my new goddaughter D and her siblings.  

two of our furry friends! 

Sam's musher Chad and his lead dog Patch. 

who lives in a house like this? 

Sammy the Snake

Okay, I caved. I said that when we get to the new house and we are settled we would look into getting a corn snake. They were so cute today, it was hard to say no. Today was the big day and M and I are still recovering. I would post photos but flikr doesn't want to upload from the mac at the moment so photos to follow. After a somewhat stressful morning of cake decorating and sandwich making we headed over to the village hall for the festivities. My in laws arrived early to help (thank you!!!) and by the time everyone arrived it looked suitably festive. Everyone we invied was able to come and it was lovely for us to be surrounded by our friends. The snake man was fantastic and had brought along a nice assortment of critters for the children to hold. They all seemed to be fascinated and were amazingly attentive throughout the demonstration. Everyone had the opportunity to hold or touch the animal of their choice and needless to say sam loved them all. I was amazed that he agreed to hold the spider but he did. Apart from a few wobblies from Sam (too much sugar and excitement) all the children got on well and I hope they all had a good time.

After the party my in laws and sil and family came back for pizza and we watched the start of the iditarod on line. Sam opened all his gifts and was thrilled with them all. I was proud of how well he shared with his cousins-quite a different boy to the grumpy teenager I had yesterday. After they left sam and M took sam's new telescope outside to do a bit of star gazing. Not sure what they saw but sam had a blast.

Still can't believe my little one is now five. We have had a lot of turmoil and tears this week and I hope that this will soon pass. Not sure how much more my sanity and good temper can take. I just don't recognise him at the moment, he is not my sweet, funny, affectionate little guy; instead he is a sullen, grumpy teenager. Not sure how to help him either, other than loving him and reassuring him that despite the changes going on around us life carries on and things will be as normal as possible. Here's hoping for a better week next week!!!!

Happy Birthday Sam!!

Happy birthday to my wonderful little man. He turned 5 today and it doesn't seem possible. Just yesterday he was a tiny baby feeding around the clock and now he is all grown up. (still eating around the clock though!!)I am so proud of him and the boy he is turning out to be. I look forward to the next 5 years and know that whatever else happens they will be an adventure. I hope he had a nice birthday. It started off with presents and ended with presents so it can't have been that bad. In between was filled with party preparations and playing new computer games. We had intended to go and see Zathura but he got too engrossed in his new games and didn't want to go in the end. Instead we took his new plane and his formula fuelers out for test drives. Give me barbies any day, hot wheels aren't half as much fun.

Sort of back on track with normals, though not much got done today. We are eagerly awaiting a book on the Iditarod from Amazon for our next read aloud. The race starts on saturday and sam is very excited because his musher emailed him a picture of himself and his lead dog. It would be so cool (pardon the pun) go to up one year to see the start and finish of the race.

things are progressing with the move but don't want to say too much as I don't want to put the kybosh on things.

Tomorrow is mudpud and party cooking and then saturday is the big day. sam is so excited about seeing the snakes etc.

Excitement but not as we know it!

We had a very eventful weekend-culminating in a sunday during which I spent most of the afternoon with my finger plugging a leaking pipe! M had done a brilliant job installing the new towel radiator and was nailing the floor boards back when the excitement started. A nail and the pipe came a bit too close for comfort and we had a nice fountain! I plugged the whole while M went to wickes to get the things he needed to repair the situation. To make a long story short after about 3 hours the water stopped flowing and I was able to move my thumb. I can completely sympathise with the little dutch boy who plugged the hole in the dyke.

The other excitement of the weekend was putting a deposit down on a new house. If all goes well we will be in by the beginning of may which doesn't leave us much time to get this place ship shape to let out. Our new house is in a small town outside leicester called Syston and it will mean M only has about a 15 minute commute into work. Will post a photo of the house later. It is a 3 storey town house with lots of room. We will all be sad to leave Pboro but will be close enough to be able to come back for mudpud, swimming etc. Hopefully our friends will make the trip over to see us as well. Must investigate home ed groups in leicester as well, I 'm sure they can't be possibly be as good as mudpud.

