An anniversary, fresh air and freedom!

On Sunday after lunch A headed off to his parents, as he's not been up for a while and his mum needed some help with bits and pieces and also needed to talk to him about his dad, not always easy to do when the girls and I are around too.

In the afternoon, K & M decided to make a birthday present for the lovely Korfball K, my longest standing local friend, who I met through korfball when I first moved to Nottingham.  We then had children and found La Leche League together.  She has continued with korfball and now our four children all play with the juniors that she coaches.  She came to our wedding on her birthday with a bump 12 years ago and on Monday she hit the big 50, although when I asked the girls who old they thought she was, although reluctant to answer, the numbers M came up with were 39 (like me) or maybe 34 - she was rather chuffed with that!  K got a bit stressed about the ball, so I helped with that, but here's what they made her.

A mini korfball pitch!

On Monday we started the day snuggled on my bed and finished the third Ruby Redfort book.  Much of the rest of the day was devoted to doing things for our anniversary.  M had decided she was going to cook a meal for us and K was making us a present.  M started off by making pudding, which was more of the delicious chocolate orange brownie muffins that she'd made last week. She needs a bit of help with the electric hand mixer, as she's not yet strong enough to hold it with one hand, which does make it a bit tricky.

One of the reasons for A going up to his parents on Sunday, was that he had a meeting on the Monday between us and them, which he could go to from theirs just as easily as for here.  He finished there earlier than anticipated, so came home for lunch and because he was feeling pretty rubbish, took the afternoon off sick (an exceedingly rare event) and disappeared upstairs to sleep.  Before he did that however, we realised we needed milk and K, having offered to go to the shop, discovered that her scooter was not where it should be, nor was it anywhere else in the house.  She and I went to the most likely place for her to have left it: the library.  Fortunately they had found it and put it somewhere safe, waiting for the owner to come and claim it - phew!  Once home M continued with the cooking, namely making bolognaise sauce.  She needed help chopping the onion, although she did some of it, the crushing the garlic, and opening the tins of tomatoes, but she did most of it herself.

I had texted Korfball K to say Happy Birthday and that we had something for her and asking when would be good to meet up and she replied saying that they could pop round that afternoon.  She was delighted with her birthday present from the girls.  She and I had a good natter, while the children played in the garden.

After they'd gone M continued with the cooking.  She had found a recipe in one of our children's cookbooks for 'doughballs' and wanted to make them.  They're not particularly well named, as they're more like savoury muffins, but both A & I really liked them, even though neither of the girls was keen.

"Doughballs"

Then it was time to prepare veggies and cook them and the spaghetti.  M was getting rather tired by this point, but she did peel and chop the carrots, measure out the spaghetti and grate some cheese.  The meal was very good, particularly the pudding.

Chocolate orange brownie muffin & ice cream.

After tea, we were presented with our present from K too.

Me and A!

Today we started a new book, it's one that was recommended by friends a while back and I've been keeping an eye out for it in the library ever since and last week I finally spotted it.  It is Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson.  The girls were initially a bit resistant, as they wanted to get back to the Wombles, but since this is a library book they agreed to give it a go and we are already about a third of the way through, and it's not a particularly short book!  I read a few chapters this morning, then we decided to have a picnic lunch and we took it to the park with us, where I read another couple, then two more this evening before bed.

Picnic in the park.

I had to take M to the doctor this morning as she's come out in a rash all over her face and chest, which is bothering her rather a lot.  We came away with antihistamines, so hopefully that will sort it.

M with her rash.

M had a bit of a moan to me that I don't go out much in the winter because it's too cold and I don't go out in the summer because it's too hot (although M always seems to want to go out in the middle of the day, which I really would rather not!) - I just never go out!  On reflection she's not massively far wrong with that, I'm something of a fair weather outdoor person, but my parameters of 'fair weather' are really rather narrow and I need to make a conscious effort to widen them. 

This afternoon, K & M stayed at the park while I came home and eventually found the shed key to get the step ladder out, M on my shoulders not quite being tall enough.  I held the ladder steady and K picked just under 10lb of plums in about 10 minutes.  They not quite ripe, but not far off, so perfect for jam.

Plum picking!

