just another morning here

It has been something of a relaxed day here. Steve had to go to Birmingham today but got there and found that his trip had been a waste of time, so had to come straight home again. Meanwhile, Joe went off to Start Right (happily, today, phew), and the girls and I popped into town.

I was looking for a new coat – sort of knew that it might be a challenge as the shops are full of summer stuff, but I managed to find one that was sort of what I was looking for, and will do the job, in the sale for £10, so that was good. The kids steered me away from one particular surf-type shop telling me that it was too young and trendy and that I should look in Marks & Spencers … hmmm.

Went to try and swap some games because the children *really* want Mario Party 5, and tbh I’m so sick of MP4 that I didn’t mind a swap. We weren’t entirely successful today but one shop is getting a pre-owned copy in for us tomorrow so that’s ideal. Ended up spending some vouchers that I had in Woolworths on ‘Mind Bender’, otherwise known as a wooden kids’ version of Mastermind – the girls had played it at the Puddles’ in January so it was a popular choice.

This afternoon we’ve had a muddle of activity going on, and Steve’s been around, he got back from work in time for a late lunch with us, and the kids unanimously voted to stay here and chill with him rather than go to the park for our HE meet-up. He’s been working hard lately so I think they’ve missed him! Anyway, Josiah and I played Zoombinis together, while Steve and the girls played Mind Bender, and Downfall, and Connect 4. Somehow just being in the same room together felt really lovely, other than eating and watching films it doesn’t happen very often – is that really terrible?

The boys have disappeared upstairs now to play drums and the Wizard of Oz respectively – Steve has his kit back here now, up in the bedroom. He likes to claim that having booted the rowing machine out onto the landing to make space for it, playing the drums will keep him fit … not sure about that one, but it’s nice that he has it here anyway. I have a thing for drummers

The girls and I are listening to the radio, they’re drawing and I’m blogging. They do love the Little and Big Toe Radio Shows.

Happy to have a book people parcel delivered this morning – 10 Horrible Geographies for £10, thanks to Alison for the tip-off, and (ahem) of course, another few books to make up the order for free postage – we got a set of history books, Shakespeare Stories (which I am going to attempt to read aloud), and the Usborne Dot to Dot book for Joe – he was very very pleased with that one – more counting!

We have a ‘Goddard Beef Stew’ cooking in the slow cooker for tea tonight so I have to pop to the shops for some suet as the kids have requested dumplings as well. Don’t think I’ve made dumplings since Home Economics lessons at school!

Successfully put off doing the shopping till later/tomorrow by getting Steve to buy us chips for lunch when we went to run some errands for him today, so that was good. I usually manage shopping with at least one less child than normal, and that’s impossible during half term especially as Steve’s dad is off so Steve is working at the garage all week, not to mention the fact that the supermarket is full of other people’s children too. An evening or early morning run to the supermarket will be infinitely preferable this week I think.

And I’ve procrastinated on the cleaning front, too – Monday is usually bathroom day but Steve is planning to re-seal around our shower cubicle this evening because it has a slight leak, so clearly I couldn’t clean any of the bathrooms, no point, as I’d have to clean the upstairs one tomorrow so I might as well leave them all until tomorrow … the queen of putting things off, me!

Other than our errands for Steve, we’ve been lazing around the house in true ‘half-term’ fashion, despite the fact that it makes no difference to us really. Except it does – all our regular activities stop, yet we don’t want to go to places that we’d normally go to when there aren’t any activities on because the rest of the world descends on those places at half term, so we stay at home! And I somehow feel ok about being relaxed on the educational front and very virtuous if we do actually do anything that might constitute education! I’m probably repeating myself, I’m sure I’ve written this about half-term before!

Josiah has been slightly hot and floppy for the majority of the day (hence my excessive PS2 playing, easy to do with a floppy child on your lap ), he has a nasty cough and is generally feeling a bit yucky, I think. Poor chap. I am half planning to redecorate his bedroom sometime soon as due to a mixup in credit card payments (yet another!) we have a goodwill gift voucher from Courts (they charged our card twice for our dining room furniture) which will go some of the way towards a new bed for Joe if they have any. I’m going to have to go down and see, because they don’t have any kids’ beds listed on the website yet I know they do have them in the shop. Anyway, so if I use this voucher as part payment for a bed it would be worth decorating his room before it arrived … I’m sure it can’t be that difficult, it’s only a little room! Famous last words, eh?

