I'm not quite sure what happened to Summer...

... but it's managed to come - happen - and be on the brink of leaving, and in all that time I've not managed to blog at all. Even now I'm just snatching a little time before I go out this morning, having woken at ridiculous O'clock, and I don't think I'll get this finished (or nearly finished).

It not been the most sunny of summers ~ weather wise, or other wise really. If I look at it broadly, it feels like we have hopped from one struggle to another ~ and we aren't out of the woods yet. I'm not really complaining (much), because I know life gets like that at times, and then it has a habit of sorting itself out again ~ thankfully!

I haven't blogged seems Stitch's birthday, which seems a distant memory now and there's no way I can cover every even from the of May onwards, so I'll link to Flickr albums here and there through this post, so you can see the pictures if you want to.

Early June was DD's birthday ~ the big 10!! I can't believe he hit double figures ~ a significant milestone in this house ~ and I didn't even do him a blog post :(
But he had a lovely day: he received the lego set he really wanted (Police Station) plus a few other Lego bits, and he got to go to Costa with Daddy for the, what has become traditional, drink and cake.

The rest of June was spent finishing off as much of the school-year's work as we could before we went on hols in July. As a family we tend to holiday in early July because we can, and because it's much cheaper ~ and often the weather is good then too. This year we had planned well ahead and booked a cottage in North Devon. We considered that this might be the last year that we are able to holiday with all 10 of us together, as Jake might be working next year (and/or want to take his holiday in other ways), so we had treated ourselves with a cottage rather than camping and I can only say I am SOOO glad we did. 

The week before we set off for Devon the car was due an MOT (why we get it done just before hols each year makes no sense ~ need to change that), but for the first time since we had it it failed. There were a couple of things that were not that big a deal, but then it needed some welding work doing too ~ and that was a major deal!  We drew breath and paid the bill and contemplated a holiday on a tighter budget than we had hoped. Kindly my nan offered the children some spending money ~ so that would help a little. BUT THEN, two days later, Paul ran over the hugest nail and got a flat! Knowing we had a long journey ahead the spare was not an option, but then it turned out the spare had perished and needed replacing anyway - so two new tyres later and we were truly skint!! If we had been going camping at that point we might have had to cancel the holiday because although the accommodation is cheaper when we camp, we end up spending a lot of money on 'easy' food. It's very hard to cook for 10 on a camping stove, and we certainly wouldn't want to try every night for a week! Not only that, but camping also means we 'go out' every day - come rain or shine - because there's not enough to do in a tent, or space! The cottage meant we could have a more home-from-home arrangement. We could cook 'budget' meals and if we ran out of money there were things to do in and around the farm that would keep us occupied. We also took toys, games, laptops, films and even the Playstation with us, just in case of skint, rainy, stuck-in days!!
As it turned out, although we had the odd shower here and there, and enough over-night rain to make us all very grateful not to have be worrying about leaks in canvas, it was an overall lovely week, and we got to spend a significant amount of time on the beach :D.
All the pictures can be found here; http://www.tmfh.me.uk/devonholiday. The titles that start 'Devon'  are from our holidays, but here's some mix and match highlights...

After our holidays the children were here, there and everywhere. DD had gym training right throughout the holidays, but missed some being away on other holidays! Once we came back from Devon it was a couple of weeks until the schools broke up round here, but as soon as they did DD and his cousin were whisked off for a most of week, down to Weymouth (yes, all the way back down South) with their Nan & Grandad. Later in the summer Stitch went with a different cousin and spent a week down there too.

Other than holidays the kids have had a holiday club at church one week and the older ones have spent time with friends. We have tried to take a few trips out as a family, but this always seems to be quite challenging to make happen. We managed a quick jaunt around Dearnford Lake one Sunday afternoon and a day out in Delamere Forest one Saturday. But somehow our lives seemed to be pretty crammed despite not formally 'schooling'.

