January, A Rather Long Post!

I had planned to write a post at the beginning of the month wishing everyone a happy new year but time already seems to be rushing away! I'm sure I keep hoping, planning for a slower quieter life but life doesn't always go the way you hope does it! Anyway very belated happy new year to everyone.

We've had a very busy start to the year, with various appointments, routine dental appointments, L was booked in to see an OT and she has confirmed my suspicions that L also has sensory processing issues, we had reached the stage of wanting a  confirmation rather than us assuming. I also asked her to check out the way L walked, she is flat footed and has for want of a better description, very wobbly ankles, she was checked at her 2 year old check etc but HV wasn't concerned but it has concerned me, especially looking at the way the shoes wear. So yes the OT feels we need to see the GP for a hospital refer, would someone mind telling the universe that I really don't do hospitals, we seem to of spent enough time in them last year, let alone more appointments. Also our local hospital is an absolute nightmare to park in, when they closed one of our hospitals and merged it into this one, they wanted an extra 2 floors in the car park,this was vetoed my the local council, saying it was out of keeping with the area and it was on a bus route! There isn't even enough disabled parking most of the time for those that need it and I have a feeling the local residence would much of preferred more parking how ever it looked,knowing what the queues are like etc,just my little moan! Car is also due its MOT on Monday, I have a wonderful neighbour who happily will service my car and do a pre MOT check but my car is now 16 years old, so fingers are crossed.

Now I have been desperately trying to simplify my life though life seems to keep throwing up complications! We, well mainly me decided to menu plan for the month and do lots of bulk cooking, as this would reduce the daily time in the kitchen plus, time shopping, prepping food etc which would allow me more time to work with M. So nearly everyone has been involved in the food prep and cooking. O hasn't but between college 4 days a week, working 16 hours a week at M&S and what ever hours he picks up at the gym, he's not getting a lot of spare time, or what little he has is on his coursework and some socialising.  His UCAS application has been put in and he is very keen on doing a degree in biological sciences. So our menu for January is this, see below, it is not set in stone so some variation may occur, obviously there is always a vegetarian option but as most of the time that's just me, I have a variety of choice from meals I made in the freezer.

 So food sorted, I decided to sort out out my childminding paper work, minded documentation needs to be kept for 21 years and 3 months and tax stuff also needs to be kept for 5 years, so I have been religiously storing both. Which sounds great till I realised I had 20 years plus of accounts, so I spent a weekend sorting and refiling everything, way too much shredded paper at the end of it but now have all the child record forms etc filed in 2 boxes, tax in another, then various other legal bits in another, sometimes it would be lovely to have an office to store it all in but at the moment, my office storage is in the loft! Now just remind me when I put next years tax stuff away, I can get rid if an earlier set at the same time....

So lots going on now, compared to Christmas which was a lovely peaceful time, hubby had a few days of and wasn't on call out, so we could all relax. Christmas Eve we had a lovely walk after our evening meal to see all the Christmas lights, which was loved by all. Chritmas day was very wet, so we didn't get a walk but L had a couple of lego sets and thoroughly enjoyed building them all and Santa gave her the first book in the Magic Tree House series. This is the first chapter book we have read her and it has gone down well, I've since introduced her to the secret seven and today read a whole secret seven book to her today, she loves them, some of the time was spent sat cuddled up on the sofa reading them, other times she was sat colouring in and drawing but has regularly asked for more stories. We are also enjoying Woodland Tales by Enid Blyton beautifully illustrated with lots of animal facts woven into a simple story, perfect for my nature loving 5 year old.

 M the last couple of weeks has been up around 6 am weekdays to get on with her work, trying to get it all finished by lunch time,which she seems to be doing. We started this year using Corbett Maths 5 a day revision, which is a brilliant website with revision sheets and answers to worksheets, each day you have 5 mixed questions  to practise and revise. Answers are online and normally show the working out if you are stuck, along with a comprehensive range of videos on different topics to help and explain if you get stuck. The only think is I am not ready at 7am mentally to help her with quadratic equations, oops!