Sam is going to get a good education in diy, legal processes, banking and frustration over the next two months!! Not sure they feature in the national curriculum. We must stick as close as possible to our normal day to day activities to maintain some type of continutiy for sam and to maintain my sanity.

magnetic personality

We spent most of the day messing about with magents from our 3rd young scientist club kit. We did all of their suggested experiments plus loads of our own. We both had fun and hopefully we learned a thing or two. I really recommend the young scientist club, they are reasonably priced, the kits come with almost everything you need and above all they are fun! Their website is www.theyoungscientistsclub.com. Other than playing mad scientist we spent the rest of the day doing normals, playing with friends and running errands. We ended up at the drs as poor sam has a ear infection. He can't be in too much pain though as he managed to eat his dinner and listen to his shuffle. Still I dosed him up with capol and antibiotics before bed so hopefully he will sleep well.

Thank you for all my birthday wishes. I had a nice day. We lazed around in the morning and then went house hunting in the afternoon. The house that we really liked was in a lousy position and had a garden almost smaller than our current one. The hunt continues this weekend, we have found a few developments that look promising. Meanwhile back here I have painted half the living room and we will be doing the bathroom at the weekend.

Party preparations have started in ernest here, sam is so excited about the big day. sourced all the things for the party bags, now just have to organise the food and do a practice run with the cake. Can't believe my little baby is going to be 5 next week.

shameless self promotion

Happy Birthday to me!!!!! I am now 38, which seems awfully close to 40. Funny, I don't feel that old and I certainly don't think that I am as grown up and responsible as my mother was at my age. Sometimes I marvel that on the outside I seem like a reasonably mature grown up capable of making mature grown up decisions when on the inside I feel like I am still an uncertain, insecure teenager. Wonder if my inward maturity will every catch up with my outward maturity, and if it does is that a good thing or a bad thing.

The 80s seems like yesterday and seems much more relevant to me than the culture of the 90s, it must be true then that your teenage years are your most formative. Seeing all this 80s revival fashion around at the moment just makes me giggle-most of the girls wearing it weren't even born then!!

I guess I must be getting old though because what I really wanted for my bday was a eggloo and a couple of hens. It just isn't possible at this house-plus the cats would think of them as a catch your own supper opportunity.

Not sure what today holds-nothing special planned, just being able to spend the day with M and sam will be nice. though as M has been on nights all weekend I suspect he will sleep most of the day. Given the fact that it is now after midnight and I don't feel tired yet I may end up sleeping half the day! If only a certain young man will up up at 6 bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to start the day.

silence is golden

sam's second sleep over has now come to a peaceful interlude. sam and p are now off in dream land-about half an hour earlier than last time. I hope the boys have had a good time. It was a bit chaotic when P first arrived as we were still finishing off painting the kitchen. After a yummy pizza dinner (thank you to my in laws!) the boys settle in to play hot wheels and then some quality time with wak & tak. we finished off the evening with scooby doo. just hope they don't have nightmares!!!

It has been a bity week. I have been very preoccupied with the potential move and feel that I haven't given sam as much attention has he deserves. Next week should be quieter so we can spend more time together doing fun stuff,not boring grown up errands. We have done normals everyday, worked a bit on our iditarod project and played lots of wak & tak and zoombeenies. we have also had lots of bday parties this week so all that hype and sugar has made sam v. exciteable. that and the fact that he is practically counting down the days until his party. I still have so much to do, the main one being sending out invitations!! Can't believe that my little boy will be 5 in just over 2 weeks. where has the time gone??

As far as the house goes I think we are pretty much decided on buying the new house in leicester provided the garden size and direction passes muster. It is scary and exciting all at the same time, especially as the house would be ready by May which is soon than we were planning on. there is still so much to do to this house to get it ready to let that I can't believe that we will be ready in time. we may go up on monday to have another look around and chat with the sales advisor so watch this space!

Long time no blog..

life in our little house has been busy the last two weeks. The highlight was without a doubt seeing old friends. Not only were we able to meet up with my old school friend M and her family for a wonderful sunday lunch but my friend from college (university for my english friends) MK came to stay for a week.

MK and I hadn't seen each other in about 14 years but it was like no time at all had passed when she got here. It was so much fun catching up with her and showing her our part of the world. I just hope that she had as much fun as we did. Sam had as much fun with her as I did, especially as she kept him entertained with stories about her mischevious pets. She must have been shattered when she left, we kept her busy everyday. It was a sad sam and I who trooped in after dropping her at the airport on monday.

