Trickle Treating and Granny time.

A couple of years ago K & M decided that they really wanted to go Trick or Treating, but a couple of things merged and M's mispronunciation, plus the fact they they decided to take treats with them to give to people and Trickle Treating was invented.  So today I baked (the plan was that the girls were going to, but that didn't quite happen) and this evening M got dressed up in her fox costume and K wore her white furry coat and took her fluffy toy polar bear with her and we went Trickle Treating.

M the Urban Fox.

We generally only knock on doors of people we know, but even most people are slightly baffled by the idea of children going ostensibly Trick or Treating but trying to give them treats instead of accepting them.  Each time K tried to explain that they weren't Trick or Treating, but Trickle Treating, however, most people don't hear the difference.  K & M do sometimes accept a treat, but not always, another thing that baffles people.  K & M had a great time anyway.

This morning K & M spent some quality time with Granny.  I'm not quite sure how they got there, but they started talking about putting on a play with their cardboard puppet theatre, K had our Complete Works of Shakespeare out.  This lead to talking about reading plays and Granny discovered that although we have seen several plays at the theatre and that we've read books on which the some of the plays we've seen have been based, we hadn't actually read any plays.  So the three of them went to the library and came home with a few plays, a Meg & Mog one and a couple based on Roald Dahl books.  After having a look at them, Granny wrote down the play that K & M have come up with.  M has also been making scenery in preparation for the play, while K was doing a couple more birthday thank yous, one email and one miniature card.  The three of them are planning on continuing work with line learning and rehearsals while I'm out tomorrow morning, ready to perform for A and me at the weekend when he's home from Berlin.

This evening we introduced Granny to Vapoosh!.  K, M & I played while Granny watched first and K won by rolling Vapoosh!, then Granny joined in for the second game and K was only a point away from winning, with me on one point, M on zero and Granny on minus one, when against the odds (1in 1296) M won outright with the second Vapoosh! of the night!  Granny thought the game was really good and suggested to make it a bit trickier, as the girls get better with their tables, we could introduce a timer, so that you only get to place your counter on the board if you work out the answer within a certain time.  The egg timers that come with the Brainbox games (of which we have several) would work really well if we decide to go for this.

Well we weren't expecting that!

 M received something in the post this morning!

The proud owner of a Blue Peter badge.

Back at the end of August, M sent a poem that she had written a while ago to Blue Peter in the hope of winning a Blue Peter badge.  M wrote out her poem about her favourite toy dog, Christopher, and we printed out a photo of him to send with it, wrote a letter of at least 50 words telling them about it and we posted it.  We then sent an email, telling them what we'd sent, as it seemed that you needed to do that too, although actually I don't think you are supposed to do that, it wasn't completely clear, but we fairly quickly received an email in reply, thanking M for her poem, but telling her that she hadn't been successful this time.

It seems to me that they appreciate the time and effort it takes to put pen to paper and send something by post rather than just an email.  Anyway, M was very happy, as she was very proud of her poem and quite upset when she received the original email, and I was chuffed to bits for her.  This is the poem and photo she sent.

I have a dog 

He is a toy

But he is real to me

He likes to sit on a log

And when I see him doing it

It gives me joy

He surely cannot be a toy

Granny arrived this afternoon, bringing with her various pull-outs from their newspapers, so we all had a go at the Children's literary puzzle crossword in one of them and between the four of us did pretty well.  Then while I cooked, Granny and the girls played a couple of games of Happy Families, with the lovely (although understandably rather tatty) pack of cards that she had played with when was their age.

Some clay creations.

Well the weather didn't stop us from going to Asfordby, but A only made it as far as Grantham before finding out that there was no way he was going to make it to London, due to flooded tunnels and trees on the various lines that he could have taken.

As is usually the case K and M spent most of their time in social imaginative play, but they did also both spend some time making things out of clay.

One of M's creations.

K's bird Mummy and baby.

I told K that this reminded me of something that you might find in a Dr Seuss book and she agreed.

K's basilisk, which she is very proud of.

A close up.

Today was also Brownies and at the moment they are all working towards their Stargazer badge, so we've been finding out interesting facts to share, mostly from this website.

