Leith Hill

Friday dawned as a sad day for the boys as they were extremely worried about Milo and his operation.  J convinced that he was going to die and A struggling to hide his worry :-( Milo got a good game of fetch and cuddles on Thursday night however. It didn't help that when I returned from the hairdressers with no Milo J was definitely sure he had died, I rang the vet for an update and he was still in surgery.

Finally at around 6pm we went to collect him (just a note to myself at this point for future reference that Js behaviour is horrific :-)) poor Milo like a drunken sailor staggering about crashing into doors with his lampshade on!! I got him a blowup comfy collar the next day as he looked so sad!!

Saturday we climbed Leith Hill in Surrey for a picnic. Daddy was out all day at a stag do so gaba and pops took us on a fine picnic! It included wine! Nice!

We climbed to the top of the tower and were at the highest point in southern england, higher than all those high buildings in London!!

Folly on the Hill

A slow start to the week with a trip to play at a friends house on Monday, followed by a home day yesterday as the weather and general tiredness was making the boys grouchy.

Milo had a visit to the vets to book him in for his operation on Friday, so Gaba came round to look after the troops and stayed a while to keep the peace!!! An interesting task of putting the sun tent together that was brought back from NZ at the beginning of the year :-)

We made plans for today and decided upon a walk around Eartham woods and a picnic. This was all going according to plan until we were driving at the back of Slindon and boys spotted a Folly on top of the hill in the distance. Que Google maps and the car map book and our plans changed to go and find the Folly!!

Beautiful walk (if not long!!) through old woodlands and along winding paths, the boys and Milo had great time and saw and learnt about new things along the way.

Mega tree roots

Milo enjoying himself (he had started to slow down a bit by this point!!)

 Boys and Gaba

Cut out in the Woods

Snakes log pile house (Gruffalo)

Tree hugging

more tree hugging

Branch hugging!

Hare Bells

Holly Hocks

THE FOLLY!!

http://www.odd-stuff.info/follies/nore.htm

Tomorrow we are going to a picnic for "Learn Nothing Day"  with fellow unschoolers (basically schooled children get weeks and weeks off from learning, so it is only fair that unschooled children get a day where they don't learn) A has already voiced his opinion of such a ridiculous day as he likes to learn and doesn't want to not find things out for a whole day!!!!! :-)

Another busy week last week.....we went on an open top bus from Devils Dyke down to Brighton! Very exciting for boys! When we got back to the Dyke we went exploring and looked for the old train and cable car lift. There was once an victorian fairground up there and animals!  We also discovered an old building that after much research was used to store test bombs for WW2. Still to discover the mott and bailey above Edburton but we will!!

More swimming and A is finally getting the hang of it again and can swim underwater :-) J is happy floating about and H has overcome his fear and is quite good at it!!

We had a meet up at Goring Gap with some friends. ..boys had a great time off in the woods exploring etc.

Uppark again with Gaba. We did meet some friends there but only for a short time as we spent so long in the house!!

Fund raising event on Sat where A got his face painted as a zombie.

Birthdays. ....

I have just realised that this post didn't upload and somehow lost all the many words that were also here :-(

A on his new keyboard

The 3 monsters on As birthday visit to The Natural History Museum

Loonies in the rain

Master H with his pot that he won on the tombola

The Week So Far....

Fishers Farm on Monday to mainly play in the splash attack. It wasn't as busy there as it has been recently and so we managed some pretty empty soft play!

We went swimming again on Tuesday, H probably only took 20mins to stop crying, he loved the rapid waters and then spent ages flinging himself in the water shouting random things like 'helicopter'!!

Had a shaving foam sensory play in the tuff spot which evolved into making the slide as slippery as possible to slide down at high speed! I also got bitten by some pesky insect on tuesday afternoon in the woods and on Wednesday my knee grew to twice the size and was excrutiatingly painful. Its still a bit swollen today but not as sore!

A was a super help yesterday as due to the high quanities of piriton I had I fell asleep on the sofa. He sorted the smalls out with things to do, drinks and some snacks. A nice change as the rest of the week he has been quite silly and rude.

