Archive for the 'Home-ed' Category

Shock Horror……

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 12, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed and Macs
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…..Natalie actually fed the Rabbits this morning without being asked. :shock:

She then delved straight into a pile of books and worked on SME, Crosswords, Monkey Maths (our home-made maths book - where I write out stuff for her to fill in - stuff that she needs to ‘recap’) and read some of the library books - again. Hermionie was busy using all the stickers we have on one sheet of paper to make a very lovely picture which I have been ordered to put on the wall! (She can be a bossy little madam sometimes).

St*pid Virgin Media have screwed the bill up again, charged us £15 over the top in charges and cut the phone off! - It’s set-up on DD, it’s not our fault if they can’t manage to take the service charge plus the call charges - Alex phoned them (’cos you can still use their operator number to moan at them even when they cut you off teehee!) - managed to sort it out but they can’t turn the phone back on till tomorrow, GREAT. :evil:

….anyway, Alex and Hermionie popped round S&G’s to use their phone and pick up some bits, Natalie stayed with me and ate coconut cake!

Natalie carried on with books I left her and then we had an early dinner then we all went round S&G’s (I think we should be contributing to their mortgage by now!) to look after K while G had a funeral :cry: and S took J to Karate. Bless her, she stayed asleep most of the time - Hermionie was not very pleased to see her bestest friend in the whole wide world asleep in her presence! Natalie Gameboy’d for a bit then I took her to Brownies. K woke up and played colouring with Hermionie - alot of whinging again. :roll: S&J came back and all the kids played nicely for bit. Came home and tidied up a bit and kids went to bed, Alex in usual position at table and me here - on my G5,peeing around with the ‘Now reading’ plugin, tagging photos and listening to lots of my favourite music on iTunes. Night

A lovely afternoon.

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 11, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed, Macs, Pregnancy and Trips-out
. 0 Comments

Didn’t achieve much this morning or early afternoon really. Kids were playing in the living room, fed rabbits, looked at sticky’s, mooched generally. Alex & Natalie popped round S&G’s for some bits while Hermionie & I cleaned up a bit - she loves helping me out especially when she’s on her own with me - she takes great delight in helping me clean, dusting, plumping cushions, and attempting to sweep - it’s v. cute, not to say that Natalie doesn’t dislike taking charge of the hoover!!!!

Had another Estate Agent round today who said the same as the other one so negative equity it is then - guess we’ll be staying in this house for the next ten years!

Packed a lunch, filled the car with some much needed - we’ve-been-running-on-fumes-for-days petrol and headed for Southsea. We late-lunched on the green behind the Portsmouth Natural History Museum which was where we headed after eating.

It’s a nice little museum - free (which is a bonus!) but I don’t think it’s changed that much since I went when I was a girl? Nevermind - kids still enjoy running round - we’ve been 5 or 6 times now and they still learn something new, they’ve got some butterflies there as well. (Although they don’t always seem the healthiest/strongest butterflies I’ve ever seen??)

So we spent a good 1 1/2 hours walking round. By closing time - we still hadn’t made it to the microscopes, so Natalie was a little disappointed - will have to make a repeat visit soon.

It was the first time Alex had been - he was quite impressed considering it didn’t cost him any money and it kept the kids busy without arguments or whinging. :lol:

Sun was shining, a little windy but pretty much gorgeous on the seafront, headed down to the beach for some pebble-throwing and shell/stone hunting.

Popped past the Southsea Model Village which we’ve never been to - so we’ll add that to the list for another day also. Grabbed an ice-cream from the van and had a lark about practising cartwheels, swinging the kids round. (which Hermionie reaaaaallly doesn’t like - bless her!) The kids then proceeded to bashing Alex about (I remember this as being a favourite pastime with my Dad - play fighting and charging about like loons :lol: )

We then headed for the park to let of some more steam!

Had to return home to eat. All watched Anthea Turner:Perfect Housewife (why? oh why ? - I hear you cry?), I managed to resist the urge to clean the house some more for about 1/2 hour, but the Anthea-Effect got the better of me!!!!

Tucked the kids up on the sofa watching Charlotte’s Web, (I’m still upset by the Spider dying :sad: ) and I have been trying to publish my now-updated iCal calenders without a .Mac account? - Trying the setting up a webdav server on the G5 but it looks a little to scary for me right now, so I’ll settle for sharing via this.

Oh….and just this pic ‘cos I think I’ll miss this face as she grows up!

