29th April 2008

Returning from the hospital - Tuesday night and feeling like I dont want to do anything more today. this was Seb's pre op appointment for next Thursday. He is having vents in his ears and his adenoids removed, I think he needs it as his right ear wasn't even measuring on the scale today when they tested him. not much more to say about that, otherwise fit and healthy and not even caring what is going to happen to him.

I did have a bad case of MBS (mummy brain syndrome) today, somehow I thought Toni had her Rainbows display tonight - turns out I am only a month wrong - thank goodness I re read her letter instead of turning up.

Mag had his BB display last night - he got his gold badge for being there 7 years and a trophy for being best all round boy which I am really proud of him for. this is his last year, and then he moves on to a company section. the leaders all spoke very highly of him.

I faked it

My sun tan that is. I hate how that stuff smells so I always put in on an hour before I shower, that way I get the tan without the icky coconut smell. I love coconut but this stuff stinks. Sitting here smelling icky I thought I had better give you a quick update...

We had another busy week last week. The highlight if it had to have been a visit to a friend from our home education group. That's how I met her, but I think now we have become good friends which is nice. Anyways - she is pregnant, very pregnant with baby due in a couple months its pretty obvious. On arrival, Seb after doing his obligatory toilet inspection, decided to tell my friend that she was fat. Quite bold about it, and thank goodness she is pregnant otherwise I might have just had to turn and leave there and then LOL. The visit went well, although it was late when we left and I think everyone was exhausted. We had hot dogs on the way home and the kids fell into bed tired and happy.

The following day, or maybe day after Seb was thinking about my "fat friend" (sorry no offence meant D.), this was obviously playing on his mind. He went into playgroup and told everyone that I was having baby! They asked him "are you sure?", and yes he was so sure about that. My friend who runs the playgroup was explaining how I wasn't pregnant to Ellis as she knows I would have told her, but he kept on insisting. So it looks I am having a baby too - LOL I wish I had that excuse for my stomach.

The weekend brought another further incident regarding our windows *sigh* one of those weeks, we discovered one of the 8ft double glazed windows in the TV room had broken, huge cracks running all over it. Total loss as to how it happened, so now we need to get that seen to. KERCHING KERCHING I can see this will cost a few pounds.

The window escapades over we had three parties to go to, come Sunday night the kids had so many e-numbers and junk food they were high as kites ... at least they had fun, and a week of detoxing is underway.

26th April 2008

Here she is Miss T - tooth no2 gone! Another 18 dramas to go. Less said the better .

I want to write more on my week but the children are fighting over balloons right now *sigh*, I am going to pop them.

House Stuff

We have been working hard the last few weeks trying to get the kids rooms back in order. the children are sharing just now - boys together, girls together .... we do actually have 5 bedrooms but Roy has taken over the main room as his office and the other room is used for storage just now though that is going to change soon. We have plans submitted to the planning office to extend out house and make an office for Roy as well as a new kitchen, family room, additional bathroom and utility room. We also have submitted plans to demolish our garage and rebuild but with a second story creating more space - I think the hope is eventually that Roy will move out there - his office - not him literally OR make it into kids playroom and a learning room ... I dont like say classroom but it explains to you what I mean by learning room. Dear knows where all the money is coming from. I can see that we will have to split the building project into two or three phases but we will worry about that when the plans are through!

Anyway, cut through the rambling now as I want to show off the boys room ...

The photos are stitched so to speak so its a stretched out version and definitely not in proportion ....





the light fitting which they love





And a wall hanging which we have made from an old quilt stretched over a wooden frame. Mag was upset about getting new bedding and not being able to use his old ..... so we made a wooden frame and stapled the old quilt cover on it. Its not hung yet but will be dont this weekend with a bit of luck ....



Now I just need to work on the boys keeping the room tidy - just now all their toys are heaped in the TV room, I am hoping on moving them in today.


OTHER house stuff ...
Our bathroom window hinges are banjaxed so we had take the window out to get them fixed ...all day yesterday we sat in draughts! The window shop needed to see the whole thing, we got new brackets and hinges now thank goodness.

here it is ..... and a sneaky of my bathroom

19th April 2008

I have to share something funny -

My husband and I would often take a glass of squash to bed with us - you know just to sip during the night if we get thirsty. Every morning Sol would come into our room and always drink what is left of Roy's squash. Never mine for some reason, always Roy's.

This week Roy went off to Scotland on business for a few days. On the second day of him being away when Sol woke up she came into the bedroom to see me. Not worried at all about Roy being absent, didn't even concern herself enough to ask where he was .....

Instead she simply said "Where's daddy's juice?"

Nice to know you are missed Roy!

just ramblings of a mad woman & updates

Well its been a mad few days ...