I came home with the ladder and the plums, leaving the girls in the park.  Neither of them had their watch on, but they were having such a good time with a new friend that I didn't want to tear them away, so told them to pop back to a particular spot every so often and I'd come and find them there if they weren't home by the time I wanted them back.  Interestingly, while they were out, on their own, unsupervised, I read this article, which is something that I feel really strongly about.  Neither of my girls has any desire as yet to go any further afield than the local shops, library or park yet, but I believe that by allowing them freedom to be independent at their own pace now, they'll be more equiped to cope with things when the time comes when they do want to spead their wings further.

Sunny science!

On Thursday K popped in to Pizza Express (on her own, which I was quite surprised about) and asked them if she could possibly have an empty pizza box for a science experiment and they kindly obliged.  After some preparation, which involved painting the bottom of the box black and covering the inside of the lid in aluminium foil, yesterday we tried it out with some marshmallows (and a grape, which M added later).

Our solar oven.

We didn't put it out until about 12.30pm and had problems keeping the lid at a good angle, plus it was rather cloudier than it has been recently.  Consequently it didn't work particularly well, although it was clearly quite hot in there!

Temperature to start with.

Temperature about half an hour later.

I don't think it ever got much hotter than that, but it wasn't consistent because of the clouds.  Anyway, we tried again today and got it started earlier, about 11.30am and although it was, again, quite overcast at times, when the sun was out it was really hot.  After about 4 hours or so, we got the marshmallows out, although to look at the oven didn't seem to have had much effect. 

A rather squidgy solar oven-cooked marshmallow.

K enjoying hers!

Yesterday we went for play and tea with friends across the road, which was fun.  M in particular is getting increasingly frustrated at our thwarted attempts to meet up or plan to meet up with friends now that the schools have broken up.  So many of them seem to have planned out the whole six weeks more or less either through necessity for child-care issues or desire to do so. 

One of the things that K & M love to do with these friends is dressing up, as they've got lots mostly from J's (that's the mum) childhood, she did ballet until her late teens and has the costumes from the shows she was in, as well as other things too.  K in particular likes it because there are things that fit her, which given her height is now quite rare.

K dressing up.

In other news, there's been quite a lot of piano practice and playing going on, mostly from K but some from M too and a bit of French horn, although it's more effort to get her horn out, put the music stand up and so on than to just plonk herself down at the piano, which particularly at the moment in this heat is an issue.  We've also been continuing with Ruby Redfort and K has finished the multiplication and division workbook that she has been working through on her own (it has the answers in the back, so she checks them herself when she has done each exercise), she rather reluctantly let me have a look at it once she'd completed it.

Disappointment and disagreements.

Still hot, still grumpy here.  In fact it was at times a horribly grumpy, shouty house, there were fortunately some good bits too, so we'll focus on them!

M had her French horn lesson, having done some practice this morning.  She's still making good progress and enjoying it. 

We read quite a bit of Ruby Redfort and watched a Springwatch special programme about otters, that we recorded a while back (last year I think!) and while I popped to the shops K & M watched a David Attenborough dvd about meat eaters from his series on mammals.

This afternoon we were quite excited to try out out bubble mixture, that we'd prepared on Monday.  Sadly it was pretty rubbish, the technique suggested of using string tied to a stick, with a washer (or cleaner as M insisted on calling it) to weigh it down in the middle, didn't work at all.  So we tried using our hands with finger and thumb making a circle, I managed to get one really good bubble, but that was it.  No idea if it will help, but we've added some more washing up liquid to the mixture and will give it another try tomorrow.

That may not have worked, but we also had a go at the 'science in seconds' experiment on the same page in the book, which not only worked, but also cheered us up after a signficant grump.  Some milk, with a small amount of food colouring gently poured on to it.

The milk plus food colouring.

Then (it says with a cotton bud, but we've run out, so we used a finger), touch the surface of the liquid with liquid soap and watch what happens.

Milk, food colouring plus liquid soap!

We then looked at the explanation about how the soap weakens the surface tension and causes the colours to whizz around making very pretty patterns.

The instructions and explanation.

We also spotted that M's bee hotel seems to have some occupants.

