Petits Haricots

have no idea what has mostly gone on!! i know that the kitchen floor somehow seems to have been artistically decorated in green permanent ink from a stamper – v v green splodged! and the house liberally coated with glitter – i think that might be card making!!

yesterday when i returned from work i did some baking with the gilrs – shortbread cookies and orange and ginger biscuits with BB, whilst SB made her lovely chocolate and marzipan surprise hearts – though this time stars! i also made the tunis cake base. the lickings were lovely, so fingers crossed!

today i was appraised – always glad to get that over with! and returned home to snuggle and cuddle girls, listen to sb recorder, watch her dance. they did bags to put presents in, i made some christmas after dinner mints [see the childrens christmas crafts page at top of blog!]. we watched victorian christmas farm, except me and bb fell asleep. this means she is now awake again. bit concerned re BB, she doesn’t look at all healthy, not sure whether combo of eczema and cold, or something worse. suggesting chris might want to take her to dr – bound to need a steroid cream.

saturday was supposed to be a catching up day, but I think we got even further behind! the girls played out in the snow alot. i kept trying to tempt them with sorting out a present for chris, but they both think they have all the time in the world ! BB started on zoombinis, and v much loved it. quite a bit of help from SB, but was getting the idea and enjoying it. SB was allegedly doing a quick bit of maths, as was trying to complete 20 last week, but didn’t quite! loads of music practice has gone on, lots of reading books, and she has been doing some ds french, so with latinetc as well, and loads of crafting and socialising, i am not much worried!

Actually, as an aside, i have been thinking on ‘evidencing’ I think, in the end, that although we hope it will come to nothing, and is certainly a fairly huge amount of money for the government to spend on an unwanted non-problem, that something that will require some level of evidencing is likely to be necessary. and that actually, our tick sheets would do.

anyway, I digress, I am going to evidence only when absolutely necessary, and in the most minimal way possible! finally, in the afternoon, the girls decided their plan for daddy, and we did it [can say no more at this stage!] and had a lovely time crafting away together. BB also made a fimo penguino [she has been with josie too much!] for J, but by the time she had finished it, the nest and the ‘egg hole’ [for the egg to be hidden away in whilst it is being incubated btw!] she had fallen in love with it so much, that she has decided to keep it!! it is rather lovely. I have no idea what they might be getting me, apparently nintendogs has been mooted… [lu-uv!], i have suggested that if bought rather than made, then really warm gloves sounds good, or legwarmers would be nice!

we finished with making my dad’s present of choc brazils – a v v every year thing! i remember giving just brazils to him when i was a lass! these days we make them ourselves, as it is fun, easy but prob no cheaper!! I think some may have been sampled already so we need to box them! we finished the day with a bit of story of the world, and then Merlin – which I fell asleep in again – i only seem to watch the first half and never have any idea over the endings! they all still seem alive the next time anyway! I spent into the night doing stuff for my annual appraisal – groan!

Sunday, still a slowish start but we managed to get out to meet the manor borns at the RSPB place for our walk. lovely crisp weather, crunchy snow, birds calling, and I think we all had enough layers on to feel warm enough. SB initially told me a mouse had been nesting inside my walking boots [after i put them on] but she was incorrect, it was chris’s.  we were going to do the lovely new walk, but c was under the weather, and in fact it was much better i think for her to pootle, tho i would have loved to do the lovely, new walk – i think it might be my favourite! but we first went to the hide ande saw loads of birds, including the woodpecker, and then went to the gardens around the house, the children and marcus had fun with the snow, it looked really beautiful. I have to say that i thought SB looked really beautiful today. as my daughter, i always think she looks beautiful, but she had a happy glow about her. <3 . BB was nearly first back to the car, but couldn’t quite keep up the pace, we had gossip, chat and smiles all they way. lovely! Back to the manor for the usual convivial evening. the children nearly had us bail out at 8, with BB not quite getting into the groove, sb falling asleep and c not being too well either, but as the decision was nearly made, they pulled together  and so our usual late departure. we did get to talk tents i love tent buying discussions – so sad!

home to wrap pressies and late to bed. I am naughtily blogging from work, because the snow has disrupted ppl arriving for me to help. i am a tad bored!

thurs i think chris and the girls tots and notted, and did some rehearsal for the christmas party nativity and some recorders, and then i think they had multisport – that pretty much took care of the day. I had a training day in Bradford, and so when i awoke to snow deep and crisp and even, i was slightly concerned that the rail links would let me down. they didn’t, had a fab training session and a safe return. the car park certainly felt like siberia though, with the wind containing blades and snow coming horizantal at me. certainly made for a very interesting drive home!! [ok, so i was a little bit scared and went v slowly, but i did discover a special effect! if you drive slowly through snow blowing horizantally directly at you and put full beam on it kinda looks like space wormhole special effects] I obviously didn’t drive like that all the way home, else i might not have made it!!

