Holidays ...

Or should I call it quarterly catch-up. I seriously neglect this blog these days. I MUST sort that out...

But for now I'm joining in with Merry's Home-ed day in pictures (seeing as pictures are what I do most of these days!).

Only we aren't doing 'school' right now, as we are stopped for summer ~ well the formal bit is stopped. But at the beginning of July we headed off down to Weymouth for a fortnight, where I fooled the kids into thinking we were on holiday..! ;-D

Here's just one day  ~ I'll do the others another time.

It's started a bit like this... kids playing games, while others showered and breakfasted ~ no hurry!

DD, TP, Taz & Bugs all developed a bit of an obsession for chess of late!

Then we headed off to Blue Pools

This is a disused clay mine that has filled up with rain water and changes  colour. It was beautiful walk and involved lots of pond-life 

& dragonfly watching...

It was interesting trying to spot the different types of dragon-fly and distinguish them from the different kinds of damselflies! I have never seen so many in one place before.

It was also a good opportunity to get a photo of the big (silly) 5.

This place is also home to the 'Wareham Bears' ~ which of course the girls & Baby loved.

We had a lovely lunch there and then headed on down to the beach at Swanage ~ which we all instantly fell in love with!

But being on the beach is not all about swimming in the sea...

Our kids like to dig,

But not sandcastles (they hardly ever build those)...

They like to change the course of the water inlet ~ build their own rivers.

One thing that was interesting this time was that when the tide changed, so did the 'draw' of the water and the amount of noticeable erosion that occurred on the 'river' banks.

Of course, the whole beach things was a totally new experience for Baby too...

He warmed to the whole thing more as the week wore on, but he was much less nervous about it than some of my others have been. 

Bugs & I had a play with some perspective photography.

And he took the opportunity to do some acrobatics on the sand!

As the day drew towards tea-time we headed down to the 'pier' for some fish & chips and pretty much stayed until sun-down. We had to make the most of such a beautiful day ~ the weather for the rest of the week was set to me 'changeable' (to say the least).

ALL PRAYERS NEEDED!!!

To all my readers ~ especially those that pray, but even those that don't usually ~ please do!

This Sunday we want to make a huge rumble of international prayer at heaven's gates, as we pray for my friend's son.

You can read her blog here.

This week they received the 'Worst Possible News'

And then Esther posted the most amazingly inspirational post about their fight to keep their beautiful little boy.

PLEASE join us ~ please pray for Daniel (aka Scooby) ~ he need's God's miracle!


And please repost and pass-on, I know Esther will be grateful for everyone who is willing to PRAY!!

"Dear Devil, THERE IS NO VICTORY HERE FOR YOU!"

Dear God, we know YOU have the victory either way ~ Daniel belongs to you!

But Father, his family would really like to keep him.

Please let them.

Please lay your hand so firmly on Daniel's disease and irradicate it from his brain and body,

so that he may live a long and healthy life.

We know he already loves you Lord, we know you are his friend.

Father be his healer too!

In Jesus' precious name, we pray.

More Crafts...

Following on from this post  on Helen Musselwhite, here are Minnie and TP's finished projects...

Good Friday from the Roof-Tops

All images courtesy of DJBrianPhotography  (Bugs) ~ edited by me.

Tree Down!

Yesterday the children were so dramatic...

... when a tree fell down at the back of our garden.

It really was no big deal really, and as it turned out the tree was rotten right through, 

so the wind (the howling, biting, icy cold wind) ...

probably did us a favour anyway.

 I love how nature has a way of taking care of things ;)

But it is sad to think this will be the tree's last ever spring & also sad that a fair number of birds will have to rebuild their nests; we counted at least a dozen nests in that tree in various states of use and disuse.

Baby wasn't sure he like the cold so much, but insisted on being in on the action.

One Small Blue Bead

A Blogland friend of mine put me on to these. I thought they looked fun, so I ordered some from Amazon. 

The children have spent the entire day fascinated and intrigued by them :D

As an added bonus they make a great photography project 

~ I think there may be more to come...

In other news ~ I've been weeding & sieving the soil in our front garden. It's been three half-days of hard graft to get it looking decent, but it really does look so much better now. This morning Baby decided to 'help' me, and had a wonderful time playing in the newly sifted soil, getting thoroughly dirty (excuse the out of focus shot ~ I forgot to put the camera back in autofocus!) :D

And the girls put together a beautifully elaborate game with the farm out the back...

...whilst my Nan snoozed in the sun, and the boys bounced!

This weather suits us :D !

Life Right Now...

There's no two ways about it, Spring is quite possibly my favourite time of year: the clocks jump forward and, although we lose an hour's sleep, we soon adjust and suddenly the days seems so much longer. It's like the seasons know it's time to change too ~ and I wake up one morning to a world outside my window just bursting with life.

Not only does that life exude joy in all that I see outside my house, but the children inside my house seem to take on a burst of renewed life too and keeping them cooped up with books just would seem like a crime! 

So I don't! I declare the last week of term a non-book week, where they can fill their time with games (inside or out) & crafts ~ with only one catch ~ they keep learning!

Baby just is unstoppable outside ~ he LOVES being out in the garden, and wails when the fun has to come to an end. I got the water-table out on Sunday afternoon ~ it's his new top toy!

Aparantly, he's not the only one who loves it..!

He also has a huge fascination with 'orseees', but then wouldn't you if you saw this fella (and his lady friend) almost every time you looked out of your window! 

And so we come to the end of another term. I can't believe we have just one more term left of this academic year ~ this year seems to have whizzed by almost without me noticing. The children are so settled in their routines now, that most days and weeks go by smoothly and without drama. Stitch is a little pester-y in the afternoons (mostly about screens), but other than that all is pretty peaceful around here and everyone seems to be making happy progress. I'm hoping the pestering might subside a bit too, now Stitch can be outside more, burning off his unceasing energy!