Just chatting really

Katie and Ben have started their Christmas notebook starting with polar bear facts and an interesting experiment on the insulating properties of blubber! Even Pepper took an interest in this one! We filled a bowl with water and ice cubes and used a thermometer at room temperature. In turn we wrapped a variety of materials, including a blob of playdough to represent the blubber, around the base of the thermometer before plunging it into the icy bowl of water to see which would be the best form of insulation for our artic furry friends. We tried cotton gauze, cotton wool, tin foil and bubble wrap as well as the playdough. Playdough came out tops - the mercury actually rose alittle before falling, but at a very slow rate compared to most of the others (which fell immediately) Equally as good was the bubble wrap (although I don't think polar bears would survive with this medium instead of their blubber). Good to know if you decide to take a dip in a freezing cold lake in mid-winter!!

We were looking forward to meeting more local(ish) families at a Christmas crafts get-together in our nearby(ish) town (from now on this group will be group 2) on Friday. Unfortunately, our new car continues to have its little problems (more on that in a mo) and so P was car less and needed our one for work. Katie so wanted to meet up with an MSN friend at the do, but hopefully we'll get to meet her sometime in the New Year.

So, "Bond". Still a fab car, but we bought it on the understanding that the garage would fix a rather annoying clunk that keeps happening on the front passenger side. At first they thought it was something loose under the bonnet, then they put in a new role bar (?), then new bushings and still the clunk wouldn't disappear. All along, because I'm just a hero, I kept saying it must be the shock absorber. Anyway, eventually P managed to drag the mechanic out for a run in the car and he immediately confirmed what I'd thought! We took the car in on Thursday morning for a new shock, and they rang at 4ish saying it was still on the ramp and wouldn't be ready until Friday sometime. That's why P needed our car for work. Anyway, they rang on Friday to say the mechanic was off sick and it wouldn't be fixed until the end of Monday earliest. A rather fuming P had a few small words to say about that! They rang again about half an hour later to say it was fixed and ready for picking up! Guess what, it still clunks just like before and from what we can see it doesn't look like any new parts have been fitted at all. All very strange ... the saga continues. Needless to say we're all getting rather p'd off with it all. Each time we take the car in it means leaving home at 7.30 a.m., having to take both cars in order to get home again, and returning again in the evening, therefore bringing two cars home again!

Gripe over!

Other things we are up to. Children are busy making presents for friends and family. I need to get card writing; they are piled up here next to the PC but I keep putting it off. I write notes every Christmas to everyone and that just take so long (as I can never really think of anything mega exciting to say!) Have taped a Morecambe & Wise 2 hour show this evening, so will write cards and watch that tomorrow afternoon! Have tried very hard (as I do every year) to take "the Christmas photo" to pop inside each card, but each time one or other of the children look silly/dreadful/half dead/eyes closed. I've given up! Will try and find a decent one taken some time during the year.

Thinking of starting afresh with a new blog next year. There's some brilliant blogger templates on the net that are very enticing. Katie is about to start a new blog so she can keep in with some of her young blogring pals and it's rekindled my interest! These and these look interesting. I got the fun snowglobe from the first link.

Another doom and gloom thing from last week. Boilerman turned up on Wednesday, 8.30 a.m. on the dot as arranged (wow) and spent the morning updating and fixing ailing boiler. This involved putting in new red drum thing, new tray to stop the top of the boiler from burning, new cut out valve in case of fire (the old one was manual and apparently against regulations) and new filter, put outside where it should have originally been put, rather than inside in a place you couldn't reach and upside down (so all the gunk wasn't being collected properly). During all this he discovered that the oil smell we are now getting since we'd filled the oil tank, was a leak which means a new something or other. He also promised to try and find the source of our poor water pressure - it seems the exchanger is completely limescaled (a limescale preventor had been fitted, but to the wrong pipe (sigh)) and therefore takes water forever to get hot and comes out at a very slow pace. He's coming again next week with these new bits. It's going to be costly ... not looking forward to getting the bill.

Nearly bagged ourselves another hen (or two!). P thought Gina had escaped a few days ago but we discovered a Gina lookalike roaming the roads. Didn't think any more of it until my neighbour popped by (just as I was having a right old go at Katie for not letting me show her how to do something on the PC - typical) saying I should try and entice the hen into my garden as it's right by our gate. I did have a try - it followed my grain trail nicely! Hens are so funny you know, they do have brains I'm sure, but they can take a while to twig something's happening. As this new hen arrived in the garden, the other two where nearby doing as they always do (eating) and didn't bat an eyelid! Within about 5 mins they'd decided something was up and started to really lay into the poor thing. Luckily for the new arrival, it managed to scarper under the gate to freedom. The noise my two were making for some time afterwards was truly amazing - like a couple of old ladies shocked at their lives being turned up-side-down! Anyway, as this one escaped I noticed another brown hen further down the lane. It turns out they belong, together with a beautiful white hen, to a family on the verge of moving out of their home. They apparently have no lock up for them or even a fence and the gate had been left wide open. Goodness knows how long they'll survive as they live on the busiest road in the village.

