Grumpiness, but loveliness too.

I've not posted for a while, partly because what we've been doing mostly is sorting out the playroom and partly because we've all been a bit under the weather.  M and I in particular have been rubbing each other up the wrong way and we've had a few days when we seemed to do like but get very angry, shout at each other, fume for a while, apologise, have a huge cuddle and then start over again a short time later. 

In amongst the grumpiness and playroom sorting though there have been things going on.  We've been making more of the Christmas cards and K & M have come up with a remarkable amount of different designs, considering that there are only 12 holes to play with!

Old photo, but more along these lines.

M has been back on Khan Academy, watching more videos and doing exercises using coding.  K has been putting a lot of time and effort, as I mentioned previously into a fancy dress costume for Scouts.  The theme was CBeebies and she had a few ideas, just in case her first one didn't work out.  We went charity shopping and found a perfect pair of trousers and a jumper - both green (both also an adult size 8 and they both fit her pretty well!).  Then she got cracking on making the rest of the costume.

The work in progress.

All her own work (I helped staple on a chin strap but that's it).

In case you haven't worked it out yet (I needed clues) - she had decided to go as Lola from Charlie and Lola, when Lola dresses up as an alligator.

Even though M wasn't going, she wanted to dress up to drop off, and since K was going as Lola, she decided to stick with the theme....

She dressed all in white and had talc in her hair.

She was Soren Lorenson, Lola's imaginary friend!

Both girls have decided that they're going to wear their costumes (including white face paint for M this time) on Saturday to the Christmas party of friends' that we've been invited to, even though it isn't actually a fancy dress party!

 

K has also finally got around to writing the letter to go with the Blue Peter ship that she made, so this afternoon she just made it to the Post Office in time to send it off.

 

The Blue Peter ship.

Fingers crossed, please, that this is considered enough for a badge! 

 

Now we just need to finish tidying up, so that there's space to put the Christmas tree up, decorate the three, do the last bits of present shopping (mostly the girls who still haven't quite finished), make some more chocolates, wrap the rest of the presents, marzipan and ice the cake, do the food shopping (A does that) and then we can relax and enjoy Christmas!

 

Just a couple of things that I meant to write about previously.  Firstly, we finally finished Pied Piper a at the weekend, snuggled in my bed on Sunday morning.  The second thing is a conversation about Christmas presents that we had with the girls about a month ago.  In our house Father Christmas fills a (fairly small) stocking and presents are from people, so it's clear who gives what.  K & M don't write to Father Christmas asking for what it is they'd like, but I do ask them to write a list so that if anybody asks for ideas then I can make suggestions.  They did this, but M told me in a very serious voice, and K was in complete agreement, that we had given them 'too much' last year and please could we give them less this year.  We tend to give them one biggish present (last year it was a Lego Creator set each) and a few smaller presents as well, quite often educational things that I would probably have bought anyway, but kept until Christmas and wrapped up!  We and Granny and Big Grandad (who also give them quite a few smaller things rather than one bigger present) give them too much.  They do each have quite an extensive list of things they'd like, but it has been made perfectly clear and K in particular has explained at length, that although she would like any of the things on the list, she does not want all of the things.  So after some discussion, it was agreed that 2 or 3 presents from A & me was acceptable, but no more!