Deathly Hallows - Sob

We've only got five chapters left now. Yes, I know, we're quite possibly the last people on the planet who are interested but yet to finish the book. Just in case anyone else interested has been even slower than us, though, I won't mention names. Emily was devestated by the death at the end of the Elder Wand chapter :-// It's quite odd, really - there've been deaths aplenty so far, and although I've cried at several of them, reading it aloud, she's been more astonished and fascinated than actually upset, but this one - I think she's spent so long bound up in the fate of this character, I guess she was really holding out for this being one death that JK Rowling wouldn't go for. What with her being so tearful about that death and then the helpful appearance of a spider on her duvet, we had an "interesting" night.

On a brighter note, our Polish friends are finally back in the UK, several months later than anticipated, so they're coming to see us next week. Emily's very excited about seeing Kate again. And who knows, with a forecast of sunny weather here next week, the long awaited paddling pool may finally get to put in an appearance. Which will hopefully distract a certain someone from the much put off finality of having, by then, finished the last Harry Potter novel ever. If only she'd discovered Harry Potter several years earlier than she did!

A Sciency Week

This week we have mostly been wearin' .....thoughtful, scientific looks. We had a couple of weeks without much science but Emily's been itching to get back to the RS4K Chemistry, Biology and Physics, so that's what we've concentrated on this week. Excuse long list of we've done this, we've done that, but since we have actually achieved some education this week, I want to make a note of it!

Biology was first, looking at how exactly plants grow, phototropism, gravitropism and plant life cycles. We've got an experiment underway with pinto beans in the light and in the dark, attached to blotting pape in jars, at various different angles, to see what happens when the roots and shoots emerge in different directions. Not much seems to be happening there, however. I don't think they're getting enough water via the blotting paper to sprout. May have to have a re-think on that one.

In chemistry, we were studying homogeneous mixtures vs heterogeneous mixtures, plus looking at how soaps and detergents work, colloids etc. Huge experiement mixing all kinds of stuff to see whether and how it mixed or not, plu finding out what happens when you add washing up liquid to an oil layer on top of a water layer.

Physics was hugely fun too; we studied the energy of atoms and molecules, including stored chemical energy in food, stored chemical energy in batteries and nuclear energy. Fabulous experiment making battery cells from 2p pieces, silver foil and salt water soaked paper towels. Emily absoultely loved, loved, loved that. We got up to 2.5v from five cells, but then it started to go a bit haywire, being so sensitive to movement of the wires, short circuits if the paper towel pieces touched, etc. We both learnt a lot from that, though, including working out why, if a 1.5v AA battery would light a small bulb, our 2.5v battery penny cells wouldn't, i.e. the difference between voltage and current. My Dad's cut us some proper copper and aluminium strips so next time we have a chance we're going to do a big battery fruit experiment for more fun and games.

In history we've finally moved on from ancient Egypt second time round, and we're onto ancient Africa now. Very interesting. Emily's been finding out about ancient African religion and myths, as well as mapping the area, comparing the similarities between ancient Kush (Nubia/Sudan) and ancient Egypt, and charting the rise of Christianity and Islam throughout the continent.

In maths we've started on So You Really Want To Learn Maths? which I absolutely love, and which Emily likes so far too (although that my be because we've only got as far as the roman numerals work in the first chapter, which she's always liked anyway, lol). We've also done tons more long division and decimals. English has been lots of spelling, and some great creative writing sessions where one of us comes up with a title (eg "The Graveyard") and then we both have a stopwatch timed five minutes to plan a piece of writing, ten minutes to write it and a further five minutes to proofread/edit/correct it. I write alongside Emily and then we share what we've written. We both really enjoy that, and Emily has produced some lovely work there.

Today Jackie and her girls came round for the day; Jackie carried on teaching them German, getting into some pretty complicated grammar. Then I helped the girls each make an "elements" themed cushion; Emily did earth, Mei Lin did fire and Jasmine did air - they made a lovely abastract job of these having brainstormed first to list colours, shapes and themes that they associated with each element. Lots of handstitching and sewing machine use, and was much enjoyed by all. Two weeks today until we pick up the new kittens on our next visit to Jackie's!

Oh, and I forgot to mention, we got a letter from Lincs Council when were on holiday, in response to the 13 page home ed report I sent them. They deigned to pronouce our educational provision "satisfactory" (hmmmrrrrppphh) although to be fair they were very complimentary about what we're doing in the body of the "report". Caused a few chuckles at this end that they phrased the letter as "following your meeting with Mr so and so, we hope you find this report an accurate reflection of your meeting, blah blah, meeting, blah blah". What meeting???!

Some More Piccies

Found the memory card, so here are a few more pictures from Jon and Emily's huge ramble around the bottom of Tomlin Head at St Bees. The first is the view of the shipwreck; apparently there's the keel and the boilers of the ship left. The tide wasn't particularly low that day, so you can't see anything all that exciting, but the point is you can't see it from the beach anyway, you have to go round the base of the rocks. Apparently it's known for its conger eels under water.

There were some very strange rock formations, presumably to do with the effect the tide has on the soft sandstone:

Lots of very old carved graffiti in copperplate lettering, lol. And two eerie faces carved into the rocks too.
It was an adventurer's paradise, with lots and lots of starfish and huge crabs to be oohed and aahed over too!

I've only just discovered, researching the jelly fish finds, that St Bees head is apparently well known for sightings of dolphins and harbour porpoises too - definitely something to keep an eye out for next time we go.

***Harry Potter Alert - No Spoilers!***
Emily woke up very early on Saturday wanting to know if our copy of Deathly Hallows had arrived yet. I was sure it wasn't going to arrive until at least lunchtime, but it came really early in the end :-)) We read the first five chapters yesterday and another two today - taking it very slowly, deliberately. The grief is coming thick and fast - think we must be up to about four deaths already. JK Rowling wasn't kidding then when she said it was going to be a bloodbath, lol! I've already been sobbing several times whilst trying to read to Emily :-// She's going to read it herself after we're done, but we like to have the first read together.

I confess to having looked ahead in the book; couldn't help it. I'd already read the first chapter and the epilogue from the "spoiler" version, the one where someone took photos of every page, but of course I wasn't sure until the book arrived whether what I'd read was fake or real. I've now peeked ahead at some of the most significant parts and I'm enthralled. Not quite sure how the reading aloud's going to go, mind you, given my level of sobs already - looks like it gets *a lot* more emotional!

In other news, I forgot to say in the last post that my Mum's had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome on one of her hands - the other one is due to be done as soon as that's healed. She's all bandaged up but managing very well and is doing the physiotherapy movements to strengthen her hand. Meanwhile, Grandad's angioplasty hospital appointment has finally come through for the 3rd August, so he's happy. He has hospital appointments on the 31st July and the 1st August too, so that's going to be a busy week!

