A few more snapshots...

Butternut & Sweet Potato pie - home made, pastry and all, by the fair hands of Abbie. 
It was SCRUMPTIOUS!


Macro-art by DD. There were faces drawn on the bricks.

BBC-inspired art by Stitch. 

This took him three attempts to get it to work, 

simply because he thought he could adapt the instructions ;-)

Can you think of anywhere better to study your geography :D? 
He was having to hold the pages against the breeze though.

Meanwhile inside...DD cooked fudge.

He did really well, but then boiled it a little too long, so it crystallised and I had to rescue it for him. Thankfully I succeeded and it tastes alright, but perhaps a bit to 'strong' - a little bit liquorice flavoured we think - and it still has some grit to it. Next time...

  

At the same time, Abbie was doing some cooking with Chip - making cookies.

  

  

He did all the work. She really just helped him with the weighing and the order of things. Look how chuffed he is with himself :D

In other news, Abbie had her college interview today and has a place to do her Level 2 Btec in Patisserie & Bakery, with GCSE Maths and English concurrently. It was a bit of a boring, paper pushing exercise tbh, and they didn't know quite what to do with her 'no GCSE's' status, but in the end it wasn't an issue. The chap we met at the open day popped in and remembered her - and pretty much said 'no problem' - I think he can tell she is going to be a great student to have around. As she is starting a year early, they just need to pull down funding for her, but having looked at government stuff online tonight, that really should not be an issue for them, especially as they are already providing 14-16s educational courses.

And, Phoebe has her college induction day in a couple of weeks too. Again, I'm waiting on confirmation of a couple of details, but she looks good to do her VOP + GCSE maths and English a year early (alongside Abbie), which will enable her to jump early onto onto a Level 3 course next year.

It's all change - and it's happened quickly - and been a so much simpler process with Reaseheath than it was first time round with Jake at SCC.

December ~ come and gone!

So, Christmas came... and went! It seems I've barely had time to catch my breath this month and when I did I couldn't always face sitting at the PC in the evenings. So, yet another long post awaits! I'll stick mostly to pictures because they tell the story, but suffice to say we had a lovely family Christmas. It was crazy-busy and we felt like we had about 5000 people through our door over the holidays, but we were glad to have everyone and spend time with friends and family.

Happy Birthday Chip
December 21st ~ my baby boy turned five! It hardly seems like yesterday we were eagerly awaiting his arrival and praying he would come before Christmas. He kept us on tenter-hooks and came with just 4 days to spare!

New ~ just hours old

  

One & Two

   

Three & Four

  

Hello Big FIVE!

  

He is a bright and intelligent little man, who loves nothing better than a snuggle and a 'chat' - with whoever is willing to engage with him. He is at that lovely 'sponge' stage where everything is exciting and interesting. He's quite the little thinker and my friend likes to call him 'little philosopher.' He has an answer for every problem - even if he has to take reality into the realms of fantasy to find it :D. He is my only child to have an imaginary friend. 'Steve' has been around a long time now and still features strongly in games and conversations. He is friendly and kind and, although he has a tendency toward shyness in groups, he is increasingly confident around all ages of people and will strangers into conversation if he can grab their attention! Slowly he is engaging more and more with children outside of his family, although it's taken a while to get to this point, and even has a little 'girlfriend' at church! He is a well behaved and happy child, with a strong sense of his own person. He may be the 'baby' of the family, and likes to play on that at times, but there's no pushing him around or manipulating him. God has blessed him with an iron will & determination ;D. On the whole this is a great asset, but it does present its challenges at times!  

And so, full speed ahead into Christmas;

Christmas Eve we prep'ed the house and made our gingerbread village

Christmas Day begins (always) with everyone piling into our room to share what they got in their stockings. 

The rest of our gifts are exchanged after church and dinner.


  



  

  

Boxing Day brings all of Paul's family calling ~ such mayhem and madness ~ and great fun!!

New Year we celebrate at church, with a service to celebrate the year past and to cover the coming year in prayer ~ then we eat together and party until the early hours! New Year's afternoon some family friends join us for games and food. This year we taught them Saboteur and Survive (our new games). Previous years they have taught us games ~ like Jungle Speed (which we also got this year) :D.

