A Hectic Two Days

It's Christmas eve here tonight. Alex was looking under the stairs for his roller skates when he found the Christmas decorations (that should've been put in the loft 7 months ago...) and decided that he'd decorate his room with them and declare it's Christmas eve! He's even wrapped up himself some pressies!

Me and Jamie have just been sorting out what we're going to be doing over the weekend, Jamie wanted it as a document on the laptop so we could print it out, so she typed it out as we discussed what we wanted to do, she's getting very good at typing now :)

Jamie has spent most of the last 2 days on her roller skates, she even wore them to visit her great step-nan! Great step-nan gave us all an ice cream, at 10 in the morning! We don't see her very often so I didn't mind too much.

This morning we went to Grandads, I needed to cut his hedge. It was the first time in ages since Grandad has seen Jamie as she's normally been at school. He made us pancakes with ice cream! (yes, ice cream again! but who could say no?) While I was getting ripped to pieces by the hawthorn/brambles/rose/stinging nettle hedge, Alex and Jamie remembered that there's a park right close to grandads house and asked if they could go. Grandad has a really bad back so we both said that they could go by themselves - it's a very quiet village and the park is on the other side of grandads garden - Jamie was reluctant to go, they've never been anywhere on their own before, but Alex was well up for it and talked her into it. When they got the park we could hear them from the garden and shouted hello. After about 15 minutes they came back, playing hide and seek. While they were gone something occurred to me.....I was worrying about them never having any time away from me, but of course they will. They will be old enough soon to do things on their own, maybe Alex a bit longer, but it wont be long til Jamie will be able to just walk round to her friends house on her own, or pop to the corner shop, I know that'll bring it's own worries, but I forget sometimes that they're actually still growing!

They went back to the park a couple more times on their own before we left, Jamie got over her nerves in the end :)

Yesterday was crazy. Not only had a home ed nature walk meet-up been changed from Tuesday to Wednesday afternoon due to rain, but I had double booked the morning! I had  arranged to visit the kids great step-nan, AND arranged for Jamies friend to come over! But I managed to squeeze it all in, and the Nature walk was so nice, well worth the rushing around to get there. We went to Mardley Heath, never been there before or even knew about it and I'm so glad my friend came up with the event, I'll definitely be going back again. And I was so pleased to see Alex actually playing and having fun with the other boys on the rope swing!

Lovely Mardley Heath Nature Reserve

Then in the evening, I had arranged to meet up and go swimming with someone that I'd only met online! She's a really cool lady and I had a really good time, although my sinuses are still feeling weird from all the pool water that went up my nose whilst doing lots of underwater roly polies :)