 In other news K continued with her maths workbook and I looked at M's English one with her, that didn't go so well.  It involved sorting nouns into common and abstract, some of which I didn't have a clue about (darkness? height?), so we sneaked a look at the answers in the back, which was fine.  Then there was an exercise which involved writing a sentence for a number of abstract nouns, but they included things like comfort and despair, which are far more commonly used as verbs than nouns.  In addition M objected to writing sentences about sad things and with words like despair and sympathy that was tricky to put it mildly.  In the end M came up with sentences for some of the words with quite a lot of help and encouragement (and frustration on both our parts), but in the end we left it and went to do the experiment above.  M had made up her mind that she couldn't do it and wasn't really open to the idea of giving it a go.  It really did seem like a very tricky exercise to have on the very first page of a workbook aimed at her age though. 

Yum!

Today M had plans to bake.  She had told me she wanted to make up her own recipe, but when I suggest that she start off with a recipe from a book and then change it rather from starting from scratch, she told me that was what she had meant.  She had already, unknown to me, chosen a recipe from a baking book belonging to K.  We had to pop to the Co-op on the way home from piano lessons, so she could do what she wanted to do. 

M needed a little bit of help, but not much and made Chocolate Brownie muffins, which she decided to add orange zest to, and they were absolutely delicious.

Making the muffins.

The result!

M has also been getting creative with her crocheting again.  She presented me with two crocheted balls, that she has made (crocheted and stuffed) completely freestyle. 

M's crochet balls.

The girls had their piano lessons today.  Usually we go to the park while the other is having their lesson, but as their lessons are in the middle of the day and there is no shade at the park, today we didn't but stayed and M had decided to take the Destination Hogwarts game to play, which I did with each of them.  They also did some music practice, both of them did some piano this morning and M also did some horn practice this afternoon, before they both went to korfball, the last of the term.

It's too hot!

I know lots of people like hot weather, but we are a pale-skinned family who don't!  M in particular is really struggling with it and moaning rather a lot as a consequence, K isn't quite so bad and I manage to moan less than M at least I am finding it a bit much too.  Consequently we aren't going out much at the moment, although at the weekend it was due to the torrential rain, which while it gave some welcome respite from the heat did show that the extension still needs some work.

Raining outside...

....and in!

Over the past few days I have been enjoying doing some little crochet projects, partly to see if I can manage to follow a pattern in US crochet terms - it seems I can!

Some flowers and a leaf!

M has started on a crochet project, which is going to be a birthday present to go with the one I made.  K has also decided she would like to learn as well, so has started on chain stitch and trying to get it even with a good tension.

Today, has been mostly spent reading, both at home and at the library, as both girls have been keen to get cracking with the summer reading challenge.  They've also both practised their music, piano in K's case, French horn in M's.  We have also done some preparation for a science experiment from here: Bigger Bubbles.

The mixture - ready for Wednesday.

Otherwise, M went to the last Brownies of the term and we read a bit more Ruby Redfort.

More variety and death.

We've had another week with plenty of variety.  After the sleepover and Gruffalo production, Tuesday morning was spent mostly sleeping!  M surfaced about 10.30am and K was asleep when I poked my head round the door half an hour later, but I think that I must have woken her then, as she got up very shortly afterwards.  We had piano lessons, quite a lot of discussion about politics and a pretty quiet afternoon, with more Ruby Redfort and then korfball in the evening.  My lovely friend S, who we usually lift share with, as A & J both play korf too, stepped into the breach and did both runs, as it was pointed out to me by the builder that we had a flat tyre.

Wednesday started considerably earlier than Tuesday, as M had her French horn lesson at half past eight!  It started earlier, but much grumpier too, as M really didn't want to get up.  She did eventually get going though.  When we got home, we made our packed lunch and headed to Wollaton Hall to meet up with our friends C, G & F, and two extras who C was looking after for the day.  C and I have been saying we must get together again for well over six months, so it was about time!

M & K posing at Wollaton Hall.

After introducing the others to the climbing tree, we went (rather reluctantly to start with at least in the case of K & M) into the Hall.  It's been ages since we went inside and there have been a few changes and we all really enjoyed it.  After fetching our picnics from the car, and meeting a friend in the courtyard, we headed to the 'beach' and ate it there and the kids all paddled, while C & I crotched and chatted.  We were joined a bit later by some folks from Fun Club, who we discovered have signed up for the 1st Aid course that C is organising in September (K & M are signed up too).

