French Breakfast (by sarah)

Jean wanted to have chocolate tea with her breakfast and as she tends to have croissant with jam and honey I descided that she could indeed have hot chocolate with her breakfast if she foresook the jam and honey. She agreed and from some where in the back of mind a thought that this was a proper French breakfast emerged and I told her so - I then got down the two dish things with handles we have. For some reason I thought that you had to drink the hot chocolate out of a bowl for it to be proper and continential but where I got this idea from I can not say.

She loved it, and we discuessed different types of breakfast - she asked if she could have an English breakfast which I still have to organise at some point.

Anyway Dad is always asking me if I want a dish of Tea (or rather Tay) and to my amusement Jean asked me if this was a Dish of Tay! Chocolate Tay of course!

Anyone got any other types of breakfast she could try?

She's had Canadian - pancakes, baked beans, fruit and maple syrup at the Maple Feast back in the spring.

Tea With George (by sarah)

Last weekend Barbara went to a Mill with her friend George and then came back to have tea and cake in the garden. George is like 90 yrs old and done all sorts of amazing stuff. He is also a techy - yes he and Alaric have whole conversations that I can bearly follow.

Anyway we had been out and Jean gotten a little dart board thing with velcro darts etc... which she took round to each of us in turn and made us throw the darts and balls at the board.

Barbara had bought a guide book of the place they had been but had left it behind so we listened to their tales of what the place was like.

A Belated Fathers Day (by sarah)

Becuase Jean had her friend around yesturday we organised to have Father's Day today as a suprise for Al (only slightly blown to bits by me obviously baking and Jean asking Daddy was she still going to decorate cakes with me!).

So we made a cake - its suposed to be a rocket but didn't quiet come out as planned - I think either I'm going nuts or the cooker is calibrated wrong - I insinerated my dinner the other night and even though I tribble checked the times for things managed to burn the cake and then forget to leave it too cool before turning it out onto the cooling racks :/

I also failed to make enough icing and made a hash of putting it on the cake anyway. Jean chose the colours so yes there is a lot of pink for a fathers day rocket and yes those are little pink hearts!

But we had fun making it 🙂

Jean also gave Daddy his card and presant she had made at pre-school.

Unfortunatly Al is in trouble with Barbara for not mowing the lawn this evening :/ And I mucked up her watering system which she told me to use earlier this evening.

But I think Alaric liked his cake - there are a lot of little fairy cakes Jean decorated too!

How I made the cake will hopefully soon appear on Salaric Cooking though I think it probably belongs on Cake Wreck to be honest!

Best Friends (by sarah)

For months now Jean has always gone on about the same best friend at pre-school and has been non-stop asking if she can have her round to play so I made a little card saying friends on it showing a cluster of cartoon animals and left it at the pre-school for Eves mummy.

We didn't hear anything for a while and I felt sad that Jean wasn't getting to have her friends round but then it turned out mum had just been very busy and we arrange for the girls to play today.

They turned up - little brother in tow and though both girls were initially shy they soon wizzed off to Jeans room where they proceeded to make braclets and empty out every single toy onto the floor!

They played with the dressing up cloths that Jean never normally touches though they are there in a draw under her bed! And they run about the garden including the prickly jungle which is a new look for the path along the stream where Barbara has planted grass in the fire pit so that it is a little secret den for Jean to play in.

They played on her slide and in the little wendy house and went through the tunnel and put things in the trailor on the trike. The little toddler played with rolly dinosuar and hello puppy and the rocking horse and kept making a bee-line for the water fall!

Eve's mum thought Jean's room was fantastic which cheered me up as I had only had negative responses to it - ie its too full of toys and does it really need to be so sparkly?

They loved the garden and the Mill and chatted with Barbara about things - Muareen and her friend Mary turned up before Barbara did for tea and cakes as Barbara had managed to double book herself for part of today! This cuased a little bit of confussion at first.

The girls pretty much kept themselves entertained and we chatted with the perants - this was lots of fun for us as well and might even result in me and Jean going swimming Friday afternoons!

