well, we were supposed to go to the nature reserve meeting, and Kirsty made it over in time, equipped with her packed lunch. I was still breakfasting and making sarnies, but we were more or less organised on time (ish). But the weather didn’t look good, and the children wanted to play, and we needed to talk Hesfes, so we didn’t make it out. We *did* do major planning – looked at a number of different camping lists, pooled our ideas on who has what and can borrow what (Jan, will be dropping you a line later 😉 ) and began to feel like we can manage this.
Then we picnic-ed on a rug on the carpet, loaded up the offspring and chucked them in the car and went shopping. Well, first of all the children had a good play in the free play area, including ds having his first wander into the baby zone. He seemed to like it.
Found the cheapest uv sunsuits were in Adams (boo hiss) so swallowed my principles and bought a set for each offspring. Perfectly lurid set for dd and blue for ds. Did have a quick peek for some for me, but all I could find were surfing tops, so I gave up on that idea.
So I’ve got uv suits. I’ve got a fleecey all in one for ds, and jumpers for dd. She has a raincoat – considering either dungarees or splash suit for ds. Does that cover all eventualities? I’m not sure.
Then we went to woodcraft folk. Bit disappointing this evening, the group is a touch on the disorganised side, and this evening mainly seemed to consist of lots of children running around screaming. Not that I think there is anything intrinsically wrong with children running around screaming (although I’d rather not be too close to it), but there are safer places to do it than a smallish room with lots of furniture, and dd got trampled on a couple of times. Another (rather larger) boy retired from the fray in tears, and a medium sized girl tore her arm up as well.
It did occur to me that that the whole thing wasn’t so surprising – most of those children are from school, and generally they spend their time with peers being told what to do, so shove them into a relaxed atmosphere with a varied age range, and why would they have any better ideas on how to behave? Schools seem to achieve very little in the way of socialization if you ask me. And I’m no better an example of it – I sat there wondering why nobody else did anything, when thinking about it in the car on the way home, it was just as much my responsibility to say or do something. I could make excuses about being new to the group, which I am, but when it comes down to it, I was really just waiting for someone to tell me what to do…
Beginning to wonder if dd is quite ready for woodcraft though – she ran around with the best of them, but doesn’t get tig – just chased about shouting tig without cottoning on to the rules! – and refused to join in with any other games. Given that she is always shattered by the end of the session perhaps I should quit it for a bit and try again in a few months time. Next week is a bluebell walk in the woods though, so assuming that the weather is OK, I think we’ll try that.
Ds finally keeled over about midnight tonight, the kitchen is an absolute disaster zone, this room is not much better and I can’t comment on most ppl’s blogs as Haloscan is undergoing maintenance. I am setting up a domain so that I can port all of this to wordpress, but got a bit of work to do on it first. Time for bed now though methinks.