In other news, K & M have both taken to reciting various things to, or at times it would be more accurate to say at, me.  Usually it's one of the poems from Alice in Wonderland or this rap about Much Ado About Nothing, with which they are almost word perfect!

A circus, thank yous, games and more.

Yesterday we finally got together with friends for a birthday treat, between the 10th birthdays of the two older girls, at a lovely local teashop.  After tea/hot chocolate and cake/scones there we came back here and after a short rehearsal, S & I were treated to a circus performance by the four girls, various cuddly toys, A and Mr Fox as the ringmaster.  It included human cannonballs (leaping of the swing), a tightrope walking giraffe (attached by string to a cane and manoeuvred along the washing line), "bear back riding" (not a spelling mistake - it was teddy bears riding on children's backs), clowns (bears with red noses made from pingpong balls) and more.

Mr Fox, the ringmaster with A.

Alice & Ted - the clowns.

Jolly - the tightrope walker.

"Bear-back riding"

A with the Diablo

M, one of the human cannonballs.

And K, another of the human cannonballs.

Mr Fox with his amazing ball catching trick.

A the mime artist.

K, one of the contortionists.

And M contorting.

J & M doing dangerous scooter tricks.

All the performers taking their final bow.

Today K has been catching up with making and writing birthday thank you cards.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo of the one that was to George, the guinea pig (who had given her a freebie balloon from a taxi company).  It was a cartoon strip "true story of the little blue balloon", that sadly was burst on a thorn on a hedge on the way home, complete with thorn saying 'Mwahaha', followed by a picture of scissors and sellotape and a happy ending of the (now flat but) happy balloon with some little baby balloons.  She has also written a thank you card to my brother, Uncle M, who she knows has got her a present, but she hasn't had it yet!  And as well as doing several thank you cards, she also made this one.

For me, just because.

M and I had played The Game of Life for the first time in ages, which was fun and very close indeed, M won by the smallest margin possible, although she wasn't very happy that she didn't get to adopt twins or a pet.  Later she and A also played Carcassonne, again for the first time in a long time and again it was a very close game, but this time it was A who won.

The girls also played with a friend from a few doors down, both at her house and then here, which involved dressing up as Wizard of Oz characters and 'ice-skating' on the laminate floor in 'Granny's room'.

In other news, I mentioned previous that M had been 'making' again, it was another Mister Maker make, which I wasn't allowed to take a photo of until it was finished.  Here it is and I think it turned out rather well!

M's new suitcase.

Now we're hoping that the impending stormy weather doesn't stop us getting to Asfordby tomorrow, while A is trying to work out if and how he can get to London for two meetings, before heading off to Berlin on Tuesday for the rest of the week.  The girls have got a visit from Granny to look forward to from the middle of the week, so hopefully won't miss him too much.

A quick update.

The Butterfly Lion was very good and we all enjoyed it very much.  M categorically denies it, saying that she just had a runny nose, but I think there may have been a few tears. 

K spent some of her birthday money on some more Creator Lego and has already built at least two (probably all three by now) of the creatures for which there are instructions.  M meanwhile has been drawing various pictures to go in her many frames, so that she has two or three stored in each of the frames, so she can swap them about for variety.

In other news, I mentioned that I had a massage while the girls were at cricket yesterday, but I didn't say that, although the massage was very good, it was considerably shorter than the information on their website stated, in fact only about half as long as it should have been.  In a rather English way I didn't say anything at the time, but I did leave feedback on their Facebook page and today had a phone call from the owner, apologising and offering me the choice of a full refund or a free treatment, which is pretty good customer service, I think.

A relaxing day.

Today was the third and final morning of cricket for the girls and after a mad rush to get there on time yesterday, today we managed to get going a bit earlier.  Yesterday I cleaned the fridge but today I treated myself and went for a massage.  Both K & M have really enjoyed the cricket and are keen to go again when there is another opportunity. 