We had a lovely walk yesterday and did some Gruffalo crafts when we came home. A found some giant feathers on our walk and wanted to try writing with them with paint. Just like a quill! He then did some writing hieroglyphic style i.e downwards and drew some pictures to tell me things instead of writing words, hieroglyphics again and those clever Egyptians!!  

This morning both boys came downstairs and wanted to do some maths workbooks. We haven't done this for quite a while and J has never before sat down to do any sort of 'work'.
They spent about 40mins going through them, J declaring that he would do it his way and not how the words told him. To clarify that, he did do what it asked but not in the same order or way. I'm quite glad he isn't going to be going to school as I feel he would struggle with being dictated to, told to do something a certain way and that the way he was doing it (even with the same outcome) was wrong. I also think tempers would flare!!
On the subject of school I believe from various posts on Facebook yesterday that it was settling in days (or whatever they are called) for all those little people due to start school. J would have been among them.....I'm not sure how he would have coped :-(

Super Mechanic is mending the back axle on the car today so we are just mooching about doing Lego, taking Milo out and waiting for the shopping to be delivered.

Swimming take two....

Different pool today for our swimming adventure,  probably won't return as wasn't really all that and its a new pool! Bit annoyed at having to pay full price for the leisure pool but then half of it not opened as there was lessons going on!!

Anyway H managed to enjoy himself loads after about 40mins of crying and panicing! J was practicing blowing bubbles and nearly got his face in and A was amazing, going from putting his face in the water for 3secs to sitting on the bottom of the pool, putting his head under for 10secs and opening his eyes and counting fingers whilst under the water. All in the space of an 1hr :-) although I think we spent nearly an hour and a half in the pool!!! #ratherwrinkled

I had forgotten to write down how prolific A has been in his drawings and book makings, lots of them keeping him amused for ages. J has been doing some too but not quite as many!

Paddling pool playing,  sandpit constructions and mending bike/pushchair tyres was our afternoon after walking Milo in the sudden humid heat.....

Camping in the forest...

Beautiful weekend away camping in the New Forest with friends.
Boys adored the fact they could go off into the woods by themselves. .....dens were built,  trees were climbed, friends were made! We saw ponies come through the woods whilst we had breakfast - they can't wait to go back!!

Petworth House

Today we had a planned home ed picnic to attend at Petworth House. Unfortunately we were a little late getting there and managed to loose our friends somehow. I think we were in they were out kind if scenario!

Thoroughly enjoyable day however, the boys enjoyed going around the house and finding the spaniels hiding in each room (they earnt themselves a sticker at the end for going back to the desk and telling the ladies how many they had spotted! )

I love that at these places we go to, because I guess they are quiter during the week, the volunteers are very passionate and really do have time to talk to the boys and me and explain about things, let them touch things and make it far more interesting when we are walking round :-)

Beautiful pleasure gardens with lots of secret paths and an array of meadow flowers.

We shall return with daddy quite soon I think, as they have lots of geocaches to find within the park and gardens and you can borrow a gps unit to discover them all with!!

Quiet day tomorrow I think.....camping again on Friday :-)

Swimming...

After a hot week with lots of water play, quite suprised at H and his sudden dislike of the water!

We went to play at a friends house in their pool on friday...H didn't like it and refused to go in. Same happened the day before at fishers splash park, so today we went swimming properly.

It took nearly a hr to get him happy in the water, but he says he liked it!! Going again next week :-)

A has been going under water and J has been finding himself underwater! Both have definitely enjoyed the return to water!!!!

Fun few days...

I promised the boys that this week we could go rock pooling.....they were desperate to go having rekindled their like of the beach :-)

Unfortunately we had no nets and I needed a frying pan after the old one was ruined and got thrown away camping, so after a fairly long exploration of the woods and many secret pathways we headed into town and met up with Gaba.

All netted up the rock pooling was going to happen today but they were highly insistent that it happened then and there!!

Beautiful...spent a good few hrs down at Goring hopping over rocks and finding creatures.

- tiny crab
- snail
- shrimp
- a few other tinies
- and a sea anemone

Today was mainly woods again trying to avoid all the horses that seemed to be round every turn and a visit with Gaba to the pick your own at roundstone.