One of my main occupations this summer has been helping the girls to clear out many of the toys from their room. On the whole they have very little that they 'play' with these days and all three are desperate to have a 'grown-up' room. Lilo does still play with her Barbies (and my old Sindy) quite a bit, so she's kept a smaller selection of favourites and the rest went. Some of the Littlest Pet Shop proved too hard to say goodbye to and ended up in a smaller box, back under a  bed. The sizable collection of Sylvanian Families houses, furniture and dolls has been relegated to large plastic storage boxes to await offspring to inherit! Almost all their Playmobil was handed down to younger brothers and dressing up clothes went to charity shops or our church toddler group. That said, the Disney princess dresses (which cost a fortune) found their way into storage and we tried to save enough to share between all their daughters-to-be! That left a gigantic collection of Polly Pocket, a small collection of My Little Pony(s), some more Littlest Petshop and all things 'baby-doll' to still get rid of. Knowing that all those things carry Ebay value I have spent my summer photographing and listing everything on Ebay and have made them a not-to-disagreeable amount of money from so doing. The money will go towards the room refurbishments, which they have asked for as a joint Christmas gift this year and seems like a great idea to Paul and I. Now just to find the time to actually do it..!

Other significant time-consumers this summer have been computers! Both of our main PC's bit the dust. Mine (a little over 18 months old, and just outside warranty) hit a graphics error, which doesn't sound like much, but is a bigger deal than it could be if it wasn't an all-in-one touchscreen PC. Because of what it is it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer and quite frankly, probably isn't worth the repair cost. Then Jake's died too, refusing to power on. His was a PC I had repeatedly repaired, and it kept blowing out various components (including the power unit once before). In the end I concluded that the motherboard is probably shorting, so I removed the hard-drive and declared it defunct. Being that money was extremely tight already, I had to figure a way to make the best of a bad situation ~ being left with three vintage, but working laptops and one relic laptop that also worked, but barely! I decided to investigate & upgrade the RAM status of all of them, and try to make them all a little quicker and functional for as long as we need to use them. I did succeed in speeding up three of the four, but one refused to accept additional RAM (even though there was no real reason why it shouldn't). So now I have two moderately quick, but still vintage laptops, my SLOW vintage laptop and the relic, which is now a teensy bit faster, but still a sloth really. My final investment ended up being a Raspberry Pi-2. I had looked at this as a cheap little 'hook up to a monitor' option to give us internet access for some of the websites we use, but chose against it until I was discussing with the children what they would like to learn about this year. Lilo said that she would like to learn how Minecraft works ~ and so at that moment the RPI became a very real option again :D. She was so happy to receive her little computer in the post and I think it will be very useful to all of us - it's certainly faster than the relic and my laptop. Sadly though, we still can't afford to buy a new PC, but I do have a plan...

OK so I think that might be my summer summed up. I'll do my 'planning' post separately for those who are more interested in the home-ed of our life than the ins-and-outs of all the family stuff ;-)

Blogging again!

Wow! Twice in a week must be a recent record ~ and this one might well be a blog without pictures! (shock horror)! 

In my Technical World...

You know how I was saying about my computer woes..? Well about a day after getting our new PC, I downloaded an update onto our perfectly functional 9 year old laptop and it effectively crashed it completely! :(

So I have spent several days trying to get that back up and running, and with not a LITTLE bit of frustration!

Eventually I've managed to get it running (thanks Tim M for your advise), but it took a complete system restore to get there. In the long run, this may not be a bad thing, as now it's running like new!! However, I do still have to try and get those updates onto the system without it crashing again ~ and when I have I think I will take it out of Vista up to Windows7 (which always seemed a much more stable & logical system than Vista). Vista is not even supported by Microsoft anymore without Service Pack 2 (which was the update that crashed everything), so I need to move it forward to keep it from dying a slow painful death anyway ~ that's if I even can!!

In my Home-Ed World...

