Posted by Sarah on July 7, 2010

Firstly I would like to say “Yeah thanks for that!”

I was all ready to be totally freaked out by my early morning appearance but seriously it’s not too bad. My hair is no more tatty than it is ten minutes after I brush it and a swarm of wheat-bix coated kids run their fingers through it. And I never wear make up except for the rare occasions that Glenn and I pretend to be adults and go out. I would like to say that my usual unkempt appearance is due to lack of time but mostly it’s because I can’t be bothered.

So all in all not to scary plus I get to show off my sexy saggy baggy PJ’s. I’m defiantly a PJ’s type gal you just can’t pull off a decent pillow fight in a frilly nightie.

Check out all the other brave people in their unedited morning glory at Hello owls.

Also if you are looking for something really entertaining you can check out the cutest stunt kid showing off his ace parkour skills

Posted by Sarah on July 4, 2010

The winter sun shone bright on Saturday calling us to the exciting world of outside. Being bored with all the current diversions we dusted off our Tardis and headed back to the medieval era. Where we watched a jousting tournament. (the Knight pictured above had misplaced his helmet but he was just practicing in this picture so there was no head shattering blood spurting moments).

I wasn’t actually telling the truth about the Tardis, sorry if any of you were suddenly delighted by the idea of popping over to ours to pop back in time. The only vehicle we own is a beaten up ex ambulance service Tarago called Freddo who is so old he occasionally stops in the middle of the road to compose himself. Senile or not Freddo had enough oomph left in him to get us to the medieval fair called Winterfest ( which is were we actually went on Saturday not back in time, again sorry about the lie)

Faking it or not it felt like we were back in time and I love that the kids got to thrust their hands into history and experience it in all its sweat smelling glory. Nothing like hands on learning. The above two photos are from a birds of prey display (well Duh you say) where very sharp beaked and long clawry birds were sent swooping over our heads. The last bird they brought out was a massive eagle named Sabrina  which caused an eruption of giggles amongst our brood as our not very eagle like bubby is named Sabrina too.

The outer edge of the field was encircled with tents containing medieval clad experts eager to impart their knowledge. Eli is under the helmet above. The helmet is a replica used for jousting which is a serious sport, they’re not acting they really are riding at each other with long pointy sticks in various tournaments with the hope of winning prises. So that helmet had already competed in the morning joust, like I said sweaty glory.

We spent ages watching various displays or ancient weaponry and hearing about the many medicinal uses of fresh urine but the children’s pick of the day was knight training.

Creepy Uncle Graham took the kids though a series of skills training with cast foam weapons and shields.  This event is for kids over 8 however after our three wore them down with puppy dog eyes they agreed to take all the little ones who were game as the last battle of the day. The poor guy who was used to working with mostly 10 and 11’s had to re adjust his tactics to handle his Hobbit army as he called them.

Class started with a great battle between two sides Lilly and Eli really got into it. In fact Lilly was a whirling furry of pink battle lace for the whole thing.

Then they were paired up for one on one fighting. The first photo is Lilly being picked on for not responding in the negative to the question “you’re not going to kiss him now are you?” and poor Lani is brim full of embarrassed laughter after being told to use her womanly charms to distract him. Both the girls tied, Lilly because they both whacked each other so many times the battle was an unjudgeable blur and Lani’s because neither of them managed to get a hit in at all. 

Eli won his battle.

Creepy Uncle Graham had the rare ability to not only appeal to the kids but all the parents watching as well. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.

Posted by Sarah on July 2, 2010

Thanks to Jo getting me totally hooked on the Temaraire series of books dragons are flying through my mind constantly.

When ever I sit I scribble a dragon, it’s becoming quite an obsession. I’m constantly bugging poor Glenn with requests for his opinion on their anatomical structure.

I’m ashamed to say I even scribble over the kids drawings, this is Eli’s beautiful drawing of Cat in the Hat with Little Cat’s A and B and a dragon scrawled over the top, ooops.

and when I asked Glenn for his opinion on this one he said with all seriousness “No I don’t think any Dragon ever looked like that…….non that I know off went around with purple Dog Fishes stuck on their chests”

Posted by Sarah on July 1, 2010

Want to know what the major problem with schooling at home is?? Can any of you with keen eyes spot the disturbance to our established routine? 

I’ll give you one more chance.

The baby herself is not actually the main issue. She used to have a long morning sleep so we did all the fiddley work in that time. Especially maths because during maths the table is covered with pencils, rubbers, sheets and maths manipulatives. Now she has dropped her morning sleep and has one decent sleep after lunch. Fine, no bother we’ll just switch when we do maths from morning to afternoon, problem solved. Well not really you wouldn’t believe how many difficulties that one switch has made. Eli just can’t get his head around the change, he spend the whole morning wandering around the house asking if we are going to do maths yet. Then by the time I do get Sabrina to sleep he is absolutely bonkers and it takes him a very long time to settle into the task. All this means we are still up at the table when Sabrina wakes and, well, you’ve seen the pictures.

We are on holidays now so I have two weeks to figure out what to do, weather to preserver with the change or try and find some way of entertaining Sabrina in the mornings so that she is no longer drawn in by the allure of school work up at the table, who knew maths could be so appealing.

All that aside the biggest problem I have come across is a failing in myself. I am not very good at keeping records. All the sheet/book work that they do is date stamped so that is fine but there is so much more that we learn about in conversations, practical experience or watching and discussing and I haven’t noted down every time we have done this. So I think from now on I am going to try and write a weekly wrap up on Friday on this blog, just so that I am noting down what we have learnt throughout each week. I think it will also help me to see if I have neglected any areas of their education and I believe that if I write it down here I will be more likely to keep it up because I’ll know that you’ll know when I stuff up.

Also do you like how they dress themselves for school, rainbow fairy costumes and a gold sparkly toga and in winter too.

Posted by Sarah on June 30, 2010

This is the little puppy I made for Talia in the softie swap. She arrived at her new home so I can show her to you now. Talia has a beautiful sooky faced doggie called Pepper so I had a pretty good idea of what animal would suit.

If you would like to see all the other softie creations at their new blog homes head over to Tab’s blog Small things and click on the links at the end of the post. You can also see a photo of my puppy with her real life doggie friend on Talia’s blog Life’s Visual Journal