Creative morning...

Two posts in one day, eh!
We have been having a creative morning...displacement activity again Bmf!!! Anything but actually get all the camping stuff down from the loft and pack our bags!
So I made these... Now, I'm sure that Sarah you are thinking that they are your fantastic templates, but actually I just used the idea and drew my own!! I've drawn ten but just not got round to cutting out all the fiddly legs yet before laminating them. I love ladybirds!!! Willie wants a set with froggies and lilypads now too...I'll have to have different slant to that one though.
And Tom made these....

QSL cards for contact information for his CB He found a programme on the web to use and then added his call sign and everything. The rough bit of paper in the top right corner is covering the postal address!

So, I have some of Will's trousers to put tighter elastic in, a sleeping bag fleece liner to make for Will and David's bed socks to finish.....eek

But I want to make some alphabet cards, flower and butterfly cards...they are addictive!

I have just been to say goodbye to a good friend of mine who is moving up to the Lakes next week...well, I say good friend because that is what he feels like, but it would be more accurate to say aquaintance, as he was the estate agent we bought our first house from 5 years ago, and sold it with 2 years later! His daughters went to school with mine and although they weren't really friends, we have always enjoyed each others company. There. I hope that is right, Simon, and that is how you would put it!!! But I will miss him...and obviously I am green with envy that he is moving to such a beautiful place!! But I wish you all luck and hope it works out for you...keep in touch!!!

It has left me feeling a bit odd. More unsettled than usual...best not walk down the canal this afternoon then, eh!

I have just discovered another HE family that live VERY near to us (maybe it isn't such an abyss after all) and have siad we will meet up when we get back from hol..... see I am trying to put down roots!

Trailer, tree cards and tweetie pies.

This is Tom showing off his bike trailer which he has evry right to be proud of! He used the other one as a model and then welded this one together from box section, using the same design, even down to the spring on the tow bar to absorb the impact of the bumps. On it is his homemade CB aerial...made from tent poles and a length of wire...which actually works!!! I couldn't believe it!

And this is my set of tree/leaf cards that I made using a template from a fellow blogger and home educator. I bought a set of pdf files which she then duly sent through to me which has lots of lovely Montessori resources to print. But typically, when I buy anything, there was something which didn't go quite right!!! A couple of the pictures were showing on the screen normal but were printing out with a second, smaller version inset on the main picture...ugh Why me? I tried evrything: printing all the pages again, printing just the afflicted pages alone, using the other laptop, she sent me the file through seperately but still it didn't work!!! Then she very kindly redid the the ones that were causing the problem as a new file and sent it through. Then it worked fine!! How lovely of her. Thank you Sarah!! But how totally bizarre! Here they are...ready for taking to HE camp! Notice the use of another Soap Nut bag!!! Any donations gratefully received...I have lots of ther ideas to make now ;-) And on a sadder note, this is the sight that greeted me this morning when i went to check on the Pekin who is sitting diligently on the Quail eggs.

Poor wee thing. And I don't know why!! It obviously hatched over night and got too far away from mummy to keep warm, but notice the speck of blood? Did the Pekin take one look and say that's not one of mine and reject it? Did she peck it? Then I realised that there are only 5 eggs left under her....there should have been 7. No sign of shell, or anything. Do we have an intruder? No room for a rat to get in but a mouse could. But they don't take eggs do they? Or as Tom suggested...a snake? In our garden? After a quail egg under a hen?

Or did she stand on them and they broke and so she ate them? Which is a much more likely story I think.

So only 5 possible left...I have risked moving her this morning into a solid box that Jonathan made for his ferrets before, so that nothing can get in, the babies can't go too far and so I can just lift the lid to see what's going on. She seems to have settled back on her eggs again fine.

And we're going away on Saturday morning too...why is life so tricky sometimes?

Home Education takes over the world....well, maybe not just yet!

