Working Week Round-up
As we’re heading off on the Muddlepuddle Summer Camp this morning so rather than do a two week catch up when we get back I’ll do a Monday to Friday round up for this week so far.
Monday Lots of plasticine playing during the day with Monster making an excellent Shrek and a Wallace copying from the dvd covers of the films. The Shrek was his first attempt at that character and was instantly recognisable so he is really getting good at spotting the key features on characters. Must speak to him about caricatures and see if that is something he wants to play around with a bit.
Badgers in the evening for Monster where they continued they Germany theme by trying some German food. He was unsure of precisely what he’d eaten other than it was sausage (I assume frankfurter) and some round meat with was lovely. Will have to take him to the deli counter at the supermarket and have him try and identify it again. 
Tuesday Another at home day aside from a quick trip to the local library in the morning to return a pile of books and gather a smaller pile of new ones. We also found Kronk’s New Groove on dvd to hire. We watched The Emperors New Groove last month as part of our Family Film Night monthly event and it was so enjoyed that we got it on video from a charity shop, so the follow up was found and borrowed with great excitement.
We spent the afternoon watching that and enjoying having a front row seat out of our lounge window for some road resurfacing going on outside. We watched the various vehicles come along and do their respective bits - the tar spreader, the gravel chucker, the roller and the gritter. We’re now a bit sad that we will probably miss the white lines being repainted as we’ll be away.
Wednesday First thing we had a very lengthened search for some yoghurt for the curry I was cooking for dinner. Our local shop didn’t have any, the slightly less local shop didn’t either and we ended up having to drive to the nearest supermarket. But it did mean we had a nice half an hour or so out and about walking in the sunshine spotting flowers, creatures and getting a closer look at the new road as we walked alongside it. We talked about the obvious indicators of Spring changing to Summer, bumped into a friend we’d not seen in months and months and spent some time chatting to neighbours.
After lunch we met up with SIL and cousins for fruit and veg picking at the local PYO farm. Strawberries, rhubarb and broad beans were all on offer. We picked (and ate ) massive amounts of strawberries, which we’ve spent the rest of the week eating so there was much discussion about planting, crops, when different things are sown and ready to eat and so on. Not to mention the loveliness of being out in the sunshine picking fruit. 
We came home via my parents and called in for tea with my Dad.
Thursday Last minute shopping at Tescos in the morning for things like cat food and cat litter to leave for Dad to look after our cats at home, and another air bed for us to bring camping. We had an interesting conversation about creation vs evolution with Monster asking some fairly unanswerable questions which I could only give him various beliefs or perspectives for rather than concrete proof. Tough being quite so simplistic on quite such enormous issues.
In the afternoon Ali and F came over for lunch, playing and chats so a lovely time was had by all there with various dressing up and imaginary play for the children and a variety of the deep and meaningful and the inane and nonsensical. In the evening I packed all our stuff up ready for camping and spent ages agonising over which clothes to take for us all given how good the weather forecasts are and how typical it would be for last minute wind, rain, hail or even snow to descend over Suffolk!
Friday My Mum and I took the children to the South Of England Show we went last year with A and my Dad too and it was excellent then. It is a big agricultural and livestock fair above all else but like most things it has become fairly commercial so there are hundreds of stands selling stuff like camping and outdoors gear as well as posh handmade clothes, bags and shoes hoping to attract the more upmarket end of the annual visitors there. In the showground in the middle there is a constant display of horse competitions and livestock competitions and plenty of promotional giveaways, birds of prey demonstrations, arts and crafts and so on to look at and have a go at. We had a lovely day there, the weather remaining perfect and the children got lots out of it. Monster had a go at milling his own flour from grain and it was bagged up for him to bring home so we’ll be making a cake from that next weekend and Teeny particularly enjoyed watching the Hackney Carriage horse racing with the prancing horses. I have photos which I’ll upload next week and add into this post.
