Things that have been happening.

Things have been pootling along quietly here lately.  We've been taking it pretty easy and not really doing much outside of the usual weekly things (piano and French horn lessons, swimming and korfball, ballet and Scouts for K).  M's still very much under the weather, to the extent that she hasn't been going to Brownies mostly (she tried last week but I had a call that she was feeling dizzy and grotty again and wanted to come home after half an hour), I think we will be paying another visit to the doctor soon, who said to come back if she wasn't better in a month or so about three weeks ago.

Things that have been happening: 

K has been writing her thank you cards.  She always puts a lot of thought into the design and from the glimpses that I've seen of the inside, and the occasional questions how to spell words, she's also writing more than just 'Dear X, Thank you for the Y.  Love from K', which is definitely progress on previous years.

The car has 'Pull Me' written on it - to reveal the Thank You.

K & M have both starting using www.studyladder.co.uk, which quite a few folk had recommended online and a friend had said that her children were enjoying it.  There is quite a lot that you can do on there for free, so I asked the girls to have an explore and see what they thought.  Initially M wasn't really interested having looked at one small section, but after K had had more of a look, they have both got quite keen and indeed have continued to be so.  I don't cough up for many things online, but have done so for this.  Time will tell if it continues to go down well, but for now they are asking me to set them tasks each day.

I've been continuing with The Wombles with M and we're now on the final book in the set The Wombles Go Around the World, so I think we'll be having a look on our globe to see where Orinoco, Bungo, Tomsk and Wellington visit.

K has also been doing some more maths, continuing with worksheet that's I make to go with this book.  We're onto the final section 'The Data Gang', so she's done a worksheet on average, including the brilliant rhyme that I saw on Facebook a while back and made a mental note about.

Hey diddle diddle, the median's the middle

You add and divide for the mean

The mode is the one that you see the most

And the range is the difference between

We have also, finally, picked up again with the Usborne History of Britain books, with Tudors and Stuarts.  It's been so long since we started it, that we went back over some of the pages we'd already read, but have now read about the English Civil War and Charles II has just come to the throne.

M has decided that she does want to learn French, which is something that I am very happy about, but also find very difficult.  As an ex-French and German teacher, unlike with other subjects, I have preconceived ideas about this that makes it tricky for me to see things in a different way, but we will get there!  

Today is my lovely mother-in-law's birthday, which has sadly gone completely unacknowledged by my father-in-law, who is ever increasingly living in his own little bubble with dementia.  Our parcel did arrive in time though (I only got it in the post yesterday afternoon, so was a bit worried it wouldn't), with home-made chocolates (by me), a card (by K) and crochet decoration (by M) and a cousin of A's called round and took her some flowers too.

M's freehand crochet decoration.

Finally, we (A, the girls and I) went to a concert, as recommended by M's French horn teacher.  It was a brass ensemble he had been recommended.  They were absolutely brilliant, both musically and in terms of the entertainment value.  They're called Mnozil Brass and are an Austrian septet, who play, sing and are just hilarious.  Do check them out on youtube, here and here for example.

Yet another long weekend away!

That makes the fourth in the space of a month and a bit, so after a Christening in Durham, a wedding in Dorset, a visit to A's side of the family in Kent, this time it was a visit to my side of the family near Wokingham.  The reason for the trip was the La Leche League GB National Workshop, which I've missed for the previous two years (it's always around this time of year, so there's always the possibility of it clashing with K's birthday).  It was on Saturday, but A took the afternoon off on Friday and we travelled down then to my Uncle B & Aunty R's, who were putting us up.  While I was at the workshop (which was excellent, and I met two online friends for the first time), A, K & M walked and then took the train and the bus to spend the day at Legoland, where they had a fantastic time and although they got rather damp from various rides were very fortunate not to get wet from above.

Over our evening meal with B & R, I found it very entertaining when M was talking with R about some little glass pebbles that R had in a couple different places.  M has a few and she was telling R about the ones she had, which colours and that she didn't have any in the colours that R does.  She was so clearly hoping desperately that R would give her one of each colour; fishing, but not asking outright as she would have done a couple of years ago.  R did indeed give her a few of the pebbles and M was chuffed to bits.

