A busy three weeks!

Well having promised myself that I was going to get back into blogging more regularly, three weeks have whizzed past since my last post.  The school holidays here disrupted our routine quite a lot, but then we did get to see lots of schooly friends over the fortnight which was lovely.

We had friends to stay the first weekend of the month.  We played numerous card and board games with them and went to Belton House, which the girls and I had been to several times previously but it was the first time for A and our friends.  We went into the house for the first time, although K cut her time inside short as she got upset at gory paintings.  The adventure playground has been completely redone since we were last there and is absolutely brilliant.  We will certainly be returning once the schools are all back to make the most of it when it's not so busy.

Monday 4th was World Rat Day which unfortunately we had to mark by taking Bea to the vets, as she'd had been bleeding when weeing.  Fortunately the antibiotics the vet prescribed cleared it up. After lunch I took M to Spring Scientists at the university (it is spring this year rather than summer as has always been the case in the past), which she enjoyed.  K, sadly, is now too old so she stayed home alone and I was rather impressed that she did get through the little list of jobs I left for her to do while M and I were out.

Tuesday 5th was Fun Club, which had the theme of product design.  The children came up with ideas for what they wanted to make and then attempted to produce the item, using cardboxes, tubes, eggboxes, sellotape and glue.  M, with the help of her friend L, made a rather impressive two storey playground for the rats.

M & L with their ratty creation.

Having now changed gymnastics to Thursdays rather than Tuesdays, we can no longer have to rush off, so could go to the park for a play with friends afterwards.  This involved swapping various items of clothing and pretending to be each other, accompanied by much giggling.

We had friends, A & J round for lunch on Wednesday 6th followed by a trip into town to the Dice Cup where we were joined by their Mum, S when she finished work.  We played a couple of the same games as we had on our previous visit (Ghost Blitz and Ingenious) and some new ones.

Tsuro

This is a tile game, in which you add tiles and the move your counter along the path that extends with each tile.  Eventually every path leads off the board and the winner is the one to stay on the board the longest.

The surprisingly difficult Spit It Out

Each person takes it in turn to roll a pair of dice and then answer six (mostly reasonably easy, although quite US-centric questions).  You then get points based on how many you get right or wrong.  The twist though, is that for two of the questions (those numbers which you rolled) you must try to answer correctly and for the other four you have to give a coherent (so if the answer is a person, you must give a name as your answer) but incorrect answer.

Like Chinese Whispers but with drawing.

Telestrations we did not play competitively on the recommendation of the Dice Cup man.  It was hilarious!  Each player draws a card and the roll of a dice determines which word or phrase to draw.  Each player has a wipe clean flip book and writes the word or phrase on the first page, then the timer is started and everyone draws what they have written.  When the time is up everyone passes their book on and looks at the picture in front of them.  On the next page they write what they think is depicted and pass on the book again.  The next person reads what it written, turns the page again and then draws what they read.  This continues until each person gets their own flip book back.  Then at the end you show everybody what was written and drawn.  Sometimes the end result is pretty close to the start, but not always!  On one occasion the starting word of tank ended up as being interpreted as elephant, which resulted in everyone in gales of laughter.

Sushi Go!

This one is, as you can see in the photo a 'pick and pass card game', you collect various combinations of different sorts of sushi to win points.  We'd actually played this before, when Imagination Gaming done sessions at our local library and it's quite fun.

Thursday afternoon we went to friends and the children played in the garden while us mums set the world to rights.  Friday 8th was  we went to a meet up at Wollaton Park.  It was a lovely day and we saw from friends we haven't seen for quite a while.  The children played games, climbed trees and went off exploring and it was warm enough for the mums to sit on picnic blankets and natter.

On Friday evening, we headed down to stay with my Mum for the weekend.  We went for a lovely long, if extremely muddy, walk with Uncle M and his dog Treacle and visited Great Grandma.  K had finally finished Great Grandma's birthday present (her birthday is in January but she wanted to give the present in person rather than post it).

Great Grandma's present.

Monday 11th was Old Dalby and it was a board games session.  K & M played Concept (which someone else had taken along, although we do have it ourselves too) with a friend.

On Tuesday 12th we had friends, J, A & K who only live over the road, but who we hadn't seen for a while, over to play.  A was going to a mutual friend's for a sleepover that evening, so we caught up with yet another friend we hadn't seen since Christmas for a while when she and her mum came to collect A.

The girls and I went back to see Granny again on Wednesday and Thursday.  Partly because school holidays were earlier down there, so we could go to Stratford and visit the Shakespeare properties without the hoards and partly because Uncle Mike was on holiday for the week, so we could see him.  On the Wednesday morning we joined Great Grandma at the regular weekly coffee morning at the sheltered housing complex where she lives and M took some lemon biscuits that she had make on Monday and decorated on Tuesday to share, which went down very well.  On the way home, we called in at the library, which has recently moved buildings and there happened to be the official opening ceremony with representatives of the local council, the local history society and the library.  The local history person, was the head of sixth form when I was at school, a lovely bloke who was very supportive when I had a difficult time when my Mum wasn't well, so it was lovely to see him.  The library now shared a building with the town museum, the town being Roman in origin.

M the Roman soldier!

In the afternoon we went for another good walk with Uncle Mike and Treacle.

