GP Camp, Shrewsbury.

Ahh sad to be home, although nice to make a cuppa so easily, and have warm dry feet!

So, we left Saturday morning, not quite so bright and early as I wished.  The "quick" supermarket trip ended up taking an  hour because it was so busy!   That's ok, I thought, we'll be there about half one instead of twelve.  Hmm, forgot about bank holiday traffic.  Joined the M25 and the traffic was snarled; and it was pretty much like that most of the way to Shrewsbury.  A 3.45hrs journey took over 5 hours.

So anyway, we finally arrived at camp, I think Rye and me were the last to arrive.  Never mind, I got the tent up, had a wee bit of help with the tarp, which I totally cocked up and had a maze of guy ropes to manover through to get into the teepee.  Adds to the adventure :-)

Rye quickly made friends, and took a particular shine to Charlie, very sweet watching them playing together.  And later he and Pheebs played lovely too... and then this afternoon, he and Saule were just adorable.  Saule chasing Rye and giggling as Rye threw himself onto the grass, and Saule would then copy him.  Martin entertained the children for a wee while, as trips to the train station were made, and again they were adorable, playing hide and seek, and the little ones chasing after the bigger children.  Gawd it was brilliant!  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 A very happy boy to be camping :D

Alas later in the afternoon it began to rain, and it didn't stop for 24hrs, ooh it was a bit miserable and cold.  We all feared we'd be rained out, as we were all talking of maybe leaving Monday if it kept raining.    The rain didn't stop us going to see Wroexter Roman City though.

 This was inside the museum, very small but very interesting.

 The ruins.

 The roman villa created entirely from roman methods, it was amazing!

 Yup, we were soaked!

 The marquee saved the camp!  Despite the rubbish rain, we were able to be together, sharing food, chatting, the children playing happily.  Nearly kissed the fella that brought a wood burner to warm the marquee up.. although, we had a bit of trouble getting it going.

 Monday, yay!  The sun appeared, and gosh it was hot!  The kids made me a birthday banner :D

 And drew me a beautitful picture with lots of witches on it :D

 Sarie also worked on my dreads for me, tightening them up, and getting the back ones started so I can easily finish them off.  It was rather addictive, I was mostly seen sat with a tiny crochet hook playing with my dreads. :D

Birthday cake!   LOL and yes I'm wiping away tears.  The children all stood together and sang happy birthday to me.  Bless Jenna, she was determined I was going to have a "proper" birthday :D  They even put on a play for me.

Rye sporting the new rainbow playsilk that Sarah dyed for me :D  Here he's been a prince.

The children racing around the field after, um, Russ, I think. 

Laura made a gorgeous vegetable curry that we had with jacket potato and naan bread, and then I made fruit kebabs and broke out the maize tortillas and dips :D  Yum.  Loved that many of our meals ended up being a shared affair.  It was great.  And that evening we sat around the fire chatting, watching the most amazing orange full moon rise. 

So despite the rain, we had a fabulous time and was again sad to see our friends leave on the last day.
Big thank yous to Clare and Chris for organising, and I think Jenna deserves a special thank you too for helping to make my birthday such a special day.

Thank you, dear friends, I had a wonderful time.
Rye is already asking when we will see everyone again!

Thumb twiddling.

Yesterday, a parent came to visit and discuss childcare for her son.  Floors were swept, again, shelves dusted, toys and books tidied, kitchen tidied, surfaces wiped down, floor mopped, garden tidied, toys put away.  Policies brochure etc printed out.  Yes, a lot of effort goes into making my setting look as attractive as possible.  The parent sounded very positive, queried if I would be able to start minding the boy from next week, spoke of her husband coming to visit me etc.   Yet I've heard nothing since, so I am assuming she's decided on a different childcare provider.

I am beginning to conclude that this house probably puts potential clients off.  Afterall, the lounge is very small, tiny in fact - not a lot of space for children to run and play - indeed I discourage running indoors, just because the lounge is that small.  Loosing the contract will not cause me any difficulties, just a little disheartening, and I confess I took a shine to the little boy immediately - he was lovely. 

The solution of course, is a bigger house.  I'll wait until next year and start looking in January, my preference is one of the lovely Victorian houses, that predominantly make up the housing down here.  The thought of packing does fill me with horror - we both have so much more stuff now, still, the ideal is to find a property I can bed down in and not having to worry about moving for a LONG time.

