weekend 2: to ring the changes! having had a v exciting week, with friends taking home their gorgeous new baby, we shared a different birthday with a friend and had a games weekend it was a shame we started our journey from great yarmouth, as i had spent the day there for work. and the kids and DH had gone to a local museum and spent time on the beach. it was a looooong drive! however, got there, sent the kids all up to bed and played some games back to back def played escape from atlantis and forbidden island – both of which we really love! and was sure there was something else! we finished v late tho. next day the kids all beat us with the number of games they were playing back to back! we played some more games awaiting other friends arrival, and then carried on until far too late at night, so had to bail out of a game half played! more games the next day until time to leave. we had a fab weekend with friends, and lots of merriment I finished another shift more or less too perfick :)

great games for mixed age and ability

games with specific kid appeal

hardened gamer types

centerparcs is a fb hol in jan that gets me through the post xmas downer and is a fab highlight of the early year. this year was no different we love sharing with friends, and have always shared with making it up, but now the soa is countable, we don’t fit luckilly le ciel rouge stepped into the breach and bravely agreed to share we had a fab time, with the jax and co just round the corner and meeting up with other home ed friends in the pool.

lots of swimming – twice a day, morning and night swim. was a bit knackering! the bigger girls mostly rapids and slides etc, popping by for a hello i am ok check and bb mostly with me initially. to our great disappointment the salt pool was closed but rumour has it that they are building a ring flume thing, so not all bad. she splashed in ring, got admiring looks for her sharks fin, dived for seals etc and by midweek had a play thing going with small over it. but then they both decided they could do rapids!! and had a fab time. i also enjoyed the rapids more this year, and giggled and hooted my way down on numerous occassions [in a not very gainly fashion!]

in between swimming we did lots of board games playing and sewing – i had taken the wherewithal to make needlecases and most of the children made a needlecase or a little purse beautifully. i should have taken more embroidery thread tho! I also managed to sew a fair part of my first shift. love chatting and playing the games, tho some went on for aaaages! and we also got some films on dvd.

food was mostly prepped in advance, so we ate v v well, in fact had too much cake!! I loved the mixture of friends with a family holiday. get to see way more of my children than i do at camps, and still giggle and gossip with our respective friend groups. SB, as always, was a delight and once over the pyjama trauma of the first night bb was mostly too . fab time with a group of lovely friends thankyou

Anyway, the theme for this term is physics and animation [sort of!] with me doing the physics using realscience4kids [tho actually i don't the experiments are as good as the text, the text is fantastic and easy to understand and grasp, and the experiments are easily jazzed up a bit!] and nattye doing animation with her fab hue box

So we have looked at the first 2 chapters of physics, thrown balls in the air, attached string and thrown the, whirled them around, then weighed and used slinkies to show fruit doing work, and calculated this in Nm and joules. [no pound yards or other weird stuff for me!] and hopefully ppl might make their own newtonmeters! the online forum for us to encourage children was initially succesful, but thinking i am a bit lone voice currently!!

We have animated eggbox critters [well, i had had to go to work that afternoon!] going to a disco and being sick! and then animated a drawing – bb volcano, and sb a house. hoping to work out how to put them on the blog. v v succesful! have the hue thing sitting in the amazon basket awaiting me to feel a bit more flush!!

for art, organise by lecielrouge we had portraits the first week – sketching in any style one of the other kids and then seeing if identifiable – they all did a fab job with different styles. then last week we first did some natural weaving with dowsing sticks and wool – some fab results to put on flickr! and some afircan art inspired animals [with a bit of australia creeping in

we did some poetry the first week with merry, but the second she was inconveniently planning to give birth woohoooooo and little dance to the safe arrival of Ben music usually gets done in some form – sb does piano prac and often some recorder with e, and a singsong around the piano. and just milling about going on a tangent etc.

Currently i think it is working nicely. i would like the opportunity to build in a little something french – even if it is just listening as you craft. v happy

So my new years he resolution is to come to a consensus about the broad strokes of the next 2 years. For us all to agree that we can do this, HE into secondary years. I know we can if we want to and try to, but we do need to put some effort in!

When we have it, I will pop it up as the mission statement!!

