Mummies and daddies...

is what William has been investigating this morning! He has been playing with his animals and as he likes to line things up and order them, he spent a lot of time categorising them. That meant deciding which ones were mummies, and which were daddies, for every species of animal he had. He kept bringing them out to me in the kitchen, upside down wanting to check that he was right!!!! It was quite amusing to see him bring out 2 pigs, upside down, saying this one is a mummy and this one is a daddy....the difference is quite obvious when you know what you are looking for!!!
It has been a while since I last posted. Since then we have been plumbers, unblocking drains....by dismantling the pipework initially and using a piece of wire to tweeze out the blockage, and then when that only got us so far, as we couldn't get to any more joins, we had to resort to drain unblocker gel. Ridiculously expensive, horribly harsh on the environment and even worse on my sensitive nose! But what other option was there?
Rob has just passed the tests and scrutiny of the fire service and will be beginning his training for the Retained Fire Service in September. Very exciting! It will be a while yet before he is let loose on the public though. I'm not sure how I feel about being married to a fireman!

We went to visit a local Organic Garden yesterday, and it inspired me and David to make a little ladybird house for them to hibernate in. It was made from one of Jonathans boxes, and a number of canes that we sawed into lengths and then hollowed out with a skewer. Once they were all wedged in place, we put it in a quiet place in the garden....
The ducks it seems, are 1 drake and 3 ladies which is great news!! They all seem very happy, waddling around in the garden and paddling and dabbling in the water filled sand pit. I just hop that they do their job of keeping the slug and snail population down. They'll have to earn their keep before egg laying begins in a few months time.
Tom has been doing more welding, making a stand for a flag pole for an off roading show. Then he was asked to help someone make some more, and they did a round trip of 100 miles or more to fetch him and take him back to their garage!! A great opportunity, with thanks and respect from the chap for his work.
Which is more than I can say he gets from a certain person who shall remain nameless. He seems to think that the ONLY way to get into college, or to get a job is to get GCSE's and holds far too much regard for university, when he himself never went, or indeed thought about going. And why would he? He was from a normal working class family, (is that politically correct?)as did I. There would have been no money for putting a child through university and debt of that scale would not have appealed to him. Instead, he trained for a respectable career at college, which he followed for a few years after leaving. He now works at what I would call, a 'normal' job that do not require any special skills or specific training at college to do. So why does he continue to pursue the converstaion with Tom regarding GCSE's and university? Tom is very tolerant and just listens and doesn't challenge him, but there will come a day when he will and their relationship will suffer. He doesn't talk to me about HE, or challenge it in anyway , yet it is obvious that he has issues with it. Did he not do any kind of research when we first started home educating? I did offer to talk and lend books and to give links to websites to explain it, but as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
I suppose this is very illustrative of the attitudes of many people that we are up against at the moment, following the recent report. It is different. Out of the ordinary. Not mainstream. We are not just running with the herd. It obviously unnerves some people.
He even went as far as to say how difficult it was going to get now that they are going to start clamping down on us....was he really gloating? And why? Hard to fathom some people.
I am troubled by it. Part of me wants to talk to him about it all and explain what damage he could be doing, but the other half wants to leave Tom to get on with it as long as he feels comfortable doing so.
I had to laugh though, when I asked Jonathan if he had been talking to him about HE too. He said yes, but when I asked him what he had been saying, Jonathan replied, 'I don't know, I wasn't listening!!! LOL






Family photo. Tom being on the left, and Jonathan on the far right!!!

It has just occurred to me that it might be wise at this point to say that the 'he' in the above section isn't Rob!!!! Just in case you were wondering!!!