"the pink is just glorious"

Sometimes my daughter makes me laugh out loud. The above statement was exclaimed as we came over a hill top on the way home, to be faced with a pretty good sunset, and of course, it was her favourite colour 😉

I had my choice of titles today, could have gone with

Woohoo, he slept through! self explanatory I feel, although I should probably mention that he didn’t go down til 9.30, then the alarm woke him at 7.30, but I still thought it was impressive.

Then there’s the

sound of the day is a as despite me planning to leave it til tomorrow, Big had other ideas – she had seen the bit of paper with all the sounds on, and recognised a as coming next, so there she was in the back of the car sounding out words to spot a. Impressive.

Or we could have had

Eureka! proves socialisation is overrated – we went to Eureka for a day out with the West Yorkshire home ed mailing list. Overall I enjoyed the outing, although even getting school rates it was pricy (3.75 for over 3’s plus £2 to park). It was quite hard work on several levels though – Small kept legging it into the distance, as Big (understandably) wanted to do things that he wasn’t interested in, the background noise level is quite high, and the whole place was run through with packs of teenagers. Beware, rant ahead 😉

If I’ve ever seen a better demonstration against schools as socialisation vehicles, I can’t remember when it was. First of all, you’ve got to wonder what these teenagers were there for – Eureka is aimed at KS2 as I understand it, with lots of areas tailored to under 5’s even. These children were about 15 or 16 I would have guessed, and they certainly weren’t taking part in the activities. Taking apart the activities, yes, they were doing that. 🙁 They ran in packs, but no mixing of girls and boys – not surprising though, as I doubt any of the girls could have kept up in their kitten heels with the boys in their trainers. I didn’t at any point see any teachers with any of the groups, and so I remonstrated with a gang of four who were attempting to destroy one exhibit myself. It did occur to me that that could have been a bit foolish – they were substantially larger than me, and I had two small children with me. However they did have the grace to stop what they were doing when I eyeballed them (Hey, maybe I’m finally developing my mother’s nuclear powered stare? She used to terrify my friends in sixth form!) and after I’d caused them to calm down a bit, I went and told on them to the staff as well.

More cheeringly, I could, and perhaps should, have used

Hello Grandad as we seized the opportunity of being 4 miles from my dad’s house to pop in on him. It was surprisingly lovely, even if Big did behave disgracefully throughout. A bit of family history here – my parents split up when I was about 3 ish, and my mother remarried remarkably quickly. My father is now on his third wife, and appears to think that this one’s a keeper 😉 He has multiple health issues, having had his first heart attack when he was in his thirties (I think) and has frequently struggled with depression. I haven’t seen him for over a year, and hadn’t spoken to him since Christmas, and was avoiding doing so partly because I couldn’t stand the idea that I’d get a hello stranger greeting but he didn’t do that. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me, looked a lot happier and healthier than I’ve seen him in years, they’ve done huge amounts to the house, and I really enjoyed the visit. So that was good. 🙂

And to finish, has anyone ever been tempted to say

no, it isn’t legal, I’m planning on making my children into criminals! I think it was possibly the first time that my stepmother had come across our home education wackiness. Big let me down – usually she replies that she is being home educated when anyone asks her about school, but she was too busy staring at the tv to reply at all, so I had to do it all on my own. We went through all of the usual questions, and C finished up by admitting that she couldn’t have done with it, school 9- 4 was good as far as she was concerned. Wonder how many ppl feel the same way about it, but don’t feel they can say that, and that is why they are so anti? As if, in some way, we are showing them up…food for thought anyway.