The rest of this week has passed in a blur-normals everyday for sam and I as well as getting to grips with our iditarod project. We have now done our map, chosen our musher and done a table to show all the checkpoints. Next we are going to learn about all the equipment and the sleds, not to mention the dogs! We have each chosen a musher (sam, Matthew and I) and have agreed that the one whose musher finishes first can choose a family evening/outing. Not sure what we will do if none of our mushers finish. Would love to go and see the race one day, will have to add it to the list of things to do!

a quick blog before bed

it has been a long busy week and we have a very busy and exciting week ahead so may not get to blog too much. My dear friend M is coming from the states for the week so we will be playing tourist. I don't expect that too many normals will get done so it will effectively be our half term.

we have finally started our iditarod project by beginning our alaska lapbook. I just need to blow up the map of alaska so that we can plot the route of the race and choose our musher. M is bringing a couple of book on the race that I ordered from amazon and sam is very excited to read them. He is really interested in the race though I think the distances involved are a bit difficult for him to comprehend. I suppose I could say that it would be like driving back and forth to london 10 times. we are marching through sotw and are back on the egyptians. sam did a lovely picture of king tut;s mask. I am just sorry that I did not take more pictures when I was egypt, it would be nice to show him the sites as I saw them.

we made a big decision this week, we are going to get the house in shape to put it in on the market. matthew is exhausted by the daily commute so it makes sense to move closer to leicester. He would like a brand new house so we will head over to the new estate in leciester to have a look at what is on offer. it could be the end of the year before we do move, there is so much to do to bring the house up to a saleable condition. I am going to do as much as I can at evening and weekends to help take the pressure off of matthew. It will be sad to leave this house and peterborough, this is the longest I have ever lived anywhere in my whole life!

on line at last

what a week. we haven't had internet access most of the week due to a problem either with the line or the router. M has managed to put things right-yipee! I didn't realise how bad my cyber addiction was until I had to go cold turkey. It wasn't exactly cold turkey though because I went into starbuck twice in the week to make use of their wireless network. It was pretty cool I have to say,

Sam has had a good week. We started sonlight 1st grade science and have already wizzed through the first 7 days. he is eagerly awaiting his next young scientist club pack which should be here any day now. He is in an art phase at the moment and several times a day will disapear off with his sketch pad to draw something. He likes trying different medium and mixing them. he is quite taken with the charcoal pencils that we got as well as the oil pastels and will often use them in the same picture. I think he must have inherited my mothers' artistic talent. I hesistate to give him too much direction because I think that if I start interferring too much he will loose interest. I just make sure that he has lots of sketch pads and things to draw with. I of course give him help if he asks but usually he doesn't. my artisitc skill are completely lacking so i am not usually much help. Perhaps I ought to do a drawing course.

Lots of socialising this week. We had lots of fun with sam's cousins on tuesday, a party on thursday and mudpud on friday. he certainly is not missing out on a social life because he is not at school. next week promises to be just as busy with ice skating, the cousins and EO group.


Have very sadly decided that we won't be able to go to melrose afterall. I was really looking forward to meeting everyone and spending some time with the families we already know. Two of the boys ( our antenatal class friends) are having their bday parties that week as it is half term and sam was devastated at the thought he might miss the parties, especially as he so rarely sees them now they are in school. In retrospect I should have realised that it would come to this choice as all the boys (bar sam) have mid feb bdays. It was a tough decision to make and i hope we haven't upset anyone. that was certainly not our intention as we value and cherish all of our friends. so have a great time everyone who is going, i will be thinking of you!

yosemite sam

after spending two hours on line and trying to get through on the phone I finally managed to book a campsite for yosemite for our vacation. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in a long time. Everytime I would get through to the accept transaction step the site would time me out even though I had not spent more than 10 minutes on the site. The site was so slow to load as well. I was so frazzled that sam kept bringing me chocolates to help!! It was worth it in the end though because now we have a reservation. Sam is very excited about going and keen to get rock climbing and hiking. They also have stables there and is equally excited about the prospect of going on a trail ride. Must try and get him a few riding lessons before we go so that he knows how to sit on a horse and isn't too sore.
Booking the site was the focus of our day really. We also went for a walk, played hot wheels, did laundry and played dino park again. Somehow I am always relagated to the ticket taker. not sure I fancy visiting the park though as the bus is usually driven by playmobil cats and dinos are allowed to roam free. he has certainly started being more imaginative in his play in the last few months-even if it does involve feeding his playmobil horses to his fluffy t-rex!! in fact he amused himself all the way home on the train last night by setting up museum and bringing it to life. I then had to solve the mystery ( I think we watch too much scooby doo)

