OOOO A BIT OF SUNSHINE

Hiya
Just a shorty, yeah right, to catch up over last weekend.

Friday we went off to London, meeting up with friends on the train, to go on Duck Tours with a small group of home edders.  We booked the whole 'boat' which was lovely.  Anyone not knowing what Duck Tours are about can check the picture below.  It's a WWII 'duck' which was using in the D-Day landings and has been modified by putting in seats, a roof and roll down plastic windows.  The tour starts off on land and then enters the River Thames by the side of MI6, travels up to the Houses of Parliment, comes back down and then re enters the road.  Tour lasted about 1.5hrs and Callum loved it, especially the River Thames bit.

Callum next to Desdemona our 'duck'

Our guide was lovely and very funny.  And we didn't just get facts and figures, but some extra information such as the reason 10 Downing Street, most railings in London and London cabs are black dates from when Queen Victoria was in mourning for Prince Albert and they were painted black our of respect.

Saturday Callum spent the day at home whilst I had a girlie day out in wet and windy Margate visiting the Turner Gallery and the Museum.  May take Callum there another time if there was an exhibition on he may be interested in, but to be honest I think he would prefer the larger galleries in London where there is more to see.

Sunday was a lazy day.

Today, we had a doctor's appointment to see if we can get some Occupational Therapy sessions for Callum as he is now saying that it hurts his collar and shoulder to write.  We remembered last week, after discussing his pain, that he had fallen from a swing whilst on holiday when he was about 4 and had suffered a suspected cracked collar bone.  We are being referred to CAS(?) where they will have a look at him, discuss his problems and take it from there as to whether he will need OT or Physiotherapy.

After that we came home, had some lunch and wrote up our Duck Tours.  Then maths!  Estimating weights and measures today; bit easy, but I could tell Callum wasn't really in the mood.  Went well.....

Whilst sitting and having a cuppa a bit later the electrics kept shorting out!  Hmmmm, went around switching everything off, rebooted electrics and then switched back on what was necessary.  No, shorted again.  No reason that we could think off; nothing had suddenly been switched on or off and TV and computer wasn't doing anything silly with updates.  On Phil's return we went through everything individually having had the electrics short out twice more.  Discovered that the plug socket that the washing machine was plugged into was full of water...eeeek!  Wall wasn't damp, so couldn't understand where water had come from until we realised that the iron was on top of the worktop laying down.  Oooops, Callum had forgotten to stand it up again after his weighing session and the water had leaked out from the steam reservoir, gone over the worktop, down the gap by the wall and into the socket.  Oh well, lesson learnt about the fuse box, water and electricity no mixing and about being a little more careful about putting things away.  Could have been worse.  All fixed now!

Cya

OOOOOO THIS IS NEW!

Hiya


Thought I'd do a very very short blog about the past couple of days and have discovered that it's all change here on blogger.com.


It looks ok, but it is a bit odd when things aren't what you were expecting them to be, but this seems easier, I think.  Only time will tell.


Anyway, back to post proper.  Didn't blog yesterday as we had a lazy day.  I know it appears that we have a lot of those, but today was a proper lazy day with no plans and no intentions.  Callum stayed up in his room all morning reading his book, The Hunger Games.  He's addicted and is zooming through it at the rate of knots.  So glad I bought the complete set as he'd be harassing me for book two by now if I hadn't.  Funny that it wasn't that long ago he wouldn't have even picked up a book, let alone read it.


He's decided that he'd like to see the movie, but doesn't want to go to the cinema to see it, so will wait until it comes on demand on the TV.  I wanted to read the books myself first, but he jumped on them, so I'm not entirely sure of their content, I just know that they are age appropriate.  He says it's a bit weird and a bit scary; hence not wanting to see it on the big screen. 


Today, we went to the first ice skating meet since before the Easter hols.  Was nice to get back to see everyone and back into a routine.  Callum still didn't skate; don't think he ever will to be honest, but he likes going and that's what matters and it means I can have a natter too.
Then this afternoon I left him on the computer while I popped next door for a cuppa.  We've lived next door to each other for 2 years and speak, but never really properly as we have both been doing up our houses.  So today was nice to actually sit down and have a chat and I wasn't worried about Callum as he was only next door.


Tonight he is watching Fawlty Towers with his dad which seems to have become a routine thing for them in the evenings until they have exhausted the catalogue available on demand.  He's cackling as I type!


So that's it.  Weekend plans look like they have been washed out, so don't know what we'll be up to.  Have a good one folks.


Cya

STILL WET AND WINDY

Hi all

Now don't all fall off your chairs or splatter that cuppa over the floor, yes I am back today. Wow, two days in a row, hehe.

