Blessed Thursdays.

Yesterday, while making tea, I popped my head out of the kitchen to check on the children, and found Rye laying on the decking, staring into space and chomping on his nails - **sigh**.   Minutes later my two minded children piled onto Rye and that moment of solitude erupted and was gone.

And thank you, Talie, the waterproofs arrived yesterday, and are fabulous, ok a little short in the leg for my rather tall boy - but with wellies it doesn't matter; the dunagrees will be fine for this winter :-)

Another busy week filled with toddler groups, feeding ducks, playing in the garden, and a need to be organised and keep on top of washing up etc; not my forte normally.  The slowcooker has become my best friend again.  Monday I made a veg stew and then dry fried some organic mince to add; with that I made cottage pie.  For lunch we had the veg stew blended into a soup, and then Tuesday night I used the left over stew with mince to make lasagne in the slowcooker.  I chucked in half a jar of passata, bit more garlic, some dried thyme and reduced it down a bit to intensify the flavours and thicken a little.  I made a roux white sauce, using the all in one method, and added some garlic, more dried thyme and parmasan cheese for flavouring.  Then I built up the lasagne in the crock pot, and then turned it on for 7 hours on low and left it be.  An hour or so from the end I changed hte setting to high and added some chedder to the top.  Mmm, nom, nom, nom.

The cheese on top doesn't brown of course, but it does melt and go lovely and stringy and seepy into the lasagne, nom.  And I served with artisan bread;

Beautiful.  I reckon macroni cheese would work in a slow cooker too - that may well be my experiment for the beginning of the week when I have my 2nd minded child too.

And when we haven't been eating lovely slow cooked teas; we've been sticking foam stickers on paper and building helicopers;

And then blessed Thursday.  Oh yes, they have taken on a whole new meaning for me; not only are Thursdays our Home Ed Group day - it is a minded children free day.  I do not have to be up at the crack of dawn and I do not have to be so super organised - which isn't a natural inclination for me, at all!

Waiting impatiently for the train. 

Spotting several large parasol mushrooms at the country park.  For a wee while we sat in the adventure playground. There weren't as many families this week; and sadly most left early because it was a bit cold to be just sat around.  Myself and another home ed parent were about to leave too, when another mum turned up with her son; so in the end we decided to have something to eat at the cafe and then go for a walk around the lake.  Beautiful; I've been to Brockhill a few times but never made it down there until today...

Yes, the lake is green.   I would be very scared if Rye were to fall in, the green stuff on the top, quickly swirls back into place when disturbed and while the lake does not appear to be very deep at all - a mum pushed a stick in and discovered the bottom is very muddy... not a place to paddle, sadly.  The ducks didn't seem to mind though and as soon as they saw us they came zooming over.  I must take some bird seed with me next time we go.

The tree throne.  We took a fab photo of the older children all sat on the "throne".  Rye was a little nervous of climbing up when the older children were up there - so he waited until they'd got down before he clambered up - and then was very proud of himself.  I really enjoyed walking around the lake; and in particular it was lovely to talk to my friend's little girl.  She's five and was really interested in what the trees etc were called; and confess, I really enjoyed sharing what I knew.

Had a lovely time and Rye is sat next to me snoring his head off - a sign, me thinks of a really fun day ;-)