Forest school yesterday, and the first time that we had a clash on car requirements, as Tim had arranged to go pick up L from London at the same time as forest school. Fortunately Em has three spare seats in her car, so Tim dropped us there on his way and we got a lift. I am going to have be more organised with writing events in the diary so that we don’t clash too often!
Of course, this glosses over the fact that I got up at 7.30 (shock, horror) to do tidying and making of lunch and so on and ended up running around like the proverbial wrangling children. Small has got to a stage where he doesn’t want to get dressed first thing, so that’s a battle every morning (but don’t worry, when his eardrums settle down, all these problems will be solved, 😉 ).
So, Forest School. It was a gorgeous day (weather sites were forecasting between 17 and 21 degrees, Em’s car said 28 by mid afternoon, and I think I agree with the car!) so being under the trees was lovely. Anna the ranger started off with a health and safety talk and elected me fire marshall, only person allowed to feed the fire and responsible for making sure everyone followed the fire rules, although one of the two older boys immediately volunteered as my assistant. This meant that I got to spend the session sitting on a handy tree stump next to the fire, handing marshmallows to my (and Em’s) offspring (I am a good mother, this time I remembered food to cook on the fire) and bossing other ppl’s children around. Right up my street really 😆 Amused by the fact that this was only my second campfire though – I did used to have an open fire way back when I lived in Durham, but I’ve never done open air fires before. Oh well, I learn fast!
So two hours of smoking later, plus assorted playing with mud (both children made mud faces on trees, I have pictures) and Small spending time with puppets (he does like puppets) and we retired to the picnic area to have lunch. Em rushed off to attend a slingmeet in a localish park, and I had a pleasant couple of hours with Helen and Nadine. We did talk about the idea of a home ed fete, similar perhaps to the Brownie fun event the other night, and open to the public, time to put across a friendlier view of home education to the public?
There was also chat of how to find a celebrity campaigner – it is time to recognise that there is no such thing as democracy in this country, and what we need is a headliner who can get us positive headlines in the newspapers and make it obvious that the government is just being a bully for no good reason but to deflect attention from its own failings. Various names being bandied about atm, but I don’t see how we get anyone on side.
Em came back about half two, and we loaded up and ran for home so that we could have cups of tea and further chatting. Even got on with a bit more crochet! Big had a nice time playing with R (E had gone off with Helen previously 😉 ) and Small was thrilled to find L at home, so he did what he used to do with my mother and brought as many toys as he could to show her. Funny boy.
Em headed home, and Tim and L took the kids for a walk down to the beach, leaving me to discover that Murray had just come on court for his match. Took me about 10 minutes to stabilise the media centre enough to be able to watch, but then I was very happy, and I got to finish the pieces for the crochet item 🙂 Just sewing up to do now.
Tired kids home for pizza, shower and bed, which did result in some wailing from Small at one point or another, but in the end they settled and we adults enjoyed a pleasant take away and lovely evening chatting 🙂
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