After lunch we went to the library, as there was a Storysaurus event on and both girls had a go at a couple of craft activities, before we came home and I read The Butterfly Lion to them.  While tidying up, earlier this week, we'd found a flyer for the theatre production and M had persuaded me to see if I could get tickets to go and see it.  She has the book and had read it and wanted to see it, K hadn't read it and said that she really didn't want to go before she knew the story and would rather I read it to them.  So tomorrow, we're heading into town for the matinee of The Butterfly Lion and K has asked if we can go earlier so that she can have a look in the shops, as she's got some birthday money burning a bit of a hole in her pocket. 

This evening we finished watching the last episodes of Heidi, although the addition of some drama at the end, which I'd forgotten about and that isn't in the book, did cause some concern but the expected happy ending relieved that.  Phew!

Cricket - in this weather!

This morning I dropped the girls off at Trent Bridge for their first ever proper cricket coaching session.  Given how wet it's been all day, it's a good thing that it was indoors!  I picked them up 3 hours later and fortunately, since they're going tomorrow and Thursday too, they had both enjoyed it, although K said she thought shorter session but more of them would be a better idea.  I had been slightly concerned, since neither has ever played cricket or done more than have a little go at A's cricket club with one of the dad's giving them some tips and that was just the once.  I suspected that most of the other participants would probably have been playing for a while and from what the girls told me that was the case, but it didn't seem to bother them.

I had a very relaxed and not particularly productive morning off, quite a bit of it in tears listening to the brilliant Olivia Coleman playing a mother with breast cancer in the Radio 4 drama Goodbye on iplayer.

After picking the girls up and having lunch, we watched another episode of Heidi together before doing some chores.  M cleaned the downstairs loo and sink and K did some hoovering, while I tidied up the kitchen, computer desk and kitchen table, mostly by dumping everything that wasn't where it should be on the kitchen table and letting everyone know they needed to put things away (and not just move them to other places that they don't live!) - it seems to have worked.

We have been planning to make some ice-cream, ever since K's didn't work very well at Fun Club at the beginning of the month, but hadn't got round to it.  So today, having bought some sealable plastic bags on the way home from dropping the girls at cricket, we finally managed it, and it worked really rather well.  If you want to have a go you need:
Half a cup of cream
2 tbsp of icing sugar
1/4 vanilla essence
a small sealable plastic bag
a large sealable plastic bag (or we used a clippit)
ice cubes - lots
salt - about 5-6 tbsp
Put the cream, sugar and vanilla in the small bag and seal it carefully.  Put the ice, salt and the small bag inside the big bag and seal it well.  Then shake well for 4-5 minutes.  Carefully take out the small bag, wipe off the salty water and take out the ice-cream and eat it!  It was very successful this time.

K's ice-cream.

And M's.

Wet and muddy!

We had a really lovely weekend away for my mother-in-law's birthday.  We introduced her to Vapoosh!, had a lovely meal out with various members of the family, and I did tell her how much I consider myself fortunate to have her for a mother-in-law and I'm very glad I did.  She told me that it was the best birthday present that she could have had, that she had had doubts about our choices to start with but that the girls are clearly having a wonderful up-bringing.  I also had a rare lucid conversation with my father-in-law, who is suffering from Alzheimers and doesn't always know who the girls and I are.  He clearly did on this occasion and told me that he had been 'baffled' when we decided not to send them to school, but that we are doing a fantastic job and to keep it up.

The girls and I left A at the railway station in Chester as he was getting the train down to London with his uncle and aunt who had come up from Kent for the celebration and going straight to Brussels for a meeting today.  The trip home went fine, until we got home and I realised that, as is usually the case when we go somewhere as a family, I hadn't taken my house keys with me.  Fortunately the neighbours who have our spare were in, so it really wasn't a problem!

This morning we got up and went to pick up our friend R & A to go den building at Rushcliffe Country Park.  To say it was rainy is really something of an understatement, as we got absolutely drenched and also rather muddy.  It was great fun though and we were all rather proud of our den.

The five of us in our den.

 We then headed back to the visitor centre and the children each made a bug hotel and we dried out a bit.

Various different habitats in there.

We then headed back to R & A's where the girls started off by building another den, this time in the form of a 'tent' for a Swallows & Amazon's game.  Then after some lunch they decided to do some dressing up and got rather creative, as you can see from the couple of examples below.