The children started of this week in the 'normal' way and the first couple of days went well. Then, on Tuesday, I took TP, Lilo and DD for a swimming lesson (I'm teaching them now) and then swam my two miles. I got into the pool feeling absolutely fine and got out with a full-blown cold!! How does that work? Since then I've felt LOUSY. Just a cold, but an achy, heady kind of one. As a result I declared the rest of the week a 'games week' and next week is half term, so that gives me time to recover properly :D. I have spent these last two days marking their half a term's work (meaning I don't have to in the break) and sorting out the laptop. I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that Windows start-up chime, but I don't think I've seen the last of my troubles yet! I tried to re-install just SP1 today and it failed, but thankfully didn't crash anything. Trying again tonight...

So, games week...

The children began yesterday by playing a great game of 'Settlers of Catan' (all but Chip, who was happily playing on PoissonRouge & Starfall on the new PC). To begin with all I could hear was Taz getting irritated with Stitch making too many mistakes, but being as Stitch is only 6, and hadn't played before other than on someone's 'team', I felt Taz was being quite unfair. I told Taz to treat Stitch with at least as much patience as he afforded my Mum (she's not great at games with lots of rules!) and things vastly improved! Stitch played the game really well once he got the hang of it :D. I think Taz won in the end, which would have pleased him too! 
Following the game, they sat and watched some old animated Horrible Histories DVD's until lunchtime. Then, after lunch, a few of them played 'Take 2' for a while (like Bananagrams, but played with scrabble tiles) - and then the 'school' day was pretty much done! 

I also managed to squeeze in a little photo-shoot to get some 'not-back2school' shots of Taz, and some better ones of Minnie (didn't like my first attempt with her). They can be seen over ... HERE...

I had said we would still do Art, but it just didn't happen. I fully intended to do it with them today instead, but again it didn't happen (mostly because I actually felt too rubbish to plan it properly).

Instead, today the children started the day by splitting up a bit: Lilo, Stitch and DD played Enchanted Forest and Labyrinth together, and then I believe Lilo played Junior Uno with Chip ~ she said he liked it :D.  The bigger three had a game of Carcassonne, followed by a game of Monopoly City (which they all agree is more 'fun' that original Monopoly, and is definitely quicker). The younger three wanted to join in with Monopoly, but the game had already started by the time they asked, so they dipped out and spent a good deal of time moping about not knowing what to do after that! 

Even Chip couldn't seem to settle to anything today. He played 'Paint', more PoissonRouge and a bit of Cebeebies on the PC, then came off and just got lots of things out, but didn't really play with any of them properly . I think he could have done with my company and attention tbh, but I was marking, restoring the laptop and generally trying to avoid being with anyone (feeling lousy). 

I was supposed to cook lunch today too, but didn't feel up to that even, so, for the first time EVER, Taz did it ~ and he did a really good job! It was an easy enough lunch, but I was still proud of him :D. While he was in the kitchen, busy chopping onions, the girls each made him a birthday card (involving watercolours, so they did some self-motivated art in the end). They've made a nice job of them too :D.

After lunch no-one seemed to really know what to do. I think in the end they all went and built towers with the Giant Jenga in the lounge ~ funny how they all enjoy that!! 

When Paul came home they all suddenly decided they'd like to go swimming! So, Paul dutifully dropped Taz, Minnie, TP and Lilo off at the pool, took DD to gym, collected Jake (Bugs) from college (after his residential) and came home. Stitch and Chip were disappointed not to go swimming too, but I was really not feeling up to it tonight (otherwise I would have been swimming my miles) and Paul didn't want to take them, because he had a couple of calls he needed to make. Chip went in the car for the ride (and a nap) though and Stitch just played on the Wii for an hour, which was probably better chill-out time for him in the end anyway.

Jake had a great time away in Wasdale, with college. Says they didn't do much walking, but what little they did do the other kids whined about! He's used to hiking up hills in the Lakes, so to him it was odd not to be. I asked whether he had lots of late nights and early mornings ~ he replied, "No, just early mornings ~ going to bed early mornings!!" He thinks he had about 10 hours sleep the whole week!! Glad he had fun though :D I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures he got, but I doubt I'll see him until sometime in the afternoon tomorrow!!!

OK ~ so just one picture...!