L and I have been reading the first couple of chapters of Story of the World the ancients, we love the ancient book, as it travels round the world covering lots of different ancient cultures, I add in lots of extra books, craft, activities, plus add in more British history. I've used it with both O and M as our basis for ancient history, now in theory the book is part of a history curriculum that is supposed to take one year, we take a lot longer, as we go of tangent and deeper in the periods of history that interest each child. For me the book is a starting point, with the history of the world laid out in order but its there for inspiration not put us under pressure. It helps us as it gives us a guide but at the same time we can wonder away from the book when needed My favourite saying is curriculum is there to help you, guide you, reduce your stress by reducing the work load as some of the hard work is done for you already,  not make you a slave to it and increase your stress as you panic to try and stay on target, OK GCSEs are a different subject all together but up until 14 the pressure is of, honest. Anyway, L has shown interest in cave paintings and has painted some of her own, lots of interesting talk about why they had to hunt animals, I don't think she has made the link yet with where the meat on her plate comes from.If it wasn't for her multiple allergies, I would carry her discussions further but at the moment they won't allow her to have a healthy vegetarian diet, so I feel we can only really skirt round the issue of the food chain, hunting for animals etc and hope she grows out of her allergies before the link is made, as she gets rather upset over it all. We've looked at and watched some short pieces on Skara Brae, lots of cave paintings and videos and books and the different tools they would use.

Then we had the clay out and I showed her how to make a coiled pot with the clay, lots of fun had rolling out the long snakes of clay and then trying to coil it round into a pot shape. Now just waiting for it to dry enough to paint.

M loves to put lunch together for herself and L loves it if she makes hers  too, picture below of one of her creations, you can tell why L loves it when M makes her lunch can't you.

I have finally finished the middle panel of the blanket I have been working on, it is way too much cabling for me and my wrists are rebelling big time, so it has taken forever to do, now working on the last panel, which is knitting up a lot quicker, cable only on every 12th row, so on the 10th repeat already, only another 20 to go!!

We've had lots of wet and frosty walks, the photos are from one of our dryer walks, as you know they love to explore the stream, this time they discovered how they could change to flow of the water with sticks and depending on how they placed the stick in the water, the pattern of the surface water changed, which they were very interested in.

Spotted one long tailed tit feeding on some fat balls that someone had hung up.

Days Out and Snow

Last week we made the most of my husband using up his holidays before Christmas and visited a national trust property, one we have been meaning to do for a few years but for various reasons hadn't. Anyway we finally got to see their Christmas displays, every room has a tree set up, I took a photo of a few of them, my favourite is the book tree.

The tree in the main hall.

All set for dinner.

                    The kitchen is actually done out in full 1950s style and this is the kitchen tree.

The woodland walk is all decked out in little fairy lights, it must look beautiful at dusk, we had planned to stay longer and have a lovely walk but there was a bitter wind, to say the least, so had a short walk though the woods.

Lots of benches had carved arms, a mixture of rabbits and squirrels, the girls loved them.

The rabbits have enjoyed exploring/playing with our tree, the love to nudge the ornaments!

Woke last Sunday to the surprise of snow, at 4am there was no snow as that is when O and his friends got in from clubbing, so somewhere between then and 7am it snowed. L and M was over the moon and quickly ate breakfast and went out to play, O got up looked at the snow, tried to encourage the rabbits to go out in it and then went back to bed.

The rabbits decided it was safer to watch the white stuff from the back porch, eventually venturing out, well Rosie managed 3 or 4 hops out before deciding it wasn't for her and Lucy just put a paw in the snow!

We made mince pies in the afternoon to take up to Nanny and Grandad's, this is the recipe I use for the filling.

We've always had one or two bird feeders in our garden but L has been asking to get more, with different food to attract more birds. Within 30 minutes of the feeders being put out, L spotted our friendly robin feeding on her new feeder, she is so pleased, we so far have had sparrows, robin, blue tit, great tit and a long tailed tit.

 Finished the last of my Christmas knitting, well present knitting anyway, loved this self patterning wool and how soft it is to knit with, its one of the rascal range from sirdar.

 Monday we visited friends and met her new puppy, who is adorable, home to make and decorate candles and watch Miracle on 34th Street.

Joining Nicole at Frontier Dreams

Stars and Sewing

The girls and I are loving The Christmas Mystery, what I hadn't realised that the story is based on a journey through history and through countries. Starting in Norway, then heading through Sweden and then on to Denmark. So lots to look up and research if you want to, this morning we had out the atlas looking at the countries and places mentioned and listening to Bach, as his music was mentioned in the story. Wondering where else the story will take us.

The girls have been busy sewing Christmas decorations, L is still working on hers, think she choose the one with the most sewing, bless her.

M and I have been making some window stars

and I had a go at making these paper stars using this origami star tutorial, still rather shocked it worked, ok, I never manage to get the sharp crisp corners that they do but there was so much folding and unfolding before you got to anything that looked like a star. I was doing the what! Really! Its's supposed to go how!! Then wow it worked,much tot he amusement of my girls. They actually had the star around the other way but actually we rather like the contrast of the different patterns.