The first outfits.

A suffragette sandwich!

Rather more bizarre choices.

 The girls finished off by giving a concert for some toys and then it was time to come home.  Where we watched a few more episodes of Heidi, a lovely end to a lovely day!

My Mother-in-law and Mini Makes.

Today we actually all got dressed in the morning and went out, even though we didn't have any specific activities on today.  The fact that it was a lovely day did make it easier to get going, but we also needed some ingredients and to go to the library.  K & M decided to stay at the library while I went and did the shopping and found a variety of books and cds to borrow.

After lunch I needed to get on with making things to take with us when we go to visit A's parents, also known as Nana and Little Grandad or J & W, this weekend for J's 80th birthday celebration.  She's really not the type for a big do, but after a successful meal out last time we were up, she agreed that a repeat, but possibly with some more people there would be a nice idea to celebrate her birthday.  So as well as J & W and the four of us, there will be J's brother and sister-in-law coming up from Kent and some of A's cousins on W's side too, thirteen of us all together for a meal on Saturday. 

You often hear horror stories about mothers-in-law, but I am very, very fortunate to have a wonderful one.  We have chosen to do things very differently from how they brought up A, but J has never criticised any of our choices and never been anything but quietly supportive.  J has the most spotless house you could possibly imagine, ours is very far from this, but the only comment she has ever made on the subject was when I was sitting on the sofa with my baby in my arms (probably breastfeeding) and she looked at me and said she wished she'd spent more time doing that and less time cleaning when A was little.   I breastfed my girls well past toddlerhood, including tandem-nursing, J once told me that she couldn't because Alan was a 'hungry baby', this at a time when the babies were kept in the nursery and brought to the mother to be fed every 3 hours, but was open to hearing my explanation of supply and demand, without taking it personally.  She once walked in on me sprawled on the sofa tandem nursing my baby and toddler and while she was a bit uncomfortable I think, she just looked at us, said 'Oh lovely!' and went to make a cup of tea. I really couldn't wish for a more lovely mother-in-law.  

 

Her 80th birthday celebrations are a bittersweet time though as my father-in-law, W, is suffering from Alzheimers.  For a long time he has called people Your Majesty, either in an affectionate jokey way or because he can't remember their names and now increasingly because he can't remember who they are, has starting calling her Your Majesty.  He is still at home and J is his carer and doing a fantastic job of it, only recently getting a day or two a week respite when he goes to a day-care centre.  Her very recent concession to getting some help with the spotless house is to get the Saturday newspaper delivered and getting a window cleaner to do the outside windows!  Until quite recently, W would always make a point of telling me, when we part after they've come here or we've visited them, what a brilliant job I/we are doing with our girls. I am a very, very fortunate daughter-in-law.

 

This afternoon I made a quiche to take with us and some chocolates for her birthday.  I will also make sure that I tell her how fortunate I am to have her for a mother-in-law, which won't be an easy thing to do, because she's really not one to talk about emotions and I'm pretty sure my eyes will leak when I do!

 

Chocolate's for J's birthday.

While I was busy with my chocolate making, K & M were busy with various craft activities.  K has been working on her birthday thank yous.  I'm not generally allowed to see them, but she does always take a lot of care in making and writing the cards.

 

Thank yous to A & me and to M.

The picture on the card to A & me is of the water bottle that she got with the bike and M painted her a picture of Dobby, hence the socks in the corners of the card and presumably the owl too.

 

M has been busy making something that isn't finished, so I'm not allowed to take a photo yet, but she's been putting a lot of time and effort into it.

 

Both girls for a reason I'm not sure of have been making mini postcards.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that K brought her cuddly puffin, that she got from the now sadly defunct Puffin Post, wearing its postman outfit downstairs. 

 

The postcards.

K's are on the top, from the left some houses, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, one already put in an envelope and a volcano.  M's on the bottom, a country scene and a castle with the 50p for scale.  K has also made a birthday card for one of her toys.

 

11 Today birthday card.

 

Finding out what they know.