On Sunday B & R were leaving us for their annual meet up with B's siblings and spouses (so my parents and other aunts & uncles on that side), so we said our goodbyes in the morning.  We were off to meet up with one of my oldest 'computer Mummy friends', another K (I'll call her Kd here to differentiate) and her family, along with our mutual friend, C who we met for the first time a few years back.  When Kd mentioned on Facebook that she was going to celebrate an old friend, I's, 40th birthday about 18 months ago and the friend had the same name as my cousin (Uncle B's son), who I knew was about the same age and was pretty sure lived where she was heading for the celebration.  You will probably have guessed that it was indeed my cousin, who it turned out was the best friend from school of Kd's husband, ex-boyfriend of Kd and had introduced them to each other.  Kd and I have 'known' each other since our eldest children were tiny and they are now 11, and as toddlers they looked freakily similar and even now you might take them for siblings.  It was so lovely to meet them all and after very little time indeed it was as though we'd known each other 'properly', and not just online, for years.  The children got on really well too (always a bit of a relief!) and we were particularly taken with Kd's absolutely gorgeous cats.

C, me and Kd.

On Monday, A had a work meeting not far from B & R's (he stays with them a couple of times a year when he has meetings at the head office of the company that has just taken over the one he works for) and was then heading straight to Brussels.  The girls and I had agreed that we would go (again) to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, fortunately we had checked the night before, as we found out that it's not open on a Monday!  After some searching online and looking at where was near our route home, I found that Bletchley Park was not far off the motorway at a sensible distance between B & R's and home, so slightly reluctantly the girls agreed we should go there instead.  It turned out to be an excellent choice.  I think K & M are probably the perfect age to take at 9 & 11, as they still get in free being under 12, but are old enough to get a lot out of it.

There were multimedia guides to use as we went round, which had a family tour option as well as the adult one, and it was excellent.  As well as description of the what happened in the different buildings around the place, there were clips about various different people and others to put the work done there into the context of the war and various puzzles and codes (admittedly mostly fairly easy ones) to have a go at too.  Among other things we looked at all of the stages that it took to get from the coded Morse Code messages that were picked up to the decoded and then translated from German and then sort of disguised to look as though the information were gathered by a spy (code-named Boniface), so that the Germans wouldn't realise that the Allies were able to decrypt their messages and about how that information was used.

The office in the library of the mansion.

K in the Post Office.

The Memorial to the works at Bletchley.

A busy few days.

Tuesday was Fun Club which was a science session.  There were various things to watch or have a go at, including dissecting a heart (which predictably K & M steered well clear of) and making a model of a lung (using a plastic bottle, balloon, plastic bag and elastic band - unfortunately the neck of the bottles we took were too big, so we'll be having a go at that one at home).  The girls also had korfball in the evening.

Wednesday was even busier.  We started off with a trip to the dentist, followed by M's horn lesson.  Then after an early lunch we got the bus into town to go to the monthly HE ice-skating meet up (our first since July, as it's not on in August and M was still getting over her broken wrist for the September one).  After skating we walked up to Knit Nottingham, so I could get some wool to get started on my next crochet project, a jumper for M.  Then it was back home for a bit of a rest, and K finished off the worksheet that I made for her on the subject of volume, before swimming lessons, then tea and the final of The Great British Bake Off.

Today was also busy but in a home-based way.  This morning we had the piano tuner coming first thing and a friend coming round to drop off books for me to take to the LLL Leader Day this weekend.  The piano tuner finished just in time for us to dash out for the girls' piano lessons.  After lunch our friends E, C, L & J popped round for a cuppa and play.  Among all this we've been doing household jobs, cleaning and tidying, and M has had most of the books on dinosaurs that we have out (and we have a lot), looking through them in preparation for the lapbook she has decided she'd like to make.  Finally this evening K has been out at Scouts.

Birthday!

Hard as it is for me to believe, my first baby is 11 today.  She's had a lovely day, despite the awful weather.  We met up with friends at Belton House and although the children would have spent the whole time in the adventure playground even though it was raining the whole time, they made do with the last half an hour before we came home.  K has received almost everything on the birthday present list I asked her to write in case I was asked for ideas, which was very modest and included a bike helmet for her sister who needed a new one. When speaking to Granny this afternoon, when Granny said she'd have to start thinking about what she might like for Christmas, K told her she didn't think she'd need any Christmas presents because she had everything she wanted now.  Both K & M have been having a go with Rush Hour, a logic puzzle game that she had from Granny & Big Grandad, which she's very pleased with.

