Life is a Highway - it’s the journey, not the destination

On Tuesday we started off the day with a bit of reading practise. Alex was first as she’d got ready first after breakfast and for once we didn’t have a performance while she was giving it a go. I think the early start helped. She did quite well, but has a way to go I think, but practice will help. Marcus did some after (the same book, a basic ladybird phonics one) and did well too, again more practice just to reinforce he can do it and to keep the momentum going is needed I think. They both did some Explode the Code too after that.

With Alex looking at her ocean life book last night and the relative sizes of the animals and fish in it, I thought we could maybe do a bit of a measuring thing. So we decided to measure ourselves (actually I should have got them to do me too) and then I cut some bits of paper to scale to show us next to a dolphin, green turtle, orca and blue whale. I should have done it smaller though as the blue whale will cover all our kitchen wall!!! Oh well, a lesson in scale And maths that didn’t involve adding which is also a plus.

That was about it for yesterday. They did patches early and have all of a sudden stopped complaining about having them on at all, even with them being stuck on the eye. Very impressed with them both, and I think it just shows what a difference a year can make in asking them to do it. I just have to hope it will make a difference when they go back to the hospital.

Oh I forgot, we did a few puzzles I printed off the internet. Need to start dating and keeping hold of stuff, never know if I may need it.

Today we were up early as we had visitors in the shape of Barbara and kids and I had to tidy! Trying to gradually get up earlier, I can sleep fairly late consistently and the kids just follow along side me. If I try and get up earlier I’m hoping they will too and we’ll actually get stuff done at a reasonable time. Alex woke up with me so again I set her off with some work this morning once brekkie was out the way. Today we just did some basic sums working out with the base 10 blocks. When Marcus graced us with his presence he surprised me that he actually remembered some very basic sums (2+2, 5+5, 3+3, 10+10) without having to work them out. I know this seems very easy, but it’s a big deal for us especially as no matter how much I show him things, it never seems to stick. I do think he’s needed his own pace with this though and I really don’t want to make maths a huge deal. The problem we’re having is that for the family who don’t agree with HE (and for some reason I’m feeling more like the concerns are being said louder lately) it’s the academic things that they will base their opinions on and if he’s not reading or showing great competence in maths then that will speak volumes to them. It doesn’t matter if he would have been the same in school, it’s just ammunition for them. It also doesn’t matter that he knows loads about cars and types, or can draw 3 dimensional cars or whatever he has an interest in, cos it’s not reading and writing. It gets me down quite a lot. (also substitute he for she soon as it will start with Alex soon too)

When Barbara called to say she was on her way with kids and ds’s my 2 rushed to get their patches on, but I was evil and wouldn’t let them playwith them till B got here. Muahahahah! But once they arrived that was them all sorted for a while, can’t say they were quiet though I sat Barbara down with a cuppa and LOTS of photos and forced her to look at them Was really nice to have them all round

Felt really like putting the telly on once they’d gone, but decided against it. Instead I told them they could do a kit I bought at a toy shop a while ago which makes a stick puppet show. The attraction wasn’t in the puppet show but the sticker maker that was included that made the actual puppets. Anyway, that kept them busy for ages, and meant that I could investigate the public transport options in sheffield so we can make it to some HE groups soon while I actually want to.

This evening after James got home we watched something about hurricanes which sparked lots of discussions, I don’t think my lot are hugely keen on going to America now!! More dolphin stories at bedtime too

finally got all the official pics on Flickr. Have fun, there’s quite a few

our visit to Jax’s the other day to pick up wedding photos (putting them on Flickr, but only managed a small selection of the many before I got bored!!). We made some fab bead geckos while we were there, Alex sat very patiently and tried really hard till about a third of the way through when she got bored, but I was impressed nonetheless. So I finished it off for her. Marcus was so impressed he wanted to do his own but wanted a snake so we started that off and finished it when we got home. Thought I’d post a pic as no doubt it will be lost once Jax comes again to see the finished snake!

I must write up something before another day goes by with me being too busy. Since we got back from tenerife we’ve been really trying to get some “proper” educational stuff done simply because I feel it’s been lacking too much and we’re constantly getting bad feedback from James’ family about HE and I’d really like to prove it does work. For some reason Marcus has also turned into a 6 and a half year old and I can’t quite remember that happening, it does feel very ‘big’ and as such I feel he should be doing a bit more work. Although, this being me it isn’t normally that much!!

So last week we sat down and talked about stuff we wanted to learn and so I have a big list of possible things to do. Funnily enough learning to read didn’t come up for either of them, but they’re both getting there with it all. I wish they wanted to though. Actually my mum was really impressed with M on holiday as he quite often draws and writes stuff to go on the picture and instead of always asking how to write something he just thinks in his head. most of the time it’s wrong, but that’s to be expected with our language!!

It’s become apparent that M is really struggling with the concepts of numbers, adding and all that stuff. We don’t follow a set curriculum or anything, but we might look into something in the future. Anyway, yesterday morning I took our base ten block s and went way back to basics with him and we just counted out the right numbers of blocks for each number up to 12. Then we looked at swapping 10 cubes for a ten, etc etc and I think he stared to get some of it. It was kind of nice just to have a maths session without him just looking all confused!! He managed to work out that 100+100 isn’t something like 100100 or whatever he normally thinks. Nothing spectacular but a big break through for us. Alex did the same after too and didn’t flap and wail so that was good too!!

Also yesterday we finished the Spain project we started just after coming back from holiday. We’ve been looking at maps, themoney they used and writing down what language they learnt over there. We also read The story of Ferdinand and Marcus narrated back the story (with some poking and prodding).