Tiny frog that M spotted at the 'beach'.

 We returned to the climbing tree for a while, where another mum and daughter turned up and after a while she asked if we were home educators too!  After a while we headed down to the fairly newly opened playground for a play there, before heading home, but not before agreeing to meet up again soon!  K & M had their swimming lesson as usual and we had a look to see if we could find any more cherries, but sadly we only found a small handful and they were really sour.

Today has been really hot!  We've also had the kitchen fitter back, now that the replacement worktop has finally arrived, so hopefully by tomorrow evening it really will be done (although there are still a few bits for the builder to finish off), only just over a month late!

Today we read more Ruby Redfort, both girls have been reading their library books and have done music practice, as well as playing, K also did some more of her maths workbook.  We also watched the final episode of The Human Body, which is about death.  Both girls were a bit apprehensive about watching it but decided that they would.  One of the main things it focused on was a man, Herbie, who had an inoperable tumour and had chosen to die at home and showed him over the last months and eventually final minutes of his life and his death.  K in particular got rather emotional, but not distressed and when I asked said that she was glad that she'd watched it.  Another thing that was shown was open-heart surgery (K shut her eyes for this part), which is quite timely, as my Dad is waiting for just such an operation.  The episode sparked a conversation about euthanasia, as it is brought up by Herbie at one point, although not using the word.  I made a point of asking K in particular if she wanted to talk about any of it, but she didn't.  I thought that it did a very good job of demystifying death and making the idea of it a lot less frightening.  Sad as it can be to think about, with two great grandparents in their nineties, it is something that K & M are going to have to deal with at some point probably in the not too distant future.

We finished the day with a much more cheerful dvd, How To Train Your Dragon, borrowed from C, at her insistence, which both girls enjoyed.

The production!

K & M were very excited and "a bit nervous, but not anxious" about going for a sleepover at their friend C's.  The three of them, plus Z & S, had a sleepover in the garden. 

Home for the evening!

They had a great time, having taken swimming costumes to go on a water slide (tarpaulin out on their nicely sloping long grassy bit of garden, add water and a bit of soapiness and Bob's your uncle!).  They cooked their own tea (sausages and burgers) on the campfire.  Unsurprisingly there wasn't a huge amount of sleep that happened, and that was probably a major factor in M feeling rather under the weather today (she also really doesn't like smoke!).  I also had a phone call at about 9pm from K to tell me that she'd hurt her hand while doing the water slide, she thought I ought to know, even though there was nothing she wanted or indeed I could do about it!

The five girls have been planning and preparing something to perform at this Asfordby for quite some time, including making costumes and learning lines.  Today was the big day and with a bit of help they arranged the stage and the chairs for the audience.

The ensemble of The Gruffalo!

K was the Snake (and narrator), S was the Mouse, C, the Gruffalo, Z the Fox and M was the Owl (and narrator).  They had an audience of mostly 2-6 year olds, who are a pretty tough crowd to please, but they sat really quietly throughout the whole thing, so clearly they did a really good job.  The costumes were made by the cast, K & M had made the fox costume a while ago and they made M's wings, sewing on the vast majority of the 'feathers' (I did a couple of rows to help out) and C made her costume (which was so good that one member of the audience found it a bit too scary!).

"A Snake saw the Mouse and the Mouse looked good"

'"It's Owl!" said the Mouse, "Why Owl, hello!"'

"Fox took one look at the Gruffalo"

 After the play it was Sports Day, although the only thing that either of my girls took part in was the relay sack race in M's case and nothing in K's.  Unheard of for Asfordby, they wanted to leave early (mostly tiredness I think), so we came home.

S's mum, I, mentioned that S has signed up for the library reading scheme, so K wanted to go straight to the library when we got home, so that she could sign up too, so we did that.  The third Ruby Redfort book that K had asked them to get in had arrived, so we started on that this afternoon too.  Then K & M had a much needed early night!

Some home days.

Thursday and Friday we had a couple of days with nothing on the calendar apart from Scouts for K on Thursday evening and cricket for M on Friday evening.  We had a list of things to try to get done, most of which we managed, including some piano and French horn practice, workbooks, more of the shared story for M and me, as well as some housework (some got done) and making a cherry pie.