While we haven't had entire pyjama days here, due to the need to leave the house for various activities, we have been having pyjama mornings and even pyjama 'as much of the time as we can possibly get away with' days.  Today for example it was mid-afternoon before clothes were donned.  As ever though it doesn't stop the learning.  K was very proud today to have managed to move on to the next stage of Timez Attack, which means that she has 'done' all of the 2 and 3 times tables plus up to 6x4 of the 4 times table.  In order to complete the stage, you have to get all the questions of the stage you are on correct with a pretty short time allowed to give your answer in what is effectively an end of stage test, although it's not presented as such.  I suggested that she get the Vapoosh! board, so that we could see how many of the times tables she knows, as I had a feeling it would probably be more than she realised.  As well as the tables she's covered with Timez Attack, she knows her 10 times table very well, the 11s very well up to 10x and 11 &12x when she stops to think about them and when I tested her on her 5 times table she was reasonably confident on that one too.  Finally, as we'd made up a silly chant when we first played Vapoosh!, that goes "Seven eights are fifty six, eight sevens are fifty six as well!", we could cover up the two 56 squares, so that the board looked like this.

Admittedly it includes the 1 times table, but when K counted up how many squares were left to learn compared to how many she already knew, we discovered that she knows over 78% of her tables, which I must admit is even better than I had anticipated!

M has also been going on Timez Attack, but so far has just missed out on moving on to the next stage.  Something that she likes to do every so often, is watch clips of the art and craft programme Mister Maker on the CBeebies website.  Today, she not only watched some but then went away and had a go at this one.

She was rather pleased with the result.

In other news, both K and M are in the process of making things in the hope of getting a Blue Peter badge each and we are continuing to watch more episodes of Heidi.

Autumn

The autumnal (wet!) weather has continued.  Yesterday we managed to get out between showers to collect things ready for the autumn themed session at Asfordby.

Today at Asfordby, M & I played conkers.  K did an autumn theme sudoku.  M & I had a go with leaves and a hammer to make prints.  You need leaves (maple work well), watercolour paper, kitchen roll and a hammer, place a leaf on the paper, cover with a double layer of kitchen roll and hammer!  The results are really beautiful, especially if you manage to keep the leaf very still.

M's prints

E's brilliant effort

 Some people had fun with the things we'd collected yesterday, arranging them on the sheet we'd taken with us.

My attempt.

After engaging with a few of the activities there was some Harry Potter play for a while, but then something new seemed to occur and most of the older children became wolves.  Very loud ones!

When we got home we watched a couple more episodes of Heidi and did some tidying and K continued hoovering, having started yesterday and sone some more this morning.  Then there was just time for tea and Brownies.

A rather wet day out.

Today was the first Nottingham Children's Book Festival.  We'd booked to go to a few of the wide variety of workshops and there were also various drop-in activities going on throughout the day.  We got rather soggy on our way to the first workshop, which was activities based on an extract from Peter Pan.

Our Peter Pan nest boats.

After lunch we split up and A took the girls to How to Draw Goodies and Baddies, which they enjoyed, while I went to hear Christopher Lloyd (who incidentally was a HEing dad for the primary years) talk about one of his big Wallbooks.  A and the girls snuck in to the end of his very good talk and we went to find a cup of tea and a piece of cake before A went home and the girls and I went for the final workshop that we'd booked, which we hadn't realised was by the drama teacher who had run the Harry Potter workshop that they'd been to a few weeks back (I just looked back and my blog and can't quite believe I didn't mention it - they thought it was fantastic and have asked C, who organised it, if she can organise a follow up one).  It was only half an hour long, but they really enjoyed it and M in particular is really quite keen to start going to her classes.  It's not really an option at the moment, as the class she runs here clashes with Brownies and the only other option is when K has ballet but a drive away.  However, there are short courses during school holidays that are a possibility and K is due to move up in ballet soon, so we should be able to sort something fairly soon.  Finally, having checked we could squeeze in, even though we didn't have tickets, the girls and I went along to the third and final talk by Christopher Lloyd, where M & I both answer questions (M that the population of the world is approx 7 billion) and took part in the very interactive talk (she 'read his mind', demonstrating the massive influence of the technology of writing, I blew up a balloon).