When we 'do' Shakespeare, we usually visit Mary Arden's Farm, Shakespeare's Birthplace or both, but rarely the others.  However this time, partly since it's the 400th anniversary of his death so we thought there might be extra things to see or do, we started off with Anne Hathaway's Cottage.

We started off by listening to recordings of some sonnets in a willow arbour.

M choosing a sonnet.

We had a brisk woodland walk and the girls posed in one of the willow sculptures before we went into the cottage.

There was a life-sized paper sculpture of a Shakespeare character in one of the bedrooms, which we identified on our second attempt as Antonio (we thought Shylock to start with, so the right play).  We found out that there were more of these sculptures around the other properties and K was very keen to try to find them all.  We didn't manage that, as some of them were no longer there, having been taken to Liverpool we were told.

Next stop was Mary Arden's Farm.  We chatted to an older lady who was making a basket out of willow, who was impressed to hear that M and I had also made some things out of willow.  She told us that babies were given rattles made from willow to chew on when teething, which would have helped as the bark has analgesic properties, which aspirin is derived from.

Willow weaving.

We also talked about the milk cow who had a fairly young calf and about why they were tethered in the pen near to each other, but not close enough to allow the calf to suckle.  They are kept like that for a while before milking time, so that there is some there to be milked for the people, but they did both look pretty content.

The calf was having a snooze.

M wanted to watch the bird of prey display/talk, which was with an eagle owl this time.  K came for part of it, but when the man started talking about what the punishment for flying a bird of prey above your station would be, she made a sharp exit as she really doesn't like anything gory.  It was a wise move.

We found two more paper people, one of which was very obvious, the other less so, which I was rather chuffed that I managed to identify first go.

Puck in the gift shop.

Dogberry in one of the barns.

 After a pub lunch, we moved on to the town properties.  We parked up and then walked first to Hall's Croft where K completed a questionaire about Tudor medicine and M found mice around the place.  We couldn't visit Nash's House & New Place, as they are closed at the moment, although due to reopen all done up in the summer.  We did however visit Harvard House for the first time and the girls decided to do the offered worksheet there too, so we looked for the clues to answer questions including ones about food, colour of clothing, places discovered by the west during Tudor times.

Finally we moved on to the Birthplace.  This turned out to be rather more eventful than anticipated, as the girls had gone on ahead of me into the garden, while I went to the loo when the fire alarm went off!  It was just a drill, but we had to evacuate and the girls and I had to leave through different exits on opposite sides of the place.  I wasn't too worrying, but was slightly uncomfortable because I didn't know how bothered they would be, so I mentioned to one of the staff who was very good and a short time later they appeared, coming down the road with another member of staff.  They told me that they'd been a little bit worried but not much.  It wasn't much longer before we were allowed back in, so we went into the house and had a chat with one of the staff, who has been there since we've been visiting.  It's a shame but the Shakespeare Aloud actors no longer seem to stick around very long any more, but we did watch a speech from Much Ado before moving on.  I had promised the girls a treat in the café, but unfortunately it was closed.  Instead we went and had a nose in the RSC theatre giftshop, followed by a treat in the Fourteas.  We then went back to Granny's for a while and tea before heading home.

Friday we had other friends round and played a variety of board and card games with them.  At the weekend, K & I went into town to do some shopping (a bargain pair of dungarees for her less than a fiver down from £49.50! and sandals for me as mine have died), while M & A did some gardening.

This week we are getting back into our more usual routine, with swimming, French horn and piano lessons, along with gymnastics, Scouts and korfball.  We've also been to a Not Back to School picnic, an additional one to the usual September event, which seemed busier than ever, helped undoubtedly by the lovely weather.

In addition to all this there has been the usual things going on.  K's still writing her book (now on chapter 3) and crafting.  She has found books in the library and recently made this dog, called Sky, from a pattern in one of them.  She's also working on various quilling projects and has bought some material from a shop in the indoor market for something that I'm not allowed to know about yet.

Sky the chihuahua.

M has been doing quite a lot of baking, including cinnamon rolls, flapjack and gingerbread.  Lately she is much more inclined to search for recipes for things she wants to make in books and online rather than sticking to tried and tested favourites.  She has also started writing a (short) story, by hand with illustrations in an exercise book, which I have been allowed to read the first chapter of.  Her handwriting is still a work in progress and I will be encouraging her to keep an eye on when she uses capital letters, but I was impressed with how few spelling mistakes there were and the punctuation was good too.  Another thing M has started doing is drawing.  She has borrowed a book from a friend and has been having a go with reasonable success, I'm not sure if she's followed the stages suggested in there or just tried to copy the end result, but she's enjoying herself with it.

Both girls are still doing maths on Khan Academy and have also been enjoying playing Fireboy and Water Girl together on the computer, which involves problem solving and teamwork, along with some maths.  I have been reading to the girls again quite a lot, having got a stack of books out of the library, most of them featuring in 1001 Children's Book You Must Read Before You Grow Up.  So, I've nearly finished Pollyanna and before that we read A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively, which is set in Lyme Regis where we went on holiday last year, and the first Artemis Fowl book, there may have been more but I can't remember just now.

I have also been crocheting again, and finished a cardigan for myself.  It's not a fitted as it's supposed to be, but that's okay.  I've now started on a much, much smaller cardigan for a little'un and unsurprisingly it's coming along a lot faster!

I hadn't realised just how busy the last few weeks had been!  Once again I resolve to be better at keeping this blog up to date, but I won't hold my breath...