Home's cool, so Home School!

This had better work or I'll smash the computer!!!

2008-05-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

The other day I spent over three hours updating this blog, only for it to disappear completely!! To say I was fuming is an understatement!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I can't really remember what I wrote, so I'll just put a load of photos up of things we've done recently:

Romy holding her sleeping sister :o)

When it snowed in March!
Day trip to Cleethorpes in April...

Taking a swing at the pinata at Tansy's birthday party.
Grading with Daddy for her red/black belt. It'll be black belt in November!!

Romy's birthday cake (made by Nana)
Some of the vegan spread at the party.
Pinata-ing again!
Helping Tans.
With Uncle Stephen.
With Tans on the 'bouncy bouncy' (Tans has become obsessed!!)
On holiday in Berwick upon Tweed...
Holy Island (Lindisfarne)

Romy hugging a saint.
We had to leave before the tide came in or else we'd be stuck there for several hours!
Roo with Tans in the sling. (She only walked a few yards with her on, lol.)
Eating gorgeous food in a vegan cafe we found in Edinburgh. Yum!
Is it sad to have been this excited about a vegan baked potato shop? Lol.
Roo enjoying herself in Edinburgh.

Beautiful sisters.

More fun!

Bamburgh castle. Breath-taking!

The girls enjoying themselves...

A very rare sight! Romy's hair freshly washed, brushed and 100% tangle-free!!! *Gasps*

A gorgeous spray-on fairy tattoo.
Angel of the North photographed on the way home out of the car window.
Roo meeting an owl at a taekwondo display she did recently.
And enjoying a go on the quad bikes.
An amazing visit to White Scar Cave for my birthday.
My friend Nikki will be impressed with these orbs ;o)

Romy drinking the water in a pool in the cave.

Fossils.
Being home educated Romy benefitted from one-to-one attention from our wonderful guide. She learnt so much and was so not impressed when she saw the three school groups pass us being rowdy and screaming and shouting. I'm sure they heard barely anything that the guide told them.
Yesterday we went to Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk. What an AMAZING place. I love it. They rescue farm animals from slaughter and terrible cruelty. I was so proud of Romy who spent a lot of her birthday money 'adopting' a sheep who was found trying to suckle from his dead mother on a farm and a pair of cows who were rescued from terrible conditions. She is such a thoughtful, empathic person. We had a lovely day too. Here's Romy's foot being pecked by chickens. (The cage above illustrates how five chickens are shoved in each battery cage.)
Feeding the chickens grass ;o)
In the vegan cafe they had there. Romy had just polished off a hummus and cucumber sandwich, a chocolate milkshake and an ice-cream cornet. She couldn't manage the ginger cake, so I 'helped' her, lol.
Today we went to a local park with a group of home edders. Much fun was had by all :o)

Holiday and (hopefully) an educational epiphany!

2008-01-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

On Friday we came back from a lovely holiday at Centerparcs in Sherwood Forest. We had such a great time. Most of it was spent swimming, as that was the only free activity. The best moment for me was being in the outdoor (35 degrees C) pool at 9pm looking up at the huge moon and crystal-clear stars whilst the steam rose up around us. A very cool thing to do in January methinks :o) The stuff memories are made of! Romy and I did an Introduction to Belly Dancing class which Roo enjoyed and I found to be absolutely fantastic! It has inspired me to find a nearby class and learn to do it properly. Colin and Roo did an archery class and that was about the limit of our finances, lol. It was soooo expensive! Luckily we got a good deal with it being January. Could never have afforded to go at any other time. We'd definitely go again though.

Some pics of Roo:

Feeding a swan outside our patio door. The first morning I opened the curtains and a swarm of ducks, squirrels, swans and birds (including loads of tame robins) came speeding towards me demanding I feed them all our bread... Oh, ok then, that was me being soft as usual ;o) That swan even took to 'knocking' on the window with its beak when it wanted feeding, lol.
The squirrels were just as demanding and tame. This one looks as though it's going to bang on the window any second, rofl.

Romy feeding it yet more tidbits. Best fed squirrels around, they were!

On the 'Bridge to Terabithia' near our lodge.

Looking at (and feeling) the Braille map.

Snowdrops and fully-opened daffodils in the woods.

The fire-beaing station in the woods.

My gorgeous girls playing and looking out for squirrels.

God, I'm lucky!! How amazing are they???

Beautiful Woodland Sprite.

Hilarious sign in the tiny boiler room :o))))

The score (in favour of Romy!!) for a game of air hocky. Daddy lost - yay! ;o)

Taking some time-out at the Jardin Des Sports.

Beautiful sisters. Inside and out.

Romy receiving some archery tuition.

This is harder than it looks!

In the village square, about to go late-night swimming :o)

Steamy camera lens, sorry! Bathing beauties.

When are we going into the big pool? ;o)

Having a splashing time. Romy became a veritable mermaid whilst there. Went swimming twice a day, every day!

The last supper. Veggie nuggets, fries and Sprite as a last night treat. There were tears on the way home, but she was philosophical :o)

A caterpillar found on the floor inside on the last morning. Apparently it was photo worthy, rofl.

Back home to reality on Friday and a really messy house as usual. Time for a serious de-clutter and decorate I think. Need to clear my surroundings as it affects my stress levels. Fed up of living in a jumble sale, lol.

A couple of ideas have merged in my head recently, been stewing and finally melded themselves into what I hope is a workable Home Ed idea. I've been struggling recently (well, to be honest that's a huge understatement) with finding stuff for Romy to so which sustains her interest and makes use of her natural abilities, but doesn't involve too much writing - which she hates :o( Quite a tall order, I'm sure you'll agree! Anyway, I believe (she says, tentatively) I may have a workable solution.

Some background: A couple of weeks ago Romy had to do a three-minute presentation for her drama group. She had a week to prepare it and she absolutely LOVED the whole process! She chose to talk about guinea pigs (surprise surprise!) Props such as piggy food, hay and photos of our pigs were used as she explained about their care and went through each of the eight we'd had as pets (ironically, Scrappy died the next day, so we only have two left now.) Anyway, this was the first little light bulb to switch on in my head. She seemed so enthusiastic about the whole process of deciding what to say and imparting her knowledge to others. It also made use of her most amazing talent; namely, her phenomenal memory.

This brings me to the second part of my idea. For months and months now Romy has been obsessed with the sitcom Black Books. It was televised a few years ago and we have the box-set of the whole three series'. In all there are 18 episodes and Romy can reel off whole episodes word-for-word. She has a quote for every occasion and has us in stitches with her dead-pan delivery and natural comic timing. I really don't know how she does it, but she's always been the same. I remember before she was two. There was s book she loved called Hannah's Helpers. She'd heard it so many times that she could 'read' it out loud without being able to read iyswim. Her intonation and timing were perfect. I remember we taped it because it was so amazing! Her vocabulary has always been unbelievably well advanced for her age. She uses words I didn't understand until I was in my late teens in the correct context. However, she struggles with writing. In all honesty I think it's all just too slow for her as a form of communication. She prefers speech and imagination - boy, has she got an amazing imagination!!

So... I finally come to my idea to radically shake up the boring routine we've fallen into of me nagging Romy to do some 'work' (usually something dry and boring from a workbook that she, quite rightly can see no point in) and her taking three hours to do something she's quite capable of doing in ten minutes because she's too busy talking to herself, watching Tansy, or singing, rofl. It suddenly occured to me that a better way to utilise her talents and bring back that eagerness to learn is to set her a topic to research (or get her to choose one herself) and give her a week to find out as much as she can about it before delivering her findings at the end of the week to us. I think that deserves a smile :o) She is really keen and has chosen to do "Centerparcs" first, lol. She'll be able to use the PC to find out everything she can about it. Look at pictures, brochures, ask people and use any other primary and secondary research methods she can think of to find out her info. I'm really hopeful that backing off about the writing will do the trick and mean that she'll turn to it maturally herself like she did with reading a few years ago. Watch this space! I'll try and update each week about her topics.

Yule, Christmas, and a Wintry Walk...

2008-01-02T04:36:00.000-08:00

On the Friday before Christmas we went over the Nikki and Emily's house for a lovely day of Yule activities. I was well impressed with the stuff that Nikki had arranged for the girls to do, despite being ill with the flu' - SuperHomeEducatingMummy!!!!!! Here are the girls making special bread that we all put lots of wishes into. It tasted lovely!
Romy's turn to stir...

Then they decorated the God and Goddess figures for Solstace...

The finished Goddess...

Tidying away before a story...

Listening to a fascinating story about Yule...

Finally a special cave was made for the God and Goddess figures to 'live' for a while. Complete with candles. Looked fabulous!

At the weekend we nipped over to Gainsborough to visit Colin's relatives. Whilst there we dropped in at Marshal's Yard; the new shopping centre. Romy isn't very impressed that this Christmas tree now stands where her beloved fountain was over summer, but you must admit, it looks rather amazing in the dark! Here are a couple of pics of Roo standing in front of it...

Christmas was spent with me having the Lurgy :o( I tried my best to be there for the kiddywinks, but it was hard. Romy was fantastic as usual and was more interested in whether I was ok than in being cross I was missing everything. I love her so much. Have I ever said that? Lol.

She got some lovely presents, including lots of lovely craft sets for us to get out teeth into. Here are a few pics... Opening one of Tansy's presents for her ;o)

Opening her strange 'breathing' life-like dog from Nana - her favourite present I think!

Our special present - a giant fairy puppet :o)))

A quiet, contemplative moment...

We went for a lovely walk to Normanby park in-between Xmas and New Year. With out new camera I managed to get some fabulous pictures too....

Romy in front of a dead, gnarled tree...

Do you think fairies live here?

Let's have a look :o)

A tree ghost!!!!!!!!

Bridge to Terebithia..?

Spooky tree.

Pet cemetry.

It really wasn't that dark and spooky. Weird!!

Romy's favourite steel sculpture. She loves to make music on it :o)

A view up into a tree.

Acting Antics!!

2007-12-15T16:04:00.000-08:00

OMG, Romy did her drama school performance today. I was soooo unbelievably proud of her. It took me all the strength I had not to burst into tears! She had to do some solo poetry and I was hoping her stutter wouldn't come out too much under the pressure. I needn't have worried though as she sailed through her piece brilliantly. She was fluent, loud and clear. Fabulous! Oh, and a quick plug for me - saw an old friend of my Mum's there who was watching her grandaughter like my Mum was. She said I only looked about 18!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (You knew I'd put that in Mum, rofl.)

(Edit: My Mum wanted to know what this was on Tansy's nose. It's a sticker that Romy put there, lol.)

Here she is (far right) doing her solo.
Really getting into the singing. No nerves at all!!!

What a beautiful person she is, inside and out. Stunning girl!!

Yesterday was the Taekwondo Christmas party. Loads of pics over on Mad Mama's Musings, but some more of Roo here. She had a fabulous time and has so many friends there now. It's ace :o)

Gorgeous girl.

With Mum :o)

With one of her friends.

Burning off some energy.

Attacking Master Smith with SEVEN other kids, lol.

Hanging around his neck.

Phew! Some time out.

Receiving her gift from 'Santa'. Looks familiar ;o)

Vegan loot!!!!

We also had the home ed xmas party last week. So really busy couple of weeks. More treats coming up this week, including visits from friends and a lovely day planned at Emily's on Friday for lots of Pagany/Yule activities.

All manner of cool stuff.

2007-12-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

Firstly, the BIG news; Romy and Colin got their red belts at Taekwondo today. Yay!!

Of course, here follows a barrage of shamelessly indulgent photographs, lol...

Roo and a friend doing self-defence:
In the middle of her pattern...
Padded up and ready for sparring...

With her gentle giant friend :o) Roo and I did that Christmassy picture in the background!

Glam location eh? With her friend Vicki after getting their new belts and certificates...

Colin, having just smashed his way through a board. V impressive :o)

Proud Red Belt...

Other exciting news (for us - we're v sad.) We found these dark chocolate coins at Thorntons (thanks to the Vegan Family website!) I went and bought five bags and somehow they've all gone before they even found their way onto the tree :-O Could have something to do with our totally irrational elation at finding them, seeing as Romy has never had a chocolate coin in her life and Colin and I haven't had one for around 15 years, lol.

We had a couple of weeks recently when we were all poorly. Romy had allsorts including impetigo, sore throat, high temperature and sickness!! Poor thing. Here she is looking ill during the worst of the impetigo. Luckily it cleared up with antibiotics. Colin and I had tonsilitis, which was a new experience in pain... Jeepers! Colin even went to the doctor which is unlike him. They asked if he'd been out of the country as he hadn't been to the docs in almost nine years, rofl.

We met up with a new home educating family this week at a local park and, whilst the weather was less than friendly, the family definitely were. Romy had a great time playing with the three children and the Mum and I had loads in common. She's a hippy freak too, rofl. She's a doula, uses slings, etc. Hope to see much more of them!

On the way home we got caught in a sea of kids leaving a comprehensive school. They were all walking one way to their buses and we were struggling to walk through them. There were hundreds of them! Struck me as a rather apt metaphor for our lives. We seem to be constantly swimming against the popular tide of opinion and have absolutely no wish to turn around :o)

On the way to the park, do you kjnow what we saw??????? Trees with BLOSSOM on!!!!!!!! I even took a photo with my mobile but can't be bothered to upload it at the mo'. Anyway, what's with that? The world's going mad!!

Me and my big girl :o)

Drama Queen!!

2007-10-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Romy started a new drama club. She had such a fab time, just as I thought she would. This is one area in life where I don't mind saying she is truly gifted! Her imagination really is second to none. She always has a story running through her head and lives her life as a narrative, lol. She is constantly bursting with ideas for plays and stories. Anyway, The lady who runs it was so impressed when I picked her up. She said (and I quote - or paraphrase at least!) "She was spot on. Absolutely excellent. They are never that good when they first come." *Beams with pride* She was given some lines to learn for a Christmas show too! I am soooo proud of her. She can't wait to go next week :o)

Mammoth Post!

2007-10-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Well I see I haven't posted on here for two months! So I thought I'd add a few photos and try to remember some of the things we've been up to over the past few weeks. Our camera's broken at the moment so you'll have to excuse the poor quality mobile shots.

Firstly (and most importantly) Romy was a bridesmaid at my sister's wedding on the 1st Sept. Needless to say she looked absolutely stunning and had a brilliant day. Below is a pic of her and Tans with their cousins Lewis and Daniel.
At the reception with Lewis: Don't they look as though they have those scary false teeth in? Lol.

And an enhancement picture I had done here. Looks absolutely stunning eh?

We've been very busy on the taekwondo front lately. Here's a pic of Roo at one of the open days we went to to do a demonstration. Unfortunately I don't have any photos from the fabulous open day and party we had in September but there are loads here.
Here's a photo of Roo and Tans in the ball pool at the Wacky Warehouse. We went there for the afternoon recently because a lovely lady we know at taekwondo works there.

We've been to Normanby park a few times. Here's Roo and Tilly in the famous Climbing Tree ;o) We were playing in the playground in the dark the other day when we realised that the other family who were there were also home edders! Gave them my email address but they haven't been in touch yet. Perhaps we were too weird for them, rofl.

We've been swimming a couple of times with Nikki and Emily which was fun but expensive! I'm just waiting for a card from Surestart that will mean Tans and I can get in for 80p.

Roo had her cousins; Lewis and Daniel to sleepover on Friday which was much less stressful than I had anticipated!

On Sunday we had a taekwondo demo to do at the Great Youth Debate in a local park. The weather was freakishly hot for October which was made worse for me by having a baby strapped to my chest, lol. Anyway, a fab time was had by all. After the demo Roo had time to get her face painted...

...And practice some circus skills with The Earthbound Misfits. Here she is balancing on a ball. The rather lovely man helping her said of the 30 or so kids he'd helped that day Roo was the best by far. He was actually able to let go of her and she walked forwards and backwards a bit on her own! I was well impressed :o)

On the education front we've been up to various bits; Going over telling the time with a fine tooth comb in maths. Lots of spelling, local geography, oh and Romy has started a correspondence course with the London College of Art.

On Saturday Romy will be starting at a drama club that had a stall next to ours at the above demo. It sounds fantastic and just the sort of thing we've been looking for. It's £5 for two hours whreas the others I'd found were v expensive and cost hundreds per term! Can't wait to see if she enjoys it :o)

Recent doings.

2007-08-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Romy changing her sister's nappy :o)
Greeting our nightly front garden visitor one night...

Looking poorly when she had a sickness bug :o(

A quick doodle Romy did in the car of her and Tansy when I was poorly (with dehydration) but didn't know what was wrong. We were on our way to the emergency docs. Almost made me cry :o(((((
On a happier note, after we'd both recovered, it was Romy's graduation at the weekend. We were soooo proud of our big girl as she'd been too poorly to practice but still did her pattern, advanced kicks, self-defence (against knife attack) and board-break PERFECTLY!!! She also had to count to ten in Korean which was no problem either. In October she'll be going for her red belt, then her red/black in January. After that it's BLACK!!!!
While we're on the subject I love this pic of Colin just about to do a board-break :o)

On Weds we went to Bridlington to see our very good friends Amanda and Dave who were there on holiday. Romy persuaded them to go on the log flume. Nearly bankrupted us!!! We had a fab time. Amanda bought Romy a keyring with a picture of them going down the flume. It's one of Romy's prized possessions now and I've promised her that I'll have a front and back door key cut for her to go on it. Just to show her how much I trust her and appreciate how grown-up she's being in helping me out with Tansy.

Maasai experience.

2007-06-21T03:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our home ed group had a wonderful afternoon with a lady showing the kids lots of stuff about Kenya and the Maasai People. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and learnt loads. Romy dressed up in traditional costume...

And then the group did some traditional dancing...

Romy had a great time!

Apart from a French exchange at school I've never, ever been abroad but I tell you, hearing all about Kenya yesterday has made me want to go and visit!!!

In other news - about a month ago Romy got a trampoline. There's been non-stop bouncing ever since (with half the kids in the neighbourhood suddenly becoming Romy's 'best'friends!!) Here she is with my (rather reluctant) sis' Jen...

Just a couple of pics from the early days with Tansy that I forgot to put up. Fairy Sisters:

Trying out the sling :o)

It's great to be eight!!

2007-05-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Romy turned eight on May 6th and we had a fabulous birthday week. We didn't have time to organise one of our usual themed parties what with Tansy's recent arrival :o) but Roo had a fab time anyway. I booked a week at Butlins at the last minute, knowing how much she loves the place. I got the best deal ever! Aroud £100 for us all for the week with breakfast and evening meal :-O Anyway, she had such a good time that there were a few quiet tears when we had to leave. She'd live there if we could, lol. Here are some pics of the great time she had (Tansy Pops slept through most of her first holiday and didn't partake of any of the activities on offer, lol.) Early morning trampolining.
Learning to pot black with Daddy.
With Candi from her beloved Skyline Gang.
And with Sprout ;o)
Taking part in one of the many Rhythm Kids activities.
Another weird Skyline Gang person, lol.
Getting runner-up in the fancy dress competition (sorry about the scan!)
Cool trophy Dorothy :o)
"Graduating" as a Junior Redcoat after a week of frantic activities.

It was fab 'cos there weren't many kids Romy's age there so she was picked to take part in lots of the shows and made a couple of friends who we kept bumping into.

We came back home on the Friday and the next day was Romy's Blue Belt grading at Taekwondo. She did soooooo well with her pattern and she only has three more belts before the Big One - Eeeep!!

The end of pattern five.
Beating up the instructor ;o)
Proud blue-belt owner!

On the Sunday we had a buffet for family. My Mum made Roo a lovely cake in the shape of a number eight and there were some lovely presents, including 'Dogopoly' which is exactly like Monopoly and takes just as long! (We played it last night and had to abandon it at 11 o'clock!)

Just to finish off for now, some pics of when Roo went rock climbing with the home ed group. She really enjoyed herself so Colin is on about making a small climbing wall in the garden!

So far it's great being eight (and being a big sister!)

Brown Belt Beauty :o)

2007-01-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

Ooooh, how proud were we today??? Romy had her brown belt graduation. She had been very nervous for the past week or so because she had to do pattern 4 Sah Jang all on her own. Here she is with her lovely new belt (which looks remarkably like a black belt in a certain light, lol.) Half way to black belt now!!!
She also had to translate some Korean, demonstrate some self-defence moves, define the term "Indomitable spirit" and spar with full protective gear on.
I'm so proud of her. What she is doing is very complicated for a seven-year-old. The others in this photo are kick boxers. The little boy on the end was born at the same time as Roo. I was in hospital with his Mum!

Xmas!

2006-12-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

Just a few photos over Christmas.

Romy and her beloved Uncle Stephen ;o)

That hair!

Tilly dressed in Romy's top!

Wow, a doll's house!

Before and after being decorated by Romy and Colin. Looks much more cosy with wallpaper and carpets :o)

The End?

2006-11-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've decided to take a break from Blogging. Normal service may or may not resume. It depends how I feel. To be honest, now I've made this decision it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I can't be bothered at the moment documenting our lives. We need a bit of privacy. I might just keep the blog for writing about special events (Xmas, achievements etc.) We'll see.

I'll carry on with my pregnancy blog and Roo will update her guinea pig one too.

Is this a record?

2006-11-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (November the 1st) we went past a house that has all its Christmas lights on!! The house was covered in them (as it is every year)but I couldn't believe they were on so soon. Madness! However, they weren't a patch on these ;o)

Hallowe'en: Part the Second.