We've identified the culprit who gave Romeo his two nasty wounds - the huge tabby cat who visits our garden and who we used to laughingly call Ju-Ju's boyfriend, because he was at first *very* friendly to her, and she to him. Romeo and he had a huge fight this morning though, before Jon broke it up - looks like things have turned aggressive between the two of them. I don't know why it's happened now, since they had co-existed peacefully enough before. Anyway, this morning, Romeo ended up cowering and with a claw sheath embedded in his shoulder fur, poor thing. Think we'll have to remove the name "Ju-Ju's" boyfriend and start calling the other tabby "neighbourhood thug" instead! He never goes for Cassie Cat or Juliet however, although Ju-Ju is now terrified of him and runs indoors like lightning whenever he appears anyway, so that may be due to lack of opportunity rather than any good grace. I guess it's possible that Romeo is just as aggressive towards him on his territory, and we just don't see that, but at the moment our poor Romeo is very much a wounded warrior :-( trying to be the man in the house. At least the two new kittens will both be males, so in due course he'll have some support!

Back from Holiday to Harry Potter Mania

Well, it's two o clock in the morning of the 21st July. I've just been watching sky news reports about the midnight release of Deathly Hallows, and judging from the comments on mugglenet, the spoilers I saw were the real thing :-(( I know, a) my own stupid fault for looking and b) I'm far too old to be this caught up in a children's book! I'm just glad that Emily didn't see them. I can preserve the magic for her for a goodly while yet ;-) We've had a Harry Potter day all day today, and we've played endless pretends acting out parts of the plot we thought were to come. Eagerly awaiting our amazon copy tomorrow/today then. If it's not here by noon we'll be off to Asda to buy one there.

Anyway. We got back from holiday late on Monday and we had the most fantastic ten days away. The best holiday yet. Utterly relaxed, full on family time, just the three of us, it was beautiful. We spent most of the time playing on St Bees Beach, playing in the caravan (how did Emily get so good at scrabble and skip-bo??) and just enjoying being together in peace for once. We did enjoy a trip back to Trotters World of Animals, only slightly spoilt by the various school trips full of noisy, rude, disinterested children. On the same day we also visited the stunning and magical Castlerigg Stone Circle, again only slightly spoilt by people allowing their children to run around screaming, shouting and climbing all over this beautiful and special ancient site :-((


Emily was utterly bewildered and quite distressed by the behaviour going on - all she wanted to do was to touch the stones gently, to feel for the ancient carvings and to try to sense the energy and find out about the history. No screaming, running, climbing or yelling required, thanks. Why do people take kids to an ancient site and then let them behave as if it's the local council adventure playground? Surely it's instinctive in a place like this that you treat it with respect? OK, toddlers and very young kids don't understand, but that's the parents job to keep them in check. Children of Emily's age and over should certainly understand without needing to be told. You feel it, you sense it, common decency and an inbuilt awe tells you as much. Give it a few more years and they'll close it off like they had to with Stonehenge. Will everyone be satisfied then?

We spent long happy hours rescuing little silver fish that were beaching themselves in the rivlets running out of rockpools, examining washed up jelly fish (compass and large lion's mane jellyfish in these pictures, I think) and saving the ones we could

finding crabs, sea anenomes and starfish and collecting enough beautiful shells to cover a flowerbed outside the caravan - a half hour's walk on the sandstone shelves in the first picture produced an entire tub full in the second picture, for instance.
Emily and Jon explored the rocks at the base of Tomlin head as far round as they could possibly go at low tide, looking at the carved out names on the rocks dating from the 1800s and taking pictures of what remains of the wreck of the SS Izaro, which ran aground off St Bees in 1907 (bottom of page on the link). I have some lovely photos they took on the rocks, but they're on the second (and at this very moment, missing, memory card, so will post later).

We also went for a picnic on the shores of Lake Ennerdale


and visited the very impressive little cinema in Workington to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on its release day. Loved the film, although I was a little disappointed with the lack of emotional intensity when it came to Sirius' death and Harry's reaction to it. What was a harrowing part of the book seemed to be very glossed over in the flim, but otherwise, it was certainly a good watch, and prompted hours of discussion about the parts they left out of the film and why.

In all, though, we didn't need to go further than the two minutes from the caravan straight down onto the beach, in all weathers (not that it rained too much, actually). Even at high tide (and at high tide in St Bees, you've barely a little bit of shingle left to walk on) Emily still had huge fun sitting on "Potions Rock" crushing up bits of sandstone and quartz to make potions.
A little selection of other pictures, including Emily at the old St Bees tidal swimming pool in the rocks, built in the 1930s but abandoned in the 2nd world war, just as the tide's about to start filling it up again:
and yet more of the beautiful beach with its miles and miles of sand, rockpools, streams and oooh, just about everything you could want from a British beach.



We'll be going back in October and we can't wait; I think this was the first time we'd actually been away together as a family for longer than five or six days. May and June were rather stressful months, so it was such a welcome break :-)))

Jon attended his level one Reiki course the day before we went away, and came home buzzing, so I was treated to reiki while we were away, which went down rather well :-)) Jon and Emily also practised tarot readings galore, with pretty accurate results, picking up on stuff I was thinking which nobody else knew I was thinking ;-)

Came home on Monday to find Romeo with two very deep cuts on his flank, though :-(( Weird marks, like a large oval and a smaller circle, close to each other but not touching, with the skin kind of gouged away quite deeply. He'd been fine earlier that day for my Mum and Dad, so he must have done it just hours before we got home. He wasn't a very happy chappy, bless his heart. We took him to the vet, who reckons it must have been either a very large cat or a larger animal. He's fine now, it seems to be healing well, and the vet fell in love with him, lol, as this particular one hadn't met him before.

And despite my words to the contrary....we'll shortly be welcoming two new kit kats to the household. Two of Jackie's black Burmese kittens are looking for homes. As if we could resist. I know Emily has some very Harry Potterish names in mind for them!

Off On Holiday

We're off on Saturday, rain or no rain. Now, I love the rain. I'm all for it. I never thought I'd hear myself say this though - I'd really appreciate it if it would STOP raining, just for a week or two! I was just looking back at my blog from a year ago - back then I was lamenting about Merlin going missing for 24 hours, bless his heart, and about it being way, way TOO HOT. Paddling pool pictures all over the show, throughout June too. Haven't been able to put the pool up yet this year, much to Emily's utter disgust. And now, according to the long range weather forecast, we're set for a week of rain in St Bees too. Oh well. I'm sure we'll have a lovely time just the same, but a little bit of sunshine would have helped!

