mmm. gordon ramsey! I am back home – with great relief, as not the best time away, and potentially financially disastrous due to a coffee accident…
Anyway, went to a restaurant called Bank in Birmingham [never been to birmingham properly before, and I loved it!] and you could see the kitchen and them working in it. As I commented at the time, i could have done with GR effing about.
At least I can watch him on TV!
is what I was thinking as I closed the doors and windows open downstairs. There was a little bit of smoke drifting across the back garden, with a bit of? ‘burning rubber’ smell to it. About 10 or so minutes later, I remembered that the some upstairs windows were open, went up to close them and noticed the smoke was coming from ttowards the front of the house, along with a couple of popping/cracking noises.
It turned out to be this across the road from us:
Realized that our car was parked on the road almost opposite, so although I thought it’d be ok, I got it back on the drive pronto.
Soon put out by the firebrigade off course:
?? 
From what I gather so far – I’ll probably get the full story in the bakers tomorrow, the occupants (an elderly couple by the looks of it) were just driving along and it caught fire.
A bit dramatic for round here.
Because the meeting I am supposed to be having I’m not [this afternoon in birmingham] though i do need to be there for the evening!
SO having a realxed morning at home, catching a later train.
Joanna and girls here. Merry expected. All the girls [bar BB!!] had a VERY late night. they have poisson rouged a lot, and I think BB has shown Jade zoombinis.
Joanna brought with her the usbourne science book [will find a link] and its fab, and SB loves it – it was bedtime book last night.
Behind. Had a nearly 4 hour phone call yesterday eve, which although lovely to speak to my friend, made me 2 hours late for bed, and also a fair number of tasks unfinished – including blogging!!
Yesterday was a fairly relaxed day. We spent lots of it in the garden, looking at the seeds sprouting, the flowers, and organising SB’s flower and veg beds by the playhouse. Hide and seek and lots of swinging! We need more of Merry’s cardboard boxes for the veg patch! I did some weeding though.
We also sowed some more seeds – our cucurbits [butternut squash, another squash, pumpkin and courgette], finished the packet of mangetout and also the fennel [which might not germinate as such an old packet! All the last lot of peas sown have germinated, and the spring onions. The broad beans are outside in open greenhouse to acclimatise before being painted.
SB’s new 1/4 violin arrived – in purple with flowers. It was fairly cheap [and sounds it compared to her stentor 1/10] but the size is much better for her, and she loves the girliness. We couldn’t actually play it, as the bow needs way more rosin to make a sound! It also came not set up, so I had to fiddle with bridge etc – a while since I did that. It was fine for me, and I was happy with purchase, but someone else may not have been so happy with setting it up. We had a grand violin session anyway – BB on the 1/10th, SB on 1/4 [plucking] and me on mine [which has a fabulous sound, but an additional 00 on price tag!!]
SB also has done lots of reading, playing with the pattern blocks, geography jigsaws, and I have read lots of barefoot stories. BB has been an adorable pickle! She has also done lots of playing with pattern blocks, singing and dancing and playing with kids k’nex. We all watched some usbourne first fun with french as well.
Today, we have sowed the sweetcorn? – including some bicolour from kirsty and some self supporting peas. i need to pot up the toms – anyone needing toms passing this way…
Most of today was spent enjoyably at Chris’s parents, who have nearly finished the doing up of their house – new carpets and all [so BB in a nappy!!] A cut throat game of ludo took all afternoon – though Grandad kept threatening to go home! A bit of Nick Jr fix [hideous adverts!]
The girls are playing at the mo with both pattern blocks and k’nex, and we re expecting Joanna and family soon-ish for an overnight stay.
Posted in Dance/drama, gardening, General, geography, language, literacy, music, Out and About, science
grr to the F12 button which I mistakenly pressed instead of the backspace. it switched the laptop off, and therefore my blogpost evaporated, so I sulked!
Anyway, tues for me finished, as always, WAY LATE, so everyone asleep when I got in. Had appalling migraine wed, but took as many drugs as possible to keep it at least vaguely under control and got up near lunch time.
Actually, we did have a lovely day – though I had to keep head as still as possible! We played, SB read a fairytale book beautifully, did some more maths MPH1A [neeeeeaaaaarly finished!], a violin and piano practice [G and F added!] SOme colouring.
We spent a while making the dizzy funland Gears thing. SB followed the instructions very well, and i tried to distract BB from wrecking it! She was going to ‘maggle it’ [mangle it!]
We all went and ran about in the garden – unfortunately I left the camera out there too [blame the headache! - it rained last night] Anyway, a bit of sorting out, lots of swinging, rollerskating and running.
We watched a robin hood – lots of discussion about the crusades. should have had merry and girls! BB was exhausted and went to bed, SB and I ended up reading a french usborne first words, as SB and BB had got the usborne first words and usborne first french words between them – I of course did ham up slightly the french accent!! [Heaven help her]
then britannia and pirates book finished.