Tractor ride and about 3.5kg of strawberries. ..definitely a success!

Came home to make strawberry lollies, eton mess and choc dipped strawberries - yummy!!

In other news A has been doing some writing and spelling games, J is not returning to playschool and H is being all he can be!!!

An Interesting Week.....

We have had a few trips out and about this week, the first being to Haslemere Museum...

Absolutely a one we shall return to, it was beautifully laid out and had the boys captivated. Although they do love a museum (big or small)!! There was a woodland walk and we ended up having our picnic in a 200yr old gazebo overlooking a pond. On the way back into the museum there was a bee hive that was behind glass, so you could take the panels off and have a look at the bees going about their business. Highly captivating!!

A has rekindled his Ancient Egyptian interest as we saw a real mummy and his sarcophagus :-)
J has grown an interest in archeology and he chose a small dinosaur egg to excavate with tools to reveal a dino inside!

Wednesday arrived in a rain shower that kept reappearing but didn't stop us from our meetup at Uppark, nr Petersfield.  We got to use our national trust NZ membership for the first time and it was a brilliant day!

Boys had an absolute blast...playing in the meadow where they stumbled upon a maze...playing with their friends and enjoying a tour around the house. They were very impressed with that. We watched a short film on the fire that nearly destroyed the house and then we spoke to a guide who showed us a picture of a metal chandelier that was almost destroyed but amazingly was prised apart and rehung in the main hallway. There were also underground tunnels that caused lots of excitement!!!

I think we stayed for around 4 hrs through the rain and lovely hot sun when it came out. Beautiful views and we spotted the Spinnaker Tower and some huge ships out at sea.

Today has been spent mostly getting ready for an impromptu camping weekend!!

Birthday BBQ

So the smallest one is now a big bad 2yrs old!!! (and don't we know it!)

We celebrated on sunday with a family bbq and he enjoyed lots of presents. He didn't enjoy being sung to or being the center of attention but he did have a nice time and even had green sick from his cake!!

Monday dawned with rain and stayed that way pretty much all day :-( Not to be concerned with getting wet we tried our hand at Geocaching! Basically treasure hunting following clues. There were some apparent easy ones in ashington but we only found one, before we hopped in the car and drove up the lane to Warminghurst where there was another treasure spot.....only we couldn't find it! Instead we went into the extremely old church which dates back to 1086! It has been slightly changed throughout the yrs but it is still beautiful.  Its not used very much now and was made redundant in 1980 but it is still looked after.

Yesterday we went on a mini adventure up Mill hill in Shoreham,  we just kept driving past the two carparks until we reached a youth hostel a good 2-3 miles up into the hills! Views were amazing and would have been better had it not been rainy. We worked out that we were only a few miles away from Henfield but and a big but it took 30mins to get back there!!!!!

I have been adding to this blog since Sunday and now we are at Thursday.....

Our lovely friend came to see  us today and bought us donuts and cookies. So we took her to the park. Very hard work today the small people, lots of screaming,  hitting and name calling. We made it to the park fairly stress free and the boys made some friends :-)
The journey back was another matter however.......
Since around 3pm however their moods have changed and they are happily playing together outside and upstairs with lego.
The beanbags have also been out today being used for some number games, throwing and catching skills and a treasure hunt!!!

Nice to SEE you...

Today was a change in the weather so not so sunny but still quite warm. Boys had another water fight and spent some time just splashing about in the water tray.

We collected our pig eyeballs from the butcher and had a run around the woods.
Got all kitted out in our rubber gloves for a handling session on the eyeballs...A was really interested and we found all the parts that we had a picture of in our human body book.

Next on the agenda is a brain apparently!!!

Something I forgot about yesterday was A deciding to make alien hats for everyone. This picture is of his, J was blue and H was red. They wore them all around Storrington much to the other shoppers amusment!!!

The bike helmets arrived so we went to the park to try them out, also hoping to get rid of some of the silliness that was causing the boys, especially the middle one, to be quite tiresome.
So it goes...... (it didn't work)