chris and the girls had a busy end of week whilst i was away on a lovely course at Madingley Hall in cambridge. v fab!! I got to start an new book there, which i am REALLY enjoying.
on thurs they went into town and had a bit of a shop. SB is on the lanky side, so has great difficulty in finding trousers that stay up without having to bunch lots of material up either with with elastic or belts. so they popped in to next, and a small fortune later she is really happy! BB had boot heaven at clarke’s, but SB not so fortunate, as with an E fitting there seems to be no shoes for her. the specialist shop in town seems to have closed down, so a bit more of a search is in order 
i remember this from my childhood! They then went onto a home ed friend for a playdate before rushing back for gym.
friday. ah yes, a home ed visit to a local orchard. a yearly event where the rather long suffering owner drives round the home ed rabble on a wagon hitched to the tractor!! i have been before, and it is excellent. he is v informative, the children get to try different apples, including new varieties and old trusted, and also see the sorting bit. he makes juices as well. SB came back with armfuls. BB had her footie lesson later on and then both happy to see me 
we have found the yoga dvd, and both girls rather cutely did it. SB and i both had a giggle reading the bagthorpe saga – our bedtime story. SB has decided she is rather good at doing trances – i v much agree, having seen her trance for over 30 mins doing one maths sum!!
Saturday. we started with the quest seekers presentation at the library. a bit weirdly it started by a speech about how hard reading was and why most children don’t choose to do it – this may be true, but seemed an odd start to the thing. and anyway, mine love reading, and i imagine a fair number of the other questseekers do too!! BB won the questseeker raffle and got a little ball game thingy, and in the book sale i bought SB 3 of the Spiderwick Chronicles
for 30p each – a bargain! also persuaded someone else to buy Azincourt
, which i really enjoyed. we posted some postcrossing postcards on the way home and put up our world map with the received ones.
SB has done a fair bit of piano practice over the last 2 weeks, so we had a ‘lesson’ together, and she is really moving forward. i am hoping that the speed of progress when she practices might persuade some more practice!! we did some recorder duetting as well, which we both like. whilst sb did some other home ed stuff – maths and music theory – bb and i played with her farm animals. i think i might neeed to practice at this, as i am less and less fond of playing with things! SB got out a tescos elecetric fan kit, which she put together quite happily – bit like this one Ein-o’s Box Kit Electric Motor Electric Science
. we then had a lovely time making cards for chloes birthday party.
Merry having rung, we realised to take an alternate road work free route!! and arrived second at the pool venue, in time to give a very pregnant Jax a hug! and for Big and SB to exuberantly greet each other, before all those staying at the manor arrived too. i loved the pool, a great depth baby pool for bb to manically swim in. as an aside, her swimming is really coming on – although it is still more drowning with style, the backstroke is particularly good! scarily, she actually dived in twice – eek! luckilly bellyflopping rather than smashing head on the ground. i got to chat to the babs a bit! the bigger girls were being crazy in the bigger pool, though SB, big and E were mostly playing with the floats rather than the long floaty obstacle course.
lovely time, i love swimming!! [though i actually didn't get to do much, mostly kept an eye on crazy bb!!] party tea at the venue and lots of the blogring were in attendence! said hello again to michelle’s friend B, who i have met before and like v much! [she should blog you know!!] the cake cutting was a crazy moment!! back to the manor and wine and chat and relaxing until suddenly it was midnight, and we drove home to the sound of kids snoring!
sunday [btw having to blog with left hand only bb asleep on me and sb snuggled up also, watching jungle book - hard!!] anyway, i had planned to go to west stow for a reenactment weekend, but i had an unsettled night with lots of v unsettling themed dreams so had a lie in to recover – as did SB from having a late night. bb was up early tho. so i was a bit put out to have ‘ruined’ the day, but recovered! i discussed with the girls what fun things they wanted to do, and SB wanted to make the viking flatbread that was in the young archaeologists magazine. could i find it anywhere??? nope!! luckilly google to the rescue. the recipe galled for buttermilk tho… so we have made our own butter and topped up the amount of buttermillk with the first ‘washing’. we did do some of the butter in a jamjar for authenticity!! but the rest we did in the food processor, and is now in the freezer! SB then made the dough for the viking shardbread. we made one batch with honey, and the other with herbs, tried some each, but froze the rest to take to history group next friday and hopefully rewarmed there!! tasted delicious!! BB did some painting and stamping happily whilst we did this.
SB and i played bohnanza and landlock, she played castle keep with chris. i played an extremely long game of farm animals with BB. SB and i got the solar panels that we won on ebay to power a knex motor tried out, and thought what we might try and build – but didn’t! instead BB did some fimo-ing – piggies – and SB hama-ed some witches hats and we are all out of black. i seem to be constantly ordering from bead merrily!! think i might save up the order though!! i used some left out and hardening hama to make eyballs, teeth and worms beads for a scary halloween necklace! [having grumped at bb for starting something months ago and then doing no more so the fimo was dodgy!! Although our present to chloe had sparked some interest from SB, we didn’t actually get round to doing watercolour painting. nor the piano, maths and ballet practice we had planned. oh well!!
hoping for an early bedtime for the girls, but have, unfortunately, woken bb up, so not sure when she might fall asleep again! but an early out tomorrow.
but still… i loved meeting loads of group people i haven’t seen for ages – waves!! there were loads of spouses, some never seen before [by me, obviously other people had seen them before!] i was fascinated by the bag pick up thingy, and enjoyed the convivial atmosphere of the whole trip really. absolutely fab!! the weather even was with us, a lovely warm lunchtime picnic!