And what else...

...has been happening with the children for the past few weeks (apart from all the art!)

Ds1 plays drums at Rock School for a week. (The staff praised him on his talent and were gobsmacked he'd never had any lessons - just a teeny proud mum moment :) ). Meanwhile ds2 went rollerblading in the local park, and dd went for playdates with her friends.

We go to a local festival, held at a large allotment. Dd stays at the festival with friends for the rest of the day, while we made our way home.

We pick courgettes from the garden. (Note the closeness of the yellow football. Plants in our garden have to be hardy to survive!)

Ds1 continues with his IGCSE chemistry and Geography reading

  Blackberry picking, to make crumble and wine.

Ds2 empties the counties' libraries of books about manga. Then teaches himself.

He makes a short list of equipment he needs to do animation 'old school', then goes onto the internet to do a price comparison.

 Ds2 decides he wants to make shortbread.

We move paving slabs to make a base for the new chicken coop that we're making out of a packing case that was being thrown out (our 10 hens need more space).

 And discover a huge ants' nest:

 Lots of reading - Guinness World Records, British History, The Aztecs, and a 4-inch tome called "3D Game Development"...

Lots of talk and plans for the kids' new Minecraft server:

 Thoughts on design:

We took down our posters and information about Australia and New Zealand:

 And replaced them with posters on space and art:

We started a chart of moon phases. The moon decided to hide behind cloud for the next three nights :)

The children caught flies and fed them to the garden spiders, overcoming their fear of spiders and experimenting with size and type of fly.

We walked to the park intending to pick blackberries. But came home with elderberries for wine.

 Swimming in the lake (bit chilly, but fine once we got over the initial shock!)

And catching crayfish

Ds2 took the screwdriver to the waterpistol to try to fix it.

Wine, all bottled up and fermenting happily under the piano.

Dd and I have a discussion about wine-making, fermentation, yeast, gas and the similarities with the chemistry of bread baking. So that's chemistry, biology, self-sufficiency and home economics in one 5-minute conversation.

Dd continues on her reading journey. Having finally decided she wanted to learn to read (or at least was willing to give it a go), in a matter of weeks she has gone from simple words like cat and bed to reading words like 'couldn't' and 'everyone'. She seems to have an excellent memory for sight-recognition of words, less tendency I think towards phonics deciphering. Each of my children has been different and found their own combination of what works for them. I haven't been teaching her. I just sit with her while she reads. She'll do it at her own pace when she wants to. Being, at the peak of "reading readiness" (which she, herself, has recognised) I expect there'll be no stopping her now.

Spring activities

Carving and then painting replica guns (a traditional Spring activity if you are a 12-year-old boy) :

A mid-week trip to the lake:

Making the most of the glorious weather:

Kayaking:

Pond dipping with friends:

Crayfish in tupperware:

Bulbs from our last planting session, now in flower:

Planting cornflowers in the front garden:

More seeds in pots:

Candle-making in the kitchen:

toothbrush-shaped candles (dd's idea!):

Apple White and The Emperor's New Clothes

Ok, I'm still fiddling around with the blog colours.

It occurred to me that brown and blue don't really go, so I changed and went all-blue. Well, it shows up as blue on my p.c. However, on my laptop it just looks like shades of white. I don't want shades of white! White reminds me of when I was a teenager and the 'in thing' was to paint your walls with Dulux 'apple white''. It was all a con of course, an Emperor's New Clothes thing, cos to anyone walking into the room it just looked like you'd painted your walls with a tin of cheap white emulsion. Dulux must have made a packet ['Let's tell them it's white with a hint of green and charge them a rip-off price. Nobody will notice.']. Mind you, most people were desperate just to paint anything over the brown and orange flowery wallpaper left over from the 70s.

Anyway, I don't want my blog to be white. So is it just me? Does it look blue or white to you?

Today we were at the sailing club. The kids went swimming as the water is getting warmer at last. Last week I christened my new super fluorescent pink 'n' swirly swimming costume in the lake, but was feeling a little more self-conscious this week. I do like it. But it's not designed for people who want to slip their lardy wobbly bits into the water with minimal audience. I mean, this thing glows in the dark.

Ds1 and ds2 have been working on various animations and games. At the moment I can't upload them onto this blog cos they're made using Scratch which (I think) can only be uploaded to the Scratch website and I can't convert them into a different format. Will keep trying. I've booked the boys into the annual Summerscreen animation/green screen workshops this year, so maybe they'll pick up some more tips.

Knitting. Sigh. I have numerous projects on the go as usual. One arm and some borders to go to complete a cardigan. It's the first thing I've knitted for myself (apart from socks) for years. I am feeling rather wary about completion. Usually I would lose interest halfway through, or get bored, or just decide I don't like it anymore and unpick the lot. But I've only one arm and some borders to go. It is worryingly near the endpoint...

A friend is heavily pregnant at the moment. I don't envy her in this heat. In fact I don't envy her at all. I never did like the baby stage (or the pregnancy stage, or the toddler stage, or the preschool stage). Now my children are at the perfect age, the 7-10 age (well ok, I'm stretching it a bit: one is 6 and one is 11, but it's the best I'm gonna get). I just need to cryogenically preserve this moment. Fast-freeze my children straight from the field like baby peas. I wonder what I'll be doing when my eldest is 16 and my youngest is 11. What will life be like? Will I be celebrating my freedom, or mourning my loss? I guess only blog will tell.

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.