The Monopoly Marathon - London destroyed by 600ft walking hairball

After I banned most screen-based activities (too much post-Christmas lethargy caused by a Christmas week plugged in) the children started a two-day monopoly marathon.

Much shouting, fighting, cheating, negotiation, and occasional violence (all of which I did my best to ignore) later, the thought that my children might be money-grabbing materialistic psychopaths began to creep in.

'Loadsa Dosh' ds2 (with dd in the background calculating her projected profit rate on my scientific calculator)

Thankfully the second day of the war monopoly game was cut short by Dogzilla who in a fit of overexcitement dragged his extra large chewy bone in true 'Zilla style through the streets of London, sending the stock market crashing (not to mention the hotels on Park Lane and Pentonville).

Dogzilla - the calm before the rampage

Questions, questions, questions....

I spent the morning chasing dog poo along the concrete outside our back door with some dangerously thin nappy sacks. The dog watched me with a malicious grin, getting ready to redecorate my back garden with teeny stringy turds the moment I turned my back.

Then I came indoors...

dd1: 'I've got a tricky question.'
me: 'Uh huh?'
dd1: 'Do Postmen go on aeroplanes?'
me: 'Well I guess when they go on holiday they might fly there and then they'd have to go on an aeroplane. Does that answer your question?'
dd1: 'Maybe.'
me: 'Why did you want to know?'
dd1: 'Oh, no reason. Just thought I'd ask.'

One of the weirdest things about parenting is that you spend your day being propelled from in-your-face-disgusting reality to non-drug-induced surreality and back again.

I've decided that if I ever write a book it should be titled 'Do postmen go on aeroplanes...I don't know dear, but there's a helluva lot of dog poo in the back garden.'

Er. No title. Couldn't think of one.

Meet...

PRINCESS PAWS

(our family superhero)

She's pretty mean with a power drill

And with a bit of help from a masked marvel...

We have

THE CHICKEN COOP

complete with it's own back garden (no decking, but with a small water feature i.e. drink bowl)

and someone already has their beady eye on it...

'So that fat bird gets the new coop and I'm stuck with that old one. I'm going on strike!'

So, the coop was finished on Sunday, just in time for the eggies to arrive from Ebay on the Monday and be popped under Mrs Broody.

I had to pick up the eggies from the sorting office as the postman had stuffed a card through the letterbox (bring back my old postie, please!). No doubt the staff helped by chucking the box labelled 'fragile' around the sorting office, warming it with a blow torch, eating their lunch off it,before sticking it in the fridge [hmm...can you tell that post office staff aren't in my good books at the moment?].

Anyway we travelled back from the sorting office on Monday with the eggies on the centre seat between the boys while we drove for about half an hour to pick up dd from a play date. So there I am, yelling 'Mind the eggies! Mind the eggies!' as the boys are hitting each other over the heads with half-litre bottles of water. I do wonder sometimes if I am responsible enough to look after baby chicks...

Anyway, on the Monday we made candles. I'd picked up a large candle-making set from the local swap shop, which was mostly complete except for wicks (which dh bought in town).

It was all fairly straightforward: measuring out the wax, colouring it, melting it, putting in the wick, pouring wax in the mould, cooling the candle, topping up the mould with a bit more melted wax and voila...

Pretty cool eh? And almost for free (except for the cost of the wick). We love Swap shops.

Anyway in the afternoon I decided to give the children a few more hours forced labour lol (at the allotment). Actually I offered them some pocket money because it was a tough job. They had the task of clearing some of the weeds off our second plot, where the potatoes are. I never give my kids pocket money, don't really believe in it, so they were almost motivated.

And I have to say that it did look a lot better afterwards. I could even find some potatoes to dig up. Hopefully it will keep the allotment Weed Police at bay.

Ds2 used the extra pocket money and went and bought a lego star wars set today (Tuesday). He then lost one of the droids from the set at the sailing club. Ds2 admitted later that he'd 'dropped' it down one of the pockets in the pool table! [I have my suspicions about how 'accidental' this was, but would like to give my children the benefit of the doubt]. So this involved a return trip by dh and a slight dismantling of the pool table. And all ended well. It did. And I'm feeling calm. And tomorrow will be better.

Cruelty to dogs, chickens and postmen

Ok, it's your own fault. If you roll yourself in lumps of wet stinky chicken poo, this is what you get:


and there's no way I'm letting you dangle those clean ears in that bowl of dog food:

Looks like Mrs broody hen needs some 'me time'. Once again the other 3 hens have to camp out.