So what have we been up to? Actually it's been really wet and windy today, so we didn't venture outdoors at all. Decided to use the time to try and get back into the swing of doing the maths and literacy dailies. However, this didn't work out totally as planned.

Firstly I was awake at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep and Callum was awake a little earlier than he has been lately too, so we were both a little slow in getting it all together this morning. We managed to print off our Easter Bunny Hunt write up and then had a go at our new photo programme which prints posh backgrounds, inserts texts and generally tarts up the presentation. We've only used it once before so we are both still learning, but the photos to accompany the write up look pretty impressive with easter egg borders and labels. It just took us a little longer than normal to sort out, but its fun, pretty easy and we both know that after a couple more plays we'll be experts, haha.

While we were doing these Terri, my daughter/his sister, turned up with Merlin the dog, so we had a manic 5 minutes with a bouncy canine.

Dailies turned out to be a mixture of easy and a bit more confusing. The literacy was easy (surprisingly for Callum), but the maths wasn't as straight forward and we are going to have to go over it all again tomorrow when we have a bit more time to ourselves.

To add to this we were going to write up our science experiment, but discovered that, although we have the photos (see above and right), we seem to have lost the results!!! Oh well, good excuse to do it again and Callum did rather enjoy throwing stones into a tray of flour coated in cocoa powder to represent meteors, haha.

So, partly a successful day, partly not, but it's been fun and tomorrow is another day.

Cya

BEES, BOUNCING AND BROWSING

Hi all

Been a couple of days I know, but I had rather a bad night on Sunday and was far too shattered on Monday to write anything up, so catch up tonight.

The bee identification course we went to on Sunday was pretty good, but aimed at people already with a little knowledge, so a lot went over mine and the kids' heads. The journey there was good, thanks to Carol for driving, and Romney Marsh has to be the most strangest place in South England. It's almost alien, but really fascinating. Callum was rather interested in the lighthouse and the power station, but it was so windy that investigating will have to wait until another day.

As I've said the talk itself was a little in-depth, but we still managed to glean quite a bit of information. It was nice to have a closer look at some bees (admittedly they were dead ones) and, using a small lens and the info we'd been told to try and identify the different types.

Callum was very impressed that there are 250 different types of native bee not including the honey bee and they any of them can re-sting as their stingers are not barbed like the honey bee's and so they can retract them. This means that the myth that bees die once they have stung you only refers to honey bees.

There was a nice array of leaflets, seeds and posters at the back and we bought a couple of packs of seeds, a set of the magnifying lenses, an id leaflet and a badge. We also picked up some leaflets on gardening for bees.

We also had a quiz which Callum saved for Monday. I had to furiously write down answers and correct my mistakes so that I had a reference for him on the Monday (no mean feat when the names were in latin!).

Monday came and he did the quiz with very little help (which was much better than I had fared the day before) and we wrote up the day for our folder. Both of us weren't feeling 100% so we spent the afternoon watching a programme that I'd recorded ages ago about the Japanese Tsunami (Caught on Camera on Channel 4) and discussing what we'd seen, how we'd feel if it happened here and how they must have felt when it happened.

Today was trampolining and Kim, his coach, spent quite a bit of time trying to get Callum's positioning correct and trying to encourage him to get some height in his bouncing. Was strange to watch an instant improvement just by Kim getting Callum to sit on the side of the trampoline and him moving his legs into the positions that they should be in for each movement. Callum says it made it easier for him as he could feel the position and 'save' it in his head. He then did some more somersault work. They are now trying to remove the extra mat as they think it may be distracting Callum (I say they to represent Callum and Kim; I don't really have anything to do with it). Callum is now consistently getting the somersault and is now over turning rather than under turning which means he lands pretty much on his feet (and collapses) or over onto his knees. He did nail one though and I squealed like a girly; sorry Callum.

The rest of the day we spent on Youtube looking at Flashmobs and having a discussion on the fact that if a small group of strangers can get together and do something unique, what could we do as a complete species if we put our minds to it. Callum was rather interested in the idea of all armies putting down weapons and refusing to fight (his thoughts) and wondering what their respective Governments would do about it. Nice to know that his fascination for warfare and fighting has a peaceful side to it (at least he realises that what he plays isn't real and that the 'real' isn't a good thing).

Anyway, that about sums up the days we've had. I've missed out the umpteen cups of tea we've drunk, the browse around the garden, the rescuing of an abandoned umbrella and the starting of his new set of books (The Hunger Games). Oh and the watching of the new series of Horrible Histories on the BBC.

Cya later folks.