We've had a fab week home-ed wise again. Emily's getting through a ton of stuff and she's really enthusiastic about it too, which is lovely to see. In amidst the English, maths, history, geography and science we've also done dozens of Harry Potter pretends, discussed every Harry Potter theory in the universe several times over, written secret prediction lists for the last Harry Potter book (anyone spotted a theme here yet?), played hours on the new Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix PC game, and been re-reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, having previously re-read all the others.

Today we rushed back from yoga to watch the live broadcast from the Order of the Phoenix London premiere although we only caught the last ten minutes of it. No more yoga now until September - time's racing by. When we get back from holiday Emily and I will be straight out to see the new film (wanting to get in quick before the schools break up, lol), and then it's only a few days until the release of Deathly Hallows. I suspect "reading" will be rather high up Emily's to-do list for a few days after that ;-)

On Friday our friends came round for the day; Emily, Mei-Lin and Jasmine had fun working on role plays about Lord Shaftesbury interviewing Victorian child workers, as well as doing some more maths, some German and lots of science experiments about density, plus a huge play. We were going to stitch some cushions on the theme of "the elements" but we ran out of time - next time. Emily and I are heading to theirs later this week before Jon attends his reiki course on Friday and then we'll hit the road for the long and not particularly fun drive up to Cumbria. Hey ho. It'll be worth it when we get there, even if it does chuck it down all week. I think we've already seen far more of that beach in rain-soaked weather than we ever have in sunshine. And caravans are rather nice places to be when the elements are unleashing their fury outside. Cosy :-))

The Education of Circumstances

It's been a very educational few days for Emily, due to real life events, namely the transfer of power from one prime minister to another and the extensive flooding. Today we had a citizenship day, which is code for having spent most of the day watching news 24, lol. Between watching the news coverage, talking with us and browsing some pertinent websites, Emily learnt a lot about the structure of the British government system, the way the Houses of Parliament work, voting rights, constitutional issues, the role of the monarchy etc etc. Oh and (very) modern history too, if you include all the "looking back at the events of this government" type things that have been on recently.

Actually, on a separate note, but prompted by all the "end of an era" look backs that I've seen, it is quite a strange feeling looking back on the last ten years and wondering what Emily will make of these times, historically and politically, when she's older. Without getting into politics, I've largely been pleased with the "Blair Years" (which seems to put me firmly in a minority, lol), but regardless of anyone's political viewpoint, watching the handover of power today was quite emotional for me personally. In May 1997, Jon and I were newlyweds, I'd just started a new job and we seemed to be permanently settled in Bracknell. Having grown up in the Thatcher years, there was a tangible sense of excitment on the morning after the election that I can remember clearly. We could never have imagined then that ten years later we'd have a daughter, be home educating, be self employed and be hundreds of miles away from our home turf. All entirely unconnected to a new prime minister, granted, but it's just the way it prompts you to look back in time. Mind you, I like it when the UK does an "occasion". I like the traditions and learning about the protocol and the ceremonies (or lack of them in this case). I'm kinda holding out for a royal wedding soon for much the same reasons!

Anyway; the other real life issue this week has been the flooding. We're fortunate in that we haven't been affected at all personally - even on the worst day it never progressed beyond "very wet" on our road. Just two minute's walk away at the village stream it was a different story though and some houses there were very badly hit. The little Scotter bridge at the end of our road was shut at various points due to a crack in it, and one of the main roads near us (the Asda road, for those who know where we are) has been closed for a while due to another collapsed bridge). On Monday night, Jon went out to his psychic circle but was turned back by police near the railway bridge on the Gainsborough road due to the flooding; it was still shut last night so Emily and I missed yoga.

Again, lots of educational stuff in there. Emily and Jon have gone for lots of walks over the last three days to see what was happening down at the stream. Some photos: First of all, the road bridge just at the end of our street, which carries the main A159 over the stream. On Monday night, the water was already flooded and high, but you could still see the archway. By Tuesday morning, the same bridge, the archway had vanished.

This was one of the seats on the bank of the stream, plus a stark reminder that not everyone was as fortunate as us:
More general photos of the scene:





And finally two taken this evening, in a lovely bout of sunshine. The village ducks don't seem to mind the situation, but even after well over 24 hours without any rain, the water has only just subsided slightly below the arch of the main road bridge.


Away from the floods and the politics, Emily's been very busy too. She's done a lot of work on magic squares (her "homework" from Jackie, lol!) - she worked out about 30 of them and then used her art program to produce some beatiful tesselation designs using the magic square patterns. We've finally started work on the long awaited Europe project in Geography, and Emily has been labelling maps of Europe with water and land features, ahead of plans to look indepth at each country. And Harry Potter fever mounts. I'm not sure if my small excited person could possibly get any more excited!

Kickathon Success!

Emily did her sponsored kickathon for the Brain Trust this morning at karate, in memory of George's son in law who died from a brain tumor this time last year aged just 34. Emily did 350 roundhouse kicks, which was fantastic as she'd been aiming for 150! She would have done more but there was some confusion among the blackbelts who were holding the pads - some were letting the children change legs as often as they wanted, some (like Emily's) were under the impression they could only change legs once. Oh well. She's raised over £100 in sponsorship, so we're really proud of her :-))) She also got to have a fab play with Mei Lin and Jasmine who were there to support George and for Mei Lin, who's only two belts away from her adult black belt despite her age (guess it helps when your Dad's a master, lol!) to take part in the kickathon.

In other news I'm finally done with my deadlines for the weekend. Emily's been out this afternoon with my Mum and Dad choosing a new tree for the garden and beautiful purple rose bush. Jon's psychic insight into the whereabouts of my Mum's long lost camera proved correct - he told her a few weeks ago when she was looking for it that it would be found but it was "in the wrong case". We all thought that meant camera case. Today my Dad went up in the loft to get down a *suit*case they haven't used since last year and weren't intending taking this year - the camera was in there, instead of in the case they thought they'd packed it in.

And Emily and I have been having lots of fun leaving each other Harry Potter related messages in the bathroom scrawled over the mirror, bath and tile with bath crayons. As you do :-))

Sizzling Solstice

Well, OK, the weather wasn't sizzling, unless you count the lightning :-)) but we did have a very pleasant Litha celebration on Thursday. It was a bit of a rush as Emily had been out at tai chi all morning and we had Grandad's birthday tea to sort out in the afternoon. We didn't have time to do half of what we really wanted to do, but we did get the tree decorated, so it's no longer a Beltane tree, it's now a Litha one :-) Lots of glittered sunshine shapes, crystal beads in sunshine colours, oak leaf bundles for the Oak God, tissue paper flames and the lovely clay sun symbols we made last Litha.
Oh, we also managed to hang some crystals outside on the small (but rapidly growing) potted cherry tree that Emily has next to Merlin's grave. There's hardly been any sunshine since then, but the idea is that the sunlight will catch them to make the rainbows dance over the grave; Emily thought Merlin's spirit would enjoy chasing them as he loved doing that when he was here. Deep breath. Here's the Midsummer Fairy with Nagini the Giant Snake, back inside just after hanging the crystals:
Emily took her Kickathon sponsorship form with her to tai chi and she and Jon explaind what it was all about - lots and lots of people there sponsored her, bless them, so she was very chuffed about that. The Kickathon is taking place at karate tomorrow. Assuming Emily manages about 200 kicks (she can do 150 odd without pausing for breath, lol) she'll raise about £50 sponsorship, which is pretty good I think.

