Happy Hallowe'en!

The gerbils that almost came to stay...

Well, here is a photo of Alex and Olivia with Charlie and unnamed grey gerbil, who almost came to live with us today. As you can see, they got as far as the house. A while back, one of our gerbils (Gerry) died, and earlier this week, we lost a second, Ozzie. Which just left Billy, who seemed a bit lonely and wandered around searching for his mates (Ozzie in particular as they were always pretty close). So, we decided, time for new gerbils. The pet shop does a gerbil introduction service, where you bring your old gerbil and they put him in with some new ones in a box for 10 minutes or so to see if they fight. We did, they didn't. Fine, gerbils bought, brought home, installed in gerbilarium and then... Billy went very territorial and violent, fought with the other two including quite a nasty bite on unnamed grey gerbil's tail. Sigh. Back to the pet shop with the new gerbils. Oh well! So now, Billy will have to live on his own until he dies - and then we'll probably get two new ones - Olivia wants female gerbils, so that we can give them girly names (yes, the priorities of a 10YO are somewhat different than those of a grownup).

Birthday!

Here is Olivia with two friends posing for a photo at Chessington (theme park), which is where she went for a birthday treat yesterday. It was a great day - a tiny bit of rain kept a lots of the potential crowds away, so we barely had to queue for anything. Fun was had by all, but luckily, the large orange banana was won by a friend, not by Olivia, so it doesn't have to come live in my house!

Love/hate relationship...

Olivia loves me, for letting her have her ears pierced for her birthday (10 next Saturday - we did it early due to scheduling issues...). Sarah hates me, because I let Olivia have her ears pierced for her 10th birthday (Sarah was 11 - oh, the injustice of it all!). Oh well, can't please all the people all of the time!

Kitchen windowsill

Haven't written much lately, I know, though there are birthdays and whatnot coming up, so there will be more. But I was admiring my windowsill earlier today and thought I'd share it - didn't realise until after taking the photo that the line of washing in the background is a bit distracting - I didn't even notice it until I downloaded the photo from the camera...

Anyway, the windowsill changes several times throughout the year, not just at the annual New Year's turnover, so at the moment it's quite autumnal, with oranges and greens and browns. The latest addition, besides the Happy Hallowe'en tea light holder (there are some pumpkin candle holders which are with the Hallowe'en decorations which I will get out probably tomorrow; this one is new this year, so wasn't put away with the other seasonal stuff) is a bottle which Olivia decoupaged for me. The bottle was from some fancy lemonade and I loved the label and the stopper, so saved the bottle "in case I needed it for something". When Olivia bought her decoupage kit at the Knit & Stitch Show, she quickly ran out of objects to cover in paper, so I brought this out - I thought it would look really nice with the paper she had which was covered in orange slices, and I was right. We also both thought that the label would show through, in a good way, and we were also right about that.

Decoupage Cat

Olivia and I went to the Knit & Stitch Show yesterday (there are lots of other art and craft suppliers vending there as well) and she bought a decoupage kit - a papier mache cat, some glue, a brush, three sheets of decoupage paper. She's very good at these sorts of crafts - a patient worked - and here's her finished cat. There is lots of paper & glue left, so I see more decoupage in our future - which is fine. A good way to recycle!

Book Character Day

We went for the little-effort approach this year - Alex was originally going to go as Spiderman (along with about half the younger boys in school, I'd guess) but I had a quick think about what was in the dressing up box and suggsted Darth Vader instead - they were books first, after all. Olivia is a pirate - to be specific, The Dread Pirate Fleur, from a book she was reading earlier this year. Fairly low effort, as I said...

Painter's Progress

Progress in the bedroom - I think it's going to look very good, when it's done. Today I am going to do the skirting board on this wall (no change, still white, just needs touching up as it's not been painted in ages) and then this wall will be done - hoorah! The cupboard will have the mauve doors painted, but we think in one of the brown tones, rather than the aqua. Anyway, it will be a while before we get to that, as I am going to move around the room the other way and save that wall for last - so next, it will be the wall behind the bunkbeds - but not until next week, as we have a busy weekend. Might get Geoff to help me move the bunks on Sunday, though!

Painting

We have finally got around to starting work on the girls' room - something which was promised when they first switched rooms with Alex, back in the spring (or whenever it was). The delay has been mostly because of thinking we'd have to strip the paper in their room and re-paper, which task I found a bit daunting. Finally, we decided to try to go ahead and just paint over what was there - we are going to use a strip of wallpaper as a border/motif around the wall about halfway up - this should cover the worst of the damage from previous borders, and hopefully look ok.

Here's Olivia putting the first coat of paint on, yesterday evening. I did a second coat today and that looks like it will be enough to cover the orange. Tomorrow afternoon I will try to get the skirting board repainted (white) and maybe even get the border on, on this wall. Once this wall is done, we can put the furniture back and move on to the next wall. Thank goodness there are only 4 walls! Of course, once the walls are done, it's on to curtains - they are going to be tab-top, though, not gathered, which will make things a lot easier...