We have been mad here this last couple weeks. Decorating the kids bedrooms has indeed taken its toll on my physical being - LOL - in other words I ache all over. The final thing is tomorrow morning when the man comes and installs the last of the robes. That is for a few weeks then we plan to start the next phase.

I need to first update you on the Kids eye appointment this week. Seb, Toni, and Sol attend the hospital for eye problems. Toni was signed off from the hospital's books, just as I thought as her issues are purely borderline and our own optician is able to deal with her. Seb - he is very long sighted, and with his glasses on is doing great so no news there. Sol - well they did the general tests on her and her left eye is still very week, with both eyes and glasses she can see well enough to get around and see sweets that she would like to eat. But with the right eye patched and even with glasses on she can see very little. Seb and Sol are going for detailed eye measurements in May to check their prescription glasses are still right for them.

Here is Sol, we try to patch her good eye to improve her bad eye .. it is having a small affect for her cosmetically or should I say a big affect as she used to be virtually cross eyed all the time. now her eyes are straighter even if they don't work right at least she looks good. Its not often I photograph her like this, quite frankly I find it upsetting BUT I do want her to be able to look back and see how things were when she was growing up.

17th April 2008

My horoscope for today ...... by the way I am a LEO




Your generosity and altruism will be put to the test during the next few days, dear Leo. You will probably help the under-privileged. After all, you have always felt concerned about humanitarian projects but never got involved. Today, this attitude will enable you to understand who you really are. You will be able to learn a lot about your motivations and about the keys to your success.

Good start to the day (not)

5.08 am this morning Toni decided to get up. She banged her way down the hallway to the bathroom, banging the bathroom door and noisily locking it. Then she banged the door on the way out, banged up the hall to my bedroom asking for a tissue. I explained to her to go quietly and she banged into the dining room and banged out of it with the "snowy white" tissues that she had to tell the world about. By 6.00 am Toni, Seb and Sol were playing at full force in Toni bedroom. Its amazing how loud these role play games can be when you ask them to hush.

It seems the quieter you want them to be is proportional to the more noise they can possibly make.

To top it off the water people are digging up the road to replace water pipes and they said our water will be off from 9.30am till 8pm - JOY.

15th April 2008

It's been a funny day here. I don't feel we have done anything hugely productive, well not much really.

The children did some work this morning, Mag answered some questions from his science books. He loves sciences, and 'has' to write it all down. He measured his feet and calculated some mass and areas. Toni did some reading, writing, and some number work from her work books which she loves. We read some more about volcanoes and checked up on the currently erupting Nevado del Huila volcano in Columbia, the children are interested in volcanoes in a big way just now.

Miss Toni is suffering with the cold just now, so this afternoon I gave her some sudafed and the children just had some down time for a change, I think they needed it after the busy couple weeks we have had. I found Toni and Seb asleep on Mag's bedroom floor wrapped up in 'pie beds', Mag was dozing on his bed. The boys toys are still piled up in the TV room as we are waiting to finish off the bedrooms, and I know this must be affecting them. I hate having things upside down, I know Toni and Seb are affected in the same way when things are not as they usually are.

And Mag - well this evening I have to say he did a brilliant job - he made his first flat pack up by following the instructions and with no help what so ever. He is as pleased as anything, and I think with it being a little cabinet for his new bedroom it might help to give him a bit of pride in his room and maybe keep it tidy.

here it is ...

Found this on yahoo - an ITN news report from March 08

I know this is old news but I find it beggers belief that 22.4 % of teachers have dealt with kids carrying weapons. So for every child discovered with a weapon in school how many are not discovered?

Growing numbers of pupils are found carrying drugs and weapons every week at school, a report has warned.
A core of schools saw a significant increase in pupils with guns, knives and illegal drugs over the past seven years, the study from Warwick University found.
Teachers warned the trend was not restricted to gangs in large cities as provincial towns and rural areas also saw more youngsters arming themselves with weapons for "protection".
The study of 1,500 teachers by Dr Sean Neill, from Warwick's Institute of Education, suggested some schools faced severe problems.
"More teachers encountered offensive weapons more frequently in 2008 compared with 2001," the report said.
Nearly one in four teachers - 22.4 per cent - had to deal with pupils carrying weapons at least once a year.
The research also found "significantly more" teachers encountered pupils dealing illegal drugs on a monthly and weekly basis than seven years ago.

14th April 2008

I was speaking with a teacher today - not your every day teacher but a man who taught my husband at school who now runs a private tutoring place. Anyways - you would think being a private teacher he would be a bit more open minded about home education ...

He was a real go to school advocate - got to get no1 son to mix with other kids his own age. LOL The son in question goes to Boys Brigade, Two different Chess clubs (is close to be playing at championship level for seniors), Games Club, Youth Club, Bible Class, Goes to camp in the holidays and believe it or not he DOES in fact have FRIENDS.