Yesterday we went to our friends for the day and cuddled the most adorable week old jet black kittens. Awwwwww!!! Needless to say, Emily is keen to take on two of them if they're looking for homes for the kittens when they're ready (they may decide to keep them all) - apparently she'd call them Severus and Voldemort, ROFL. It's not going to happen though; not this time round. It wouldn't be fair on elderly Cassie Cat to put her through the upheaval of more kittens. It took her about three months to get used to Romeo and Juliet, and now she wouldn't even have Merlin to share the burden with. So no more kittens for us. They are adorable, though!

Yesterday Jackie did lots of maths with the girls, looking at magic squares and their esoteric and cultural background; Emily was fascinated with that. I did some history with them, looking at the differences in childhood through historical periods - each girl researched a particular area, made notes and then "taught" the other two what she had learned. That worked quite well, so I think we'll do some more of that next week. We were going to do some science too, on the topic of density, but they were having such a ball playing that it seemed a shame to interrupt them!

Today Emily's been busy writing down her theories on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, doing jigsaws, playing with Ello and bouncing on the trampoline. No ballet today since we've opted out of this concert thingy. I did get a letter from the teacher yesterday letting me know when Emily's lessons for September will be - on Monday evenings, yay! This is the first time ever they haven't been scheduled for Saturdays. This means she won't be able to go to football practice on Monday nights BUT she will be able to go to the football practice on Saturday mornings instead plus all kinds of other things that always crop up on a Saturday.

Since it's the weekend, I've had to do my traditional "oh, it's the weekend, I'd better work on some deadlines" thing, sigh. Before we go away I've got six sets of BBC work to complete, the huge amount of work for the new press agency contract to finish, plus the two normal monthly press agency contracts both of which have deadlines set for whilst we're away. Eeep. Did have a very promising conversation with the editor who rang about the book proposal - looks like that will be going ahead after all, although fortunately I don't need to add that to the list of stuff that has to be done before we can leave.

We've also got no less than three separate Grandad hospital appointments in the next fortnight, plus he wants to go back to the docs, plus he's got a dentist appointment, shopping trips, opticians, prescriptions to put in, prescriptions to pick up, etc, etc. And we're still waiting for one Grandad hospital appointment to come through, which no doubt will be scheduled for the week we're supposed to be away....which will mean cancelling our holiday, naturally. I'm not very impressed with these hospital appointments. One is for the diabetic clinic which he only went to five minutes ago and which they said he didn't need to go back to for six months. Instead of which this will now be his third visit there in three months. They never actually DO anything, and he doesn't listen to their advice in any case. Another of the appointments is for an angiogram pre-screening, which, according to the bumpf that came with it, is just so that they can talk the patient through what an angiogram involves, take his medical history and check his medication. OK....except he's only just had an angiogram during the hospital saga, so that's only a few weeks ago, and they're well aware of his records and medication. So that's another pointless one. No wonder the NHS never has enough money.

Jon has been supposed to be going for a six monthly blood test at the doctors; we've put that off for a month already, now we're putting it off again. I don't think he's been for a doc appointment of any kind yet in 2007, which given his diabetes is a bit off. Time to attend to our own needs is getting pretty thin on the ground. We've also been putting off various trips with Emily for the last three months or so, again due to lack of time. I think I'm going to be making a resolution come September when the school kids are back safely tucked away - it's time we put our own needs and wants first for a change. Naturally, we need to take care of elderly relatives and it's not Grandad's fault, for instance, that he's ill. I probably sound heartless. *Shrugs*. Jon's Dad is much loved. He can be extremely demanding, however, and given his regular moods and cruel put-downs of Jonathan in particular, that doesn't sit very well with me at times. Those who've been in this situation may know where I'm coming from. Those who haven't should try walking a mile in these shoes. I just don't think the brooding resentment we're starting to feel, in this demanding atmosphere, is doing any of us any good at all and it certainly isn't helping the father/son/daughter in law/grandaughter relationship. There has to be some give and take. Much as we may love someone and have a sense of duty towards them - Emily only has one childhood, and when her needs and wants are also being sidelined, something has to give.

Positive Vibes

Must get back to updating here more often; can't remember much of the last ten days! It has been a largely positive time, though, I'm pleased to report.

We've been very, very busy, with lots of Grandad appointments and other bits and pieces going on, so we don't seem to have sat still very much. Grandad's ex daughter in law (as in David's former wife, not Jonathan's!!) plus two of his grown up grandchildren came up from Somerset to visit him last Saturday, which was nice. He hadn't seen Carol for nearly ten years, not since we moved up here, so I think he was chuffed. In honour of our visitors, lol, Emily and I had a HUUUUGE clear up of our dining room/Emily's work room. People who have visited it in its previous incarnation wouldn't recognise it now! We now proudly have a lovely corner sitting area with Emily's altar table and festival tree in it too, and two settees. The rest of the room has been thoroughly cleared out and all of our educational stuff sorted and neatly arranged. And no clutter!! What's more, we finished clearing up on Friday....today's Tuesday and it's still tidy! This is a record, believe me.

Emily's been a busy bee education wise recently. She's finally getting to grips with times tables, since we've gone for a different approach of spotting the patterns in each, instead of pure rote learning. She's also doing fantastically well with spelling. Can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but we're using this Speling Power system, which seems to be working really well. And yes, one day, I might go back to using something produced in the UK. If and when anything half decent that isn't stuck to the ridiculously inadequate national curriculum is produced over here. Emily's also been doing more history (we're still on Egypt, sigh, but she's still enjoying herself). She's starting to struggle a little with the latin now; the course has reached a point where the grammar gets harder and there's much more to remember. She's still keen to carry on with it though, so we're perservering. It's just a matter of practice, really, and there are some things that just have to be memorised, there's no way round that.

