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Family BBQ on the Friday to kick-start Ben's 9th birthday - opening presents from his Grandma, Grandad, Aunt, Uncle and cousins with a very broad grin. Lots of Lego, construction and a new watch. Perfect.

The weekend was filled with much water play outside thanks to the continuous scortching weather. Don't want to moan, but I must say it did swipe us all out by lunch time Sunday! It was way too hot to do anything other than water play. P and Ben enjoyed the sprinkler and we dug out the old "canal" system which we all had a tinker with. Indoors was much cooler (apart from the conservatory) but somehow it seemed like we were wasting the good weather, so ended up lounging outside in the shade drinking cool drinks and watching Georgie, the cats and nature in general. The weekend ended feeling pretty chilled!

Monday, Ben's big day! Pressie opening first thing, naturally (although he managed to wait until about 8 a.m. - nice boy). More construction and some Asterix books to get his teeth into. Ben asked for money from us as he was getting in a tiss over the "best" present for us to get him! He was very excited about the dosh in his card, and kept offering to buy us all gifts! He spent most of the morning patiently waiting for cousin J to turn up (for a sleepover), flicking through the Argos, Woollies and Tesco catalogues for ideas. From lunch time until 11.30 p.m. (with a very short break for a very unhealthy tea), there was continuous play from Ben and J with the Lego. Not too sure what the game was, something to do with rescue missions, but they were happy and didn't need any intervention except to announce "tea's ready"! Needless to say, by lights out they were zonked. J was asleep within minutes and I didn't hear a peep from either of them until 9 this morning!

A little more time to play first thing before dropping J back home and then some much needed birthday(s) and Christening shopping with a bit of a stock up on arty stuff for Katie and more pondering over what to buy with the money fast burning a hole in Ben's pocket! He found an activity book on cars in The Works which I bought for him which he's had his nose in this evening. Seems quite good with pages to design your own cars plus pre-drawn ones to decorate with stickers etc. I haven't had a chance to actually look at it all as Ben's been so occupied! He finally spent his money on another large Lego set (surprise, surprise) and he bought Katie a new Schleich model horse - sweetie.

Much cooler this evening with the forecast looking good for tomorrow but rain for the rest of the week so we'd better make the most of it! Katie's spending the whole day at horse riding tomorrow, so she'll be in her element. I'll probably spend the day playing Lego with Ben!

Cute furry beings at Pets at Home

Took a trip to our "local" Pets at Home this afternoon to take part in their rabbits and guinea pigs "Get Set for Summer" workshop. I don't think they were expecting anyone to turn up (you didn't need to book) as the session was from 2 p.m. and we enquired at the checkout as to where we should meet and the guy was surprised to see some interest! In fact he telephoned the necessary person in charge and I heard him say, "no seriously, there is a family here for you"! Anyway, a couple of other families turned up too and the session was fun and interesting. We all had a hold of a couple of very young guinea pigs which restored my faith in them (we've had bad luck with guinea pigs in our family) and found out useful information on rabbits to help us with Billy, who continues to be allergic to either his surroundings, us or his hay! The two in charge decided to show us some other furry pets too (this should have happened on the next workshop really). We found out about the Degu (which Katie has her eye on) and that they are related to the Chinchilla (which Ben has his eye on), and Katie had a hold of a darling male rat (which she also has her eye on!). The rat's tail was really strong; used for balance and support apparently. We met a variety of hamsters - dwarf, Chinese, Syrian etc. The dwarf ones were really funny; tiny, tiny and full of beans.

Anyway, I think Katie has been wishing for a pair of Degu for a while, but may be slightly sidetracked for the adorable rats. We shall see! I'm sure something along these lines may appear on her Christmas list. The children had previously picked up work books for these sessions which they'd completed at home, so they finished off the workshop by doing a quizz and received handouts, certificates and stickers.

A fun afternoon and I see they're happy to do free "school" tours if anyone needs ideas for their HE group.

Still scortching hot today! Did our monthly nature study and noticed the outside temperature reached 30.1 deg. C. around 11ish.

