Monthly Archives: March 2006

Sunny saturday – well mostly!

life is a bit manic for me at them moment, with lots of really late evenings at work – mostly because I got co-opted into being the union rep. Hmmm. Bad move, except that there is huge need for someone of my mouthiness. I just hope that I don’t end up with a dreadful troublemaker label for my efforts.

Anyway, so to today. SB started by making another mothersday card for Nanna French. The sun was shining so we were out into the garden to plant and sow. Obviously planting and sowing with just me trying to keep an eye on 2 girls, jollying one along, and preventing the other from random unplamting and eating was not always straightforward. particularly as SB took it rather badly when her planted broad beans were unplanted and trodden on. We did manage to get into a rhythm, with me and BB ‘sowing’ broad beans [imperial green longpod] at one end of a row, and SB planting them [jubilee hysore]at another. Sb wanted me to help her though, and was put out that if I did, BB would surely rampage. The sooner we have the wendy house for independent pottering about in the better! [it is going in the veg patch.

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like a ray of sunshine, Chris came out with coffee, but more importantly cake. We all sat and picnicked, and even BB must have agreed that cake was more tasty than compost. SB then ran about like a proverbial loon and bounced on her bouncer, climbing on the frame, and bouncing BB on the trampoline.

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When BB went in for nappy change and snooze, SB and I sowed a row of mixed carrots [nantes frubund] and radish [scarlet globe]. This being so much fun, we sowed another. We usually have bog all luck with carrots – but that was in Leeds, so lets see how we do here! [I miss Leeds!]

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i then hoed approx 1/4 of the veg area, and popped in half of the onion sets [names!] other half to go. I started cleating the asparagus bed of weeds too, but was happy to pass that over the Chris, as SB getting ravenous.

We made more tickabilla creepy crawlies for lunch, and she then spent ages on the Nick Jnr website for games. Getting bored, I went off and did some seed sowing indoors for the propagator. Lots of things, as getting to peak sowing! Mussleburgh leeds, spring onions, Pea [misty and rondo], artichoke green globe, second sowing of mangetout [oregon], and a tray of salad leaves [mixed]. SB seeing what I was doing sowed some sunflower [russian giant]

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BB woke up and was fed, so SB did some sticker maths, and had a go at the easiest Kakuro – thanks Alison for the link. She got the hang of it quickly, but lots of scaffolding!

We all played rampaging games together, fuzzy felt, and making lots of noise with the noisy toys [my poor ears!] and whatever came out of the box really for the rest of the afternoon. Chris has done a bit more tidying up of the veg area.

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Since we are planning to watch the ice age on tV tonight, the girls had an early tea – through which SB nick jnr’ed again, and are now bathed, so I better go. SB is now doing a guardian sudoko – rather well.

will add photos after bedtime, and perhaps get that gardening blog going!

12th Carnival of Homeschooling

well, we will get round to some proper blogging, but until then I have enjoyed reading some of the articles featured on the
12th Carnival of homeschooling

And here are the Previous Carnivals

A Blast From the Past

Spurred our first digital camera in June 2002 we started posting daily pictures of Stringbean on our website. When we started this there weren’t such good tools around for photoblogging etc. so it was done manually. Probably becuase of the effort it took, we eventually stopped after about a year. I did work on better system, but never good it up and running. And then they got taken down for soem reason or other. But they’ve been ressurected, viewing them all again it’s tempting to have another go – should be much easier/qucker now with better tools around.

Yeah, I know we have Flickr , but the rather cleaner presentation is nice. Should be easy enough to pul suitably tagged pictures out of Flickr though using their API.

Anyway here is Stringbean’s Picture of the Day

This takes you to the last one we posted, browse back from there

Thankyou Sarah


My Blog

Originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.

what a lovely idea! An Ed Phil in miniature!

Hama Heart

Stringbean has spent so long on this that I think it deserves a post of it’s own:

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I think it is lovely.

Helen helped her set out the rainbows, becuase she couldn’t quite count/plan out how many to use for each colour, but otherwise the design and work was all her own.

Think I need to fiddle with colour/white balance, it was on a white piece of paper.

3 PJ tops and no bottoms!

HONESTLY!!

Just another manic monday

I will let chris add in the morning as he and the girls went to the local[ish] home ed group for an egyptians session.

Your wish……

Good start to the day, BB slept through which is the first for a while – but of little benefit to us since we didn’t got to bed until 2am…. First thing SB wanted to do was finisish of the last bit of the end of the book ‘test’ in the Explode the Code book 1. So she sat and finished that and had breakfast. could cope perfectly well with the sentences they finished with. she was pleased and wanted sticker becuase she was such a good girl :-)

Then it was quick scurry round, getting dressed and ready to go out, we wer wout by 9.30, as we had to go via Tesco for some sugar cubes, for making sugar cube pyramids. Of course i forget that it is ginormous Tesco extra and so of course buying half a dozen items require a mile walk or somesuch. so were were about 10 -15 mins late to the hall. But all got set up, pyramid building was popular, even if some were more of ruined sort – authentic I guess. Unfortunately BB nor totally perky as she has had nasty cold and wanted a carry much of the time, which when you are trying to keep and eye on what SB is doing, help out what the pyramid builders are doing, chat to soem other parents etc. was bit tiring. Sb also made a hippopotamus out of dough, and a mummy/cask mask. All good fun, and a nice ‘potluck’ Eyptian (very -ish) lunch to finish. A few photos, not brilliant as I was more often than not distracted by something else.

