General

i’ve been working, but chris and the girls have been busy busy. a visit to nots and tots at one of our not so close HE groups. picked up our suma order from Katy - pleased so see that it is enormous, as it was expensive! Also pleased that chris left in the dried mango slices - yum yum. SB put out that she didn;t finish the science experiment on heat loss as she had to go to the dentist. SB was fine at the dentist, and was oK with the discussion that her front teeth stick out and will need some work when she is older. [aargh to thumb sucking, if i could go back in time i would be there with the dummy] bB wouldn’t open her mouth. she decided she only will when she is f and bigger for an overwhelmingly confident bean she is remarkably scaredy about these type of out of family/friend things.

in the afternoon, SB did maths, handwriting, piano and violin - she is def motivated at the moment! When i got home they were recreating the heat loss experiment. weirdly paper did best, our socks obviously not v good!! BB and i had lots of stories from library books, and she played chase the A through the book.  SB did some more of our viking brooch craft, and also made a paper kit viking ship i picked up from greece some time ago. SB particularly likes the idea of i-viking as a phrase! She amazed me by saying that she knew how the vikings and normandy tied up, and telling chris about it. it is in SOtW, but i don’t test recall, and make no significance to remembering, and i get a sad thrill about things remembered! We did some french altogether, with SB snuggled on my lap.

I really like an SB snuggle, and I don’t get one so often any more [oK. i still get lots, but i like LOTS] and i had a distinct moment of looking at her and seeing the lovely, charming older girl looking back at me. i cherish every second, because one day this older girl is going to leave home! i am not sure that we do the best that we can all the time, and i know my parenting and ed could be better, but i think we try hard, and love well. Though she is still emotionally up and down, i hope that this gorgeous and sensitive child is being done the best by that we possibly can. ah, i had a real mummy moment!

whilst bB went to bed, it was games time, and SB did some of the horrible histories viking sticker book with me and then chose a multiplication game. we read a bit more of the second roman mysteries book and did a made up story.

we are being reasonably productive at the moment. yesterday the girls had a library morning, making owls and listening to owl stories, and SB has read loads of her library books. she also did some piano and handwriting. She learnt she had got a place at gym - woohoo, and also went to the first swimming of term, she is now at level 7, so v happy.

today SB did some violin and piano. we are trying to do 15 minutes more regularly, but this is v variable! SHe has done maths and spellings as well. from the box books she chose some of the viking stories [we have viking fact and fiction, volcano fact and fiction and weather fact in there at the mo]. We also did the first chapter of minimus, realising we have forgotten too much of our sketchy latin!

BB has also done lots of letterland books [ iread them and we play search for the main letter of the book] as well as counting and jigsaws. She also played on starfall.

we all made castles and other creations out of wooden bricks for a while, and played outside for a bit too, and i read a french book with them both.

SB has done some education city science, and bB loads of the jump ahead starting maths. i was desperate to do something crafty, so eventually enticed them away with air drying clay. BB made snowmen and SB the start of the viking badges in the hundred history projects book. They both wanted to be facepainted, so i did that, but soon they wanted it off as they said it was itchy.

SB did a chromatography experiment with felt tips to see what hidden colours were there after initially identifying the pen that had made the ‘test’ chromatogram. she really loved doing this, and i think plans to do loads more. i think we might then have a go with 2 way chromatography on the ones that didn’t split well and use alcohol as the other solvent [though we don't have pure ethanol!] and perhaps see what might happen with other solvents.

a quiet time with ‘how things work’ and ‘magic school bus’ and then a castle/fairy game before tea and bed. I have started shortening SB’s judo suit.

chris has had fun with a blocked drain, and sorting camping stuff for the weekend. i love camping!

IMG_1373, originally uploaded by Scrumbledelicious.

nearly all the piccies are up!

Actually, a pretty small haul, and mostly knew whose things were.

But there is a light blue cool bag that no one has claimed yet - anyone?

… comes the eating up of spare party food - never so enjoyable!! though katy’s cheese bread that i missed on the day has been wolfed down!

chris and the girls went shopping for some non party food, and also try out a different library. SB has done maths and handwriting, and we have printed out the first Dolch set of words for her to learn how to spell. Since they are allegedly common words, we thought we could start with those, especially since a lot of them are easy!

both girls have done a lot of playing with shops today, and also castle stuff, and also being puppy dogs. SB has bee doing a lot of french knitting, and made BB a bracelet, and also some painting of kits and bB has made pompom creatures.

