Tuesday 24 July 2012

Proper Summer's Day

A much happier start to today!  No holiday booked yet, but Hubby is working on getting time off soon, so here's hoping :)
I woke to the most beautiful sound of children playing happily - Youngest chattering away to Daddy, and Eldest and Youngest playing Top Trumps (Bugs - of course).
They watched just one episode of Spongebob before breakfast, and then after breakfast and a burst of bouncing on the trampoline before it got too hot, they actually wanted to watch something other than Spongebob (hooray!), so Eldest put Deadly 60 on, followed by a special episode of Deadly 60, Behind the Scenes.  Behind-the-scenes specials are great - they're really interesting, and lead to all kinds of conversations and learning opportunities :)
Meanwhile Middle was having fun on Mathswhizz (he'd never have put Maths and fun in the same sentence before!), while Youngest and I played Alphabet snap.
By then Deadly 60 had finished and Eldest found an episode of Hermie and Friends that we haven't seen before (we've been recording them off the UCB channel): 'Buzby the misbehaving Bee', so we closed the curtains, fetched some popcorn and had a nice little mid-morning movie-time :)
Speaking of Hermie and friends, our Cinnabar caterpillars may not have such a happy ending as the cartoons they were named after.  It seems that the last batch of ragwort that we brought in had a hitchhiking spider on it, and Eldest was a bit concerned that the caterpillars may have become Spider-nosh :(  I got the spider out, but Eldest thought it may be too late, if it was indeed a caterpillar-eating one... however, we later found one little pupa lying on the ground, so it's possible the other two have pupated underneath the kitchen roll at the bottom of the cage.

Cinnabar chrysalis

The spider wasn't the only thing to come in on the last stem of ragwort either - we've also discovered two very teeny caterpillars that must have come in as eggs... "this could go on for EVER!" shouted Eldest gleefully... hmmm, I'm not sure I'm that enthusastic!  By the way, the Painted Lady caterpillars are now 2.5cm... five times their size when they first arrived, six days ago!

After lunch we went out to meet some local HE friends at a local splash zone.  It was lovely getting out (making the most of the sun while it's here) & seeing people, but I'm not sure we'll be going anywhere that busy again: youngest really didn't like the crowds & ended up sat on my lap for a long while not long after we got there (not at all like him).  The problem is, we're all a bit spoiled now - we're used to having public places pretty much to ourselves during the week.  Anyway, it was glorious weather, and the company was fabulous, as always, so I reckon that counts as another lovely (not to mention SUNNY) day :)

No comments:

Post a Comment