Diary: Day 1

Having been doing my 'How to Weave Yoghurt' blog now for a couple of weeks I found that, while this is a great way to record the activities of the girls, there was nowhere to record the activities of me, mum. I don't want to encroach on their space, and clutter their achievements with my inner ramblings, but I want to have somewhere to reflect on how things are going, what is working, aims etc.

So here is that space. As I blog the girls life I will waffle along in the background, and then no doubt look back in a years time and cringe at all the psychobabble I have spouted :)

So how are things starting - in chaos, how else. Grandma W arrived yesterday, Grandma N arrives tomorrow, today Dad is 40 and at the weekend we have about that many people coming to help celebrate the fact that now his is officially a grumpy old man. Not content with that lot, then the rest of my family are visiting for Easter - 15 house guests, and a pony show in the middle.

So in the middle of bed shifting, sheet washing, cake baking, saddle cleaning, ham roasting, child taxiing, mother collecting and the odd glass of Tia Maria there is this tiny niggle in the back of my mind that somewhere in this I am suposed to be educating the children.

The only tangible thing they have to do is Hannah's application letter for the OU - which we are doing this morning, because it has to go out of my brain if not to the OU. But other than that...

They will get lessons in engineering (bed building), Home Ecconomics (baking, sheet washing), Science (why does the sugar do that on the ham, and why are you boiling it in Coke) and of course, advanced diplomacy (what else could watching your parents interact with both mother and mother-in-law at the same time be called). Pony show will cover P.E. (trust me, all that tack cleaning is physically hard work).

But still I worry that they do enough, or that I do enough. Should they be sat at a desk with a workbook for 6 hours a day? On the whole - No :)