We went out to Pizza hut and I took pics on my phone.
We had pizza and salad…
Then I was stuffed but the kids wanted ice cream…
Behaviour was excited but good - lively but not over the top. I was very proud of them both and might consider taking them out to eat again!
Well, the kids did with the help of another parent at home ed group this morning. I helped with the eating and it was lovely. No doubt there was weighing, mixing and stuff along the way. I did watch both Dino and Mimi rolling out the lasagne sheets over and over again until they were finally thin enough. Other kids were making tagliatelle. Lunch was vege lasagne, tagliatelle with butter, garlic and spinach, garlic bread and some cheese to sprinkle over. Dino loved everything and Mimi at least tried everything and she said the tagliatelle was nice.
There are a couple of pics but I have tog et them off the camera, crop and resize, so, umm, maybe later.
We do eat a fair few meals with pasta in and I’m wondering about getting us a pasta maker so we can make our own, dry it and use it and maybe even gift it for friends.
I have washing out on the line, the sun is shining and the sky is blue (ish, in patches in between the clouds) - shame it’s still cold really, it’s a lovely day. The ground is still very very wet, so no digging but I may go back out to spike some more lawn in a bit. The washing won’t dry but it’ll air and smell nice!
The kids took a bucket and went slug hunting - feeding them to the hens as they found them. That should help with the slug problem this year. While they did that I got out my new cordless drill and put up a new bird table on the big shed. Then we discovered we have no bird food apart from an old fat ball we found in a cupboard - I have no idea how long it’s been there but it didn’t smell rancid so we hung that up. Then on the table part we chucked a handful of mixed grains (don’t tell the hens!) and a couple of apple cores and we’ll see what happens. We have bird food on the shopping list for next week.
Thinking about the garden - we had a chat about how there’s pretty much no cover round our garden and nowhere for wildlife to live. So this year we’ll be putting in more shrubs, bushes and wildlife friendly stuff, as well as the veg we’ll be growing too. I don’t think another tree will work, we already have three and more might cause problems, I’ll have a think on that. I do like trees though.
I also want a bit of a herb garden, some for eating, some for pretty and some for scent, and some just because…. I think a visit to The Herb Garden near here is in order sometime in March or April. They do native wild flowers too, which might be nice.
The kids are clearing and hoovering the living room and making a decent job of it - probably because I banned DS time until it’s done to my satisfaction. Also likely a result of the serious talk we had about their sliding behaviour again.
I got some Autumn planting onion sets, they should have gone in the ground in October and over-wintered but I didn’t bother with much over winter planning so didn’t get any until I saw an offer on some online…. So, my onion sets arrived yesterday and the instruction was to get them in the ground as soon as possible - so as the sun is shining and the sky is blue today - even if the ground is hard and cold - we turned over a smallish area of one of the Bramble patch beds and stuck in 24 onions. I hope they grow! I want some red onions to go alongside them now, I love red onions….
We had quite a discussion about how some things need to be outside through the winter so they can grow properly - like the garlic which is showing nicely and looking good. It doesn’t look quite as good as last year but it’s still going to be a good crop I think.
We pottered about, tidied up a bit out there and threw the hens a bucket of weeds to pick over, which they seemed to like. Didn’t stay outside long as it’s bitterly cold and we were starting to get chilled despite coats, scarves and gloves.
Both kids are getting their set "sitting-down-work" done each day, although I called a halt early today and they are each short one piece of work because they both have horrendous colds and can’t concentrate properly. We’ll get back to that when they’re feeling better - but I’m not dropping it completely, they need to learn that some things just need to be done.
We went to see City of Ember this morning and on the whole we enjoyed it - the kids more than me. It’s a good story of a pocket of humanity hidden deep underground to survive some major catastrophe, with a kind of alarm clock set to let them out after 200 years. The thing is lost and they stay there beyond the 200 years, forgetting all about life above ground, until their generator, which they rely on for power, heat and light, starts to fail.
Then it’s down to two teenagers, Doon and Lena, to find a way out and save the day.
The only thing that let it down for me was the scale of bugs and things below ground that didn’t seem to match once they got above ground. Other than that it was fun - Mimi (and other more sensitive children) was a bit un-nerved at the unexpected (for her, I saw it coming) death of a granny and the star nosed mole towards the end.
I wonder if the book is worth a read….
I knew it wouldn’t last.
I couldn’t settle and sleep last night so this morning I rolled over, went back to sleep and got up very very late. So that didn’t start today well. Then after I’d had some breakfast I tried to get Dino and Mimi working….
Oh the trauma, oh the drama ….. The watched Bamzooki and then I made them sit down and get it done.
Dino did ok in the end. He worked well, reasonably willingly once he got going and what he produced was good. Mimi on the other hand refused to sit still, refused to do anything with any degree of willingness or effort and as a result her work was a mess. Yes, I know, she’s only 5, but she can do much much better and I sat her down and showed her. She wasn’t happy.
We will crack this and they WILL sit and do something educational every day in the week. I’m leaving weekends as weekends as that’s when we see Daddy, go to the cinema and stuff. And I think the differentiation in routine helps.
Today we had loads of little errands to get done in town so we (I) decided not to do any sitting down and we went shopping instead.
We paid bills, we posted parcels, went to the library and did food shopping in Lidl. We visited our favourite butchers and I picked up a couple of maths work books in Smiths. They can start those tomorrow.
Oh and it was raining so we got soaked which wasn’t nice at all. But we did manage a wander round 3 of the local charity shops and the kids spent some of their own money.
Other than today the new regime is going reasonably well. Umm, apart from the guinea pigs now living on Dino’s desk…. That might be an issue tomorrow…
Nintendo ds’s are banned until work is done, and under other conditions but that’s not education!
We have all sat here and worked for a while this morning and while I have several tasks left on my list, the kids have one each left - all the others are done! Their project task for today is to find a book on the chosen topic in the lbrary this afternoon. I could do with setting Dino some spellings for the week too.
But on the whole it went well and we have this afternoon free for food shopping, ds’ing etc.
We’ve drifted a bit into dossing about and doing nothing with spurts of doing things with no real purpose, direction or plan. This applies in business, writing, home ed and life in general. Actually it’s been quite good doing that but I am now feeling the need for a bit more structure and direction - at least in the home ed and business arenas. I won’t bore you with the business stuff here though. 
But the education thing needs a metaphorical kick in the pants.
So, from Monday and with allowances for days out, visiting, going away and home ed group now and then….
Dino will be doing every weekday:
Mimi will be doing:
Around that we’ll be gardening, going out, shopping, living, cooking and whatever takes our fancy. They still have Cubs and Rainbows and Dino wants me to find someone to teach him to play his guitar. We’re all knitting as well and we’ll be making things through the year - maybe for Christmas/birthday, dunno yet.
How long this will last is anyone’s guess but we’ll start and try.