When i got home we did some french altogether - BB ‘woofed’ her responses - hmm. We read some viking stories, a section of SoTW and did recorder practice. Bit of playing outside, and a game of SET. BB also did some blowing on the recorder.

i am STILL flickring. i will delete duplicate photos when up i think.

we had a great weekend chez haricot. friends started arriving from friday. friday was spent busily making our house look habitable [i think we made a creditable effort!] some more baking [the delia chocolate bread pudding was a real treat - i microwaved choc, butter and sugar as have an aversion to bain maries, added the cream to the eggs and then the warmed stuff]

we painted the pirate ship and on the sat chris put it together - we were most proud!

jax and the nic and families arrived on friday and the fun started. we did jobs and drank wine and talked until way too late on the fri! but always nice.

so sat dawned and it was sunny - hooray. we were excited at everyone who attended. we all had a great time, which i think is best shown in pictures. i made the sangria slightly too potent, so had to lemonade it, having had to sit down for a bit after one glass. The kids enjoyed bashing 7 bells against each other using the lagging, clambering all over the pirate ship and general aarghhhing about.

michelle brought a pirate ducky game that they all enjoyed, and the waterpool was then v enjoyed by BB and minx, and the later on by all the bigger girls - they got rather wet!

more drinking and chatting by adults, and total wildness by children, but eventually all kids fell asleep, adults chatted on sofas and went to bed too late.

so today was a rather laid back affair, i was last up, gradually goodbyes and settling down. seems a shame to go back to work tomorrow!

i am thinking of listing our khyam frontier with a reserve of 150 and a BIN of 180 in ebay. if anyone was considering buying one similar, or knows someone and would like to see photos or consider it before i do flog it, please let me know!

This is a great Special Edition tent from Khyam in their ridgi dome range, with their quick erect rapidex pole system. utterly reliable, and we have had it leakproof through dreadful storms. in the original khyam adverts [long since gone!] they said they were tested in a wind tunnel, so good for all weather. I would agree, having camped safely through gales in the UK. They are a high quality good name and this is one of their high end spec tents. The main frame poles are aluminium, the porch poles are powder coated steel and the top poles are fiberglass.

its a lovely spacious tent, exceptionally spacious living area, at 5.1 x 2.9m. It has a front porch - pictured, which opens up and has 2 extra poles to become an integral sun canopy. The weatherweave outer material also rolls up, and there is a mesh door underneath, which increases ventilation, but protects from flies [and midges in scotland]. It has a back porch as well with a J door, so their can be a good through draft for ventilation when needed. there is a window beside the J door. It is tall, you can stand easily in both the main living area and the inners. The middle is just over 2m high.

It has 2 very spacious sleeping areas. one of them is a 4 birth [which can easily sleep 5], which has a divider that can come down. the other is a 2 birth [though we have slept 4 in it easily! - see inner picture for its 2 person/playroom use]. when i bought the 2 birth sleeping inner, it stated it was for the excelsior range rather than classic [which is the frontier] but i found it to be tight to the loops at the top. this was resolved with the use of hair bobbles to add more stretch, and has always been used that way without problem [hair bobbles included!]. i can find a photo if required. The inners have internal pockets and integral groundsheets, and the doors have a double system of both material and secondary mosquito net doors, so in hot weather they can keep cool. The inners are poly cotton that khyam semi-proof to prevent dampness from condensation penetrating.

it has the correct khyam fitted groundsheet. This is of woven polyethylene with taped seams. the tent was bought in 2003 and has been used approx 2ce per year.
http://www.khyam.co.uk/technical.asp

we have patched 2 tiny holes on the flysheet with the patch set - caused by embers from another’s fire [always irritating] but is obviously completely watertight. There is plenty of the patch kit and khyam seam sealant.

We are selling because it is too big for us - our family size did not reach expectation. our last holiday this summer we had a family of 4 in each side. [this is the pictured holiday].
We will miss this tent, but it is an excellent, sturdy, easy to pitch and seemingly impossible to blow down option for comfortable family camping. It is in a ready to go camping condition.

Do you think this would be a bit wordy?

