Birthday Come ~ and Go!

Can you believe May sees two birthdays in our house and I haven't blogged either one? ~ slap wrists!

Bugs turned 14...


Those of you with sharp eyes will notice I can't count!!!  ~ check the bottom of the blog...

 'Strawberry & Chocolate Oreo Cheesecake'!! (home-made I might add, and super scrummy!!)

A couple of weeks later (last weekend) he had his party ~ a houseful of teenagers over for a BBQ/Wii evening. It was great fun :-) I've decided I really like teenagers, or at least I really like all the ones I know! 

 (that's Bug's GF on the Guitar Hero btw)

Then we did a few more weeks school ~ a day of which I blogged here;
There's been some sewing (Minnie's been doing this x-stitch forever!), earing and necklace making (Minnie is wearing hers in the picture) & some shrinky-dink making ~ everyone really enjoyed that. We watched them curl, flip & shrink on the sandwich pan and talked a little about polymers (although I must confess not a lot, as I'm not very knowledgeable myself about such things - anyone want to offer me a science lesson on this?!)

The younger three also had a 'Wild Things' week :~ read the book a couple of times and made masks, told the story back - which DD is getting really good at, wrote about our own imaginary 'wild thing', drew monsters, made monster puppets with empty toilet rolls and topped off the week by watching the film ~ which is good, but a little serious I thought, compared to the book.

The boys had a trip to Manchester Velodrome with scouts and very much enjoyed that ~ came back asking to go again!

And then Stitch turned 4 on Friday ~ where did those four years go??

10 points to the person who spots the theme in most of the birthday pictures ;-)

This time last year we spent the week with him like this ~ with Pneumonia!

Aside from birthdays and fun stuff there's been all the 'normals' around here too. DD & Lilo are both doing really well on Explode the Code Online. Lilo has zipping through the lower levels already, as I had hoped she would. DD is also progressing steadily and is surprised to discover 'I can read' :-) He really can too! There are a couple of letters he consistently forgets the sound of still - 'd' & 'w' being the main ones, but essentially he is sounding out and beginning to read short sentences. It's all seemed very effortless with him and I believe it will be with Stitch too, when he decides to give it a shot. Atm, he's pretty much refusing to do anything schooly unless it's on a computer, or he can work with me ~ fair enough I guess, but I'm feeling really stretched & tired right now and can't always give him what he needs/wants from me :-(. I'm hoping September will be a little easier with Baby able to sit and play more. Just now I am feeling a bit burnt out and creativity is almost non-existent in regards to school. I am just so grateful for all the online resources that serve me up ideas so readily and take so little adapting to make them work for all three of the youngest. In that respect, it makes it simpler that Lilo has been such a slow-to-learn reader because her 'literacy' work is not that far behind the boys! That said, she is gaining speed at quite a pace now and the other morning, presented me  with a book which she has been apparently reading in her spare time & has now finished..!  

This week the oldest four are off on 'Energi' camp again ~ it comes around quickly. Paul is taking the week off and we are planning to spend some time doing 'fun-stuff' with the littlest four. A trip on a 'real train' is planned to either Liverpool or the beach, depending on the weather. I got a free 2 month family railcard (online from the Daily Mail ), so that makes it affordable and a treat for the littlies, who don't remember the days when we went everywhere by train as a family!

So that's me caught up for now. I'm missing not being Off The Path this weekend though, it just wasn't possible in the end :-(

Observation answers; ~ 1. Bugs had an extra candle on his cake, 2. All pictures involve chocolate cake!