Visiting authors, arts and crafts

Ha, if I thought Saturday was an early start, Sunday was worse! First, having just remembered before going to bed to change the clocks, we realised that we didn't know if Roarke's pda (which he uses as his alarm clock) would automatically update the time or not.

You can guess what that did to my sleep; waking every hour or so to check the pda to see if it HAD changed! (it didn't). Then realising that getting up at 6.50 was - to our body clocks - 5.50... arggh!

Apart from that, Sunday is the day that I make two loaves and a set of cereal bars for my coeliac brother, which sets the framework for the day.

Today was an interesting day. In the morning we had an early visitor, when we had a "real life" author come to visit; Dave Hill, who amongst many other things writes for the Guardian, came along to spend the morning with us and educate himself about home education ;0)

He coped admirably with conducting the interview amongst interrupting aspies, persistent 4 year olds, and an 11 year old itching to get his point of view across! Oh, and Roarke, coming in every few minutes to ask a question about the baking.

Yes, I delegated the baking to him, and he and the boys made some chocolate crispie easter egg nests (they'd made some at church yesterday but couldn't eat them as they weren't gluten free), and some more of our killer shortbread.





This is so that they have some party food to take with them tomorrow, for a 5th birthday party for one of the HE children.

Sadly, it wasn't finished in time for Dave to taste any of it ;0)

Once he had gone, William reminded me that I had promised that they could "do some art". Now, regular readers know I freely admit to be terrible at craft in so much as I can't stand watching the kids make such a mess of things, so it was with a sinking heart that I cleared the table and set out the, gulp, paints...

However, William and Samuel settled down happily and had a fun time, with very little mess, and I was really proud of them (and glad I'd let them do it. Bad mum, must do it more often!).

Amongst the stuff I'd collected from someone from Freecycle, we'd discovered some packs of beads and string. All the boys then decided to make a series of necklaces and bracelets for the birthday girl tomorrow, which I thought was really sweet. All the boys put a lot of thought into theirs; William designed some eleborate necklace then promptly dropped it before it could be tied up. His second attempt just had 3 beads on it ;0)

Joshua and Samuel made some lovely designs, which I realise now I forgot to photograph before they were wrapped. Oh well!