2006-11-02T04:01:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday Romy's 11-year-old home educated friend Bethany came round for a Hallowe'en sleepover. Romy got a bit of work done in the morning before she arrived and helped me to tidy a few things.

When Bethany got here, she and Romy set about playing, looking at books and showing each other their costumes. Colin arrived home from work and took them out trick or treating for half an hour before it got too dark (and freezing!) They only went to houses decorated for Hallowe'en and the two neighbours, so only a few houses, but they ended up with £1.40 each, some chocolate for Bethany and lollies/other sweets for Roo.

Romy is a witch (again) and Bethany is the ghost of a victorian lady.
Sharing out the loot :o)

Bethany wanted to see Romy's taekwondo lesson, so off we went and were surprised when they asked Bethany to join in. She even got to borrow a suit and a white belt and had a whale of a time. She kept telling us how much she reeeeallllly, reeeallly enjoyed it, lol. Afterwards we whizzed off to Tesco's to get the girls some snacks for the sleepover. Sitting in the carpark afterwards we got a great view of the Hallowe'en firework display at the nearby football ground without having to pay to get in (Scrooges that we are!)

At home the girls amused themselves putting on magic shows, playing with the pets, and gossiping upstairs. They finally got to sleep at around midnight and then knocked on my bedroom door at 6.50am to ask if they could get up. I told them to play in Roo's room until 8 (I know, I'm a mean sod. Was tired though.) Anyway, they fell back to sleep and got up at 8.30. Result!

Bethany's Dad came to pick her up at around 3pm, so in the meantime there was lots more playing with pets, tidying Roo's room (which they did beautifully) reading books, playing with musical instruments and carving of pumpkins.

And we discovered that guinea pigs love pumpkin entrails ;o)
The end result!
Evil spider balloon!
Oh yes, and Romy has updated her guinea pig blog.

Hallowe'en: Part one.

2006-10-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

Flippin' Blogger won't let me put photos up again, so I'll have to try doing them in another post. I've got a couple on here that I'd saved as a draft the other day though.

On Saturday after Colin's taekwondo lesson he took Romy to the Archaeology club at the museum. They had a Big Draw event on. Basically they both came home with lots of pictures they'd drawn of archaeological artefacts from different angles. In the evening we went to a Hallowe'en party. Some friends from taekwondo had organised it in their home and I must say I was gobsmacked at how much they'd really 'gone for it'. We had to walk through an alleyway at the side of their house to get in and they'd done it up to look like a real haunted house with ultra-violet lights and cobwebs. There was even a proper 'zombie' in there ready to jump out at us. Unfortunately though after hearing the hysterical screams of the kids who went in before us I had to politely ask him not to jump out at us because Romy was petrified! Bless him, he stayed still, rofl. What a nice zombie. You know they have such a bad reputation.

Anyway, Romy went as a gorgeous witchypoo:

I was a somewhat less-than-gorgeous witchypoo and Colin was a Ring Wraith or summat from Lord of the Rings. Hope that's how you spell it ;o)
Scary!
Found these cool pumpkin related videos on youtube. Amazing pumpkin carvings and utterly revolting yet strangly fascinating timelapse rotting pumpkin!

On Sunday night Roo and I had our own little Hallowe'en party when Colin went out to his friend's house. We also watched Dirty Dancing (again!) Oh I love having my girl. She's such a wonderful age. Still my little girl but grown up enough to enjoy a bit of romance and escapism :o)))

On Monday we got down to a bit of work; Romy wrote a few pages in her diary, then did some handwriting practice and some Lazy Town maths problems that I'd written for her, lol. At 4.30 we dropped Roo off at Emily's house for a brilliant Hallowe'en party. Colin and I went to a pub just a few doors away for a meal while Roo was enjoying the games and fun. Unfortunately she had tummy ache during the party (too much to eat that day I think!) I'm hoping she didn't put too much of a dampener on things. She was still poorly when we picked her up and went to Colin's taekwondo lesson. She was laying on the floor the whole time :o( Putting us through a mammoth-length version of Game of Life and a good night's sleep put her to rights though.

Half term happenings.

2006-10-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to update for a couple of days but Blogger still wasn't playing fair with the photos, grr... At last it's let me upload some, so here's one from last week when Roo's friend Abi came to her taekwondo self-defence seminar.

So this week we've been up to various fun things for half-term. Roo and I watched a girly film together; Bend it like Beckham. We really enjoyed that, especially Jonathan_Rhys-Meyers Yum yum ;o)

We made bath melts that smell divinely of chocolate to go with the bath bonbs we made last week. We couldn't resist rubbing the last bits of the mixture on ourselves (just cocoa and shea butter) so we smelt lovely, lol. Here they are all wrapped up:

On Tuesday my Midwife Debs came round. Will write more about that on Sunday in my pregnancy blog. Then in the afternoon Theresa, Abi and Thomas came round to play. The girls went upstairs whilst Theresa and I tried to stop Thomas from attacking the poor guinea pigs ;o) I was mortified when he saw Willow drinking from his bottle and took it off the cage and stuck it into his own mouth!!! Noooooooo! We both shouted. Luckily Theresa saw the funny side of it. Phew!

While Abi was here the two girls wrote a letter to the fairies. Romy has been writing to them for a while and they've 'written' back, but this time they decided to ask for something the fairies couldn't quite manage; two gold lockets filled with magic fairy dust, rofl. They left a note saying they'd run out!

On Weds we had a walk up to Ashby to buy roo a pink wig (explain later!) and we'd just got home when our friends from a couple of years ago; Kim and Emily turned up! Haven't seen them for ages, so it was nice to have a catch up. Roo and Emily played like they'd never been apart and Kim and I had a good laugh too.

Back to the pink wig. Romy has a current obsession with the children's programme Lazy Town. It's maybe a bit young for her, although the lead character is meant to be eight, so maybe not. Anyhow, she loves it. She was desperate for a 'Stephanie' outfit so I treated her to a wig. I'm hoping my Mum might be able to help out with the dress ;o) Here's Roo all in pink playing on the birthing ball I got the other day. (Have hardly been able to get on it meself!!)

I've been surfing around (on the net!) to find stuff for her about Lazy Town and have found some lovely stuff on Youtube. Unfortunately though there are tons of sickos around and it makes my blood boil!! The girl who plays Stephanie is actually 15 but looks about eight. There are comments from grown men (paedophiles) on there saying "phwoar, pass me the Kleenex." and other such revolting things. Even if they're going by her being 15 (still illegal) she looks like a little girl!!! She has no breasts, hips, waist, etc. SICK!! Then there are the other type of sickos who are making fan vids to make it seem that Stephanie and 'Sportacus' (played by a 42-year-old man) are in love. What's wrong with these people??? It's a kid's show. I can't believe I have to screen stuff about a kid's show before I let Roo watch it. It's a sick world :o(

Anyway, rant over. Onto nicer things. Romy had Emily over to play yesterday and today we've been quilling with a set bought from Nikki, baking choc chip cookies *dribble* and Roo has sewn herself a dress made with fabric bought from the Fabric Warehouse yesterday. She certainly takes after my Mum; she's in raptures in fabric shops. She runs around touching them all saying "Ooh, I love this shop soooo much!" Rofl. Here's a quilled poodle we made this afternoon:
Off to swimming lesson now!

Sleepover central!

2006-10-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I've had a shattering few days, mainly because Romy had Abigail to sleep over on Friday night. They of course had a fab time. I on the other hand am getting a bit too pregnant to be having three hours sleep ;o) I'll come to that bit in a minute. Firstly, what I can remember of the past few days.

Our candle-making kit arived first so we had fun making votive candles. We experimented by putting food colouring in with the soya wax but that was a total disaster. I suppose if I'd any head for science at all I'd have realised that it would all sink to the bottom when the wax set. Unfortunately we ended up with a very red worktop for a while! Anyway, here's a pic of the candles cooling in their moulds

Next to come through the post was a free Scottish wildlife pack that I'd seen on Lucy's blog. Roo started colouring some of the animals ready to put on the map and we had a look through the top trumps that come with it. Very educational.

The next day our bath bomb set came :o)))) Been looking forward to that one! They were so easy to make. But does anyone know where I can get citric acid from to make more? We were really chuffed with the results, although the teddy one didn't survive completely intact and was later used by Romy and Abi:
On Friday afternoon Roo went to Emily's for the afternoon while I tidied like a mad thing (well like a mad thing with gammy hips, which is a lot slower than a regular mad thing.) She had a lovely time. I didn't. ;o)

After swimming Abi came back to our house and I threw them in the bath, did their hair and then they played for the rest of the evening. I'd been under strict instructions to get Abi to sleep by midnight (as opposed to 2am like last time, rofl.) So a midnight feast was out of the question! They made do with an 8 o'clock one instead. I didn't get to sleep until 2am though, and then Tilly woke us at 5.40am by kindly having another fit. She only just had two on Tuesday! Poor thing. Anyway, that was me up then. The girls woke soon after so I dragged my sorry bum out of bed to make them breakfast. We then nipped into town to a morning of activities at the art gallery for The Big Draw day. The girls had lots of fun making a bag, pencil pots, magic pictures and rubbings. By the time they'd finished it was time to drop Abi home for lunch. We got home and grabbed something to eat quickly (I could've just stayed there on the settee) and went back to pick Abi up again for a self-defence session that Romy's taekwondo place was doing. The girls had lots of fun pushing a hunky policeman to the ground and then played whilst Colin had his session. Have got some photo's but Blogger doesn't seem to want to put them up :o(

When we finally got home I collapsed into a bath but had to get out after a while because I was falling asleep in there! That's the first time I've ever done that. Mind you, I came downstairs to find Romy and Colin fagged out on the settee and chair too, rofl. I woke them up for tea and we watched Ant and Dec. We all had an early night though!

Been to my Mums' today and saw my scrummy sister. Off for our regular girl's night in now ;o) (We have chocolate!)

Oh and tomorrow we'll be having a go at the last kit I bought; bath melts!

Quick round-up.

2006-10-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

We've just been up to bits and bobs over the past few days. Nothing too exciting, so bullet points can suffice (can't be figged to write loads.)
-Roo has just been to Brownies. Tonight some 'tortoise ladies' brought in some... you've guessed it... tortoises! She got to hold them and entered a competition to name one of them. That girl is still being horrible to her. Do you know I'm sick of things being ruined at the moment. It seems like everywhere we go someone has to be horrible. There's a girl in Romy's swimming class making her life a misery lately too. I'm just waiting for either one of them to overstep the mark before I have words with teachery people.
-Talking of swimming, Roo got a prize again for staying under water the longest :o) She's got a good lung capacity that girl!
-Roo and I have been watching episodes of Heidi every night in bed on the portable DVD player. Very cosy :o) We're sad it's finished now though.
-We've also been taking it in turns to read chapters from the third Stardust Spitit book in bed.
-We got a National Music Week pack through the post with loads of freebies including a pop quiz DVD. I'm great at the 80's section ;o)
-Played loads of games; Boggle, Rummy, Pyramids (card game) Dingbats, etc.
-Got a really odd book to review from Education Otherwise. We do seem to get the weird ones :o(
-Roo and Colin weeded/tidied the front garden. They found loads of caterpillars hibernating so Roo brought them in. we kept them for a couple of days on lettuce but they were looking really 'badly' today so we've turned them out into the elements again.
-Romy has been adding to her button collection. She bought a few from the market on Saturday and then raided my Mum's button box on Sunday.
-Been teaching Roo to crochet. She bought a lovely ball of wool with her money on Saturday and is currently crocheting the baby a scarf. Bless.
-Roo has been playing with a couple of boys who live five doors away. They used to go to the TKD place she was at. They came in our house and said "This is a scruffy house. Do you have a vacuum cleaner?" Little sods!
-We've been making gorgeous fairies for people for Xmas. Have also ordered a couple of craft sets off eBay. We'll be making candles, bath bombs and bath melts for Xmas pressies too :o)
-Roo's been biking, scootering and skipping... a lot!
-Managed lots of English, maths and handwriting practice.
-Tilly had a fit at 2.40 am and then another one exactly 12 hours later at 2.40pm. Spookee!

Royal Mail rant.

2006-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

No, they don't even deserve capital letters. Let's call them royal mail. God I'm sooooo mad, I could scream!

A while back (before I was pregnant) I bought two tickets to see Keane in concert for me and Romy. However I didn't realise at the time that they were standidng tickets and now I can't face standing there for hours so I put them on eBay. Well, they did very well and I was really chuffed. I got twice what I paid for them (I would have been happy with just the cover price.) The bloke paid instantly by Paypal and I sent them first thing Monday by first class recorded delivery. So far so hunky dory. However I emailed him last night to ask if they'd arrived safely and, er no. He hasn't received them yet. So I checked online and by telephone using the tracking number and was told to leave it a couple more days as, no it hasn't been delivered yet. AAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!!! Why didn't I fork out a fiver to get guaranteed next day delivery? If I have to give this money back I'll be left with nothing as you can't even get compensation for recorded (Well, you can get a bit but it doesn't cover the cost of the tickets.)

Anyone know a good field I can go scream in?

Graduation and self-motivation.

2006-10-09T04:24:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I still haven't blogged Romy's green-belt graduation from Saturday. I'm so damned lazy ;o)

Well, she did excellently. She had to show all the skills she knew all on her own as she was the only taekwondo student graduating. The rest were kick-boxers. Here she is getting her new green belt from her instructors: Showing off her new belt and certificate:
And in the middle with the kick-boxers who also graduated:
After the graduation we went to the garden centre to look in their craft department for a quilling set. Unfortunately they only had a few strips of paper for a fiver!! Forget that. We'd had a go at home-made quilling on Friday with varying degrees of success. We've found a lovely set that Nikki sells though, so we're going to buy one of those. We walked throught the Christmas shop while we were there. Very surreal as it was blazing sunshine outside!
Just before the graduation I nipped into WH Smiths and bought Romy two vastly overpriced books for a 'well done' pressie for Roo. I got the fourth Stardust Magic book. Unfortunately they didn't have the third so I've ordered it from eBay. Romy is absolutely obsessed by these at the moment. Luckily there are only four to collect (as I write!) but Linda Chapman's other books; the Unicorn ones are certainly prolific!! I don't know how many there are but Romy finds them equally enchanting. I found the first two stories in one book at Smiths' for the same price as a single book, so that's the second book I bought her.

On Sunday my Mum and Robert came round and very kindly took us out for a meal at Pizza Hut :o) Not until Romy had shown Nana how she can ride her bike though, lol. She's now riding the ultra cool Cica bike she won in a competition when she was 11 months old, rofl. When we took her to get her first pair of shoes from Clarks' we filled in her details on this win-a-bike thingamejig and forgot all about it. We were really amused when we found out she'd won. Anyway, the bike went up in the attic and has finally come down to be ridden. It has suspension and all sorts of funky features. Mind you we're making sure we keep it in the house as those pikey kids from down the road (who we're convinced nicked Roo's scooter) seem to have their eyes on it :o(

On Monday Romy spent the whole day doing two sides of work for her taekwondo project. I was none too pleased I can tell you. So as an experiment on Tuesday I left her to do whatever she wanted. I was around to help but I didn't push her into doing any formal 'work'. Let's just say I was amazed when I realised what she'd actually done by the end of the day!! Briefly, she made a ten page magazine for me which included quizzes, competitions, a story, pictures, colouring to do, and instructions for how to make a unicorn model. She then made a dolls house all by herself. She used a Weetabix box, cut off the front, used patterned paper as wallpaper and carpet, made a bedside table, lamp, mat, bed and even little people from pipe cleaners with wool wrapped around them to make clothes. Later on Romy rehearsed and put on a play for me, read several books to herself including one about castles and designed lots of stuff with stencils. All-in-all a much more productive day than the day before when I set her some 'proper work'. Just goes to show me then, doesn't it?!!

We were all feeling crappy on Monday night as we'd received some really bad news. We went to bed a bit shell-shocked and numb :o(((

This morning we've spent a while sending messages to each other using the sign-language alphabet. Romy then wrote a letter to her friend but I had to tactfully tell her that there were a few spelling mistakes in it and that her friend would probably say she couldn't read it (she did last time!) Roo was upset but we went through it and I suggested she type it instead and then I could scan the pictures she'd done for it onto the word document. That seemed to work really well and she cheered up no end. Emily is here now and they've been playing dressing-up, stencils, paper dress-up dolls and arguing. Lol.

Gosh, makes you think...

2006-10-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Have a look at the short movie on this page. Makes you realise what you have.

Growing up.

2006-10-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

Coming hot on the heels of the "I can write stories just for fun and not worry about the spellings" epiphany comes the "Look at me, I can finally ride my bike" epiphany. It's been a long time coming and I was getting worried she would never do it (not that she's been anywhere near her bike for about a year as she's been more into scootering (before it was nicked) and roller blading. I kept seeing little three and four year old kids riding away merrily and thinking we'd failed as parents, but today Colin took Roo to a local park with lots of empty paths and off she went!!! I've even seen the video clip from Colin's mobile to prove it. I'm well impressed (apart from the stopping part which involved just falling off onto the grass, rofl.) She did master the stopping and starting bits eventually so I'm told. Proud, proud moment :o)))

Another thing Romy's learnt this week is how to do plaits. Unfortunately though this was prompted by some bullying :o( At Brownies on Tuesday they made a friendship bracelet by plaiting some embroidery cotton (even I would find that fiddly!) And Romy took a long while to do hers and was being pressured by the others in her 'six' to let them do it for her. She was a bit upset so on Wednesday we set about learning on her Barbie horse. She got the hang of it straight away and decorated it fit for a dressage competition! It was lovely to see her so proud of herself :o) I was fuming after that Brownies session because apparently another girl was being nasty to Romy. She told her friend Abi that she didn't like her because Romy had once told her to shut up in Woolworths. What the....? Romy's never been in Woolworths except with us. And she'd never tell anyone to shut up anyway. I've been told that this girl is generally a nasty piece of work but it still makes me mad. Romy said every time she looks at her she gives her an evil look. And peope wonder why I don't send her to school! As far as I'm concerned this is like an hour and a half of school. And that's even without the boys! I'll play hell up if anything else happens as Roo really loves going there so I don't want her being put off. She took her badge book in this week to get her two swimming badges. Brown Owl (lol) told her they'd never given out an advanced swimmer badge before so she'd have to wait until they got some.

Work over the last couple of days has consisted of lots of maths (estimating, using a calculator, giving change) and English (Tons of pages from a KS2 workbook. Too much to list!) We've also been looking at some great websites including researching all the actors from The Sound of Music on IMDB. Was really interesting to see the ages of the children who played the kids in the film. Leisl for instance was supposed to be 16 but the actress was 23!! Romy has also been writing her own book about dogs. She always seems to find something to occupy herself with. I've never once heard her say she's bored (and she doesn't know what a Playstation or X-box is, lol.) Most of the time it's hard to tear her away from the stuff she's doing to get her to do some "work." Sometimes I don't bother. She has a pen in her hand, or she's reading so she's learning, right? Why is the stuff I want her to do from a workbook any more valid than the stuff she's thought of to do herself?

Anyhoo. Here are a couple of funny pics from tonight. Romy (oddity that she is) was eating a half-cucumber like a banana. Here she is being attacked by Frosty who was none too pleased at being left out, rofl.

Account of my boring life, lol.

2006-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Saw this over at Jax's blog. Thought I'd have a go. There are some things here I'd never want to do in a million years anyway (like eat kangaroo meat, etc.) Also loads of travel-type stuff I'd never be able to do due to finances. Never mind. I suppose I've done some cool stuff!

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables.
18.Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

The house is alive... with the sound of music.

2006-10-03T03:06:00.000-07:00

So, Romy's latest obsession is The Sound of Music. After just two viewings of said film she has learnt all the words to all the songs and is regailing us night and day. I could hardly sleep last night because I had "How do you solve a problem like Maria" going round in my head!

Here's a weird picture my friend Ursula sent me of Romy with her two gorgeous boys R and R. Thought I'd put it on here 'cos I love it.

On Friday we thought we'd make the most of Colin's last day off and go out to the seaside, but of course it pee'd it down :o( At the last minute we went to see "Hoodwinked" at the cinema. There was only one other family there! Cost a flippin' fortune though. Reminded us of why we never go to the cinema. We could have bought the DVD and still had change :o(

At Swimming on Friday Romy got her Dolphin level 4 badge. There's only one more to go now!! There are nine levels from complete beginner to expert. She did the seahorse levels 1-4 and has now almost finished the Dolphins. I'm so proud of her :o))) Not sure what comes after this. I think it's a choice of swimming clubs, such as lifesaving, distances, etc.

On Saturday after Colin's taekwondo lesson (at which he was asked whether he'd like to be assistant coach to Romy's class) he took Roo off to Archaeology club at the museum. They were doing graveyard mapping. Romy brought some very interesting work home she'd been doing; she had to fill in worksheets about different gravestones, writing down the inscription, dates, condition of the stone, etc. She also had to mark lots of stuff out on a church map and find certain benchmarks. We then went for a long walk at Normanby park and collected lots of conkers. Colin has been teaching Roo how to play which has sparked a passion for olde fashioned games. At the moment she's playing with a big collection of victorian toys she's just made (hoopla, cup and ball, hoop and stick, etc) after researching it on the internet. In a moment she wants to look up Victorian clothing.

On Sunday Colin took Roo to his Dad's house as relatives were visiting. I washed my hair and then we went to my Mum's. We decided to go to Cleethorpes even though it was raining torrentially!! We were comforted to see that we weren't the only mad people when we got there though, lol. On the contrary, we could hardly get a parking space. We had some goes on the 2p machines, tried to win a 'Lumpy' Heffalump for the baby on a grabber machine but failed miserably as usual and had chips and mushy peas (mandatory!) Tilly was allowed on the beach so I sat in the car with my dicky pelvis while Roo and Colin took her for a run. It was lovely to see her so happy (chasing seagulls, lol.)