On Friday, Jackie, Mei-Lin and Jasmine came round for the day, which was lots of fun. Emily's making surprisingly easy work of long division, which Jackie has been teaching. It's rather curious how she can get Emily and her girls to sit down to maths without a murmur of complaint...yet when I wanted Emily to practice what she'd learnt the next day I had a rather different reaction. Rolls eyes. Still, apparently it works both ways - Jackie's girls work beautifully for me with Emily, but evidently aren't so enthusiastic when she wants them to do something, lol. Anyway, apart from Jackie's maths session, I taught the three of them about air resistance with lots of messing around with parachutes. In the afternoon, we all made gemstone wishing trees to celebrate (early) Litha and the summer solstice.
The girls played happily all day when they weren't "working", with trampolining, drawing, nintendoing, polly pocketing and barbieing. This Friday we'll be going back to theirs, for more maths from Jackie (I'm loving passing this responsibility!!) and for some creative writing and history from me.

Yesterday we went to visit Hazel, Romy and Tansy. I had a fantabulous cuddle from the gorgeous Tansy while the big girls played on Romy's trampoline and busked (?!). Emily was enchanted when Tansy smiled at her - I think the prospect of potentially having a baby brother or sister at some time in the future no longer seems quite so horrific to her ;-)

Emily's been to her usual ballet, yoga, tai chi and karate lessons this last week, although she didn't go to football, but will get back to that regularly soon. The ballet fiasco continued - Jon discovered last Saturday that this "show" is actually a full scale concert on two nights at a local school. Had he not pinned the teacher to the wall with his hands round her throat (I'm kidding - I think) we probably would never have known. Anyway, the woman spent all Saturday morning shouting at the kids and had Emily's friend Kayleigh in tears and Emily nearly in tears, because they and all the others were struggling with the dances for this show. Next Saturday was to be the last lesson of term, with the concert the week after. Saw red. Decided Emily's not doing the damn show. It's simply not worth the hassle. She was very relieved - it's just not fun any more. So we've had it with ballet for now. Emily can start back in the new September term and we'll see how it goes from there. She's done two of the huge Plowright Theatre shows now, so she's had the "experience" and confidence boost that comes with that - she doesn't need to be yelled at for another week over a show nobody even knew about and which the teachers couldn't even be bothered to properly explain to the parents. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Jon's psychic development is really gathering momentum at the moment. At his circle meeting on Monday night another woman sought out him specifically to do some psychometry for her. He's getting quite a reputation :-)) She was exceptionally moved by the information he gave her about her late mother. Kerry was taking photos during the evening again, and all the ones of Jon are covered in orbs - no orbs on or near anyone else she photographed. Weird. Last night, Jon did a reading for me using a ring I wore constantly as a teenager (long before we ever met). Now, obviously, he knows me better than anyone, but the little details he came up with about that period of my life were very impressive!

The retail side of the business is still winding down, but we're almost done with tha now. Right on cue, lots of little things have been happening that seem to tell us we're doing the right thing in moving away from retail and into developing Jon's abilities and my writing. I've been offered a new commission from the press agency, which will bring in another £500 a month, which is great news. Also, something that happened yesterday right out of the blue was a bid odd - back in 2003, I was approached by a publishers about writing an astrology workbook. We worked on the project quite a bit with them and had the whole concept mapped out, they'd sent me mockups to fiddle with etc etc....but in the end, nothing came of it, they dropped the project because "it wasn't the right time". I'd been paid for my concept work, so I wasn't too bothered and forgot all about it. Yesteray, the editorial director rang up and spoke to Jon - the think the timing is apparently good now and they want to discuss going ahead with the book after all, after all this time! So, we shall see.

I think it's becoming clear to both me and Jon that there is life after retail. Dumping that side of the business, which we've spent nearly ten years building up, has been a huge leap of faith for us. It's been a scary few months, puncutated by lots of "what the hell are we doing? We must be insane!" moments, and lots of worrying about where the income is going to come from to replace the dwindling retail sales. But I'm getting the distinct impression that it's all going to work out rather nicely :-))) I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and there are very many individual things that have happened over the last six months that all pointed us down this path. When you add up everything together and start to look at the links between one thing and another, it feels very "right".

Tomorrow is set to be very busy; Emily and Jon are out at tai chi in the morning and Jon's out in the afternoon too. We'll be celebrating Litha/Summer Solstice and also Grandad's birthday, so we've got a festival tree to decorate as well as a birthday tea to prepare. Friday we're out, then Sunday is Emily's charity kickathon, plus we have masses of writing deadlines this weekend again. The really, really good news is that we've finally found a free week to go to St Bees, so we'll be heading off to the caravan on the 7th July. We were going to go the first week in July, but Jon's attending a reiki training course on the 6th, so we've moved it to accommodate that.

This means that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in cinemas while we're away, but fear not, I've booked tickets for me and Emily to hot foot it to our local cinema on Monday 15th, the minute we return. I'm glad to see they're doing early morning showings, and I'm VERY glad that we'll get to see it before the school holidays kick in :-// And then of course, at the end of that week, it's 21st July and the Deathly Hallows book will be released. Excitement is reaching fever pitch round here; Emily and I have discussed just about every possible theory a trillion times over, lol. She thinks Snape will die defending Harry. I'm really interested to see what happens to Draco, and I'm taking bets that Harry will die. Possibly. And that Lily was an unspeakable, somehow connected with working in the Love Room at the ministry. And what's with the riding a dragon thing on the US artwork?? Ooooh, the suspense!

Tapping Away

Emily came back beaming from ballet yesterday morning: she got the results for the tap exam they did, and she got a distinction :-))) She's very proud, and so are we - not so much for the result, although obviously that's great, but for the fact that she stuck it out and did the exam in the first place, despite having been reduced to tears for several lessons on the trot.

I'm still not thrilled about the two dance teachers and the way these lessons are now conducted, but for the moment they're not working towards an exam - apparently they're doing a show on the 30th June so they're practicing for that instead. Only found out yesterday that there had been no lesson break for half term. In their usual style, nobody had bothered to give out a note to that effect, or even call all the parents in to tell them, or put a notice up on the board...nothing. We thought Emily had missed one lesson by being ill, but it turns out she's actually missed two (the second because we thought it wasn't on due to half term), and of course it had to be during those two that everyone found out about this show. So we haven't a clue what's going on. The mums I'm friendly with also have kids who missed the half term lessons, so they don't know either and I'll be dammned if I'm going to ring the bl**dy teacher up to ask. I'm disgusted with their communication skills, but then that side of it always has been a shambles. I'm sure it must be just a little show for the parents, as if it were the big Plowright Theatre show they'd have been practising for months by now.

We looked after Maisie for most of yesterday as Janette couldn't change her shift at work. Maisie's Dad dropped her off here with me while Emily was at ballet, and she stayed until 8ish when Janette came to pick her up complete with a lovely bouquet of flowers for me, bless her. Needless to say, Emily and Maisie had lots of fun; they spent most of the time on the trampoline, and when they weren't doing we made tree stump fairy houses together out of clay.