It was back to normals this week and sam seemed as keen as I to get back into the rythmn of things. We seem to be marching through the read alouds so am searching around for more good chapter books. Have two on the way about the Iditarod which we will be following and doing a project on. Sam is excited as we have almost finished kindergarten science and will be starting first grade science next week. I am going to reinstitute the weekly experiments as I got a bit lax at the end of the year. Sam enjoys them so much and as one of my goals this year is to make our home ed experience more fun then back they come. our next young scientists club box should be here soon. We are also catching up with SOTW and are looking at ancient africa at the moment. several good ideas to try out, including a recipe or two.

Sam really enjoyed both home ed groups on friday. In the morning it was the main EO group where we did experiments with light and color and in the afternoon it was mudpud at activity world. Needless to say he was shattered by the end of the day.

Yesterday we went to london to celebrate M's bday. We wandered around covent garden before heading over to the scienc and natural history museums. We treated M to an IMAX movie for his bday . We saw Aliens of the Deep and the boys loved it. I prefered the space one we saw last year. We were all so pooped that we headed home about 4 and all had an early night.

Today is M's bday but he has had to work. Hopefully next year we will get to celebrate with him.

FSP

Today was the first meeting of the year of the Future Scientists of Peterborough club. The club focused their attention on air and what happens when you heat it and cool it. They did approximately 6 experiements and a good time was had by all (at least I hope so!) The youngest member of the club-josie was very keen to join in and assisted greatly in the experiments. The key thing (from my point of view) is not so much that Sam learns lots of complicated science but rather that science is fun and accessible and starts to look at life in a more scientific way. It was great having the puddles over to join in and I hope that it was a success from their point of view. Sam is very excited about the next meeting of the FSP and spent the afternoon looking in his books for experiments for them to do. Sorry there are no photos-didn't get a chance to take any but hopefully Merry will blog some of the ones that she took.

Seeing the children have fun today and go off on lots of interesting tangents really sums up home ed for me. It is all about making learning fun and hopeing Sam's eyes to the wonder and excitement of the world around him. I hope that we managed to achieve a little of that today.

only my son..

could come up with a line like "mommy, my pteradon wants me to read chronicles of narnia to it, please can you come get it down off the shelf".When I went up to get the books he was surrouned by his fluffy dinos and most of his dino books. He had obviously been reading them bedtime stories. It was so cute. It wasn't so cute however, when 45 minutes later he still hadn't fallen aslelep!

Despite M not being here (he's at work) we have had a really lovely day. We went to cambridge to check out a few museums and do a little shopping. We went to the Sedgewick, which is one of his favs and spent ages on their time trail. Having done the OU fossils course I enjoyed it even more as I was able to put things into context. We had intended to visit the museum of classical archaeology and the anthropology/archaeology museum but the former isn't open again until next week and the latter until open until late afternoon by which time we were both pooped. He was very good company and we both had fun. We treated our selves to chocs from Hotel Chocolat and maybe I chose the wrong thing but I much prefer Green & Black. Sam seemed very happy with his though and devoured it in reccord time. We had mom & sam movie night tonight and watched jurassic park 3. he was so cute, he insisted on bringing all his fluffy dinos down to watch and then covered their eyes during the scarier bits. He has asked to watch Walking with Beasts tomorrow so that his new smieadon can see his family. He also wants to make his own version of jurassic park ( or mesozoic park as we call it) tomorrow-sounds like we have a busy day ahead!!

Was absolutely stunned at how easy it was to file M's taxes on line last night. Was even more astounded when it came out that we are due a refund. Must have done something wrong! Only my taxes to do now-am just waiting for my on line pin number. Have worked out all my details on paper so hopefully it won't be that bad. I made next to nothing so there is really nothing to report.