Yesterday I gave Romy a set of screwdrivers and an old phone and supervised her whilst she took it to pieces. She had so much fun, it was great. We were both fascinated to see what the different components were and what wires went where. Here she is looking triumphant amongst the destruction, er I mean education:
The afternoon was spent drawing plans of Fairyland (complete with key) squeezing our own orange juice, playing conkers, collecting leaves (was very surprised that she'd remembered the names of all the leaves from this time two years ago when we did an autumn project,) doing leaf rubbings, going out to do bark rubbings and watching The Sound of Music together. Here's Roo with her leaf/bark picture.

Science and seaside jaunts.

2006-09-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a dragon sandwich Romy made for Colin the other day. The scales are pumpkin seeds :o)

Yesterday we decided to do lots of science experiments. Most of them seemed to call for vinegar, which, typically I had thrown out the day before whilst having a clearout of the kitchen. Doh! Anyway, quick trip to the corner shop sorted that one out and on we went. The first experiment was a magic water fountain (to demonstrate air pressure) Here's Roo blowing into the tube before standing back as the water shot out.
Then "static snow storm." Romy rubbed a balloon on her hair and then held it above some little polystyrene balls to make them jump up.
Then we copper-lated a nail, which I was most pleased with! We put 15 copper pennies in a dish. Here's Roo covering them with salt. We then added vinegar and after 20 minutes the pennies were shining like new. We took them out and put a steel nail into the solution. After another 20 mins it came out copper-plated. Amazing!
Then came an even more exciting experiment. The home edder's favourite: a volcano!! Here's Roo about to add vinegar mixed with red food colouring to a glass of baking powder...
...and the resulting 'eruption'.
We also did some maths (de-ciphering codes and doing sums to find out letters.) And English (words ending in 'ddle' and 'ttle' and adding 'dge' to the end of words.)

Whilst Colin was bunging stuff in the attic he came accross a load of baby clothes so he brought them down and we had a sort through them. We put them into girl and unisex piles and I've washed a load of vests and sleepsuits. Romy had a whale of a time making a baby clothes shop complete with signs and leaflets advertising it. Colin and I had to come several times to 'buy' loads of stuff, lol. In bed we all played Junior Dingbats and Roo was inspired to make some up of her own (e.g drawing a bat and a man for 'Batman.' She did some quite complex ones which had Colin and I flummoxed!

Today we went out and bought Roo a Brownies badge book as she's hankering after getting some badges for her sash. Apparently this pack 'doesn't really do' badges. Hmmm, Roo's not very pleased about that. She can, however get some herself by working on them at home. She should be able to get her swimmer and advanced swimmer ones signed off by her swimming teacher tomorrow.

Came home and did lots more maths and English and Roo made some puppets and put on an impromtu show:

Tonight we went for a drive and ended up at the seaside in the dark! (Well, Cleethorpes anyway, lol.) Roo was most pleased and Tilly went for an unintended swim when she half fell into the sea. She was most displeased ;o)

Stuff.

2006-09-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

Not really been up to anything exciting over the past few days really. Just bits and bobs. Over the weekend we went to taekwondo, to a farmer's market to buy veg, played board games, went to my Mums' and tried to watch The Sound of Music but the DVD wouldn't work. Romy is really into it at the moment after watching that How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria on tv. She's dressed as a nun as I type whilst playing with Emily upstairs. Makes a change from Fairies and Princesses I suppose. As long as she doesn't run off to a Nunnery one day ;o)

Colin has a week off and the darling is doing lots of tidying around the house. It's like having an invisible tidy fairy :o) He's earning tons of Brownie Points, I tell you ;o)

We were all on tidying duty yesterday morning as our Midwife, Chris came round. Everything was fine and dandy despite my womb size being 16 weeks instead of 14. Hmmm... Baby is the right size as the scan said so. Maybe I have a high womb like my Mum. Apparently doctors always though she was a couple of weeks further on than she was.

Anyway, in between tidying and chatting to the Midwife Romy managed to get some Maths and English done and then we went to Tesco's for chips and beans in their cafe (aren't we posh?) Bought lots of lovely, healthy food while we were there, so Baby is pleased, lol. I even ate a grapefruit for breakfast this morning, healthy or what???

Romy had a bit of an epiphany the other day. She realised she could write a story purely for the enjoyment of writing it, without worrying about spellings and stuff. I am SO pleased for her!!! She started writing a story about a mermaid going to a fancy dress party on Saturday and she's been writing it non-stop ever since. It's fantastic! To see her enjoying writing instead of it being a struggle (because she's a perfectionist who get's cross if she gets a spelling wrong) is just brilliant. She's also been doing some fairy recipes with both written and illustrated instructions.

This morning we went to Colin's taekwondo lesson and Roo took some work to do. Her teacher was highly amused to see her doing her 'school' work there, lol. He told Colin that Romy will be graduating this time round as she's finally cracked the complex third pattern "Sam Jang". A bit more work after a trip to the library and now Emily is round to play.

Romy has also started a collection after noting that some of her friends have them. Hers is going to be buttons, which is rather annoying as I've just got rid of a load of them. Typical! Brownies tonight, and we're going to ask about swimming badges. It seems that you can just get your swimming teacher to tick off what you can do and then you can have the badge(s.)

Photographic walk.

2006-09-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

Did lots more English, maths and other stuff yesterday morning and then Romy went to play at Emily's for the afternoon. She had a great time and made a lovely tree collage whilst there. We picked her up and went straight to taekwondo where Romy got her blue tip for techniques. She only needs her black tip to get her green belt now.

Here are the stained glass cards we did yesterday. Romy's is the giraffe one that hasn't photographed properly :o(

This morning Roo got a lovely card in the post from our friend Amanda. Her very talented boyfriend drew it especially for Romy. It's the fairy pox! Roo is much happier having fairy pox than chicken pox, lol.

This afternoon Roo and I went for a nice, long walk across the field to the pet shop to get guinea pig food. It was boiling but very windy too. Not good lugging a 5kg bag of food home on my shoulder, lol. Anyway, we took the camera and I told Roo to take a photo of anything interesting on the way that took her fancy. These are the excellent results. She has quite an eye for detail (and the absurd!)

Huge web!

A beautiful flower.

Er, a post box.

Bobbled pavement.

Vandalised swing.

Graffiti on slide.

Says it all really, doesn't it?

Flytipping.

More consumerist rubbish.

Abandoned and lonely gas cylinder.

The lovely steelworks :o(

Halloween display at the pet shop.

Fishies.

Giant scary mouse cat beds.

Some more maths and English when we got home and Roo also took ages making a brilliant pet shop complete with proper signs like Buy One Get One Free, lol.

Crappy day.

2006-09-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

Romy woke up with a cold which must've sneaked up on her while her immune system's been 'down with the pox' bro'. Then I get a phone call from the supervisor of midwives at our local hospital asking whether Friday at 10 would be ok for my scan... 'Finally' I thought! So I said yes, not knowing whether Colin would be able to make it. Turns out he can't have the morning off as he has some training thing that's been arranged for six months and he can't get out of it. Poo! He's not very pleased. Also the woman said "One adult only" when I asked if Roo could come. Double poo!! God, how I hate the red tape of hospitals. What harm would a seven-year-old child do sitting on someone's knee. It's not as though I'm bringing six kids, or even a toddler. Grrrr.... It's all to remove the pregnant woman's power. It's the same at the birth; one person only. They know that that one person is going to be tending to you so won't have time to play hell up with them and question all the interventions. Bah! It's times like this when I thank Goddess I'm booked with independent Midwives. And a huge sloppy kiss to Colin for doing extra teaching jobs to help pay for it. He's one-in-a-million really :o)))

Anyway, trust my Mum to jump in and save the day just as I thought I'd have to ask someone to look after Roo and go on my own. She has said she'll come with me and either look after Roo in the waiting room or (hopefully) get to bring her in if Roo can do her Puss-in-boots from Shrek eyes, lol. Thanks Mum!

Anyway, all this should have gone on the pregnancy blog really but by the time Sunday comes hopefully this'll just be a distant memory and I'll have a nice piccy to put up :o))

As if all this faffing about wasn't enough, Tilly decided to get hold of one of one of Romy's squeezy bottles of poster paint (white) and chase it up and down the stairs. Luckily we found her almost straight away, but not until she'd punctured the bloody thing and got paint all over the hall, stairs and landing carpet (and her nose.) I chucked her outside shouting "You bad girl!!! I'm fed up of you, you idiot!!" Hope the neighbours didn't think I was talking to Roo ;o) "Hello, child protection services? Yes, my neighbour keeps her child away from school and locks her outside screaming at her like a banshee." Lol.

Somehow we have managed to get loads of work done today and yesterday, including:
-Loads of PSE (or whatever it's called) All about me poster inc family, personal details, portrait, things I like, three wishes. Listing the play equipment at a local park and then designing your dream playground whilst keeping safety in mind. Design a campaign poster for your local playground to stamp out drugs, bullying, litter, graffiti, vandalism, etc. How green are you? Answered a quiz on recycling etc and had to write definitions for the following words: Biodegradable, Recycle, Ozone Layer, Organic.
-Art: Made a lovely stained glass card for Nana using glass paints and acetate.
-Maths: Rounding up and down to the nearest ten. Ordering numbers. Multiplication showing the different ways of writing each of the five times tables, (e.g, 5x5 = 5(5) = 5+5+5+5+5+5 = 15.)
-English: Spelling/writing words ending in nt, pt,xt, lk, lm, lp. Comprehension questions about a story. More ending sounds. Practice with joining up writing at the proper places. Choosing the right word to finish sentences.

Romy's pox are really healing up now. No more 20p bribes as the one near her mouth has dropped off, lol. She was glad to get back to taekwondo last night and is unbelievably excited about Brownies tonight, lol. It's been nice to get out of the house at last!

On the mend.

2006-09-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

Romy's pox are getting nice and crusty now. Well, most of them are anyway. There are still one or two huge blistery ones. She even has one on her eyeball now!!!! Is nowhere safe??? There's one particularly nasty one next to her mouth that she's soooo tempted to pick at as it's "hanging off by a thread Mummy!" I'm bribing her with 20p a day to not pick it, lol. She might end up with a pound by the time it drops off ;o) It's a good job I don't have to pay out for each one!

Since Monday we've been reading a Fun Day Fairies book each day. We'll be reading Sarah the Sunday Fairy in a bit when Colin goes out. Blimey, if I'm not sick of these crappy fairy books!! I find myself screaming inwardly and worshipping the likes of the wonderful Lauren Child whenever reading one of the sodding things. For some reason, even though Romy's more than capable of reading them to herself I simply have to read them to her as I 'do good voices'. Damn! :o)

On Friday Roo watched a couple of really good schools programmes. One was about Gandhi and one about Nelson Mandela. She couldn't believe that even when I was in the last year at comprehensive Apartheid was still in force and Mandela was still in prison. She was fuming with the injustice of it (that's my girl!)

Last night Romy and Colin had a painting session. Roo did a lovely self-portrait (complete with pox!!) in pastels. It's fab, but too big to scan. Other than that we've mainly been playing with Playmobil. Went to town yesterday and my Mums' today. Oh, and Roo really enjoyed watching The Vicar of Dibley last night. The one where she has to eat four Xmas dinners, lol.

Off...to...read...last...fairy...book...now.... NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Itchy Scritchy Scratchy!!

2006-09-14T03:52:00.000-07:00

Roo's pox are much better today. They've started to crust over which is good, but not according to Roo as now the itching has started in earnest!!! I'm going to put her in a cammomile and Lavendar bath in a minute, poor love.

Yesterday Roo and I had loads of fun on the floor making this mad collage: It's a narrative on the juxtaposition twixt good and evil and relies heavily on the crinkle effect (we found the paper crinkler and couldn't resist crinkling everything before it was stuck on in other words! ;o)

Last night after Colin came back from taekwondo we went out for a drive. Romy and I were sooooo cheesed off with having been stuck inside for three days it seemed like heaven! We had the windows open and Roo sang along to cheesey music until we got back at 10pm. We had the works; Steps, Kim Wilde, Shakin Stevens, The Darkness, Toni Basil!! It really cheered Roo up. We even got chips and mushy peas on a tray. Heaven! Better go and soothe some pox (and untangle some hair!)

A veritable plague of pox!

2006-09-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

We woke up today to at least twice as many pox as yesterday :o( Here are a few pics of the poorly patient:

Unfortunately last night we found loads inside her mouth! No wonder she doesn't feel like eating, poor thing. She says it hurts to swallow (had to buy her some ice-cream, lol. She only managed a tiny bit though.) She even has them on the palms of her hands/fingertips, scalp, inside her ears and on the soles of her feet! There must be hundreds of the bleeders :o(

Roo did have three nice surprises yesterday though. In the post my Mum had sent her a Get Well Soon card with two scratchcards inside. She won a pound on one of them! The card had a giraffe on the front and my Mum had written "Chicken Pox" and drawn an arrow to the giraffe's spots. Roo thought that was really funny. Also in the post was a lovely parcel from Emily. She had sent a card and a mermaid book to cheer Roo up. The postman asked if it was her birthday, lol. (She didn't have any pox on her face then!) Another lovely surprise was Abi calling round on her way to Brownies. Romy was really sad that she couldn't go to the first one back after the summer. She'd had all her gear set out since Saturday! Abi had brought her a home-made card and a Fry's Peppermint Creme bar. Bless! To say that Romy's hardly eaten anything for three days, she didn't half wolf that chocolate down, rofl.

Roo has been a bit bored but we've been reading loads of books, looking at the atlas and Roo has been doing some arty/crafty stuff from an Art Attack magazine. Still not getting much sleep (me.) Colin came home to find us both fagged out on the settee yesterday! Tilly had another fit last night just to add to the general malaise of the household...

The latest on the patient...

2006-09-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

Last night Romy fell asleep on the settee and when I took her up to bed her temp was 40.1!!!!!!! Crikey! Not much sleep for me again last night then. I gave her some Calpol and after an hour it was still 39.8! After another hour it had gone right down to 36.4 - Bizarre! I finally fell asleep then (after covering her up, lol.)

This morning we've found loads more 'poxeses' in the oddest places; hands, armpits, lip. Poor baby :o( She's watching little kids' programmes at the moment and then I guess it'll be another day on the setteee reading books :o) Bless Roo, she was worried about not doing any work until she realised that if she was at school she would have the week off anyway, lol. She's not up to eating much at the moment either. Yesterday she only has soup and a bit of Innocent smoothie. Today she says food makes her feel sick. She can't be that ill though; she's watching 'Big Cook Little Cook' and they just said "Milk comes from cows" and Romy shouts "Not all milk!!" Rofl.

Meanwhile this picture really cheered her up this morning. I'm expecting a get well card from my Mum for her in the post too. That'll cheer her up no end. Thanks for your comment too Nikki :o)

Chicken Pox!!!

2006-09-11T06:29:00.000-07:00

Just worked out what's wrong with Roo. She showed me a 'spot' on her neck this morning. Thought nothing of it but has just shown me another that looked just like a tiny blister, so I lifted up her top and there are loads of the little bleeders!! Well, there you go...

Poor Roo :o(

2006-09-11T04:23:00.000-07:00

We're having a day off work today because Romy is poorly. We were on the settee last night when she suddenly said she felt really hot. She was burning up! To cut a long story short I didn't get to sleep until half four this morning after constantly checking her temp, putting on and taking off her quilt, putting a damp flannel on her head, etc. At 4am I cracked and gave her some junior Nurofen (hate medicines) and within a few minutes her temp was normal and I finally got some sleep.

She seemed as right as rain this morning but her temp has since gone up again, so she's currently lying on the settee watching Wind in the Willows and drifting off. Poor little sausage. Her temp has only got up to 38.8 but compared to my almost reptilian 36.2 she's really hot.

Ann Kronheimer.

2006-09-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

It's ages since we've done any of Romy's illustrator's project, so yesterday we decided to do a picture each from Linda Chapman's 'My Secret Unicorn' books which are illustrated by Ann Kronheimer. They haven't scanned very well unfortunately, but here are our attempts at Lauren and Twilight:

Colin was out teaching First Aid all day yesterday, so we did these pictures then. We also read some more of the book. When Colin came home he took Roo and Tilly out to the park for a while. I finished my book and had a bit of a tidy up. We then went out to the pub for a meal and for Roo to have a play. Bought some ice-cream on the way home and had it with cake. We all felt as sick as dogs by then :o(

Today we've cleaned out the fish and disinfected the piggies' cages. I know, we lead such an exciting life!! Off to my Mum's in a bit :o) Oh, and Roo brought me a highly nutritious breakfast in bed this morning; a chocolate soya milkshake, toast and cake, rofl.

Tilly's shoe fetish.

2006-09-09T02:15:00.000-07:00

Hope I don't get Googled on that!

This is Tilly's bed as seen this morning when Roo and I got up. Quite an impressive collection eh? Luckily she no longer chews the damn things, just feels the need to hoard them! Just one of her many 'eccentricities' (read: mental health problems.) If she was a human I swear she'd be in a Home for the 'differently abled.'

The stash briefly consists of:
-Football boot (1 x size 3)
-Slippers (2 x size 10)
-Barbie sandal (1 x size 2)
-Work shoes (2 x size 10.)

Note the poor severed limbs from Charlotte the spider plant too. *Shakes head*

Cooking up a storm!

2006-09-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

We've had a full day of baking today and I've only just finished the mountain of washing up!! Here's Roo trying to resist the chocolate cakes next to Colin's scones (which were boring in comparison, lol.) There's grated Maya Gold chocolate on top!
Just one, please!!!
Some decent sized cookies topped with a rather indecently sized one :-O
In between all that we've been to the shop (had no icing sugar, doh!) Romy has made various plasticine models and has drawn a lovely picture for the baby of a baby fairy on a toadstool using pastels with "Welcome baby to our world" on the back. Brought a tear to my eye! I'm so irrational at the moment. Things make me cry/angry at the drop of a hat.

Talking of pregnancy, I'm currently reading this book. It's utterly fascinating. I got it from the library a good while ago and have renewed it a couple of times. Only just started reading it though and it's really unputdownable! It's hard to believe the conditions Jennifer describes so vividly are only from 50-odd years ago. Shocking!

Better go and wash my hair before Roo's swimming lesson.

The Tooth Fairy cometh... (for the ninth time.)

2006-09-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

Last night at taekwondo Romy was finally so fed up with her wobbly tooth that she bravely asked me to pull it out for her. So off to the toilets we went (thought it might bleed a lot so needed tissues!) It was ok though. No fuss whatsoever and a big grin when it was gone. I think she was just about cheesed off with not being able to eat anything other than soup, poor thing. Anyway, she put it in her tooth fairy box and we went out to the shop. By the time we got back Herself had been already, leaving a pound! Dunno how she manages to be so quick, lol.

Colin is still reading Roo The Hobbit and at the moment we're reading various My Secret Unicorn books borrowed from Abi. Roo did lots more work this morning before going out for the afternoon with Emily to a soft play area (which she came back from tired out, hungry but very happy.) I was looking for some science worksheets this morning and came accross the Homework Helpers site. I looked under Year 3 and 4 (Roo would just have started year 3) and was shocked at the simplicity of the work! There was one called "What gives off light?" and you had to tick boxes next to pictures of a lamp, tree, torch, bed, etc. Another one asked what light could pass through and again you had to tick the boxes; window, wall, etc. OMG! Had to look under Years 5 &6 to get anything worth attempting. Even that stuff was easy. I'm not saying Romy is ahead in everything but she'd be bored stiff in science class at school, that's for sure.

Briefly, the work we did this morning then:
Science:
-Identifying which part of a plant different foods come from (i.e, fruit, flower, leaves, stem, roots.)
-Sorted minibeasts into a Venn diagram and a Carroll diagram (sure we've done this before. Deja vu, lol.)
-Sorting foods into fruit/not fruit and whether the seeds were edible or not.
-Basic food chains, producers and consumers. Putting them into right order, e.g wheat-mouse-owl.
-Using keys and flow charts to identify different plants. All this is supposed to be ten-year-old stuff!!!
English:
-Lots of spellings using the consonant blends ff, ss, ll, ct, ft and lt.
Maths:
-Repeat addition/multiplication.

Tomorrow we're having a baking/craft/art day. Have a few things up my sleeve, such as a vegan chocolate cake, scones and a mosaic picture (non edible, lol.)

Successful first day :o)

2006-09-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

Well it's three o'clock and we've just finished 'work' for the day. And what a productive day it's been! Here's what we've managed to get done:

-Roo got started on her taekwondo project by printing out a map of South Korea, a map of Asia and one of the world. She then marked the country on the latter two maps.
-She coloured in a South Korean flag and learnt about the significance of all the various symbols. There were questions to ask about the origins, meanings etc too.
-Romy found some TKD clip-art pics using Google images, printed them out and stuck them down to make a front cover, which she then laminated.
-She drew the symbol for the Twin Tigers academy that she attends.
-In geography Romy did two worksheets about map reading. They involved plans of towns (American unfortunately) which Romy had to answer questions about using compas points, directions, grid references, drawing in shortest routes and learning about intersections, etc. She really enjoyed this.
-Maths: Romy did two pages of a workbook colouring in patterns on a number square and counting in 3's, 4's, 7's, 10's etc.
-English: Two pages of spellings using 'sh' 'ch' 'th' ans 'st' sounds. Also read me some of a reading book that is way beyond her age group. No need to worry about her reading then ;o) And her writing is really coming on. Just as I said it would if I left her alone, lol.