Bits and bobs ....

We discovered, by chance, this interior design software called Sweet Home 3D which Ben has enjoyed using and also this free software to assist in making your own computer games. At first I thought it would be a little too confusing for Ben to pick up; how wrong I was! We started ploughing through the instructions together to start with, and then he carried on without any problems, made the game work and then went ahead and altered it without any further reading. Why are children so good on computers compared to us adults (in most cases)? Also, along the build and design theme, Ben has been creative on the Bekonscot Model Village site too.

Katie had an absolutely fabulous horse riding day at Holkam Bay a couple of weeks ago. Starting at 8 a.m., she helped get the three travelling horses/ponies ready and load them into their horse box, had a drive in the horse box and experienced 1 1/2 hours of fun riding (where she nearly reached a gallop racing another pony) along the beach. Doing this has been on her list of "must dos" for as long as I can remember, so she was thrilled to have the chance to take part. She and the other five children had workbooks to complete too and write a picture story to be entered into the school's competition. On return, she had to help unload the horse box, sort the horses/ponies out for re-stabling and clean out the box before heading home about 5 ish. Lucky girl.

School work hasn't really featured much at the moment. We've been doing bits and pieces whenever we have a spare morning, but with our Wales trip and Katie's visit to my Mum and Dad's and then P taking last week off, things have really slowed down in this department! We did manage to read more from our "Serious Survival" book about the rainforests and take a peek at this nice site giving us an idea of what it would be like at night. Katie and Ben have been updating their lapbooks with bits of interesting info too.

We've done some art, producing scratch paintings using acrylics. We've also started to contribute to Sketch Tuesday (see side panel) which Katie and Ben are enjoying. Last week they had to draw something that "comes out of an egg" and they were really pleased to see their pictures on the web page the week after. This week the brief was to draw a flashlight.

Have been interested in the Petits Haricots blogging of "Music Monday" for some time now and with the view to enlightening my two on the joys of a wider variety of music other than the local radio station (actually, to be fair, Ben enjoys Classic FM in the car when Katie's not there!) have decided to do our own Music Monday. Ben was talking about drums this week so it reminded me of my Music Monday mission and we found different drum recordings on You Tube, all of which went down very well. Here's a couple that were more of a hit then others.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=osHT73lWMD0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MZcStceKGTc

After these Ben went off with P's drum sticks and made suitable drums to perform his own piece of music; luckily he didn't use his head (as in the second You Tube video). We also came across my sister-in-law playing live with the Royal Philharmonic in Leicester Square for some Star Wars tribute which caused quite a stir with them.

Yesterday we met up with friends to visit the Batemans Brewery Visitor's Centre in Wainfleet. Weather was good enough for a picnic and there were loads of outdoor games for children and adults to play. We went round a "Brewery Experience" mini tour which was full of information but the children weren't really that interested! We kind of whizzed through it, but it was well thought out with lots of models, bits and bobs, etc. Because of this we decided to experience the actual Brewery tour which was more of a hit for us all. The witty young lady leading us round was truly brilliant at telling us the ins and outs of making beer from the very start (with tastings of various kinds of Barley) to the actual bottling. We even had samples afterwards to try with free lemonade or coke for the children. Planning to take P sometime soon.

Katie had her riding lesson and a morning of stable management (now it's the summer hols) today so Ben and I enjoyed spending some time together. This afternoon the temperature soared and so we attached a sprinkler (which I found in the corner of our shed earlier in the week) to the hose for some water play. Lots of longing looks at our rather sad looking swimming pool - just not sure if it's worth sorting out - but today, it would have got a lot of use!

Thought I'd just post abit about some of the things we've been up to lately.

