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Today has not been a normal day - though to be honest, I'm not actually sure what I am meaning by "normal"!

S (8) spent the day out with the one friend that he had from school. They went swimming, had lunch and then went to see Chicken Little at the cinema. By all accounts, he had a lovely day and behaved beautifully. Like a lot of aspies, he is brilliant with his sense of direction and apparently gave his friend's Dad directions all day!

J (10) had his old school friend over for half the day. I think J realised what I'd meant in the morning, when I warned him that his friend might not be interested in playing his games. His friend is used to Playstations,pc games, tv - rather than the sort of highly imaginative, complex games that my lads play. They can take over the whole house, creating worlds out of bricks, boxes, and any toy that comes to hand. Noahs Ark becomes a research station, the zoo becomes an experimental genetics lab... His friend just wanted to play on J's pc and wasn't interested in J's suggestions for games. Still, they had a nice time, and I allowed J to walk to the corner shop with his friend to buy some sweets. To give them both their due, they both bought back some sweets for W (3) who was feeling rather left out without a playmate of his own.

In the afternoon, one of our other Home Ed friends came over for a chat, and the daughter had a chance to play with J and W. Her Dad and I spent some time discussing the TOS issue that I referred to (obliquely) in my previous post.

Today I've been making some arrangements for the first visits of the year for our group. Next month we are off to a potters, and the children are now working through a design pack to create their design, ready to transfer to a clay tile.

Our visit the month after will be to the Britain At War Experience which we are looking forward to. It ties in nicely with the work that some of the families in the group have been doing about Europe, politics, and the second world war.

In the course of today I've read just short of 400 emails - I never realised it could be so exhausting! I've also been working on some new recipes for our family cookbook - it's not been updated for a while. I'll let you know when the new recipes are up.

They should include some raw, vegetarian and some CF/GF ones - if I get my finger out and write them. I've been getting a lot of support and ideas from the new groups that I've joined, for raw foods and for GF/CF diets for children.

The weather here has been bright today, the first time in a while. This meant I caught up on the washing but, without the car, we didn't get out to enjoy it. Tomorrow we are travelling across the towns to visit another HE family in Strood, which should be nice.

Dh has been struggling all day, bless him. He's still quite rough and is relying on all sorts of pills and potions to keep him at work. He's off to bed with the boys in a moment.

Ah, peace and quiet (once I turn this machine off...)