Christopher Lloyd with his Science and Technology Wallbook.

We were impressed enough to buy the books and had a brief chat with him afterwards.  We then, having mostly dried off during the day, got exceedingly soggy walking home via the shops to buy some marshmallows to go in hot chocolate, which we had while watching Strictly Come Dancing.

In other news, I forgot to mention K announced, while we were playing Vapoosh!, that 1 plus 1 minus 1 times 1 divided by 1 equals 1, which cannot be denied!

A morning out and afternoon in.

This morning we were out and quite remarkably managed to get up, dressed, breakfasted, tooth-brushed and across town with very little chivvying, arriving on time for a 10 o'clock meeting.  I realise this may not sound like much to those who regularly get their children to school on time five mornings a week, but for us it's an achievement!  K & M are no longer particularly keen on going to LLL meetings, although the toddler meetings I usually lead are acceptable, so I am generally I'm the last resort, as was the case today.  They each took a book with them, in K's case Usborne's Thousands of Things to Spot, which she's been working her way through recently and in M's Jeremy Strong's The Beak Speaks, which she read for a while, but found it a bit too tricky to concentrate after a while once the meeting had got going, because the mummies were talking too much.

Once home both girls immediately demanded more Vapoosh!, so we had two games, first the simpler version played with just two dice, then the full version.  K won the first and I won the second, and M is starting to get a bit frustrated as she's now the only person in the family not to have won yet.

After lunch I read the final chapter of Heidi and we started watching a blast from the past for me, the Swiss German television series from 1978, dubbed into English, that I loved when I saw it as a child, which a friend of the girls has lent us. We've watched the first two episodes so far and it's just as badly dubbed as I remember, which is really rather entertaining.  We'd just finished watching when our neighbours popped round with a late birthday present for K and stayed for a bit of a play, until it was time for K to go for her ballet lesson.

Much maths!

When I arrived downstairs this morning, M was on the computer doing some Timez Attack and K had already had a go too.  Both girls had initially been quite keen on this (free!) programme when I got it about 18 months ago, but both had quickly got rather frustrated because of the speed needed to complete the questions.  After a break of about a year they came back to it and got on better and started playing again for a while.  It seems that it's something that they will return to every so often and each time they are making a bit more progress.  In the game, there is a sort of test that you can't progress past unless you get all the questions right first time, and as the game builds up through the times tables, even if you know all your 10, 11 and 5 times tables for example, but are a bit shaky on the higher parts of the 3 times table, you'll stay there until you are completely confident.  That's where the girls are at the moment, but they seem happy with it, so that's okay.

We had a pyjama day today, but that didn't stop the learning of course.  Admittedly K & M spent most of the building and then playing with Lego, but after we'd caught up with the Great British Bake Off, which I'd recorded, we finally got round to playing Vapoosh!  It was really fun and we ended up playing three times, twice the three of us and then again with A after tea.  In terms of the maths, there is the mental addition of adding the pairs of numbers on the dice together, as well as the times tables.  I encouraged K & M to try to work out the answer before lookign for it on the board and also to say the sum and the answer aloud, to help learn their tables and they were generally willing to do both of these and a bit of silliness helped as we chanted things like "Seven eights are fifty six and eight sevens are fifty six as well!".

We also talked about probability as in the second game I scored a Vapoosh! (i.e. I rolled four sixes).

Vapoosh!

I explained that there was a one in six chance of a six on each dice and that you multiply them all together to get the probability of all of them being six, which is 1/1296.  K had previously rolled four ones, which has the same low probability as Vapoosh!, but unfortunately for her doesn't automatically win the game.  We also talked about how most of the counters on the board were around the middle, because it's much more likely to roll a seven with two dice, than a two because there is only one way of rolling two (1 & 1), but three ways to roll a seven for example (1 & 6, 2 & 5 and 3 & 4).  We beat the odds and in our third game A won by rolling a Vapoosh! too. 

 All in all a really good game with resulted in much more maths than it said on the box, so to speak.

A birthday or two.