On the way out we bought a sort of Triops Aquapolis from an US family who are moving back home and getting rid of various bits?

While the girls went home with Helen, I went via a couple of shops. I bought soem clocks in Argos. A couple of basic ones for downstairs and Disney Princess one for SB’s room. Relaised we didn’t really have any proper dial clocks around now, and so it’s bit harder for SB to actually learn to tell the time so easily. The two downstairs clocks are both ‘radio controlled’ – they set their time by the rugby time signal or whatever it is. Rather spooky, turning them on and then watching the hands turn to the right time. It wasn’t a feature I’d gone looking for, but the chips must now be very cheap, to find in in the mechanisms of cheap Argos clocks.

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This was the Hippo

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I had a fairly crappy work morning and then hurried to join them as BB very grumbly, not at all well and ravenous for a feed, so I said hello to everyone cleaning up as i gave sustenance. It is only 5 mins from where I work on Mon, so convenient for emergency feeds. Anyway, nice to see SB in the middle of a gaggle of children having great fun, playing all sorts of games together.

In fact I fed BB all afteroon, or she slept in my arms. SB a good lass though, and we played some games, read 3 different books about egypt and ancient egyptians. She also started explode the code 2 – woohoo! I read some of ulysses, and she then nick juniored.

I had a brief respite from permafeeding and sowed cauliflower autumn giant, and sweetcorn.

We finished the evening with chips from the chippy, and watched the planet.

BB has come alive a bit now – little hope for a good night!!

MP’s response

OK, so it wasn’t one of my better emails,but this is a nothing response!!

?Thank you for your recent email addressed to Shailesh Vara MP.

We are looking into the matter that you have raised and will reply as
soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Richard.

this was my crappy email!
Thursday 16 March 2006

Dear Shailesh Vara,

I have been increasingly concerned about the governments Legislative and
regulatory reform bill, and how it in a roundabout will lead to the
potential to abuse the democratic freedoms that this country has
enjoyed.
I feel that the government under Tony Blair are persistantly eroding
freedoms and curtailing democracy, but this bill is the most concerning
yet.
I hope that you do not support this bill

Yours sincerely,

Helen

Short blog

last night execrable, so why am I still up?? Mostly book balancing as there is a strong suggestion our pay will be cut by approx 350 net – no reduction in hours! So rejigging budgets madly and thinking on wild schemes.

But today good. We went for a chill day. Though peversely SB did more explode the code in one day than she’s ever done before – desperate to finish book 1!

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So she cbeebied, and liked the idea of bug food on tikabilla, so everything she has eaten today has been shaped – spider, octopus, butterfly, lion and finally for tea, ladybird! She watched some TV – scooby doo!. We played lots of games – dinosaur ludo, uno and set. Also she helped Chris build the propagator whilst I potted up the aubergines and artichokes.

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lots of book reading too – 3 of the Just So stories – we particularly liked he armadillo, a ladybird book about the earth and various library books – she got another spongebob one – yuk! She helped me put smilies on various posts I made today.

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BB has been considerably under the weather still and mostly been feeding – and how! She did play a bit with the noahs ark that SB brought down for her, and is always very interested in the keyboard – she has gathered the spacebar and left click are the best buttons to go for!

So, work for me tomorrow, and home ed group for the other beans. We will start a gardening blog I think.

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Flying visits

We had Jax and family overnight on their way to relatives. That was fun. SB was desperate on friday waiting for them to arrive, and when they did, she Big and Small vanished. The all slept in her bedroom without too much kerfuffle as well. We adults had wine and chat…

The next day we had the odd ‘stayed up too late and woke up too early’ melting moments, but on the whole they all still got on. Some stickering as a firebreak unfortunately was not entirely succesful, as I hadn’t realised SB’s attachement to some flowery thingy stickers – bad mummy! A short pause of story reading [barefoot animal stories] restored SB’s equanimity. Its clear that Big and SB get on like a house on fire, and have many character similarities. It was also good to see them and Small all playing together inmaginatively upstairs – lots of picnics, dollies and happy street. Small was desperately cute persuading BB to play with him. Unfortunately she is post MMR and with cold, so not at her peak!

So, when we saw them, they had fun with the wacky wigglers – small was totally engrossed. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of him roller skating down the hallway later on.
transfixed bt wacky wigglers

SB and Big really enjoyed sowing seeds together [summer sprouting broc [wok brok], broccoli romanescu and asparagus peas.]
gardening in pjamas

But mostly there was a lot of noise and mayhem!

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What fun. SB collapsed in bed tonight with angelina ballerina stories and barefoot princess. No such luck with BB – she has permafeeded and snoozed her way through the day, and resitance to sleep very high indeed!

PS, which 8 of you are up as dreadfully late as me? few minutes after posting this, there are 8 views on the linked flickr pictures!!