More piccies up on Flickr now as well - managed to transfer all our photos to iPhoto (can you tell I’m big with the Apple love?) and tag them and found I can drag them straight out of iPhoto to Flickr……little things :roll:

Tired!

Published
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pixieminx
on July 10, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed and Pregnancy
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OK, maybe I whinged a bit excessively about Stonehenge - it seems they do do out-of-normal-hours walk-amongst-the-stones visits and there are big changes planned including a new Visitor Centre with lots more educational facilities on-hand, the removal of the path and the major upheaval of re-directing the two roads around Stonehenge - Go For It!

So, today started early with a visit from K. Hermionie & K were very argumentative today - Hermionie didn’t really want to ’share’ and was asserting herself a little more today (K is 9 months older than Hermionie!) much to K’s disgust! Every time one of them found a new toy, the other wanted it instantly and whinged incessantly at either me or Alex until one of us withdrew the toy and left them to it!

Natalie was busy drawing Horses (all the girl wants is a rich Daddy and a Horse) ‘How to Draw Horses’ Book - she really is quite good with the aid of the book - shall see if she can remember how to draw a horse without it - she’s used this book alot!

Popped down the shops for some over-priced sugery goodness and took the girls to the park, left as the skies turned grey and it started raining! Kids sat down to watch ‘Over The Hedge‘ but the littlies got bored. S came round with a very poorly back, Natalie drew & decorated her hands for http://www.handsup4homeed.blogspot.com/ now I just have to scan them in..hmmmmm

G finished work and joined us, Alex was dismantling a Boombox and a DVD Player I believe? G & Alex ‘worked’ while S, me and the kids mooched. Had to put the Hedrin on Natalie (well S did ‘cos I’m over-cautious being pregnant! - thanks S!), the little bu**ers have been breeding, I thought they might not like pink hair but no - I thought that there’s no way she’d get nits if she weren’t at school - guess I was wrong, I think they just looooove her hair - arrgggghhhh!!!

Popped over Cosham (Yay! - sarcastically) with G, K and Hermionie to sort K’s eye out at the pharmacy and grab more sugery goodness in the form of half-price priced ring doughnuts - Yum!

All decided we’d be better of round S&G’s so departed to there, kids were happy playing - Natalie set-up a drawing school in the living room and PS-2d with J. (very nicely I might add - they really get on alot better now!)

Hermionie & K continued to squabble over babies and I quite frankly got sick of it - thank goodness pizza goodness arrived to stop the arguments.

Tried to settle the kids down, Hermionie eventually fell asleep after 2 hours of being so over-tired and wriggling/singing/talking to herself/pillow-plumping and jumping all the sofa while tried to watch Holby with S but I was so tired I lost my rag with both kids and put them to bed in the conservatory (on the sofas with sleeping bags!!) and didn’t end up saying a proper goodnight to them which just eats away at me - ahhh - went in later when they were both asleep to say sorry and kiss them goodnight.

Alex & G got alot done, S’s back got the better off and she toddled of to bed, leaving me with the tv remote!!!

Not as Impressed as I thought I’d be……

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 9, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed and Trips-out
. 1 Comment

We went to Stonehenge today. Managed to get up late as usual, took ages to get stuff ready, people organised etc and finally got on the road at about 11:30am. :roll: A Lorry had overturned on the road we needed so a detour into unknown territory was needed and more time was lost. :roll: Finally arrived later than we said we would (we went on an Home-Educators Free Educational Trip Visit) but it didn’t matter with this site - thank goodness!

Really was not expecting a huge amount of people to be there but it was quite crowded in the car park, lots of languages being spoken, lots of groups of people being hustled about. Weather had been on and off on the drive there so Raincoats were at the ready! We all came out of the tunnel entrance to the stones and I was……….

….severely pi**ed off and disappointed. I had wanted to go up for the Summer Solstice (and WILL next year!) - I had heard that you were allowed to walk among the stones, touch them, get a sense of the sheer size of them and ‘feel’ something being there (I think the site of Stonehenge is more important than the actual stones - correct me if I am wrong - I often am!), well the only thing I felt was ‘Grrrrrrrrrr!’ couldn’t get anywhere near them for the bl**dy barrier - what do they think people are going to do??? - I know the crazies are out there and the stones are things of beauty to be preserved but come on….oh yeah and desecrate the site by putting a concrete path across it yeah!!!!

Humpf - rant not over - they expect us to pay nearly £16 to gawk at the stones from afar????? Thank goodness it was a freebie.

