Here we go

I have the wordpress app, and it’s actually rather good on my phone, so this is going to be easy.

Yesterday afternoon Nick and I decided ti get moving on our plans for our bedroom, looking for a sideboard for the end of our bed to put the tv and xbox on. I know there’s mixed reviews on havibg a tv in the bedroom, but we’re adults, and as the kids grow we need more private space. Doing something about it now is a big priority for me.

We realised our Ikea 5×5 shelf unit could be cut down and be roughly the same depth as everything we were looking at, and it’d save us £300. So we did that.

I’ve made myself a list of things to be getting on with when the kids go to school, msinly to help me feel calm. But as you can see, I clearly do need to work through the fibre. It is taking over! In future I think I’ll be buying pre processed fibre to spin, because while interesting, the process has been arduous and not that much fun.

My mum sent me this photo of someone who thinks he’s getting this for Christmas 😂

Yesterday we also went for a lovely muddy walk in the woods to get everyone out and excercised and aired.  It’s been a little while since we’ve been to these woods. I have a feeling when the days get longer I might keeo wellies in the car for after school walks. Its already gettinh gloomy here at 3:33, so it might be a bit tricky at the moment.

Today we’ve taken the day off doing any “home school” or preparations for school (so much shopping to be done!) We popped out swimming for a couple of hours and had a lovely time.

The rest of the week will probably be spent gathering uniform, shoes, bags, lunchboxes. We also have some fun things to do that I hope will create happy memories. (Maybe the kids will also love the shopping, but past experience tells me otherwise!)

All Change

I’ve been wanting to write for a while. But life has been full.

It’s been full of decisions and it’s been full of thought and actions. We’ve made a lot of changes to our lives in the last couple of years. And we’re about to make another big one.

On Monday, I registered the children, all three of them, with the local authority to go to a local Primary school not too far from us.

I barely even know where to begin explaining how this happened. I know I also will have such a vash array of reaction from friends and acquaintances, varying from, “it’s about time!”, to, “oh no! why would you do that?”

It basically comes down to me. I’ve been struggling. As much as I love my three lovely munchkins, they are a lot to handle all together. Especially if one of them doesn’t want to do something, which if I’m honest happens more than daily. I’m wiped out, exhausted. I need a break.

The school is amazing. It’s going to be really good for them to have input from more kids and adults, But not too many. It’s not so big that they’re going to get lost.

I’ve been making some baby steps back to getting an engineering job and fullfilling myself in that environment, which I’ll pursue as long as this all works out, and Nick will become the parent who takes days off to look after sick children and stuff like that. I seem to have been hiding some ambition for gaining chartered engineer status and working for a PhD. Right now, I just have to decide whereabouts I want to start out, and which industry is going to hold my interest. I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of applications, but I’m not going to overdo it in these early stages.

Today I’m running a STEM workshop / competition with our local home ed group. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be a fixed materials budget egg drop challenge within teams. I’m really excited to see what they come up with.

I’ll try to remember to update with photos from my phone of our last few home ed weeks. Then this blog will probably have more of a focus on me, and what I’m getting up to, as well as family life in general.

The front garden

I’ve been trying to dig my front garden up to plant vegetables and herbs and fruits for some time. The soil here is quite acid and very heavy with quite a bit of clay content. It’s not ideal, but I’m slowly improving it and digging farther into the lawn and planting a bit more each year.

This is when I planted out the sweet peas we had germinated indoors. I think seeing them out here and the start of the good weather sparked something in me and we have tomatoes and peppers and squash all going on the windowsills now.

I dug a bit further and had to take a photo to prove my progress to myself!

I’ve wanted a bay tree for a while and I finally treated myself. Not sure where it’s going to fit in and I’ll probably wait to decide on its permanent position until I’ve got the annuals in and thought about it some more.

Now I’ve planted s triangle of sugar snap peas.

Today we planted a pyramid of dwarf beans, and some early/maincrop peas.