Anyhoos moving on.

Rye is very taken with his treeblocks recently and has been building lots of little towers and "castles".

Which he then knocks down;

The new myriad catalogue plopped onto my door mat this morning too.  There are some lovely new additions to their stock.  The Fairytale Castle is beautiful; pricey too at £229.95.   Then there's this lovely Fagus Excavator, which has had a re-design.  Again rather pricey at £89.95.  Rye adores contruction vehicles and I have looked at this and others in the Myriad range a number of times.   The prices have always given me pause, as I was never entirely sure how big these were.  £90 for a decent sized excavator, well, I don't mind too much - £90 for something that sits on my hand; I'd mind.  Particularly, as I've bought some things in the past and then been shocked how small they were for the price.

The catalogue has a large photo of a boy playing with the excavator and it looks a fair size, so I think I'm  set on this being Rye's birthday present. For Yule I think the Camphill Dumper Truck will be appreciated, and I'll ask my brother if he'll gift Rye with the Camphill Transporter.

Although given Rye's lingering love for castles and building of; I am tempted to buy the Kindergarten Play Set 1    and buy a couple of these castle wall sides  Add in the treeblocks we already own and Rye could make fabulous castles, without the £230 quid price tag.

Ahhhh, little consumerist me, eh.  I am not going to apologise - these days I am in a financial position where I can splash out now and again and while I enjoy hand making gifts for Rye, my skills do not extend to transporters, exacavators and beautifully carved pieces of wood... I feel a crochet exacavator may not quite hit the spot, too.

Well, there I go, off on a tangent - I meant only to mention the new catalogue and drool a little over the fairytale castle, before going on to write about yesterday afternoon.

Picking up my minded child from nursery - watching them run across the playing field, playing on the slides and swing - then back to mine for lunch and naps.  Rye isnt napping much at the moment, so he played with the treeblocks, trains and cars.  Then it was time for C to get up; and by now the rain was sillaging it down, and the washing I put out earlier - well rinsed.

I really didn't fancy taking the children out in torrential rain, so I needed an activity to distract them from running in and out of the lounge and kitchen, screeching.... this is what I decided on

Good 'ole aquamats.  And no mess, normally I don't mind mess; but after spending a lot of time making the house very spic and span for the interview with the parent, I really was not in the mood for mess.

Mess does follow me though, the dishwasher is having a moment.  So I need to emptied it and handwash the dishes.  (sigh)  I need to do it today too, as I left it for a couple of days hoping it would reset its self.  It did and turned back on; and then the programme got stuck again.  If I leave the dishes any longer they will go mouldy - yuck.

I suppose I better go and do that then.   Blah.

Poxy Blessings.

Today has been filled with laughter and joy... oh and a bit of baking.  Mmmm perfect.
The children played on the bean bag, laughing and giggling as they fell on it, then rolled off; and generally got into big heaps.

We had fun playing with the jigsaws, and YAH! Rye seems to have passed the "I can't do it," and sulking stage and really had a good go at the jigsaws; most of which he can do now, so time to start looking for more complex ones I guess.  My charge had a decent go too; although she was more interested in holding the cat piece and shouting "CAT!"  lmao.

Thursday's are half days for my charge, so at 1pm, her mum picked her up.  I flumped onto the sofa with a cuppa and the laptop for half hour... and much to my amusement this was my various views as I looked up occasionally;

 I had wondered how long it would take him to figure something like that out lol.

He asked to play with the v'tec reader thingy; it's been sat on top of other book case for months, and today I was feeling magnamious, so I got it down for him.  The shorts disappeared in a frantic dash for the loo.  Rye is going through a somewhat frustrating phase of waiting too long to go to the loo, and thus wetting himself.  Most of the frustration is his because he is getting modest in his old age, and wants trousers on - 'cept he's going through 4 or 5 pairs a day and I simply cannot keep on top of the washing when I can't put clothes outside to dry.  Today has been a mostly dry day though, as I've sent him upstairs as soon as I've seen the slightest hint of a jig or willy holding.

And the poxy blessings?  Well, that's because normally on a Thursday I would be at HE Group with the kids, owing to the spotty lurgy we stayed home, so after C was picked up an afternoon home.  Well, the kitchen called me and as Rye had taken himself upstairs with his cars and the v-tec reader thingy, and after I checked just what he was up to; (cuddled in my bed watching Bob the Builder Dvd and playing with his cars), I delightfully stepped into my kitchen.