Oh and of course paper chain making, M still loves to make paper chains and L is getting into the swing of making them.

Joining Kat for unraveled Wednesday

Advent

There is something special about lighting the advent calendar for the first time, I love the excitement and anticipation at what this month will bring. 24 crafts and activities planned, one for each day of advent, books sorted, happy times ahead. Now I had planned for the first of December to be a day at home, crafting and story telling, instead ended up in town shoe hunting for L. L has very narrow feet and we hadn't been able to find anything in the out of town shoe shop, had ordered a couple of different styles, gone back but these didn't fit either. So town was the next choice, won't say how long we were in town for but we now do have some nice sensible shoes, that fit and according to L are  very comfy, though I did have to talk her out of some pink suede boots. Yes the did look nice but pale pink suede footwear on my tree climbing 5 year old, maybe not the best choice. On the way back to our car, realised that they have moved all the payment machines, so ended up having to walk through one level of the car park, to find one and then up the stairs we don't normally use. M was going up first, turned the corner and quickly turned to come back down, heard a man's voice apologising and then stuck his head round the corner, slight panic initially from me but as he stayed sitting and was very apologetic, that I trusted my instinct that he was ok. Turned out he had come to what in theory was the quietest staircase, to get out of the cold to try and get some sleep, one of the towns many homeless. He was so apologetic that he had worried my oldest daughter and was busy moving his bags out of the way for us to pass, while still apologising. Me by this time had recovered from the initial shock and was feeling guilty that we had disturbed his sleep and had been busy buying a few Christmas decorations while he will be spending another night out in the cold. He was saying that a new shelter was opening over the Christmas period and he was hoping to get a bed there. In the meantime he had been given a new army sleeping bag by one of the local charities, so it wasn't as bad as it had been, he was so polite and positive about his situation, we wished him all the best and hope he does get somewhere warm to sleep. So this post is written with real mixed feelings, the joy and happiness I want my family to feel at this time of year and the sadness for those that are in difficult, stressful situations now, those that are homeless and those that the threat of eviction is on the cards. We as an individual can make difference but at times it never feels enough, where we live the cost of housing is so expensive, the situation is only going to get worse.

Our advent reading this year, we have 2, for L we are reading  Advent Stories and for M The Christmas Mystery, the age range for this is 6 to 11 year old, we are only on day 2 but actually M,L and I are all enjoying the story, its lovely to have a Christmas book that we all can all snuggle up and  enjoy, well the girls the menfolk aren't so interested.

We are reusing an advent calendar we made a couple of years ago, under each tag is an activity, craft, poem to read, we always read The Night before Christmas on Christmas Eve. So our first craft

was making Christmas cards for Grandparents and realising that we have loads of Christmas stickers, think I have picked up more than one pack in the sales after Christmas, won't need to buy any for a couple of years.

I have finished L's Odila cape pullover, she loves it, its roomy enough to pull over another jumper if she is cold, if you are wondering what she is doing, she is using a periscope that her Dad and her made the other week. Which she has thoroughly enjoyed playing with and experimenting with trying to see round corners, above worktops. Joining Nicole for Crafting On

Living Rainforest

Monday saw us visiting the Living Rainforest, the girls are already asking when are we going back again, its not a huge place but lots to see, its great seeing how much they remember from our rainforest project earlier in the year. We didn't manage to spot the sloth or the armadillo, actually we could see the soil being dug out by the armadillo but not the actual creature and we checked on them several times. We did get to see some amazing blue poison dart frogs

Goeldi monkeys

Agouti

The stunning pink flowers of the jade vine.

Periwinkle

Can't remember the name of this bird, we were sad to see they no longer have their toucans, used to love going and seeing them.

There were a few snakes but this one made us giggle, they all have a large display with foliage, tree trunks etc but this one had decided that the cables running around the top of its enclosure was the best place to rest.

Tuesday made the most of the dry sunny weather and spent the morning at the allotment, dug up the rest of the carrots and L happily scrapped of the excess dirt. Cleared another patch to be covered with some well rotted compost to over winter and let the worms do the hard work of digging it in. In the afternoon we met up with friends at the park, won't say just how long it took me to warm up once I got home.

The rest of the week we have been busy with school work and Christmas prep, way to much time looking on pinterest have lots of Christmas ideas for the little ones and us older girls to craft, need more than 24 days! Have sorted out all our Christmas stories and some films to watch too, I do so love this time of year.