Have booked our flights to CA-we are all very excited. It is ages and ages until we go but we can't wait. It will be lovely to see my family again as well as showing sam yosemite and monteray. there is do much to do, I don't know how we will fit it all in!! May even get to go to my 20 year high school reunion while we are there-can't believe that it has been that long. I certainly don't feel old enough to have graduated in '86.

Rant

Excuse me for a moment while I rant about the lack of computer games for macs. We got Sam zoombinis for xmas on the basis that it would work on a mac-what they failed to mention on the requirements is that it doesn't run on the latest version of OS (which we have) now we are stuck with yet another game sam can't play until I get my pc mended. We have searched high and low for mac games but for this age they just aren't out there-why!!?!?!?!? someone ought to start up a software company that does edutaional games for macs-there is surely a huge gap in the market, we can't be the only ones with this problem. If my pc isn't fixable then I don't know what we will do-hardly seems worth paying hundreds of pounds for a pc only to pay games on it.
Rant over, sorry about that.

A belated thank you to merry for a lovely art day on tues. we had lots of fun and sam enjoyed the different media. We must get back into doing this type of thing at home. I am great on talking about artists and their paintings but not so good on experimenting with their techinques and styles at home. I guess I am more a read it out of a book kind of gal.

Resolutions-Sort of

As a rule I don't do resolutions because over the years I have learned that I don't keep them which makes me feel even guiltier than I usually feel on a day to day basis. Merry's 5 goals list got me thinking though. I would like to set a few goals for the year, both personally and for HE. I haven't done 5 for each category and these are likely to change over the year and may well be forgotten altogether if my track record is anything to go by.

Personal Goals:
1. Pass my fossils course
2. Pass my Leonardo course
3. Keep the house organised for more than 5 minutes
4. Make sure my family and friends know how much I appreciate and value them
5. Have a more proactive approach to life
6. Focus more on my business-try to achieve an event or party each month
7. Make time to exercise

HE Goals:
1. Make learning more fun
2. Follow through with ideas more
3. Help sam to develp his creative side
4. Finish all the experiments we start!!!

I am sure I will think of more as the days go by so may well add to this list.

Sorry!

Sorry to all those Scrapy Doo fans that I may have upset with my last post! I think we will all have to agree to disagree. Who knew that a cartoon would engender such lively discussion both at home and on the blog!

New Year's day had an interesting start for us. Came down to discover that in the night someone had broken into our shed and a neighbors. They practically destroyed both shed doors in doing so and took only the seats off our bikes. I am just so thankful that they did not try to get into the house. M spent all day sorting out the two doors and his parents came up to sort out our kitchen lights. Sam delighted in showing them Swamp Beast and I think my fil was really taken with it. Once both problems were sorted out we had fun playing games and were kindly treated to chinese take away by fil. Despite the unpleasant start to the day it turned out to be a nice one.

Today has been mental. Sam and I have been working since just after breakfast to get the house back in shape. He has been such a big help-he really enjoyed the reunite daddy's orphan sock game. Who says cleaning can't be educational! All of our clothes closets look much better as does the living room. All xmas decs are put away for another year and life can return to normal (whatever that is). One last tidying job to tackle tomorrow-sam's room. I am not looking forward to that, don't know where I am going to fit everything in. Should have asked santa for a ray gun for xmas to shrink all sam's toys to pocket size. when he wanted to play with them we would just reverse the polarity of the gun.

A policewoman came by today to interview us about the break in. Poor woman wasn't quite prepared for Sam Dolling ace detective who was eager to help her with the case. She took it all in her stride and patiently explained the crime solving process. He was excited to hear that the crime lab will be coming to dust for finger prints ( so was I-wonder if it will be like csi?!) They don't really expect to catch anyone but at least they are investigating.

Happy New Year!!

A Happy 2006 to everyone. I hope it is a happy, healthy and prosperous year for everyone. We had a quiet night last night-it was a family movie and game night. We watched Scooby Doo the movie-the one with Sarah Michelle Geller. It was good and we all laughed a lot. It did prompt a family discussion about Scrapy Doo. M & S think he is a good guy and should never have been made the villian of the movie. I disagree- I never liked Scrapy Doo. Oh, the level of intellectual conversation in our house.