All smiles here...

We have had a lovely couple of days, so I think I will blog them. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have a positive sounding blog where the good stuff outweighs the the bad.

Yesterday we watched the BBC programme called Pompeii - The Last Day. We had watched it first time around, but it was on BBC4 recently and so was showing on Virgin Catch up TV. The kids showed a greater interest in it this time, and were able to remember snippets from the Dr Who show which made more sense to them after delving into the history. Afterwards we took the dog out for a walk to the local fields and countryside. Kira is fantastic off lead, and I don't have to worry about her once we are away from roads. I sat and threw the ball for her, whilst the kids practised for their "Olympics". They did long jump, sprinting, and javelin yesterday *smile*

When we got home again we had a marathon read-aloud session, which was great, and we all commented at how much we had missed the daily read-alouds. When I was feeling ill, the last thing I wanted to do was to read out loud, in fact, when I tried I found it almost impossible as my throat was so sore and my eyes seemed to strain. Nice to be able to put that behind us now and start our reading routine again.

Today has been fun, with lots of garden playing time. The weather has been so beautiful today. I took all of our workbook resources outside and sat on a rug sorting through them. I made a note of which suited which child, and got rid of those that were filled up or no longer suitable for our working style. The children kept coming over and checking on my progress, and with dh and my dad working on the car, and the dog running around like a loon begging people to throw her ball for her, it made the time quite fun and not at all like the usual humdrum task :o)

Once that was done, I surprised the children by suddenly jumping up on the trampoline, it was such fun! The first (and consequently only) time I went on our trampoline, I felt sick. A sea-sickness type feeling, which was horrid. This time I felt absolutely fine though, and I realised what a fab stress release it would be! At one point there were 5 of us on the trampoline and I was so worried that someone would fall off! Fortunately we were all very sensible though, taking care that the younger ones were away from the edge and we all just bounced lightly. We still had a good laugh.

After lunch we sat on the trampoline, basking in the sunshine, and read 2 chapters of Little Women. Being the classic version, it does have rather long and sometimes complicated words in the text, but Chelsea and Joseph both handled them brilliantly. I liked the fact that they both asked for an explanation if they didn't understand a certain word. Joseph sometimes has the habit of just skimming over things and wanting to get his reading over as quickly as possible, pretending he understands everything.

More trampoline jumping after that, and then I left the kids to it as I set about sorting through some of our other resources and trying to make room for everything. I currently have a craft room, which I adore, but want to somehow incorporate some of the school things into it as well. At the moment most of our school stuff is in the room downstairs which is a fab space, but I do tend to think we don't use it to it's full potential as you can't access it from the house. Often we use the dining room to work in. Our main two bookcases are stored in the shed and we just go out and fetch in what we need. It works well for us and it saves us being surrounded by hundreds (I'm not exaggerating) of books that get very little use, and gives us extra storage space inside the house. We use the library such a lot, so many of our books are redundant really, I just can't bear to let them go as I know they will be of use *someday*. After my re-arranging today, I now have many of the school resources in my "craft room" along with a couple of desks and a table, perfect for working in :o)

Tonight I am hoping for a good sit down and plan type session, with lots of typing, printing, and sorting out to do. I actually enjoy it once I am in full swing, but the thought of getting started fills me with dread and I know I would prefer to just sit and relax and watch the TV! It WILL be done tonight though, of that I am certain (unless the children conspire together and decide otherwise!) I know it will all be done by the time we are starting the new term (the schools are on holiday down here at the moment, and I am not going to start trying to get my lot into their full school-work routine until the girl from nextdoor stops calling for them to play! ;-) )

Chelsea is staying over at my parents house tonight, so I'm not expecting her back until Friday. We are having to make some sad decisions at the moment, concerning Scouts and what Chelsea is experiencing there, but she has made me very proud with the way she is dealing with things.

Joseph is playing on his football game on the Playstation, and Tiegan is doing the Mario Olympics with Callum on the Wii. I'm cooking dinner (roast chicken tonight that smells yum!) whilst I'm blog surfing and forum reading, so I apologise for any errors in this posting but I'm multi-tasking *grin*

Sunday and Monday....

Sunday we finally got around to going to church. Having failed miserably to get there last week due to the weather, I was determined not to be deterred this week. I'm glad we went and tried it. Completely new to us, in that it is a very much more traditional sort of service, in a rather more traditional church, but it was nice enough and I felt at ease there. We will certainly try it a few more times to see how things go.

The rest of Sunday was just spent pottering around the house. I did a bit of personal bible study which was lovely, whilst the children were *ahem* helping dh in the garden.

Today has been a nice enough sort of a day. We went to Trago Mills this morning for general bits and pieces, then popped in to give a birthday gift to one of Emma's boys. We didn't stay for long as they were expecting visitors, but the brief chat we did have was lovely and made me even more determined to arrange another visit soon.

We returned home and Chelsea and Joseph played out on their bikes, whilst Tiegan and I played "hairdressers". She so loves having one-to-one attention, and delighted in us taking it in turns doing each others hair and make-up.

I have finally managed to sort out the Scouts for Joseph, so he is starting there tomorrow night. I am so happy that it is just around the corner from where we live so no night driving necessary. The dear lad is so desperately excited, I just hope it lives up to his expectations.

I had a phone call from my brother to say that work on the flooring should commence on Wednesday, so fingers crossed it does this time. I'm not looking forward to the awkwardness of having it fitted, but it will be worth it. Photos will then be taken and shown off *grin*.

Well, the children all seem to be settled in bed now, so I'm off to the craft room to complete a couple of card orders I have so I can post them off in the morning :-)