We were also offered a kitten today; it was very hard to say "no". Pepper is such a joy to watch. He's grown so much since July and has us in fits of laughter. He's started climbing the trees (only about half way up), and likes to wack me around the nose during the night if he's bored (not so good). Today, he sat inside the car as I gave it a much needed wash, trying very hard to catch the water as it ran down the windows. He was all over the place, up the seats, sliding along the dashboard, trying to climb up the back window - hilarious.

Off to watch a movie now and snuggle under a blanket by the fire. Will write cards tomorrow - yes, I will ... I will!

Art, Latin and other bits and bobs

Children are busy somewhere (Ben's doing Lego and Katie's making a house for her horse riding dolls). We seem to be ticking along nicely at the moment with few arguments (over work anyway) and therefore lots of interesting things have been studied autonomously as well as planned.

We are still all working from the KS3 maths book as well as doing mental arthimetic each week. Still seems easy (probably too easy, as Katie and Ben keep asking more questions than they need to just to triple check they've got it!). Also got a KS3 English book out of the library, again for Ben and Katie to tackle and again amazed how it's just recapping on everything they've (or KS1/2) have learnt. Perhaps we should move on to harder things (gulp).

We designed and wrote, in Latin, either a birthday card or invitation, decorating the work with Roman style mosiacs etc. Then we moved on to reading about the Roman army. Ben printed out and made up this Roman soldier and Katie made the peg doll Centurion before writing about their clothing and weapons. I'm getting more and more impressed with Ben's writing (or typing in this case); very descriptive and informative. How he's come along since he's reached 9.



We emailed our drawings of apples to Sketch Tuesday, although I wasn't able to finish mine. I initially thought that apple drawing would be a doddle, but it took me a long time (between interruptions) to get it finished, all those different colours just on a red apple - it really makes you observe things more closely. For this week we are supposed to sketch our State bird. As England doesn't even have a national bird, we decided to draw birds that we have seen locally (although I don't recall seeing a Kingfisher!). With encouragement, Ben really observed the photo of the Kingfisher he was drawing, and I thought his, and Katie's lovely pheasant, were really very good (pretty pleased with my half finished Barn Owl too actually).


Thought I'd just throw in these up-to-date sketches of horses by Katie. She's drawing lots at the moment and her art is coming along beautifully.

While we drew we listened to some classical music. Using Classics for Kids we chose Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Handel's Water Music.

Not sure how and why it started, but Ben has been going on about the Isle of Man for some time so we finally got around to looking it up (pitifully I didn't know where it was, mainly because it wasn't on our map!). Through Wikipedia we learnt lots about the culture, currency, language and the triskelion and meaning behind the motto "It will stand wherever you throw it". Went on to read about the darling Manx cats and then on to the Bee Gees (who live there) and naturally that lead to You Tube and various Bee Gee greats!

Finally, pic of mini Pepper sandwiched between "big Al" and "medium sized cat" (as we feel Pepper calls them) aka Allie and visiting cat Kan. They are his playmates and are very tolerant of his pouncing on them whenever they come indoors.


and a close up.


He's venturing outside more and more now, darting back indoors whenever next door's dog begins to bark! His pastimes are chasing the chickens (they've stopped laying now, probably because of this), catching flies, bugs, moths and the occasional hardy butterfly, running after thrown sticks and cones, eating leftover food put out for the chickens and pouncing on people as they walk past (usually from behind a big towel that hangs on the radiator if indoors, or from behind the car or logs etc., if outside!).

Heritage Open Day

As part of the Heritage Open Days in Lincolnshire we went along for a tour of Sutton Bridge as it can so often hold us up on route to wherever! It is a swing bridge across the River Nene just before it reaches estuary of The Wash and is used for tall mast ships and large tankers which often moor at the docks. The tour, which was really informative, although a little mind boggling with all the ins and outs of it's workings, was interesting and we got to go right up into the main room to witness the fews over the Fens towards Hunstanton, Kings Lynn and Wisbech. The bridge is now powered by oil but used to be powered by water so we were invited to visit the old water pumping station, part of which has now been turned into a domestic house! Being Grade II* listed, the old pumping station has been really well looked after. A lovely afternoon out, and what with the warmth of the sun finally beating down on us, a cardigan and raincoat free afternoon too!