This morning Emily's been to karate, and she's spent the rest of the day out in the garden with Jon, boing-ing, gardening and picking a bumper strawberry crop. They're busy making jam at the moment. I've been stuck here working on two deadlines. I love weekends. Not.

During my occasional forays into cyberspace this morning, however (when brain dead and staring at an empty word doc, willing words to appear on it) I did come across a link to this Home Ed Harry Potter Summer School Curriculum posted on the Well Trained Mind Secular newsgroup. Basically, you can sign up to access dozens of lesson plan ideas for things like herbology, divination, charms, arithmancy etc. and there are also letter templates for inviting your child to participate, letters from the various professors, assignement ideas and so on, plus lots of creative ideas for making it all work and turning it into a magical experience for the young Harry Potter fan. What a fab idea! We did something very like this for Emily's 8th birthday back on the 2nd Jan, where we had a whole days of "lessons" and fun tasks based on Harry Potter. She adored that. I don't know that we'll be doing any of the stuff on this site as it's rather similar, but I do think it's great to have the resources in one place and lots of people have obviously worked very hard on the project. So I'm posting here for any fellow home-edders who have Harry Potter obssessed kids. Not that it's such fun for the adults, too, of course. It's purely for the kids. Really ;-))

Death Eater Masks!

Ooooh, my daughter will be in heaven when she gets back from ballet. I was just, um, looking for something on the web, as you do.......something very grown up and business like, obviously......and I stumbled across these two new (well, to us) Harry Potter bits and bobs. Death Eaters and 20Q - two of Emily's favourite things in the world, lol.

Go here to view official Death Eater Mask Art and to download an art kit to create your own

Go here to help "train" the currently under development Harry Potter 20Q game.

:-)))

(Is it nearly July 13th/21st yet?)

Great Week

At last, we've had a really good week. We were overdue one, I think! We started off really well on Friday when we went to our friends for the day. Emily got on fantastically well with Jasmine and Mae-Lin, who are actually 12 and 10, so older than I thought they were. Jackie and I got on tremendously well too, so that set us up in a positive frame of mind for the week to come. Thanks for the tag, Elle, will have to have a hard think about that one!!

On Sunday Emily went to a birthday party for twins of friends of ours. She had a great time there, but it served as yet another lesson about the myth of the benefits of school "social skills". Most of the kids there (not Trish's own kids, I hasten to add) spent much of their time calling the entertainer (who Emily adored) a "fat pig", trying to spoil his act and generally hassling him to death. OK. Who's bringing these kids up (and teaching them these oh so important school induced social skills) that they'd call **anyone** a fat pig, let alone in someone else's house, to the face of someone trying to be nice to them, who'd been paid for by someone else to try to give them some fun for an hour??? Once they'd finished that, they then trashed the beautiful garden they were allowed to play in, delighted in deliberately popping the treasured balloons of the littlies, and generally ran amok for a couple of hours. I was shocked, I have to say. Yeah, my daughter's REALLY missing out on those social skills. How can she possibly turn into a well rounded adult if she's not subjected to that kind of crap day in, day out? How will she possibly turn out to be a worthwhile human being if she hasn't learnt to be a such a rude, obnoxious, revolting little sh*te? Let's just say we're willing to take the risk. Sheesh.

Anyway. On Monday - fanfare, please - Grandad came out of hospital!! That's it now, touch wood. He'll have some follow up outpatient appointments, but he hasn't had any actual pain for a long while now, so we're hopeful. Also on Monday, Jon had a very successful night at his psychic cirle. He did a psychometry reading for a lady who had wanted one done at their open evening, but didn't get time, so came back especially to see him on Monday. He took the pendant she gave him and sat in the corner for a while building up impressions from him. Apparently, she was practically in tears watching him from a distance because the gestures and movements he was unconsciously making were so significant to her and the person who had given her the pendant. When Jon called her back over to tell her what impressions he'd formed, Jackie's daughter Kerry took a photo of him doing the reading. Right over the whole side of Jon's face is an enormous orb :-))

With Grandad finally home, we've had time to do a ton of work this week. Emily's done maths and spelling until it's coming our of her ears. In biology she has been studying the parts of plants, plant lifecycles and plant nutrition, with that old favourite experiment involving white carnations and jars of food colouring/water. In chemistry she's been working on the properties of acids and bases, and has made her own indicator paper from boiled up red cabbage and blotting paper. She had a lot of fun with that, testing vinegar and ammonia as control acid and base, plus dozens of other items inbetween. We're still loving the Real Science for Kids series. Next week we're onto the next pyshics lesson which will involve making batteries from pennies, lol.

In history we're catching up, having not done much of the History Odyssey series during May. We're still on Eygptians. I'm kind of torn between on the one hand knowing Emily's done all this before, and wanting to hurry her along to reach the bits we haven't looked at before....but on the other hand, she's having a ball and really seems to be benefiting from going back over Ancient Egypt and learning a lot more than she did two years ago, so.... she's got the rest of her life, after all, let's linger! At various points this week Emily's made a step pyramid from sand blocks (play sand mixed with glue and cut into blocks) and she's also done several real payprus paintings using payprus from Egyptian Dreams and artist's ink.

We've also done lots of latin, some art and some Italian - or at least, we meant to do some Italian, but I've lost the Rosetta Stone CD that Jon bought for me. Sigh. It'll turn up. If I haven't accidentally thrown it away. During the week Emily's also been to ballet, yoga and tai chi.

Today we went to Jackie's again for the day, which we've got plans to turn into a regular weekly thing. Emily, Mae-Lin and Jasmine had a wonderful play (with much borrowing and lending of dolls clothes between the three of them, lol). Jackie taught them all a very impressive maths lesson for an hour, and I taught them to use personification in poetry, which went down well; all three worked hard on producing some great poems with lots of thoughful imagery in them. All three girls also made scones together, which were rather yummy. Emily made heart shaped ones because it's Daddy's birthday today :-))) He was very chuffed when we finally got home with them - we thought we'd be home about 2 but it was gone 4 by the time we got back. Next Friday they're coming to us; I'll teach them about air resistance (yay! parachute experiments!), Jackie will do some more maths and we'll all do a craft project together too.

Our later than planned return meant that Jon's birthday tea was a bit of a rush to prepare, but we've all had a nice family dinner this evening with all Jon's favourite things. Emily, me and my Mum and Dad bought him various spiritual pressies, including a wooden laughing buddha statue (one of his spirit guides) and various meditation CDs, crystal and DVDs by the teachers on the psychic development course he went on recently. Jon's Dad bought him a hypnotherapy course, which is actually more for me than for Jon, but he'll share it with me too.

