Music and Friends (by sarah)

Just at the point where Jean started to take to playing and learning songs for the keyboard/piano, our hammond organ decides to die. We are hoping we can still fix it but it is going to be a major job 🙁

So a friend of ours said we could have an old keyboard of his, it used to be his grandmothers. We picked it up at the weekend with a little musical distraction!

For Jean spotted his epic set up with phone and mic stand and coloured buttons all set up to the computer 🙂

He also has a tank drum from Bali, I love these instruments so he let me have a play and of course that meant Mary had to have a play!

It was great seeing friends at the weekend - some of whom we've not seen for 3 or 4 years!

Of course after school yesterday my poor old struggling laptop was kidnapped for music recording / song making to happen - this mainly seemed to consist of Jean shouting at Mary for talking over the recording!

Once again I've been amazed by our wonderful friends 🙂

Parental Party Failure (by sarah)

So Sunday we were doing house work and admin and we wanted to pop to the shops for some candles, we were going to go to Homebase but we sailed past and ended up at The Range instead.... Once we had finished all the admin and popped the kids in bed Al spotted a text from that morning asking for comfirmation that Mary couldn't have cheese for the party.

We hadn't seen an invite though Mary had mentioned a party but not a when or where, so replied saying she'd love to come (it's one of the kids she really likes), but when was it?

Turns out it was when we were faffing with candle buying 🙁 Meaning that we dragged a crying child who did not want to go to the shops past her friends party and worse if we'd gone to Homebase we'd have bumped into people and she could have just gone to it!

The little girl was convinced that Mary was going to it as well so I feel really, really bad :'(

I've often wondered how many invites and things we miss, and of course conversely I'd said to Al that I was worried a couple of key people might not have gotten Mary's birthday invites as they didn't even say they couldn't come which is very unusual for the families involved.

Issue is that we drop the kids at breakfast club early so see hardly any of the other parents and w don't do pick up as we have a car share thing going and often they are in the after school club so same issue as with breakfast club.

Jean also has missed two parties this academic year - one because we lit. forgot and another because complicated logistics meant there was just no time to get her there on the day 🙁

This sort of thing make us feel like really bad parents.

Parentfail

edit: so Mary proudly presented us with the invite yesterday (Tuesday) after school 🙁 I assume it ended up in her draw at school.

Ada Out and About (by sarah)

This week is British Science Week so Ada and the other puppets are out and about, Mary was so exstatic to find out that she could take them in to her school for show and tell 🙂

Of course she now has her own wish list of puppets she wants making!

The puppets are for our Science Outreach, Communication, Education stuff which goes by the name of Cuddly Science and will be appearing at the end of the week at Cheltenham Hackspace for a Science Cafe!

Detentions, Dresses and meh. (by sarah)

Jean has a lunch detention today for forgetting her PE kit yesterday. It's an automatic thing, she's stressed, I assured her we've all managed this one she reckons only we manage this sort of thing - she packed for the wrong day.

Mary is off to Funky Thursday an all change day at school and chose her own cloths, it is the new dress she was given at her birthday party. It is the third time she's worn it ie everytime it comes out of the laundary she wears it.

Me and Al are ill, we've had a week of three different little babies coming and going in the house plus the normal everyone has the late winter sniffles. Inflammation is the name of the game including joints, sinuses and for me also this always includes my inner ear and issues with my stupid thin ear tubes. Yep we have man flu and are still basically functioning, not even ill enough to be off work etc...

There is no real purpose in this post other than I wanted to write it.

The Jan Recap… (by sarah)

It's the end of January so what has gone on in the household snell-pym in the first month of 2017?

For a start there was the end of Christmas, I am still making the last few Advent vids ready for Christmas next year. We delivered presents though sadly not all the presents so we still have a back log!

Also mine and Mary's birthdays - mine involved a coffee, meal and shopping with Al before hospital stuff but we have only just done the proper celebration with kids and friends this weekend just gone which was also Mary's birthday. There was also posh vegan/Gluten Free brunch. Mary has so far played in the Waterstones cafe with her friend Lilly as her party is going to be in two weeks time. We've planned the party and got stuff ready for it.

This includes me working out how to make upcycled unicorn head bands and tail belts and little roll and pop up horses for the kids to make.

My mother was hospitalised so there was a trip to Essex and the adventures of getting home on the train which were unexpected.

DIY wise we have fixed several toys, remounted a coat rack which had pulled off the wall, dealt with networking and upgrading Jean's computer.

We got a telescope - an amazing thing which was a pool of Christmas money instead of presents for Al and Jean and part of mine and Mary's birthdays. We've seen binary stars so far. It was an undertaking to assemble and we now need to build a storage/transport box but it is assembled and being looked through though we've only had like three clear nights!

I've had three lots of testing at the hospital which took it's toll and norovirus hit the household. I missed a theatre meeting about performing a monologue and a poetry recording evening but I am being given second chances at those so that's all good.

I also missed my Krav self defence one off class and a poetry book launch which made me sad but on the other hand I was live streamed reading poetry at Food For Thought.

Talking of poetry I have also been typing up and editing poems from the BOOKCASE (Not shelf) of notebooks I have. The shear number is insane obv. not all of it is usable but a lot is so I have been organising Turquoise Monster and have even started submitting work again (as in 2 poems so far). I've written three poems this month predictable all about Trump. Of course I am doing my poetry writing challenges so I've drafted a good few more mostly not about Trump.

Jan has also been me gearing up for the poetry writing challenge that I host over at Wopo.

I have also designed, refined and created mini poetry scrolls, story scrolls, made bookwallets etc... for blank scrolls for others to write poetry on, personalised pencils and made write your own poem kits, made and put together 100 mini zine surprise pouches, story boarded two more zines, drafted half a short story, edited a couple of flash fictions, tried to write daily on this blog and started on the mammoth task of trying to sort out the Salaric Craft blog.

Also Storystorm - what used to be Picture Book Idea Month has rebranded and moved to Jan. so I have been idea generating and expanding on those ideas for kids books.

Alaric has been making a cufflink holder for the cufflinks I made him for Advent, the girls have been making invites and decorations for Mary's party and we have all been working on the cosplay outfits for True Believers Comic Festival which is this weekend coming. This has involved sewing, sticking, painting, metal twisting, papier mache and buying new wellys.

I had to get a third print run of my colouring book Love: A Stranger Dream made and in general have been trying to sort out The WigglyPets Press.

I have been teaching myself origami and have folded lit. hundreds of things from geometric modules to make bigger things from to little stand up foxes to pretty little boxes.

We've organised things for getting back down the allotment, so just sorting out containers for soil etc...

I've knitted four hats, made an Ironman craft kit, taken the kids to two (not us) birthday parties. Three projects are still currently being designed and refined including mending a rocking horse that is older than me. I accidently made a pair of slippers from an old coat whilst trying to make a portal gun (please tell me this happens to other people!).

Alaric made my laptop usable again (for now) and we had a chicken fatality 🙁 and we had to fix the chicken run and stuff and general animal stuff to sort out. We've got our new electric car and there was pie making!

NB pie was not chicken Al is veggi!

Jean is still at Scouts, Jujitsu, and Drama and Mary is doing her Ballet, both girls are missing climbing but for one of the parties we did get to go "caving". Alaric is still doing Krav and Hackspace each week. Oh and of course we had to do my tax (sobs!).

There were also visits from and too various family.

So that was January - it snowed and it rained and there was scary fog.