Getting Lots Done

I'd forgotten I hadn't posted here since last Thursday. Well, over Friday and the weekend, Jon and I worked hard business wise and Emily had great fun in her pool, doing gymnastics in the garden, designing and colouring fashion outfits, doing shrinkles and scrapbooking her 7th birthday party. Emily also started work on the perspective section of her art course; she had to draw and shade lots of 3D shapes and letters to begin with, and will be moving onto a 3D view next.

Friday was a weird day; Grandad's surliness finally got to Jon who was seething by tthe time he got back from taking Grandad shopping early in the morning. After dropping Grandad back home and thinking Emily and I wouldn't realise he wasn't back yet, Jon drove straight off to the doctors to try to get his Dad an appointment - but we did realise he wasn't there and went into panic mode wondering where on earth he'd gone. I thought he'd driven off to hide somewhere because he was so upset over his Dad. Harsh words all round between Grandad and I and lots of tears from me and Emily while we waited for Jon to get back. Something's got to give in that relationship, as we and Jon especially are bending over ourselves backwards to try to please but just constantly being met with criticism, grumpiness and demands :-((

Yesterday morning Emily and I went to see Garfield 2 at the cinema. Emily loved it to bits; I don't particularly like Garfield or animated films in general but it was entertaining enough. Went to buy a large diet coke for us to share and a junior popcorn....was told that it would only be 10p more to have a large popcorn (not sure how that worked out, but there you go) and would I like that instead. Well, OK, why not? Why not indeed....the size of the popcorn bucket had to be seen to be believed, rofl!!! We've still got most of it left.

Back home yesterday afternoon and for all of today we've been pressing on with our body project which is....drumroll please....**finished**!!!! Not that Emily wanted to finish, mind you - she'd have been set to carry on for weeks yet, I think. Here she is with her life sized body which now has all its main bits apart from the reproductive system.

We still haven't looked at the endocrine system or hormones but we have done pretty well otherwise. Yesterday we covered the digestive and urinary systems with lots of experiments and diagrams; this morning we finished off a few oustanding experiments - testing the strenght of hairs from various family members (use them to suspend styrofoam cups and fill cups with certain no of coins), finding out why we sweat (two thermometers, one covered with dry kitchen towel and one with wet) - and we also spent ages looking at various hairs and skin tags under the microscope and comparing human hair with cat hair.

Oooh, I've remembered something we did on Friday, actually - we looked at the results of a tooth experiment; we had eggshells that had been sitting in various liquids (milk, water, coke, squash and fruit juice) for a few days to simulate the effect on teeth. That did a pretty graphic job of illustrating why plain water or milk are best for your teeth....the state of the others was ughghhh.

This afternoon we looked briefly at the female reproductive system (having covered it mostly previously) and we had an entertaining foray into genetics. Used red and yellow jelly diamonds as X and Y chromosones to illustrate the chances of conceiving a boy or a girl; Emily also did a family tree chart of blue/brown eyed genes after we'd discussed the brown gene being dominant; it was quite tricky to work backwards through the generations to establish whether the brown eyed among us were "pure" brown eyes or "hybrid" brown eyes, but she loved doing that. We also extended it forwards to find out what colour eyes Emily's future child might have with three different "Prince Charming"s, blue eyed, pure brown eyed and hybrid brown eyed. Really interesting.

So, the project's now finished and Emily's very, very pleased with it. Apparently she can't wait to start Romans next.....

Meanwhile, Romeo and Juliet are a year old! We can't be sure when they were born, but working backwards from when we got them, it must have been around about this past week. The little tiny balls of fluff we brought home mid August last year have turned into these handsome cats:
Hard to belive they looked like this a year ago (link to our August 2005 archive, can't remember how to link to individual posts, but kittens arrived half way down the page!)
Both are suffering in the heat at the moment, especially Romeo. Merlin and Cassie don't seem too bothered, perhaps they're more used to it. Both kit-bits (as I'm determined to still call them, year old or not) have been having a butterfly ball this last couple of days. The number of butterflies in the garden seems to have suddenly exploded and they've both spent hours sat under one of the two buddleia trees on butterfly watch, rofl. Juliet especailly rarely leaves it! Here they are side by side, on duty.
As well as the masses of butterflies of all different kinds, we've got lots of crickets/grasshoppers in the long grass under our holly tree, too.

Health appointments are mounting up at the moment; Jon's been for another blood test today, Grandad has to see the doctor tomorrow and also tomorrow my Dad has an appointment for a whole battery of tests for a prostrate problem :-(( Emily was booked in for extra ballet lessons over the summer but unfortunately they've decided to hold them on Wednesdays, which means we'll miss the first two (busy tomorrow and the next Weds) but she's excited about going to the rest.

Royal Mail's - ahem- overhaul of their system and move to Pricing in Proportion is pushing ever closer, which has been causing us concern. It's going to have a massive impact on the way we have to frank upwards of 300 packages a day yet astonishingly, none of the major franking machine companies really have their act in gear. With the new system starting on the 11th August, we're running out of time to get that particular hot potato sorted out :-/

This evening Emily and Jon went for a stroll to the river and back; Emily found an eggshell and tons of feathers she wants to identify, so that'll keep her busy tomorrow morning before she goes off to Romy's for a play tomorrow afternoon. [Well, tomorrow in now today - wrote all this on Tuesday but wasn't able to upload it yesterday......bl**dy blogger]