The weekend after our visit to Wales, Katie went along to one of her model horse shows which was close to my parents home in Essex. I think she's getting a bit of a pro at this now; I believe this may well be her third year of showing! Anyway, for those who aren't "up" on the model horse showing world, enthusiasts (most belong to model horse forums and know each other through this virtual world) bring along their model horses and enter them into a huge variety of different classes in the hopes of winning a rosette and 1st or certificate to 6th place and possible entry into an overall winner's class. Katie has always been the youngest enthusiast, but we noticed this year that others seemed to include her more in their conversations and she even asked, and was accepted, to help judge two of the classes. I must admit, it's a bit of a joke among the close family members about how "boring" it all sounds, sitting around watching grown-ups (mainly) preening and presenting model horses, but actually, it's a pretty interesting day (and just becomes a little tiring towards the end when time is ticking on and the judges can't decide the best model of the day). It was a long day too. Katie was up and ready by 5 a.m. and we left home at 7 in order to arrive in time to set up ready for the first class at 10! P and Ben had a fab day at a couple of local parks; the weather, luckily, was gorgeous. So, Katie's models did well. She came away with a few first places and we were especially chuffed that her new and prized resin Fresien took one of these too.

Not one of Katie's horses (she didn't take any photos of her models!), but a lovely example of some beautiful Arabian tack, probably hand-made.

After the show, Katie went to stay with my parents for the week. Again, she's a pro at this as we worked out she'd been having holidays with them since she was 6! Can't believe the time has flown by so quickly.

Weather, as I recall, wasn't bad that week. They got up to lots of horsey things, highlights being the annual visit to her favourite shop "Utterly Horses" and also a trip to the Essex Ada Cole horse sanctuary.

Feeding one of many very friendly squirrels in Belfairs Woods.

Ben and I enjoyed time together and did lots of bits and bobs around the place. He was actually willing to continue with some work without any of the usual hassles that I have to put up with so we did maths, handwriting and some catching up of topic work during the week. Other times we potted around in the garden and have started to reap the rewards of all the veggie sowing earlier in the year. We've now planted our last seeds for the time being - sweetcorn. Just a little space left for them! The cabbages are taking over the whole patch!

Thinning the leeks.



Nothing like fresh veggies!

This week we've continued with norms and topic work learning about the Rainforests using some pretty good websites plus the books that we've borrowed from the library as a brilliant source of information (see side panel). The Serious Survival book is an interesting read as it involves expeditions to various places in the world (polar regions, Amazon etc) by teams of young people and experienced guides. We've been doing some drawing using the fabulous art work of Beatrix Potter as our inspiration; this week we studied and drew moths and butterflies. We've also updated our nature notes for June (a little late, I know). Katie has had another cooking frenzie and made some strawberry oat bars and hummus which we shared with friends today.

Hummus, strawberry bars and home grown tomatoes - yum!

Excuse me, this is a kitchen you know!

I know this is probably the warmest room in the house at the moment, but please ... it is the kitchen! Talk about taking advantage.

New member of the family

Welcome ... Georgie.

Our dear friends, who will shortly be on their way to live much further North (or North West to be precise), very kindly have given us this absolutely stunning, funny, full of character, hen - Georgie.

Must admit, the idea of having chickens kind of goes hand in hand with country living, but I was a bit dubious to start with as was P who loves his manicured lawn far too much to have it ruined by a pecking hen. However, in the very short space of time that we've had her, we've all fallen head over heels in love with her and can't wait to get her a mate.

A typical member of our family already, she loves food and will run up to us as soon as we venture out of the kitchen door. Reading up on hens on various websites (this one being my favourite), it seems this is actually the norm and that they can eat virtually anything (although not the onion or garlic that is growing in my veggie patch - it could make her ill. Luckily she hasn't, as yet, gone too close to them). However, she does like destroying the beautiful flowers that Katie enjoys planting in the garden. She doesn't eat them, she does pecks them off and throws them around the place - perhaps she thinks it makes the garden look prettier!

It took her just under a fortnight to start laying eggs for us and has so far produced one a day. Fabulously rich yolks in neat little packages! Yesterday she hadn't laid by the time we'd opened her run, but she certainly let us know that one was imminent with all the noise she was making.

Today, she has settled for an afternoon nap on our kitchen door mat. Must be feeling at home.