Romy's having a well earned rest now watching her programmes before TKD tonight. That's P.E then! Just glad she's not starting at the scabby Junior school today like her friends :o)

Work Tomorrow!

2006-09-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Poor Roo. She's had a bit of a bad day today. She got up too early and I think that skewed the day a bit for her. She's had a few tears, mainly about her bottom canine that is very loose and has done nothing but bleed tonight. I've read her a whole "My Secret Unicorn" book to make her feel better. Bless her :o(

I haven't had the best of days either really. Theresa rang and asked if we wanted to go to the park this afternoon, so off we toddled the 1 1/5 miles there. By the time I got home I was in considerable pain with my Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction. This is the first day it's started in earnest. A momentous day, lol: 11 weeks and 2 days pregnant. Here's to the next 29 weeks ;o)

Anyway, Romy had a good play with Abi today and with Emily yesterday so tomorrow it's just the two of us. The table is clear(!!!) and we're down to some work. We can't wait. Romy is planning on starting a TKD project, rofl. I'll see what I can do education wise. Her wish is my command! I'm thinking; the history of TKD, geography including South Korean flag and map, computer skills researching and printing stuff out. I'm sure I'll get plenty of maths and English in there too. Yes, the rest has done me the world of good. I'm planning on having Monday afternoons as a play day with Emily (assuming she's free on Mondays) tues, Weds and Thurs 'working' and Friday as an arty/crafty/baking sort of day. We'll see how it goes. The best laid plans and all that...

A weekend of achievements.

2006-09-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

We were really proud of Colin on Saturday. He got his purple belt in Taekwondo. Now he's the same as Romy ;o) Here he is doing one of the patterns he had to perform.

Also on Saturday Romy finished her reading mission Here are their certificates...

So what else have we been up to since Thursday? Well, we visited friends for the afternoon. Romy played manically with Abi for a few hours while we chatted. Abi's back at school on Wednesday, so we're off round again on Tuesday afternoon. Talking of school; Romy's really raring to get back to some work. We've decided to start back on Wednesday too. Will have to clear the table, lol. Even though we've been having a rest this summer, she's still been learning loads and doing 'work'. The other day she started a story in an exercise book, she's been doing lots of plays for me, both rehearsed and improvised. There's been tons of reading this summer too and she's been emailing her friend Bethany.

Following on from the Medieval day at Gainsborough last week Romy and Colin have been very busy making a tabard and a flag with a coat-of-arms on that Romy has designed. He bought her some fabric paints today and they've been busy painting the dragon and bear that Romy wanted. Will post pics when they're finished.

On Friday Romy went to football with Emily. She was a bit upset when she returned as two boys had been bullying her. They kept saying she was rubbish apparently. Grrr... This is one of the major reasons why I never sent her to school. I hated that when I was a kid; if you're not the best at something you have no right to be doing it. I remember hating P.E at school for precisely that reason and it put me off sports for life :o( Luckily we've never come accross anything like that at TKD or swimming. Mind you, I think it's something about boys and football. Most of them seem to have really pushy fathers who've had them playing as soon as they could walk and tell them they have to be the best at all costs. Vicarious living anyone?

Anyway, we've had a lovely day today. We went to my Mum's and had a lovely Sunday dinner and then tonight Roo had a phone call from Bethany. They ended up chatting for over an hour!!!! Romy and I have had the mother of all Girl's Night In's!! Here's my girl getting ready to watch Dirty Dancing for the very first time. Note the snuggly quilt and the plate of vegan chocolate squares... Perfect!!! We're off to bed now to read and chatter :o)

Noah, where are you?

2006-08-31T01:15:00.000-07:00

For it surely must have rained for 40 days and 40 nights. We may be in need of his ark building skills soon. It's 9.10am in August (just) and it's flippin' pitch black! What a complete washout August has been :o(

Anyway, we've had quite a nice couple of days pottering around. On Tuesday Colin had an extra day off so we went to his TKD lesson in the morning. He needed to go to get his last tip before his graduation on Saturday. When we got home we piled a load of junk in the car and Colin took it off to a charity shop. That felt good I tell you. Can't be arsed with car boots anymore. We never seem to make any money, so it's all off to charidee. In the afternoon we went to what was supposed to be our friend's little boy's 2nd birthday party. Unfortunately the wrong date had been written on the invitation and it was actually the day before. Doh! Never mind, we went in for a chat and to give him his pressies. At home we tidied up, read books and played perfume shops while Colin was out teaching first aid.

Yesterday morning the midwife came round. Debs is my first midwife and the one I saw last time, Chris, is my second one. They're both lovely. Debs and her student ended up staying for over an hour chatting and stuff. It was great. Details will follow on Sunday on the pregnancy blog.

After she'd gone there was just time for a quick bite to eat before Nikki and Emily came round to take Roo to the park. I spent the afternoon wasting time on here playing games and listening to music. I also got a lovely phone call from a friend with some brilliant news that put me on cloud nine for the rest of the day.

Today I feel like hibernating because of the weather, but we'll see. It depends whether Theresa's still going to the play scheme thing and we fancy getting drenched...

Good day good knight!

2006-08-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

This morning we went to Gainsborough Old Hall to their Medieval day. Romy was really chuffed when she got to help out with the falconry display :o)
Here she is trying on various bits of costumes:

Colin and Roo then spent a while watching an archery display while I went and sat in the car listening to music (I was sooo tired!) The day has certainly rekindled Romy's Medieval obsession anyway. She's currently playing Knights and Princesses, lol. On the way home Colin called into The Fabric Warehouse and bought some fabric and has just sewn Roo a Knight's tabard and a princess cloak!! He's missed his vocation there - Industrial Chemist, nah! Seamstress ;o)
This afternoon we went to Normanby park to their so-called 'Children's Day' Yeah, right! There was a soaking wet assault course and a craft fair with about three or four stalls. Not to mention the torrential rain that ensured it was a complete wash-out. Just as we got back into the car it began to hail and they were as big as peas!!! Glad we were under cover, lol.

It's party time!!!

2006-08-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a party Romy has been to today. It was her friend Bethany's 11th birthday and she definitely celebrated in style... The party had a Chinese theme so Romy wore her Mulan dressing-up costume and I was rather chuffed that I managed this hairstyle complete with chopsticks:
We arrived a bit too early as we'd given ourselves plenty of time to find the village. Makes a change from being late I suppose, lol. After being shown into the most gorgeous house ever (converted chapel) Romy gave Bethany her present; a basket of Body Shop goodies which she seemed pleased with. When all the other girls had arrived there was time for a quick photo opportunity before an hour's play:
Then at four o'clock THIS arrived outside!!
The girls were ushered in and given "champagne" by the chauffeur before being driven off down the road, horn honking all the way.
Colin and Bethany's Dad took the dogs off for a walk whilst we ladies had a good old natter. The girls came back an hour later on cloud nine (heralded by yet more horn honking!) Apparently they had waved at many open-mouthed pedestrians on their outing :o) Romy was so excited.
Time for a bit more playing whilst Dad went off to get Chinese food for a party feast. As a vegan Romy was very well catered for with chips, noodles, beansprouts and rice. All the girls had a go with their chopsticks. Colin and I even got some food which was unexpected but very appreciated :o) After games of Twister, X-factor and Big Brother impressions(!) it was time to light the candles. Romy munched on one of her vegan chocolate bars from her party bag while the others had their cake. Once the cake was demolished three of the girls went home and Roo, Bethany and her cousin went out to play on the trampoline where Roo was taught to do cartwheels by the two older girls ;o) We finally had to tear her away to come home after we'd been there for almost five hours!!! That was only on the promise that we could come back to play soon.

We've a busy week planned (well, for Roo anyway - so what's new?!) Tomorrow it's Medieval day at Gainsborough Old Hall, the next day we have a little boy's birthday party. Romy is off to play at Emily's house on Wednesday, play scheme with Abi on Thursday and football on Friday with Emily. Phew!!! So why is my side of the calendar always blank? Me want a life too. S'not fair :o(

A mixed day.

2006-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Woke up to a nasty surprise this morning: Romy's beloved scooter had been stolen from the back garden :o(((( She was so upset, the poor thing. It didn't cost much and my Mum has said she'll buy her another one but that's not the point. I think she was just so shocked that someone would come in through the gate and pinch it. We have our suspicions that it's those kids from down the road so Colin has made some flyers and put them through doors down that end hoping to make someone feel guilty. The sods, grrrr.... He's outside putting a lockable bolt on the gate now.

The rest of the day has passed in a much more pleasant way. We went to Colin's Taekwondo class and he did some excellent board breaking. Romy played with the owner's son and I listened to my ipod :o) We then went into town and I got some lovely compliments from some people I haven't seen for ages (see pregnancy blog.) Romy reviewed her fifth book for the reading mission at the library and was chuffed to receive a secret pen. I'm off to test out my new bath pillow now ;o) Romy is cleaning her shells that she found during fieldwalking yesterday. They're pre-historic apparently, from when the field was underwater. She has a really exciting day tomorrow...

Snakes alive!

2006-08-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

We've just come back from our friend Ursula's house. It was her youngest's birthday. Romy was besotted with one of their pet snakes, lol. She was quite fearless with it. Here's a pic, but it's not very good because it was taken with my mobile. There was a point where she was face to face with it which would have made a lovely picture but unfortunately didn't get the camera on in time :o(

We've all had a lovely day today. Roo and Colin went fieldwalking for archaeology and I spent the day at home listening to loud music and chatting on MSN :o))) Here are some photos of Roo at work in the field:

They were shattered when they got home. They'd been out from 7.30am till 3 o'clock. Colin pegged out on the settee and Roo watched her programmes for a bit and then it was time for her swimming lesson. After playing with Ursula's kids tonight too, she should sleep well tonight!

Yesterday we went to the summer playscheme thing again that we attended last week with Theresa and Abigail. Roo and Abi had a great time and Theresa and I had a good old Gossip. I love nattering to her. She knows just how I think and we always end up in hysterics. Love her to bits :o)

Roo and Colin have been playing lots more chess. She's really getting good now. We've read loads more books and generally had a good time playing and watching Black Books. Roo loves it!

Check mate!

2006-08-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

It's a good job Colin and I are good at different things. I've taught Romy to read and write but she hadn't a hope in hell when she asked me to teach her chess after finding chess pieces in a compendium of games. Colin was asleep at the time so we played draughts instead. I beat her easily the first time but by the second go we had to call it stalemate when we both had two kinged pieces on the board chasing each other around, lol. Anyway, the next night Colin set about teaching her the rules of chess (which I'm ashamed to say I still don't get!) Daddy won by a whisker, but he'd better watch out for the re-match!

I've been showing Roo how to do logic puzzles too, so she's really been stretching that part of her brain which is great because naturally I think she's more artsy like me. We bought Uno yesterday and played that too, although I was mad to find that it's just the same as the game 'pick two up' that we play with a normal pack of cards. Waste of money that then!

My brother came back from an oil rig in the middle of nowhere at the weekend, so we went over to my Mum's to see him as he was visiting. Romy was all over him like a rash, lol. She's missed him, not having seen him for a couple of months. He's really great at that rough and tumble play that kids love :o)

Last night we got a lovely Indian take-away and Romy pretended we were at a restaurant. She served us 'wine' (7 up) and even gave us a chocolate with our bill, bless her.

Ooh, the other day we went to Brigg and saw a woman pull up in a car with a pheasant hanging off the front grill :o((( It's head was stuck and thankfully it was dead, but Roo was horrified. Colin went over to tell the woman and she said "Oh I thought there was, but I'm late for a wedding." She then proceeded to get out of the car to get a car parking ticket and got back in without even glancing at the poor thing!!! She was obviously one of those hardy country types who don't think it's a big deal. Hope she didn't turn up to the wedding with her car like that though!

Beginning to rouse myself from my summer holiday home ed slumber and think about stuff to start in September. I have a few ideas but I need to have a chat with Roo to see what she wants to do next.

Just pottering about...

2006-08-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

Well, over the past few days we've done nothing much worth blogging ("so what's new?" I hear you cry! "That doesn't normally stop you from assaulting our eyes and ears with the banal details of your life." LOL.) Romy has been playing with friends, we've been reading loads, done a book review for EO, played many many board games and hundreds of games of dominoes, been to a play scheme thing yesterday with friends that was free, visited relatives, been to Taekwondo and Roo has written an illustrated a booklet. Roo and I have spent an enjoyable few hours rediscovering her Neopets account which has laid dormant for a while. We spent lots of neopoints on doing up a couple of rooms in her neohome. Have a look on floor 1. We did the jelly disco room and the chillout beanbag room. Lovely waste of time that ;o) Oh yes and Mac has been to the vet's to be neutered, as detailed in Romy's blog. He was being mighty aggressive, so I'm afraid the testicles had to go, lol. At the moment peace reigns over Piggy Towers once again :o)

Roo is now at the Scunthorpe United Football Club summer scheme thing with Emily, so I'd better get off the PC and get some work done; pots to wash, filthy Taekwondo uniforms to wash, etc, etc...

The Post of Many Photographs.

2006-08-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

We've been up to allsorts recently. Romy has made some lovely Oz characters from Hama beads. We couldn't find patterns anywhere so she modified other ones to make Dorothy, the Lion, the Tin Man, Toto and a rainbow. Will take a photo of them all when she gets round to the Scarecrow. In other crafts, Roo has discovered the delights of flour and water paste by doing lots of papier mache. She's also been making hideous concoctions in the kitchen involving such delectations as flour, tomato sauce, miso paste, vecon, brown sauce, marmite, sugar, etc. Hmmmm.... can feel the nausea rising as I type, lol. I had to ask her to remove it from the house, so it's currently sitting in the driveway waiting for some brave soul (Colin!) to wash the bowl out ;o)

Roo has been watching Bamzooki and Raven on BBC1 for the past few days. She's really got into them. We need to go to the Bamzooki site and make a Zook (Weird robot thing!)

We've been reading lots (as usual!) And Roo has been playing with her friends. She went to Emily's house on Tuesday and came back with tales of potions (which are being kept in the freezer for next time apparently!) and spiders (not being kept in the freezer I assume.) On Wednesday we went to the park with Abigail, Thomas and Theresa. After the kids had worn themselves out we went back to their house for a while.

Yesterday Romy had an open session at Taekwondo. She took Abigail along to join in the fun and games. Here's Roo just about to avoid being whacked with a sponge thingamebob:

And Abigail blocking:
Around the assault course they go:
Locked in mortal combat with their "swords" and "shields".
After we dropped Abi home we had a mad dash to Wragby to pick Christine and Joseph up to take them to Chamber's Farm Wood. We were really late - sorry Christine :o( We were having a home ed group nature walk with the park ranger. It was really good fun even though the ranger was a bit of a bossy old school ma'am type ;o) She clearly wasn't used to free thinking kiddywinks. At one point we parents even got told off, rofl. Romy, her new twin friends P&D, and Joseph ran off in front. It didn't bother us in the slightest but the ranger shouted "Who's are those children?" "Come back and attach yourselves to your parents!" We were in stitches!! Anyway, apart from that and me sitting on a red ants nest and being bitten it was really enjoyable. Roo had a great time playing with Joseph, Katie, P&D, and another girl M. Here they are before we set off (with their bug viewers and identification sheets.)
Pond dipping.
Identifying leeches and other such lovelies.
Enjoying a picnic afterwards.
Yesterday was Tilly's second birthday. Romy bought her a little present and made her a lovely card. The piggies got an even better present though. Our friends donated their old rabbit run to us and it's massive!! The pigs thought al their birthdays had come at once when we plonked them out in the garden for half an hour. There's no grass to speak of, but what we do have in abundance is dandelions. Yum! Thanks Gail and Mark :o)

A muddle of guinea pigs:
Romy has just gone out with Emily and her Dad to that Scunthorpe United football thingy again. Typically we were still fighting with her shin pads, socks and boots when they arrived. We're never ready for anything on time. Doesn't bode well for when we have a new baby to get ready too ;o)

Dog agility photographs.

2006-08-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Weaving in and out of water bottles.
Through the tunnel.

Roo has just updated her guinea pig blog.

Striking while the iron's hot. (Pun intended!)

2006-08-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

Haven't had any photographs for a while so here are some (courtesy of Nikki) from a trip to Anwick forge last week:

Leather apron and goggles are so this season!
Last munite adjustments :o)
Get in there girl!!
"Was that ok?"

Some more pics from a football training session that Roo went to with Emily on Friday. She had a great time and is eager to go again this Friday.

Some other stuff we've been up to this week:
-Tidied up like mad idiots ready for the midwife's visit on Tuesday.
-Had friends round on Tuesday afternoon who had to scarper when said midwife appeared. See Mad Mamma's for deatails.
-Read lots and lots of books and Roo took her library books back for the reading mission thing.
-Had a good play on this cool Clarice Bean site.
-Started crocheting a baby blanket.
-Roo finally got her swimming certificates. Unfortunately they still don't have any flippin' 75m badges in!

Yesterday we went to Christine's annual Home Ed garden party and it was fantastic. We've been every year since it started (Roo was three then) but this one was the best ever. Even though I knew hardly anyone there it was lovely as we got talking to lots of new people and made some new friends. Roo had a fabulous time playing with no end of kids. One girl invited her to her 11th birthday in which she's going to have a pink stretch limo (blimey!) It's going to be in a Chinese restraunt and Roo has to wear her Mulan costume, lol. Roo then got totally carried away inviting people to her next birthday, which isn't for nine months, rofl!!!! When those girls had gone home she played with a lovely pair of twins and I got talking to their Mum (who subsequently had another girl and then another set of twins!!!!) She was really friendly and easy to talk to and has invited us over sometime. There was much scribbling of addresses and promises of emails between various adults and children (Roo has already received an email from the 'party' girl this morning!) Anyway, a big thank you to Christine who, as usual put so much work into it and made loads of delicious vegan food. We stayed for seven hours so it must have been good :o)

Colin has taken Roo and Tilly off to a dog show (don't envy him as I bet Tilly will be showing him up barking like mad at the other dogs, lol.) When they come back we'll probably go and see my Mum.

Dog training!

2006-07-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Damn, I wish I had the camera! It's in the glove box and Colin is out. Romy has set up the most amazing dog agility course in the garden and, bless her, she's managed to get Tilly doing it all. There are jumps, weaving sticks and even a tunnel :o) I'm really proud of them both. Roo is on the phone at the moment talking to my Mum about it and the programme they both watched earlier "Britain's Top Dog" or something. My Mum used to do dog training when I was a kid. Romy's after teaching Tilly to skip now, rofl.

Quick update of what we've been up to over the past few days...
-Watched some video of Romy as a baby *sniff*
-Roo and I watched the thunder storm at 4am the other day.
-Roo has played Oz lots!!
-Went to the library and Roo took her first book back to review for the reading mission. Also got more books out.
-Went to town and Roo bought the other Clarice Bean book with her money. "Clarice Bean Spells Trouble." I'm reading it to her in bed and I can honestly say it's the best kid's book I've ever read. I find Lauren Child a breath of fresh air. I love the odd language she uses; just like a real kid. I could read it all day :o)
-Romy did a gorgeous painting of the Oz characters in acrylics on a proper canvas. An art shop in town is closing down so Colin got one for each of us for a pound. Anyway, I was really proud of Roo's effort.
-We bumped into old friends in Asda. Romy used to go to gymnastics with a girl called Emily and we saw her and her Mum. She had hardly changed even though she was four last time I saw them!
-We've been fascinated by the amount of butterflies on the budlia in our front garden. There are literally hundreds at a time on there!
-Roo spent a long time drawing some very life-like lion cubs from an "I can draw wild animals" book.
-Swimming still didn't have a 75m badge to give to Roo :o(
-Yesterday we went to Barton on Humber Gala as Roo and Colin had to do a TKD demonstration. I was really proud of them both :o) I was knackered and hot and tired by the end of it though and just wanted to go home :o(
-Helped my lil' sis' with doing a CV and covering letter.
-Having a mad tidy up today ready for midwife coming on Tuesday. Details on pregnancy blog.

Look what came in the post today!! (Mark II)

2006-07-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

Another lovely surprise in the post today: a signed photograph and letter from Tamsin Greig!! We wrote her a letter because we love her in Green Wing and Black Books. A few months ago Romy was supposed to be doing her work and called me over to look at her doing an impression of Tamsin as Caroline in Green Wing when she gets a pen lid stuck up her nose (as shown here.) Anyway, here's the letter we sent:

4 July 2006

Dear Tamsin.
My name is Romy. I am seven years old. My Mummy and I both like you very much. We especially love your character Caroline on Green Wing. I hope she and Mac have a happy ending. Don’t worry, my Mummy turns it over when the rude bits are on! We also love watching you as Fran on Black books. I am allowed to watch all that because it isn’t as rude as Green Wing :o)

Here is a photograph of me doing an impression of Caroline with a pen top up my nose. I was supposed to be doing my work (I’m home educated) but I thought this was funny. So did Mummy :

We would be very happy if you could send us a signed photograph.
Thank you very much.Lots of love from Romy and Hazel. xxxxx

Here's the photo we received... (note the pen lid drawn on, rofl!!!!)

Not only that she wrote us this lovely letter. It says:

"Dear Romy and Hazel. Thankyou for your lovely letter. I'm glad you enjoy the funny (not rude) bits of Green Wing. I am VERY WORRIED by that picture with your pen top up your nose! When I filmed that scene, the pen top was CUT IN HALF so it would fit. Please take it out! You'll have a nasty accident!