WHAT HAPPENED? WHERE DID THAT WEEK GO?

Hiya

Sorry, can't believe it's been 10 days since I last wrote this up. I am seriously out of practice.

So Easter weekend arrived. Oooops! I'd forgotten, or rather I'd lost track of what weekend we were on and thought it was the following week. To be honest though Callum was so involved with his game I don't think he really cared. So the weekend went a little like this: Friday, chilled out; Saturday, I did my back in after I'd managed to track down an egg for Callum; Sunday, I laid on sofa in pain and Callum ate his egg and Phil ate his chocolate; Monday, I felt a little better and we went off to Capstone Park to do orienteering. Forgot camera! Anyway, we were given a map, a list of clues and a compass and sent on our way. The idea was to use the clues and the compass to find stamping posts to stamp our card with and hopefully manage to find all the stamps and make it safely back to the starting point (visitors centre). We decided that Callum would do the stamping, I would read the clues and between Phil and Callum they would use the compass and try and figure out where we had to go. We managed to find all the stamps eventually, but we did get lost twice, well lost once and miss a stamping post completely once. Took about 2hrs and we all got a choccy egg at the end. My back was killing me by the end of it, so I went back on the sofa for an hour or so when we got in. Then into the kitchen with Callum to make chocolate rice crispy (gluten free) nests with added mini eggs inside - yum!

Tuesday and Wednesday we continued to write up all our days out. We've had loads to do as we've been forgetting to write them up and had a rather large backlog. All done now and our folder looks rather impressive with write ups, photos and some additional information with regard to special events. Now just got to finish off a project and we are finally up to date! Hooray!!!

Thursday we had his friend Azeem over for the day and they spent all of it on the computer! Command and Conquer again. Was very interesting listening to them making maps and plans and then the uproar of laughter when things didn't turn out quite as expected or the 'enemy' did something silly.

Then Friday it was a friend again; this time Callum D who we haven't seen for ages. Once again it was the computer! Boys of a certain age do tend to be slightly obsessed it would seem, but at least they were communicating and cooperating with plans and laughing lots!

Today has been quiet although he did go out with the dog this morning with dad. Came back with a tray of strawberries which haven't really lasted that long in this house!

As well as the above, his sister Terri has been over for a few days this week so its been nice to have her around.

Tomorrow we are on a bee identification course in the afternoon and next week its back to normal as the kids go back to school and our home ed events will start up again.

Lets see if I can write his up a bit more regularly. Hmmmm, don't hold your breathe.

Cya

A QUICK CATCH UP

Hiya

Well, got a few days to catch up on, but as we are still not 'back to normal' there isn't loads to write about.

We went to the home ed meet in Faversham last week and although Callum did spend quite a bit of time on his own playing on his DS, he did eventually disappear off with his mate Stewart into the computer room. So getting there slowly.

The following 3 days were a right off as Phil was off again and we couldn't really get on with anything.

Saturday, Callum went off with his dad to the fire station thing that we went to last weekend on the wrong day!!!






Saturday night was also Earth Hour. Between 8.30pm and 9.30pm we turned off all the electricity, lit candles and sat chatting. Earth Hour is run by WWF and happens every year. Callum loves doing it and I think it is something we should do more often than just the once a year. The first few minutes are the worse as there is no TV, no computer, no nothing, but actually it always turns out to be really enjoyable as we find other ways to entertain ourselves which normally means having a really good family talk.

Sunday we had a lovely walk with the dog at Riverside.

Then this week we had our friends Lorraine and Amy over on the Monday, which was lovely and relaxing and the kids spent all afternoon in the garden firing Nerf guns at targets and giggling.

Tuesday we had trampolining and Callum finally managed to nail at least 3 somersaults onto his feet which made him feel a lot better as he now understands what the movement feels like. Just need to work on getting them consistantly right now. Kim, his instructor, seemed pleased too. Then it was off to another friend's house for the afternoon where I again didn't see him the whole time we were there. Thank you Liz.

That brings us up to yesterday where we spent a glorious sunny morning with Terri and Merlin down at Riverside doing the Easter Bunny hunt. They had two types of card bunnies to find - yellow and blue. Yellow had clues for younger children and the blue had clues for older kids. Obviously we did the blue clues. Was a little easier than last year to find the bunnies, but still took approx an hour to complete. Callum got a chocolate egg for his troubles and then we went to the cafe for a cuppa and an ice cream. Decided to walk home as it was a lovely day and we can walk the majority of it along by the river.

Today we are having a proper day off. Pjs all day, no visitors, no dad, just us chilling out and watching some telly. Sometimes it's just necessary.

Cya