A LIFE WORTH LIVING....: Saturday here.....

Saturday, 6 June 2009

Saturday here.....

Our days always start in a very relaxed way,it takes me a while to come round and so by necessity I treat myself gently in a morning and don't rush around.Milly has never really been a morning person either and has been waking around 9.30/10.00 lately.When it is a work morning Al is up at 6.00 but on weekends may have a lie in till 8.00:-)He quite likes to get up and get going,he likes to be kept busy.He was up first, with me shortly after,while Milly snoozed on...

After walking Beauty, Alan got back and sat with a cuppa,getting in touch with his feminine side, reading my trashy mag;-)

I had baked off some sweet potato's yesterday to make a sweet potato cake today.I can't make enough, Emily and Alan adore it and so does everyone else that's eaten it.I got the recipe from a blog and I can't remember which one but here is the recipe.I just use two bread tins to cook it in and use a food processor so it is a very easy cake to make.

We had no plans this morning so when Emily did get up she decided to watch some W.I.T.C.H, while we were nearby finishing baking,reading.

Beauty did what Beauty does, and chilled out...

Alan went off to play with Emily.It is an ongoing game involving some W.I.T.C.H characters they have been playing on the walks each night.While they were busy,I eventually got around to clearing the kitchen cupboards.
They don't look as bad from this distance but things were falling on top of me whenever I attempted to get anything out to bake.

There were an embarrassing amount of things out of date,which although wasteful meant more space so I could spread things out a little.Once I had cleaned the sticky,icky shelves.

We decided to watch a film together and as we had just bought Slumdog Millionaire we started that .Milly wasn't keen and after an hour we turned it off and watched another one we hadn't seen, The Mummy(3) instead.

Alan then finished painting some garden furniture and I got on with the tea prep.Delia Smiths Braising steak in green peppercorn sauce, a simple but delicious and mouth watering Recipe.I can't find it on line but it is in an old complete cookery course book I have.Haven't got time now but may come back and put the recipe on cos it really is delish :-)

Once I had it in the oven I had a couple of hours,so went off to play a hospital game with Emily,I was the nurse and she was the patient,reminded me of Chloe as we had something similar when we were in the tent I remember:-))

Then I got in a bath and read for a while before hair washed and tea prep.

Lovely meal then TV and blogging before I head off to bed with Milly to watch the end of Slumdog whilst she snoozes off.....

That was our Saturday, how was yours?xx

4 comments:

Michelle said...: you need lots of bandages to play the game properly :-)

parcels have arrived btw - thank you. Proper thankyou will be with you shortly (i hope - we can be a bit slow around here) but just wanted to let you know they arrived fine. And that you are very lovely (if slightly incorrigible)xx; 7 June 2009 at 01:00
Jax Blunt said...: sounds like a lovely way to spend a day :); 7 June 2009 at 11:36
Lynn said...: Michelle,I'm glad they arrived safely.Hope c got a nice surprise:-) I do like to surprise people.xx

Jax it was nice:-)
Sometimes the weekends can feel like a marathon trying to fit in time as a family and still get the jobs done,yesterday just seemed to flow a little easier.xx; 7 June 2009 at 22:24
sunnymama said...: Sweet potato cake sounds awesome! Thanks for the link to the recipe :); 10 June 2009 at 10:49

This is me.....

There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.” Stacey Charter.

Why we Home educate

( Slightly edited from a blog post I did when we started out) In the end the actual decision to take Emily out only took a matter of days but before that it had been around a year and a half of talking about ti and reading books, Free range education by Terri Dowty, Educating your child at home by Jane Lowe and Alan Thomas were two that had a real impact for different reasons. Free range education has lots of examples of real life home educators and I think I can say that it was this one that convinced me the most that we could do it. We are two very average people ,neither of us left school with many qualifications, we went on to do quite well in our chosen professions and had no need to think about the education system at all until Emily came along.

I knew about home education and when Emily was born considered it as an optionbut always felt my lack of education would be a problem and that I wouldn't be capable of providing her with what she would need.Looking back with hindsight it is easy to see how wrong I was!!

School never really suited Emily......After the nursery year at a very highly rated, high achieving school we knew that particular School wasn't for us and took her out. We enrolled her in a lovely village school with only 70 children in the whole school .The ethos of the school was totally different, the children didn't wear uniforms and there was much more emphasis on the children being individuals.The head was a sensitive and principled man who wanted the best for the children. We thought we had struck gold.Over the reception and year 1 Emily gained confidence and really started to bloom. It was at this time she was diagnosed with dyspraxia( we had had to go down the diagnosis route as our observations of Emily's difficulties were not enough to enable the teachers to tailor things so she was helped and given less work in class) but she managed quite well in the more relaxed play orientated early years.Year 2 with more emphasis on academic activities got progressively harder for her. She is very sensitive and it wasn't just the academic side it was the embarassment of having to put her hand up for the toilet,seeing others being told off and worrying in case she did something wrong and got the same treatment, panicking because she couldn't do the work and the teacher never had time to sit with her (alot of this did not come out until she had left school) her behaviour at home became worse and worse she was so angry and obviously stressed . At this time we began to seriously consider taking her out but held back because of my lack of confidence in my ability to provide her with an adequate education ,my health being so poor was also a major stumbling block.

Then in year three it became blatantly obvious that something needed to change .She was struggling on all levels and we couldn't allow the school system to damage our daughter anymore.She became ill with a bug that was doing the rounds and she was off for two weeks , during that time I had a conversation with a friend who home educates her two children and I was so upset I couldn't make a decision and she said just go with whats in your heart and that really helped me to shift my thinking and stop worrying about what I couldn't give her and focus on what I could give her.

We never sent her back.I still get emotional when I think of that time , the look on Emily's face when we told her she would never have to go back to school was priceless,the immense sense of relief that we were off the treadmill of school life and the excitement of the time ahead and to be honest the fear of the unknown......

So here we are four years on and a lot of reading and researching later I feel comfortable with what we are doing . The changes that have happened so far have been helped along the way by the many wonderful blogs out there.They are so varied and there are so many different approaches , I have found ones that I can identify with and have read a lot of archive material that has been written in each and found answers to so many of the questions I have had that they have helped me to sort out what will work best for us .As much as I wish we had done this earlier and saved Emily from the distress that she went through I do believe things happen for a reason and that the time was right for us to take her out and that looking on the bright side one of the benefits is that at least she has had a taste of school and now we all know without a doubt that it is not for us !!!!

It is very liberating to be making decisions based on what works best for us as a family and not what society expects.

Let your child be a child.

No child was ever spoiled by too much love.

Be authentic with your child.

Listen openly to your child’s needs.

Believe in your child’s good intentions.

Find the humour.

Look past the behaviour… what is your child feeling?

Have fun with your child today!

“There is no reason why we cannot say ‘No’ to children in just as kind a way as we say ‘Yes’.” - John Holt

“Play is really the work of childhood.” - Fred Rogers

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” - Oscar Wilde

Children thrive in a peaceful and loving environment.

A child needs love most when things go wrong.

Children reflect the treatment they receive.

A few qoutes I like....

Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore

The perpetual testing of public school children is like a gardener constantly pulling his plants up by the roots to see if they are growing....(unknown)

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instuction...Helen Kellers teacher

I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand...Confusious