Not much.

Other than going to visit Tammy, which is always lovely. Suddenly having sun makes getting out so much more appealing and we’ve been out and About a lot this week. The girls are still happily doing their week of theatre and seem to be delighted by making their own lunches; i’ve got to conjure up outfits next.

Amelie particularly enjoyed the magnet and iron filing play over at Tammy’s but otherwise has continued to be very trying. She looks awful, right back to skin as bad as the milk days and i just don’t know what to do for her. I’ve resorted to steroids again. Ger face looks like she’s had pox, but she hasn’t so i’m baffled by that too. Josie woke up this morning to what actually looked like snot pouring from both ears, which i took as a sign that i’d made a bad call on trying to ride out the ear thing and we went to the doc. Lovely nurse (have i mentioned how much i love my prescribing nurse?) gave her an ear spray as as Josie is the only one out of my lot that i can’t get anti-biotics down. She defeats all my “mother of 3 previous victims” strategies. Poor girl though; i feel really bad.

Other than that we ordered a bankers draft ready for our hopeful exchange on monday (ARGH!), picked up a parcel, dropped off the notice for this house (ARGH!), packed parcels, did bead patterns and unpacked beads. Was rather proud of Fran tonight who, for the first time, single handedly unpacked my delivery, marked it all off on the delivery sheet and then made sure i knew about something that was missing and brought everything up to me. She was ever so proud of herself and it really was a tremendous help as i was very busy getting caught up. I’ve now managed to run out of envelopes, having only ordered 200 10 days ago 🙄 I’ve been so busy i didn’t notice the bottom of the box was approaching 🙄

In a way all of the upturn in that has been good for me; it is making me take a break from absolutely everything that exists beyond it and my family. I’ve barely had a thought process that wasn’t kids or beads or house move in weeks and i think i need that at the moment. All the things i love about our normal life will, i hope, feel fresh and new again in a few weeks when we arem oved, settled and ready to get roaming again. And hopefully we’ll be fresh and new for the people that can still remember us!

I do need to give considerably more thought to the kids education; luckily al the ground work of the last two years has put in enough routine that they are happily learning anyway. Maddy and Fran have gone to bed clutching those mini Usborne Encyclopedias tonight. Fran is very excited about tomorrows Rainbow Fairy launch, having fulfilled her task of reading 5 other different sorts of books in between times. Maddy is now using joined up writing at times and i keep finding Amelie written on bits of paper too. But i have preferences for more “delight” and i feel it is missing. Time to get out my checklist and concentrate on seeing more face than laptop screen.

While reading Danny tonight i was struck by a lovely idea; Danny talks about the inscription above the door of school and says how wonderful it would be if his dad could write something he knew up on it each day. His examples are things like how long a bees tongue is, or how a grasshoppper hears. I wondered if i could do something like that with them. We’ve got a huge pile of encyclopedias on a shelf and loads of National Geographic Mags; maybe we could have a sort of ‘daily wonder’ notebook. It would be very CMish i think.