Quick tidy up; and then baking; well that was the plan; but then I decided to use up the last of the veggies because my Riverford Veg Box arrives tomorrow.  The plan initially was to make vegetable root soup; it morphed into red lentil curry with brown basmalti rice. YUM.  There is bread dough rising, I'll pop that in the fridge though and bake off in the morning - hmmm fresh bread.

And I was going to bake the lemony shortbread again; but just below that recipe was another for lemony bars.  It is basically a shortbread/buscuity base that is baked off; and then a lemony "custard" poured on top, which sort of seeps into the base, while a little stays on top.  Delicious; tastes a bit like a cross between lemon cheesecake and shortbread.  Very, very rich and tasty :-)

And then after tea; the rain began to pound against the window, the lightening flashed and a huge crack of thunder overhead.  Rye raced to the window to watch the storm :-)  It was a beauty, although over in flash ;-)

Oh Bollo*ks its raining

that was my unthinking exclamation this afternoon because I'd optimistically hung some washing out.  It was nearly dry too; and then the rain came.  My son also heard my exclamation and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me it was raining, "Ohhhhh bolloxs", he would then add.  Will I ever learn to watch my mouth?

Rye has drawn pictures - spiders apparently, played with the plasticine, played with his cars, the leapfrog reading thing, which I hate but of course he loves, I hide it and only bring it out when I'm sure I can cope with the constant wailing "its broken," because he's knocked the memory stick thingy and it's stopped working.  He's watched dvds, requested porriage and pancakes for tea, (we had scone pizza instead), and then much to my surprise fell asleep while cuddling up to me, while watching Merlin on Iplayer.  So he's in bed, asleep, with virtually no effort from me!

Regardless of the weather, we're going out for a walk tomorrow.  I feel all fuzzy head from spending the day indoors and, I guess, spending more time than normal online too.  Need some fresh air to blow the cobwebs away.

The crochet pinfore dress is coming along too, I want to get it finished and out of the way so I can concentrate on other projects, so for the next few days I will be concentrating on the dress, on the plus side I'm starting to speed up as I get use to the tension, and I had a brain wave.  Every 6 rows there are decreases, factor in the tight tension too, it means its been difficult to determine exactly which is the last stitch of the row, so I've had to spend ages counting and recounting to make sure I have the correct number of stitiches on each line, which slowed me down further.... then I suddenly realised that if I use my stitch markers at the beginning and end of each row, I won't have to count constantly, because I won't be accidently adding any stitches, or decreasing when I shouldn't be. 

For someone who tends to work more freeform, following a pattern is proving challenging; I'm starting to see the shape of the dress though and the satisfaction of seeing something almost magically grow, is kicking in.  I can't wait to see it completed :-)

This is the dress so far, the back would have been finished had I not needed to frog so many rows when I realised I had made a mistake...still its coming along and I'm pleased:

P.S.  There's two yarns lengths there because I'm simply carrying the colour not been used up each row, this saves on lots of ends to darn in, (and on yarn too), and actually makes for a sturdier fabric, as sometimes those ends can work free, particularly if an item is worn and washed alot - this way it reduces the risk of any unravelling.  And ok, I hate darning in loads of yarn ends!

As night draws in.

Teatime; chicken and vegetable pie with carrots and mashed brussels.

Rye's response, "Ummm pastry, so nice".

Rye took a photo of his cars and garage.

I took one of him and he insisted I took a photo of me - eek:

And then another photo of him

When asked what he wanted to do next he said, "Ohh, park".

So, we went to the park and jumped in puddles on the way.

and got very wet bums;

And I have been meaning to post a thank you to Rachel, from Our Free Range Family blog , for the lovely books - thank you hon, Rye was very chuffed to see Thomas books AND a dinosaur book :-)

Rainy Monday

Too wet to go out today - well for this mama whose doesn't own a raincoat, so we stayed in:

Washing up the breakfast things.

Row, Row, Row your boat, gently down the stream, if you see a dragon snail don't forget to wail....arrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, if you see a crocadile, don't forget to scream...... ARRRGHHHHHH

Mega block bridges and castles with big scary animals attacking.

Treeblock house and farm yard, encased by train tracks.

The building of "wood henge"

All this building is exhausting.