Monster & Teeny

Way back in the mists of distant time, well 2005 a few of the early blogringers did a photoday meme. You can see our’s from April 2005 here our photoblog day from last year can be viewed here  and today we did it all over again. I tried to pick a day which represented as typical a day as we get, so I didn’t want to pick a weekend, or a day when I’m at work and today seemed a pretty representative day having a good mix of the sorts of things we get up to fairly regularly with a few extras and a few omissions.

Monster’s day starts in pjs with breakfast and a bit of X box

Teeny’s day starts with breakfast and a smile - she takes after A there - both Monster and I are far less morning-y

My day started with a very large mug of tea and a quick browse online

While outside it rained 

Teeny did some drawing in a workbook - she is ignoring the actual questions and spending time colouring in things or making up her own games to play with it

while Monster did some more x boxing

then I made lunch, dug wellies out of the garage and we all got togged up ready for a damp walk. My wellies have been garaged for so long a family of spiders had taken up residence. I’m not too worried about spiders particularly but I did wear socks and made Teeny wear them too so that if we did squash any leftover squatters we wouldn’t be able to feel them inbetween our toes!

And we drove to a local-ish woodland (NT area) to meet my SIL and her twins and another Home Educating family with a 4yo boy and a 9yo girl. On the way we listened to a fairly ecclectic mix of music including the Kaiser Chiefs, The Proclaimers, Tracy Chapman, Catatonia, Take That and They Might Be Giants, so there was plenty of singing and in-car dancing going on to that. At one point we had a car infront of us sporting an EO car sticker so we speculated a bit about why there were no children in the car and what exciting adventures they might be up to.

We arrived during a brief lull in the drizzle and headed off with children running ahead through the woods to feed the ducks who had an impressive brood of ducklings at various stages of size, independance and cuteness

We headed back to the carpark where we stopped for a picnic lunch, sheltered by a handy canopy of very leafy trees

By then the rain had really set in again but we decided to have a quick wander in the woods again before calling it a day which allowed some time for puddle splashing - an activity in short supply these last few weeks!

climbing on gates

running very fast

and enjoying a bit of going away from the grown ups slightly to have some independance while keeping us in sight, just in case

By the end of all that we realised we were now actually really quite wet so we posed for one more snap before stripping off wellies and muddy jeans and getting back into the car to sing again all the way home

We arrived home ready for some dry clothes and some hot chocolate and were very pleased to get a text asking if we were home from Lucy & the R’s  who came round to join us for hot chocolate

Some of the children went off to play with the musical instruments in the playroom

while others, hilariously, decided to stay with the grown ups and indulge in a spot of glue sniffing!

We were then treated to a magic show by Monster which we all had to keep our eyes closed for large amounts of

and involved your standard pulling a white rabbit out of a top hat type stuff

  we were instructed to turn off all cameras and mobile phones but I blatantly disobeyed in order to bring you these pictures

Not to be outdone Teeny did her own show involving some impressive sword work

Shortly afterwards my camera battery died and had to go on charge so you’ll have to believe me without the aid of photographic evidence that A arrived home, cooked large amounts of toast for the children, Lucy and the R’s left and I sent Monster off to get changed into his Badgers uniform before the battery was charged and ready to go again

not to be outdone in the many costume changes of the day stakes Teeny headed off to return as a magician herself

Monster and I headed off to Badgers. A slightly early getaway time coupled with light traffic meant we were over ten minutes early so instead of steaming up the car windows and sitting in the carpark we parked at the beach and ran down to the sea for a quick photo shoot. We do go to the beach a lot but I’ve never really taken the children there when the weather is not so good. Before children A and I would often walk down to the beach in real extreme weather like storms, wind and heavy rain as it’s just so exciting, dramatic and energising there in those conditions. It wasn’t raining and the tide was pretty high and crashing down so we dashed down and even managed our only self timer shot of the day

Then we went to Badgers, D went in (you can spot him waving out of the window to me) and I sat in the car reading for a blissful, peaceful hour

Back home again and Teeny was already in her nightie although seemed far from otherwise ready for bed, still twirling and dancing around

It didn’t take long though with the promise of three bedtime stories each so they chose from the current pile of library books which 3 each they wanted while I turned our eggs currently 7 days away from hatching (we hope!) in our incubator

Then 3 stories for Teeny

followed by 3 for Monster, who then picked up a Dr Who books and sat for a further hour or so looking through that!