Petits Haricots

this being the third blog i write this evening, and trying to get them all in by midnight! [yep, i backdated the saturday one so they appeared in time order rather than writing order.] Today was a good day! lovely and sunny. however, we had spent all day yesterday out and about, and the girls wanted to get some other things done. SB was a few ticks short of her magic 30 for a book, and wanted to complete, and BB had invented a game she wanted me to play. SO we went into the conservatory – our new fav room! i played BB’s convoluted game [with changing rules!] and managed to win – somewhat of a shock there since i had no idea what i was doing

SO SB did some galore park junior english 1, followed by an out and about maths workbook because she couldn’t find her singapore maths [which i have subsequently done] and then some of the DK project book on human bodies. She did a short clarinet practice – with difficulty, because she has got a cold, and the breathing is hard. SHe also did a short piano prac, and declared herself ticked off in the meantime BB and I had moved onto a ‘real’ game of rubbish sorting, oh and I was taking photos for the 10/10/10 meme thingy – see below!

Having done that, we went out and inspected rabbits. the fawn one is the explorer of this group, and was again in the run, tho snuggled in the hayhole we have put in there, but i have made a leapstopper so can’t get out for a bit, as worried that really too young for that kind of leaping. let skittles out – and he makes a beeline for the family run, as he can sit under the hutch and ‘chat’ thro the wire. awwww. not so long now skittles! SB and i then played marbles – not done that for a while!

lunch, of left over jackets from last night made into sautes with fried egg and beans – a proper caff lunch! and then onto tidying no-one in our house is a particular fan of tidying and sorting, so there tends to be the usual grumpy moments doing it, especially since i was helping BB sort out tat into big and little tat boxes she did agree to part with some of it, which will replenish our geocache tattrove! but anyway, job done, more or less! so we proceeded onto craft. SB had found a mosaic craft again, and she wanted to do that, but BB just couldn’t settle on anything. after much wailing and gnashing of teeth she settled on a knight puppet craft. good thing we have so many! in between painting rounds, BB ran around with balloons and lizards in her own game, and SB revised 2 chapters of the minimus so as to be up to speed for this weeks latin . She also had a lot of fun blowing bubbles in the conservatory. Have I said that I love the conservatory??

SB snuck off to play with lego quietly without sibling and I kept said sib occupied with dsing – including the dreaded nintendogs! [BB loves that :)] and animal crossing, where I give bB all my money to make her house bigger, run around removing her weeds etc etc!

And then all of a sudden teatime and bedtime – that snuck up on us! Chris, bless him, has done lots of tidying

Today is 10:10:10, and one of the memes going around [as well as doing pi in binary, which is a bit much for me!] was to take 10 photos an hour apart. Not exactly sure why 10 an hour apart, because perhaps 1 at 10:10 10:10:10 would have been more like it. Anyway, not my meme, but i like taking photos!

SO we were in the conservatory, as the current nicest room in the house, and most of the photos are from there.

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other memers here and here

Unfortunately i was given an earworm for the day by lecielrouge from Dora the Explorer! Hence the title!!
We all met up for a day of geocaching. It was quite ambitious [for us!], with 9 planned caches in 2 separate spots, with a picnic inbetween. The day was fab, nice and warm, but not too hot. the countryside idyllic, and great company for both adults and kids. [SB and P were partic cute]

first stop was a previous fail to find, once by us and lecielrouge together [and we had 2 shots at it that time] and another time by lecielrouge on their own. We were absolutely determined this time! we paced, measured, scouted and scoured… and still didn’t find it!! ARGH! The nettles had even been strimmed! We did, however, find lots of funghi and insects! As part of our camouflage from ‘muggles’ we did do some educating on funghi and insects! so, somewhat disheartened we went to the next one.