I was aseked to do a treasure hunt, and so wrote lots and lots of clues that sent the girls with O trailing all around house and garden until finally successful. some of them were better clue spotters than others . they all did a bit of christmas crafting that was in the conservatory, and then settled down to play smallworld v happily. well, it is a world of slaughter whilst BB ds-ed. We handed on a cornet that had been handed along for them to try as a temporary swap for a bass recorder – much enjoyed

Finally after tea they went home. I don’t seem to be able to add photos still, but they are here

sat was chatting, playing games all settling in and hunkering down, the prep for the next day done, we had made food in advance and frozen wherever possible. house was all glitzy and christmassy and carols blaring . sherry, mince pies and carrots left out for santa, and reindeer food courtesy of le ciel rouge scattered outside.

christmas day worked well, so much of the prep had already happened, that the meal etc wasn’t such a big stress, and that takes out a lot of the day stress. the kids all were told they couldn’t go downstairs for santa until 8, and had to get us first . so they did and we piled downstairs. unfortunately i used mums camera for father xmas sacks – small, lovely and not full of tat . breakfast of croissant and pain aux chocolate for veggies and gammon for carnivores. the kids v happily got dressed and teeth cleaned and present opening began! think next year might do kids then adults or go back to adults on xmas eve! however everyone really happy with what they got. SB had a netbook, bb a telescope and camera and then some crafts, books and ds games from us, lego and sylvanians and various exciting things from family, and all happy. mum like the lizard i had made, and dad liked his choc brazzles in a bowl marked ‘grandad’s nuts’ !! we also added a family game of forbidden island

dad was in charge of nibbles and champagne half way through the present opening I had set the oven to be ready for 11 – what a fab think to be able to do and then we could enjoy seeing what we had and kids getting out the lego to make etc before lunch, on time at 2 the rest of the day was spent watching kids, playing games, doing jigsaws [bil's dad and my inlaws] and was actually v chilled for such a number. I missed viv, and could see mum and dad did too. none of us managed much tea boxing day was more of the same. bil and dad went home earlier than anticipated – before lunch – so some moments with e and m, all sorted and sunniness resumed. a day of craft, lego and wii

tues onwards had holiday orch, all 3 girls booked in, but bb dithered over going, and in the end stayed with m, and now def wants to go another time. e went, but came out of 2 of the 3 sessions in tears [i was in with her] only enjoying the choir. i think she was wishing bb there, and missing her dad. sb loved it strings, samba and gamelan. e didn’t go back the following day.

dad took us out bowling on weds, which was great fun, and i even got a strke! only dad was watching tho! the kids had great time, and bb did better than i thought – thank goodness for rails a lovely time out.

christmas was full of fun, laughter and good cheer. i tried not to be grumpy when the few ppl either barely helped, or helped making a meal of how much they did as a favour. really, it isn’t a favour. helping out is a sign of love and respect, my house may be the venue each year, but the care and effort is better shared. but small gripes! lots of game playing, lots of happy kids, and therefore happy adults. moving on step by step but still missing viv and especially at this time little nanny. x x

family christmas feels like little nanny to me. she was the matriarch and the role model. she made xmas work, with care, love and food. the house was warmed with a coal fire downstairs and hot water bottles and multiple ppl sharing the 2 bedrooms upstairs. the pantry smelt of flour, raisins and baking, the kitchen of roasties, and there was copious tea and cake. as a 2 up 2 down council house, we were crammed, adults got seats, kids got the floor, and we played games, giggled, had christmas carols and felt wrapped in the warmth of family. popular games of tell me, chase the ace, rummy and taste testing. indoor fireworks were a hit, though dad and grandad chuntered about them. the presents were smaller, more carefully chosen, and often included the nice’ clothes for next year and reading books.

maybe i only remember the good bits, but i remember warmth, laughter, love. i remember you always x x

Starting with my craft I bought red and green felt which I had cut into star shapes, various coloured embroidery threads, a bag of mixed jazzy buttons, and a bag of sewable bling and some stuffing to make hanging decorations. We put them together however fancied and had a very jolly display. They worked really really well J I had forgotten [obviously] that I had bought something similar in mass numbers from baker ross – doh! I did have one lad tell me that boys don’t sew… so he definitely did, and it wasn’t as completely unenjoyable or difficult as he had thought!

Michelle brought oranges, red ribbons and cloves to make scented Xmas pomanders. These made the conservatory smell absolutely delightful! Lots of very intricate designs were done, and in the end I did one too J. SB spent hours on hers.

