The Tardis Car

We spent the morning outdoors with other home ed friends (one of whom is majorly pregnant, so I had visions of us acting as midwives down in the woods!). The kids came back filthy, which I like to think is a sign of having had a good time. However, it did make me look at the state of our car when we got home and realise that it really does need a clear out and a clean (inside).

Once the boys had been ferried off to their music session at a local Montessori school and dd1 was happily occupied with a friend upstairs I set about taking some of the clutter out of the car.



Hmmm....It's not good. In fact it's so bad, I have to list the items in order to shame myself that the car wont get this bad again. This is a list of the initial bag of items I have exumated from the car (there is more to come). I'm just wondering how all this fitted into the car (plus 5 people and a dog). Perhaps we've acquired a people-carrier version of the tardis?:



2 chip wrappers (and some left over chips - from today)

A bottle of ketchup (almost finished)

A bottle of brown sauce (very sticky)

two bottles of tap water

a pack of chewing gum

a pair of gardening gloves

two branches (no, not twigs or sticks - huge branches that were jammed across the front passenger seat)

Lots of tissues

A cardboard cloud that belongs to a pop-up Kipper book.

Two packs of sparklers (these are at least 2 years old, though they haven't been on the dashboard qute that long)

A toy car

An empty cassette case of 'driving music'

A slice of cork with a cup hook screwed into it

Two empty coke cups

A child's umbrella

A pair of muddy wellies

Two coats, a mac, a small vest, some pants and a bag of assorted spare clothes, mostly muddy.

An empty box for slides (we don't do slide photography anymore)

A car aerial (not from our car)

A book of local places to go

A spiral-bound road map, torn and muddy

A cassette of 'The Waterboys'

A bus ticket

Empty coke can

A white plastic strip for covering wiring

A tin of sweets (those expensive ones that they sell in motorway service stations)

Three felt-tip pens (mostly with lids missing) and 3 pencils

A dalek-shaped cookie cutter

A ticket to an ice disco (dated 12 December 2007) that we've never been to

A shop display leaflet that dd1 took off one of the display bikes in Halfords

Two black straws

Some unchewed lumps of chewing gum

A Charlie and Lola colouring pack

Two hankies (filthy)

A cassette of 'The Clash'

A felt-tip pen lid

A tescos receipt for Pringles and diesel

3 green shiny foil bottle tops

A box of nappy sacks

A parking ticket from October (stuck to the dashboard)

A discount voucher for ready brek (we don't eat it)

Two empty smartie tubes

A Micromeg purified water cartridge (huge and empty - came from the scrapstore)

A white pump thing with an arrow and 'flow' written on it (plus some weird tubes coming out of it)

A large scratch card (not the winning one obviously otherwise I would have paid for someone else to be clearing the car out)

A crayfish claw

An empty pack that once contained glowsticks

A rubber dart from a toy gun

A cardboard tube from the centre of a cone of machine wool

A birthday candle

A business card for dh

A tesco carrier

A pair of old glasses that are no longer worn

A pair of yellow sunglasses
A plastic boy on a plastic skateboard

A business card from a restaurant I've never heard of

A piece of card from a cigarette pack (we don't smoke)

A price tag from a batman toy (not ours)

A padlock that we don't have a key for

Another cork

A red plastic ball

Lego (assorted items including the head and arms from a Lego skeleton)

A clothes peg

A parking ticket for November

A piece of netting attached to 'missiles'

Some red straw-like things attached to attaching things

A plastic coin

3 pennies and a 20p piece

A small blob of bluetack

3 hazelnuts picked up from the pavement

A piece of flint

A long purple strap, used sometimes as a dog lead

An envelope for collecting pumpkin seeds



If this is representative of my life (or the state of my brain) I think I should be worried!
I sometimes wonder what my car would look like if I didn't have kids, or if I didn't home educate...

Vampires, silly nails and umbrellas on fire...

On Friday the kids spent most of the time at Sailing club making decorations for the party on the following evening. We hung lots of black paper bats in the windows and used 'sticky pad' stampers (created from scrap from our local scrapstore) to print halloween designs on banners. The children also helped make ghost meringues.

Ds2 decided on a sort of vampire theme. This was probably prompted by the sale of halloween items in Tescos - they only had capes, hats and teeth left - which made the choice fairly easy!