STILL got the brownies timing wrong. overdone this time. sighs and goes to bed.

the girls having bath as the lickings were black, and spread everywhere!! lots of baking to do this eve, as don’t need so much energy to bake as i do to tidy.

we have been very busy today. i had a lie in as still feeling bleurgh, but medication overcomes all eventually! SB was v industrious, and did her maths [woohoo, she can finally reliably tell the time, so she is due a watch], handwriting [still getty and dubay] and piano practice before i got up.

i got up at 10, because that is when the amazon parcel arrived. the girls were falling over themselves desperate for me to open it! it had 2 french/english story books, SB’s recorder books and 2 michael morpurgo books - beowulf [which we will save as a bedtime book, we are currently on the second roman mystery, and chris on the first narnia] and blodin the beast. Oh i also bought a pompeii book to go with the current theme on a different bloggers recommendation, and we enjoyed that.

SO today has been rather book oriented! I read the blodin and pompeii book to the girls, we did the red riding hood with cd [but prefer me to do it] and sb read me some of a volcano fact book we have. both girls read a pirate flap book we have as well. BB did some maths and some letters. SHe also did ‘extra’ french, as she insisted on doing the maths counting in french.

All this took the morning, and a late lunch and then a bit of the afternoon. we went outside to run about, play football etc, and then returned in for a snack.

At this point the enormity of the total tipness of the house, and the imminent guest situation turned me into a bit of a panic, so i reorganised the bookcases in the playroom [why i couldn't just lump the books on i don't know] and also we sorted the child ‘bits’ - you know, fimo art blobs, broken hama, numerous tiny plastic tat animals etc. the girls found homes for them all . i realised i was getting snappy, so told sb to choose some music - and we had a french cd [rofl!] but i calmed down, and we have done not a bad job! i have also polished some of the staircase woodwork. i hasten to add that this house is actually not going to live up to many peoples idea of tidy, but it will at least have somewhere to place feet!!

BB did maths jump ahead, and SB whichever jump ahead she has got to, then they both argued over who could practice recorder with me first and def couldn’t under any circumstances be doing it together. it was sb’s turn to ‘win’ a nonwinnable situation, not that it made her happier. but once we had settled down to it, it was fine. some magic school bus to watch, and a treat of curry take-away for all our hard work.

i think it takes about 15 mins for me to be threatening to throw all toys away and move out. it is an area i have no tolerance for. i hate tidying, especially miscellaneous trash treasures.

luckilly, applying music has a miraculous effect in this house , listening to a french song cd!!

edited to add - btw, this will hopefully get house to a level that i won’t die when guests come out of embarrassment, rather than actually tidy, and heaven hope for neat!

bb fell asleep on the way back from gym, so we had a peaceful evening with SB, and then BB woke up with SB asleep [and still awake actually] and she has been generally playing with her mosp [a possible wasp or moth she made] and just generally being the kind of BB that you just find yourself saying, oh i love you bb. this is very lovely, since at the beginning of the year this was mostly said through gritted teeth. i’m not saying she is any more biddable… just that she can be more easily approached on the whole lets work together. [though it was SB chanting the best kind of work is teamwork!] and possibly because we have learnt how to work with bb. we are still working on the whole how to balance 2, as that is a crux problem at times, SB getting dramatically upset if the slice doesn’t fall her way. Whether its something to do with the whole unhappy unsettled thing? but i try and build as much individual time with SB as i can, doing something hers and fun. mind you, i don’t want tag children on the whole, i want to work to us 50% at least loving and enjoying the same thing. i guess we are getting there!

so really seems nothing holiday-ish to me! and been working quite hard too. chris put the tent up in the garden, hopefully at somestage it might dry enough to come down! SB and I have done some reading on volcanos and pompeii, piano and violin practice. we have all read some french and watched bonjour mes amis. BB and SB are happy pootling along with french, and SB def getting some vocab. both girls done some maths also. Today we did science, SB chose the brainbox kit. BB insisted on designing her own circuit, which didn’t join, so stropped at the lack of light. when it did join, she then threw a wobbly about it not being so pretty, which i cuddled and jollied and then noticed had made a short circuit, so scorching hot batteries. At least it was me who noticed! SB investigated serial and parallel lights and used the multimeter.

other than that, a lot of playing in the garden, investigating cabbage white caterpillars and other bugs! Harvesting well at present, but weeds are ascendant!

but i am going to get a bit of backpay next month. it should be used to help fix the conservatory, but i would like a really quick up and down nightstop tent.

i was thinking perhaps of the vango sigma 400. i want something that will stay up in a hurricaine, is quick to put up, light and packs small - so that if we ever cycle camp, it would be just about OK .