Zoe’s first craft of colouring in a matisse stained glass window en masse was done in bits and pieces through the day, and finished off by us and the manor borns in the evening, it looked really lovely.

Katy was dipping pinecones into candlewax to make firestarters. We haven’t used ours yet, but BB was particularly taken with this activity, so we do have rather a lot of them. Due to the number of guests over Christmas, we had our heating on to a hotter setting than usual [too hot for me!] so no fire. We did think afterwards we should have added some copper sulphate to the mix.

Merry brought some fimo J to make plaques with holly leaves and the word ‘joy’ on as a tutorial, and then optional penguins or snowflakes for those who wanted to do more. Many did. BB in particular does enjoy the clear instructions.

Gina brought some cross stitch bookmarks [with ones predone by her DH J ] and also provided Christmas music practice for those with woodwind instruments.

In the afternoon, most did Zoes fabulous wreaths, even better than before J my garden isn’t completely stripped of all greenery…

So a fantastic day. The manor borns stayed for a jacket potato supper – so unusual for them not to have to rush off so that was lovely J. Certainly got us in the christmass mood. Such a shame I still had work to go to!

hmm, my blog def seems to have forgotten how to add photos

Camp preparation consisted of making lots and lots of cake, and lots and lots of tablet as well as some soup and some puff pastry pizza swirls and a quick scurry wrt music for camp. Luckilly some cyberfriends as well as real-friends-in-cyber-land came up with some links and an email that got the ball rolling I was most grateful. I love the excitement of camp prepartion, hearing what everyoe is planning, and stressing about being ready, and wondering whether it will snow [it did] etc etc .We set out on time, and the giggle that we would have to return home and try again proved clairvoyant, as we had forgotten to drop keys at neighbours for rabbit feeding – doh! but at last we were off and headed for a church in sheffield as our first stop.

journey to bethlehem: As we arrived at the church they diverted us to the side of the carpark due to imminent arrival of sheep !! and i was a bit worried not to recognise any cars. a quick phone call and we were united with loads of friends and went into the church to start the celebration. they had made lots of paper stars, a cheap but hugely effective decoration and it looked fab. if had time off between now and xmas would consider trying to recreate.

Sb and lots of the other kids did some dancing with the dancing ladies, i had tea and chatted with friends and the minister. all very welcoming, especially since we were so early. They were very interested in the fact we had come so far tho! we got going and it was really lovely, a lot of thought, effort and joy have gone into the making of it, and me and my girls were really appreciative. i liked the break in the middle with the market/crafts as well. poor bb was a bit tired and got flustered with the photo, so was wailing, but i sorted out the problem, and she carried on happily. loads of ppl shouting bb at her made her feel in trouble! back on track she loved the end of the journey, and we swept both off to the youth hostel, greeted there and shown where to park and got stuff into hostel and prepared to have fun

food: first night was soup and stuff, so made it to kitchen to start helping out. DH and i took turns to be kitchen elves through the week – he got to do the dumpling tossing this year, including new modifications from bfish! he also made an utterly fabulous roasted veg in filo pastry parcels [with help] . i made the traditional camp curry and helped with chopping and roasting veg for xmas dinner and last meal. so we both saw a fair bit of kitchen. the prob with the kitchen was that it was so cut off from the rest of the world so you didn’t get popping by helpers as previously as it was v easy to not notice ppl were missing for great swathes of time, and also carrying the food across was a bit of an effort. we knew the kitchen was a bit of a problem when booking, so decided to make the best of it, and we soon got used to the difference. still prefer an integrated kitchen tho! i think over the years we have gradually perfected the timings and getting on with the food, so that this year we were mostly on time! cooking for 50 has its challenges when you rarely do it. ringing my mum and getting her rice advice was a good plan tho, and now feel comfortable with cooking rice for loads! As always, the food was good, hearty and plentiful

games: i think being in the kitchen i didn’t play quite so many games as planned, but did get in quite a few!! mostly with kids as well as adults it has to be said, pandemic, settlers, carcassonne and alhambra and did like the playing with various groups and chat . didn’t get to caylus with the babs, but must fit a games weekend at some point! lots of the kids played the games tho – we are raising the second generation of gamers! A hit for camp [adults] was the camp top trumps as invented by the lovelyem and then giggled over endlessly. Although there was some contentious scoring i don’t think anyone saw it as being anything other than fun.