Hadn’t prepared the kids much for Stonehenge - though we’d see what they make of them - Natalie was not at all impressed with the no-touchy rule and proceed to rebel against it by crossing the line.

(Shhhhh!), She listened to the audio tour for a bit, but I guess it wasn’t to her taste - Alex listened to the rest while Natalie and I took photos, and discussed how long the stones had been there, where they came from, how they were erected etc, also saw lots of sheep and rabbits. The weather held out though, although we were a bit early for the sunset (shame :sad: ), we still got some nice shots of the stones, which I’ll photoshop together later.

We bought a Guidebook which re-iterated what was in the audio tour and has some nice stuff in it, we’ll study that later. We looked round the gift-shop but as usual money was an object so we just looked. Saw a nice little model of the stones as they are now which I though we make out of clay one day and maybe shine torches through like the sunrise/set. Had meant to do some’art’ whilst at Stonehenge, but neither Natalie nor I felt like it after the dissapointment of the barriers (Natalie had wanted to crayon and chalk ‘rub’ the stones).

Starving hungry and lunch packed ‘cos we had no bread :roll: - we left in search of food…..

…and came across a Harvester in Salisbury (Our favourite) - so we all shared a Plantation Platter for two and several bowls of salad - £20 not bad for the four us and it goes on the Credit Card so it doesn’t count. :lol: Whilst in Harvester we all studied the Stonehenge Guidebook and talked about Stonehenge and the area in general.

Tummy’s full, we set off home, via the New Forest - well we couldn’t miss the opportunity - sun was shining and it is kind of on the way home. Had a lovely drive through, saw some pony’s, lots of lovely English green open land without a pylon in sight in some cases! Popped to our usual New Forest Haunt - Boltons Bench - no ponies :shock: (well only 2 and a donkey!) - they’re usually gathering in masses here - so we drove on to find some more to satisfy the horse-freaks in the car. Hermionie found a keepsake stone to add to her collection.

Found some lovely pony’s and foals as we drove through to Beaulieu and a small group of donkey’s with a Foal Ahhhhhh!, they even let us stroke them - they were lovely. Off home the more scenic way than just joining up with motorway as soon as we could - saw lots of VW campers - aren’t they cool? - I think we’re going to need to change the car soon - can’t justify driving round in the ‘05 Picasso really - love the campers but would probably go for something a little more reliable - going to need more seats and the space would be great for car-boots.

Got home - completely shattered all round, kids milkshaked and off to bed.

Blah, blah, blah….

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 8, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed, Macs and Pregnancy
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Natalie was DSing in bed this am while H trashed her room playing dress-up.

Natalie had a guide bbq (free Yay!) this afternoon and had a good time making new friends with the older girls. I spent a very comfy hour with Hermionie on the sofa, playing on Natalie’s Leap-pad and watching CBeebies. She still has quite a rough cough, not taking anything for it now though. Picked Natalie up and went to Emsworth for some duck feeding and boat watching. Damn forgot crabbing materials! Had some nice ice-creams (baby no 4 likes the ice-cream - my excuse at least!)

Natalie and I watched RSPCA Rescue - she’s v. interested in working with animals - have to work on that.

General ramblings: Binka’s limping again - keep an eye on him. • Saw a link for tie dye on someone else’s blog - want to that now! • Looking forward to a possible holiday in September, a couple of days in the New Forest. • Been listening to ipod alot lately, great escape listening to music, but means I don’t sleep till about 3am! • Want to do alot more spontaneous stuff, paint, create - need to fulfill a creative desire, instill it in the littles ones who will invariably make a mess :-) Saw people painting down Emsworth - amazes me people can that - I have no faith in myself - boo hoo. Want to learn to play the guitar.

A new way to approach things…

Published
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pixieminx
on July 6, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed, Macs and Pregnancy
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Have had some lovely weather here today - managed to 3 loads of washing washed and dried on the line! - Yay! Rabbits also had a lovely day out in the garden.

I sat with Natalie whilst she completed 5 pages of SME and set-up some maths and handwriting for to carry on with later through the day, along with some french, human body, and please oh goodness please child finish JP7!!!! (just so it’s finished!) - can’t believe I haven’t tried this approach before - I’ll figure out what I want her to cover the next day - set it up, bookmark the relevant pages, etc and leave her to it (unless she asks for help obviously)- hopefully with her completing it by 5pm, this might take the pressure of the work/play divide that seems to happen - if she knows what she has to do - she can take some responsibility for it and arrange ‘play time’ around it - I hope!!!