Friday dawned with a fair wallop of snow on the ground, and the girls rushed out to play in it. bless them, they took their sleds, though our garden is as flat as flat can be. never tried a spirit level on it, but still guessing flat!! we let them play for a bit before piling in the car for the home ed group christmas party. we had great fun. It is a shame so many ppl were stopped by snow, but said hello to all and sundry. unfortunately i was migrained to the hilt – prob due to the v long day previously with only an occassional snack to keep going rather than proper meals. But lovely ppl brought me cups of tea, and i snuggled BB whilst watching the fab nativity play, and then the cabaret. lots of great music and some poetry too. I do enjoy watching kids enjoying showing their skills in such a non-pressured and appreciative audience way! Sb played a carol on the clarinet – she is v happy with her clarinetting, and it shows in her keenness to get it out. she also had a go at sightreading some carols from her 0-1 upgrade christmas special music – done v nicely. yummy food, and children playing outside all quite merrily. we finished with dave on the hurdy gurdy [quite jealous really] and then a rousing carol singing.

Katy suggested we go back to hers, with the temptation of free skating at a local park! so we went. it was freezing cold so we all wrapped up v warm. it was plastic not ice, but the children all loved rampaging around on the ice, and BB in particular was suitably fearless, showing the others how to twirl, run etc… Bob and I kept each other company, and tasted the hot chocolate. Back to katy’s for chippery tea, good company and conversation. BB let the tone down considerably by repeating what SB had read her on a very ‘blue’ card that must have been within reach at the post office. :blush: my head seemed to be finally better [typical!] so home and bed for us all, more or less!!

oh for such unimaginative titles! well, thurs was nots and tots, and philosophy. french peut etre, recorders and clarinets, and a gym trial session for BB. i got home and totally forgot i was supposed to be at a colleagues xmas do, so had to hotfoot it there to be marginally late, and not in xmas glam mode!
friday chris and girls wrapped pressies and packed i think!

today should have been latinetc, but my persistent migraine problem became too great today to go out unnecessarily, and although i had been looking forward to seeing friends and enjoy the wed, i bailed out, sorry. i really try hard not to bail out of things due to migraine, but it just wasn’t going to work.

so, to catch up, SB has decided to do 40 things on her list this wee – something of a challenge i think! partly because she didn’t do any the week before, i said that wasn’t true, clarinet x 2, art x 1 craft x 1, planetarium could count as science [she demurred, trips are extra, not part of the count] the geocaching walk, playing the recorder? well, we agreed on 7! this is no big deal to me, as i keep stressing, that although n mature i like lists and ticking them off, this is SB’s process. just that if she is going to do it, she has to do it fairly [ie not tick off things she hasn't done] and properly [ie do what would be considered a ‘reasonable amount’ of something in a ‘best effort’ kind of way – ie no 2 second pencil scribble and call it art. she can do those of course, but counting means it needs to *count*, ie try reasonably hard to draw, or render an idea – abstract or concrete. i guess, to me, it is a lot behind the thought, that quality is more important, to try and reduce the desire just to see ticks? Anyway, for whatever reason, she has determined 40 is the number! She made a good start on Monday, doing a spread of 6 different things, less on tues as it was such an out and about day, and another good day of 6 things today. i know i could check on her chart what they are for the week, but i only know todays – maths, galore park science – which she is starting to realise how the book works to look for answers etc, and is finishing magnets, verbal reasoning [still 7-8 level is the right one for her here, spelling is the problem!], story of the world – henry 8 for the hampton court tie in! piano practice, box book and craft. BB also did some reading practice and singpore maths earlibird 2a. she is a bit of a monkey about reading, and is currently resistant, so still going on the v slow. i have a sneaky suspicion she will just do it behind our backs, not the least because today after completely failing to identify the s in six until i said, come on, it is in your name… oh, its that one then, s… she then found i and after me saying any guesses at the last one, she rolled her eyes at me and told me it was an ex. of course, she then made the word ixie! [knowing it would spell a number ]

but actually, in the morning, when i was trying to look alive whilst simultaneously slumping semi recumbent [or semi rutus] on the sofa, they decorated the christmas tree. they have elected not to have a tree in the playroom this year, as chris told them they would have to tidy the room before he would buy one [why i think i can give tidying advice to jax i have no idea!! ] anyway, so i thought about it, and since we are having one tree, its the girls tree decorated to their taste! we have loads of baubles and bits for 2 trees now, so have kept most of ‘mine’ packaged up, but did let them get out the 2 new sets i bought in the jan sales, and some of the angels. the tree is covered in decs, and looks absolutely fab. girls wer v pleased with their efforts. it smells lovely too!