Me & K aged about 7 months.

K last month.

Blood and maths

We've had some ups and downs since getting back from Kent.  The lowest thing was M having some blood taken for testing following a trip to the doctor.  Despite some local anaesthetic cream, it clearly really hurt (she later said it was nearly as bad as breaking her wrist).  It was very difficult, we teach our children that they have control of what happens to their own bodies, but although M was screaming for the nurse to stop, that would have been worse because she'd then have had to go through the process again, so I had to overrule her, because I knew that was the better option even though it felt wrong.  I really hope we don't have to go through that again.

Apart from the usual weekly things (piano lessons, French horn lesson, swimming, Brownies, Scouts, although korfball was cancelled), K had a catch up ballet lesson (she usually goes on a Saturday, so has missed the last two) we went to friends on Tuesday for a play and tea for the girls and multiple cuppas and chat for the mums, and we went into town on Wednesday. 

K in particular has been getting quite mathsy this week.  She's enjoying continuing with coding on Khan Academy and has outstripped my admittedly very limited knowledge, so we're having to try to work out together what the problem is when she calls on me for help.  Both girls like playing some of the games on mathsisfun.com including "classic breakout" and highest level that any of us has reached involves trying to hit numbered bricks in the order of the Fibonacci series.  I gave K the numbers on a piece of paper, so she could try to do so and when she'd had a go, asked if she could work out how the sequence worked and she did without any help at all.  This led a couple of days later to exploring Fibonacci some more by watching a series of videos, again on Khan Academy, called Spirals, Fibonacci and being a plant which were fascinating! 

In other news, we've finished another Wombles book (The Wombles at Work), the girls and A have been acting out Mr Men and Little Miss books with various cuddly toys, M is working on making an activity book having been working through one that she was given as a present a while back and I've finished another crochet top, this time for K. 

Down on the farm.

A has done an awful lot of driving over the past few weeks.  We shared the driving back from Dorset last Sunday (unusual because I generally fall asleep in the car), but after a couple of hours rest A then drove up to north Wales to his parents'.  His mum (aka Nana) was having a week's respite holiday from caring for his dad (aka Little Grandad), who suffers from Alzheimers, for the first time.  He stayed overnight and brought her back here on the Monday morning.  We had a couple of days here and then A drove Nana and the girls down to Kent, while I went by train.

Nana was staying with her brother (Uncle P) and sister-in-law (Aunty M) on their farm very close to where they grew up and we stayed in a self-catering place nearby, although we didn't spend much time there.

It was compact and bijou!

The village sign.

We had a couple of days out, but first went out 'lookering', a new word to me, which means counting the sheep and making sure they're all okay.  On Thursday, we went with Nana and Uncle P to Dungeness and K & M paddled in the sea in the third place in the September.

K in the sea.

On the very shingly beach.

Dungeness.

Nana & A outside it.

We just about managed to dash to to the top.  That's the station of the Romney Hythe & Dimchurch miniature railway with the train in the station that the girls and I took.

The view from the top.

K & M on the train.

On Friday (after lookering) we all went to Sissinghurst Castle.  We went up the tower, and looked at the gardens for a while, then A, K, M & I went for a walk around the lake while the others spent more time looking at the plants.

The tower...

....with K, Nana and P at the top of it!

M & K with a fairy door we found on our walk.

We also had the opportunity to see plenty of wildlife.  There were lots of blue tits, great tits and chaffinches in the garden, and we also spotted a woodpecker.  There were also plenty of rabbits around and we saw some bats too.

The bird-feeder.

On Friday night A & I went out just before dusk, taking P's new gadget  with us, a night vision monocular.  We went badger watching.  We had already seen the sett during the day and it was clearly an active one.  P had told us where to watch from and we did indeed see a couple of badgers, which was fantastic.  Unfortunately though, we hadn't got it quite right where to watch from, so were much further away than we could have been, so on the limit of the gadget's range once it got properly dark. 

The sett.

K & M liked just spending time on the farm mostly and particularly playing with the dogs.

K & Meg.

And M & Meg.