craft: a fair bit on offer for when kids were exhausted, needed a chill out or fancied it, and the same for adults we made a christmas banner, and hopefully can add year on year, did needle felted star decorations for the xmas tree, stained glass window pics and felted dreadlocks for most ppl – channelling our natty-ness [i think we were scary in the end!] . it was lovely sitting in various groups chatting to adults and kids as things were being made and displayed. I spent some time with kids i don’t usually – like n and J, talking about dinosaurs and fish and the burgess shale whilst felting ammonites etc.

music and entertainment: em and i did manage to play our trio together once, but accretions of children collected, so it turned into a runthrough of xmas carols. we did several runthroughs with various kids and adults and a bit of rejigging of arrangements until all were happy and were part of a singalong at the christmas day. it was fab. the kids are all improving on various instruments, and more adults joined in, so it actually sounded good!!! Em brought bells, which always sounds really beautiful, and was again practiced a couple of times, and then the kids played after xmas dinner. unfortunatley em missed it, but they did you proud other entertainments were a magic show [2ce!] with BB, C and B which was best the first night, and they did have to put up with a great deal of heckling. courage under fire and all that! the weds had a cabaret with sb dancing [v nicely] magicking and playing a piano duet with me [which i bodged as the keyboard threw me a bit - tho lovely keyboard ] Jan and I also duetted, and the keyboard gave us a really surprise by having a life of its own midway thro!! lots of good solos/jokes etc by other kids and v enjoyable [whereas sometimes it can be a bit...] . was glad to know what the real words were for one of the songs… Also on offer was xmas line dancing . Music degenerated into karoake carols including the rhythm generator on the keyboard and conga around the hostel. whereas the earlier carols had passers by stop and look in the window as generally beautiful, i think this had the hostel staff in fits of giggles behind their desks!

kids: they had a ball, sb had a varying group she played with, and it was all v flexible based on what ppl fancied doing rather than who they fancied doing it wth. BB was playing ninja/kung fu/spies etc with J and X and they were inseparable for most of the week . they really had a fab time and thought it was wonderful. what was also v nice was there didn’t seem to be any ggrumps or grouches that needed a parental intervention to get things back on track so a v happy camp for parents too.

secret santas: the christmas day and secret santa at camp is always magical there is a made/second hand or cash price limit, and we do try and stick within it and do home made we all loved preparing our secret santas to give out, and hope all were appreciated – galokas usually are and I know bb’s was too. the girls had spent ages trying to get theirs perfect. We all loved ours. SB was delighted with her bag of goodies including an apron as she loves baking, bb adored her dinosaurs – fimo and knitted, i loved eating all my chocolates without help and will enjoy the chutney and DH has made an inroad into his custard creams . thankyou everyone

educational stuff and outings: the first outing was a short multicache around town led by MDJ mwah ha ha in best voice!! having realised that took us straight up a cliff into the snow, so we did an ‘alterntae walk’ which turned out to be walking up a stream/waterfall with not all kids in perfect clothes for the task! however, it was a beautiful walk, and most kids raced up and down the rocks. bb raced once too often, and after comforting we found we had been abandoned! we pushed forwards, but she was disheartened, so only a couple of hundred meters sort of the goal we turned back. ah well!! The second outing was to eyam plague village. sb and some friends took turns reading out the info boards [good way to know they read them ] whilst bb was trapped in the stocks. A short walk round as a v v cold day, and the museum was shut. A peer in the church and look at the story in stained glass, and the mediaeval paintings in the upper church before looking at graves and the saxon cross outside listening to jan educating us. the final bit was the fossil activity put on by the youth hostel themselves. this was rather fun, we went and saw all the fossils in the walls, learnt abit about the geology of the area but rather more dreadful jokes! then the kids made fossil imprints and one with plaster of paris. a nice easy way to spend the day

it was a really lovely camp. a few initial stressy moments about sleeping arangements etc were all sorted out with the minimum of fuss using good old fashioned direct communication techniques and from then on there was lots of laughter and jollity. quite my most favourite ppl to go away with . * . lots of drinking [diet coke for me], cake eating, chatting, merriment, late night [ and all day] laughter. some of ‘the men’ even did a pub run! thankyou everyone. somethings we never got round to – we never did spray glitter in snoring mens’ beards

I may come back and add highlights etc and photos

other views here, here here here here here