I spent about an hour on the Friday afternoon helping dd1 make a 'wolf' mask with cardboard and brown felt. Of course, she then decided she didn't want to be a wolf. In fact she didn't want to dress up at all!

Still despite this hiccup, we turned up at the Halloween party having made a little bit of effort. The cheap face paints from Tescos were handy for drawing spider webs on faces and other creepy things and the black nail polish was - er - interesting. I'd forgotten all about it until I got to work yesterday evening and saw that my fingernails were still black! One of the girls at work had dyed her hair red and I asked her whether she had done it for halloween. 'Er no' she said,'I just fancied a change'. Oops. Sometimes it's better if I keep my mouth shut.

Then I lashed myself into the traditional frenzy of pumpkin carving. There are some fantastic patterns you can download off the internet - last year we managed a fantastic scooby doo design - but this year I stuck to something fairly simple. I think the spider is still very effective, don't you?

The bonfire was initially a bit of a wash-out as we'd had heavy rain all afternoon and evening. Eventually it took light and as you can see, it managed quite a blaze.

Nice flames.

Dd1's umbrella isn't really on fire...honest

And then today at Sailing Club we lit the last remnants of the unburnt wood. Here's ds2 cooking - sorry - burning marshmallows with a very long stick (the fire was scorching!). We had to tie Jack up as he's not always the brightest hound when it comes to warm things. Having seen him stick his head in the oven on more than one occasion to get nearer the

warmth, I didn't trust him near a bonfire!

The rest of the day was taken up with book making. I have a fantastic book with lots of ideas for different sorts of books to make (origami ones, ones in the shape of a house etc). I'm not sure the kids were that enthusiastic as all my bunch were tired from too many late nights and early mornings, but hopefully it will trigger some thoughts and they might come back to it again.

As for home ed in general, we haven't really settled down into any more structure, apart from our weekly trips to the sailing club. We have started on 'The Story of The World' again and have picked up where we left off with 'Vikings'. I've promised the kids we will soon move on to Samurai and Knights. And yesterday we finally posted the letter that ds1 has written to his Australian penpal. I think we started it in September! These things take time...

And away from our little lives, in the news today: the USA now has a black president.

False Leg Found Under Alton Towers Roller Coaster

Some things are just too strange not to acknowledge...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h

False leg found underneath ride

"The owner of a prosthetic leg found beneath an Alton Towers rollercoaster is being sought by the amusement park. The leg was just one of many bizarre items found near The Corkscrew, which is to be dismantled after carrying 43.5 million people since it opened in 1980. "

Fungi, the short life of wellies and dancing in slippers

Well it looks like autumn has finally arrived. Not only have we have we had frosts and - urrghh - soggy snow, but a trip to our local woodland gave us the full Autumn experience...

I'd like to impress you by telling you that I could identify all of these fungi, but actually I can't. A few years ago we went on a guided 'Fungal Forage' and even the guy who was suppposedly the expert couldn't identify many of the things we found. So, I don't feel so bad about my ignorance.



Here's some of the bracket fungus we found on the - presumably dead - tree branches. There seemed to be loads of dead wood lying around and I was tempted to gather a huge bundle and take it home for a bonfire. Not practical of course : the children (well some) had already complained about having to walk so far to get to the woods (I've now resolved to take the car less and make them walk more) and I didn't think any of them would be chuffed to have to carry home bundles of wet branches and logs. Besides, damp wood never made a great bonfire.


And here's a puffball-type fungi. As you can see it was well camouflaged against the leaf litter. I discovered it when it 'puffed' out spores as my foot brushed against it. Couldn't get it to do it again (I guess it had run out of 'puff'), otherwise it might have been great to video it.



Ok, who am I trying to kid: it would have made a pretty boring video...but it would have been nice to try.

And here are some 'pink' fungi. I suppose with the distinctive colour I should be able to identify what they are, but I can't find our fungi book anywhere. I'm not even sure if we have a fungi book, but dh was looking for it the other day, so perhaps we're both imagining things.

I was planning to do some spore prints with the few fungi that we picked, but I have a suspicion that they'll probably sit, sweating, in their carrier bag until I realise what 'that bad smell in the house' is.

Remembering all those home ed things I'd planned to do if we ever took a walk in the woods (but usually never got around to) I encouraged dd1 to do some 'leaf things'. So we did leaf rubbings, leaf paint prints and sandwiched some leaves through the laminator too. The laminator did make a bit of a crunching noise as some of the thicker ones went through, but it seems to have survived the process. Is it just me who puts fat things through the laminator?