Black Books was great fun too. Please don't copy Fran. I can't bear the thought of you smoking, drinking and swearing...

Lots of love, Tamsin Greig."

How fab is that??? I'm way more excited by it than is proper for a 32 year old ;o)

Once more to the Land of Oz...

2006-07-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

On Monday night our friend Denise very kindly took Romy to see a production of The Wizard of Oz at Lincoln Castle. It was a wonderful belated birthday present and Roo had an absulute ball. She hasn't stopped talking about it (or removed her Dorothy dress) since ;o)

We met Denise and Katie outside the castle at 6.30pm and had a chat before they went in. Colin, Tilly and I then went off whilst they went in for their pre-show picnic. We went for a lovely walk around the cathedral and the city centre and went to Pizza Hut for a vegan pizza. The show finished at 10pm so we went back to wait outside at around 9.30. The castle and cathedral looked absolutely stunning lit up by floodlights. Denise has kindly sent me some photos of the evening.

Katie and Romy having their picture taken with the cast (note the real Toto!)

Pre-show munching of pink wafers :o)

Saying goodbye.
Romy was most chuffed that the 'lion' mentioned how nice her Dorothy dress was. The ruby slippers I'd made with glitter glue for her birthday had finally given up the ghost so Colin secretly nipped into town at lunchtime on Monday from work and found some nice sequiny red slip-on ones for £5. They're just right and Roo was so happy when she saw them. She thought she'd have to go in tatty 'falling to pieces' ones, lol.

Yesterday we went to the park with Theresa, Abigail and Thomas. Roo and Abi had a fab play even though it was boiling hot. Theresa had a time of it chasing after Thomas. He's not even two yet but he was up the climbing frame like a whippet and at one point ran out of the park waving 'bye'. Rofl. I sat on the bench laughing until Theresa wiped the smile off my face by saying that that will be me soon :-O When we all got too hot we went back to their house for a bit.

At TKD last night Romy earnt her first two tips on her belt. You don't get them automatically every month like at the last place. You have to earn them. There are five different coloured ones. Romy got her fitness one and her sparring/self-defence one. It's way too hot for me there at the moment so Colin has taken her tonight. She'll be back soon and then he can go back for his lesson.

This afternoon Emily has been round to play. They sat in the garden for ages making poisonous potions for princesses to drink (?!) Oh, and let's just say Romy has a lot of tidying up to do in her bedroom again ;o) While they were playing I had a bit of a self-indulgent and premature look at pushchairs and such like on the internet.

Found this linked to over at Kris's blog: 33 things your kid should do before they're ten. I've put a star next to the ones Roo has already done. We'll make a point of doing the others this summer I think!

1. Roll on your side down a grassy bank*

2. Make a mud pie

3. Make your own modelling dough mixture

4. Collect frogspawn* (Well, if tadpoles count!)

5. Make perfume from flower petals

6. Grow cress on a windowsill*

7. Make a papier mâché mask

8. Build a sandcastle*

9. Climb a tree*

10. Make a den in the garden

11. Make a painting using your hands and feet*

12. Organise your own teddy bears' picnic*

13. Have your face painted*

14. Play with a friend in the sand*

15. Make some bread*

16. Make snow angels*

17. Create a clay sculpture*

18. Take part in a scavenger hunt*

19. Camp out in the garden

20. Bake a cake*

21. Feed a farm animal*

22. Pick some strawberries*

23. Play pooh sticks*

24. Recognise five different bird species*

25. Find some worms*

26. Ride a bike through a muddy puddle

27. Make and fly a kite

28. Plant a tree*

29. Build a nest out of grass and twigs

30. Find ten different leaves in the park*

31. Grow vegetables*

32. Make breakfast in bed for your parents*

33. Make a mini assault course in your garden/the park

More swimming badges! :o)))

2006-07-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

At Romy's swimming lesson on Friday night Theresa and I were having a good old chinwag when we realised that both Romy and Abigail's class were doing length after length of the pool. Normally they do a couple of lengths and then lots of jumping in and 'rescuing' bricks etc. Anyway, they both came out beaming from ear to ear. Abigail had got her Dolphin 3 badge and Romy had got her 50 and 75 metre badges :o))) I was really proud of Roo as she's very good at all the jumping in/holding her breath under water stuff but she's not really into the swimming long distances stuff. She really proved to herself that she can do it when she tries!

After a bath and hair wash we headed out to the 'Picnic in the Park' event at Normanby Park. Unfortunately though the road was closed and they were filled to capacity and weren't letting any more people in. Roo was disappointed but we took our picnic home and had it there instead.

On Saturday morning we got up unfeasably early and dragged our sorry arses to a car boot sale up the road. Hilariously in half an hour's mad scramble we managed to get enough stuff to sell. That was without even looking properly! Just shows you how much crap is lying around our house :o( We only managed to make about £25 but that bought us some food to carry us through until Colin gets paid on Tuesday. We need to have a proper BIG sort out and go off to a much bigger car boot to make some proper money. We only managed to get the £25 because Colin let some of his (boxed) Myth and Magic ornaments go for pittance (six for £18.) Without them it wouldn't have been worth getting out of bed!

Ooh, and then came the lovely, lovely rain! Now I'm no big fan of rain per se, but after so many days of scorching heat I could've kissed it ;o) We went out to town in it and it was lovely. Took Romy to the library and she signed up for the Reading Mission. The first book she chose was this one.
We also got three others from the set to read and also a new Indie Kidd one Roo saw on the New Books shelf.

When we came home, We read some of the books and also some baby development ones I'd got for Roo and then she played out in the rain (after the thunder had stopped!) until around 10pm :o)

Today we've been round at my Mum's for lunch. Bless her, she bought me a big fan! I've been so hot (and complainy!!!) People will be much happier to be around me now that I can be cool. Thanks Mum :o) My sis also bought me a bottle of PJ dragonfruit smoothie. Gosh I am being spoiled!

Off to have a quick bath now before Colin goes out, then it's Girl's Night In. Yay, we have chocolate and books!

Oh yes, and I've updated my preggie bloggie.

Summer holidays - Yay!!!!

2006-07-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

Today we're 'breaking up' for the summer holidays. Not a moment too soon really, as we've kinda run out of steam over the past week or so. I think we both need a few weeks off to re-group ourselves and get stuff sorted for a new start in September. I've got mountains of work to sift through before then, but for the moment it's going to go in the spare room to clear the dining table (and my head) for a while at least! We've decided that we'll carry on with the mental maths book until it's finished, read lots of books and finish the illustrators project over the summer. Sounds like enough to be getting on with to stop our brains going mushy. Other than that we'll play, listen to music, go out with friends, etc.

This week we found an old chemistry set of my Sister's. We did the first experiment about soluble and insoluble matter. There were lots of lovely test tubes of interesting coloured chemicals, so we tried most of them and also a few household items such as salt, sugar and vegetable oil. Roo had no trouble predicting which would dissolve and which wouldn't. She then wrote the results in a table.

Later on I found Romy doing the last of her butterfly work in Tilly's bed! She'd taken her manky bedding out and put a blanket in. As you can see from the picture Tilly wasn't going to miss out, so got right in there with her, rofl:

Human biology next; we've been looking at lots of websites about baby development in the womb. Romy's found it utterly fascinating. She keeps asking me how big the baby is now "er, still the size of an apple pip" lol. We've also read through a human body book for kids and learnt about all the systems of the body.

We found a "First 1000 Words in French" book and had loads of fun looking through it and comparing the French words with the English ones. More often that not, as Romy noted, the word is either the same or comes froom a word that's similar.

We've been reading an awful lot this week too. Roo found the sequel to Oz that I got her from eBay for her birthday so we've been reading that. It's a bit odd, but then so was the original! Romy is loving it anyway :o) She certainly hasn't lost her obsession with Oz yet! I read her "Utterly Me: Clarice Bean" by Lauren Child too. We've had it for a couple of years but when I tried to read it to her then she wasn't interested. I've been itching to read it ever since as I LOVE Lauren Child books. Anyway, Roo absolutely loved it with a passion and we have to get the next one from the library which is this.

In other work, Roo has been doing lots of spelling, mental arithematic, logic problems and these mosaic and Hanje puzzles of mine. She's also updated her blog.

On Tuesday Roo went round to Emily's for the afternoon to play in her paddling pool. Then on Thursday she went with Emily to her Drama club end-of-term party. She had a lovely time and they played lots of games and had fun.

Oh, I got a nice surprise in the post too: my Aromatherapy diploma certificate :o) And that's not all! I actually got an A!!!!!!!!!! Am so pleased with meself, lol.

Celebrations and fireworks!

2006-07-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

Wow! What an eventful weekend. Have a shufties at my new blog to see why. Then come back for the rest of the news :o) I'll wait....

...Are you back? Good. Then I'll carry on :o)

We've spent the last few days in a bit of a hazy whirl really, so not much 'school' work has been done. Thank God(dess) it's the summer holidays soon ;o) Romy's butterflies hatched on Friday and we released them all apart from a disabled one :o( She has poorly wings and can't fly. She's living happily in the butterfly garden eating rotten bananas, sugar water and budlia flowers though so she's not having too bad a life :o) Here's Roo releasing the 'able winged' ones, lol.

We had a lovely afternoon at the park on Friday with Tilly. I'd just got my positive pregnancy test, so couldn't concentrate on much! Romy had a good play and I got a couple of lovely omens about my pregnancy while I was there: I found a little silver Tinkerbell charm and saw a yellow butterfly which has personal symbolism for me.

We did manage to do a bit of maths and spelling though :o) And Roo did lots of history at the museum on Saturday. It was National Archaeology Day or something. Colin took her and she ground some wheat using a saddle quern (whatever the flip that is!) Summat ol' fashioned eh? Roo also helped to make a miniature wattle and daub house, did some drawings, made a clay thumb pot and dissected some 'poo' (Don't worry, it was made of clay!) She had to chisel it and find the bits of grain and stuff inside and then match it up with ancient people's menu's to see whether the poo-er was Egyptian, etc.

While they were there for a couple of hours I had a LOVELY wander around town. I had Keane on my ipod and I was on cloud nine. Couldn't help looking at baba stuff even though I had no money (and don't really need anything anyway as I still have everything in the attic from Roo.)

Tilly got bitten on the nose by a guinea pig, rofl. Well it serves her right really. Mind you, it didn't half bleed! Poor thing. She's fine now :o)

Last night we went to a fireworks display on the Humber Bridge for the silver jubilee of its opening. WOW!!!!! is all I can say. It was absolutely magical. The sort of thing we'll all remember for the rest of our lives. Romy had such a fantastic time. If I find a picture I'll scan it.

I'll also add some pics of Roo at the archaeology day tomorrow. It won't let me do it today. Bah!!

Fully fledged Brownie/Sad news.

2006-07-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Colin and I went to see Romy doing her Brownie promise last night. It was lovely. She did really well. She's now a real Brownie - just in time for the Summer holidays! They don't go back now until mid September. Anyway, she looks gorgeous with all her badges on her sash. I tried to photograph the moment but the batteries failed in the sodding camera :o(

While Roo was at Brownies Colin cleaned the two piggy cages out and unfortunately he found Zippy dead in his little house :o((((( He wasn't even fully grown yet. We haven't a clue what happened. He was absolutely perfect apart from some blood coming out of his nose. Poor thing. I must admit my initial thoughts were about having to tell Romy when we picked her up though. She was so happy after doing her Brownie promise and then I had to go and tell her that.

We had a lovely evening on Monday at our friend Denise's house. She and her children had a fundraising event for whales and dolphins. We bought some lovely books and Romy entered a couple of competitions and had a good play with Katie.

On the work front Roo has sewn a lovely bag for herself using the tie-dyed fabric we did the other day. Again, no pic because of the camera batteries. We've finished the Egyptian project. Wahey!! It's not as in-depth as it could have been but Roo is happy with it. We've also read lots in the garden and also done some mental maths out there (from a book I forgot we still had of Emily's - sorry, will give it back soon!)

Finally Romy has updated her blog about Zippy.

Cuteness overload!!!!

2006-07-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

OMG, you have to go to this blog and look at all the categories of photographs. You've never seen such a collection of cuteness in all your life :o)))))

Just a quickie.

2006-07-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

Can't be bothered writing lots tonight. So here's what we've been up to over the past few days:

-Took Roo to see a JOPSOX (Junior Operatic Society) performance of The Wizard of Oz on Thursday night at the local college. She was absolutely entranced by it. It was fantastic.
-We tie-dyed some fabric, but forgot to buy dye fixative, so most of the colour has come out :o(
-The caterpillars turned into chrysalides after only eight days!!! Now I know as well as the next eejit that caterpillars turn into butterflies, but to actually watch it with one's own eyes: amazing! They crawl up to the top of the container when they're nice and fat and then hang by their back legs. One minute they're upside-down caterpillars and the next they've mutated into a chrysalis. It's so quick and odd. We've hung them in the pop-up butterfly garden thingy and we've to wait about a week for the butterflies to emerge. Can't wait. I think I'm finding it more fascinating than Roo, lol ;o)
-We've been reading loads and loads. I've finished the following books from the library over the past week or two, all of which were top notch: The Time Traveller's Wife, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Watermelon, Anybody Out There? Marian Keyes is fantastic. I especially loved Watermelon as it made me laugh out loud. I've been reading Adrian Mole since the first book, so the new one was a real treat. With Roo I've been reading more Milly Molly Mandy which is utterly charming and old-fashioned. Colin is still reading her The Hobbit. Roo has been reading to herself a lot lately too, which is lovely.
-We did lots more work outside on Thursday. I gave Roo a list of random spellings and mental arithematic. She really enjoyed doing that and did really well too.
-Emily came to play on Friday afternoon. The girls had a fab time making potions in the garden (one dressed as a princess and one as a witch. But of course!) I too had a fab time, as I lounged on the settee finishing my book before it had to go back to the library.
-Talking of libraries; we went yesterday to take my books back and somehow about ten more jumped into my grubby mits. Dunno how that happened, lol. Romy got a leaflet about this year's summer reading scheme The Reading Mission. It starts soon. She loves doing that each summer so we'll definitely be signing up for it.
-We've written lots in our grattitude journal.
-Roo has practiced her Brownie promise for Tuesday. She knows it upside-down and inside-out now. She's still nervous as they all have to stand up and say it by themselves. She'll be reet. Parents can come and watch too, so I'd better take some hankies, rofl.
-Colin and Roo have been excavating all the triffids (ok then, weeds) from the back garden and driveway.
-Yesterday we went to the open surgery at the vets and we had a TWO HOUR wait for a ten second injection for Toby the piggy!!! Blimey. It's the second of three at weekly intervals so we made sure we made an appointment for the next one.
-We've been henna-ing ourselves. I did our palms and then Roo went mad on our feet! Only another four weeks or so until it comes off then ;o) Have a pic of our palms but stupid Blogger won't let me put it up. Aargh!!

Just a daft thing to end on. Saw it at Lucy's blog :o)

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Hazel's Syndrome
Cause:	the wrong type of snow
Symptoms:	mild lack of reflection in mirrors, shouting, anxiety, scaly skin
Cure:	drink lots of water
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Romy's Disease
Cause:	secret military experiments
Symptoms:	extreme drowsiness, coughing up blood, mild blisters
Cure:	trepanning
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Colin's Lurgy
Cause:	computer virus
Symptoms:	premature greying, vague hair growth, glowing
Cure:	don't do it again
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

Ooh, get me!

2006-07-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just jealous. Go out there and change the world.
Take this quiz!

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Stuffy classroom or comfy chair in the garden....

2006-07-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

...You decide, lol. Here's Roo doing her work today in the garden. Our neighbour popped her head over the fence to say hello on her way out and said "Ooh, what a lovely way to do your school work. " :o) Oh and ignore the chocolate soya yoghurt all over her face!

Mostly Roo's been doing a set of worksheets about the butterfly garden. Some of it is way too easy for her but she's enjoying doing it. Talking of the caterpillars; they've grown sooo huge and as I type this they're starting to hang upside down ready to turn into chrysalides. (There you go, you learn something new every day. I thought the plural of chrysalis was chrysalises!) Here's a pic of Roo with one on her finger a few days ago before they got so big:

And one I've just taken (not very clear, sorry) of them hanging upside down. I can hear you all yawning from here ;op

Other news: Roo came home with her Brownie promise to learn for next week. She has to say it on her own, eek! Meanwhile I went out and parted with an extortionate Â£6.99 for a sodding Brownie sash to sew all her badges on. I've turned into my Mum because I just kept saying to Romy "You could make that for nothing" rofl.

Books - we've finished every Worst Witch book inexistencee and have started reading Milly Molly Mandy from the library now. It's lovely and gentle and old fashioned. Roo has a bit of a soft spot for books like that :o) In a complete paradox Colin has started reading her The Hobbit too. Well no-one can say Roo's tastes aren'teclecticc!

Tonight Romy was the only student in her class at Taekwondo, so she got some one-to-one tuition with a lovely new teacher. He was fantastic! Romy went all squishy and was putty in his hands, lol. He had her in fits of giggles throughout the whole lesson. He's going to be teaching all next week too, so that'll be good. Oh and Roo has also been picked for the demo team for a display in Barton at the end of the month.

Yesterday Roo went to play at Emily's house. She got bitten by a red ant, which I have to say I've never seen before. They had a grand time playing in the pool and selling strawberries and peas (!)

This afternoon we tried to get to grips with an art package called Dazzle that Emily lent us. I'm not quite sure of how it all works, but we had a great time messing about with it anyway. Roo has also done some more work on her Egyptian project with more on the mummification process.

I had a great idea from someone I know recently: a gratitude journal. Romy and I have made one each and every day we're writing one or more things in it that we're thankful for. Ifiguredd it'd be a way to stay positive even when things are going badly (not that they are atm.) Also we can look back on it and see all the wonderful things that have happened instead of just remembering the bad stuff. One of the daft things I was thankful for today is Tilly making us laugh running around the garden with Romy's hula hoop in her mouth. Sorry for the blurriness.

Look what came in the post today!!!!!!!!!

2006-07-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo!!! What a lovely postal delivery we got this morning. Not only were there no bills, but there was this....

A signed photograph from our favourite "Dr." Dr. 'Mac' McCartney from Green Wing (Julian Rhind-Tutt.) Romy and I sent him a letter with a photo of Mac our guinea pig on it - his namesake :o) Bless him, he also wrote this on the back of the picture:

Ooh, that's made my day :o))) *Swoons*

Tagged by Kris :o)

2006-07-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

5 things in my refrigerator:
Withering bag of spinach
A vegan chocolate Santa of Romy's (1/2 eaten)
Salad cream that no-one ever, ever eats (possibly furry by now!)
Hummous (as always)
Cucumbers (Romy eats them like they're going out of fashion :o))

5 things in my closet:
Some of clothes that are too big for me
Some of clothes that are too small for me
Romy's 'baby box' with all her momentoes in it
Several couch rolls for my therapy couch.
Loads of coat hangers (where do they all come from? They must reproduce, surely!)

5 things in my purse/handbag:
Mobile phone
Ipod
Tissues
Plasters
Pens/several other 'Mumsy essentials' ;o)

5 things in my car:
Hay strewn all over the place (from picking up those hay bales the other day. Looks like we keep a horse in there!)
Bottles with hot water in (supposed to be cold but you could drink coffee from them when they've been in the car in this weather.)
A Yankee Candles apple flavour car freshener
A piece of carpet for Tilly to sit on
Dog hairs :o(

5 people I am tagging:
Nikki
Lucy
Liza
Everyone else seems to have done it!

All day party in the park :o)

2006-07-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

Phew! We've just come back from an all day party at Normanby park. Our friend's son R was nine today. We bought him a skater top as he's a little 'skater boi' (like his Dad!) Romy had bucketloads of fun playing football, clibing trees, etc. Us oldies had a good old natter and a picnic. As usual Roo was too busy to eat much so is really hungry now :o)

Yesterday Roo helped Colin to make some stilts. She hasn't have much luck using them yet, but half of the fun is making them isn't it?

We've also been taking advantage of the boiling hot weather by doing lots of science about melting and evaporation. Oh, and read LOTS!

Alton Towers, birthday celebrations and Hazel the snob!

2006-06-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

We had a fab time at Alton Towers yesterday. We got there at 10.30 and stayed until it closed at 6.30!! Can't believe I walked around for eight hours!! Mind you, my feet are still aching. Good job I had my trainers on. We saw loads of women in flip flops and even a few in high heels. How on earth do they manage it??? Anyway, here are some pics (as if you hadn't guessed, lol.)

Taking me on a tractor ride.
Am I too big for this ride? ;o)
Scary talking worm thing.
Queen Romy eating her royal crisps in the Merrie England courtyard.
Getting soaked with Daddy in a giant bath tub on the flume ride.
And the second soaking of the day. Well, someone had to keep our stuff dry. That was my excuse and I'm sticking to it :o)
Winning a pink and purple dragon.
Augustus Gloop's Mum in the new Charlie & chocolate factory ride. Utterly brilliant, especially the glass elevator at the end!
Bouncing bugs ride.
Looking a bit unsure on the frog hopper ;o)
Flying though the air!!
Romy and I had already been on this, but Roo had to drag Colin on one last thing before we left, lol.

Actually the kid's parts were completely empty so Roo and I went on everything we wanted lots of times while Colin went and queued for his biiiig rides. Romy bought him a medal for his birthday which read "I survived Rita Queen of Speed" lol.

