn’t bother asking me! Now, they either just didn’t bother, as I’d come well prepared for a long wait as it’s par for the course down there, so was happily connected to ipod and DS at the time, OR I was looking super-grumpy with that neon ‘Do Not Approach’ sign above my head (also possible as it has been like that for much of the week), OR I have the look of a car sales person about me, who, by definition *should* know what they’re doing at the tax office as they are there most weeks.

The children are still really enjoying themselves – they are all very happy and have settled ridiculously quickly. They’re really tired, but we’re just about managing to cope with that. Mornings are still happening fairly well, they’re all happy to get up, dressed, pack lunches and do music practice before school. Well, Joe was a bit too tired for violin this morning, but generally even he has been managing fine. I don’t for a minute regret the decision that we made, I wholeheartedly think it was the right one for this point in time.

I’m still reeling from it personally, and finding the transition myself much harder than they seem to have done. Certainly, if we had tried to have this week with them around it would have been even more of a living nightmare than it has been. I am really enjoying the enforced organisation/motivation, I am loving the state of the house, and I know I will get used to the work situation – and in a couple of years maybe it will change again. I guess it’s hard to come to terms with, as for a moment (well, okay, for a couple of years!) we had a taste of a very idyllic lifestyle. Choosing to invest time and build the business will hopefully pay off so that in another couple of years maybe we can change again. And yes, it is *myself* I am still having to justify myself to …

So, anyway, I decided that rather than avoiding school like the plague, I ought to show willing, stop resenting the fact that they’re there, and show a bit of interest – having seen Joe’s teachers this week I wrote a note to the girls’ teachers too, so I’ll hopefully get to see both of them next week and find out how they think the girls are getting on. More importantly than anything though, I know they are all happy and enjoying their lives just as much as they were before.

What else? Well, Steve and I had some time off yesterday together (still not sure how we managed it, I think we just decided that we *had* to put that time to one side) which was good. We had lunch together, then ended up with an hour to fill at home before picking the kids up. Their swimming lessons have moved to Thursdays, so we all went off to the swimming pool together and spent time with the kids as they were between lessons – and strange though that seems, it was really nice. Steve played pool with the girls, I read to Josiah, we played computer/ds/gameboy games, just chilled out, really. Oh, and they ate a packed tea as well – school dinners have their advantages on days when you have to sit at the swimming pool for three hours over dinner time!

Blogging is taking a relatively natural downturn, I just haven’t got as much to say or as much time to say it in, it seems.

Apart from all that, although it’s looking like quite a busy one, I’m just glad to have made it to the weekend (almost!). Now where’s that Crunchie?!

Then the other phone, the office phone, rang. Russ picked it up and said ‘hello?’ in that tired ‘what now’ tone of voice, as though it was yet another call from Steve, then immediately realised what he’d done and started apologising profusely to the *customer* on the other end of the phone!
‘Um, I mean, hello, this is Steve Clarke Cars, how can I help you, I’m really sorry!’

Maybe you had to be there, but I laughed, anyway Just as well, we’re busy, stressed, tired, and snappy (that’s just Steve and I), so we need something to smile at. It’s all good though, or it will be …