after lunch, i made a valiant effort to interact more, rather than just being admiring! so i got out christmas craft from yellow moon! we painted with glass paints some dangly christmas themed things, and then some plastic tat things. the prob with the plastic was that i didn’t look at instructions suggesting acrylic first, and we 2 all sat down to paint, my poster paints worked fine, Sb’s did too, but BB’s… total melt down disaster. in the end sb [bless her] washed BB’s clean, and once she had done the glass painting one she was happy to start again with acrylic, luckilly successfully! funny girl copied my father christmas exactly, then came to the tree and told me i had done it wrong, as the tree one i was copying [actually i wasn't!] has green trousers. ah well! SB is much more individualistic, and hers is obviously aya napa party santa! both girls spent a lot of time and effort getting them to look how they wanted, we had carols in the background, and it was a lovely relaxing [mostly] 3 hours.

At the end, they wanted to know if they could go and feed rabs a treat, and we had to own up to rabs being missing since last night. we have said likely a call of the wild and rabs off with the local wild ones. hmmm. so we watched some wallace and grommet and had a snuggle followed by disney robin hood.

we decided to go the long route home from the christmas camp, via hampton court, staying at a premier inn. now, we don’t stay at premier inns, or any other kind, particularly often, perhaps 1ce a year! but BB asked if they were the moon ones, as they are her favourite. [yes!] we made good time, so spent the afternoon at hampton court, having been invited to the royal wedding. we had planned to attend the royal wedding in the summer, with more of the actors and spectacle, but the summer wasn’t as planned really! we still enjoyed it, and perhaps more as there were v few fellow guests, so got to feel important. SB wasn’t entirely sure that the actor wasn’t really HR, as he was big, slightly grumpy, and def had ‘a presence’. BB was persistantly reassured!! but we enoyed it a lot and also the bits on the side about dressing for court, who could wear what etc. both girls thought the bumroll and codpieces funny [haven't told them that bob has a codpiece too ] and the detachable fancy skirts a good idea. when henry and kateryn went off to consummate, we went off for a hot choc and then back to hotel, as with migraine only just under control, felt better to not risk it! usually high standard of room, good night sleep and early start, though opted for big breakfasts, and SB ate as if she had been starved for a week!

so the next day we got there with a plan, the girls wanted to look at the garden and the maze, then the kitchens and sb wanted to do william III’s rooms. so that is mostly what we did, tough did stop at the info bit and pick up some ‘worksheets’ which are actually more fun booklets than dull write things here sheets! we went into the display on the changing face of hampton court, and did loads of talking around things. the statues in the garden are all wrapped up against the cold, which made us giggle a bit! nice lunch at the tiltyard cafe, and race around the maze and on to henry’s kitchens. thought these v nicely presented, and the booklet thingy worthwhile. SB got to turn the spit a bit, and BB pretended her hand was a rat for me to catch could have done with a couple of labels in places. really emphasised the warrenness of the palace, and the fact it mimicked an undercover town in places – v odd, and so unlike the various castles and french palaces. we spent ages there before going to William’s suites. we had seen the dolls house version, so could put that into ‘real life’ but bb started to flag and at 3.30, we thought we had prob seen enough, tho i missed out on the young henry exhibition! a quick shop stop = knights plastic armour for bb [ecstatic] and a horrible history sticker book for SB. noticed more puppetry, but i am going to buy mine from play merrily!

home far too late and realised we had missed judo party, so SB sad.

today was mostly come down after camp, had considered christmas at audley end, but felt a day in was required! we did some christmas crafting tho – candle dipping!!

we went to christmas camp last week with loads of friends. allways a much looked forward to event! we had plenty of cakes and snacks to contribute, and also birthday party stuff for BB, and secret santa stuff for the pretend christmas day! SB had done some fab baking herself, and everyone complimented her or me on her millionaires shortbread as well as cookies.

monday was BB’s ‘party’ and she was v happy with the party games, the prizes and the dalmation birthday cake. she was also lucky enough to receive a variety of lovely presents – i think she just about murmured a thankyou to at least one family member of each of the families giving gifts! the children stayed up late, and the adults even later, catching up with friends and gossiping!

