hmm, have delayed writing this blog post to see if would be uplifting a cheerful! sorry. i feel a bit worse than a ham sandwich – and that is a pretty bad thing for a vegetarian
yesterday my mum and dad brought little nanny to visit. it was lovely to see them, but she has got noticeably frailer in the last month since i saw her. the lump over her breast and collarbone is clearly the start of a fungating cancer, though she doesn’t really want to admit this, or consider any treatment options. i have suggested to her she needs to as it will only get worse. not sure if she will. just had to have a short break there. anyway, the girls were delightful and played games and entertained. I love my Nanny. i guess though, what I am wishing for her, above all else is to maintain the dignity she has always had.
after they left, we finished off the day with doctor who and time team, feeling rather subdued.
today i haven’t felt much better TBH, and realising we had let a few home-ed things slip through our fingers hasn’t helped self esteem much. we could do a lot better really. we neither go out loads, or do ‘normals’ or projects and stuff, and well, blah!
But today, SB has done a lot, and it hasn’t made me feel any more competent! She did some galore park english – we are working through one tiny section at a time, as she really isn’t keen on writing, but is wanting to get better. she wrote a lot, and although the spelling is highly imaginative, she is getting the idea. She spent ages beading – i have a bracelet and some presents have been made, and also playing with Barbies. The birds have been fed again. She also did piano practice. Together we have done some conversational french, and a quick look at chapter 1 and 2 minimus vocab – as she said on the way home from melrose then only latin word she knew was fatigata! Also, whilst she was painting a picture of soap for sketch tuesday, i read something from SotW on the Jewish diaspora – but i don’t really think she listens when she crafts, as she has a ferocious concentration face!
BB has done a bit of her before the code, read with me a level one oxford reading tree – she read mum and dad, and i did the rest, we looked at the piccies and letters etc. SHe has also painted, sang songs, played with her paper castle, and periodically screeched!!
ho hum
due to colour arguments – were well worth the pennies, and were used a lot every day by our kids and others – was pleased how well the sharing thing worked. the portico also brought sledges – rather cool silicon mat type thingies. so yes, snow was a key part of the melrose experience this year.
, and would be happy to play those lots. others played carcassonne and mission 44 and blokus, but i settled for those 2! lots of the adults got involved, and what with those stitching beside giving helpful commentary, it was all v sociable.
SB did a fab gym routine and also a leaping lunatics dance, and finally a bit of recordering. after some rather good clowning act moments – including heckling by small – BB also did some recordering. lovely acts from all in it i thought.
[which i wanted to read!] and instead had a dinosaur theme! 
and SB sorted out a variety of books having melted down over the roald dahl books and not chosen any of them… We saw M and C for about 5 mins, had a wrong book trauma best glossed over and missed train by a minute. 
and 
she is going to make a list [who does she get that from] of all the roald dahl books we have, and then spend her book vouchers on getting the ones we don’t. not that she has stuck with fiction, other nose in a book moments with 
and 
. but actually what she has mostly done this weekend [and this is a falling of perch moment plus extra drumrolls] is writing!!!!!!!! My daughter, the not keen on writing one, must have spent about 8 hours this weekend writing. SHe has written thankyou notes to all her friends who went to centreparcs [all of her own volition, and the one i caught site of was v effusive] as she wanted to let them all know how much she loved them – aaaah. please remember agape! those whose children receive them, will hopefully receive them more happily than the rainbow friend, who when SB told her she loved her, said that that was highly inappropriate [raised eyebrows emoticon!] lots of 2 way explanations involved which i thought rather saddened the whole thing. ANyway, proud of all her writing, we carried on with all the christmas thankyous. SB has also done some piano practice [last pieces in the gbdf book] and maths – spurred on by BB with her head in the clouds declaring that she was catching up!
which she is particularly keen on as there is a dinosaur on the front! we had done lots of reading together, including most of the quentin blake books we got from the book people, incl this one 
. 
and we played lots of games [
, 
, 
] we tcikled, giggled, sylvanianed – the girls doing good compromise and cooperation – phew! BB did some brianbox electronics, and was most pleased to get a circuit that could light [she wasn't following instructions]
[bah to all that text in the link!!].
, 
. they were great hits, as the english is funny, the french doesn’t appear to be a direct translation, but use nice language [must check with katy!] and we also bought jill and the beanstalk, 3 billy goats gruff – which i remember borrowing from leeds library in english/arabic [and a couple of others :blush: ] un beknownst to me, chris had also weakened on the resource front! 
. i blame michelle 
and recommend it. ermm, i think from there we went on to watch harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, and eat tea and SB’s cake. where i am at the moment! oh, i have flickred xmas day, and now onto the rest of xmas. will get there!