It was very tasty!

For K in particular having a list of things to get done in her own time seems to be working well, so we've talked about continuing with that.  I asked if she thought doing one for each day would be better or if she thought one for the week would be better, to which she replied that she thought either would be okay and that I could write one for her and then she could add things to it.

M started one of the workbooks we bought on Wednesday, looking at nouns ending in vowels and plurals of words that end in o.  The latter was really rather tricky and I didn't get them all right - plural of domino: dominos or dominoes?  M took some convincing that using a dictionary (or other reference book) to complete an exercise isn't cheating, in the way that it might be if you were doing a test.  She insisted on having a go (or guess probably more accurately) first, then I said whether I agreed with her or not, before we used a dictionary to check.

We also watched the penultimate episode of The Human Body, which is about ageing and once more fascinating.  We also continued with The Wombles and while I read K & M were busy with their new Lego.

M's monkey/toucan chimeras!

A arrived home on Thursday evening, just in time to come with us to take K to Scouts, which was at the local Scout campsite for 'wide games' (i.e. games played over a wide area).  It's right next to a fairly new (still under construction) county park on the site of a former colliery.  A, M & I had a lovely early evening walk there, before returning to pick K up.

Today, Saturday, A went to the England v India test match at Trent Bridge with a college friend and his young son.  They had another child ticket anyway (it works out cheaper), so since M has started playing cricket, she was offered the chance to go.  She didn't want to go for the whole time, but I dropped her off pretty much straight after lunch, expecting to be summoned to pick her up an hour or so later (partly because she'd already been moaning about being too hot and their seats had no shade).  She stayed until they all came back though (it had clouded over somewhat, so that probably helped), not quite the close of play, so that they could go and play a bit of cricket themselves in the park, before the friends headed back up to Durham.

K & I had an afternoon just the two of us, which is unusual.  We played The Game of Life Adventures Edition, which I haven't played for a while, although K had played it by herself earlier this week.

Tomorrow the girls are going for a sleepover with C, which they are very much looking forward to.  It'll be very strange without either of them here!

Different days.

Yesterday the girls each had a piano lesson, with a trip to the park while the other had theirs.  We also continued with The Wombles, which is going down very well, but the thing that K & M were looking forward to most was their friends A & J coming for a play and tea before going to korfball together.  As it happened korfball was cancelled, because it poured with rain, so they had a bit of extra playing time instead.  At M's request A & J brought their musical instruments with them, which meant a trumpet in J's case and both a flute and a violin in A's.  While I was making the compulsory pizza (the would be an outcry if there wasn't pizza for tea with A & J), there was music made of varying tunefulness (is that a word?), according to who was playing which instrument at the time, but they certainly seemed to enjoy themselves.

J & M with each other's instrument.

They also did a treasure hunt, which A made up and set out for the others, resulting in finding the treasure that I provided (strawberries).  After tea of pizza and fruit kebabs, they played outside for a while.  S (A & J's mum) is working full-time at the moment, so she joined us later and we had a catch up while the girls were playing after tea.

Today we started off with a lovely present from M.  She has been quietly getting on with crocheting, mostly doing things in her own way with a combination of the couple of stitches that she knows (chain stitch and double crochet) and one she made up herself and she created a lovely flower, no pattern, just doing her own thing.

M's crochet flower!

M had her French horn lesson this morning before we all headed into town.  K was supposed to be ready to go when we got back from M's lesson, however, she wasn't even dressed, so it took a while for us to get going.  We didn't have that much to do in town though, so it wasn't a problem.  Both girls had decided that they wanted to spend some of their money on some Lego, so all three of bought some (in my case it was for friends' son, who was the second birthday that I had recently forgotten about!).  We also bought each of the girls a couple of workbooks, which they'd asked for.  They each chose one English and one maths one, so we'll see how we get on with them.

After lunch and ice-skating, where we saw lots of friends, we headed home via Hotel Chocolat, where we all spent a bit more money (we always go in there when we go into town, because they usually have something to taste, but don't often buy things).  K & M really wanted to get home though, so they could open their Lego sets and get building, which they did while I popped round to a neighbour to help with some French banking and then they continued with it while I read some Wombles, before we headed to swimming.