Today Roo and I went into Ashby to buy some vegan chocolate to make Colin a birthday surprise. He's always looking at the fruit and nut bars in the shop longingly, so we made him a vegan version!

Romy's butterfly garden came the other day. We sent off for the caterpillars which are absolutelty weenie at the moment.
Will keep you posted with their development!

Oh, and am I a snob? I must be. On the way back from Ashby today we saw a couple with a baby in a pushchair waiting for the bus. The poor thing was in the full glare of the sun with no hat/parasol on whilst they were canoodling. She was obviously hot and fed up but they ignored her apart from peiodically shoving crisps into her hands. They also had three baby's bottles with sugar and aspartime laden orange cordial in with filthy teats on the end. They looked like they'd never been washed. On the bus the poor kid dropped one of them on the floor and they just picked it up and shoved it back in her mouth :o( I hate to admit that I felt morally superior to them. I felt so sorry for that poor baby. All she wanted was to be picked up and taken out of the sun but they seemed oblivious to her needs. Even Romy commented when we got home. I hugged her tight and felt glad that we had each other. I think having Roo has turned me into a snob :o(

More Mummies and Brownie Badges.

2006-06-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here are the photo's Blogger wouldn't upload the other day. Don't know what's wrong with the bleedin' thing! Romy (in the denim jacket) is at the museum archaeology club learning how to wrap a Mummy :o)

Today, as part of her Egypt project Romy has been creating step-by-step instructions for the mummification process and illustrating it. Yuck! We've also been looking at the pyramids on Google Earth. Amazing! We got sidetracked after that and started looking at loads of other places/landmarks too including the Statue of Liberty. Roo's also done some Cartouches for her project and learnt some more about hieroglyphics. Oh, and designed a front cover too.

In other work, we've done lots of flow charts, tally charts, pictograms and making junk models. Romy has also been reading to herself a lot (as well as me reading the last Worst Witch book to her.) She also updated her guinea pig blog.

At Taekwondo Romy has been board-breaking using a hammer fist technique and tonight she did loads of self-defence. Colin beat the teacher at rag-sparring (where they have to try and grab a rag from each other's belt) about six times ;o)

Yesterday Romy came out of Brownies as pleased as punch with her first ever Brownie badge! A "friend to animals" badge. She was really proud :o) Just got to buy a sash to sew them onto now, lol.

While Roo was out at Brownies Colin and I went to Brigg to pick up some hay bales that someone had advertised on Freecycle. They'd used them as extra seating at a wedding. Just right for our house full of guinea pigs! It'll take them a while to get through all this...

We've also made Colin a birthday cake as we won't have time tomorrow because we're off to Alton Towers!!! Yey!! All three of us can go for the price of one (which is quite expensive enough, thank you) because we have a BOGOF ticket and a ticket we bought using Tesco vouchers. Complete bargain that was, over at Clubcard Deals. We've been wanting to go for ages but couldn't afford it. Can't really afford to go now really, but can't pass up this offer really. It's a birthday treat for Colin anyway ;o) Can't wait to go on the new Charlie and the chocolate factory ride!

Not much sleep at the sleepover!

2006-06-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

Well, Romy's first sleepover went exceedingly well. Much better than I could have hoped for anyway. Abi came straight round after their swimming lesson and I plonked them both in the bath. They had a bit of a play before I washed their hair and put them into matching plaits ;o) At home Abi would have been going straight to bed then, but not here...

First we went to the turf maze and much fun was had running around 'sans dog' (Abi is scared of dogs, so Tilly had to stay at home.)

We didn't stay long as we wanted to take the girls to a pub near the river before the sun went down. Romy kept saying to Abi "Would you be in bed by now?" and "Would you be fast asleep by now?" ROFL. We spent a lovely hour or so in the pub garden watching the most gorgeous sunset:

The girls had lots of fun on the bouncy castle, on the slides and rolling down the hills. There was a lovely moment when Abi came up to me and said "Thank you so much for bringing us here Hazel. I'm having so much fun. I thought we might just go to a park or something." Bless. We often go there in the evenings, so it was lovely to see it from someone elses point of view (who has to be up for school in the mornings, lol.) But this was Friday night, so it was time for fun!

When the sun finally went down at gone 10 o'clock we set off for home. The girls went off into Roo's bedroom to make Hama things while Colin and I watched Big Brother that we'd taped.
Later on - still not flagging - they had the obligatory midnight feast and got into their pyjamas and brushed their teeth. I read them a chapter from "The Worst Witch All at Sea" and then they read to themselves for a bit.

They finally got to sleep at 2am!!! This was after saying they wanted to get up and have breakfast because they weren't tired. Then suddenly *zonk* they were out ;o) Phew! Of course then it took me ages to get to sleep 'cos I was thinking they'd wake up again. Doh!

If you'd gone to sleep at 2am what time would you be up in the morning (Saturday remember.) 10 o'clock? 11 o'clock? Try 8 o'clock!! Hmmm.... Carrying on with my saintly Mummy routine I served them toast and 'champagne' (lemonade!) with strawberries floating in it and then they went off to play whilst I ironed their Hama creations.

It can't have been 'alf bad because Abi wanted to stay for the rest of the weekend and kept asking when she could come back! Oh dear. I think I've started something now ;o)

So, briefly here's the rest of the stuff we've been up to since I last posted:
-I bought some tickets for Roo and I to see Keane in Hull in October. Woo hoo!
-We stumbled upon this hilarious website which was advertised on another site we were on. We weren't really looking for bird nappies - honest guv!
-We started learning some French using a children's French/English dictionary and a CD Rom.
-Read lots more Worst Witch (how many of those books are there?) and Indie Kidd.
-Romy made some Victorian toys using bits and bobs; a hoop and stick (which she was most successful in learning how to do) a conker on a string, and a wooden sword.
-We forgot our nephew's first birthday party, so had to make a mad dash over afterwards to drop off his card and present. Ooops!
-Roo did lots of English/spelling. And learnt to use the Yellow Pages and phone book.
-We found what appeared to be a blood bath in the guinea pig's cage. After searching each pig for injuries we found it was Willow's foot. He must've either been bitten by another pig or caught his foot in the cage. I'm suspecting the former as there's a LOT of fighting going on at the moment :o(
-Romy made me a lovely fruit basket as a surprise after hearing me say to my Mum that I'd never had one. (She had one for her birthday last week.)

-Romy's paddling pool water has gone green! We've found out that we need to buy chlorine to put in to keep it clear. It costs a fortune. Boo!
-Roo went to Archaeology club with Colin yesterday and they had a go at making a life-sized Mummy! There was a foam person and the kids all had a job to do each, starting with opening up the velcro stomach and removing the internal organs. Ewww! Romy was number 19 and had to add the mirror so that the deceased could do their hair in the afterlife or something, lol. Romy had also drawn a picture of Anubis and Bastet for the ladies who run the club :o) I have a couple of pics of the mummification process but Blogger won't let me put any more pics up at the moment (probably thinks I've put enough up already, rofl.)
-Went to a BBQ at my Mum's today. My poor sis' has a tooth abcess so her face was really swollen :o(

Happy Birthday Mum!

2006-06-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's my Mum's birthday today. What a lovely day to be born on too :o)
Happy Birthday Mum. We Love You!!!!
We went over this afternoon to give her her cards and presents. Romy made her a lovely decoupage kitten card with millions of kisses on it. She also bought her some Body Shop satsuma body butter. Mum was thrilled with it but joked that she'd be followed by bees, lol. I bought her The Thorn Birds DVD as she used to love that when it was on years ago. I also had the mad idea to get all us 'kids' to write lots of little notes saying why we love her. Romy and I decorated a box to put them all in and I spent a fortune ringing/texting my siblings trying to co-ordinate things. Unfortunately not everyone was as enthusiastic as me about it, so I didn't quite manage to get notes from everyone, but I think she was pleased with it anyway.

Other random stuff we've been up to:
-Colin and Romy spent a looooong time tidying Roo's room as (fanfare) she is having her first sleepover on Friday! How excited can one child get???
-Went for a play at Normanby park.
-At Brownies a lady from the Cats Protection League came to give them a talk which went down extremely well.
-Romy has done lots of writing in her diary with invisible ink. It only shows up when you shine an ultra-violet light on it.
-We drew faces on each other's knees in bed last night just because ;o) And also played Cluedo.
-Did some maths: Playing shops, adding totals and giving change with real money.
-Read yet more Worst Witch books!
-Romy sat with Colin and did reams of work this morning on Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Roo drew each deity and Colin read out their name, what they were God of and when they were worshipped from and to. Romy wrote all the information next to each picture. She also learnt about the meaning of B.C and A.D.
-I finally finished my Aromatherapy exam!!!!!!! *Does celebratory dance in chair* Am I glad to see the back of that!
-Romy drew lots of pictures of Mildred Hubble from the Worst Witch books.
-We cracked open a geode rock that Romy bought the other day from Bridlington. I had a moment of doubt when I thought we'd probably have picked one of the 10% of stones with no crystal formation inside, but no, we were lucky! Here's the result. Ignore the felt-tip on the thumb (from doing Nana's card, lol.):

Change of plan and a weekend in pictures.

2006-06-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to be going camping today but unfortunately our friends got ill so we've had a change of plan. Hope they get better soon. Seeing as though Colin had booked three days off anyway we decided to go to Bridlington today. First other news from the weekend...

On Saturday we made some fairy furniture from the toymaker website I linked to the other day. Roo took this photo: We also went into town to get Colin's Father's day present. Pipe and slippers (well, not really the pipe!) We then went strawberry picking and picked way too many as usual ;o) They're absolutely gorgeous though! Yum.

On Sunday we went to Romy's home ed friend Joseph's ninth birthday party. We went to a play area first and I actually had two goes on one of those giant wavy slides ;o))))) I squealed like a little kid I tell you. I must have been about Romy's age the last time I went on one of those! After the scrummy vegan chocolate birthday cake......

......we all trooped off to a nearby park for a lovely picnic that Christine had prepared for us. Once again it was all vegan and scrummy. Romy was too busy playing to eat as usual so was really hungry later. She ran off and started playing with three girls who just happened to be in the park at the same time. We had to prise her away eventually as we had to go and visit Colin's Nan. From there it was on to Colin's dad's to give him his Father's day card and present and then on to mine. I gave Robert a big card with a cardboard medal on that says "World's best Dad" and a giant mug that holds three-and-a-half normal mugs of tea, lol.

We saw this tent while we were on our travels this weekend. Romy thought it was utterly fab!
And here's a random picture of her dressed as a witch (!?) on Saturday evening when we were cleaning her pool cover.
Here are some photo's from our trip to Bridlington today. We surprised Romy by taking her to John Bull's rock factory. The entrance fees were extremely reasonable - £1.50 for adults and £1.00 for kids. There were free samples to try while watching the amazing process of the rock making. I don't know how they do it with people staring at them all the time. Mind you, I suppose there's no slacking, lol. Romy got to make a stick of rock with her initial in it. Here she is trying to roll it (it was extremely hard!)
In the next room we were unnaturally amused by a conveyor-belt that weighed bars of coconut-ice as they went along and shoved them off if they didn't weigh enough. We soon worked out that the magic weight was 115g. Even those that weighed 114.9g were thrown off. Over half of the flippin' things seemed to be too light. We wondered what happened to them and also to the end bits of all the rock. We soon found out as we entered...THE SHOP!!! Roo has her rock she made but Colin has a bag of end bits that weighs a ton!! When he'll ever eat them is beyond me. Rock anyone???
Here's Roo at the beach having written her name in the sand:
And then a message for me... aaahh!
Colin and I were on the promenade for this shot. Roo seemed miles down.
And back home we broke open the rock to find the 'R'. Ignore the stray birthday card in the background. It was a belated one :o)

Reading, reading and yet more reading!

2006-06-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

As you can guess from the title of today's blog post we've read lots of books over the past couple of days. This was prompted by a note from the library informing us that one of Roo's books was wanted by someone else. Oops, we've had them for ages and not got around to reading them. The book in question was one of The Worst Witch stories. We read it all in a day and then started on the other one we had from the library too. After reading that one we started on an Enid Blyton mysteries book. One of the characters in it is called Fatty!! Romy had me change his name to Freddy though. We're now reading Flat Stanley, which I'm not too impressed with. Can't quite put my finger on why though. The writing seems a bit poor I think.

Here's Romy's lovely photo from Brownies. There was also a group shot with it but they want £12.50 for the two! Slightly illegally we've decided to just scan them instead ;o)

We had fun on this maths games site the other day. Lots to do and loads of other subjects I think we'll go back to another day.

Yesterday Romy and I went into town for the afternoon. We had something to eat, bought me a new (bargain) swimming costume (mine was way too big) went swimming (water was freeeeezing!!) and spent some time in the library. Romy chose TONS more books. I don't know when we'll get to read them all, rofl. She doesn't seem to 'get' that when we're in the library. She's like a kid in a sweet shop. Actually, she's not that fussed about sweets, she'd rather have books ;o)

This morning we printed some beautiful stuff from this fantastic site. That I found over at Lucy's blog. We only managed to make one thing in the time we had as the cutting out was v fiddly. Here's Romy's fairy-in-a-box:

We also did a bit of music appreciation this morning. Romy made up dances for various classical pieces including a ballet-type effort for Ave Maria and a marching dance for Bolero. In the afternoon Emily came round to play. They were straight in the pool again...

...But Romy couldn't bear the cold for more than half-an-hour ;o) So they came in, had a picnic upstairs and played guitar and sang.

Just been to Roo's swimming lesson and enquired about her 50m certificate and badge. The teacher said she'd have it next week and added that she's not too far off gettin her Dolphin level 4 now. Ooh, I was chuffed. There's only one more level after that and that's it! Then she can go on to do life-saving or distances or whatever.

Colin was really pleased at taekwondo this week. He got to do a board-break and beat a black-belt at sparring! (He's a yellow-belt.) Cool.

Feelin' hot hot hot!

2006-06-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Phew! What a scorcher of a weekend it's been :o( Too hot for me I'm afraid. Especially as we had to be out in it all Sunday without reprieve.

Can't remember much that we got up to on Saturday apart from feeling extremely frustrated at taekwondo as they did last minute practicing for the Gala the next day. More about that later. Oh and we also went to the French Market in town. Ah yes, it's all coming back to me now. It was the England match wasn't it? So we went out for the afternoon thinking everywhere would be deserted. Unfortunately every other woman seemed to have the same idea as me and was trying on clothes at Tesco's. Boo! Never mind. The roads were quite empty and we were spoilt for choice for parking spaces in town. Annoyingly though even Evan's had the match blaring out of the radio. Don't they realise that we're coming out to get away from flippin' football?!

Romy made some yummy(!!) potions later on. BTW, that's tissue she's holding up with chopsticks :-O

Sunday morning we were up bright (not) and early for the gala. We picked our friends children up: M and R as we had two spare free tickets. Before Romy's taekwondo demo she had time to go on the free trampolines and bouncy castle and have a general look around. We had a go on a few charity tombolas and Roo bought herself a crystal from a stall run by the people I did my Indian Head Massage with. So it was nice to see them again.

This is the first year we've been to the gala when it hasn't rained. In fact it was quite the opposite: unbearably hot. Romy was supposed to be doing two demo's but after the first one I decided she shouldn't be out in the sun any more. (There was no shade anywhere!) She had come out in a really bad heat rash :o(
So we dropped our friends off at Normanby Park where their Mum was with their little brother and we went home to get changed and pick Tilly up. Then we made our way to an open day at a brand new taekwondo academy very near where we live. It was very impressive and is about half the price we're paying at the moment. So we made a very impulsive decision that night to move there. We've been extremely dissatisfied with the place Colin and Romy have been at for a year. It's not just the expense (although that is extortionate) it's the whole ethos of the place. Money money money, that's all they care about. You pays ya' money, you gets ya' belts basically. Whether you're good enough or not. I won't bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say we've been waiting for somewhere else to open up with reasonable prices. And this one has better training too.

After dropping in there we went back to Normanby for a picnic with our friends who were still there. Roo had a play with R and R and we had a good old natter. When they went home we decided to go to a nearby pub for a J2O ;o) Roo played with some kids on the bouncy castle and slides and we watched huge boats go past on the Trent. Tilly barked at a jacket that someone had hung in a tree. She thought it was a dog (she's a bit blind, bless her!) Here she is cooling off in the evening shade.
Yesterday (Monday) we stayed in, out of the sun. Romy got lots of work done for her Egyptian project and other stuff:
-Used oil pastels to colour in pictures of Gods and Goddesses. Lots of blending and colour mixing to get the right shades.
-Did some spelling dot-to-dots of Egyptian words.
-Did lots of work on hieroglyphics. Learnt the alphabet and then deciphered tons of words and wrote them in English.
-Did some Egyptian maths, lol.
-Made a guinea pig play area from boxes, etc.
-Wrote a fabulously funny taekwondo book all by herself.
-Read me a book about fairies.
-Wrote a review for the book "Indie Kidd: Are we having fun yet?" that we were sent from Education Otherwise. Here's what Romy wrote:

"I really loved this book. I was excited to read it as soon as it arrived in the post. I could have read it myself but I asked Mummy to read it to me because she is good at doing the voices. It is a very funny book about a girl who tries lots of plans to cheer her friend up who's cat has died. The girl gets a new cat in the end and calls it Mrs. Mumbles even though it is a boy! I loved the illustrations. They are by Lydia Monks who also did the pictures for Princess Mirror-bell which I also love. All the pages are really interesting with lots going on. I want to get all the other Indie Kidd books as soon as possible. "

Last night we went to the new TKD place and it was great. Romy had to go down one belt to purple, but she wasn't fussed as she had thought she'd have to go down to yellow. They haven't been teaching them the forms in the righ order at the other place :o( Glad we've got out of there.

And so to today. It's been a bit of a disaster so far:
-Tilly had a fit at 4.55 am.
-Tilly had another fit at 10.15 am.
-Tilly was sick on the settee at 11.30 am :o(((
-A thrush flew into and got stuck in the conservatory and was none too pleased when I rescued it.

Let's just hope the day improves!! Roo's done lots more work this morning including beautifully writing her name in hieroglyphics. She's now having a break and circling things she'd like in the Playmobil catalogue, rofl. Tilly is exhausted from the morning's 'excitements' and is asleep whilst the guinea pigs play around her (this is unheard of!) Back to Brownies tonight and it's 'show and tell' apparently. Better think of something to take. We've only had two weeks to think, lol.

Very quick update.

2006-06-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

Love love love this: The Real Hot 100. Makes such a lovely change from all those crappy bloke's mags with their 'Hot 100 babes.' Bleurgh.

Oh dear. I'm not very well travelled am I??? You can see why I'm not that bothered about going abroad. There are so many places in Britain left to go yet.

Over the last few days Roo has been making a start on her Egyptian project. I printed loads of great stuff from Edhelper which has started us off nicely.

Last night we went for a lovely picnic at a nearby turf maze:

I love the last one of Roo drinking an Innocent smoothie without the straw, lol. She went over to Emily's this afternoon and had a whale of a time in her paddling pool. She came back as brown as a berry. She had two further soakings tonight too: her swimming lesson and a bath. That girl is CLEAN!

Loads more to write about but it's too late. I need my bed :o)

All work and no play, makes for a dull day.

2006-06-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

So, the past two days Romy's been back down to work, but there's been lots of fun too. Yesterday she almost managed to finish the Oz project. She wrote profiles for each character. We also did some spelling practice and maths. Here's roo making a fairy work of art on an easel that Colin bought for a bargain £1.99.

We also spent an hour playing the free trial of this fantastic game. It's great fun and easy for kids (on the first couple of levels. But you have to turn your speakers off after a few minutes lest you go mad.)

At TKD Roo had a play with her friends R & R after her lesson and then played with a boy from down the road who goes to watch his Mum (who's in Colin's lesson.) In bed we read a Where's Wally type book that's a bit easier. (One of four that my Aunty gave Romy on Sunday.)

This morning Roo announced she wanted to write a book about Tilly. I love it when she does that because she's practicing her writing and spelling without seeing it as 'work'. A few months ago she would never have volunteered to do that anyway. So it looks like my 'hands-off' approach is working (as indeed it did with reading. She's now very fluent.) Anyway, this book so far includes Tilly's name, D.O.B, etc, pictures of her, and some stuff about Romy too.

This afternoon Emily came round to play. The temperature was barely 20c but in the new pool they went (the temp in the pool was approx -2, we had to break the ice for them to get in, rofl.) I dragged them out after an hour as by then their skin colour was pretty similar to their cossies ;o)

Much fun was had despite the cold. They played mermaids and quized each other on subjects close to their hearts (Emily: Tai Chi, Egyptians, functionings of the human body.) (Romy: Taekwondo, guinea pigs, Medieaval times.) I did a Very Bad Thing and picked Tilly up and dropped her in the water. She hates water ;o) Mind you, she paid me back by drenching the kitchen floor when she went in, lol.

Another tiny bit of education squeezed out of the fun of the afternoon: The girls found some red larvae in a container of water in the garden so we Googled them (love that new verb: 'to google'.) Found out they were midge larvae. Nice.

Off to our second home now (TKD.) We won't be going for much longer though as we've found out about one that's a third of the price we're currently paying, and it's right on our doorstep too which will save us mucho wonga on petrol.

The Mystery of the Missing Pictures.

2006-06-06T03:45:00.000-07:00

Very strange... Seem to have been accepted back into the fold at Blogger this morning. Here are the photo's that I couldn't post over the last few days:
Roo and Joseph with Mac and Zippy on Thursday.
Emily and Roo in the garden on Friday :o)
With Uncle Stephen at his BBQ on Sunday.