It was interesting that the girls kept each other entertained making Jean far easier to look after than normal - the only down side is that they decided to run themselves a bath - something neither child would have done on their own but somehow together...

I did have appaplexy just before they came over as I discovered that a cat had weed in the corner under the cabinet and so there was a frantic clearing of books and chunks of amythist and a hasty mopping of the area etc...

I was glad it didn't rain heavily and that they went outside for a lot of the time but here is the twitter poem I wrote just before they arrived:

And so the day begins

the weather looks like - rain, it brings

when out side play

should be the activity of the day

children run about the house

wish they'd be quiet like a mouse

but they will not

And loud shouts abound

that glorious joyous childhood sound

I read it to Jean who then asked, 'is that about me and Eve?'

I said, 'Yes of course it is who else would the poem be about?'

At which point I felt I was in a Winni the Pooh story :/

The Saga of the Flat Tyre (by sarah)

Yesturday Barbara was getting ready to go out and as always she went to drive Madge - her canary yellow MG convertable round to the front of the house in to await when she was ready. Jean loves to rid in the car for these little manoovers and so it was that I was sitting there working on a book review at the table in the garden when I notice that her rear wheel was - erm as flat as a pancake.

I call to her and she looks and is startled and then confused that she hadn't felt that it was flat.

Anyway (stupidly in hindsight) I wandered off to check the washing on the line and to put some more up in the workshop on the drying rack.

When I come back Jean is standing up in the car whilst Barbara jacks it up on on of those little tiny jacks that looks like two metal brackets bolted together. Jean is playing with the wheel nuts and is absolutely covered in grease.

I tentively ask if I should remove Jean from the vechile Barbara says no it wont make any difference and continues to jack up the car on a slope. I look at the set up and its shifting!

Barbara hasn't noticed and I'm shouting and pulling her away - I have no idea if she was already moving or anything like that. The car smashed down with a wide eyed Jean in it.

'That bumped me mummy' yes and thank god she hadn't been leaning over the side as she had been a few moments earlier when I came upon the scene.

The car was now sitting on its wheel hub 🙁

I removed Jean and took her to wash the grease off her hands - thinking of how I should have seen what was coming. We came back and Barbara had rejacked the car up and Jean tried to run over to the car as she wanted to go back in it and I grabbed her fearing the car would come back off of the Jack. Jean thought I was being very mean and got very grumpy with me.

But the car did slip again - the searing pressure on the jack just too much - this time it landed on the spare wheel.

Barabara then got another jack out of the garage and started jacking it up again - fearing that she was going to squash herself I stayed in the garden trying to occupy Jean in the 'jungle' so she wouldn't go near the car.

I went back to check just as the car slipped off of both Jacks - Barbara got a third out and Begain again. I was worried by this point - I'm sure that with jacking cars there are only certain places on the chassi that you can put them without twisting the car making it dangerous too drive.

Plus I knew she would just carry on until she either succeeded or something catastrophic happened 🙁

I couldn't offer to change the tyre for her a) its too physical for me to contemplate at this point in time, b) who would keep Jean away from the car? c) I would never ever risk a car jacked with one of those jacks on flat ground let alone a slop. I grew up playing with jacks and the ones Barbara has really are not safe at the best of times 🙁

Anyway she then asked me to keep an eye on the wheel and the bolt bits on the hub - so I stood on the bank with a fierce grip on Jean praying that Barbara wasn't going to get hurt and panickig everytime she put her arm between the wheel and the car - my mind couldn't help but think - if the car falls off now she'll loose her arm etc...

All I can do in these situations is voice my concern.

Barbara thought I was being silly not letting Jean near the car as she would have been fine inside it. (not if it then squashed Barbara she wouldn't have been - Jean loves Barbara and that would be a bad bad thing to happen and yes I am probably being a really paranoid mummy again.)

Anyway - she got the wheel back on and then went of to Gloucester in one piece and came back ok too which was a relief.