And...the postman complained about our front path. I guess he didn't like wet vegetation slapping his legs. Serves him right for wearing shorts if you ask me (I know you didn't)

I did concede and cut the borders back a bit, but I do hope that means he will actually deliver packages rather than knock, stuff a card through the letterbox and run before I have time to answer the door.

We did like our old postman, who would do everything at snails pace and always had a fag break before doing anything, but at least he would stuff the packages behind the recycling bin if we were out. And he even used to say 'hi' to the kids.

Anyway...

And 'The Booker Prize' goes to...Jack the dog!

The storm kettle has arrived!!

Jack seems to think we've bought him a new dog toy.

(And no, I don't normally keep camping equipment on the lounge floor)

Are you wondering why my blogging has suddenly become more frequent? Displacement activity of course...still haven't done my homework from last term's writing course (er, yeah, the one that was meant to be in several weeks before Christmas).

I can do the week-to-week writing stuff, cos that's fun, but can't seem to summon up enough mental energy to complete anything longer. Besides, with my short attention span, it's far more fun to start something and ditch it for something new the following week, than to persevere and stick to it. Ho hum..sounds scarily like my attitude to home educating.

We did something in a class the other week that was fun. We took a piece of writing that each of us had been working on, printed it out, cut it up into its separate words and then rearranged it to make interesting sentences. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

'Who am I? I rise with unfamiliar legs, waffle-dusting the fluff with each of my functional toes.'

'Coordinated clouds weave wooden skylarks in A minor'

'I notice that a metal head can strangle the line of aesthetic'

I quite like the idea of waffle-dusting with my toes, particularly if they are functional. I'm not sure how difficult waffle-dusting would be if you didn't have functional toes.

The original piece was a descriptive essay about 3 different beds. Most of the sentences were far improved in the muddled around product. Ok, so it was a bit dodgy in places where I had to try and make a sentence out of the leftover words (3 'and' s and 4 'bed' s and 1 'duvet'- not a great combination for exciting writing). But it's a fun technique to give 'added value' to writing - a bit like turning boring old potatoes into a pack of fab cheese and onion flavour crisps. And yeah, I write alot of potatoes...

So I now feel inspired to do something similar with the children (no, I don't mean cutting them up with scissors and rearranging their parts, though there are days when that might be tempting). I thought I might take some poems or song lyrics, preferably ones that they know fairly well, and get them to chop them up and rearrange them into something else. Of course I haven't told the kids that I'm going to do that.

Hmm...I'm not quite sure how to approach it with the kids. I have to totally not emphasise the possible educational slant (a guaranteed put-off). Though if I just leave some printed poems with a pair of scissors on the table, in the hope that a child might get the urge to cut it up and rearrange it, I'm not sure they would tune into my subtle approach. And of course the dog might just go and eat it. Or maybe (thinking really abstractly) the dog might tear up the piece of paper - scissors are kinda tricky without opposable thumbs - scatter it on the floor in a really artistic manner and make his own marvellous contribution to world of literature.

I need to get out more...

Some ambitions are rather tricky to fulfil...

Tonight we were watching 'Victorian Farm' (episode 3) on BBC iplayer as we missed recording it the other day. This episode's theme was home-made remedies, lambing and making fences (to keep the pigs in).

We were watching one of the men, bashing away at hot metal to make gate hinges for their fence.

ds2 said 'I want to be a Blacksmith when I grow up'.

To which, dd replied 'I want to be a Chihuahua'.

I'm so glad my children have high aspirations...

Rudolph 0: Dog 1. But the chicken lives to fight another day.

Poor Jack. Outwitted by the chicken again...

Maybe if you ask her nicely, Jack, she'll let you get to the back door.

Oh, and yes, that is a standard lamp at the bottom of the steps. Doesn't everyone have one of those in the garden?

Considering how hen-pecked and scrawny our bunch of chickens are looking (and we do feed them, honest) I'm amazed that all four chickens have continued to lay throughout Autumn and Winter; we've just come back after 2 days away to find 10 eggs in the coop from 4 chuckies! And no, we don't use any extra lights. I know the farmer said that they were a hardy cross, but they've outperformed anything we've had before. Just hope I can find the scrappy piece of paper that I put his address on. I obviously put it somewhere safe. Yes, that safe.