We went down the library and managed to get some books on future learning ideas - dolphins and electricity. Wonder if you can work out who wanted which Actually M’s list was all physics-y kind of stuff which is crap for me as I never did it. But James did electronics at college so he knows what he’s talking about. On the way to the library was lots of nature spotting, M remembered about ‘lambs’ tails’ and we talked about spring starting with all the flowers coming through.

Back home and it was patch time - both of them have to have them for 3 hours a day - ugh! horrible, but actually yesterday wasn’t too bad. I think they’re getting used to them. They can play their computer games while they have them on and I think this helps Although I’m not sure the whole 3 hours is good for M to have on a playstation, we’ll see about maybe dropping it. Alex at least isn’t that obsessed with her ds!

Alex spent some of the evening pouring through a book on ocean life and looking at the sizes of the fish/whales/dolphons compared to humans and trying to read the sizes (so work on cm and metres - yay!)

Finished the night with few chapters from a book from Sonlight - Dolphin Adventure, that I happened to find on the shelf and fitted nicely with our ‘theme’

So a good day and I wanted to record it!

Oh and the hot socks refers to James’ bad neck so I made him a rice thingy that you warm up in the microwave with a sock. Of course the kids then wanted one each to take to bed so have been wandering about with socks all bloody day!!

ok so a quick recap on the good bits of the holiday and I’ll try to add some pics too. (might be later on though as flickr is getting grumpy with me)

With it being half term time it was fairly busy with more than the Saga brigade at Tenerife and any visions I had of just chilling somewhere went pretty rapidly once I saw how busy it got next to the pool. We tried it on the 2nd day as we’d arranged to meet my mum and dad there and it was my idea of hell - noisy kids!! Especially bad when I don’t have my own to worry over So we tried to do some cool stuff there rather than just blob about. The kids were desperate to spend a night with us so when they did we took them on a boat trip to see some whales and dolphins.

Really loved it, I even got some good pics but managed to wipe them off the camera a few days later and was so gutted.

James and I walked loads. My new Crocs got a real hammering and didn’t once give me blisters. I got the kids some too and Alex hasn’t taken hers off! She’s still insisting on wearing them even though it’s been raining since we got home!

My mum and dad treated us all to a day out to Loro Parque which is a large zoo with som fab orca, dolphin and sea lion shows.

We decided to sit in the splash zone of the orca show and got rather wet as these photos of Alex show

before

after

actually that pic was not representative of her mood after being splashed - she was not impressed!!! The dolphin and sea lion shows were much drier and she liked them much more!! Had a fab day there and resolved to bring the kids back another time to see it all again (another holiday though).

It was Carnaval time for some of our holiday and James and I ventured up to Santa Cruz to watch it, was lovely to have an evening to ourselves, and fab to watch.

Ugly Betty at the Carnaval!!

Batteries ran out at the carnival so photos were sparse, wasn’t having a good camera holiday!!

A lot of time was spent at my mums complex where we had our 2nd week (all 3 days of it!) as her balcony was HUGE so I could chill out and read my books in peace. The kids were in the pool loads and have really come on with their confidence.

And although that was a very brief round up of it, I can’t be bothered to go into the nitty gritty of it, nor subject you to James’ 250 photos of sunsets and mountains!! I think we’ll go back to tenerife one day, i’m so not a package holiday person, but there was a lot there that we enjoyed and more we wanted to do but didn’t have time for. Plus we promised another trip to Loro Parque! So although not a honeymoon really, it was a lovely holiday.

arrived home late on Tuesday night after a very nice 11 days away in Tenerife. Was lovely to surprise the kids with us being there and was nice to have a holiday pretty much with my mum and dad as I doubt we’d have ever chosen to do it.

Shall endeavour to catch up with everyone soon!

watching a music channel with songs from 1996 on - oh the memories, I was free then

So I guess I should do some sort of post wedding update then so in the time honoured tradition, the good and bad bits:

Bad bits first as there’s not that many of them
Our ipod crashing when we’d planned to have some background music playing. Also we missed having some good dancy songs which we really wanted, and our proper first dance song.

The barman not turning up when I expected him to - made me feel slightly uneasy and worried, but all worked out ok.

Coming home the day after to the news my mum had collapsed in the night and wasn’t breathing, think it was similar to what I had, but bloody scary!

Feeling sick and faint to the point of not being able to walk on the morning of our flight to Tobago and having to cancel it. Still bloody gutted!

Good bits
the gorgeous weather

feeling calm and not at all nervous

looking good (or so everyone tells me!!!)

hearing that james was nervous!

all of the ceremony

the ceilidh band (except for daft caller)

watching all the kids all day

Ros and Nic dancing!

the buffet

the lovely messages in the guestbook

my lovely friends insisting me and James head off early while they tidied up

and mostly just everyone who managed to come and share the day. I can’t say how much this bit really means to me, that I have some bloody good friends who made my day just fantastic! Thank you all of you who came - love you all.

I’ve probably missed loads too!

So now we’re waiting to try and get a last minute holiday to Tenerife to try and manage some sun, sea and sex Got most of it booked, just running out of money so have to wait till James is paid tomorrow to book some other stuff! Not quite Tobago but it should be ok. will be able to see the kids a bit which I secretly am looking forward to! And fingers crossed the insuarnce will pay out and we’ll get to tobago eventually.

photos from my brothers phone are on flickr now if anyone wants to see them.

Thanks to everyone for turning up and making it such a fantastic day, I love you all!! And special thanks to the tidy uppers, you know who you are!

*edit* rofl to the one of Alison and Nic doing “the Alison” !!!!