more busyness

I've a few days to catch up on here.

On Wednesday morning the sprogs and I did some Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress, we tried Mathseeds again for both Small and Tiny, but it still wasn't working properly. The games were loading off the screen for Small and they wouldn't load at all for Tiny. I must confess to being a touch disappointed as the Reading Eggs bit has always been really good*, so I expected more from Mathseeds. There is a lot of work to still be done on it.

*Apart from that one incident on the Driving Test section where Small had to complete the word, which began with the letters CR, and one of the endings was AP - made me laugh, a lot, but not entirely appropriate for a children's reading website!! Cue email with picture to their customer services dept asking them to rectify it asap!

In the afternoon a local friend came round with her youngest for coffee and a chat and the kids played out in the garden until it was time for her to go on to the local school to collect her older boys. I told the sprogs we were going to walk to school with them, so we all got our shoes on and off we went... it was actually a surprise for Little as we were picking up M, her best friend from when she was at school. After picking him up we were invited to go up to to local play area with another local friend and her son, so off we trotted and spent some time playing on the play equipment. We eventually had to leave as Small walked in front of the big woven swing and was very upset that his back bone was broken and his life was over. When we got home the sprogs were all really very warm so I mowed the lawn nearest the house, and then fetched out and blew up the paddling pool and filled it with water which went down a treat. They all got swimming costumes on (including O, our neighbour, who went home to fetch her costume so she could join in the splashing) and had a whale of a time splashing each other. Meanwhile I mowed the rest of the lawn as it was predicted to rain on Thursday and the grass was looking a bit jungle-esk.

On Wednesday evening, Podd and I frantically tried to finish preparing for the science group on Thursday. Podd soldered together some light boxes using battery packs, resistors, push-to-make switches and 3 coloured LEDs. He also soldered resistors to several more battery packs as the LEDs were burning out without them. I collected together all the items we had for the various activities, packed them up, printed out the instructions we had and generally panicked. I'll write about the science group in a separate post.

On Friday we had a bit of a lazy day. We got up late, having spent most of the week getting up reasonably early. The kids decided they wanted to spend the day in their pyjamas, which I was fine with. They did some Reading Eggs/Eggspress again and Small had a play on a couple of the lessons on Maths Whizz. Must say he wasn't overly impressed, but that may have been because he really wanted to watch Little on the floating island rather than do maths. In the afternoon a friend and her baby son were supposed to be popping round but actually she ended up not doing and we just lazed about. I also did some interviews with the kids after reading Crappy Pictures' interviews with her boys. I need to figure out exactly how to incorporate the answers to these questions onto our About Us page.

Yesterday we went to a friend's during the day as she was hosting a housewarming for her fiancé who has just moved in with her. We didn't stay too long as Podd was exhausted from not sleeping well and I was on call for a client last night. Today we have been mostly lazing about as well - I've spent much of today researching chickens, chicken health, coops, and other chicken related things. We are planning on rehoming some ex bats soon :) we (when I say we, I do of course mean I... he mostly just nods and agrees because he knows arguing isn't worth it!) want to build our own chicken housing setup as well. There will be a build post when it happens. For the moment I am thinking, talking and breathing chooks!