This one was a lovely walk along the river, across a couple of bridges to a little island. the streams were v clear, and we saw some perch and just looked idyllic. i said to mrlecielrouge – i would prob hide it just there on the other side, and there it was! fab!! and even better for the girls, a tat exchange one! we placed in 2 travelbugs, mine and vivien’s – which we hope will visit Italy, USA and Canada, as places she had plans to go back to. if her children are interested, we hope to show them where her keyring visits. I dunno, it just seemed a good idea to have something non emotionally invested that could open a discussion with her in it. if it doesn’t, well my kids are looking forward to seeing where they will all go! I nearly led mrslecielrouge across to the wrong next island by misremembering where the next cache was, so we went across the ‘salmonweir bridge’ i am pretty sure no salmon here?? saw a fab spiders web, and i realised just in time to be going back the right way when pulled up on it by daddybean and the GPS!

kids starting to bemoan the lack of sustenance in their belly, so had a picnic by the historic mill. kids running around having fun together and building dens. BB was quite tired and cuddly tho, so had a long snuggle, and did wonder whether we would do the third cache,

SO third cache across the watermeadows, but a sturdy path to a magnetic micro on the bridge. found without too much angst, and more importantly, without wet feet or muddyness! All v proud of selves, and happily came back towards car. some of us got back much sooner, having been chatting away, and not realised kids had stopped to feed the cows – giggle!

A move of venue, and first stop the supermarket for far cheaper icecream! We then bailed out of doing the supermarket cache as we were way too conspicuous and thought most likely to be referred to police for suspicious activity around the bike racks! we didn’t count that as a fail to find, as more a fail to look. So the proper first was near a pub, again a magnetic micro, fairly swiftly found. A walk along the river to the next, and this one was a failure to read the opening times of the museum rather than a ftf :blush:

Better luck with the next magnetic micro whilst girls swirling, twirling and chasing on the nearby grass then re-enthused, we trekked off to another tat exchange one, found a geocoin for the first time – so big! and dropped off another 2 travelbugs of ours, SB’s ELF and BB’s The Lizard. I don’t know if ppl can see those links? anyway, will upload pics of the travelbugs shortly…

Final micro of the day in a disused cemetery, found far more quickly than anticipated. it is overlooked from 2 sides by houses, and so completely impossible to tell whether we were observed, and it is hard for 8 to look inconspicuous! SO we didn’t attempt 2, and failed to find 1, so we counted that as a score of 6/7.

The children persuaded us all v easily to come back to ours for tea and more play/chatting/baby rabbit adoration, and so a really lovely day, thankyou lecielrouge

But I had got somewhat distracted by anger with the Royal Institution. yes, that place that i have raved about for their great science lectures for school aged children, and their welcome of HE-ers. Unfortunately no more! No, instead they are charging a slight increase to HE-ers compared with school educated children, as they are concentrating on ‘mainstream education’. Looking at the events, this turns out to be a factor of 400%. not so slight!

We welcome home educators to participate in the schools programme at the Royal Institution.

Our popular programme of demonstration events operate during school term times, and tickets are available through our events calendar. We charge a small ticket fee to minimise non-attendance and we invest ticket income into the events that we put on. Home educator fees are slightly higher than those for school parties, as our programme is primarily intended for those in mainstream education.

We charge a small ticket fee to minimise non-attendance and we invest ticket income into the events that we put on. Tickets for school groups are £1.50 per person (teachers and students). School groups are welcome to combine their visit with a tour of the museum. Call the schools dept on … for more information, or to book our limited space for your students to have lunch.
Home educators are welcome, priced at £8 for adults and £6 for young people. Home educators can buy Ri membership and get their tickets for £4.

if you find this to be as discriminating against home educated children as i do, feel free to contact them!

Hmm, lets get back to the task in hand – blogging! well, we are still moving things from the normal playroom/home ed room, as the windows are being stripped, fixed and painted, and messy, dusty and full of painters, so that took some time!

girls did some home ed in the conservatory with me – SB maths and handwriting, BB music theory and explode the code. SB also did some piano prac, oh, and had a golf lesson first thing! We finally parcelled and sent off chloe’s present.

We finished watching Prince Caspian, and then having made a spur of the moment date with lecielrouge family to geocache the following day, and having just received through the post our new travelbugs, we sat and made chunky fimo keyrings for them! well, i did and SB did, but BB made a v delicate one of me [which is lovely, tho not quite so representational] and chris already had a chrisbead made previously, so that they were all ready to go out. i did stay up somewhat late varnishing them…

i have blog posts wrestling in my head to be first ones out! But it is going to be my account of the days! Yesterday we went to Merry’s and basically the girls played and we chatted [sobbed]. missed BB’s swimming lesson unfortunately SB still did judo tho. [editing to add, yes, it was a lovely day of chilling with a good friend x x we nattered, did a bit of grieving, a bit of gossiping, a bit of forward planning and the girls did playing, board games, imagination etc and BB and J were fab together and the rest got there after a shaky start which is why we were late home, as the girls voted with their feet, and I wasn't in a great hurry either]

Today I had a lazier start, with SB having slept in our bed last night, finally going to sleep at half past 1! Our book people order arrived I went to GP, and will now have to chat to occ health to see if can return without on call first. [appt arranged by work, should find out when 2moro], have some more time till can be organised, but starting to feel i could go back to the normal work bit, find my feet again, and then add the stressful out of hours bit. .