Now, feeling like we've ticked something off my mental list of 'things we ought to do', I can allow myself a brief, smug, home-educating mother moment.

[*******SMUG HOME EDUCATING MOMENT*****]

Ok, it's over now.

Obviously the brief smug mother moment went to my head because I then felt I could take on the world. Well, not exactly take on the world, but take all 3 of my kids shoe shopping. At half term!!! Bad idea.

But, on the plus side, I'm so glad we don't have to actually buy proper shoes; you know, proper black boring school shoes. Certainly one of the benefits of not having kids in school. The funny thing is, for the first few years of home educating I still bought my kids boring black school-type shoes every autumn. Why? Must be years of subtle subconscious programming; I was driven by the same urge that takes over every September and makes me go out and buy new stationery and pencil cases and other rubbish that I don't need. And the daft thing was, my kids wouldn't even wear the shoes. Instead they lived in wellies and trainers.

So, shopping for wellies and trainers it was. Oh, and slippers. Personally can't see the point of slippers - wear another pair of socks if your feet are cold, or comfy shoes, but dh has a thing about the kids wearing slippers. Maybe I should let him take the kids shoe shopping next time.

Talking of wellies -well actually I was talking about slippers, but anyway- I was just wondering how ds1 manages to wear his wellies out so quickly. He gets through 2 or 3 pairs a year! Surely that's not normal? With this last pair, both of them have split down the back. Other pairs have worn holes in the bottom. I'm starting to think he must be sleep walking in the darn things.

Back to shoe shopping. Well, it wasn't too horrendous an experience, though the boredom quickly took over when ds1 refused to have any of the slippers or wellies on offer. Can't blame him really; he's nearly 10 and doesn't really want 'pirate' wellies or 'spiderman' on his slippers.

My bribery ploy (shopping survival strategy) was to promise them a look round Gamestation at some point. This kinda backfired as it reminded ds2 that his elder brother has a ds lite and he only has a gameboy advance. As if my technohead child needs reminding!. So we had sulky, grumpy, and occasionally violent outbursts for the remainder of the shopping experience, pacified only by a look at the mountain bikes in Halfords. Sibling rivalry. Got a lot to answer for.

[Hmm..hope ds2 isn't expecting a mountain bike for Christmas.]

Anyway, at least one child was happy with their purchase. Here's dd1 dancing in her fluffy pussycat lighting up slippers. At what point in my parenting life did I give up on the 'just buy them plain non-commercial shoes'?

I wonder if they do them in my size.

Ok, better finish this now. The dog, who was sitting on my lap and was performing the role of hot water bottle, has now moved and I'm getting cold. Also dd1 has just come in to tell me she's been downstairs for ages and I still haven't got her breakfast. There goes that smug mother moment....

Two theme parks in one week!

Ok, so I'm going to do a ratings score: here goes (scored out of 10)...
(I haven't added up the totals, so if you're feeling bored you can do that for me)

Gullivers Land (Milton Keynes)

Queues: 9.5 - barely any queueing, either to go in or to go on any rides.
Variety: 9 - Lots to do, different rides and shows.
Age range suitability: 8- This place is suitable for toddlers to 10years, so great for my kids, but perhaps not for older ones.
Wow factor: 5 - Nothing that made me go wow, but still enjoyable.
Cleanliness: 9
Friendliness: 9
Parking: 9 Easy parking, no long walk to front entrance. Car park was a bit boggy in places.
Cost:7 - We had vouchers that got us in for £5 per person. Otherwise it's about £10 per person, which seems alot if you have a family of 5 to pay for!
Commercialism: 8 - not too commercial. Once in, all the rides and activities were free.

Overall a very pleasant experience. Gentle for the little ones and no ghastly queues!