Chocolate Fountain

We borrowed this from a friend - it takes rather a lot of melted chocolate to make it work, but Sarah and her friends who are sleeping over for her birthday enjoyed it (as did the rest of the family) - it was quite a big nuisance to clean, so I don't think we'll be buying one of our own any time soon!



My chocolate boy enjoyed himself. No one was sick, though I think we stopped just in time!

311 steps!

Alex is studying the Great Fire of London in school this term, and despite having lived in London for a long time, none of us, Geoff and I included, have ever been to see the monument to the fire. A friend of mine was there recently and commented favourably on the views, and as it was a nice day, we decided to go up to town and have a look, then wander along to the Museum of London (where we have all been many times, except Geoff) and refresh our memories about the section there on the Great Fire.

Geoff and I particularly liked one line in the inscription on the monument (now removed) which blamed the fire on the Catholics. As any Year 2 child should be able to tell you, the fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane...



Here's a view from the top - looking towards the building commonly known as the Gherkin. More photos from the day and more views from the top are over here in my flickr album...

First day for all...

The traditional first day photo - first year with two different uniforms!

Diggers ahoy

Today, Alex and I had a trip to Diggerland, while the girls were off at the Guiding Centennary Launch Party (Sarah camping for the weekend, Olivia down for the day) with hundreds of other Guides, Brownies & Rainbows. Thank goodness there was nice weather for them! And for us, of course. We had great fun at Diggerland, which is a theme park based around diggers. They had some rides made from diggers, but more to the point, the chance to dig with actual diggers and ride in them. Of great appeal to small boys, clearly, though I had fun, too - more than I expected.

Loads more photos and a couple of videos over here on flickr...

Big School

It may seem a little strange to start school on a Friday, but it's only the Year 7s who were back today at Sarah's new school. They had a talk and stuff in the morning - sorted out the administrative stuff - got lockers, registered their thumbprints for the cashless payment system, etc - and went to a few classes after lunch. Monday, it all starts for real, with all the bigger kids. Strange that kids who seemed so big recently at their primary schools now seem quite small again with all the Year 10 and 11 kids (who are as big as grownups)...

R.I.P. Gerry the Gerbil

Well, we knew the time would come when one of the gerbils died, and that time was today (or rather, I think it was a day or two ago, as I haven't noticed him so much recently). Not sure what was wrong with him - he's always been a bit mad, liked to chew on the bars of the cage - perhaps it was eating the paint off the cage bars? - but the kids took it quite well. Gerry was nominally Sarah's gerbil in that she chose him and named him, but really, they all belong to all of them so they are all a little sad. They did agree unanimously that they didn't want to get a new one to replace him, so we are now a 2 gerbil household. He wasn't quite two yet, so he was a little young to die, but 2-3 years is fairly common for most rodents, so it's not a huge surprise. Farewell little Gerry; it was fun!

A litte rain and some sun...

makes a rainbow. Not a very prominent one, and not for long, but it was nice to see as I was dashing to get the end of the laundry taken down....

Legoland

Legoland - the promised outing. Kids have been wanting to go all summer. I said if they were good (enough) we would go, instead of Chessington, a theme park closer to our house, which is where we usually go (and which I prefer - shorter queues, better rides, cheaper and only about 15 minutes away). Anyway, I guess it's worth doing Legoland once - we've been before, actually, but Alex was very small and wouldn't remember, and he does love Lego, so he really enjoyed the buildings and creations, not just the rides (which of course is the point of going to Legoland rather than some other cheaper, closer theme park...)



But despite the queues, we did ride on quite a few rides, and had a nice day out - a long day, but a good one. I'm glad we're not going anywhere tomorrow, though, I have to say.



Personally, I could do without the rides and would be happy to pay a lower admission just to walk around and look at things built of Lego, but hey, we all have burdens to bear! Here are the kids in front of a small but surprisingly accurate Mt Rushmore, and below, a rather spectacular Gothic Cathedral. Loads more photos (and a few short videos) on flickr - I even labeled them so that my mother won't complain...

Junior Chef

Alex helped me make dinner tonight - it was a quiche - he helped make the pastry, he snipped the bacon, sliced some leeks, grated cheese, broke eggs, whisked and so on. I think it took about twice as long as it normally would have, but we had fun...

Simple Saturday

Sometimes it's nice to have a day where you don't do a lot. We had nothing planned, as British Gas scheduled our annual boiler service for this morning (between 8-1) - hard to plan anything if you don't know what time you might be free. As it happens, he came at 8.30, so we could have done something, but sometimes it's nice not to do much. We cleaned house in the morning, I did some sewing, then the kids played a variety of dressing-up and roleplay types of games this afternoon - also, we did a puzzle. I forgot to take a photo of it completed, but I can vouch for the fact that it looked like the box.

