There are a lot of balls in the air… i’m dropping about 1 a day – and i don’t like it.

I’d love to do a long and lovely post about trying to run a business that turns over what ours now turns over – but i can’t. I will be taking in work experience HE kids in the near future though

The kids have been banned from TV and computers except Education City for a week, for not tellnig the tyurth, not doing as they are asked and being utterly rubbish at getting organised for dancing. I think when their own stupid behaviour resulted in Max and i having a screaming row in front of them, it finally began to sink in that taking from 9am to 3.30pm to assemble 8 pairs of shoes, 3 dancing dresses and 3 sets of musical theatre outfits but only in fact finding 5 pairs of shoes, 2 dresses, 2 pairs of leggings and 1 dirty t-shirt, was a bit crap.

Apparently though, it was my fault for coming home at 3.40pm instead of 3.30pm. If only i’d been home that 10 minutes earlier, they’d all have been ready NOT.

So that was last Friday; if they manage to get to dancing on time, with all the right things tomorrow, they can have their tv back. Although, in all honesty, i’d rather they didn’t. They’ve been much nicer to be around this week; i blame Tracy Beaker Mind you, like i say, they have to get there with all the right things. I’m not holding my breath.

This week Fran has got most of the way through The Goblet of Fire, written a decently written and punctuated story (after we wept blood, swear and saline over it and nearly came to blows), her test date for The Academy has come through (conveniently at the same time she needs to be at Addenbrookes in Cambridge), she has finished the Yr 5 maths level on EC and moved on to Yr 6 (not before time, most of it was too easy but she needed to practise a few bits), done a fair bit of music but got into trouble in her lesson today for not actually practising the things she’d been asked for. She’s been worknig fairly consistently at anything asked for her, but perhaps not with that much grace. Hormones approaching i fear

I’m looking forward to Xmas being over and my sabbatical from work, so i can enjoy some topics with them all again but for now, just having them working away on simple things, reading and doing arty stuff suits me fine; everyone is fairly happy that way and brain cells are ticking. It isn’t perfect, but we’ve pretty much decided on a plan of action for next year now and it will mean i am more or less always at home i think. I’m looking forward to that.

Maddy is her normal busy self; her guitar is really coming on, she is reading Enid Blyton happily and just being her normal occupied little self. I really want to do more art with her next year. She got a huge sense of completion from finishing her literacy level on EC. She was still on yr 2 as she was so far from reading last time we used it; once i discovered she was repeatedly doing a section that expected her to spell things like cholera, chaos, mechanical and then various other wh- and ph- words of dubious use, i helped her finish it so she could gloat at a full box of gold stars and moved her on (What Yr 2 child needs to spell cholera, i ask you?) She’s already half way through the Yr 3 level.

Amelie is doing similar. She insists she can’t read but actually reads really quite well and is happily working away at her levels. She was delighted to get a new, larger violin from Josiah this week but then promptly freaked out. She was okay after her lesson today though; i’ve not been supervising any of them well enough though – just not got time at the moment – and i feel bad about that. Thank you to Sarah and Joe for the violin though – just lovely

Other than that, just ordinary stuff; they do have all their groups, so even when i am being rubbish about going out and doing stuff, i know they have that. I want HE to be more interesting though – and as of January, it will be.

Oh – but we DID have a very special moment all together on the floor of the kitchen today… i finally shot down Gulliver!!!!!