Seems we don't learn enough either, my children 'need' to be in school so they can learn a wide variety of subjects. hhhmmmm I was wondering when the last time my kids were just restricted to the handful of subjects on offer at schools these days - makes you wonder what people think about us.

TODAY

Was a funny day, I got Mah kicked off doing some work out of his English books today. He doesn't like English but I like him to do some sort of formal study on the subject ... though sometimes I wonder whether or not I should push it, as he loves learning about everything else. He learns by many means too so it is something we need to explore for English, I have tried different books but it still doesn't light his fire. Toni read to me for a while and then drew pictures of things from her books. Her art work is brilliant these days, she would ask to draw virtually every time she sits at the table. She also copied some words from her book to make a little story.
I didn't push any of the children as I am pretty tired after the 4.30 start this morning. Hubby was heading off for Scotland and of course when he is up showering, having breakfast and so on everyone else knows about it. I never known anyone to make so much noise when trying to be quiet, seems to me the harder you try to be quiet the noisier you get.

My friend came round at lunch time and we both got stuck in trying to make the rest of the house look a bit more normal, seems to me that when you are decorating one or two rooms the mess migrates outwards at an amazing speed. She left in time to go collect her son from school and I just got some other bits done around the house.

Tomorrow morning my tesco.com shopping arrives, just as well as we have no cornflakes left. Also the boys' new bedding and some other bits for the rooms, so it looks like I am building up flat pack tv units tomorrow.

14th April 2008

Bad start to the day, and I am not one to moan usually. but (there is always a but) was up at 4.30 so he could head off and catch a flight to Scotland for three days. He has left us in chaos (not his fault), we were waiting for the paint to dry on the floor in one of the bedrooms and last night it was still tacky. So I had the prospect of moving two beds this morning with 11yo DS. he tries you know, but 11yo just dont have experience in furniture moving, and now I think I have pulled a muscle. Other DS is very load and active this morning, where is Super Nanny when you need her?

Well I had better get my butt of this seat and go get some decent clothes on. My friend is coming today to help out a bit, she does cleaning for me too ... works both ways I get stuff done she gets £££.


COME BACK DH - ALL IS FORGIVEN!

A peg too close! 13th April 2008

Look at this!


This yellow peg which is from one of those picture maker toys. This peg ended up side aways up my Seb's nose. Funny - yeah right! I put him for time out, he was being stupid and the sad thing is I cannot even remember now why he was in time out. Time out is our porch, some people have a naughty step but us - the porch! Its got a glass door where you can keep an eye on 'them' when they are in time out! YEAH RIGHT! There is a 8 foot tall plant in there too - Arthur, he looks after the children when they have been naughty. If the kids mess about in time out Arthur tends to fall over so they daren't move an inch. Well - after a moment or two in the porch my 4 year old started yelling, I called him him and saw he had a bloody nose. Wondered what he was up to, I was also half way through doing Sol's nappy change so I made him stand still and be quiet while I finished up. I managed to get a few sobs about a toy up his nose, and sure enough I looked and there it was. He kept sniffing but thankfully it was wedged side aways so could not go up any further. I yelled for No1 son to go looking in my little pen basket for a pair of tweezers - I just put them there a couple days ago .... thank goodness. and we got Seb up on the kitchen stool and performed the surgery.

Crying afterwards he was complaining about me sticking tweezers up his nose - ungrateful boy! His nose bled off and on all day, the peg cut him while it was coming back down but there wasn't much I could do about that.

10th April 2008

Reaching the point of inner contentment with regard to our children's education has been a long road. Forgive me if I don't make sense here, I do understand what I am trying to say even if no one else does.

It seems to me the last few months has been an extremely steep learning curve for our family. We became home educators in early 2007 - quite by accident need I add and here we are over a year on and just feeling great about it all.

What can be more liberating than just taking control of what your children learn, see & do? Who wants to be sending children into the schools we live so they can have a 1 in 3 chance of being bullied, worse still being the bullies. With 4 children that's a big risk, a big risk that something bad will happen to one of my 4 most precious things in my life. Would you let your kids go somewhere if they had a 1 in 3 chance of being damaged? Who wants to send them to school where they have a 2 out of 5 chance of leaving school not being able to read or write sufficiently well to get some basic qualifications? I think we will take our chances at home - thank you very much.

A VISIT FROM THE TOOTH FAIRY

We had a visit from the tooth fairy this week. And what a drama one wobbly tooth can cause too, my dd took several days out from real life to walk around with her hands clamped tightly over her mouth so her tooth would not fall out. She was terrified, and boy did she let us know. no sleep, no eating - she would not do anything.

So in the end the bad mommy that I am got my friend to hold her hands and I pulled the tooth out. After the initial shock she was the proudest girl in the world.


Strangest thing is that her replacement tooth is now growing in the gap, but her other new front tooth is actually growing behind her other milk teeth. I am sure they will straighten up, but it still is odd.