THE APPRENTICE
Yesterday, was library day, but before that managed to be organised enough to have children dressed, breakfasted etc. in time to sit down and start on the Getty and Dubay handwriting book B. So did that and then checked up on what books we had out, found most of them, decided which ones to take back, which ones to keep or renew, got grumpy as one card wasn’t with the other two. And as usual just about made it on time for storytime. Which I keep waiting for SB to decide she is bored with, seeing as it’s aimed at under fves, isn’t really that well attended usually, and most of those going or 2-3 yo.
But she likes it, and as it’s round the corner, we keep going. BB was rather cute, she has worked out she can carry her book bag by sliding it up her arm to her shoulder – rather than just dragging it along the ground. So she proudly walked along, going on about carrying her books.
For the first time as well really, BB found herself some books she wanted to take home but it did involve herremoving rather a lot of the books from the shelves/boxes and piling them up. Found a nice one about ‘xray book of abcient buildings’ and one about rivers that has some practical project ideas, which we may have a go at some – though some are rather complicated. Sb had an eclectic collection – including 2 board books for toddlers (why?) and a Rainbow Faries or Jewel Faries or whatever they are called book. She’s seen them before at other peoples houses, but not read one before. But it looks like she will manage it, so I guess it might start a bit of a ‘thing’.
So, home, to peruse a few books and have lunch. after lunch BB got increasling grumpy, and annoying towards SB, when we sat down on the sofa, she clambered about on me grumping for bit and then fell asleep pretty rapidly sort of dangling off me. Well she had been up until about midnight the night before.
Afternoon passed with SB doing a bit more maths from MPH 1B, we are slowly approaching the end, but never seem to quite get there. We went into the garden for a while, I moslty hacked back a lot of the very overgrown fig tree that gets in the way once it comes into leaf and shades the Greenhouse to much. The hacking is the easy bit, removing the piles of hacked stuff is the tedious bit. Sb was sort of helping, but mostly clambering about on the swings.
BB woke up, we sat for a bit in the sun with a book reading with SB, till she was perky enough, i finished up clearing up, and then came in to cook, whilst they played around for a bit more outside. They came in, we tidied the playroom and they watched a bit of Bob the Builder which is BB’s real TV obsession until tea was ready. After dinner and gettign ready for bed we all sat down on the sofa and watched a bit of one of the ‘Natural history of the British Isles’ DVDs. We must have got pretty near to the end, but we all three had dozed off, when Helen got back from work about 20 minutes later (it was late- about 8.30pm) we were al snoozing away- ah well that was an easy single handed bedtime. :-) So me and Helen settled down to watch the season finale of Battlestar Galactica.
H did do blog for today, but then lost it, so it’ll have to wait for another time.
Posted in General
wow, found out the other cylons!!!
Nearly at earth!
OH SO FAB
Posted in Daft Stuff, General
| You are Catherine the Great.
You are very intelligent and a socialist. It is very important to you that all people be treated equally in a society. You are able to fully comprehend social problems and you are outspoken when it comes to dealing with them. |
Posted in Daft Stuff, General
I sit down to blog today, and find H has reprised it already ….. Well that’s me for the week 
Additons:
needed to send Grandad J’s birthdays cards off today, SB decided she had something to finish on it, so spent more time faffing about with stickers, meaning we left later to go to Nanna and Grandad F’s than intended. And because it was encrusted with great big fluffy pom-poms they? needed to go as a large letter, so a quick trip to the post office was needed. Well, at least I realised – unlike some people 
Noticed my Dad has some weird? thing on his eye – some sort of? swelling under the bottom lid – really quite big – GP had no idea really – not seen anything like it (nor did the other doc there), so he is off to the Eye hospital in the morning. hope it’s nothing to major.
Trauma of the Day? – finding out Little toe Radio Show has gone, not listened to it for a couple of weeks, but Stringbean has really loved it. Went to find it? (on listen again on the BBC website), but it seems to be no more
There is something called Cbeebies Radio, but we tried a bit of that, but first impressions weren’t good – a number of old pop songs from years ago which seemed rather odd, I think there was a story, but amongst the songs and the chatter and drivel . In fact my initial impression was sort of like ‘radio drivel – aka most radio nowadays’ for littlies. Big toe has? into Big toe Books’, so may give that a go. not sure if she won’t find the stories a little old for her, though. Anyway, grump, grump.
Posted in Daft Stuff, General
The world is on hold as it were! totally lost without it. sigh.
I have a man-cold [feel miserable!] Work was work. The beans went off to Nana’s to help sort out the patio, and BB has returned with big egg on back of head having fallen backwards out of patio doors. SB did colouring there and reading, and some MPH 1B maths on return, and some SOTW. [Confucius]. Mostly running about ike a loon though with Kleine Hippo on in the background
my yellow-moon order arrived though, just a few bits and pieves – and a few of them presents as well – so very restrained. I did get some bug poppers for BB [a ladybird and a beed [her word!] She doesn’t like them popping – typical! But has enjoyed making them talk to each other.
We had frog-in-a-bog for tea [otherwise toad in the hole, but with veggie sausages] which was a yummy change from our usual teas. The girls are in the bath, and soon more britannia and the last bit of the pirates book.
Maybe Chris will blog this week though!
Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, General, history, literacy, numeracy, Stringbean's HE, writing