Tomorrow Emily's off to ballet again and then a friend is coming to play for the rest of the day, so it's busy again, but at least we're finally feeling that we're getting stuff done, which has to be a plus!

Oh, and both Juliet and Romeo had great fun at midnight one night playing with this bug. I haven't had a chance yet to try to identify it, but it was huuuge. Jon heard a commotion outside the door and went to look - guess they thought it was a new toy, although I'm pleased to say it lived to tell the tale!

Boing!

Yes, the sound of boing-ing has been coming thick and fast round here for the last 24 hours, of which more in a mo. Very zebedee like.

I am so looking forward to the time when I can get this blog back to being a home education blog. At the moment, all I seem to have to say are constant updates on the Grandad-Hospital fiasco. May has passed in a complete and utter blur of continuous hospital admissions and visits; I'm extremely alarmed that tomorrow is the first of June, it feels as though we have just fast forwarded a month :-((

Anyway; Jon's Dad is STILL in hospital. After his cancelled angiogram last Tuesday (post below) and the hospital records fandango, he was supposed to have an angiogram on Thursday last week. They prepped him for at 6 am, and all through the morning they kept telling him they'd be ready for him in half an hour, ten minutes, another ten minutes and so on. Lunchtime arrived and he was refused any lunch (which bearing in mind he has severe diabetes was not a good move). It wasn't until about 12.30 that they finally admitted they weren't going to do the angiogram because....drumroll please....they still didn't have the bloody records. Unbelievable. He was extremely upset. Jon and I were absolutely livid.

I rang the ward to find out what the hell was going on and was put through to a dopey staff nurse who told me that she couldn't answer my questions because she also didn't know what was going on. OK, I'll speak to a doctor then. No can do. They're not available (are they ever??). Saw red at this point and emailed the hospital complaints manager explaining what was going on and stating that we wanted to make a formal complaint about the whole fiasco. To be fair, she did respond within ten minutes, which was something. She said that *we* couldn't make a complaint, it had to come from the man himself, but that she had alterted the "modern matron" to the situation and it was being immediately investigated. The complaints manager then rang back about an hour later full of profuse apologies. She admitted that they had made a "huge mess up" with the records situation and that the way Grandad had been treated was "completely unacceptable". OK, but now what? She assured me that the records would be obtained urgently, and that his angiogram was still on course....but that there were no more angiogram slots until next Thursday, i.e. today.

Sooo.....on Friday, Jon's Dad was given a choice of whether to come home and go back into hospital today for his angiogram, or whether to stay in as an inpatient for another week. Inexplicably, he decided to stay there. Apparently because it saves him money as he doesn't have to get any shopping. OK. Never mind the cost and inconvenience to us then. Fair enough. Anyway, he's still there. It's now 4.30 on Angiogram Day. As far as we know, he hasn't had it done yet. Which means he probably isn't going to have it done. Which means I am going to have to throw the paddy to end all paddies with that bloody hospital. And I'm so tired of having paddies with them. Which also means that the whole of this month's inpatient and visiting saga has been for - nothing. Happy bunnies? Nope.

Right, so apart from all that, has there been any education going on? Well, er, not really. Bits and bobs, here and there. Emily has displayed the patience of a saint, to put it mildly, but she is now beginning to get bored and really wants to get back to some degree or normality. Which isn't much to ask.

We have at least been socialising, as it were. On Friday afternoon last week we went to visit Hazel, Romy and the increasingly, if that's possible, adorable Tansy, who were the proud owners of a new and huuuuggge trampoline, which Emily naturally fell head over heels in love with. We'd been debating getting one at Easter time, but had decided against it. Having seen how much fun (and, more to the point, exercise) Emily had on Romy's though, we had to change our minds. So with thanks to them, we do now own a trampoline.

It arrived yesterday morning. We had Emily's friend Maisie over for the day, so she and Emily enthusiastically "helped" my Dad and Jon put it up, lol, which largely consisted of playing Egyptian Mummies in the big box and helpfully asking every five minutes "is it nearly ready yet?" When not boing-ing, Emily and Maisie also had fun making home made pizza dough in the morning, which they baked with the toppings of their choice in the evening. Plus hairdressing, dressing up, nintendo-ing and all sorts of other malarky. All capped off with a late night phone call pondering over the intricacies of neopets. Some pics from yesterday:





Tomorrow we're off to visit George's wife Jackie and her two youngest kids (9 and 10, I think they are) for the day, for a mixture of work and play for the girls and a good chinwag for me and Jackie. George is Emily's karate and tai chi teacher, and together with Jackie runs the psychic circle Jon attends. They home educate too, but it's taken us a while to get the kids together. Jackie and I do have very much the same approach to home ed, so although at the moment the girls barely know each other, hopefully they'll all gel together and it should work nicely. Then on Saturday, Emily's playing with Kayleigh and on Sunday she has a birthday party for twins to attend. So at least she's having some good play times, even if the education is rather lacking!

Oh, and both Emily and I were rather narked with these two pieces of Harry Potter news: US Order of the Phoenix Film Release Date Moved to July 11th and Universal Studios to Open Harry Potter Theme Park. What's the deal with the US all of a sudden? I though JK Rowling was supposed to be keen to keep the books a basically British thing. So could someone explain to me why the hell the film release date is moved so that the US gets to see the film BEFORE the UK??? Why not on the same day? And as for the theme park, well. A) I hope they don't ruin it and b) yet again, if they must have one, why the US?? Yeah, money talks and Harry Potter is big business. We all know that. But we're narked.

Another Poorly Patient

Although this patient isn't in hospital, thank goodness, just curled up on the sofa. Emily's had a very high temperature for the last two days and a horribly sore throat. We've been snuggling up watching DVDs in between going back and fore to visit Grandad, who's still in hospital. Yesterday we watched Night at the Museum (good, but about half an hour too long) and this morning we saw The Devil Wears Prada, which we really enjoyed.

Poor Emy missed yoga last night and is probably going to miss tai chi tomorrow too. She did have a good Monday, though, before the poorliness kicked in at bedtime. We did the next science lesson in physics, which was about potential energy. Fun experiment involved running a toy car down a ramp at various heights to see how high the ramp had to be in order for the car to smash a banana slice, then repeating with the car weighted down with pennies, and working out the car's gravitational potential energy in both cases. Emily also went to football on Monday night and came home very chuffed to have been praised by the coach for her good tackling.

