NotSheep

It’s been a good day today. All the boys did a little work in the morning, including Henry, who was struggling a little with decimals and fractions, but I hope my half-French-half-English explanation helped! He wrote an email to his parents and made a list of people he wants to send cards to; we’ll have to buy some stamps for sending letters to France so he can walk or cycle to the mailbox and post letters whenever he wants, without needing us to take him to the post office. Not that we mind doing that, it’s just that I think it would be better for him to have that bit of independence.

He also helped me make spaghetti sauce this morning, and I’d been told by both him and his parents that he was a dab hand at pasta, so I told him he could be responsible for dinner this evening The weather was warm and sunny (if windy), so after lunch we all headed out to walk to the leisure-centre and go for a swim. I added Henry to our family membership there; they put him in with our surname, and he was delighted to see his membership card with that on it We all had a really good time in the pool, even Toby, who wasn’t very keen last time. Today he laughed and splashed and tried to leap out of my arms to catch balls, and he thoroughly enjoyed a game where he sat in one of those baby-floaty-seat things and we pushed him around from one of us to the other (the other boys enjoyed it too :-)) He even tolerated having his face ducked in the water a couple of times. After our swim, we went to the cafe and I treated everyone to a cup of hot chocolate. Scratchy collected us after work, but since we’re still one carseat short, he took Barney and Henry home first, left them boiling spaghetti and re-heating the sauce, and came back for the rest of us.

Dinner was a quick affair, as three of us needed to be delivered to two different places by 6.30 - George to St John Ambulance Badgers, and Freddy and me to Beavers. It was my first night with this pack, and my first night of planning in over a year - and the first night back after the summer. We played a good active game - one in which everyone ended up on the same team, so they all won - then talked about summer and seasons and all the Beavers made giant paper sunflowers to take home to remind them of summer. It all went very well; I think they’re going to keep me We had a couple of new Beavers; one of them was a bit tearful at the beginning and I asked Freddy to befriend him. Coming home, Freddy told me that he made sure the new boy had a good time and that he was going to make sure he’d a good time next week too - then revised that plan to “I’m going to make sure everyone has a good time every week!”

Scratchy picked up George from SJA and left Barney and Henry at Cadets; Henry seems to have had a good time, and particularly mentioned two of the other Cadets. He was pleased to find an email from his parents waiting for him when he returned home, and has gone off to bed in good form. I’m sure there will be difficult days, but today wasn’t at all

Oh, and one month into this “I’m going to lose weight and get fitter, yes I am, no I really mean it this time” thing? I have lost 11.5 pounds (the 0.5 is important LOL) I’m very pleased with that, because I haven’t actually denied myself much at all. So a good day all around