Green House visit, ponies and bubbles

Yesterday we had a visit from Dani, Leo and Pearl of Green House By The Sea, which was lovely. The weather was just about good enough to spend some time in the garden, so they all played out there while I got lunch ready, resulting in at least one major calamity each I think, each on a different item of play equipment, so Dani was kept very busy. It was nice to be able to sit outside at the table for lunch (pittas, salad - lentils, avocado, cashews, chard, rocket, tomato - and crunchy veg to dip in houmous). While we ate we talked about languages and alphabets a bit and Pearl demonstrated her amazing flag knowledge and also her rather excellent conversational skills.

The children seemed to get on pretty well - F was quite thrilled and slightly scared (in an exciting Dr.Who or roller-coastery way) to be chased by Leo as a cyberman, and she and Leo both made cybermen in different ways using silver card. F gave hers to Leo to take home with him, which was a nice gesture. They also talked a bit about Dr Who and compared notes on sticker album progress!

Earlier on they had all had a lot of fun with a new bubble-making thing that was one of the last deliveries resulting from my recent Amazon 1-click frenzy. Luckily it came with 3 different blowers, so those were passed around between them. I love giant bubbles! Dani had some specialist bubble tips gleaned from a family member with experience in giant bubble-making. We took pictures and filmed them - I was going to play the film while they were here but didn't get round to it as the camera didn't speak to the puter at first and then I forgot to go back to it and got distracted.

Somewhere in the mix, when the children were in their quiet phase, Dani and I managed a quick chat covering Greenham Common, feminism and parenting briefly. Hopefully we will get the chance to talk more when we see them again. As they set off to go get their bus, F rushed out and gave Pearl a big cuddle.

After the Green House gang had gone, F and I did our own things for a bit (mine being dishwasher and laptop, hers being sandpit and bubbles). We watched Totally Dr Who and got excited about the next episode, then rewatched the two Cybermen episodes. She asked me to film her with the little ponies doing something, so I shot 5 films, one minute for each of the main ponies she had there (one is visiting friends at the moment), and they each got a close-up at some point. The story was pretty hazy but it was fun.

Later, J was out for much of the evening, and I let F stay up late, as I relaxed with a glass of wine and watched the C4 Big Brother edit to see what kind of spin they had put on the big row of the night before (which I had watched while working). She laid out a long lego railway track including the bridge and then laid out small lego bricks alongside it to be a city and an airport at the end, which was a few white bricks and some other special bits. Then she wanted to build a house for her ponies but she was getting too tired, so I took her up to bed, read a couple of chapters of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and she was off soon after.


This morning, she and I went out with J on his way to work (late at 10am!) to go to the local shop and get various needed items including our Friday night curry. F had a good run around in the park on the way back. Back here she has built a pony house (only one-pony size, so far), successfully solved a few different problems that came up in the course of building it with very little input from me, played the harmonica a bit, joked that it was broken by playing the wrong side, played with the motor and gears with me making a thing that a pony could stand on and go round, blown some more big bubbles and watched her pony films from yesterday on the puter.

Tonight, curry, wine, Sezer being evicted from BB and more relaxing. I don't really have to work until Sunday evening I reckon. Sunday during the day we might go to the big local Springwatch event, as Dani mentioned it and I just looked at the website and thought it looked really good. J's mum has her operation on Monday, hoping that all goes smoothly for her.