In the hospital, things are getting pretty surreal. Yesterday morning, Grandad was supposed to be having an angiogram first thing. They had him all ready - shaved, medicated, gowned...then they came to tell him at the last minute that they weren't going to do it.....because they had only just realised that they didn't have his hospital records from when he had a quadruple heart bypass ten years ago. He had that done in the Middlesex Hospital in London, which is now closed down. Why it took them until that long to realise they didn't have the records, when he had repeatedly told them his history and where it was done, I don't know. Even worse - they then told him that it was impossible to GET his records, because of the hospital being closed down. Oh, OK, what did they do with all the records when they shut it? Burn them? Hello?????

It took me less than ten minutes yesterday morning to google for Middlesex Hospital, establish that everything from there was now being dealt with at University College Hospital, ring their records dept, confirm with them that they did have the records from Middx ten years ago, get the exact name of the administrator the hospital needed to speak to, plus his direct phone and fax numbers and details of exactly what the hospital should put in their faxed records request. Now hard was that, and why couldn't Scunthorpe hospital manage it????

On top of all this, they then told him that, depending what the records showed, they may not ever be able to do an angiogram anyway; something about it depending on how the grafts on the bypass were done. Well, OK. But then WHY has he been kept in hospital for the past week awaiting a procedure that a) they knew they may not be able to do anyway and b) that they didn't bother requesting the records for in order to find out????

To say that everyone, including of course Grandad himself, is now hugely fed up is a bit of an understatement, shall we say. When I got back from the hospital this afternoon, he's been told that his angiogram is back on again for tomorrow morning. Except then a doctor appeared - asking Grandad whether HE had any news about what was being done and when. So the doctor didn't know and seemed to think that it wouldn't be taking place at all and that he should go home. So the last week has been for what, exactly? Okkkaaay. I'm not holding out too much hope for this fiasco having a successful resolution any time soon.

Anyway. I shall stop writing about that now before I scream.

LOL, Emily's just come upstairs asking if she can have her paddling pool out tomorrow, for the first time this year. And she's ill? Well, yes, she is - but nothing comes in the way of that girl and her pool. She practically lived in it last summer. I'm afraid big bad Mummy and Daddy are going to have to deny that request until her temperature's gone, but I guess next week "It Will Begin"!

Back in Hospital

For the third time in just under three weeks, on Thursday morning we called an ambulance for Jon's Dad. He had another angina attack and they admitted him back into hospital. Friday morning, in hospital he had yet another one. The consultant came round while Emily and I were there on Friday evening - they now think that there's a problem with the grafts from his quadruple heart bypass that he had ten years ago. Looks like one or more of the grafted veins is partially or even completely blocked. They're going to keep him in hospital until next Thursday when he's scheduled to have an angiogram. Depending on the results of that, they'll know whether he a) just have to live with it, b) they can do balloon angioplasty to relieve the blockage(s) or c) and most drastic, whether it warrants a new bypass operation.

It's a lot to worry about, but at least things are moving towards being sorted out, one way or the other. If they do decide to treat him after the angiogram (as opposed to just send him home with medication), he'll have to have the treatment in Hull hospital, as they only do diagnostics in Scunthorpe apparently.

Anyway. Hopsitals aside, Emily's been busy this week. On Monday we did the next lesson in chemistry, which was all about exploring four different types of chemical reaction: combination reaction, decomposition reaction, exchange reaction and displacement reaction, and about observing signs of chemical reactions such as precipitation, bubbles/gas production, colour or temperature changes and so on. Emily had a blast mixing together various combinations of salt water, sugar water, vinegar, lemon juice, milk, egg whites, bicarb, bleach and ammonia to observe the reactions. She's not a fan of the smell of ammonia ;-) but we were very impressed with the reaction of mixing bleach with ammonia - lots of manic fizzing and smoke coming off, lol. Not to mention the stink!

On and off this week, Emily's been working on a latin translation from stage 4 of the latin course, which is going really well. When I got back from the diabetic clinic on Tuesday we had a good old mess around with clay, making texture plaques as well as temple archways, plus I made an alien rose and Emily made a coiled snake jar. We haven't got round to painting these yet, but we did use glitter and coloured sand in the clay which was quite effective.

Also this week, we looked at lesson 3 in the biology course, which was about photosynthesis. Our basil plant volunteered for the experiment, so it now has some of its leaves covered in cardboard but still attached, or unattached and covered in cardboard, or unattached, covered in cardboard and in water, or unattached and in water, or just unattached, while we monitor their progress. Emily's really, really enjoying the Real Science 4 Kids stuff.

In history, the History Odyssey course has wound its way up to the Egyptians, much to a certain someone's delight. Emily did a HUGE Egyptians project back in spring 2005, but she's delighted to be re-visiting all that. This part of the course uses a resource called History Pockets; at first glance this seemed a bit boring to me - there's lots of colouring in and sticking pictures in the right place on sheets, etc. It seemed to me a bit too reminiscent of the busy work they do in school history. With hindsight, now we've actually started using it, though, Emily seems to be enjoying it. I guess it's a nice change of pace from the rest of the course. That's my one criticism of History Odyssey, actually, come to think of it - the pacing. Some of the "lessons" are wayyy too long, with far too much to do in one session, but others are really quick. We're enjoying that too, though. Although I think it's going to take more than a year to get through "ancients" before we move onto the next stage.

Bought a "creative writing machine" CD rom resource thing off ebay the other day, 'cos it was cheap and sounded like a good idea. Was very disappointed with it though. The principle was good (it had 100 each of characters, situations, objects and places that you had to randomly pick in order to come up with a creative writing "task") but the actual content was very bland and unimaginative. So Emily and I came up with our own instead and had great fun on Friday morning brainstorming 51 each of characters, places, situations and objects of particular interest to Emily. She then picked one of each at random and wrote a super story around them. She wants to do that regularly now, so I guess although the ebay buy was a bit of a let down, it did lead to something better, so that's good.

Yesterday afternoon we went to visit Hazel and Romy; the girls got up to who knows what in the garden, including busking at the garden gate (??), whilst I got to cuddle the increasing even more adorable baby Tansy. Hotfooted it from there to the hospital to see Grandad.

I did have loads more I wanted to write about, but I've started this post about eight times since Tuesday and it's all very disjointed in my head now, so I think I'll leave it at that!

Stunning Meditation Garden

We've been a bit devoid of pictures lately, so I'm going to chuck all these on from Jon and Emily's early morning trip to the Pureland Japanese Garden & Meditation Centre, which they found absolutely stunning - perhaps all the more so because it was pouring with rain - and the perfect place to meditate. All pictures are by Emily (apart from the ones *of* Emily, lol). She and Daddy loved it there and are keen to go back. Emily was particularly bowled over by the energy coming from the crystals in the crystal garden and she loved that there was something beautiful and interesting hidden just about everywhere. The owner, Buddha Maitreya, brought umbrellas out to them, and had a lovely long chat with Emily :-))