Category Archives: General

3 things

1.driving home late this evening, the smell of strawberries from the pYO was delicious.

2. I passed a man earlier in the drive who had 2 bottles of beer in his back pockets of such baggy jeans that they wre below his crotch! YUK [he was clutching the front - rofl]

3.I had my first redundancy consultation meeting. It seems odd to be blogging it openly, but I guess it is now. the deal is 1 redundant now or a further 10% paycut each with no reduction hours. it seems likely that this conversation willr be repeated a number of times. we will end up I predict with 2 redundant having taken a further 10% paycut. [tries to shrug nonchalantly]

dinner time


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Originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.

our hideaway


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Originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.

bed-den made for two

mum and dad

mostly a day talking tactics for the future and gardening. its nice to have some help in the garden. Dad gave the topiary a good trim, mum and i weeded, SB watered and BB pulled up to veg – sigh!

SB did do some obvious home ed stuff – she did some explode the code, read some raiders and rioters book, and then some history with mum – mostly mediaeval bits and pieces. She is starting to read words out and a bout – which is nice, even if it was predominantly shed [garden centre] and getting more and more proficient with mental maths of adding and subtracting over a ten. She did some nice singing for my mum, and lots of maze books.
Most of the day was playing though. I think my uncertainty is not helping the girls, as SB more waily at the moment, and mimicking BB for the attention.

BB also had fun today. pottred around, started undressing upstairs as poopoo – so we might start potty training in the good weather. she enjoyed the sandpit and the brio track the most.

Homeschool Country Fair

I’ve been avoiding tidying the kitchen by reading posts over on the 4th? Homeschool Country Fair (started up? recently as an alternative to the longer running Carnival of Homeschooling. No links to blogs on Home School Blogger – becuase of the boycott, no posts re corporal punishment, and a more secular bent really).

This post is one of those ones that reminds you just how different a country the US is.

my little girls they smileth

The many faces of Stringbean
My girl butterbean [de dah dah dah]

Catching up

kind of day. did some trrying to sort the veg garden – weeding, a bit of watering where desperate. the peas in their entirety didn’t survive us being at kessingland – very sad!

SB read to me the 9th ladybird phonics book, and did some explode the code. We also did some singapore maths thinking skills, and read a book all about how the body works. Mostly we played out in the garden though. SB definitely turning into a trapeze artiste.

i feel the need to be expanding on her home ed with resources we have, but not quite doing it. Luckilly she is very good at finding things to read/do, but I’m not keeping up with the piano, and would like to do the getty and dubay, latin and story of the world more regularly.

BB and I did lots of shape sorting and jigsaws before mostly playing in the garden. lots of running under water! [no hosepipe ban here, though this is the first use of hosepipe as most water butts now run out – unfortunately noticed one was full after i had watered! [we are metered]

chris made flapjacks, but neither girl really helped!

i am finding it difficult to keep my head in one place at the moment. Need a haven of tranquility – rofl! No news yet.

quick today

at the moment I am trying to seize the moment with the girls, and banish the dark side as it were.

so today we watched some cbeebies together, played imagination stuff, geomagged, read books – SB read 2 red nose readers and an apple tree farm with a bit of help. i then read why the sea is salty, and we discussed beaches and seasides. SHe then spent a while on jump ahead maths while I played allsorts of toddler things with BB.

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when bB slept, Chris set up and experiment for SB, and we watched how cooling gas in a glass makes the water level rise – well I’ll show a picture. We used the DK picturepedia explanation of molecules – really good – to help her understand what was happening, and she enacted molecules in various states!!

science - molecules!

BB and SB have both made plaster of paris foot and handprints [well, C and B's respectively at Kessingland were so good!]

When BB woke up, we did a great deal of sorting out of the hayloft, as someone locally is putting a few boxes of hers in there. If my future becomes less than pleasant, I guess we could rent that space for storage… BB played in the car, and I rescued my box – see previous post!

we played outside a bit, and then listed to little toe whilst eating tea, and discussed real vs totally made up stories.

Not the best choice of evening pastime

in the circumstances, I shouldn’t really be looking through a keepsake box bound to make me cry – it did. I have a box my dad’s dad used to show me, and the keepsake I have of him and granny. the box is fairly uniteresting, but in it, he kept his momentoes of his father – who died as a merchant seaman when he was very young. he went into a home at that point as did his brother. larer his brother was a transport to NZ, and died there aged 16. in the box is his fathers seaman cards, english naturalisation and letters to his mother. there is one letter back. also flowers pressed from the grave of his brother, sent by the vicars wife to his mother. He had so little of a childhood, and valued these things hugely.

Also various pictures from his and gran’s childhood – some identifiable, and some not. Will flickr these as the canadian family can look and see if they can identify themselves [well, their parents/grandparents] in grans.

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i then thought how poor my keepsakes will be. I have both too much and too little.

Kessingland Camp now updated

was great, but no blogging facility in my brain. Hopefully Chris will do it.

here are the photos.

actually, we are probably both not feeling very bloggish, so while SB does jump ahead maths on the other computer, I’ll do a quick blog for posterity.

I loved all of it, there were no bad moments – wellllll, OK, I WAS a bit stressed before my craft as sure it would be a failure, and when an eager beaver child knocked a whole cup of plaster of paris over me I DID have to take some deep breaths! And I guess BB’s constant desire to run away as fast as possible, or lean throuh bridge to see ducks did get a bit much…

There wasn’t enough time, and inertia stopped me from actually being good enough to explore hookups, even though friends there that I wanted to chat to more [sorry]. And to be honest, my life so spiralling out of control at the moment, the opportunity to sit and let it wash around me was very tempting at times.
however, I was really happy to have put behind shyness to introduce new people [though not very good at it!] I loved meeting them too, as don’t want camp to become cliquey – although when you see people you know the temptation is to catch up on life and everything!

i think the crafts worked really well, getting everyone to hook up and have a good reason to say hello and chat. Although no sandcastles made, the beach expedition too was good for non-stressful meeting and socialising, and getting the children all together.

SB was much more into doing the crafts this year as well, so not me doing it by proxy. SB and Big concentrated so hard on their felting – though i do think there was a bit of pride in who stabbed themselves the most! SB made a great basket, and I made a lid for it.

I was proud of SB for learning to make compromises with her friends, and giggled at her hero worship of violet [who bought her a slinky] and her resilience when violet prefered to play sometimes with the older kids. Though also giggle at the various slaves games initiated – i think – by violet.

the africa alive trip was fun – though wouldn’t hand around to see the lions fed again! Enjoyed the swimming – i love swimming! weather was mostly great.

SB danced and sang at the caberet – though BB didn’t. And all children worthy of claps and cheers. Both my girls appeared to have a fantastic time, enjoying the increased freedom of camp, and SB was fairly responisble about it [well, mostly!] playing with a mixture of children and minimal grumps.

Also great was the last minute suggestion by Merry that why not stay another day and go to the beach in lowestoft – why not indeed?

So a perfect week indeed, and now am over initial brain stopping panic of where my life may be going, i can look back on it and think fantastic again.