Katy’s rambles about life

talk about timing… we had just finished the reading for our Jesse tree, Becca was carefully cutting round her rainbow and ark and Adam knocked on the door (Adam being the vicar) So he looked at all the books strewn over the sofa (my “teacher’s desk” you understand) and there’s the Bible I’ve just read the Jesse tree bit from plus the “instrucions”, More Grandma’s attic which is quite “Christian”, The Last Battle (final Narnia book and aparently meant to be about the Second Coming???) and now he probably thinks I’m home edding on religious grounds!!!! (which I’m not although using Sonlight there’s quite a moral vein running through it!)

Had a lovely chat, you know, life the universe and motorbikes (he chickened out of doing his bike test cos he’s a cruiser not a speedfreek and didn’t like going over 50……) met Tim and very graciously didn’t mention God to him once let alone the usual “are we going to see you in church as a family this Christmas?” that I’ve seen others pull. Nice chap.

Fortunate really taht he hadn’t arrived a fwe hours earlier when Becca was wearing nothing but poster paint and a big smile!!!! She still loves the sensation of paint on bare body……

In other news, she read to me today!!!! I suspect she even sounded out a couple of words with a bit of prompting. So she can now read Zac the Rat, Peg the Hen, The Big Hit all from Starfall and “Red Hen” from the middle of the second Jolly Phonics workbook. you know, we may yet make it!

was in the middle of a huge link blog - loads of printables etc - and hit the wrong button, closed the tab with my blog in it and lost the whole flippin lot!!!

Let this be a lesson….. save as you go!!!!

wondered all day why everyone else was saying it was cold and I was toasty warm…. realised when I stripped off for my shower it was becuase I’d got 2 skirts on…. yup, that would keep you warm…. now I have no idea how I managed to do that which perhaps tells you how dozy I’ve been today!!!!!!!

Other news…. The skirt I’ve been eyeing up in ASDA for weeks is not on the rails now I have the money for it - probably as well really, I would look a right wally in a black gypsy skirt complete with spangly bits but I loved it and I wouldn’t care how silly it looked on me!!!!

We did the library this morning, I really should take a video camera one day, it’s so comical… she charges round grabbing random books and piling them up until I say enough then grabs them all up adn heads for the lady “to pay for them” She is absolutely convinced her library card is a bank card So this afternoon I’ve read them all to her, at least there was only 1 Clifford book this time

She did the next Jesse tree symbol whilst I read the passage to her - serpent and apple symbol for the garden of Eden and apple eating therein - and again is listening and getting the connection between the symbol and what I’m reading. Also had another chapter of Last Battle, she is just about understanding this, once or twice I’ve had to help her along but she is refusing all suggestions that I leave it til she’s bigger.

She spent all afternoon at the craft session finishing some more of the Christmas cards, only a few left for her to write in now!

We are reading to her from 2 fairly old books at bedtime at the moment, they really deserve a mention as they are so good but sadly out of print. They both have 1960 or there abouts as a publishing date and have come to us from the back of a dark cupboard at Tim’s mum’s house! To Read and To Tell has lots of short stories/folk tales and so on, some you almost know but not quite how they are told (eg there’s the story of the Wee Bannock which is the Scottish version of the Gingerbread man) she loves these becuase of the repetition and “feel” of them, so do I. The other book is Enid Blyton’s Brer Rabbit stories. Now, I read (or tried to) a Brer Rabbit story from one of last yaer’s Sonlight books and it was in “Southern drawl” which was incredibly difficult for a Northern English lass like me to read and it was just awful but these are “English” versions of the stories and great fun!

christmas card baubles - an oldie but still a goodie!

Bead on pipecleaner decs - sure I’ve got some pipecleaners somewhere….

More pipecleaner and bead things - stars this time

Doily angel - bet you could do this with paper doilies!!

CD Wreath - oh YES!!! at last, a use for all those AOL CDs!!!!!

You can’t make a person love you. You can only stalk them and hope for the best.

Don’t you think hard work must’ve killed someone?

QUANTUM MECHANICS: The dreams stuff is made of.

Of course I’m out of my mind, it’s dark and scary in there!

There are two ways to argue with a woman. Neither one works!

My child sold your honor student the answers to the test.

It’s better to have loved and lost than to live with a psycho the rest of your life.

Always remember: plunder first, then burn!

We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?

And one last one:
Why be difficult, when with a bit of effort you can be impossible?