The 'kids' exhausted on the way home. Bless.
The Fimo models Roo made all by herself on Sunday night.

Scorching Saturday & Showery Sunday.

2006-06-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

Had a fantastic weekend: On Saturday after XMA we nipped into town for a bit to get some stuff from the health food shop for a BBQ on Sunday. Roo bought herself a vegan ice-cream cone with her money and I nearly fainted when I paid for the vegan hot dog sausages - £3.55!!!!!

Back home we sat in the garden for a bit in the sun. Roo and Colin decided to take the old washing machine to pieces so that Roo could see all the components. She was fascinated. Kept coming in and showing me each piece ;o) She couldn't part with the circuit board when Colin took the rest to the tip/re-cycle place so that's been kept to be played with!

The guinea pigs had half an hour outside too, and made an interesting rectangular bald patch on the overgrown lawn! (Mind you, at least they ate a few dandelions.) Romy has written about it on her blog.

Had a bit of a wobbly moment later on. I've started letting Romy play out the front, which some people might think is about time. After all, she is seven now. Anyway, she came back in to say that she was playing with some kids a few doors up. I must admit that my pre-judgemental head popped on for a while. I was none too pleased as I know which house these kids come from: one of those "Life of Grime" type houses where the junk is spilling out into the road. The kids are being dragged up and even the baby is out playing in the road :o( Suffice it to say that I swallowed down my concerns (hard) and said "Oh, that's nice sweetheart." Two minutes later she came in asking for ice-lollies for all of them. Okaaaay... I didn't mind that actually as Roo never eats them, so the ones in the freezer have been there for ages. So off she trotted. Next she came in and said that some older girl had asked her to ask me for money so that they could go to the shop and get chocolate. Grrrr!!! Poor Romy, she didn't much like what I had to say about that! Back she trots five minutes later "Mummy, can I get them all a milkshake each?" OMG! No, our soya milkshakes cost 47p each for a start and there were about eight kids out there, but that's not the point. She was a bit upset when she came in so we had a heart-to-heart. I explained to her that I just didn't want her to get pushed around by a group of kids and that it was rude of them to keep asking for things. I tried to covey my feelings about how hard I find it to let her go and allow her to grow up. She was very understanding and we had a big hug and I squeezed her extra hard as I realised that I couldn't and shouldn't choose her friends for her. I'm glad/sad to say that I felt the metaphorical 'ping' of a loosening apron string. *sniff* Later on we had a snuggle and started reading "What Katy Did." It felt even snugglier than usual :o)

Yesterday we went over to Nottingham to visit my li'l bro' and his GF in their new house. And lovely it is too. We got the guided tour before the rest of the family arrived and then we all had a BBQ in the showery rain ;o) I wanted to put a couple of pics of the BBQ but after allowing me to put the above photo's up Blogger has now decided that's enough :o(

Half term play days.

2006-06-02T17:14:00.000-07:00

What a fantastic few days Romy has had with her friends: On Wednesday we went round to Abigail's. They had loads of fun in the garden making potions and perfumes from flower petals and playing on the swing and slide. On Thursday Romy's home ed' friend Joseph came to play. We took the bus to the train station to meet him and his Mum then we all went to the museum as it is practically next door. Romy is developing a new obsession (er, interest) with animal Gods and Goddesses. She's not that bothered about the rest of ancient Egypt, but the Deities fascinate her. She showed us all round the exhibition (this is her third time now!) And I was amazed at how knowledgeable she is about it all. As we were waiting for the train to arrive she was telling me all the names of the Goddesses and Gods and what they were Gods of. She's announced that she wants to do a project which will include her inventing lots of new Deities and writing about them. So...... Monday is reserved for tying up all the loose ends on the Wizard of Oz project so that she can start the new one on Tuesday. I love how things suddenly spark her imagination and we can just run with it wherever she wants to go :o) We'll never be short of subjects to learn about because Romy finds so many things utterly fascinating.

Anyhoo, got a bit sidetracked there. Roo and Joseph had a grand time at the museum. I took a photo of them in an Anderson shelter but it came out too dark :o( Romy was scared of the bomb noises and I had a sudden awful thought about all the mothers in the world now and in the past who really have had to try in vain protect their children from bombs. Felt incredibly humble and priviledged and squeezed Romy extra tight.

We met another girl called Romy right there at the museum. How weird! I wasn't best pleased as I like to think Roo's one of a kind, rofl ;o)

We came home to a nice vegan lunch (they're vegan too) and Roo and Joseph set about playing with the guinea pigs, making badges, getting filthy in the garden and goodness knows what else. They played really nicely together, it made me feel so proud of Romy. She can get on with anyone: girl or boy, any age at all. Some kids are gifted academically and my girl's no thickie but socially she really shines and I'm proud :o) I was nowhere near as confident as her at her age (I still am not) so I don't know who she takes after. When we saw them off at the train station Romy and Joseph were blowing kisses to each other. Bless. I have a gorgeous photo of them on the settee holding a piggie each, but Blogger won't let me put piccies up today for some reason :o(

Today (well yesterday as I'm writing this at 1am!) Emily came over for the afternoon. Again I have a lovely picture of them in the garden, but alas! 'tis not to be. Maybe tomorrow the damn thing will work. Anyway, they had a great time getting covered in mud (again - what is it with Romy and mud?) The three of us had a gander at some cool places on Google Earth. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with mystery games in the garden and the bedroom. I kept out of it :o) Oh, and raiding the fridge as usual!

Back to some serious work on Monday then. Bring it on!

200th post!!

2006-05-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Gosh, this is my 200th post. I've been blogging now for almost a year now!

Yesterday we went over to Barton to the Water's Edge Country Park visitor's centre with my Mum and Robert. It's a really fab place that's only just opened on the south bank of the Humber. The whole building is made from re-cycled materials and there are loads of great educational things to do. As well as the blue tit webcam on a big screen there were others like a barn owl one. The chicks looked like little dinosaurs! We also fed the very hungry ducks and geese and their babies in the park itself. Here are a few photo's of the day.

Using the ink stampers to fill in a quiz sheet.
Playing a giant environmental board game with Nana.

Global issues.
Feeding the hungry ducks with Grandad.

After Dinner at my Mum's we came home and went for a long walk. Colin then took Roo out on her bike while I had a bath ;o)

Today Roo and Colin went out to the museum again to have another look around the Egyptian exhibition. Then they took themselves off to Normanby for a couple of hours. They flied a kite, met up with our friends, held tadpoles, played in the parks and stroked the horses. While they were enjoying all this I was stuck at home doing my last aromatherapy question. Boo hiss!! It's felt really weird this long weekend as Roo has been out with Colin quite a lot. Normally she's with me pretty much 24/7. It's been a nice change for all of us I think. Colin's back to work tomorrow though, so it'll be business as usual :o)

This afternoon:

Romy has really got into Where's Wally recently. The other night we decided to have a look online to see if there were any WW sites. We found one and clicked on it looking for Wally, and all of a sudden this scary face jumps out at us screaming!!!! I was absolutely furious as Roo was petrified (me too!!) If you're interested here's the site. It's probably not so scary when you know what's coming.

I saw this over at Lucy's blog. I've seen some of it before in the EO magazine I think, but put to music it's just wonderful and so true. What better argument for home ed can you get? Lovely.

Oh and just a funny photo of Roo at the supermarket with a cow on Monday ;o)

Weekend round-up.

2006-05-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Books read this weekend have included Fantastic Mr. Fox and Rani and the Mermaid Lagoon.

Yesterday morning Roo was at XMA. They were practicing for the first of the summer demonstrations which will be at the local Gala. Only two weeks to go - talk about cutting it fine! We also got dates for two other fete things.

After a quick change Colin took Roo off to the museum for the science club. This time it was a bug hunt :o) Much fun was had with nets, pooters, viewers and microscopes.

Romy also had a good look round the Egyptian exhibition that's on at the moment. She was fascinated by everything, but didn't much care for a mummy that moans when you walk past it! Oo-er :-O

While they were out enjoying themselves I had a couple of hours to myself. I messed around on the computer for a bit and then did a watercolour:

Today we've been out for a walk to Twigmoor woods. The rhododendrons were absolutely stunning as they are every May. There are hundreds of them in all different colours.

Colin and Romy cleared out the car when we got back. It was full of dog hairs :o( While they did that I finished all but the last question on my Aromatherapy exam. Just the biggy (70 marks) left now. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into that. Not.

Colin has gone out so it's Girl's Night In :o) Off I go...!

Ooh, a piccy of Roo and Tilly from Normanby the other day:

Sad to see that two of the six blue tits on the webcam from the previous post haven't made it :o(

Ooh, I've also been crocheting the past couple of evenings and have made myself two skinny scarves!

This week.

2006-05-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

I've not updated since Monday, so here goes:

On Monday Theresa came round with some flowers and a present for my Birthday. Thomas (who's 1 1/2) was fascinated by the piggies. He kept trying to get in the cage with them, lol. Colin's Mum dropped a card over, and then we spent all flippin' evening at TKD :o( Lovely highlight when U and M brought in two bunches of flowers and a gorgeous hand-made card for me. Hugs all round too. Before bed Roo and I treated ourselves to an application of the vegan face mask and cream that Amanda got for me. While it was drying we read some of Princess Mirror-Belle :o)

On Tuesday we had friends round to play all day. Roo had fun in the garden and trashing her bedroom with Lewis and Katie. Then it was off to Brownies. While Roo was busy having a great time there Colin and I did a picture each. Here's Colin's fabulous watercolour of horses:

I did a very poor picture of a cat fairy for Roo using pastels which cannot be shown in public, so there.

On Weds Roo did quite a lot of 'school' work. She started working through a Janet and John workbook for 7 year-olds which was, quite frankly a little on the easy side. There was some comprehension passages/questions, finishing off poems with rhyming words, etc. We did some work on 'same sound but different letter pattern' stuff (or, ore, oor as on torch, more, door.) I wrote out "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" sentence and Roo copied it out as neatly as she could a few times for handwriting practice. We had a great time on this site. It looks like Roo has remembered everything we learnt about money a few months ago. She had no problem making up £9.56, £6.84, etc. It's a really good free resource that. I think we'll concentrate on giving change from now on.

We had a go on this site too. It looked quite promising, with fabulous 3D graphics. Roo was very excited about exploring the town on a hoverboard, but - alas! We couldn't make head nor tail of the damn site, so gave up after half an hour. Shame really as it could have been really great if it was a bit clearer.

Throughout the day we kept our eye on this blue tit nest webcam. It's based at the Water's Edge Country Park at Barton on Humber. My Mum rang and told me about it. Romy learnt a lot about the laws of nature sometimes being cruel as we watched the same couple of big babies being fed each time while the little ones were overlooked :o(

On Weds night we read a Where's Wally book, some more Princess Mirror-Belle, and went to TKD.

Thursday morning was spent doing more work on the money website, more handwriting, and finishing the Mirror-Belle book. Romy has absolutely LOVED those. Such a refreshing change :o) In the afternoon she went off to play at Emily's for the afternoon. Apparently she had a fab time. Here's a pic courtesy of Nikki.

While Roo was out I took Toby to the vet for his teeth to be clipped again. Then had an hour to myself which I thouroughly wasted surfing the 'net ;o) Roo came back full of cuddles and talk of what she'd been up to. We decided to spend the evening at Normanby Park, so off we went for a couple or three hours. We had a walk through the woods before bumping into a couple with a daughter and a dog, who seemed to adopt us. Eep, we couldn't get away! Tilly had a whale of a time playing with their dog, Romy made friends instantly with their 12 year-old daughter (who had learning difficulties so functioned as a seven-year-old.) And we were left talking to the Mum and Dad. They weren't bad, but a bit 'full on' iyswim. Kids and dogs played for ages while we talked about dogs, schools, home ed, etc, etc, etc!!

Today Roo and I got up reeeeeeeally late for some reason. We had a picnic lunch on the floor and then Roo did six pages of work to finish off the Janet and John book. She also managed to fit in some arty crafty stuff. We're off to her swimming lesson in a while, then it'll be bath and tidy up before a relaxing evening.

Birthday Blues ;o)

2006-05-22T01:39:00.000-07:00

Mine that is! No, not really. I think 30 was the worst as it seemed so "Aaargh, I'm a grown-up!" 31 was quite bad too as it only proved that I was now in my 30's and couldn't go backwards :0) 32 doesn't seem so bad, or maybe I'm just resigned to the inevitable, lol. Mind you, looking ten times better than I did at 30 helps too I suppose ;o) I can't believe I'm going to do this, but here's me at 30:

And me now:
Hey, that makes me feel alot better. Roll on 34 eh? (Still have mucho weight to lose.)

So what have we been up to this weekend? Well, I felt all scrinkly and pre-menstrual on Saturday, so I was a bit moany. We went to XMA in the morning and then I made a start on my Aromatherapy final exam. I was so disappointed to come home from the lakes and find no certificate. I had no idea there was a final sodding exam :o( All the assignments have been out of 30 or 40 but this is out of 150!! The last question is worth 70 marks on its own. Gah!!

Colin played Playmobil with Roo while I had a nice bath. Then I went out to the cinema with my friend Theresa. We wanted to see Confetti but when we got there the projector was broken or something, so we had to see Prime instead. It wasn't too bad. It was just nice being selfish for once and going out on my own. Having a couple of hours to myself with a good friend was bliss. We had a right laugh too, which was a good antidote to the earlier pre-mestrual skrinklyness ;o)

While I was out Colin and Roo did a lovely watercolour picture each. Here's a scan of them:

Yesterday Romy went to her friend's party at a local play area thingy "Cheeky Chimps." She had a great time and was very pleased to get her chips and beans first, while everyone else had to serve themselves from a platter of chips, sausage rolls and chicken nuggets, lol. Instead of ice-cream she got a fruit bag, yum. She didn't eat much though, she was too eager to go back and play :o) Abigail was also invited, so her and Roo had a good play and Theresa and I had a goss.

We went to my Mum's for dinner later. She'd made me a fabulous birthday cake as a surprise. There are two bits left, so Roo and I are going to have them in a mo'! Need to tidy a bit too while Roo gets on with her 'school' work.

Got some lovely stuff for bday: Roo and Colin bought me some Derwent watercolour/pastel pencils/paper, etc. Tee hee, my hints at the pencil museum paid off then! They went out on Saturday to get them. I got money from my Mum, a Reiki CD from Nikki and some vegan face cream and a mirror that says "Out of my way. I'm fabulous!" from My friend Amanda. The postman has just brought a card from my Grandma with £5 in and a scratchcard. Didn't win though ;o)

Ooh, Roo has just told me she's got a wobbly tooth. That'll be her ninth one lost (and her first canine!) Cool :o)

Happy Holidays :o)

2006-05-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Go fetch a cuppa'. This is a biggie!

We had a fantastically relaxing few days in the Lake District. Well, it was slightly less relaxing for Colin who ended up driving 574 miles over the four days! We dropped the little guinea pigs off at my Mum's on the Monday so that she could brush Mac every day. She was also looking after Tilly and my brother came in to feed the other piggies.

We stopped off at Scotch Corner to stretch our legs as it was about half way. By then it was peeing it down and we were afraid it would carry on all week. Luckily we were wrong :o) When we got up to the lakes we drove through Penrith, trying to find a health food shop I'd spied on the internet (I was armed with a list!) We couldn't find anywhere to park though so we carried on to Pooley Bridge near Lake Ullswater. It continued to rain like a good 'un so we just had a wander around the three or four shops there are, lol. Here we are looking like drowned rats ;o)

We then stopped off at Keswick to try and find a vegetarian wholefood cafe I'd heard of. Boo, hiss, it was shut! So we had to make do with chips and mushy peas :o( We carried on up to Carlisle where we were staying in a £10 Travelodge (we had a different one booked for each of the three nights. Now that's what I call a bargain holiday!) When we got there we decided to go to the local swimming pool which was really cheap but the water was freezing! Romy didn't seem to mind as she showed off the tumble-turns she's been doing for her swimming lessons. It was a 33m pool and was really deep but Roo swam like a fish. I must admit I was glad to get out and get to the Travelodge though. We all had showers/baths and washed our hair. Absolute bliss after being so wet and cold :o) Once dry we read books, looked at leaflets to plan the next day and watched some episodes of Heidi on the mini DVD player (well, that was me and Roo when Colin was asleep!)

In the morning we went to Gretna Green. Colin and I were married there over eight years ago so it was nice to go back(although it all looked different to me as I have a terrible visual-spacial memory!) Unfortunately our camera stopped working but luckily we could take some using our 'phones. The quality's not very good though but here are a couple of Romy at Gretna:

There were quite a few tourists milling around, including American and Japanese. I felt like going up to them and saying "We were married here!" Rofl. Romy had lots of fun looking round all the gift shops. We bought a box of shortbread for my Mum and Robert, and the World's Most Expensive Chocolates for Roo and I to share! They were some vegan violet and Rose creams. A wallet-straining £5.50 for a ballotin of 12. Jeepers! Ne'er mind, it's not every day we treat ourselves. Romy bought me a lovely stuffed highland cow with her money (bless, she knows I love cows.) She also bought Colin a "Best Dad in the World" keyring ;o)

Next it was back into Keswick to find that vegetarian cafe again. This time it was open. Yippee! The Lakeland Pedlar was a sight for sore vegan eyes. To actually have a CHOICE on a menu was an almost unheard of treat for us. We would definitely reccommend this place to anyone (of any eating persuasion!) I couldn't resist taking some daft piccies ;o) Here's Roo with her leek and potato soup and hummus sandwiches with crisps and salad (yes, that was on the kids menu!)

And vegan ice-cream for dessert:

And THIS!!!!! My vegan chocolate cake that seemed to have been made by angels ;o)

Despite probably thinking we were weirdos of the highest order for gushing about their cake and photographing our food, they gave us a menu to take home for Roo's home ed scrapbook. I think She would rather have taken their deaf Border Collie home with us though (to go with our half blind one!!) After looking around some shops in Keswick in the glorious sunshine (!) Roo bought herself a couple of jokes (fake cat poo and vanishing ink) and some of those twisted paper things that bang when you throw them on the floor. At least that's what they used to do when I was a kid, now it seems you have to find an elephant to jump on them after six unsuccessful attempts at throwing them on the floor.

Still in Keswick, we spent a staggering 2 1/2 hours at The Pencil Museum LOL!! It was actually more interesting than it sounds. Well it'd have to be really wouldn't it? Romy enjoyed seeing the longest pencil in the world and entering a competition to win a set of posh crayons.

Real giant pencils! Why? ;o)

The shop at the end of the museum was pure torture :o( Everything was sooooo lovely and sooooo expensive. I would have loved to have bought a nice tin of watercolour pencils but had to make do with a couple of reject ones for 25p each ;o) The full priced ones were £1.25 each!! Never mind. One day eh? I further tortured myself by taking a catalogue of the full Derwent range. It was like pencil porn! (I love art stuff and stationery ;o))

Then off we went to a fabulous place called Rheged. I'm not quite sure what it was but it was filled with cool shops, a play area and loads of other stuff and it was all built into a hillside.

Rock climbing near the entrance.

Sitting near a fountain (after repeatedly swishing her hand in it!) There was a lovely shop there where you could fill a box with different coloured paper and card for a certain amount, but alas! I had to tear myself away from the stationery empty handed yet again, lol.

We arrived later at Southwaite Travelodge, dropped off our stuff and went for something to eat at the services next door. There was also some play equipment for Roo, so she had a balll on that. Again that night we read stories and watched more Heidi.

In the morning it was off to Penrith. Found the health food shop. It was rubbish :o( So we had a wander and decided to go to Ambleside instead. Gorgeous place. Loads of lovely shops. We all made a wish in a well with a bell:

Romy bought herself some organic strawberries:

We visited a lovely shop that sold every conceivable type and size of gemstone. Needed dragging out of there kicking and screaming I tell you ;o) Here's Roo next to a giant geode.

And we saw this amazing little house thing built on a tiny bridge! It was about 6ft by 6ft.

The poor car was in the pay & display recovering from a trip down The Kirkstone Pass. You could really smell the brakes and burnt rubber when we stopped! It was both beautiful and scary. My ears popped like mad goind down though.

In the afternoon we went to Brockhole Visitor's Centre. We bought tickets to go on a boat on Lake Windermere from their launch. They were much cheaper from there than the big boats further up. While we waited at the jetty Roo couldn't help putting her feet near (yeah, right) the water:

Oops, her socks and trainers got all wet. How did that happen??? Better take them off and go the whole hog then ;o)

Thankfully when we got off the boat at Waterhead there was a shop where we bought Roo some of those neoprene beach shoes. The lucky thing! We fed the ducks there and it started to rain. Heavily!!

Off we went back on the boat (sitting inside this time instead of on deck.) Roo was disappointed not to be able to play in the adventure playground back at Brockhole, but it really was belting it down now :o( She must have been exhausted though, bless her as she slept all the way to Scotch Corner where we stayed at the Skeeby Travelodge for the night. We had something to eat, read Princess Mirror-belle, drew pictures and watched yet more Heidi in bed :o)

On Thursday we went to visit Mother shipton's Cave. I've always wanted to go there, and all I can say is...WOW!! The cave and petrifying well are almost overshadowed by the breathtaking scenery of the setting. Knaresborough is gorgeous! And the people are fantastic too - we went into an ordinary cafe (McQueen's) where they bent over backwards to cater for our vegan-ness :o) We also found a wholefood shop (Mungo's Deli) owned by a lovely vegan bloke who we chatted to for a while. He was most impressed at Romy being a Life Vegan :o)

We were disappointed not to find any petrified teddies for sale in the gift shop at MSC (apart from a big one for £80) but otherwise we had a fantastic time there. It was fascinating to learn all about MS's life and times. Roo learnt a lot (so did we!) She did a quiz as we went around. We made wishes in the well: there is a strict set of rules you must adhere to when making a wish, lol. The best bit of course was the well itself with all the objects hanging up. There were loads of bears, a firefighter's helmet, shoes, teapot, etc. The museum also had some amazing petrified objects donated by celebrities. Even a shoe from Queen Mary! The two lumps you can see protruding from the well wall are a gentleman's top hat and a Lady's bonnet. They were hung there about 150 years ago. Fascinating.