Now, it seems to me that there is a dramatic increase in the number of families starting out Home Educating, or considering it at least. I belong to a number of Yahoo groups and it never ceases to amaze me the number of new people asking about HE. There must have been half a dozen in the week alone!
When we started HEing, I had only just found out that you could, from an old school friend of mine (Thanks Liz!) despite having worked in education for almost 10 years! I knew absolutely nothing about it. My initial thoughts were, as I'm sure most people's are, school at home, but then with a little research, I realised we could just live our lives and learn along the way. Even then it sounded daring, brave and almost slightly unbelievable! What about all those people who had done it before us....for years!!! How come they knew and I didn't?
Now it is just evrywhere.....it is almost constantly in the newspapers from what I gather, and although I keep my head firmly planted in the sand when it comes to the threat of new legislations regarding HE, I do have a nose at the blogs of those who have their nose right in the middle of the action, so to speak!!
But how could the government suddenly start monitoring all the HEing families more closely, when the numbers are increasing daily? And isn't that because it is now so well publicised because of the articles in the paper all the time?! Is the government not sort of shooting themselves in the foot there?
Maybe I have totally missed the point, or got the wrong end of the stick...I have never pretended to be Mrs Current Affairs!!!
But I am pleased to hear of so many new people to HE and that is why I have recently been really brave and added a link to my blog to any postings on the yahoo groups. I remember how important seeing how other people 'did it' when I was making the decision and starting out. Hell, I still do!!!
So this is my little bit for HE....a window in to our world.
And this from a person who hates pulling up the front blind for fear of feeling like a goldfish to passers by!!!! (And we live in a close!!)

Another little creation...

But the idea was 'borrowed' from another blog, and I can't remember whose...sorry! I am so pleased with it! It startedwith Jonathan making the little playing pieces from wood for me a few months ago!!! Then they saton the windowsill for ages, while I tried to find some material to re cycle for the bag...I found a pillow case that had 2 different coloured sections so thatseemed perfect. Then the pieces sat on top of the folded pillowcase for another very long time. The task of making a little drawstring bag was just a little bit daunting, and as Louis prevents any evening sewing at present, it was going to have be a daytime project. So not much hope of concentrating on it eh!!

And then this morning I had a brainwave!!! The soap nuts that I buy for the washing machine come in lovely little drawstring bags!!!! So all I needed was to cut out some squares from felt and sew them on.....so pleased with it!!

So here we have a noughts and crosses game to take in the car and on holiday with us!!

10th post this month, goodness me!

