This is the week for watching kids be in things. First there was a ballet show on Sunday, then one Christmas play and a Rainbows enrollment on Monday, and today, the other Christmas play. All very cute, of course. This is Olivia with her friend Isabella after being enrolled at Rainbows. 

This is my advent calendar - each day has a little mini quilt, you add one each day. Exciting! 

Been ages since I posted, I know. I'm feeling guilty as I just (finally) wrote the Christmas letter, and mentioned in it that I try to update my blog regularly (oops). But it's been the week running up to the Christmas fair at school, so extra busy. But at least that's all over now - went ok, not as big a turnout as some years, but a lot of people were away or ill - Olivia's now got this bug that was going around (not a throwing up one, thank goodness), so I think she'll be off school tomorrow - Sarah had it last week. So far, no grownups have got it, but I guess it's early days yet. And soon it will be Christmas - wow, where did the year go?

Got visited today by a whole flock of those green parrots that hang out in London sometimes. This shows two on the feeder - at one point, there were four of them. And at another point, we counted about a dozen distributed in trees, feeders, and so on. Fun!
 

lotsa braids... 

Another year older (more or less) - maybe another year wiser? One can only hope! So, that's birthday season in our house done with, except for poor Alex who is out of sync with the rest of us - just in time for Christmas, of course. One of my birthday presents is the new Harry Potter, which we will probably watch tonight, based on the assumption that there won't be anything worth watching on telly (well, it's Saturday - what are the chances?). Should be fun - Sarah and I saw it in the cinema, but Geoff and Olivia haven't seen it yet (we thought it might be a bit scary for Olivia in the cinema, with the dementors and all) so a treat for them. And the girls and I actually watched the second HP the other evening while Geoff was out - I braided their hair in lots of little braids while we watched - they had a mufti (i.e. no uniforms) day at school on Friday and they wanted fun hair. Photo to come!

Here's Sarah holding her postcard album - she's not finished labelling them yet, but we're getting there... 

Being a slacker again - so what else is new! Not a lot of unusual stuff going on here - I've been helping Sarah with her collector badge for Brownies (many thanks again to all who have sent postcards - she now has 122). We have to do some other things for the badge, too, like visit some places that have collections (museums, galleries, etc) and learn about the history of the object she's collecting. Brownies badges have become a lot more interesting since I was in girl scouts - not sure we ever actually did badges in brownies, but at older ages, I remember them being a bit dry, to say the least.

Spent the morning today helping in Reception class in school - you wouldn't believe how loud 17 & 5 year olds can be - I swear they were louder in school than at Olivia's party! Or maybe it just seems that way because you expect them to be loud at a party. But it was fun and Olivia enjoyed having me there, although she's not really keen on sharing me with the other children. She'll get over it, I'm sure.

This afternoon I'm doing a mass pancake-making exercise (little tiny ones) because they are having a World Food Tasting tomorrow at school and I'm doing pancakes with syrup (and other toppings for those who might not like maple syrup). They'll have to eat them cold, but I can't imagine the kids will care. So I'm going back and forth between the computer and the kitchen (which luckily are near one another) doing a sentence or two, then more pancakes, and so on. My life is just SO exciting.

But on the plus side, Kiki & baby Kenny are going home from hospital, which is great news :)

Grrr.

So, it's the big day today in the US - too scared to even think about it, frankly. My friend Kiki is in hospital, having given birth recently (by Caesarian) to Kenneth Albert (congrats, and welcome!), so she's probably the only American I know not voting (I hope!) but as she lives in Maryland, it won't really matter anyway. Little Kenny had some issues with his blood glucose levels, so has been spending a little time in the NICU, but hopefully will get the all clear today to leave the NICU and hang with Mummy. Mommy, rather. :)

Anyway, not much here except a minor domestic crisis in the form of the gasket/washer thingie coming loose on my washing machine during a wash cycle - not an issue as it's easy to fix, except that it meant water everywhere during the cycle as it has to be fixed from inside the machine and of course you can't open the machine until the cycle is done (we have frontloaders here in the UK in case you Yanks are bemused). Good timing, though, as the new flooring is (finally) being installed Friday, so the old flooring has to come up anyway, so I just ripped up the floor at that end of the kitchen so the floor underneath can dry faster. Satisfying, really. It will sure be nice to get the new floor down!

No doubt I'll be back tomorrow with comments (hopefully positive ones) on The Election. Until then...

I tried to post this yesterday but for some reason, it wasn't going anywhere...

Well, today's the last day of the half term holiday, so it's back to school on Monday, hoorah. Of course, there are two parties to get through before then - there's a birthday party for someone in Olivia's class tomorrow at Horton Park Farm, which is nice as I can take the other kids and we can just hang around at the farm while Olivia goes to the party. Then there's the Marina Avenue Halloween Party (in the Pavilion in our local park) on Sunday, which should be fun - we decided to get together and have a street party, except not in the street. I'm sure the kids will all have fun, which is the idea, after all.

