Sugar and spice...

It's been a dreadful day, weather-wise. But right now I'm cosied up beside the log burner. Baby is asleep and everyone else is out.

This morning Honor and I examined the contents of our goodie bag and after trying out a few with breakfast, we put them into the green bowl. I took a piccie of them as well as our other little sweetie who was rolling around on the floor in her pink, striped 'no added sugar' romper suit. Later on, Hubby took us on a shopping spree. He knows how to keep his ladies happy! Honor had enough pocket money saved to buy this lovely white fur jacket. I don't mind getting older and fatter, except maybe a bit when I see the fab stuff she gets to wear. And she does look great. I couldn't help feel disappointed every time I caught sight of myself in the mirror - so I chucked some concealer and face masks into the trolley.

Hubby has managed to fit in a bit of painting and decorating over the last few weeks. We moved into this house nearly 3 years ago and, it would seem, nothing had been done for about 30 years! So, it has been hard work trying to smarten the place up a bit on top of everything else and we appreciate his efforts. He'll be off to South Africa soon and then it'll be Christmas so it looks as though we'll have to leave decorating any further 'til next year and concentrate on the kids and having some fun as a family.

I need to go and put the chicken in the oven, now. We'll have a roast dinner and watch the results of the X-Factor.

My top 3

Olly
Rachel
John and Edward.

Whooooooooo hooooooooooooo!

It's getting bigger, this Halloween thingy. I've just been out this evening with a couple of my 'mum' friends, trick or treating in their neighbourhood. Their neighbours are mostly good sports who are prepared to entertain a bunch of gruesome, hyped-up, little dwarf monsters with candy. Yes, I said "candy"! Tonight I witnessed one of our little gang being severely reprimanded by his mama for using this Americanism. Jamie Lee-Curtis' hair would not just have stood on end but fallen out with fear altogether. But, hey, our lovely friends, over the pond, have given us more scary stuff than this Halloween palava to worry about... Hannah Montanna, High School Musical...

And, speaking of hair standing on end, I have just really enjoyed John and Edward again tonight on the X-Factor. Hubby has just got up to get the phone.

More fractions and funny faces.

Continuing with the fractions and percentages work, Honor is working out questions relating to the fruit and bricks. She is pretty good with understanding maths concepts but seems to find memorising things like multiplication facts a lot harder which is such a shame because then she'd find this work a doddle. Henry can be seen matching reading cards to objects, focussing on colour words. He did this easily. The kids spent most of the rest of the day outdoors. It has been such a lovely, warm day. They played in the garden and made funny faces with the windfall apples. We popped over to Homebase because I want some more coat hooks put up in the hall for all their school stuff. However, there was nothing there I liked so we just enjoyed mucking about with the funny christmas toys that sing and dance when you press them. After that, we stopped at a really nice playground where they found a couple of other children to play with, collecting acorns and imagining they were characters from Fantastic Mr Fox. I attempted to get some much needed exercise by walking round the field with the baby as many times as possible. So now I can enjoy my Tesco value turkey leg, guilt free!

Take a pumpkin....

I like to get my money's worth out of a pumpkin so here's what we did with ours....

Henry made pumpkin pie. It tastes like custard tart - yummy.

Honor roasted the pumpkin seeds (and, incidentally, as it's cooking day, also made Nigella's breakfast bars). I reserved some of the pumpkin puree and mixed with baby rice to feed Hope - she was impressed! All served up with a glass of red wine.

HAPsI

I've added a link in the side bar to a charity called HAPsI. Glenn became one of the trustees after seeing first hand the good work done relieving poverty in Southern India.

Day 2 of half term started with a lesson on.... half. Fractions and percentages is the topic of the week. The pictures show the kids finding different ways to cut a piece of paper into half. Henry's focus was to understand the meaning of half, recognise the symbol and write it while Honor worked out 50% or divided by 2 large numbers. Proof that you can successfully teach a mixed age class! Okay, okay, so I only have 2 pupils (so far!)

This afternoon we went to Wildwood. We are members. It only costs £5 per month, so, I think, it's well worth it. I forgot my camera, though, so no photos which is a shame because we got to see the grey heron close up and the beavers and the otters were out to play, too. The otters are my favourite - such characters. Hope really enjoyed it. She's noticing the animals now and kicks her legs excitedly. About three quarters of the way round (just can't stop talking about fractions!) Henry started to complain that he didn't feel well. He did feel hot and he's had a cold for the last couple of days so we came straight home and watched Ring of Bright Water - a lovely film based on the book about an otter by Gavin Maxwell. While we were watching, Honor asked me if the author was still alive so I looked him up on Wilkipedia. Turns out he was gay. So when he meets up with Virginia McKenna but turns to the otter and says "don't worry Mij, she's not my type" I understand what that was all about now! And, sadly, he died of cancer a few years later.