Swampy

Today has involved friendship, paper mache, tiredness, and mud.

Lots and lots of mud.

We'll see how the washing machine has coped in the morning...

At least they wore wellies today though! More here.

Lovely morning. I actually had a lie-in, like an actual asleep lie-in! Until Bear schlomped over my head trying to reach my phone which he'd unlocked, done something to and handed me thirty seconds earlier. That woke me properly. He and Steve headed down to breakfast together leaving me and the Bean to sleep a little longer.

Bear and his Daddy bonded a bit this morning :) Bear instigated a wellie-boot hunt. He evidently was not going to let a severe lack of dry shoes put him off from wanting to go outside. They found all the wellies eventually but then he dug out the mei tai and presented it to Steve telling him in great detail exactly what he expected to happen with it. Of course it was in Bear language so we didn't quite get the finer points, but we understood the gist! Up he went on Steve in the mei tai and had a cuddle while Steve put most of the shed contents back into the shed.

A friend came round for coffee with her little boy a bit later. Neither of us are big talkers so it was actually pretty quiet! I made a handful of scones and the kids played. Bean monopolised Jeni almost entirely: even if I'd been able to form sentences (I was so tired) I wouldn't have been able to get much of a word in edgeways. Bear showed Barnaby all the fun stuff, like stairs and climbing and drums and boxes to hide in.

This afternoon we went to our Wednesday home ed group and started making planets for our solar systems. Three paper mache balloons (I chose to use flour and water paste mainly because I wanted to see how well it worked and also because I wasn't keen on wallpaper paste on my already damaged skin), Bean and Bear playing with lego, and three small polystyrene balls to take home to paint. Nice to see Pam and Evie there! We watched Bean, Evie and Luke playing together at the end with some amusement :) I love this photo, it seems to have so much friendship warmth in it :)

After the Wednesday group we headed into the garden. Steve was finishing off the new/old shed (it now has bolts and a lock!), and Bean headed straight for his swamp. It is now very much enlarged. And even with wellies on and using spades as walking sticks he fell in several times - but he didn't lose a boot once!