Last week we had a look at the cherry trees near the swimming pool and were very disappointed at what we saw, but we took a tub with us again this week and actually managed to pick just over a pound after their lesson, which was better than I thought we'd manage.

Enough for a pie!

After tea and getting ready for bed we had another chapter of The Wombles, before the girls headed upstairs. 

Out all day.

This morning A left for work at the office at his normal time, but is going straight from there to the airport this afternoon, heading to Berlin and not back until Thursday.  It's unusual for him to be travelling as much as he has been lately and even more unusual it's more than just a night or two, but after this trip I think he's home for a while at least.

The girls and I were out pretty much the whole day too, with an LLL toddler meeting this morning.

M, aged 9, in a toddler car!

We went straight from there to Wollaton Hall, where we met up with our friends E, C, L & J.  As we drove in towards the carpark, we went past some of the herd of red deer, so having met the others in the carpark, M & I went to have a look at them a bit closer and we talked about how you can tell how old they are from looking at their antlers.

Some of the red deer.

After having our packed lunches, we had a look at some more of the wildlife...

...like this little frog that C found.

We all had an ice-cream while we we for a walk around the lake, until we got to the little 'beach', where we stopped for a quite a while and the children got delightly wet and grubby.

The smaller people got their feet (and in some cases shorts/trousers) wet.

E & I made the most of the opportunity to talk to the girls about how to deal with disagreements with friends, which they sometimes struggle with with each other.

M, C & L decided to go on ahead to the climbing tree, which we had deliberately not headed for earlier, it not being very fair on J, whose broken arm means that he would have been rather left out.  E, K, J & I stayed a bit longer by/in the lake and between us we managed to rescue a damsel(fly) in distress.  It had got stuck on the water and the water surface tension had also stuck two of it's wings together, so it couldn't dry them out.  Happily, by gently sliding a till receipt between them, we managed to unstick the wings and soak up a bit of the water, so after about five minutes or so it was able to fly away.

The damsel in distress.

After a quick trip to the climbing tree, it was time to head home.  Where we watched another episode of The Human Body on dvd, which was about the brain and fascinating!

We also continued with our new book, which we started yesterday:  The Wombles!  Although I remember watching the tv programme as a child, I don't think I ever read the books and we're really enjoying the first one so far.  It also sparked a bit of geography, as all Wombles are named after places that they either choose or stick their finger on at random in Great Uncle Bulgaria's atlas, so K decided to find them.  She's only found Cholet and Tomsk so far, but is planning to look for them all.

This evening we took M to Brownies and then K & I listened to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and The Archers on the radio.  On The Archers, Brian and Jennifer Alridge have just got a new kitchen and K was delighted to hear that Brian wasn't happy with it (as she and M still aren't happy about ours, which unlike the Alridge's still isn't finished), and found it very funny when he said that the oven and the fridge had been communicating.

Unexpected company.

This morning M did some French horn practice, for the first time in a few days, but is still sounding pretty good.  We had a bit of a manic moment when, having agreed that A could have the car to go to cricket, we realised that K's ballet was not at the usual walkable venue, so he had to rush to get ready, so I could drop him off at the club after dropping K off at ballet about 10 minutes late.  It all worked out fine in the end though, there were only three of them at K's ballet lesson, I think mostly because of the exams that were the cause of the venue change.

After picking K up from ballet, I decided that we would go and see what there was at the Food Festival event happening on The Avenue.  On the way we bumped into our friends and neighbours, J, A & K who were on the way to take K to a friend's birthday party.  We agreed that we'd try to meet up at the teenager playground a bit later and after having a look around and buying a bison burger for our lunch, we did so.  After a play in the playground, we all headed back to where there was fruit kebab making for free and K, M & A each made and ate one, with melted chocolate drizzled over it.  We then headed back through the park to our house, with the girls running on ahead to climb a favourite tree.  Once there they were reluctant to leave, so I mentioned to J, that what I would sometimes do is leave the girls with instructions to be home by a certain time and asked if she was up for that and coming back for a cuppa.  A is about 6 months older than M, but with little sister who is 6, so hasn't played out on her own (without an adult, I mean) yet.  J & I had a cuppa and a muffin (I'd made some more raspberry and chocolate ones - yum!) before the girls arrived back, shortly before the agreed time, but without A's scooter, so she and M dashed back to get it.