Legoland (Windsor)

Queues: 4- As always it was busy. Always queues for pretty much everything, which can get a bit tiresome after a while.
Variety: 9 - Loads to do for all ages. Even better in summer when families can make use of the outdoor facilities more!
Age range suitability: 9 - great for all my kids. There are fewer things for toddlers to do, but they get in free anyway, so perhaps that compensates!
wow factor: 10 - Well they had their fireworks event on, so I have to give it a high score for wow factor! The place is so huge though, it can't help but be impressive.
Cleanliness: 7 - overall quite clean, but with the sheer numbers of people the toilets can struggle!
Friendliness: 9 - despite the rain the staff did their best to be cheerful. Maybe that's all part of their training, but still, it makes a difference.
Parking: 6 - we were lucky this time to get a space fairly near the entrance, but it's not always like that. The car park is so huge that if you can't remember where you parked you might have to wait for everyone to go home before you can see your car!
Cost: 5 - extortionate if you pay full prices (does anyone actually pay full price?). We do the usual Tesco Clubcard vouchers, but there's no way we'd set foot in the place at the normal price.
Commercialism: 5 - Very commercial, lots of places and things to make you part with your money, which makes me a grumpy mummy. But...I guess that's what most theme parks are like.

Overall: If we didn't have Tesco Clubcard Vouchers we wouldn't visit. Yes, it wins on 'Wow factor', but at a price. Personally I find the commercialism and the queues irritating. But the fireworks are absolutely FANTASTIC and the kids love it!




One of the strange devices available for children to ride and experiment with at Gullivers Land. On this one you have to wind the wheels with handles. On another type of machine you wiggle the handles to propel yourself. I had a go on one contraption and I have to admit it was rather fun...(but I did have a sore bum afterwards).



We got bored in the queues at Legoland, so ended up taking some very strange photos of each other to entertain ourselves...I'll post some more when I get a chance. This is dd1 in her new mac that she got for her birthday. She had a perfectly good functional mac, but, alas, it was navy blue. Just NOT girlie enough! This one, however, is perfectly girlie (even for dd1) and it gets her approval. Some people are just plain fussy...

Ds2 in 'Miniland'. For some reason the kids love this bit of Legoland. Lots and lots of miniature versions of landmarks around the world with moving parts (all made of lego of course). Must be a 'child' thing, cause I can't see the attraction personally. I just get the urge to step over the railings and start dismantling all that lego. Very tempting.

Riding in the 'balloons' at Legoland. One of the few rides that usually doesn't have huge queues. Of course the kids had a fight about who was going to pull on the rope to make the balloon go up and down.

As it had been raining all day anyway and we were dressed for the weather with our macs and waterproof leggings we figured we might as well make use of all the 'wet' rides. We had our 2nd ride on the Viking thing (we tried it last year) and were very thankful for our waterproofs as everything got drenched! For the first time ever we also went on the log flume ( ds1 and dd1 and me). We were all fine until the bit when we realised that our little vehicle was about to drop off a precipice into the water channel below. As we got off the ride we had a look at the photos that are taken automatically and the one of us showed me with my head stuck down into the bottom of the 'log'! The kids were sat up straight, but I was being a complete woos. However, in my defence, I was at the front and could see where we were going, so it was much much much scarier...

Star Wars fireworks at Legoland

Have just had to edit this because I forgot to mention something. A work colleague arrived at work tonight a little late and gave me the news that it was snowing outside! (In case you wondered why I hadn't noticed this myself it's because I don't sit near a window, and besides, it all looks black out there at 7.30pm). So, it's snowed. That's the wet, sleety sort of snow (probably the stuff that the rail companies hate), not that nice crisp 'Christmas card' sort of snow.

Word confusion

Conversation between dd1 and ds2:

ds2: that's not fair
dd1: why?
ds2: if you say you wont do something unless I do something then that's whitenail.
dd1: eh?
ds2: whitenail! Don't you know anything?!
dd1:what's whitenail?
ds2: you know! Whitenail

and so on...



I was confused too. It took me about 10 minutes before I realised what he meant was 'blackmail'!

And on the subject of child conversations, the kids and I were talking about all sorts of stuff on the way to my osteopath appointment. Ds2 said in a loud voice 'Ooo that's the Private Shop, I know what's in there' and then leant over to continue the conversation in a whisper with ds1. He saw that I was eavesdropping and buttoned up. When I questioned him he just grinned and wouldn't tell me anything. I'm interested to discover what he thinks is in the shop. If he actually does know what's inside that shop then I want to know HOW he found out!! There are some things that 7 year old boys really shouldn't know!

And on a completely different subject, this is an interesting article I saw posted on a home ed email group. It's by Steve Biddulph. If you don't know who he is then just google it and you should find plenty of references!

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-childcare-lesson-from-canada/2008/01/18/1200620205875.html