Yesterday we had K's actual birthday, which was quite a quiet one, probably in no small part due to the fact we were all rather tired from our long day in London the day before.  In keeping with her request and since she had already had her bike from A & me and will be getting a couple more when she next sees people, she didn't have very many presents to open.  M had made something for her, a painting.

Dobby!

K spent some time doing a craft kit that she'd been given last year and she had decided that she'd like us all to play a family board game, which we thought was a lovely idea.  In the end though the girls and I went round to see our friend C, who used to teach them piano, because she popped here to give K her present and K expressed disappointment at this because she'd wanted to go to C's house, because that way she could see George, C's guinea pig too.  So C went home and we went to hers instead.

Today we made the most of the continuing good weather and met up with friends at Rushcliffe Country Park.  We started in the playground, then moved on to Gibby's Wood, before returning to the playground and finishing off at the Sensory Trail.  A lovely time was had by all!

When we got home, K & M busied themselves making cards and a present for a friend whose birthday it is today.  They seemed to have a Swallows and Amazons theme going, as M drew a picture of an Amazon pirate hat and painted a skull and crossbones on a fridge magnet for her, from a kit she had, while K made a really good pop up card with a sailing boat.

K's card for A.

The girls finally managed to give the playroom a reasonably good tidy.  They are still really keen on getting a pair of rats, and had been doing a really good job of keeping the room much tidier, which we have said is necessary if they are to have rats, as it wouldn't be fair not to be able to take them out of their cage regularly and if the room isn't tidy they could eat something that could harm them.  Rats for Christmas are still a possibility, but they need to do a bit better at keeping the room tidy to show us that they can for it to happen.

Fantastic birthday treat.

Today we headed down south, for K's birthday treat, a trip for the whole family plus, N, one of K's best friends to see Matilda the Musical.  We  went down by train, during the journey we ate our packed lunch and the girls played card games while A & I read, then we walked from St Pancras to the theatre.

At the station (after the visit to the sweet shop).

On the train.

We got to the theatre with plenty of time to spare and settled in to enjoy the show.

Today's cast.

Our view from the front row of the upper circle.

There had been a few small changed from when we saw it originally back in December 2010, soon after it opened in Stratford-on-Avon, but it was still fantastic and we all really enjoyed ourselves.  N really appreciated it and we were thanked numerous times for taking her with us!  M has decided what she'd like to do for her birthday next June now - go back and see it again!

After the show, we went for pizza before heading home and we just had time to have a quick look at Platform 9 3/4 before catching the train back home with three very happy but rather hyped girls!  Fortunately we don't have any need to get up early in the morning.

Birthday preparations.

Today K has been busy making things.  She chose a trip to the theatre instead of a birthday party, so tomorrow we're heading down to London to see Matilda the Musical again (we saw it when it opened in Stratford-on-Avon nearly three years ago).  As she's not having a party, there will be no party bags, so K has decided instead to make something herself.  Her friend, N, is coming with us tomorrow, so she has made three 'theatre boxes' for N, M and herself.

Three sets of Matilda models.

From left to right there is Bruce's chocolate cake, Miss Trunchbull, Matilda (complete with book under her arm) and the Wormwood's telly!

She also bought three boxes to put them in (rather bigger than she'd planned, but that was all the shop had), and decorated them.

The 'theatre boxes'.

K has been very clear about what she would like for her birthday and in particular the fact that she doesn't want to be given a lot.  She was explaining to me that although she has given me quite a few ideas to put on her 'birthday list' (a list of suggestion in case anyone asks me for ideas), she really doesn't want to be given all of them and would have a dilemma if she were.  We've talked previously about how sometimes we might be given something as a gift that we aren't particularly keen on, but that people give presents with good intentions, so we should remember that when thanking them, but actually re-gifting to someone who would appreciate the item or giving to a charity later is a good way of recycling things.  K was telling me that although she would rather not be given lots of things, she realises that if she were given things from her list or that she liked she would find it too hard to do this, and so she wanted me to make it clear to people who would usually buy her a present that if they did buy her something (and she really wouldn't mind if they didn't), please could I ask them to just get her one small thing.  She has also said the same to M, who has painted her a lovely picture of Dobby the House Elf.