Some more pics of our day there:
More adventure playgrounds! (Two there.)
A beautiful huge viaduct over the river Nidd.
Will my hand turn to stone?

Just as we were thinking about leaving it began to rain again. So we took the hint and off we went home. It only took us an hour, so it was a good idea to stay at Scotch Corner that night and then go to Knaresborough. Seemed like we were home in no time. Colin even had the energy to go to Taekwondo when we got back! After that we went to pick up the pets (Thanks Mum!) We decided to give them all a bath before we sat down to relax. It took all the nerve I had to bath Scrappy I tell you! Ferral pig that he is ;o)

Today (well, Friday. It's sodding Saturday morning now. I've been doing this for ages.) we mainly unpacked, tidied up, went food shopping and had a swimming lesson.

Phew! I'm off to bed.

Off on our travels.

2006-05-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we're off to the Lake District for a few days. We got three nights at £10 again on the Travelodge website. Tilly has gone off to my Mum's and I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet :o)

Yesterday Roo had her XMA class in the morning. Then we nipped into town for a scoot round before dropping Roo off at her friend Abigail's house for the afternoon. It's her birthday on Tuesday but we'll be away, so she went over for an indoor picnic (because of pooey weather.) She had a fab time and ate tons of strawberries apparently!

Today we've been out to Pizza Hut with my Mum and Robert. Not v impressed with the surly waitress it has to be said. They're usually so friendly in there. Anyway, I'd better go and pack!

Relaxing week.

2006-05-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

Last week was so hectic with all the party preparations, so it's been lovely to have a relaxing week of not-doing-much :o) Here are the bits and pieces we've done that I can remember since Monday:
-Romy has written lots of thank-you notes (but has loads more to do.)
-Sat out in the sun reading Pet Fairies books and Princess Mirror-Belle (from Emily for Roo's birthday. We absolutely loved Mirror-Belle!)
-Roo has been scootering everywhere, including every time we've been for a walk, in the garden and even in the house!
-Roo started a new guinea pig blog, which can be seen by clicking on my profile. She has done a couple of posts already, including weighing all the pigs and recording the info.
-I finished my Indian Head Massage course and got my certificate.
-I finished my last Aromatherapy assignment. (Forgot to send it off today. Doh!)
-Roo's done lots of maths; re-arranging groups of three digits to make the largest and smallest possible numbers. Counting in threes and sharing groups of three bananas between monkeys, lol. Completed the next two numbers in lots of number patterns.
-We lost one of the new guinea pigs - Mac, this morning. Searched absolutely everywhere and eventually found him in the biggies cage *rolls eyes.*
-Roo made up lots of poems as we went for an evening walk. (Mainly about the pollution from the steelworks!)
-We made lots of rhinestone craft using a set Roo got for her birthday.
-Did some more maths; units, tens, hundreds, etc. Talked about numbers right up to billions and trillions. Even Googleplex, lol. (One with a million noughts!)
-One of the piggies chewed through the modem cable!! (The new piggies are chief suspects.)
-We went to Normanby park with our friends. Roo had a play with R and R while we oldies had a chinwag.
-Went into town this afternoon in a thunderstorm. Romy opened her own account at a building society. Now she's seven she could open it in her own name and only needs her signature to make a withdrawal. Ooh, how grown-up! :o)
-Spent some time at the library. Got the sequel to Princess Mirror-Belle and some Worst Witch books. I ended up getting a few too. Don't know when I'll have time to read them though!
-Did some science on the bus talking about lightning. Explained to Roo all about electricity conductors, earthing, etc.
-Been to Taekwondo and swimming lessons.
-Enjoyed being in the garden. The Twisted Hazel (my namesake, lol) is looking fab this year. It'll soon be full of ants and aphids though :o(

Welcome to our new triplets ;o)

2006-05-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

And what a motley bunch they are! Here's the gorgeous Mac, named after our favourite character from Green Wing; Dr 'Mac' McCartney who has exactly the same hair:

Here's the almost as gorgeous and absolutely eeny weeny Frosty:

And not forgetting Zippy. So named because he zips around trying to evade capture :o)
You can just see Tilly's nose trying to have a sniff there, lol.

And here's a photo of the new three becoming acquainted with the old three:

Clockwise from my hand at the top: Toby, little Frosty, Zippy, giant Willow, Mac, and Scrappy.

Seems as though Roo's birthday money was burning a hole in her money box today. We remembered about the guinea pig show that we'd seen advertised and were going to enter Willow into (but never got around to doing.) So we went for a look around (yeah, right.) We never thought there'd be any piggies for sale but there were. We saw Zippy first for £5. Bargain compared to the £19 we paid for Scrappy from Pets at Home! Then we walked round a corner and saw Frosty for sale. Again only £5!! Around the next corner was a sign that said "Satin Sheltie" £15. All I could see was a bunch of hay, so I opened the cage, moved the hay aside and saw the most gorgeous boy. We just had to have him, so we paid quick!! He looks about 3 or 4 months old (a bit older than the other two) but his hair is already about 3 inches long. It's going to be much longer than Willow's. And as his name suggests it's really satiny/silky to the touch. He's been well taken care of - obviously been brushed every day and his bum hair has been trimmed, lol. Will have to keep it up! We had to drive the poor things home without a box (on my knee.) We got home, put them in a pet carrier and went off to show my Mum. On the way we stopped off to buy a home for the new piggies. That's most of Roo's money spent now. She's going to take the rest to the Lake District next week.

Better go. I'm supposed to be watching Return to Oz with Romy while Colin is out.

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS.

2006-05-06T01:39:00.000-07:00

9.30am: Well I got lots done last night and then left a list for Colin to start on in the morning ;o) I finally went to bed at 3am! Got up at 8.30 so that Roo could open her cards and pressies before going to XMA. She got 13 cards just in the post! My friend Amanda made her a lovely Wizard of Oz one and we got her a Clarice Bean one when we went to Nottingham. "Hey, how did you get this without me seeing?" Lol. My aunty sent Roo a wonderful box-set of Wordsworth classics and some craft materials. More stuff to read ;o) She got money in a few of the cards too. We could only afford to get her a couple of DVD's because we've spent a fortune on the party and the food :o( We got her Narnia and a couple of cheapies off eBay; Heidi and Return to Oz.

Colin has taken Roo off to XMA so I'll save this as a draft and add to it later. I'm off to tidy up and start on the food. Eep! Wish me luck.

11am: Ooh I'm really proud of myself. I'm getting loads done but I'm not rushing around. I'm trying to remember that it's my 'birth' day as well as Romy's and it's not all about this two-hour party. I'm taking time to relax in-between jobs. I've just painted my nails green (I'm the Wicked Witch of the West, lol.) I have Morrissey, The Goo Goo Dolls, Keane and Alison Moyet on whilst I'm working too, which helps :o) Roo will be back in a mo', the Linda McCartney sausage rolls are on and I'm chillin' ;o) Ask me again in a couple of hours, tee hee. Better go.

8.30pm: Well I'm too shattered to write much, but I wanted to put some pics up of the big event. Without further ado I present the cake... (note the Wicked Witch of the East's legs sticking out complete with Barbie shoes!)
And here's another with Roo hardly able to resist it anymore ;o)))
Colin in his usual apparel, er, sorry dressed as the scarecrow. The chocolate fountain proved a real hit.
Just one more chocolate strawberry!
The Wicked Witch of the West and Dorothy call a truce.
A cutesy baby lion.
And still they come for more chocolate!
Roo covered in confetti from the party poppers.

Roo is still in her Dorothy dress! Do they do Dorothy pyjamas???

When we got home Romy had a great time opening all her cards and pressies. She got 35 cards altogether! There were some lovely gifts too, including lots more books and a big bag of surprises from Emily :o)

I'm going to put my feet up now. I ache all over. It took me an hour to put these photo's on 'cos Blogger is playing up :o( Then I published the post and half of it disappeared!!!!! Grrrrr... It's now 10.15pm and I'm off!

Midnight Party Fairy!

2006-05-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

That's me by the way ;o) Yes it's midnight and I still have a zillion-and-one things to do for tomorrow (today - eek!) The house is quiet, apart from the voices in my head (joke!) Thought I'd take a moment to blog the last day of Romy being six before the Big Seven tomorrow.

Did we have lovely weather today? I didn't notice as I spent all day in the (unbelievably miniscule and hot) kitchen baking buns. Roo joined in for a while before losing interest and donning her Dorothy costume for a lengthy game of pretend Oz. Her interest fleetingly resurfaced when it was time to ice said buns and add star sprinkles but not for long. Like her Mum, she'll be no Fanny Craddock that one ;o)

In the middle of the marathon baking session Colin's Nan and Grandad turned up unanounced to see Romy. Gah! The house was a complete tip. Well it always is, but people seem to pick just the right (or wrong) times to turn up when it's looking particularly How Clean is Your House-ish! Had to quickly move stuff from the settee so that they could sit down, apologising profusely whilst cursing my inability to perform basic housework tasks when there's the much more interesting (and rewarding) business of Doing Important Stuff With Romy. Never mind, hopefully when I'm dead and gone people will remember my sparkling wit and personality *snort* and not my woefully inferior house cleaning skills.

Managed to cross loads of things off my list today which was very satisfying. I'm (in)famous for my lists in times of crisis, i.e parties, Xmas, holidays. I make 'em and lose 'em at a rate of knots. I can't, however promise to actually do anything on them, but at least I appear to be organised, lol.

Disappointingly we've had three children say they can't come now :o( A brother and sister who have gone on holiday completely forgetting the party (sounds like something I'd do!) and Romy's friend at swimming who very kindly brought her a card and present today anyway.

Ooh, talking of swimming. Romy got her Dolphin Level Three award today :o))))) So proud! There are only two more levels to go and that's it. She was chuffed because all the kids and the teacher sang Happy Birthday to her too. Bless!

Not only has my wonderful Mum made Roo's costume, she's also made her a fabulous cake. It's Dorothy's house with the witches legs sticking out from underneath it (complete with red Barbie shoes, rofl.) She's even added the yellow brick road and a rainbow! I'll make sure I get a picture before it's eaten and post it here.

We took the piggies to the vet today. Toby got his teeth cut again, but his bottom ones have begun to grow back so he shouldn't need them doing again. Bizarre! Don't know how he lost them in the first place. Romy was worried about some lumps under Willow's arms so we took him to get checked out. I thought they were just fat though and I was right. He took a sample from one with a needle, placed it on a slide and identified it as fatty tissue. Hopefully that's put Roo's mind at rest as she's been worrying a lot lately about people/pets dying. Poor thing, she's been getting quite upset. It's not nice to witness the end of innocence in a child; the point when they realise that people don't have to be really old to die and that no-one knows when anyone will go. I'd love to tell her we'll all die peacefully in our sleep at 100-years-old but that would be irresponsible and patronising. So all I can do is try to comfort her and not make too big a deal of it. I know it will pass.

*Sigh* I'd better go and wave my wand then. These things won't get done on their own. Here's to a fantastic birthday tomorrow. I hope it's one that Roo will remember forever. *Thinks - She'd better flippin' do!*

Where did the last seven years go??? *Logs off before she starts sobbing into keyboard.*

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!

2006-05-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Here's Romy wearing the unbelievably fabulous Dorothy dress my Mum made. She brought it over today and I couldn't get Roo out of it for hours :o) Thanks Mum. You're an absolute star!

We've done quite a lot for the party today actually. Thank goodness! Only one more day to go. Baking tomorrow I think.

Apart from party stuff (which involved art, craft, reading, writing and counting) we spent a lovely hour or so out in the garden lying on a blanket reading to each other. Romy decided to strip off and spray freezing cold water over herself in an effort to make it feel like summer :o) And what a summer it's going to be - my Mum has bought Roo a GIANT paddling pool for her birthday. It has a cover and a filter so you can leave it filled all season. Cool! Can't wait to try it out.

This evening Roo went to her first TKD lesson as a green belt. She was learning how to use a Bo staff and did some two-on-one sparring. Quite scary really as she had a ten and a twelve-year-old girl trying to kick and punch her. She certainly gave back as good as she got though ;o)

Barefoot in the park.

2006-05-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Some beautiful pictures of Romy at Normanby park this evening whilst I was at my Indian Head Massage course....

Some other things we've been up to today:

-Read a Disney fairy book "Rani in the Mermaid Lagoon." -Had tea outside at dusk. -Roo has had Emily over to play and they had a blast. -We tidied up. -Roo wrote a letter back to her friend.

Things we definitely haven't done today: -Any 'school' work. -Party preparations that desperately need doing. Gah!! I spent the entire afternoon as Roo and Emily were playing looking at Morrissey videos on youtube.com. It was a lovely waste of time though ;o)

Ruby Slippers.

2006-05-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

Here are Romy's Ruby Slippers for the party on Saturday. I am so pleased with how they've turned out. My Mum got the shoes from a charity shop. They were plain black and I used some red glitter glue to turn them into fabulous ruby slippers. I've had to put four layers on. I wish I'd kept them as a surprise for Roo, but never mind. She loves them. I had to prise them from her feet to put the last layer on as she was dragging poor Tilly (Toto) around the house as Dorothy :o)

We had a fantastic weekend. Saturday was the graduation which I've already written about. On Sunday we went to my Mum's for dinner. Romy played with her two cousins, generally having a riot of a time. We left Tilly there for my Mum to look after as we were planning to do a car boot sale the next morning. On Sunday night Colin went out to play D&D with his mates as usual. He dropped Roo and I off at U's house. I had a good old chinwag with U, her hubby A and her fantastic daughter M. She's 13 and I love her to pieces already and I've only known her a couple of weeks. Roo ran around the house like a Demented Thing with the two boys R and R. We got to hold their corn snakes which was weird, and Roo, R and R spun each other round mercilessly in one of these cool chairs. By the time we left at 11.15pm Romy felt thoroughly sick! This is a photo of how she fell asleep on the settee as soon as she got in :o) (She was fine though.)

On Bank Holiday Monday we dragged our sorry butts out of bed at 6am to do a car boot sale. Gaaah! I HATE doing those, but needs must. We were desperate to earn £30 to pay for Romy's party (the hiring of the hall) so even though it was peeing it down we had to go ahead :o( To cut a long story short, it was a total washout and we only ended up making £20. Boo! Never mind. We put it down to experience and went home to bed for a bit after picking Tilly up from my Mum's ;o) We also went and looked round some shops with my Mum and Robert in the afternoon and did some more party preparations. Then in the evening I went for a lemonade (yes I live life in the fast lane) with my friend Theresa at the pub. We had agood old chit chat for a couple of hours which was great (and long overdue.)

Today Roo has been doing some English comprehension exercised from a Janet and John workbook. She's also made these fab Oz characters from toilet roll tubes. Sorry pic's a bit rubbish. We've also done some more party preps, drew some pics of fairies and read some books. Off to get Roo ready for Brownies now.

Green Belt Goddess!

2006-04-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

We were up bright and early for Roo and Colin's graduation this morning. Actually I got up at 6.30 as I couldn't sleep. I took the opportunity to re-watch last night's episode of Green Wing as there was a rather excellent twist to the Caroline/Mac storyline (not to mention a squeee-inducing snog!)

Anyhoo, Colin got his Yellow Belt today and Roo got her green. My Mum and Robert came to cheer them on with me :o) Here are a few pics:

Romy getting her certificate and wearing her new belt.
Sparring with a friend.
Kali stick-ing!
About to begin her XMA performance.

Then it was quickly home for a snack and a change of clothes before they went off to the museum Archaeology Club. Today it was making Bronze Age beakers from clay. Lots of worksheets brought home too. I nipped round town while they were there and bought a load of stuff for Roo's party (plates, napkins, sweets, etc.) Here's Roo with her finished article. It's a lot more detailed than it looks on the pic.

I bought Roo a 'well done' bunch of flowers in town which she was well chuffed with. I don't know what sort they are but they're lovely.

This evening Roo and I have been sorting out party bags, which was a lot more work than it sounds. My back is killing me today. I'll be glad of my bed tonight!

Better go and write our review for Education Otherwise. We were sent an Usborne book this time "Fairy things to stitch and sew." It's lovely. I always seem to leave it until the last minute to do my review though :o(

Party preparations...

2006-04-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

Today has been another that's been largely spent preparing for Roo's birthday. I'm feeling a lot more confident about stuff being finished in time now. Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon trying in vain to make a Yellow Brick Road. I'd beeen really chuffed to find a roll of yellow wallpaper in the garage and got out the black paint and off we went. Boo, hiss! When it dried it just cracked off :o( So I tried going over it with PVA glue. When that dried it peeled off :o[ By now it was looking a right mess. Then I had a brain wave; masking tape! Here's the result. I'm quite pleased with it :o)
We've also made some 'Over the Rainbow' name badges for everyone:
And here's my laughable attempt at the Tin man's torso for 'pin the heart on the tin man.'

We've a few other things up our sleeves too that aren't finished yet. That's enough for one day though.

Still on the theme of Oz, we got the soundtrack in the post today. I got it off eBay for a coupla quid for the party. We listened to it this afternoon. Roo does a mean scarecrow dance/mime to "If I only had a brain." Bless :o)

Apart from all the party stuff (which is after all art and craft) Roo did a bit of English this afternoon - filling in the missing words in a story. She did that while I was cutting out all the laminated rainbow badges!

This evening Roo went to her swimming lesson and had a little play with her friend Holly. She's had her bath/hair wash ready for her big day tomorrow. It's her Green Belt Graduation! Better get sorted :o)

Pony Princess :o)

2006-04-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Phew! We're absolutely shattered as we've only just come back from Normanby Park where Romy and Colin had rides on our friend's horses. We were there for three hours and ended up getting locked in as the park shut at 8 o'clock ;o) Romy and her new friend R had their TKD lesson and then we all went off to see the horses. First of all we went to get the horses and then Roo helped to brush Alfie down. We then had a not so happy moment when he decided to tread on Roo's foot in return!

After they'd been saddled up U and her daughter M rode the horses down to the riding school. They burnt off some of their energy while Romy played with R. R is an almost-nine-year-old boy but he and Roo got on like a house on fire. When Alfie had calmed down a bit Roo got to have a ride around the park. It was lovely as everyone had gone home by then so we had the place to ourselves. Colin got to ride U's horse; Sally which he was well chuffed about.
M helping Roo onto Alfie.
Doesn't she look as pleased as punch?
Colin and Roo with U and M.

Not a care in the world :o)

As soon as we got in the car Roo said "when can we come again?" Rofl. I was shattered as I'd walked miles but she was raring to go again :o)

Other stuff we've done today: Mainly party preparations. We listened to music as we made lots of surprise decorations for the party. Every available surface, including the kitchen worktop is covered with painted things drying! Roo made some lovely Sizzix people with TKD suits and belts on. We had our lunch outside in the sunshine, went round to see a neighbour and wrote a list of stuff to buy for the party. Roo has decided to invite yet another friend. This has to be the last one as there are 23 kids coming now! There was also a very long pretend game of pet fairies involving poor Tilly being walked around the house on her lead. Bless her, she's a very co-operative and patient dog.

Off to rest me' bones!

Outdoorsy day.

2006-04-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

This morning we re-potted more plants; spider plants this time. Lots of fun doing that. Then we came in briefly to do a bit of work. Romy read several books to herself and did some worksheets on words with rhyming long vowels. We then painted a Felicity Wishes picture each for Roo's illustrator's project. Here's Roo's followed by mine:

Took us ages to Google the illustrator - Emma Thomson - without getting info about the actress with the same (but differently spelled) name!

We went back out then for a long walk. We walked accross the field to look round the pet shop. Found an interesting ad in there for a rabbit and guinea pig show. Romy has set her heart on entering Willow into the children's pet class ;o) Think he'll need a few baths and brushes before then!

On the way home we played in two parks. Well, Roo played. I sat and watched her, thinking how wonderful she is and how blessed I am to have her.

Last night we read more Calvin and Hobbes, which caused a bit too much late night giggling! Mind you, I'm glad because before we read that we'd looked at a few more pages of the Book of the 20th Century and Roo was a bit worried/upset about wars. We'd read about WWI and she started worrying about more wars happening now. Poor thing. Not the best bedtime reading material then!

I've just come back from week four of my Indian Head Massage course, in liquid form (it's sooo relaxing.) I've become friends with a lovely woman there who has her own business as a beauty/massage therapist. She gave me her price list tonight for reference for when I start my own business. She said if I want anything doing though she'll do it for free. Not bad eh? Obviously I reciprocated with offers of Reiki. We always pair up to do the IHM practical so I've got to know her quite well.

Romy and Colin went to Normanby park whilst I was there. Here are a couple of piccies of Roo. Apparently she can really bomb around on those in-liners now :o) After practicing on her bike and whizzing around on her skates she played with a boy she met there the same time last week.

Off out again now to take Tilly for (yet another) walk. Got itchy feet!