After New Year I spent a day reorganising the boys bedrooms (x2). Partly because I needed to loose the baby toys they have all outgrown to find room for new stuff, and partly because Chip had all but outgrown his toddler bed. Joel wanted a floor bed (instead of a loft bed) and so swaps needed to happen. 

After that I pretty much crashed and burned and it's taken me best part of 10 days to get back on my feet and up to speed. We took an extra week off Home Ed while we all recovered properly and now we are back at it...

Last Week

~ Last Saturday the girls and I went to get Phoebe a new phone, as her hand-me-down one died and she would be getting one in a months time anyway, for her birthday (as is our tradition at 13). We took the opportunity to grab lunch, a hot-chocolate and a doughnut together :D. Then the girls hopped on the bus to Chester to meet up with Abbie's BFF, and go to 'craft club' ~ they're getting so grown up!

~ Last week Joel decided to have some fun with a 'Sick Science' can crushing experiment, but it may need to be repeated as it didn't really work. Not sure why. Maybe water was not hot enough, or possibly the cans weren't soft enough metal. We'll try again with Coke cans.

~ Last week little man learnt to hop ~ he was a bit pleased with himself :D

~ Last week we embarked on a new activity to do together each week. The bigger chids and I have decided not to carry on with 'Igniting Your Writing II' any more ~ it's a good course, but we all feel the need for something more 'hands-on' and all the children do enough English and writing in other ways. Instead we have decided I will do proper cookery lessons on a Wednesday! Last week we had some left over chicken bones (from the night when Paul rescued my burnt meal attempts ~ see the irony there), so we made chicken soup. It was just going to be plain, but then I found we had some Thai spices and lemon grass 'flavour pots' in the cupboard, so we converted it to Chicken Noodle Soup.

I did very little towards this (I just chopped the mushrooms to oblivion and then did the bone picking towards the end, because the chids had run off to do some other work whilst it simmered) ~ and I have to say it was DELICIOUS! In this case many cooks did not spoil the broth ;-)

This week we're making biscuits and next I think we'll make pastry. The little chids will probably join in with those too. I want to keep a mix between savoury, sweet and 'staples'. I've invested in an old fashioned home-ec' book, so between that and Delia I think I should be able to teach them the basics that they may all need one day :D

~ Last week (and so far this week too) Chip has been BIG into wanting to know how to write his letters and numbers. At his demand we've done lots on paper; I've let him make up his own way a lot, because it's just good for him to play with emergent writing; and we've done some like this too ~ because it's fun. He tells me what to write in dots and I obey!

~ Last week IT SNOWED!!

Not for long, but big soft flakes fell for about 20 minutes or so. It was enough to cover the ground; enough for DD to make a tiny snowman; enough for some of them to throw a few snowballs at each other; and enough to satisfy their craving to simply stand in the falling snow!

Chip remembered how cold it was last time I think, so he was very reluctant to go outside. Instead he watched from the comparable warmth of the living room window ~ and then agreed to sit there for a bit while I took a few cute photos of him watching the snow fall ;D

When the snow stopped falling and gave way to sunshine, we came inside and painted snowy trees instead. By the time we were done the snow outside had all melted away :(. We were glad we enjoyed the moment while we could!

Artwork oldest to youngest (Mine, Abbie's, TP's, Lilo's, DD's, Stitch's and Chip's);

I just want to say that with Chip I learnt from last week, and only gave him a half sheet of paper. Then he set to work and did his almost ENTIRELY by himself (the last one). He drew around the triangle templates by himself, he drew the ground and the dividing lines by himself. I initially drew the tree trunks and stems, but he did ALL the over-lining by himself. He then chose all his own colours and painted it entirely on his own. When it came to the snow, he chose to do it multicoloured and arranged them where he wanted them, I just helped him squeeze the tiny dots of glue. I think his might be my top-pick of the week! I think it's incredible and I absolutely love it!

Joel chose not to do the watercolour work, but instead did a rather fabulous sketch of a turtle (using a tutorial book we have). 

 ~ This week has been a bit bitty so far, but the three younger ones did have fun with Steve Spangler's Coin Tower experiment (looking at friction and inertia). They weren't entirely successful with it, but had fun trying and I think Lilo did manage it in the end ~ when I wasn't videoing of course!!