I now need to dig more lawn so there’s space for a pyramid ( I know that’s not the right word!) of runner beans, which I wanted to plant today, but seem to have forgotten to buy the seeds. We also have a ludicrous amount of tomatoes growing indoors that I’m going to have to find space for, and I always like to grow beetroot. Carrots would be nice, but I don’t seem to have the knack of growing them. We already have potatoes in pits in the back garden, and I’ll probably grow the squash in containers in the back garden, where it tends to get more sun.

Very exciting, I’m glad to be spending more time at home!

Cuteness

Just one photo today – I left my phone at home while we were out, so I yoinked this photo from Nick’s phone. Isaac in his new coat (with toggles!!) and Velcro shoes, looking very smart indeed.

Today the girls started at a performing arts programme at our local school that runs on a Saturday morning. Willow got to play the violin, hand bells, keyboard, and recorder, as well as doing a few drama and dance related activities. Eve joined in with the junior orchestra (on percussion since she doesn’t have an instrument she’s comfortable playing in front of others yet), joined a drama group, had done 1:1 tuition on how to play the keyboard and how to read music since the class was quiet, and finished with a singing/dancing class.

I’m really glad to have found this group because it gives them a chance to meet some more local friends and adds a lot of things that would be difficult and expensive for us to provide otherwise. I wish schools operated on a more dip in /out method so that we could tailor the kids educations in a more reasonable manner and in a way that suits us. But never mind.

In other news. I’m still making some wonderful health improvements. Today’s milestone: I got a headache sneak up on me sharply and only one prescription strength cocodemol was enough to take the edge off, whereas normally I would need to take two and still feel seriously off for quite some time. More on that another time. Busy busy busy 🙂

Isaac’s 5th Birthday

Opening cards

His doggy from me and Daddy, the little dog the girls bought him, and the tortoise I knitted for him.

We spent the day at The Hub in Northampton, which everyone enjoyed. I got thrown into a giant burger 🙂

We went for lunch at Pizza Hut and I had the opportunity to introduce the kids to chip spice. SO YUM.

The kids all fell asleep on the way so I think we got something right 🙂

Home Education Snapshot

Counting the pennies Granny Rona sent and sharing them out.

Isaac stacking different types of 5p.

Planting pepper seeds, sunflower seeds and getting potato seeds ready to chit.

Modelling the stickers from #gyop

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Eve is at Grandma’s house. Isaac decided to watch an episode of “Ruffruff, Tweet and Dave” about planting seeds directly after this. Now they’re snacking on monkey nuts and fruit.

It’s been so long…

It’s been so long since I last properly blogged. There’s a lot of reasons for that. Some of it is that I’ve been concentrating on recovering my energy and making sure the house and family are running properly. I haven’t had the headspace for another project. I haven’t really engaged in any hobbies at all really.

Lots of things have happened since the last time I posted. And I’ll talk about them another time. It’s too much for one post. I don’t even know where to begin.

I think the main thing I always wanted to use this blog for was to keep a track of what is going on with the kids. What we are doing on a day-to-day, week to week basis… because I’ll never remember, and it’s nice to look back. For me, to remind me that I/we are being productive…. and for them, so that they can see how much they have grown.

I might just start sending a few photos with captions a couple of times a day (via email from my mobile), and following up with a proper post once or maybe even two a week.

I don’t know if anyone is still “following” me… but if you are… thank you for your patience 🙂 Normal service will resume shortly.

 

We, The Spectrum People

More ratty photos

Eve feeding the girls yogurt. This seems to be a firm favourite. Apparently when you have built up trust you can use your fingers and they’ll just lick it off!

They were seriously loving this stuff!

The girls fast asleep in the top of my makeshift double layer hammock. So cute!!

Our new pets

So these are our new pets. They are a slightly early birthday present for Eve. She has named one Maisy (has a black line down her back) and Kizzy (who is mainly white). The third rattie is mine and has been dubbed “Splodge” (she has a black splodge on her back).

I took these photos while we were giving them some time to run around in the bath (because they can’t really escape, and I don’t trust them anywhere that they would be able to right now, I don’t have time to chase rats around!!)

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I made this hammock with a top for them out of a couple of old tea towels. They seem to enjoy it, but won’t sleep in it yet.