So I’m horribly late posting this but, the perfect is the enemy of the good etc etc and just going through photos for this blog has inspired me that there were some good moments in February so I’m going to post it and commit to a more regular blogging pattern this week.
February started with a really cold spell of snow and then loads of ice, which was pretty exciting! Benefits of remote schooling, no trudging out in the snow to school or wondering if it was open or not and being able to jump out into the garden straight after lessons to build snowmen. Short bursts of snow for the kids were great as we are just not used to it here and goodness knows where the proper weather gear is. Or perhaps it doesn’t exist in the house!
It was also half term, which I was both looking forward to – a break – and dreading – a break with nothing to do except go to the wet, muddy forest. Again. However, it was fun and we did some fun things, like setting up a treasure hunt in the Forest in some gorgeous mild, Spring like weather. Getting more bulbs to cheer up the house, this is definitely going to be a regular thing now as it has really helped during the long winter days. The kids challenged themselves to spend a whole day in their dens which was quite good in terms of them keeping themselves busy, but then they got bored after a day and half – they did come out for meals and sleep!
The most exciting thing was that we got eggs to grow our own chickens! Super exciting although the first time one hatched it was both beautiful and horrific. I will never look at eggs in the same way again. The kids love them and out of 6 eggs, 4 hatched which is pretty good. Lets hope they are all girls. Or at least some of them are. This has provided much excitement for the kids and another benefit of remote school is that they could show them to their class super easily!
In lockdown any excuse to celebrate anything is good! So I learnt about Imbolc and will mark this down as a festival to celebrate by making a yummy seed cake and talking about seeds, being aware of new life growing. I also made a swiss roll for Valentine’s day and some heart shaped biscuits. Isaac got into baking too and make a carrot cake pretty much solo, which was yum. We also had a fire to celebrate um half term, the fire pit coming into its own once again and after having no garden/food waste collection for 8 weeks it meant we could burn the Christmas tree. This was also around the full moon too which is always worth celebrating.
In terms of family traditions, we always have “child rules” night on a Saturday night, where one child in rotation chooses what we will eat and the movie. This is good fun but we’ve had such a run of them that we’ve got into a bit of rut, so we decided that every four weeks we’d now introduce “Eat the World” night where we sampled a different country’s food. If we can’t travel, the world can come to us! First up was China, so we did a kind of version of various Chinese foods, or probably more accurately Asian foods, the kids loved it. They’ve selected Egypt for the next round.
A big achievement for me was that I finally completed upholstering the chair that I found on the street last May and brought home as a lockdown project. Into the third lockdown and it finally got done. I learnt from this that I do not really love upholstery but I do enjoy staple gunning, that a project like this takes A LOT of time, even more time if you do it over a long period as I had to recut almost every piece which involved ordering more material. I’m pretty proud of it and despite banning every child and animal from going near it, the dog has now claimed it as his own. Not sure I would rush to do it again but I did do it and am happy with the result.
Schools will re-open again here 8th March. Everyone is looking forward to it, in the main. It will be weirdly quiet at home though and I will miss them!