any alternative suggestions, or experience??

well, as you see, our blog was hacked - sigh. we now need to actually take all the hacked code bits of the posts, but the upgrade has happened - and is supposedly safer, and we have changed all the passwords for admin etc. not that the previous ones should have been in any way obvious . i had been reading about it in Arran in the grauniad, and thought we should look at our blog, as we have been to busy with other things to upgrade. Sarah’s auto-upgrade sounds good. unfortunately the first weird comments glitches were back in july, so plenty of opportunity, and plenty to search, and even if we upload a trouble free back up, there will still be loads of work to do. weirdly, on going back, its the ones with no comments that seem to be affected. however, they all have pointy bracket u style=’display:none’ pointy bracket [written so can def be seen!] so have searched for that, and only 20 posts obvious. if someone clever knows how i can find out if anywhere else, would be most greatful!

other things we did today was become kiterunners. hmm, but sorting it out have at least decided to have a more me [rather than my mother] icon. hmm, i thought i had popped it in, but not so sure? oh yes, there it is! ooh, i do like being able to do that with the new word press, nice and painless!

we also made a start at the mountain of back flickring, we have done the SOTP party, and half way through Arran.

oh yes, we did interact with the children too! SB and i had slept in the same bed last night - she is having an insomniac phase. so we had a lie in. then did some violin practice. SB and BB played a fantastic farm game for ages, and when went a bit wild, we read some books. on doing french, we decided to cherche for les animaux, so had a game with the farm and animals which was greatly enjoyed. BB was keen to do her match and sort, so we did maths, whilst SB cut out aeroplanes and wrote a letter to her cousin.

After lunch we finished making viennese swirls and then did some SoTW, legoing, a bit of investigating cabbage white butterflies that had snuck under the environmesh in the winds whilst we were away and have been having a good old nibble. we did a fair bit of dancing to steps and s-club from utube - sb v much likes them! i have no interest or fashion in teenybop, so any recommendations of anything current of that kind of nature for her to listen and dance to.

we made a lovely exotic fresh fruit salad to have for our tea, and SB did her maths. we have done the usual cuddling, tickling, playing and being silly. And now i have been looking for hacked blog posts - joy!

Tim kindly pointed out that our blog had been hacked - lots of the posts contain a whole load of hidden links to other sites at the end of the post.

Anyway, it has been running on a very old version (2.0 - ooopps!) for much to long (kept meaning to sort out another template to go with the upgrade) so this inspired a quick upgrade (not so quick, some odd problem with the config.php file seemed to be causing blank screens - spent much too much time sorting that out).

There were various issues with the old one (which continued even after I moved the install from the old host) so I did a clean install of 2.6.1 rather upgarde over the old one - hence the reversion to the default template. Think I might just dump a few ok looking ones in here and play around with them on on off.

The spam links are still in most of the posts - will ponder easiest way to remove them. Hoping that it’s recent and so I can revert to a recent backup.

holberg suite. i love this. i always think it sounds ‘very english’. i have a thing for all strings! here is some more.

we went on a camping holiday last week to arran. we booked a lovely campsite in lochranza, ferry crossings etc and went with good spirit, despite the weather forecast.

we actually did have a lot of fun, but had to work hard for it! we pitched the tent in rain - well, it rained as soon as the outer was up and was very ratty making! it was late when we got their after a long day of travelling. the night was considerably windy, but the tent was rock solid. [tho i did stay awake to make sure!] the next day the weather was ‘variable’ so we went shopping for staples, played a bit on the beach, and me and the girls played mini golf. it then soaked it down! BB hated midges, and SB and i got eaten alive. oh, and the pressurising bit on the stove stopped working, so we had to swap to emergency gas cannisters! the night was again incredibly blustery, but i slept.
the following day [tues] was pretty much solid rain to start with, so we played games in the tent to start with, and then did some craft kits - must add craft kits to camping list! - and got the girls jollied along [though mummy not so impressed!] and then decided to drive around the coast and stop whenever and wherever it wasn’t torrential rain. luckilly there was a glimmer of improvement, so SB and i played on the beach and found stones. it started to tip it down, but we were well wrapped up. back to the car for hot choc, and then drove some more to find a cafe for lunch. suitably restored and in a light drizzle only, we went for a walk to kings caves. we enjoyed the walk so much and did lots of investigating that we never actually got to said cave [which is a shame], but we were all happy. the midges descended - 6 o clockbeing midge o clock and we ran back to the car and had a restaurant meal to inject further cheer into the day.