Went to Kew Gardens today to look at "collections" - part of Sarah's collector badge for Brownies. And also because they have a good display of pumpkins and other autumnal fruits and veg there at the moment. It was nice because as it was sort of rainy (though it never actually rained much) it was quite empty despite being half term. The girls had a great day and barely argued at all, which is pretty good compared to how things usually are at the moment. (We're having a big spate of sibling rivalry or something at the moment - another reason to look forward to school being back in session...) And we found tons of autumnal bits and pieces to use in our autumn decoration we are going to make. Should be fun.

Well, half term holiday is nearly over, and we've survived, more or less. Last night was the infamous sleepover (Thalia, here) which we've been promising the girls since the summer - it just never seemed to work in the summer for one reason or another. Anyway, it went fairly well, and I think they were both asleep by about 11pm. Which for Sarah isn't THAT late, but Thalia goes to sleep very early (read "normal 7-yr-old bedtime") so it must have been a bit of a shock for her system. Tommorrow, unless the weather is dire, I think we're off to Kew to have a look at their pumpkin collection/display and whatnot. We were going to go up to a museum up in town but I think the kids are just too tired to cope. Not to mention, Mummy.

This isn't from the party, but just from yesterday when she was being silly - her hair is in lots of small braid under the wig - I kinda like the look in a sort of Cyndi Lauper way... 

Well, survived the birthday party - actually it went very well. There were 20 kids there, of whom several were siblings - the nice things about this place - it's one of those indoor climbing thingies - is that it's fairly small, so when you do a party there, you get the whole thing for an hour, just for your party, so no extra kids. Makes it easier to keep track of them, and also, if you've got little kids who are nervous with older, bigger kids they don't know, it's not a problem. Haven't opened the pressies yet - lots of pink wrapping paper, and I happen to know at least one of them contains makeup, so I'm sure she'll love that! And now, time for a large gin...

There's probably a new techie type word for people like me - people who start a blog and promise to update it faithfully but then lag farther and farther behind as life gets in the way... But frankly, I'm not young and hip enough these days to know what it is...

Tomorrow is Olivia's birthday, so I'm off to party with a milliondy-seven 4 and 5 year olds at Sutton Arena (a Leisure Centre) - there's one of those indoor climbing adventure playground thingies, which they get to run around for an hour, then we get an area to have food & stuff in, and then, hoorah, they all go home. Should be fun, in a noisy, chaotic kind of way. Next year she's not having lots of people (I think there are about 22 of them), but this year is her year to have a "big party", so I'm stuck with it. At least there's no school the next day (half term holiday next week), so she'll have time to recover. Can't believe she's 5 already!

Got my absentee ballot today for the US Presidential election. Not that it's likely to be a real problem in Maryland, but I do want to stand up and be counted this time. I'm not going to be able to sleep the night of the election, I'm sure, waiting for the results to come in. Sigh.

Nearly finished painting the computer room - probably won't be able to do any work this weekend, but maybe Monday or Tuesday afternoon I'll finish and then I'll be able to get some of my life back.

Haven't posted in ages, I know. Mostly this is due to laziness, but also to painting the computer room, so all the furniture was piled in the middle of the room & the computer wasn't even plugged in... More on that later - must dash out to see Sarah enrolled as a Brownie!

So, what's new? Sarah's party went well, thoroughly enjoyed by both girls and me - which was nice. Olivia's party will be more work, but hopefully that will be fun, too.

I finished painting the kitchen ceiling (2nd coat) and hope today to move on to the dining room - which will only need one coat, thank goodness, as it's just over paint, rather than new plaster. I may not be able to get to it, though, as Olivia is home today - she's fine now, but had one of those lovely throwing up viruses in the middle of the night (why is it always 2 in the morning?), so she's home from school.

Geoff had to take the morning off work, because this was Alex's yearly ultrasound to check on his dud kidney (I couldn't take Olivia even if she wasn't ill) - which appears not to be such a dud after all, as apparently it has grown since last year. It's still a lot smaller than the left one, which is normal, but it did grow, and it grew nearly as much as the left, so the proportional sizes are still similar, which is excellent news. We've got an appointment with the consultant paediatrician next week to go over the results, but I'm guessing they may send us for another DMSA scan to check functionality - before it was at 50 per cent of normal function (i.e. 25 per cent of overall function) - and if it has grown, it may still be contributing similar amounts of functionality. It's good news, though, because if it's growing, even if it's small and oddly formed, there's much less chance they'd want to remove it, and what I'd like to avoid (obviously) is surgery. Alex hated the ultrasound though - fussed the whole way through - but you can't really expect a toddler to do well with these things. Poor chap.