Phew!

I think that really must be it now. I’ve sent 70 parcels out from friday and the weekend and i probably have about 20 left to do but otherwise there is barely anyone on the site and while a few more bob would be nice, i can cope. Can’t believe how hard it has been; it feels like the days have been a blur since about October! Stockroom isn’t actually ravaged, i think my profit is sat on the shelves mostly but pretty much all the extra i got in has gone, so i’m down to a nice healthy ordinary level of a bit of just about everything. Although, when we first arrived here i had about 1/6 of the amount and only 1 line, whereas now i have 4, so things are pretty different i suppose. Been a big year for BM.

I gave myself the night off on Thursday in order to consume a fair quantity of alcohol with my lovely husband and watch “How Music Works” with him. For a relatively unmusical pair, we are both riveted by this; i’ve been able to read and decode music since i was 7 or 8 (so long as it was treble clef) so i find it quite difficult to comprehend that it is all Greek to Max, in much the same way i assume that everyone understands at least some French. Much to be said for the CM education teaching some things early and thoroughly then 🙂 Either way, we’re finding it interesting, plus he (the presenter) is the son of Max’s old headmaster, and i’m wishing i’d recorded it all for Maddy, who would love it. I think the symmetry of music quite appeals to Max and we ended up (slightly drunkenly) discussing how different things would be in music and maths if your teacher made it that interesting 🙂

Friday involved quite a lot of clearing up and pottering and then another trip out to TPP for some more present making, where we met up with J,J,B,R & K and socialised a bit. And then i spent 15 minutes trying to get out of their drive thanks to SOLID traffic 🙄

That night, having decorated with Hama the day before, we went for the first tree decorating and put up our old fake one downstairs. Kids had a ball decorating it and did it all themselves and then once they were asleep, Max and i wrapped parcels, watched “A Knights Tale” (love that film) and made a hole in the year hamper from my aunt 😆

Saturday mostly involved the kids and Max making a determined attack on Gamecube Shrek 2; they’ve finally made it to 24% mostly thanks to Amelie saying “Well, Ernest does it like this!” so far as i can tell! Max eventually gave in and i found him a walkthrough 🙂 I cycled (cold), parceled (got told off by another postman) and tidied then we went out and bought a real tree for upstairs and decked the halls with boughs of firtree and fake snowflakes 🙂 Must do photos. Josie is working on stripping the bottom half of both trees bare. 🙄 We’ve fitted in a bit of Animal Crossing too but yesterday i devoted myself to tidying and cleared the whole middle floor… which now looks much as it did before i started.

Speaking of floors, i noticed the other day the kids have developed a system of positional referencing, depending on where they are in the house – we have upstairs, downstairs, up-upstairs and down-downstairs. I like it.

This morning we’ve had a brief visit from friends and they’ve now departed with Fran and Maddy in tow for a jolly away from home. Amelie and Josie have played Dora Gamecube, with Amelie excellently convincing Joey that she was Dora via a fake controller and now they are back to Playmobil.

I’m going to tidy. And ponder conversation with Fran from last night about how she wants to be in charge of what she learns by herself now and might not want to do things with us anymore apart from maths. Hm.