On Saturday morning we went to a Macmillan Coffee morning, where Nana met a couple of old friends, including an old boyfriend!  A and I each had a go (along with lots of other people) at guessing how many hundreds and thousands on a picture of a cake, the prize being a big cake which Aunty M had baked and A won!  On Saturday afternoon it was time to head back home after a lovely few days.

Delightful Dorset.

We've been away for a few days to a part of the country that none of knew at all, but I have a feeling that we will be returning.  One of my closest friends from school, known in our family as Big K (having the same name as our K, and indeed one of the reasons I like the name so much), was getting married 'after a whirlwind romance of 20 years' as it said on the invitation.  It's rather a long way to the south coast, so we decided to make a mini break of the occasion and on Wednesday went as far as Oxford, where we stayed overnight with my brother and sister-in-law, before going the rest of the way on Thursday morning.

We arrived in Corfe Castle in time for lunch.  We parked in the National Trust car park and had our first view of the castle, which is rather impressive and also exciting as it was the inspiration for Kirren Castle in Enid Blyton's Famous Five books.

View from the car park.

The walk around the bottom of the hill to the village is a lovely one, particular the detour through the 'Play Trail', which has an obstacle course and the option to cross the stream using stepping stones.

Obstacle course.

Sticking to the stepping stones is no fun!

Before going into the castle, we had lunch and had some company.

The girls decided he was called Rob.

The lure of the model village was greater than that of the castle too, so we went there next.  It was rather good and had some games (quoits and croquet among others) that we had a go at too.

The castle as it would have looked.

Not sure if The Doctor ever visited though!

 We then went up to the actual castle, although it's rather battered compared to the depiction in the model village.

M on the way in.

K, M & A admiring the view.

Exploring.

K & M sitting on The Wishing Chair outside the Enid Blyton shop.

Next stop was the very nice B&B we were staying in a mile or so down the road and after a break for a cuppa, we headed for the beach where the wedding celebration was taking place on the Saturday at Studland.  Having learned from our last trip to a beach (up north) when they went paddling and ended up really rather soggy, we were more prepared this time.

They kept their top halves on to start with.

It didn't last long.

They really like the beach!

A little breather.

We had to tear K & M away to go and find something to eat.  We had planned to go straight out to eat, but needed a quick pitstop at the B&B for the girls to shower the beach off first.

Friday we had decided we'd go look for fossils.  K's not particularly bothered but M was very keen.  On the suggestion of the B&B lady, which tied in with the helpful information given by Facebook friends we went to Kimmeridge first.  There were loads of things to spot and M brought quite a few stones home to go at with her hammer too.  We found lots of things that were clearly something although quite what we often didn't know and although we didn't find any ammonites, which is what M was very much hoping for we found plenty of imprints where there had been one.

M hunting for fossils.

A couple of ammonite imprints.

And another one (with M's finger).

We also visited the marine centre and discovered that I was correct and that the colourful thing that M had found was indeed part of a lobster's tail.

Hermit crab at the marine centre.

 We then moved on to Lullworth Cove, where we went into the visitor centre and found out a bit about the geology of the place.

Amazing seeing so clearly how the layers of rock have been pushed to such an angle.

We walked from the pebbly beach all the way up to the top of the hill for the view.

We finished off with a brief return trip to Studland's Knoll beach, where K discovered that wasps are exceeding ungrateful, when one that she was trying to rescue from drowning in the sea stung her on the finger, before going back to the B&B to shower off and for a bit of a rest before heading out for a curry.

On Saturday morning we returned to Corfe Castle village for more croquet at the model village.  K & M

really wanted to go back to Knoll beach considerably earlier than we needed to be there for wedding celebration.  They had chosen some appropriate things to give the bride and groom as presents from among their possessions and wanted to make them something else.

A sand wedding cake!

With a playmobil bride & groom and pollypocket wedding set.

The bride and groom and their sand wedding cake.

The ceremony had been family only at the town hall in Swanage, so the couple redid their vows on the beach for everyone to witness, before a glass of bubbly at the café and then to the village hall for the rest of the reception. 

The vows.

It was an absolutely wonderful celebration and so lovely to see so many old friends too.

In other news I have finished my first attempt at a crocheted garment (not counting a hat) and indeed wore it to the wedding.  I'm really rather proud of myself!

Ta dah!