I seem to have spent a lot of time blogging this month. I can't place the reason why. From my usual bank of information, I would deduce that I am feeling contented and happy to share with the world what is going on for us. After all, there has been a lot going on! Horse riding, welding, bike riding, camping, egg incubation, duck hatching, fencing, planting and growing, cooking, walking, reading, lapbooking.....the list is endless. I look at all that we are doing and know that the boys are happy. They are living life and learning from everything that they do or witness going on around them. They ask questions and expect answers, they find out information for themselves and share it with the family. They play together. They help each other...though obviously there is a fair amount of time when thoes last two things simply do NOT happen!!!
So from that it would seem that life is ticking along exactly how it should as an autonomously Home Educated family of four boys.
But on the other hand maybe I am just trying to show myself how good we have it? By looking at my blog it is almost looking at our family from the outside, with impartial eyes. No pre conceived ideas. And it looks good! A full and interesting life had by all!
So why do I feel so unsettled, STILL. We have a large house (all be it untidy and unkempt) and a good sized garden ( enough to grow veggies and keep chickens, with space left for the boys) but still I don't feel right. I feel almost as if I don't belong here, yet we get on well with the neighbours who are like minded as far as chickens and veggies are concerned. Our house needs new windows desperately, one of the french doors in thekitchen is hanging off its hinges!!, flue pipe for the Rayburn, probably a new boiler too really if we were honest. The front garden really needs a hard surface so that the boys can do things out there without getting covered in mud. The back garden needs a section of it turfing from where we took down the conifers and put up a new fence.
But to do these things, I need to feel settled here. The reality is that the house doesn't really work for us....no drive or garage...kind of hard with boys that want to tinker with cars etc and no where to keep the muddy boots etc out of the kitchen. So can I really justify finding the money to do all the things that need doing to make it liveable for the winter when it really isn't the right house for us?
Am I just too fussy? I should really be grateful for the roof over our heads, the lovely little close and village that we live in, our health and living the kind of life that we want to live (well as good as we can get to here). Am I just one of those people who will never be satisfied with what I have? No matter how many blessings I count, I just don't feel right.
A piece of land has come up for sale in a neighbouring village, with stables and paddocks within a stones throw of the canal....my heart leapt when I saw it, but it sank as quick as it had leapt when I thought about the logistics of it all. Couldn't buy a piece of land before selling the house. Can't get enough for the house anymore to pay for the land/boat without having an ENORMOUS loan. Yet still I dream. I long for a little bit of land. I long to live on a boat, yet I know that with four boys it would be virtually impossible without two boats!!!! So why do I torment myself?!!!
I want to live a simple life...we have far too much clutter, but it is all toys and things that the boys play with or use. So it isn't really clutter is it?!
The two eldest boys are off to church for the St Georges Day parade for scouts before going fishing, Rob is at work and that leaves me with the two littlies. A day of quiet puzzles, bricks and maybe the park I think. Maybe a froggy lapbook too.

Quick duck pic

This is a picture of the ducklings parents sent to me by Sara at Farming Friends...They are such lovely ducks aren't they?! The daddy is the one with the dark head...lets hope we don't have too many of those!!

My hugely talented, yet totally modest husband's creation and other photos...

This is the birthday card that Rob drew for me whilst I was in the dining room pressing and sewing Will's jumper... Isn't it great? I love all the little details...obviously personal to me, but I thought that you would all appreciate it. Louis on my shoulders, chicken as a roll mat, carrot bullets, duck grenades, spade weapon with pile of MUD !!!! Ok I'll go to compost, but thats it! It's fab isn't it. Trying to persuade him to do a series for greetings cards...what do you think?

And here are the ducklings, out in the sunshine the other day....they have grown so much! Two weeks old now and I struggle to hold all four in my hands together now to move them!

Tom is now constructing his own CB aerial out of some old tent poles and wire reclaimed from a skip...following some instructions found on the internet. His other CB aerial has managed to put out a signal string enough to be heard 45 miles away!!! He has been learning the CB language and has been communicating with a number of people. It's a good job that he sensible enough to know who to talk to and who to avoid!!! A lot of his 4x4 mates have them so there is a kind of network I guess. Everyone knows everyone!

Tom is off today with Scouts/Explorers for St George's day celebrations. They needed to make a sedan chair strong enough to carry an Explorer...so instead of a wooden one, Tom welded one together from box section and then spray painted it. I have no photo as yet...but I'm hoping there'll be some later on to share with you all. He really is doing well with the welding. The other day he used his trailer that he has made for his bike to take 2 bales of hay down to the field so I didn't have to get the inside of my car covered in hay! I just wish I'd got the camera out.....it really was brilliant to watch!!

Jonathan's riding lesson was a huge success too.....he got to go out in the cross country paddock and Bob and him did brilliantly. Huge tree trunks, tyres, solid walls, poles over a dip and the bank....all like he had been doing it for years!!!! The only hiccup was the ditch...Bob was not going through that for love nor money...not even following me!! So practice needed there but the bank was fantastic!!! They work so well together...a real team. Always brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes when I watch them jump. I do hope that we can get him in to a competition some time. His teacher said that he would certainly be capable of it.

David is after a pair of bed socks to take to HE camp next weekend so I'd best be off and get the wool out....now the question is, to machine, or not to machine?!