Once back the three of them made some more fruit kebabs, which was really quite handy as we've got loads of fruit in at the moment, so of which really needs eating!  I did also melt some chocolate for them to have with them.  The girls then played in the garden for a while before J went to collect her K.  While she was gone the girls asked if they could change into swimming costumes and make a water slide, which I said was fine with me, but they needed to wait to check that it was okay with J too.  It was, so they had a whale of a time sliding down a very wet slide and splashing and squirting each other with water, until it was time for J, A & K to head home.

After tea I read the last three chapters of the book that we're reviewing for my friend, T.  It had a very slightly unsatisfying ending, but only really in the sentence that it is perhaps a little bit too obvious that it's the first of a series (a trilogy as I understand it) rather than a stand alone book.  We definitely want to read the next one though!

Eyes and outdoors.

We had to be up this morning for optician's appointments for eye tests both the girls and me, so last night I left one of our many books about the human body on the kitchen table open to a page about the eye.  When I came downstairs K was sitting reading it, but unfortunately hadn't got as far as getting herself breakfast, so I had to chivvy her along or we'd have ended up being late.  We did return to it after the appointments though, so it worked nicely.  While at the optician we got to see a photo of the inside of the back of my eye and the optician talked us through the different parts, and told us what she was looking for and it was interesting to see a very similar photo in the book when we got home.

M at the opticians...

...and K.

We also had a look at some optical illusions on the same page, including one about perspective and one that demonstrates the eye's blind spot where the optic nerve enters the eyeball.

After we'd had a look at this K disappeared and I found her doing some more of her grammar workbook, but M wasn't particularly keen to carry on with our new routine this morning.  I pointed out that I had written my next installment though and she had a look and wrote a new bit herself.  We took it in turn to read out the parts we'd each written while I was hanging the washing out.  M's new part was quite short, but the final word she'd written 'no' instead of 'know', so I reminded her about there/their/they're and pointed out that this was another example of homophones and wrote a few sentences for her to choose the correct one out of no and know.  After this I read some more of our book and we also continued with the Kentwell guide book, reading about 'Childer', as well as 'Cooking' and 'Dairy'.

Over lunch, M asked if we could go to Rushcliffe Country Park and K was keen too.  They both really wanted to take their bikes so that they could go on the BMX track there.  Unfortunately we couldn't fit them in the car, even with one of the back seats down, and I wasn't up for attempting to attach the bike rack (I might have managed it, but possibly wouldn't have then had time to go!).  There was a bit of a discussion/stand off about whether to go to the country park anyway, or just to go for a bike ride from home.  We went for the country park option and it really was lovely (although a bit hot!) there.  One of the local school has an 'insect day' as it's known here, so it wasn't as quite as we usually find it during school time, but it's a bit place.  We'd taken various things with us including M's cricket bat and a ball, so M and I played with them for a bit, while K went into the playground and we also had a go with our kite.

K's turn.

As it was rather hot, we decided to go for a walk in the shady woody bit and do the ladybird trail.

The start of the trail.

We didn't have the identification sheets, although have done it with one in the past.  On the way we spotted various minibeasts and stopped to have a closer look, even though we haven't got a clue what they were.

Like this one!

 We finished off in the sensory garden, which seems to have more things each time we go.  We couldn't stay as long as we'd have liked here, because we had to get back for M's cricket, next time we must remember to head here first!

Listening to where a sound is coming from.

Putting the cap on the mushroom - trickier than it looks!

Pan stacking puzzle.

We just had time for M to get changed and K and I to get something to take to do while M did her cricket.  I did some crochet and she read a library book which was a play of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  After tea we had bit more of our book before bed, nearly done now!

In other news, I'm getting a bit fed up of both K & M stropping at me due to things that are not my fault!  This morning it was K because she couldn't find her t-shirt and as we had an appointment I insisted that she choose a different one to wear because we needed to leave the house.  This afternoon it was M, because she had got suncream on her carseat.  The girls had asked if they could put it on on the way to the country park to save time and I said yes, but apparently this made it my fault when things didn't go entirely to plan.  I go so fed up that we very nearly turned round and came straight home, but I'm glad we didn't.