More tourism

Today's was a visit to the British Museum, always interesting, and you usually manage to see something you never noticed before. Today, there was a whole room on money I can't remember ever being in before, though I'm sure it was there...



We did visit the Egyptian things, of course, and I particularly liked all the little servant statues - especially these blue faience ones. These range from about 4 inches high to about 7 or 8 and the detail is amazing. Little statues were sent along with the dead as insurance against having to do agricultural labour (among other things) in the afterlife - by making sure you had enough servants to do it for you. I can't remember if that was the precise purpose of these particular ones or not...



Olivia with some seated Sekhmet goddesses.

Lots more photos over on flickr - mostly of treasures rather than the kids, in this instance.

A few pics from Uncle Stuart

Here are Alex and Sarah blowing very large bubbles in the garden. Alex has this bubble sword thing, which is great fun - you can make a bubble larger than your head!



Here we are at the Wetland Centre (went yesterday - I didn't take any photos as it happens as I have taken loads and loads of them at the Wetland Centre and decided I couldn't be bothered. Stuart, on the other hand, has never been before, so it was all new and interesting to him. Consequently, I am actually IN some of the photos, which is not something which usually happens...) looking to see what exciting things were found during pond dipping...



And here's a nice view across the ponds to the Peacock Tower, and a shot of Olivia and Alex having a cuddle. Alex noticed at the last minute that he was having his photo taken, so he got a strained look on his face (not a natural in front of the camera), but I promise he was enjoying himself before that! There are more photos, which I might put up someday, but as we have no internet at home (could be 3-5 days - yikes!) at the moment, I just brought a few on my memory stick to upload at the library - wasn't sure whether I'd be able to do it at all, so didn't want to try anything too elaborate.

Touristy Day in London

A few snapshots from our day, which started at Waterloo station, carried on down the South Bank with a stop at the Watch this Space by the National Theatre, where the kids sat in a large astroturf armchair and then watched a little play about bees while the grownups had a coffee in the sun, then on down to the Tate Modern



where we had a brief trip inside and watched the Peregrine falcons hanging out on the tower.

We then crossed the river on the Millennium footbridge, which is no longer wobbly, and walked back down to Trafalgar Square along Fleet Street, looking at all the cool buildings, from St Paul's on down.

The former National Express building is a favourite...



Eventually, we wended our way south of the river again in time to queue for our "flight" time for the London Eye. We then finished up the day with some playing on the playground near the Eye, and dinner at Pizza Express (no photo!) - a really lovely day. It's sometimes nice to play tourist in your own city. I always forget just how much I like London; this trip was particularly fun for me as I worked on the South Bank for years, so it's like my old stomping ground. Only it's nicer now than it used to be!

More photos from our day are over here on flickr...

Birdworld

Today the kids and I had a day out with Uncle Stuart to Birdworld, which was pretty good. As you might expect from the title, there were quite a few exotic birds, plus also a small farm and an aquarium. The weather was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun doing an activity trail, picnicking, feeding some of the farm animals, and so forth. Quite a few more photos are over here on flickr.

Painting with helpers

Here's what we did today - didn't take long, actually, as it's a very small room (you should have seen Sarah and me trying to both work in there at the same time - it was kind of funny). Actually, Alex only painted a tiny bit - enough to say he'd painted some - but Sarah did quite a lot of work in the room, though of course I did all the high bits and a lot of the striping, which is harder. The room looks much better now, kind of cheery in an underwater sort of way. I think it needs a fish themed quilt to go on the wall. Or something of that ilk.

Lego world

Amazingly, the kids all spent several hours this afternoon and evening playing together with lego - making a whole lego village and playing with it. Isn't it nice when that sort of thing happens? This photo was taken about halfway through - there were more buildings, etc by the time they finished.

Parham in Sussex

Today we took advantage of the lovely afternoon for a drive in the country and a visit to a Historic House - Parham House, in West Sussex. I had a complimentary ticket from the Silent Auction at our school fair, and as the house has limited opening hours, it seemed sensible to take advantage of it while we could.

The house is in a lovely setting, nestled up against the South Downs, and is a very pretty example of Elizabethan design (it was built in 1577). We enjoyed browsing the gardens and touring the house - fortuitously, in addition to some nice paintings and copies, the house also contains a rather spectacular collection of needlework & tapestries, which I found very interesting.



Even the children had fun, running about the gardens and doing an "I-Spy" tour around the house, complete with clipboard. It's nice that the children are getting old enough to do stuff like this, and to enjoy it. They even stood and listened very politely and with some interest while one of the guides was telling us about why so few Elizabethan buildings in the Southeast have South-facing windows [because of superstitions about bad air coming over from the continent!].

More photos over here.

Pizza Chef

Everyone loves pizza night in our house. We each make our own - some are very similar, but it's the fun of having your own pizza... Pizza night was actually last night, but as I had other pics to post yesterday, I thought I'd save this one today. Once again, I'm going to try to put up photos here a little more regularly - it will probably last for a few weeks and then tail off again!