Precious Moments

Well, we are getting there slowly.  Next week heralds the last of the exams and it can’t come soon enough for me.  The older children are working hard with Thomas doing one past paper each day and the girls doing at least two, sometimes more.  Thomas has had more time in between his Chemistry Paper 1 and Paper 2 (almost a month) so he isn’t needing to do more than one paper per day to complete all the available past papers.  The girls have had less than a week before their English Paper 1 and Paper 2, so have needed to do two past papers per day to get them all covered.  In fact, they may even have to work over the weekend, which they have never done even once over their whole home school career 🙂  Needless to say they are less than impressed but resigned to the possibility…

The poor younger ones are feeling the neglect brought on by the fact that I have to mark all these past papers, and whilst Chemistry is fairly simple to mark (the answers are either right or wrong) there is much more flexibility in the English papers.  I am marking them the best I can, with the mark scheme, but it takes me about an hour each paper.  I am so looking forward to school returning to normal, especially for the younger ones.

That said, we have managed a bit of time outside.  One night Gary needed to go into work in the evening, after the course he manages had some big competition.  He needed to go in to collect the markers (?), so the little ones and I accompanied him.  His place of work is glorious and I can so see why it is no hassle for him to get up at 430 when this is what he is greeted with:

So pretty:

and so much wild life – my phone died before I was able to take pictures of the vast number of bunny rabbits, geese, ducks and moor hens.  I did manage to snap one of the swans, which a couple of weeks before had been sitting on a nest:

The girls helped their Daddy collect the markers:

and generally had lots of fun ‘driving’ the mowers:

Lol, so much fun 🙂

Saturday came and for some reason, unbeknownst to anyone, including me, I fancied doing a bit of gardening.  Just recently I keep going out into the garden, hand on hip, surveying the wreckage which is currently our back garden.  It has such potential, but alas I am next to useless at gardening so tend to leave it to Gary.  Lately though I had been feeling the need to garden.  I’m not sure if Gary groans every time I say that, or whether he just thinks it will pass as swiftly as it came so he really doesn’t need to worry too much….y’know, about the damage I might do if I was ever unleashed onto the garden.  This time it didn’t pass and Gary was at work and B6 was at a lose end, so we decided to garden.  I spent an hour and a half ‘gardening’ with my gorgeous six year old:

For the majority of the time I was in, what can only be described as, a slightly confused state.  I mean…weed or flower?  Treasured plant or potato tops in the middle of the lawn?  Beneficial insect or pest?  Honestly?  I neither knew nor cared!  I took everything out I didn’t like the look of, and kept everything in that I did like the look of.  I was quite impressed by my efforts and at least a quarter of the garden is looking pretty spiffy:

As soon as I could, I dragged every single child I owned, along with their father and grandmother, to excitedly show them what I had done, nudging Gary and hinting heavily that if he ever wanted the day off from his green keeping I could step in!  He grinned but for some reason didn’t make any promises…..

Weeds and pests aside, it’s looking good though, don’t you think?

I may have missed my vocation in life  😉

Have a wonderful weekend everyone <3