The chaps in charge demonstrated a scaled down working replica of the swing bridge, made completely from Meccano (it took 18 months to build) to give us a close up view of how the bridge operates. At the end of the tour, the traffic was stopped in order for us to view the actually bridge opening, watching the various hydraulic jacks move into postion to support the bridge in opened and then closed positions, and see the cogs and wheels move the bridge round.

This evening, Ben made his own swinging Sutton Bridge from Lego, and later a large floating barge to complete the scene.

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!

Wet, windy, wonderful Wales

We spent this last weekend camping in Wales near Builth Wells, Powys. P and I last ventured to Wales years back, way before kiddies were in our lives, so it was lovely to be back. This time we ventured futher into Wales and witnessed the fabulous scenery all around us (and the never ending "baaing" of sheep). Anyway, our reason for visiting Wales? Katie went to stay with her friend who moved to the area around Christmas time. The family live in a lovely, peaceful part of the world, back to nature and (more-or-less) away from civilisation as most of us know it.

After dropping Katie off, we headed for the campsite through a never ending stream of twisty turning, high, low roads to the campsite (it was only about 16 miles "down" the road but it felt much further). We're pretty novice at the camping lark and were pretty stunned (as we've been on the last two occasions) by how much stuff we needed to take. The weather was fabulous when we arrived, allowing us to leisurely set up our two small tents (one for P and one for Ben with me) and our newly acquired gazebo to give us some protection when sitting and cooking. I chose Fforest Fields over another local site because it mentioned the lovely walks, streams and views around it for members to wander through and enjoy. Ben is absolutely mad on wading through water so I thought it would be right up his street.

View close to our pitch.

Our first wanderings were not a disappointment. We found streams hidden in the hillsides to explore, mini waterfalls and, a bonus for Ben, remains of an animal skull to explore and ponder over. The views from (almost) the top of the hill were breathtaking. Once back down to earth P and I studied the clouds over a cuppa. Very interesting as we had been learning about clouds and weather this last week. The clouds hanging over us were typical "fair weather clouds that also mean a change in weather within 24 hours". How right they were!

Climbing over fallen trees and following the stream up the hill.

We didn't mind the rain overnight. It has a lovely sound that kind of lulls you to sleep (although at the back of your mind you can't help thinking "this had better clear up by tomorrow"). The rain continued in the morning and as the day moved on the wind began to pick up too. We headed for the Dan-yr-Ogof showcaves and had a brilliant day exploring the three caves and the various other attractions at the site. Reading about the dinosaurs and seeing an Iron Age camp took away the pain of climbing the steep hill to the different caves. Well worth a visit.

It took an age to get back to camp along the roads, but such beautiful scenery made up for it. When we returned we were relieved to see our gazebo was still standing after the strong winds of the day! We were even able to cook on the bbq, under cover of course. Overnight the wind picked up big time. Ben and I were woken about midnight and endured the roar of the wind as it blew through the tree covered hills closer and closer towards us. The huge gusts seems to last an age, with, strangely, a lull of about 15 mins before it would continue. It was pretty creepy; the tent was being battered, but stood its ground! Poor P was on his own in his tent which took the full brunt of each gust near-on collapsing it each time. I knew the gazebo wasn't going to survive and at 2 ish I peeped out during a lull to see the damage. It was still tightly held down but one of the posts had completely buckled. P and I decided to dismantle it before anymore damage was done. It's amazing how quickly one can disassemble something when you really want to get it over and done with and get back to bed!

The wind continued into the Sunday and we moved P's tent so that it didn't get so much abuse! We went for a delicious Sunday lunch at a local pub and then discovered a fabulous waterfall called "Break-its-Neck" fall. We all had lots of fun splashing through the water to the fall, climbing up some of the rocks and having a really great time. Back to camp for another bbq with the wind at a reasonable speed and the weather much improved. We went for our final walk through all the pine trees on the hillside to witness another view point of the campsite.

More water play

"Break-its-neck" waterfall

Pine covered hills

Needless to say, the weather was superb on the Monday. We picked Katie up about lunch time and had a sticky 7 1/2 hour journey home (thanks to two accidents on the M6 and a three hour drive through Birmingham). Katie had a brilliant time with her friend and even managed to go hacking on the Saturday between rain showers.

A big thank you to D, A, Ch, J and A.