an up-and-down kind of week

Seem to be having a run of it at the moment. On Monday we missed gymnastics again :( the sprogs were just not feeling it and I won't force them. Podd rang in sick as he lost his voice and we made the spur of the moment decision to hire a car for this week. As I said the other day I am really struggling with public transport at the moment and this week was pegged to be busy Monday through Thursday. We visited a good friend for lunch and I spent some time catching up with her while the sprogs played. One of her friend's daughters was there too (as she had just become a big sister and her mum was a bit tired!) so the sprogs enjoyed playing with her. When my friend went to pick her boys up from school she dropped us off at the rental place and we picked up a little Corsa for the week. It made our usual shopping and swimming trip much shorter (5 minutes to get home instead of 50) and easier (shopping in the boot of the car instead of in my trundle trolley).

On Tuesday I had arranged to go to the local MSLC meeting so the sprogs went to play with some home ed friends of theirs. I am informed there was much excitement, and I returned at lunch time to find Little had drawn a lovely rainbow picture on their driveway in chalk with arrows and signs for where I should park the car. After a quick trip to the supermarket we shared lunch together and I caught up with them. We left around 3pm and decided to take advantage of the car by going to buy seed compost (ahem, and some alpine plants, and strawberry plants and seed onions...) from a local garden centre, something we would usually have to ask a friend or relative to help us with as none of the garden centres are easily accessible on public transport. I was looking forward to Wednesday as although it was going to be really busy it would also be a really good day. That was, until about 11pm... when Tiny was sick :( cue late night washing and bath.

We had organised with some other home edders to go see a free film screening on Wednesday morning - needless to say it didn't happen. We were also hoping to go to a drop in session that another home ed mum was running to make bunting to show support for the Choose Your Midwife, Choose Your Birth protest on Monday which it is unlikely I will be able to attend :( Instead it was a home day with the older two miffed that we couldn't go out and Tiny being a velcro child who wasn't happy unless she was touching me. Bless her she was very distressed, but every time I mentioned her being poorly, she would shout at me "I'm not poorly!" We watched a lot of films on Wednesday! Tiny fell asleep in the early afternoon despite protesting that she wasn't tired, so I did some boring financial stuff on the computer which I had been putting off because there was always something better to do! Little and Small found the cardboard circles that came out of our Potato Council chitting tray, and decorated them to look like pizzas. Then Little made a pizza restaurant with the toys in her bedroom:

She also made a map of the town around the restaurant, which I've not managed to photograph yet, but it's very impressive.

On Wednesday evening we had gig tickets to see Skunk Anansie at Leeds. They'd been booked for about 6 months and we were supposed to be going with Podd's best friend and his partner to celebrate Podd's birthday. As it turned out, they are currently on a trip to New Zealand, so we found a couple of other friends who were joining us. The sprogs were very excited to be staying over at my parents house.... expect we couldn't send them with illnesses floating about. I stayed home while the others went to the gig and I must confess to being rather disappointed about that as last time we had tickets to see them I didn't go then either as Tiny was only 2 weeks old. It was especially annoying when Tiny woke up just as Podd got home from work and by the time he left the house had perked right up and was bouncing about like nothing was wrong. Consistent with Small, it lasted less than 24 hours before she was back to normal again.

On Thursday, with Tiny being better and Podd having booked a couple of days off work we decided to make the most of the hire car. In the morning we visited Scrap Magic, a fantastic art supply shop in Bradford which sells both the usual arty crafty supplies plus a variety of scrap and junk for art purposes. We bought lots of stuff for crafting and playing - fabric, chess pieces, egg trays, large cardboard tubes etc. I also bought some chalks and dry wipe pens for our home ed Basement Group. After that we drove to St Leonards Farm and had lunch there along with lots of fun (see the farm post). Eventually we got cold at the farm so we decided to visit my parents' for a cup of tea. While there I read on a facebook group about some books that were on sale at Aldi so on our way home we popped in to a store and I picked up Human Bodies and Planet Earth, complete with magnifying glasses.

The sprogs didn't notice them at first when we arrived home but when they did there were loud gasps of joy at the magnifying glasses and lots of fun to be had...

(They did read the books too lol!) We considered what we might do yesterday before returning the car, but any ideas were scuppered when Little threw up on her way to bed :( we also woke up to a significant blanket of snow (yay...! NOT!) so I just cleaned the car and took it back to the rental company. Yesterday also ended up being an at-home-watch-films-and-spend-all-day-playing-Minecraft kind of day as not only was Little poorly but Podd was too, so we threw all our expectations for the day out of the window. So far I've been the only one who's not had this bug... keeping my fingers crossed that will continue!

This morning, in keeping with Small and Tiny, Little and Podd both felt pretty much normal again so we opened our packet of spring crafty bits that we bought from Scrap Magic ...

... and the sprogs decorated some spring baskets:

Little's spring basket

Small's spring basket

Tiny's spring basket

And while they are really lovely, I must confess they look very silly sat on a windowledge when outside is a foot deep in snow!! And as a random footnote, here's a progress picture of the flowering plant I posted up last week:

Can't wait for it to fully flower! :D