Tim’s wage is in….. literally just in the nick of time - all the bills go out tomorrow.

Off to the shops for such luxuries as bog roll and washing powder as soon as they open (ran out of both yesterday!!!! - had to phone a friend for a roll!!!!!!)

kept this seperate from the slightly whingy blog as actually this went really well.

We missed yesterday as I wasn’t quite organised so today we did the first 2 day’s readings and pics. She was happy to have the relevence of the stump and branch explained to her and to listen to the readings from a “proper” Bible not a kids one.

Once coloured in she stuck the two symbols onto our “Jesse tree” which is just green paper in a vaguely tree-like shape stuck up on the wall.

I wanted to do this with her last year but got hung up on trying to embroider them all and having the perfect tree and the perfect little embroidered on the front with velcro on the back “ornaments” for her to put on each day so of course it didn’t get done. This one will be SOOO not perfect but infinitely better for it!

I just want to hide the workbooks……

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I look on them as a useful tool but some days I’m fairly sure they are just a nice little stick to beat me with in her eyes!!!!

She did several pages from JP workbooks today, finishing off the last little bits at the back of 1 and 2 and starting on 3. That was fairly painless, she even managed to stumble through sounding out the words in the flowers at the back of book 2 (after doing the “I can’t do it”s for 5 mins obviously) Then said no more for the day. Well, that was fine, she had done loads!!!

Then this evening I headed upstairs for a tutorial (Spanish course I’m doing) and left her with Tim who promptly got a call out so left her with a video and instructions to play quietly or go and sit on our bed and chill until I finished. She did pretty well on that but then anounced that she wanted to do more puzzle books, grabbed the Developing the Early Learner book and sat down. Rhyming words…… how the ***** do you explain/teach ryhme????? So we slogged through taht page. And she wants to do the next - a sequencing page - and we slog through that as she didn’t “get” the first set of pics (toy in toy shop, toy being put in bag, toy being played with… poor child, rarely goes in toyshops you see….) which didn’t set us up well!!! But she plodded on… and on…. and on…. through pages of “listen to the instructions then do it” which she never manages (arg!) and a maze (which is dead easy for her) and then decided half way through a page of “colour this shape this colour, that shape that colour” etc to go to the beginning of the book and admire her work to date. This was 9pm ffs!!!!!!

I suspect the attraction in the book was nothing to do with the puzzles at all, in fact I’m damn sure she just wanted to see how late she could push bedtime and how much attention she could wring out of me….. never mind, I’ll have lots of nice full workbooks to show for our year’s work (safe in teh knowlege that the “real” learning happened the rest of the time!)

The lead story on the Midlands news was a mum being jailed for not sending her 13 yo boy to school but there is no trace of the story, I wanted to link to it or at least find out the facts a bit before deciding if I wanted to rant about some poor kid being forced to school when he was phobic/bullied or if it was just some job who couldn’t give a **** about school…..

I have mailed the councilor they interviewed though cos she said it was the law that all children must be in school……..

I’ve just had the neighbour for half an hour telling me her builder saga…… She’s having her roof done (yes, she’s decided to have her roof done starting last week - strange she only got 1 builder even willing to quote starting a roof job this time of year!) and for some strange reason she’s found the house cold and damp since they took all the tar off the old flat roof! Oh and she’s signed a contract that says the price will be £x so that’s all she’s paying regardless even though they have talked her into having some other stuff done at the same time adding £2k onto the bill…(um, I saw the contract and I pointed out to her several times that it said £x plus any agreed on extra costs and she has verbally agreed to have the extra £2k of work done) The builder’s original estimate was double what she has signed for but as she didn’t get a break down of what the cost is I can just see him now saying “ah well, you see, we didn’t cost x, y and z into that estimate” and suddenly it will be back to what he said in the first place adn Lord I’ll hear about that one for months!

Don’t get me wrong, I do sort of feel for her, it must be awful being in a cold house etc but she’s lived with a slightly leaky flat roof for 2 years, would a few more months to get us through the winter really be so bad? And I’ve already said all the do’s and don’t’s that she’s gone and totally ignored (because it didn’t suit her - she’s seriously a very old teenager) so when she then comes and says stuff I’m feeling like a parent wanting to say “well did you do what I suggested? No? Well that was why I said to do taht to stop this happening”…..And does she have to give me chapter and flippin verse on the whole catastrophe when I’m trying to bake?????