Anna has played Reader Rabbit Yr 2 and Zoombinis, Abbie and Joe did a reading comprehension activity together from a box of story cards that we borrowed from the resource centre the other day, they’ve played outside and with Mollie, we planted our avocado seedling into a pot (finally), and I’ve played PS2.

Oh, and Anna did some adding money activity or other on Eduss, but soon got bored because they were asking her to add money in columns using carrying, and she didn’t want to add and carry, she wanted to add it up in her head, as you would normally do with money! For once I completely understood where she was coming from, it was a daft activity, in my humble opinion – if you’re going to add and carry you might as well use normal numbers … even adding and carrying with decimal points would be fine, but for some reason you just don’t add and carry with money, do you? You start with the biggest denomination and count up, don’t you? Well, at least, with the numbers they were giving Anna she could manage it by counting up, so she didn’t see the point of adding and carrying in the longhand sort of a way, iyswim.

Anyway, I’m not going to blog again till I have some pictures to post, this page is incredibly boring without any photos! Hopefully that will make me do something somewhat more organised (or at least worth photographing) tomorrow …

We’ve had a reasonably nice day here today

I caught up with washing and cleaning after the weekend. Steve worked most of the day, Joe went to Start Right this morning. The girls both did music practice, a bit of writing each, and a little maths from workbooks too.

Abbie wrote a Christmas card for our sponsored child in Honduras – early I know, but they go to translators before they get sent to the children themselves.

Anna did another page for our London scrapbook/folder, and I helped organise all our bits and pieces into the folder too. Only another couple of pages to add and then that one is finished. Strangely, after the ordeal of the last writing episode, she was absolutely fine about doing it today, and produced 5 sentences in no time at all. Even Steve has contributed a page of writing to our project, which is a miracle in itself!

Over the weekend Steve’s Aunty Jacky offered to do another project with the children (she did the Romans with them about 18 months ago now) so we’ve suggested the Ancient Greeks thing that Anna expressed an interest in – and she thought that was a great idea, so I’m really pleased that she’s going to take that on! I’m planning a trip to the resource library to see what I can find on the subject – any other suggestions for good books etc. would be gratefully received!

Abbie’s maths was just general number bond practice, oh, and some basic shape naming stuff – which she could do standing on her head. In fact the hardest bit for her was writing the names of the shapes down – I’ve been looking at the Draw Write Now stuff as well, after all the muddlepuddle recommendations, I think we might well indulge as well .

Anna was doing division with remainders, which was interesting. She persisted in working out the remainders the wrong way – so for example, given the sum 24/5, she would say 5r1 rather than 4r4 … all the time?!! It was obvious that she was just working the wrong way round … working out how many she needed to get up to the next one, rather than how many left over, iyswim. I think she had just about got the hang of it by the end! She’s now playing Zoombinis Island Odyssey …

Picked Josiah up from nursery and Anna went off to school for dance & drama – the rest of us went shopping, and finished off errands at home. Steve picked Anna up from school and came home (via a digital radio shop?!?) at 4ish so that was nice. Then the kids played outside with Mollie for quite a while – poor old Mollie is a bit pickled with chickenpox at the moment, but as my 3 have all had it we don’t mind .

Had tea, now it’s bathtime (in fact I’m being yelled at to help with Zoombinis and drying small people so I’d better go), soon to be followed by bedtime .

Instant Messaging one another across the bedroom!

The girls’ computers are now networked, and they are very happy about it. We’re very happy with the screens (especially the headphone sockets!).

It’s been a lazy day here, we’ve seen lots of friends, Anna had a cello lesson, Abbie has read some more of her book, Joe’s played with his trains and with the Geomags … Steve put up some child-height coat hooks and sorted the computers. I played Zoombinis for a while, made soup and rolls, now my friend and I are about to pop over to a neighbour’s house for some sort of Christmas gifty party thing … all very pleasant.