I've been thinking about getting a couple of ducks, but I need to read up a bit first. As long as we can keep the foxes out I figure they can't be too hard to look after. But what would they do to the garden? Would I have a veg patch left by the time they had paddled all over it?

Oh and here's a very sad announcement.

Jack ate Rudolph on Christmas Day.

And here's what was left after an hour of chewing, tearing and destuffing...

Just a couple of nibbled antlers

That's the last time I bother buying that dog a dog toy.

And here are the kids admiring our fantastic light show on the front of the house...(aren't you impressed?)

Ok, ok. So it's not our house. But it could have been...

...and as they always say: it's the thought that matters.

The stupidness of chickens who doe-cee-doe with dogs and don't know when to get their heads out of the way of large garden forks

Today the kids and dh went to our local science centre. I can't say much about it, seeing as I wasn't there and I'm not telepathic and the kids weren't that forthcoming about what they'd been up to, but here's a photo. Apparently they were making a Knex fairground thing with a motor. Poor children, they look resigned to having their photo taken. With all this blogging you'd think they'd get used to it.


So what else has been going on? Well ds2 was sticking foam letters on the bathroom wall the other day and spelled out the cryptic clue 'Im hot I boil water'. He was most miffed when we read it (rather tricky not to as some of us old folk have to go to the loo at least once a day and I'm far too old to use the hedge in the front garden), but I love the way his brain works.

Apart from that? Well my shoulders are aching and my knees hurt from playing on Wii tennis and Wii dance mat respectively. And ds1 nearly trashed the lounge while playing against me (ok, overexaggeration, but quite a few Christmas cards flew across the lounge as he lunged for the ball). I actually worked up quite a sweat on the Wii dance mat (probably more info that you wanted), so maybe this will help with my new year's keep fit resolution. I have the same fitness resolution every year, but of course...

****THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT****

or maybe a bit different

or maybe just a teensy weensy bit different.

(Though it may all fail dismally if I break a leg flaying around the lounge with a controller and a nunchuck while trying to do funky moves)

Talking about the 7th Wonder of the Chickenshed Household, I wonder how many brainstorming sessions they had to have at Nintendo to come up with the name 'Wii'...or nunchuck.

I mean, do you call those names? [speaking from my grumpy old woman persona]

I, personally, would have suggested 'white addictive thing with very expensive extras that you feel the need to buy even if you don't want to' and 'zappy thing that doesn't do what you want it to, but at least you can blame it when you're rubbish at whatever game you are playing'.

But no doubt they get paid an awful lot more than me, so I'm hardly in a position to be critical.

Anything else going on? Well, I've also been poking the raised beds in the garden with a fork, which was tricky today as the ground was rather frozen. I kind of churned up the soil a bit, made a feeble attempt to take some weeds out and then decided it was far too cold to be doing anything like weeding. Then I emptied the contents of the compost bins on the raised beds and covered them up as best I could with cardboard. Recently I've been letting the chickens out to rummage the garden and their idea of rummaging is more like rampaging - scraping out the contents of my raised beds:( : hence the need to cover them

One of the chickens was so enthusiastic about the contents of the compost bin that it nearly ended up with a large fork in it's head. No I'm not deliberately cruel to chickens, but they can be exceedingly stupid animals when it comes to avoiding garden implements. Though, to be fair, this one was distracted by the big fat juicy compost bin worms and wasn't taking much notice of the huge silver prongs heading its way and about to propel it into chicken heaven.

[Amazing observation: I've discovered that chickens don't respond much to being shouted at. 'Get your head out of the way, I'm trying to stick a fork in the compost heap!' got absolutely no response. I wonder why?]

I'm thinking of writing a book ' How to train a chicken'. Should be a bestseller.

Ok...scrap that idea. I just put 'chicken' and 'train' into Amazon's search engine (you can tell I have nothing better to do) and came up with this book : '100 Ways for a Chicken to train it's owner' by Diane Parker.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Ways-Chicken-Train-Human/dp/0340910208/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230668289&sr=8-5

That sounds like a much better idea. So there's no need for me to go to the trouble to find an agent then.

I'm quite tempted to buy a copy...

Anyway, back to stuff. Jack has been pleasantly surprised to find the chickens loose in the garden these past few days and gave them a quick lesson in how to avoid the stupid furry barking thing. Stupid animal chasing even more stupid animals? Well that's my week's viewing sorted.

