Yesterday

F had a lovely time with E visiting. They played DS, bounced on the trampoline, played 'Guess It' (like 20 questions but more flexible), tried to build a Crazy Golf course, made up a story taking turns together and watched a bit of Alice in Wonderland. And they did it all without requiring any involvement from me, so I just kind of mooched on the laptop, got them a drink and a snack when asked and that was it really. My previous experience of having more than one child here without any adults has been that it's much harder going than just having F and I've had to do a lot more, but with E it's different. They are getting more confident at suggesting things and trying things out with each other and both like verbal games, both good at listening and taking turns with each other, so no arguments.
So that friendship is really working out... so far....

C, M and baby D came to pick E up at half four, then we got ready to go to Woodcraft Folk. It was a pond-dipping session, which means it's roughly a year since we joined, as our first session was pond-dipping too. We walked over to the nature reserve, having some lovely conversation on the way. F had picked up a leaf at some point and then a bit further on we met a man who identified the leaf as a lime leaf, which meant it was edible, so we stopped and chatted and nibbled lime leaves together for a bit. We told him about our recent discovery of some Chicken of the Woods (big bracket fungus) up in the lane - we haven't tried it yet, but plan to. Also all the kids had some dill that was growing well around the edges of K's allotment at last week's Woodcraft, so a lot of picking stuff and eating it going on recently.

A bit further on, we walked past one of the cartoon posters protesting against local development, so we talked about that and the fact that our town is going to be included in the National Park area, and what that means in terms of development. Also saw a poster for a local event we'll probably go to in a couple of weeks, so talked about that. F said 'I love where we live, this small town of comfort and wonder'. She has a very poetic turn of phrase often at the moment. Really want to do some poetry appreciation/writing with her soon.

We got to the meeting place just outside the nature reserve about 5 mins early, so sat waiting, looked at the river. F got us making up a song - you had to put together lines about the natural things around us, following the same tune and ending each line with 'as usual'. Then everyone else turned up and we went off to the shed to pick up containers and nets. Everyone was in good spirits and chatty, it was a nice session. The kids managed to find 4 little fish, some kind of damselfly and a couple of bugs and nymphs. F got a water snail and spent some time playing I-Spy with (other) E down by the reeds. Only 1.5 kids and a dog went in the water!

We left, having managed to arrange a lift to next week's session as it's out of town.
On our way home, we picked up chips and houmous salad wraps and then went via the park. As we came along by the Grange we saw a small bird fly straight into a tiny hole in the wall, about a foot from the ground. We crouched down and looked, couldn't see in but we could hear baby birds in there.

Today and tomorrow we don't have to be anywhere or do anything particularly, might have a walk out by what's left of the winter stream - it has stopped flowing but we want to see what the deepest part looks like now, whether there is still water there, any life in it, etc.