Squidge currently has a penchant for screwing and unscrewing things, so he was very excited to put together this little metal giraffe from metal strips, screws, washers and nuts.
An exciting hour's browsing on Pimp That Snack and much hard toil by chef Squidge...
...resulted in this spectacular fourteen inch diameter Jaffa Cake...nomnomnom
We did a bit of water bead painting with the water beads that they've been 'growing' in the bathroom for a few days.
Squidge made some roast tomatoes from a recipe card he picked up at the British Tomato Growers' Association stand at the Good Food Show a couple of weeks ago. He then heated some fresh garlic in olive oil and mixed the whole lot with some pasta. It was gorgeous :)
We've been playing quite a bit of Nemo's Reef on the iPad, and chatting about various fish and other sea creatures. One of their favourite bedtime stories, Pearl's Ocean, has seen a resurgence, and we're planning a trip rockpooling at some point. We've dug out this gorgeous Peek Inside Coral Reef book again too (it pops up and turns into a 360 degree reef, it's lovely!).
That prompted Squidge to start bringing out huge piles of books and we've spent a few happy mornings reading lots of stories over and over again, like The Lorax, Shark in the Park, Charlie Cook's Favourite Book, and The Day Amala Didn't Start School (I love that they love my book haha :D )
Following our trips to Shugborough and Highfield Happy Hens in the last few weeks, farm's are high on the popularity scale at the moment here too. The boys are enjoying the Hay Day app, and Squidge and Moppet have been playing with this Ikea farm we got years ago and have had very good use from!
As always, there's lots of dressing up and make believe, and Moppet's joining in now too :)
On a sad note, a developer is in the process of cutting down all these beautiful trees behind our house. They were one of the reasons we moved here, and the children
get so much joy from the foxes, birds and bats that visit us from the woodland.
After appealing unsuccessfully to the developer's human side to at least leave the trees until he actually had planning permission, we called the local paper and quickly organised a demonstration for the next day. Unfortunately this still had no effect and they are going ahead. Sprout's really upset about the trees going, so we've made a plan to find somewhere we can go and plant some trees to replace them, which seems to have helped him a bit.
I found this photo while I was searching my phone for pictures for this post. It might seem an odd inclusion but it shows really nicely one of the ways we say some form of yes instead of no. Squidge came shopping with me for a couple of things we'd forgotten to get on our weekly shop. I only had enough money that day for those specific things, but Squidge saw these Frubes that he wanted. Instead of saying no, I said that they looked really cool, and how awesome that they come with a sticker, and how about I take a photo to remind me and we come back on Saturday and buy them? And then, most importantly, I remembered to stick to my promise :)
(Why do my photos keep turning upside down??? V frustrating!) This, if you invert your head, is Squidge's picture of two friends he did on the leftover card from the demonstration banners. He designed and drew and we coloured in under his direction.
The trampoline continues to be a huge hit, with even Moppet venturing onto it often :)
Their grandpa organised a trial trampolining class for the boys at the local sports centre. They both said they'd like to give it a go, but in the end Squidge found it all too big and overwhelming, and Sprout is happy working out his own moves and had only really been going to keep Squidge company, so we left before the class started, and came back to our own :)
We've been treated to some most un-British weather this week, so have had a few trips to the park with friends and a few just us...
Back at their grandparents' house they had picked up a double sided Lego jigsaw/playscene, so the boys put it together and built some of their uncle's old space Lego vehicles to go on it. Squidge lost interest after a while and went to start building a Lego Technic vehicle instead.
While the boys were immersed in Lego, Moppet played catch with me (she's getting more accurate with her throwing!).
They all headed outside for a water fight after a while...
...and while I'd brought a basin of water out for Moppet to splash her hands in she had other ideas :)
Once soaked through, they went round with their grandpa to see the latest developments in their garden. There was the new bees' nest behind the fascia under the eaves (possibly white tailed or buff tailed bumblebees, it was hard to tell). There was the now-vacated wrens' nest (the one that the boys had seen the fledgeling from last week) that had been made inside the insulation of the garden tap (right of picture)...
...and the tiny little shell of the sterile egg that had remained.
There were these stunning Himalayan lilies towering way above even their grandpa (Not sure if you can tell from the picture but the white flower at the top of the picture has its stem right where the boys are standing. It's TALL.)
After all of that they made their way to one of their favourite places - their grandpa's sand store - and spent the rest of the afternoon building civilisations in it.
After home ed group, where Sprout played a role play version of Assassin's Creed, Moppet toddled round singing, and Squidge made this paper plate hedgehog...
...and found out what his name might have looked like in hieroglyphs (again, wonky photo, grrrr)...
...we came home, popped some corn and watched The Dark Knight at Squidge's request, and downloaded Awesomenauts for Sprout to play.
Hackspace saw soap-making, and completely unrelatedly, Sprout's first go at using his Bare Conductive circuit-drawing pen to make this light up house.
A large roll of paper has made its way into our lounge, and has been made extensive use of for mirror image painting...
...jumbo jets for little toys to play in (seriously, upside down photo again and it just won't turn, why do I have gremlins??)...
...and the result of my favourite conversation of the week, which started with Sprout's question, "Are there any animals without brains?" Then progressed through considering whether or not zombiism would be a zoonosis, to what creatures would be left on earth following a zombie apocalypse. Cue millions of years of evolution, and we potentially have Spongebob and Patrick :D We then illustrated the whole process...
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