Jack almost gave up when faced with one chicken who was obviously too stupid to run and had decided to face him square on. They did a kind of doe cee doe (er don't know how it's written, but it's one of those country dancing* sorts of things that we used to do at school when I was 6 and I always got it wrong and got told off): Jack would move forwards and jump back just in time to avoid the beak attack; then the chicken would move forwards and then back as Jack would bark at it.

Thinking about it, I should have quickly got my camera out and filmed it. I could have sent it in and got loadsa money off 'You've been Framed'.

Oh yes, trust me, I would stoop that low. I have no shame*. If people want to watch trash them I'm perfectly happy to provide them with some material (for a fee of course).

[*'Shame', along with 'guilt' and 'embarrassment' are such 'thirties' things. Now I'm nearly 40 I'm sure I can come up with some better replacements...like intolerance...pig headedness...and downright middleaged grumpiness...]

Hmm...I've suddenly realised that I have no idea when term starts and so have no idea when the kids start back at music lessons. Or, probably more importantly, when I go back to work. This could either mean I'm so chilled that it doesn't matter, or that I'm in denial. [The Jury is out at the moment, but I think it's probably 20:80 chilled:denial]

Anyway, got to go. I have a just-bathed dog trying to sit on my lap. Yuk.

[*I think they call these things Ceileihs or something like that (you can see I can't spell it) except that it's pronounced Kayleigh, a bit like that song that was in the charts for ages by that balding guy who fronts a heavy rock band who's name I can't remember, but it was a ballad, so not really a rock song at all and it got a bit tedious cos it was always on the radio and if you're not as old as me you probably wouldn't have heard of it anyway, but it was one of those songs that would probably have been played at lots of 6th form Christmas discos and all the cool girls would smoochy dance with the cool boys and the rest of us would slunk away looking as if we didn't care cos we had better things to think about like scented erasers and scratch and sniff pencils and stuff like that... [big breath] Anyway, I think Ceileighghgheighs (or Kayleighs) are the trendy version of that skipping around stuff we used to do at school to the BBC radio's school country dancing programmes. And yes, I was rubbish at it, always going the wrong way, or not skipping the right direction, or just not paying any attention whatsoever, and it's probably scared me for life. Or did I mean scarred? Well, one or the other, or maybe both. ]

Lordy, tell that girl to stay off the sherry...

Bread bricks and Chelsea buns

Spent the morning baking and cooking. No evening work over Summer has left my bank account a tad empty, so it's time to raid the freezer, get out the cookbooks and turn the kitchen into a bombsite in the name of frugalness. Yesterday I tried out some new bread recipes in the breadmaker using a book from a carboot sale. Three attempts at a recipe for 'milk bread' and I managed to produced two bricks and a pile of breadcrumbs. Not a success. It seems that the recipes just have too much flour. Had another go today. Tried out the Chelsea bun recipe. Busked it a bit, leaving out some flour, and miraculously got something resembling the picture in the book. It was even edible!

Perhaps I need a bigger kitchen..?

Yep, I definitely need a bigger kitchen!

The afternoon was spent at a local 'play day' organised by the Council. Lots of child-friendly activities had been set up, but most were met with glum faces from my kids. What's that phrase... 'You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink'. Well I guess that summed it up lol. However, there were some things that were popular: dd1 liked the mobile' farm. Ds2 was keen to go on the mobile climbing wall, but despite queueing for some time we eventually gave up and moved on. All three of them had a try out on some temporary play equipment. This play equipment was different in that it was intended primarily for adult use and incorporated 'gym' style machines. A friend and I agreed that it would be a great idea to have these sorts of things available everywhere: I could have a workout while the kids were playing in the park, or even in the Tesco's car park.

Ds2 says 'hello' to a sheep

Dd1 pats a goat

We said 'goodbye' to our friend, Arlo, today

Arlo went home today. I think Jack will be pining for him, but at least he's happy to be allowed back on the sofa again this evening now that there's space.

Warn the neighbours!

Ok, so whose great idea was it to get the kids an electric guitar? Huh?

[clue:someone who isn't at home all day looking after the kids].

So, enter the new instrument into the house. Bit of mending, some new strings and good as new. I'm sure it's all very educational, but only when volume control is used appropriately. Dread to think what the neighbours will say...

But anyway, the kids think it's really cool. Ds2 is starting to learn to play 'Smoke on the water'. Oh joy. Next I guess it will be 'Stairway to Heaven'. Well, if they all become famous rock stars as a result I'll eat my words.