for the adults there was lots of chatting – friend based, advice based and also political – particularly around the shameful eo debacle; game playing – caylus, race to the galaxy and agricola; and just general chilling! the children played in v fluid groups and really nicely, there seemed to be a mix of big groups and then splitting to smaller groups or dyads and then rejoining – all v friendly and natural. SB had a great time, playing with everyone she wanted to! i saw her dsing, racing around, game playing, small dyad playing in private, all seemed v v happy and so i was too. BB took a little longer to warm up, but also enjoyed playing in the bigger group of littlies, with gwenny [aww] and particularly with J from SoTP – v cute!!

crafting was mainly done on the tuesday, with crafts brought by wednesday friends and em in the morning and then by merry and me as TA in the pm. i loved helping with the sorting, painting and stringing up, but the glueing was particularly tedious due to the pva rather than uhu! anyway, they were fab kits! similar to these in fact, and there were lots of puppet games thereafter! chris took the girls and any others for a bike ride as well.

wednesday was a trip out to the south downs planetarium. unfortunately the satnav postcode doesn’t take you there, so we were late. the other unfortunate thing is that one of the rudest volunteers on this planet works there, and was particularly sarcastic and snide and really spoilt the whole trip for at least 1 person, and seriously annoyed several others… but the actual planetarium show was fabulous. we really enjoyed it, and the chap doing it was v skilled in both that and the questions afterwards. Liked SB’s question, which was on whether if you had a big enough star its light could escape black hole. we went off with merry and family for a restorative cafe lunch in chichester in a crypt. lovely food, great behaving girls, and think a charming elderly couple were convinced we were mormons! back intime to get veggie curry going [yum, my favourite!] and watch the talent show, despite merry’s rather temperamental [or just plain mental] satnav! i was really proud of SB playing her clarinet, as she can’t have had it much more than a month [will check back in blog and see] and crazy play by some of the other girls had us in stitches.

thursday is pretend christmas – yes!! lots of fun, a walk across the downs [i am migrainous so stay behind with bb] chatting, baby cuddling etc etc. getting dinner started, putting the world to rights etc etc! kiddies watch a film whilst we adults continue with serious chatting elsewhere! then carols. i love carols, but this year, when playing the carol cd’s for the first time on the way down to sussex i just howled with grief, that this is the first christmas without little nanny, and that it is little nanny’s christmases that set my personal bar and template for what christmas should be. i really really miss little nanny. and that this year my sister will be in florida for christmas, and whilst i am really happy she is having the holiday of a lifetime, i will miss this too… so it was good to play carols altogether in fun and happiness, getting a way for everyone to join in – thank goodness for jan, as i have no clue whatsoever about guitars! christmas dinner done with minimal fuss and angst, and secret santas went with great joy and happiness, we were all happy with both what we gave and what we received – must be the best way really! packed a tired bb into bed, and suggested to sb that if we didn’t notice her, we wouldn’t chase her… [1 am!!] final game play and chatting eve, and sorry to nic and asilon that a maudlin moment was nearly had!

friday a pack up and away, not too painful for anyone but me, miserable with migraine. i do so hate having migraines. sad to be at the end of the week so quickly, waving everyone good bye. thanks to nic and ady for organising, as well as the variety of friends, helpers etc that make it all work

oh, dear, having checked prev post – a longgg time ago!
lets see, well,
thurs would have been nots and tots, with clarinet/recorder ?philosophy?? gym later on.
friday should have been an art session, but the home ed group was locked out, so went to an activity place instead and had loads of fun! loads of baking. various cakes, buns for the camp the next week, and finishing the secret santa gifts.

saturday we had arranged to meet up with a friend from schooldays who i haven’t seen since!we saw a lot of each other at school, doing many of the same subjects, but mostly bcause we both play violin and hared a desk for most of our school days – with lots of giggles as i remember!a lot has changed for both of us since then, and we hadn’t kept up at all, but the wonder of fb reintroduced us! [in a strange but true roundabout way as well!! we agreed to meet up at stanwick lakes, which took us less time than we thought it would, as convenient for her and family, nd looked a good place to cycle. we caught up, had a walk ate some lunch and it was remarkably easy for a 20 year gap!! we won’t leave it so long next time either! after they had gone, our girls were desparate for a cycle ride, so we cycled around before coming home.

sunday was another baking and making and doing day, finally being all ready for camp. sb did 37 of her items this week, and so is v proud! bb did 9.