Kids watch a few DVD’s- Toy Story, Barbie Fairytopia - Magic of the Rainbow and The Secret Garden. Alex took kids to Tesco for top-ups and crazy-pregnant lady fetish food whilst I tided the usual load of can’t-see-the-carpet-for-toys that Hermionie had left me with.

Hermionie has been wandering round most of the day chanting her version of the alphabet (v. cute!)

We all watched the last Doctor Who again on On Demand - made more sense watching it knowing what’s going to happen - Natalie still couldn’t quite get her head round the whole one word at one time all across the world and the satellites thingy that saved the Doctor and now I’m tired of trying to explain these sorts of things in simplistic form! (you know where you try to explain something to a child without using words that they don’t understand thus leading you to divert the explanation and explain the meaning of the word then backtrack to where you were originally, without repeating yourself and carrying on! - Ugh!) And is just me or where you put off by Catherine Tate in the Christmas Episode and now she’ll be back in Season 4 - Not Pleased. :evil:

Spent some time re-connecting with my G5, sorting through iTunes, iPhoto, enabling Front Row (tee hee!) and trying to control it all with my mobile! (wonder if it will ‘just work’ with an iphone?) obviously this was all too much for Alex ‘cos he doesn’t see a point in it all (Front Row that is….) ‘cos it doesn’t actually achieve anything…….until…he saw that you watch movie trailers on hand with a few clicks - fickle bu**er. :lol:

Pink haired faeries

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 5, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed and Pregnancy
. 0 Comments

Alex has been on a mission to clear our extension - or rather make space in the extension for the piles of c**p that shouldn’t be in the house ‘cos even though crazy pregnant lady doesn’t outrightly moan about it any longer, he sees her right eye twitch every time she has to squeeze past or jump over a pile of c**p that shouldn’t be there!

I managed to mow the lawn today before the heavens opened.

Natalie read most of the library books we got the other day. (I managed to request Imperfectly Natural Baby & Toddler and much to Alex’s amusement - I have been completely sucked into this book as I was with it’s predecessor Imperfectly Natural Woman)

Dyed the kids hair pink!!! (we are so rebels :twisted: ) Natalie has a pink steak either side, her fringed ends tipped pink and all the other ends pink, Hermionie has a single streak to the side which looks very ‘Hermionie’ (she also has a tattoo!!! - it’s a temporary spider-man one from a packet of sweets that she refuses to wash off!)

Trying to have more of just a quiet day in today (I need it!!) Natalie went to Brownies and took part in the ‘Cheeky Monkey Challenge!’ - managed to get some sponsorship money but forgot ask a few relatives when we saw them. :roll:

GDadL popped down for an hour to see the kids today.

We do ‘do’ alot honestly!

Published
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pixieminx
on July 2, 2007
in Generally and Home-ed
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May seem like no HE goes on but you can guess that everyday I’ve answered ‘what does……, what if……., how long……., when did…….., etc etc or told madam to l go look it up in the dictionary, find it a book, Google it or it’s on that game called…… to find the answer. - I think more goes in that way!!!

Hermionie has been saying ‘uffat’ alot - which means ‘what’s that?’ and asks what every single things is! - she always sounds fascinated with the answers bless her!

Please don’t bite your toenails.

Published
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pixieminx
on July 1, 2007
in Generally, Home-ed, Macs and Pregnancy
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Yummy fried breakfast courtesy of Alex. Managed to win for Natalie the brownie books she needs on ebay plus a little bag - still have to hem her trousers.

Natalie was singing on the PS2 - she’s quite good- get’s alot of Lead Singer’s (although all you really have to do is hum the right tune!). She had a go on Lemmings with the eyetoy but they kept bursting!

I have been drinking lots of Orange Juice and milk lately - not together obviously! Yuk! and eating lots of fruit!

S,G,J&K pooped round after their carpet hunt - kids all a bit hectic - had popcorn, Natalie showed S the sticky’s. Hermionie has been quite clingy today - she fell asleep on me while I was on the computer (mastered the art of this when she was a baby!)  We meant to go out to feed ducks somewhere today but time got away and it was raining most of the time - although not in London evidently - caught the Tribute to Diana Concert at about 5:30, broke for a bit while H went to bed and N had a luxury bath!!! and a pedicure - disgusting child bites her toenails :-(.

just found link…

Published
by
pixieminx
on July 1, 2007
in Home-ed
. 0 Comments

Just found this:

Enjoy

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