NotSheep

We seem to have had a mad-busy summer. Jack spent a night in hospital at the end of June, and that seems like an awfully long time ago now – but it’s been less than two months. Barney and George had two weeks of GY Summer Scheme followed by a weekend of Scout Camp, then George and Freddy had two weeks of RYA Sailing courses while Barney spent a week at Air Cadet Camp and I attempted to deal with getting the refrigerator replaced and looking for a bigger car (success and no-success-yet, in that order). Then it was Toby’s fourth birthday, and then the Tall Ships were in town, and then it was…well, it was this week.

On Monday we had a trip to Ikea – which I feel is enough activity for one day, but of course it wasn’t all we did. Tuesday was one of those lost days, and on Wednesday we had our home-ed meet-up – which, while very enjoyable, was also exhausting. And on Thursday we went to visit friends – we hadn’t seen them since May and their kids go back to school soon, so we wanted to squeeze in a visit. They live a fair distance away, so we usually stay overnight with them, but this time they have an extra teenager staying with them, so they have a little less room than usual. And as we have so much to do before the end of August, I decided it was better not to stay over, but to drive there and back on the same day. The theory that it would allow me to get more done on Friday fell apart in practice though, because I was too tired to be productive All I really managed to do was to read (yet more) Harry Potter to Freddy, Jack and Toby, while Barney, George and Scratchy went out last night to an Ulster Orchestra concert.

So here we are, nearly the end of August, and my to-do list is longer than ever. Barney and George are going to be away for a few days on a residential. It’s at the same centre where Barney camped with Explorers, but this time they’ll be in dorms or chalets (I don’t know which yet) rather than tipis and yurts. They leave on Tuesday, and they’re supposed to be back on Friday – but George is double-booked for Friday, because he’ll be going to the airport with me to collect his new French brother and his maman. So on Thursday, Scratchy or I will go and collect George from the residential (and Barney will come back on Friday with all the others on the mini-bus – hm, I wonder if they’d notice if I stole the mini-bus…)

And September isn’t shaping up to be any quieter – Freddy is torn, because he really wants to keep going to Sea Cadets on a Wednesday night and return to Cubs when it starts back – and it’s also on a Wednesday night. He could switch to a different Cub pack – although not the closest one to us, because it’s on at the same time as ju-jitsu. But he could go to another pack where the Cubs meet on Mondays and the Scouts (which he’ll be moving into shortly) meet on Tuesdays – those two evenings being the only weekday evenings he has free – but he likes the Cub pack he’s been going to up until now. Still, a decision will have to be made. And another decision will have to be made by George, who, similarly, has a clash between Sea Cadets and Scouts – until he moves to the senior section of Sea Cadets, at which point his Wednesdays will be freed for Scout meetings – but the seniors meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he’ll have to decide between that and fencing, which is also on Thursday evenings…are you confused yet? Because I am.

Barney’s schedule is much the same as it was last year, with him out every evening from Monday to Thursday, plus Saturday afternoons – although his Wednesday evenings will be freed up once he’s too old for Scouts (not far off). Jack’s is much more straightforward: Beavers on Tuesdays, and he’ll be adding ju-jitsu on Fridays – maybe. It depends on whether he does what he’s told to do by the sensei more than he does for us. His first adult tooth has just appeared and I live in hope that it will bring in a new era of Jack actually listening to other people once in a while. Toby is still little enough that he doesn’t have any “extracurriculars”, thank goodness, and Louie is just determined to spend every evening attached to me – which is okay by me, for the most part, because I haven’t the energy to do much by that time of day anyway.

Meanwhile Barney is heading into the home-straight of his OU course, with just two computer-marked assignments and one tutor-marked assignments left. Only one of those is due in September – the others aren’t due until October, but I’m encouraging him to have them completed in draft form before his final tutorial, which is mid-September, and which will be taken by a new tutor, the old one having gone off to work overseas. I’ll be glad when the course is done, because he does have quite a heavy study-load at the minute, and finishing the OU course will let him concentrate on the GCSEs he plans to take this year (in November, January and May….)

And all of that doesn’t even include consideration of the possibility that Freddy might go off to France for six months at the beginning of January.

I only hope Google Calendar can cope