NotSheep

Well - five days anyway. It’s been a busy week. It’s not so much that we’ve been doing lots of things, more that there just doesn’t seem to have been much time left over for things like writing down what we did!

The “big boys” (aka Scratchy and Barney) got back from camping on Sunday, Barney in happy-happy-I-had-a-great-time mode, Scratchy grumpy because the clutch on the car was acting up (he takes it personally). Despite not having much sleep over the weekend (surprise surprise), Barney read late into the night on Sunday and, as a result, was exhausted and miserable all day on Monday. He even decided not to go to ju-jitsu on Monday night because he was so tired, and we bribed George to stay home too. Scratchy tried all day to get hold of our mechanic, but had no success, so on Tuesday I drove out to find out what was going on. It turned out his phone wasn’t working, but of course there was no way he could look at the car on Tuesday, so we had to book it in for Thursday. We spent the rest of the day not accomplishing much of anything - started with plans to shop for hiking boots and sweats for Barney, but the stress of one cranky baby, several uncooperative other children, too many people and shops and not enough space around me got to me in the end (well, okay, after about ten minutes), so we ended up dropping in on friends in the hope that they’d provide tea and sympathy. We did drop by Lidl, where, it turned out, they were selling hiking boots - happy coincidence This is unusual - usually Lidl puts things on special the week after I need them

Tuesday night was Community Circus for Barney and George, and Beavers for Freddy - I hung out at Beavers with Toby and Jack in order to avoid sitting in the car for a further hour, while Scratchy picked up Barney and George. Then it was home for dinner and bed.

On Wednesday the boys caught up on the work they didn’t do on Tuesday, and then later we’d archery, Cubs, Scouts etc. We failed (again) to find the hall where St John Cadets is held - I think perhaps the HQ has told us the wrong location! Barney wasn’t pleased about missing it for another week.

On Thursday Scratchy took the car in, then got the train and bus back to work - which took over two hours. Freddy went to dance class with our friend J (the teacher), who has problems with her car door at the minute (ie it’s held on with string! so Barney went with them so she could park, and he sat in the car with a pile of books while J taught the class. It doesn’t take much convincing to get Barney to sit in peace with a pile of books

Today, so far, we’ve done some tidying-up, the boys have done some work and Toby has refused to sleep. He’s lying beside me now making very cute little nearly-eight-week-old-baby noises