Girls and i decided to do some home ed in the conservatory, as nice and warm there. BB did some music theory and then some explode the code 1, and SB some galore park geography and recorder prac. We haven’t tried the galore park geography before, but talked about it, and SB thought she would give it a go. we did it quite a bit together to start with, as it begins with map reading, and we spent a while consolidating how to find the coordinates. once she got the hang of it it was fairly easy and fun, so she thinks she will do it again.

She also wants me to find nice italian workbook for her – argh. no hurry tho – phew! any suggestions? had a look on here, but so hard to tell! Made harder by the fact that I don’t speak Italian! SB recorder playing seems to have suddenly improved a lot as well enjoyed her playing today. BB had finished 10 ticks, so got to choose a book – a cartoon version of chaucers Canterbury tales – lol! Fab book!!

we played with rabbits and then [after washing hands!] had lunch in the conservatory as well. it is going to make a great HE space! After lunch we have got onto chapter 5 finally in Story of the World 1! [woohoo!!] for SB and BB, then started dismantling the playroom, as the painters need to go in there next BB off to gym, SB did piano prac and then we played landlock and rummy and then I took SB to gym [it is still quite an effort actually to leave the house tho]. BB returned with chris, and started to make a card for Uncle M [we forgot his birthday ::(: ] out of felt, needle felting it to make a pic, and it looks really good .

that pretty much finishes off the day. oh, dinner was watching the first half of Prince Caspian, so a change from David Attenborough!

well, today def woke up feeling bluergy and grieving, and strove to get going! girls did a library visit, and miracle of miracles all books bar one found! SB did some smelly spellings and gruesome grammar – we have agreed on trying to get her english up to scratch, as she now does like writing more! [wonders will never cease], some mathletics and read a bit of a horrible science.

somehow time had shuffled on quickly with BB reading library books, and chris and I making a presumptive sexing of the baby rabs. we decided all but fudge a girl, as fudge distinctively different! [tho with all that fluff, hard to actually access the area required!] and we had a quick lunch before racing out for a home ed group Djembe drumming. i have to say that i needed to leave the house like a hole in the head, and had v stern words with myself to get into the car! but was so glad to have done, as it was a really excellent session led by ‘ian’ who was really good at getting it going and working, with various children fluxing in and out – in fact had been really well organised with a separate room for children to go into to break! BB was absolutely thrilled with it, having had to be a bit coaxed by me due to shyness. SB also really enjoyed it. BB had a break in the middle, playing with my rather lovely charm bracelet but staying with me, and after about 3/4 of the session [1 1/2 hours in total i think] SB said her hands hurt, and took herself off to do some galore park history, whilst i took over. so, really good!

when i got home, was rung by vivien’s iain rennie nurse to see how i was getting on, and wept all over the place. sigh! SB went swimming. BB and i did a bit of dig a dinosaur, a bit of snuggling and reading, and then SB and i played nordic ticket to ride whilst BB watched loony tunes, and we finished off the eve with david attenborough telling us about insects. BB going through a clingy and temperamental phase. have to imagine it is something related to my mood!

oh, and we were right in the sexing of the first 4, and feel reasonably empowered to sex the second litter when the time comes!

blog will be short today, as not really feeling much like blogging, but i forget if don’t get it down! went to lecielrouge to mix with them and the puddles for their fortnightly art sessions! very lovely, even if BB on her more challenging side… they did do a great tree and leaf pic, and their take on merry’s fimo trees, and lots of playing

we then rushed SB to golf, but it was cancelled so picked up a geocache that had been a failed to find before and then SB had ballet whilst BB and i baked a v nice carrot cake. SB has done some maths on fractions this eve and a great piano prac – her pieces for grade 1 suddenly moving on well.

chris has bought shelving stuff for the girls room to try and make it work, so that should help on the tidying front