wed was glorious and sunny - hooray! we cycled to a nearbye castle to explore, spent time playing on the beach and then cycled back for lunch. had we cycled a bit further we would have found a cafe, never mind! we then drove to a lovely pebble beach, where there were lots of rockpools and crystal clear water, and we saw lots of wildlife. unfortunately when we were investigating anemones, BB was investigating the flotation of crocs, so there was a mad dash to save one from drifting to kintyre! this was def A Good Day! i didn’t sleep well from this moment onwards as taking max piriton and anti itch creams for the total body rash of bites! SB tried to swallow a tablet as we hadn’t got the syrup, but she hasn’t developed the technique yet. oh, and we think we might have seen an eagle!
thurs another day of variable weather - mostly drizzle, some heavy and some just midge. we did some art and craft in the tent and then went to the heritage museum. this was rather fab, and we actually spent the whole day there. it had a nice cafe, and also a weaving and spinning workshop. BB was less enthusiastic, but fell asleep for most of the afternoon. SB keen for chris to make her a weaving frame to do more, as she quickly got into it. she also wants a spinning wheel for christmas - not quite so sure about that one, but will perhaps see about a drop spindle if she fancies it instead!

fri , not quite so variable! in fact it was quite sunny in parts!! so we went to a beach with sand - actually it was quite nippy at this point, but both girls got stuck right into making sandcastles and were happy. we moved onto a cafe for lunch and then we had decided that we really really wanted to see the stone circles, so did a walk to those. weather stayed fine, and girls had a good walk. lots of conversations about this that and everything and lots of smiling. fantastic! SB singing her ’show’ songs continually, so even BB and I know most of the words now.

sat was time to go. we packed up everything but the shell whilst it rained, and the girls were helpful and lovely. we treated ourselves to lunch at the cafe, hoping the rain would ease, but instead it turned from moderate drizzle to really rather wetting! chris, me and SB were soaked. by the end- after we had convinced sb that although she was v helpful, we didn’t want to her to be wet and miserable,  chris and i were in a state of giggles at how awful it was, and the fact that our reactalite glasses were convinced it was sunny - so we were wet and looking at things in extra gloom!

so we went for retail therapy, and visited the cheesery - yummy peppercorn cheese amongst others, and arran aromatics - various rellies presents bought! oh, and another cafe for cake! a final beach visit and then the ferry
home was in stages, we spent a night at the premier inn in carlisle - and were inpressed with it and the service there. and we stopped off sunday lunch at jax and co, for something to eat and a good natter.

overall impression - regret for the holiday we didn’t get. arran was lovely, we had identified walks and cycles to do, but the weather was against it. die hards might have still gone ahead, but lets face it, SB and BB would have been really miserable, and we would have been moved from borderline miserable to outright!! so we did crafts and made of it what we could. SB never wants to return to scotland, as she and i still v midgy.

firstly thanks to the SOTP family for a lovely weekend at their house. good friends, good food and happy children. we took loads of photos, and will no doubt flickr them. thanks also for giving us a room in the house. although i am sure our tent would have been fine [it proved itself later in the week] i think to have put tents up and down in adverse conditions more than once would have made the week seem stressful! sorry for those whose tents came down in the night though…

Had a lovely time chatting, and meeting up with the wellyboots family for the first time, as well as much loved old friends. SB and BB had great fun as well. glad to see that SB happy with her friends and reasonably confident after a few major wobbles since her accident. there were loads of games going on, and the rainy weather didn’t seem to hold things back. BB was charming and adorable nearly all the time! i loved her attachment to her capri sun DS. i also like the video of her grape eating on flickr. she repeated the trick more wildy several times whilst we were camping!

talked books - always a good subject, and came away with some to read. always good! some interesting talks on new atheism. which to me seems currently to be a particularly rude and brattish way of thinking - i think i perhaps am not  keen supporter of anything new [think new labour!] if this is going to be the face of atheism, i will be an agnostic [preferably of the old variety!!] you can’t do much exciting with people hedging their bets.

we decamped [well, ok not quite] as we had a schedule to keep on the sunday and went to catch the ferry to Arran. i am considering here what exactly to say about the holiday. i might facebook [as tim says its my go on scrabulous] and come back to post again.