Spent the afternoon with the kids in the natural sandpit at a local nature reserve. The kids played well, with few squabbles, which makes a pleasant change. The boys disappeared into the woods with their friends, reappearing periodically for food and drink, and dd1 paddled in the tiny stream that runs through the middle of the sandpit. As always, she's never far from water. The weather held out surprisingly and we didn't return home till gone 4pm.

Arlo and Jack are now absolutely shattered, fighting for a place on the sofa. Tough! I got there first! Now I know why we only have one dog. Two dogs on a sofa doesn't leave any room at all for the adults in this family!

The giant tent

At last I've managed to upload the photos from our camping weekend at the sailing club last week and a few photos from this week too. Looking back at this blog it would look like we've been living at the club over the past month, which I guess we have. While the weather has been good it's been great to get away from our oven-like house and go have a dip in the lake.

Our giant tent.

One person - cheeky begger - asked us if we'd just erected the new club house! I guess we asked for that, having such a huge tent. At HESFES the size didn't seem so obvious as other families had big tents too. But here, next to all the little 3-man dome tents it did look like we were about to host the local circus! Despite the jokes, there were some genuine admirers. We must be getting better at putting the tent up as it took us hardly any time at all. And, even more surprisingly, packing up was fairly quick too.

This time we didn't put up the inner tents inside, and just had the huge space open, which was great for the hot weather.

Ds1 and dd1 in the tent

Sailing in a paddling pool. Not the most stable of boat designs!

Ds1 set up a business selling spectacles made of grass stalks (and rabbit ears), as modelled in this photo.

He seems to find an opportunity to sell something, anything, wherever we go!

Dh and dd1 enjoying the party, and the stunning sunset.

Ds2 'completes' the sailing boat in the playground (using a fishing net and a dog blanket)

Ds1 doing his Harry Potter impression (with home-made glasses, wand and broom(stick))

Ok, so you guys aren't wet enough, here you are!

Spot the difference...

...two 'doggies' doing doggy paddle

Dd1 absolutely loves swimming. Even though her lips were turning blue and her teeth were chattering uncontrollably, she still wanted to go in again and again.

Somewhere under the blanket is a very cold, shivering dd1, having been swimming in the lake yet again.

The storm after the calm

Well I added a few photos to yesterday's blog entry and then realised how pathetically sad my life must be if I actually use my time and effort to take photos of the insides of our loft and balls of wool. Perhaps I would have made better use of my time supervising the children...

I suppose I only have myself to blame having spent yesterday morning hiding in the loft (see previous blog entry). I knew that when I finally came down I would have to face the carnage of those few hours' unsupervised play.

Urrgh.

It was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies, but with fewer boys, more split peas and no blood (well as far as I could see).

The first thing I noticed was that there was a saucepan of water mixed with dried split peas, which had swelled to a sodden mass, on my bathroom floor. Apparently (as I was later informed) this was dinosaur food. Clumps of wet toilet roll adorned the bath, sink and toilet lid. Perhaps the dinosaurs had used the toilet after eating their dinosaur food? [note for future reference: need to train the dinosaurs to tidy up after themselves]

All - and I mean ALL - the soft toys were having a 'tea party' on the floor of dd1's bedroom, a room where even if I wanted to swing a cat I would have great difficulty doing so. I could barely open the door so I had no idea how we were going to get her into her bed that evening.

The trail of split peas (most, thankfully still in their original dried form) led across the landing and down the stairs through the hall and into to the lounge where there were further piles of them on the rug. In the middle of the floor the boys had set up a train track using all the wooden Brio trains. The carriages were loaded up with split pea 'cargos'. I was pleased that my 9-year-old felt comfortable playing with toys most people would consider only for younger children, but the lounge looked like a firework had been thrown into a lentil factory.[And when will my children realise that the reason I put cushions ON my sofa is because I like them ON my sofa, NOT all over the floor. If I wanted cushions on the floor then I would have bought floor cushions...obvious really.]

And then to the conservatory where every possible item of scrap had been emptied on to the table and floor and several half-finished creative masterpieces - i.e. some scrap that had been glued together - were precariously balanced on top. The dog had made some effort to tidy up judging by the chewed remains of plastic straws and something I can only assume was once a cork.

