Battlestations everyone!

The playroom (hence forth refered to as the games room) now looks like a ready room from the Imperial War Museum. Set up on two wallpaper tables are the two boards that make up battlefield for warhammer. The boys have started to construct a battle field on the boards, complete with hills, wreckage and water features. It is looking very cool and sam is dying to play a game on the board. I think it will be a continual work in progress as there will always be something to add or change. It is nice that we have finally found a use for the games room, it had become a bit of a dumping ground. I think between the climbing wall that is under construction and the games room I am going to have the middle floor to myself a lot in the future! Sam loves going to daddy's gym and gets most indignant when Matthew works out without him. Today sam went down to do pull ups and spar with daddy. Talk about a personalised PE lesson and all without having to endure communal changing rooms. Communal changing rooms was what I hated most about PE in school, especially once I hit high school, thank goodness I only had to do one semester of PE.

Life has been flowing along here, a nice mix of school work, friends and family. Schoolwise we are pretty much back on track after our long half term. Next week we start growing radishes as part of a month long science project. I just hope they fare better than most of our science experiments which can sometimes be less than spectacular. Sam is enjoying drawing and writing at the moment which makes a nice change. His handwriting is really coming on and even his spelling is improving. I think that the daily spelling tests are helping not so much because they are teaching him to spell specific words but rather to get him used to the idea of sounding something out to spell it and the different letter families. Our read aloud at the moment is Strawberry Girl, which is set in rural Florida in 1900 and all the characters speak in the vernacular. Sam thinks it is highly amusing and enjoys copying the words and accents. Things are now 'purity' rather than 'pretty' and so on. He sounds very southern at times, my nana and poppa would be proud of him.

M's parents came up at the weekend and we had a nice visit. We had a special birthday dinner for my mil as the actual day falls while they are away on holiday. It was lovely to see them and to catch up. Sam enjoyed playing lego with them and then after dinner all the boys had a game of warhammer, surprise, surprise! Sam won thought I am not sure that the rules were stictly adhered to on his part.

Sunday saw us venture into the city centre to go to games workshop. As part of his hobby badge for beavers he has to go in and play 4 times. I think in future we will try to go in on a weekday afternoon, it was just far too busy. They joined three tables to make up one game and it was so big that sam only got to fire once in a 90 minute game. Most of the players were pretty fed up by the end of the game. The city centre was just as packed as games workshop, Christmas shopping must have begun. I think I will be doing most of mine on line, I don't function well in crowds and I hate waiting in line. Think I am turning into a grumpy old lady as I approach my big birthday.