Don't even blink.

The big 2 have been having endless fun re-enacting (taking ownership of the terror, i think) the Weeping Angels scenes from this weekends Doctor Who. Fran plays Sally, Maddy plays the Angel and frankly it’s hilarious 😆 Considering the episode itself actually did have them jumping out of their skins and i think i actually took a picture of Maddy behind the sofa, they are remarkably humoured by it now 🙂

Things are busy here as normal, but quite productive and fun. I think as we settle into a routine of MF being here more often, it will improve more. In fact, i’m humbly aware that the person who needs to change most is me; i need to locate myself downstairs while she works and quit hovering. It’s a perfect time to be in the dining room with the girls, giving them my full attention. I need to change my habits.

However; MOnday started horribly early as Josie took a real dislike to being in her own bed again, was up half the night and came an took over mine about 4am. My shoulder/back was really bad again after the camping (and the inflated boobs i’m hauling about!) so i got up, left her to sleep and did nearly 6 hours work before anyone got up! The morning then went by in a drizzle of half hearted normals (sigh) and then the big 2 set out on some project work of their own choosing. While we were away, Fran decided to do a project on ‘animals’ and when asked to narrow it down said “well, actually, i’ll probably just do the whole of nature!” So when she came and asked me to give her some project work, i told her she needed to think it out herself and some books would be a good start. I was very pleased when she appeared with a stack of appropriate books, read them (wrapped in a blanket) for 2 hours and has been spouting reptile facts ever since! So she decided to start with reptiles and did a School Express unit on them while Maddy, who decided she wanted to know about snakes and lizards a while back, did all the Draw Write Now stuff on those she could find. Then we had a good discussion on reptile/amphibians and discussed classification; could tell Fran had learned from her reading as she piped up with loads of “bits” from that. Maddy’s drawing was excellent; she is really getting into those books.

Monday evening i went off to a Business Club meeting for the first time, which was absolutely fantastic; i had to do a 1 minute pitch on my business, in front of all 60 present members (there are 650 all together so i suppose it could have been worse!) and i was SO nervous. I used to do that stuff all the time but it has been years since i have been just Merry, not Merry the mum/home educator/muddlepuddle woman. The evening seminar was particularly suited to me and i met a graphic designer, an HR specialist, a lawyer, an accountant and a couple of business mentors; i’d previously agreed to do a couple of days work with the mentor (£420 a day, eeek!) and i met the HR bloke today to sort out tightening up MF and Lucy’s situation; one account is coming next week and so is the designer to do some local advertising work with me. All feels very grown up, especially as i also started making enquiries about premises today. 😯

Max let them all stay up ridiculously late while i was out, so they were fit for absolutely nothing the next day 🙄 Mostly they did Bindeez and Aquabeads and once they got used to them being more fiddly than Hama Beads, they did really well. Fran has been particularly enjoying them and has done lots of nice stuff. One advantage is you can break stuff up and reuse the beads, which does save a bit of money! Mostly they played in the garden and sprayed a lot of water around, worshipped the rabbits and wound each other up 🙄 Auntie Kate came round too, so we had Little Flower and Madison here for a while, which was enormously entertaining and we had to tidy up for the cleaners, but overall we managed to keep the day civil and it could have easily not been!

Today has been better, despite the enormous qunatity of boxes that arrived and meant that getting to the kitchen required ropes and toepicks. Amelie and Maddy did lots of education city and Fran had to be dragged out of various books; she has taken to lying in the garden, under an umbrella, reading 😆 I got them all to work on a gallery of maxi bead stuff for me so they did that, some Bindeez, some drawing, a lot of listening to stories and music and then some crafty things in the afternoon to make Granny’s birthday presents.

Fran had a good moment with a book on inventions; she was reading about 1st electricity supplies which cost £10 a month and set about, off her own back, working out how much that would cost a year. She’d worked out how many weeks in a year by doing 4*12 (is this an age inappropriate knowledge gap? Probably!) so when she came to discuss it all with me, i told her about the lunar calendar v the (ummm… Gregorian?) one. Sent her off assuming she’s work that out perfectly simply but later discovered her carefully writing out a 40 times table, having evidently decided i didn’t know what i was talking out. beautiful writing and all right though 😉 At which point we revised the fact that multiplication exists and that multiplying by 10 is easy and i thanked goodness the 3rd edition Singapore should turn up soon while contemplating more “natural maths in a none book setting” type things i should do more of with them. Still, it was all her own idea and she got there, oncew she woke up, without ending up hating me, maths or the book! Need more of that type of “living history” book for her, must try harder. While creating Granny’s card, i discovered that she now has nice handwriting and can spell perfectly well when she wants; yesterday Max discovered much the same when she told Maddy she’d just done a t-r-u-m-p in the car!!!! 😯 🙄

Maddy has learned to French knit today and drew a fantastic Statue of Liberty from the DWN books too; she’s done loads of Hama and been generally cheerful; a big improvement on the stress ball she was by the end of the holiday 🙁

And that, i think, is it – excpet to say that the main reason for the title was to apologise for the state of my computers. All my mail is stuck on the dying laptop which expires if i try to do anything strenuous, so i’ve not read any merrily. mail for 2 weeks, because i can’t and i can’t remember the settings or passwords to install it anywhere else 🙁 Poor laptop is literally so ill that blinking at it seems to hurt, but neither new computer has some essential software on it that i have to coax the old one through using and i’m up to my ears with new products and trying to do listings on the 2 sites (building a new shop) and on Amazon, so i can’t transfer all the data, or hunt for my dreamweaver or photoshop disks, because i haven’t got time in the day. Which means i can’t send my old laptop to be fixed 🙁

So don’t blink, because you might make it faint, even from all the way over there 😉

However, i do now have lots of new lovelies so if you fancy an oggle, i do have most of them on BeadMerrily@Amazon  – the children are fuming because i refuse to give them new things! Muhahahahaahaha!