Continuing back through the house the available evidence indicated that several small elephants had tried to make themselves strawberry milkshake in the kitchen: there were showers of milkshake powder across the surfaces, splodges of milk on the floor and a trail of footprints, none of which looked human, from the fridge to the cupboard and back again. A half-eaten banana, 6 used cups, an empty packet of Jacobs Cream Crackers and a pile of satsuma peelings confirmed my elephant suspicions. If there's one thing that home education has taught me it is that unsupervised small elephants just can't resist Jacobs Cream Crackers and strawberry milkshake.

The dog had peed in the hall. Well to be precise he had peed along the hall. He'd probably peed on the lounge rug as well judging by the smell, but amongst the split pea carnage it would have been difficult to tell. While on the 'dog' theme, my clean pile of washing looked suspiciously like it had been home to a small lazy Spaniel for several hours. Tell-tale white hairs and a dog shaped crater in the middle was a dead givaway. A half-chewed lego tree and a sprinkling of dog-slobbered cardboard (possibly once containing dd1's pack of playing cards) was further indication of dog rebellion. I shouted at the dog and tried to put him out in the garden. He was clearly bemused by my feeble effort at discipline.

As I went back into the lounge I noticed all the children had moved to the sofa and were glued to the tv.

Ds1 turned to greet me as I entered the lounge.

'Oh hi mummy. Where've you been?'



A friend once warned me about the changes in children's behaviour when there was a power vacuum in the house. At the time I probably thought she was talking about hoovers, but now I understand exactly what she means.

"That's one small step for man...

...one giant leap for mankind

- dammit! Fell down the crater again!"

Yes, this is supposed to be chocolate cake. Got the recipe from another home educating friend, but somehow it didn't work quite as well as hers :) You may notice a teensy weensy dip in the middle..?

Perhaps it had something to do with confusion over the recipe - baking powder AND bicarb? - and what sort of flour - hmm let's try self-raising - and uh oh, forgot to sieve the cocoa so it's gone in in huge lumps that now wont dissolve - oh, most of that went on the floor (it's ok, seems the dog likes cocoa powder) - and, oh, only got 10 mins before we're due to go out, better wack up the heat a bit - oh, what's all that smoke in the kitchen? - oh yeah, I remember, pizza from 2 days ago that's still in the oven- hmm, well take the cake out, might not be done enough, but we gotta go - oooh look at it sink - oh dear, one BIG crater.

And as if to add insult to injury, 2 minutes after this photo was taken (while I was washing off the astronaut's feet in the kitchen) the dog got up on the table and ate half of the cake. So now it has a huge dog licky sodden misshapen patch out of it and looks even less appealing.

I can't help thinking that if god had intended me to bake, then I would have been born with oven gloves.

A day in the woods

Some days things just don't go to plan. Usually I can blame uncooperative children and my bad organisational skills (I'm easily sidetracked), but today I can definitely put it down to 'unforseen circumstances'.

The original plan for the day was to have a 'Winter Woodland Warmer' at a nearby private woodland. A bunch of us home edders and their families were to get together to do some work in this woodland - in this case the 'work' was to burn old cleared wood on a bonfire. Unfortunately, a petrol station blew up in front of the house where the lady who held the key to the woodland lived! She and her house were ok, but very soon the whole village was evacuated and all roads closed, so no chance of getting the key and making it to the woodland. It seemed that on one of the rare occasions I had actually been responsible for organising things, it was going to be a real bummer of a day.

BUT...on to plan B! Lots of phoning around and emailing later and we were all heading off to Shotover to the natural sandpit that lies in this lovely nature reserve. I'd rummaged around in the garage to find two disposable bbqs and stuffed the already-packed picnic lunch into the car. For once kids and dog seemed enthusiastic and the weather actually looked as if it might be good.

Well, the frozen vegeburgers were kinda black on the outside and a bit chilly inside after their stint on the bbq. Then of course they got a bit sandy in the 'let's get them off the bbq before they go up in flames' panic. But, hey, they were almost edible. Various children's hair was adorned by dribbles of sticky melted marshmallows, but we managed to get through about 5 or 6 packs of the things, so I guess they were popular whatever their condition! The kids made dens in the trees, using some of the netting we got from the local Scraptstore. Then they just ran around like mad things. Ditto the dogs (it seems most of our network have dogs now). Poor old jack was exhausted by the time we finally packed up about 5 hours later and joined the tired wailing toddlers being reluctantly dragged back up the hill to the car.

The weather had held out and it had been a lovely day with great company. I think around 11 families came with around 26 children, quite a feat for an impromptu change of plan. Al Fresco home education at its best.