Catching up

I suddenly realised that I hadn't written about Halloween and it was so long ago now!
We had a fantastic time, Jo and her boyfriend Julek came down to visit us again and brought with them some cool shrunken apple heads that they had made. Jo also had her fantastic home made witches skirt. I painted the boys faces, Ninja as a skeleton for his Grim Reaper costume and I did Baby Dynamite as a monster - it was really tough doing his face as he wouldn't keep still and not long after I was done he decided to clean his face with a baby wipe! He'd been bathed and his entire face washed off before evening but he seemed to enjoying having a monster face for the short time it was there as he kept looking at himself in the mirror and roaring.
We made skull pizza's, creepy severed hand jellies and eyeball cupcakes which after taking a few of the kids trick or treating we took round to the party next door.
Trick or treating was a complete washout with only a very few houses welcoming visitors. I was really disappointed as I'd posted leaflets to the entire street asking those who didn't want callers to let us know so we didn't go round. Only 3 houses asked not to have the kids call round, we didn't hear from the rest but most just pretended not to be in. What spoil sports!

Every one seemed to have fun though and it was great having Jo and Julek down. Steve the scare crow was very successful, he made quite a few people jump -although they seemed, at first, to think it was Daddy Cool sat in the dustbin!


Since then Ninja has been spending a lot of time with Xander, both boys are mad keen on Pokemon and discovered a website that allowed them to produce their own Pokemon cards. They have had hours of fun creating characters, thinking up moves and getting carried away with their fantastic imaginations.

Generally life has been plodding along, we had some small celebrations for Diwali where we tried Indian sweets, did henna tattoos and made lanterns.
Ninja had a go at dinosaur origami and has set up an online shop where he wants to sell his photographs from. Baby Dynamite is now very good at drawing circles and using glitter, he also enjoys performing forward rolls whenever possible.



A couple of months ago I registered at the doctors, I left it for as long as possible before I did as I was sure that as soon as I did all sorts of people would start popping up. And they did!
First it was a letter from the LEA wanting to confirm that Ninja was being Home educated or at what school he was registered. I filled it in and returned that one. Not really a big deal but now they know where we are.
Next it was a letter from the health visitor inviting herself round for Baby D's developmental check. I was in two minds whether or not to cancel it as i really can't stand their patronising or their tick boxes for how well they think that my child -who they've never met, should be doing.
I doubt she will like that he has a dummy, she may think he's small for his age - having a short Daddy will do that, but most of all I hope that she sees the very happy, intelligent and wonderful boy that I have! Actually, how could she not see that!

As I said I was going to cancel her visit but decided that actually I wanted to talk to her. Baby D, while being very chatty doesn't say a lot of actual words, well not clearly so I want get the HV's opinion. I know all children develop at different times and he is coming out with more and more all the time but I also don't think there is any harm in checking, so, if he does require a little extra help, he can get it sooner rather than later.

The last person to pop up was an LEA inspector. He arrived at my door uninvited and unannounced. I was really quite annoyed. I don't appreciate my friends turning up unannounced let alone some guy I have never met before.
He wanted to come in but I refused, didn't really introduce himself and although he was wearing his ID round his neck made no effort to actually show it to me.
Neither did he explain exactly what he wanted, just about me writing reports and how he'd like to come round for a visit. I said I'd have to ask Ninja as be wasn't really comfortable with it and his response was that he could send him a photograph so he'd know who to expect! Not quite sure how he thought that would help, it doesn't make him any less of a stranger!
He told me the law was changing (!!!!) regarding what was required of me so he could help me write up my reports for them, even write it for me if I wanted, so maybe we could arrange for him to come round after Christmas. I think he was trying to be helpful but I was so annoyed at him just showing up like that.
He claimed it was the only way they had of getting in contact with me as they didn't have my phone number - I wasn't likely to give it to him either! Though he obviously had my address so a letter would have been nice - but no, apparently they had sent several letters to me. This isn't true, as I made very clear to him.
I won't be having him to the house, I don't buy this "I've done nothing wrong, so have nothing to hide" attitude. This is our home. Its private, we only invite people we know and care about into our house. While Ninja is generally, now, happy to chat to new people, it has to be at his own pace, when he feels comfortable to do so. He has already made it clear that having and LEA officer in his home would not be comfortable for him so we shall be writing to them, not only with our report but also with a complaint.

Aside from that things have been pretty good. Ninja came with me for the four day craft fair I did last week. Daddy Cool took two days off, the Wednesday and Thursday so the Dynamite Baby spent time with him. On the Friday he stayed with is Nana, and again with Daddy Cool on Saturday.
Its been really strange not seeing much of him over those few days, he did really well, I think it helped that he was with Daddy Cool for the majority and not his Nana, don't get me wrong he loves spending time with her but its not the same is it? Yesterday he wanted to do everything with me, not that I minded of course, I have missed him and it worked out well as Ninja was at his dad's on Sunday so got a break from me!
The week of the fair was quite enjoyable, sales were none existent pretty much but both Ninja and I met some really lovely people.
We got a lot of questioning from the old people on the charity shop stalls. Most were just intrigued and asked the usual questions but one woman did my nut with all the 'he needs socialisation' 'he needs to be with kids his age' blah blah blah -seemed to have escaped her attention that he was having a variety of conversations with all sorts of people all week, her included! She was a scout leader and kept telling me that he should be at scouts - didn't seem to matter that he didn't want to go, and with people liker her I don't blame him!
Most we really interested and a few really got it -mostly the artists to be honest, and almost everyone commented how lovely and well spoken, friendly and happy he was. Go Ninja!
I think he learnt a tremendous amount while being there, not just the funny little tricks some of the stall holders showed him but more important things that he probably hasn't even realised he's learnt.
He made some new friends too, he was particularly taken with Richard Vobes, 'Vobes' is an "entertainer, actor, film maker and professional podcaster" and was at the UpMarket doing the empty shops radio and interviewing various people - he also does a fantastically funny suitcase routine!
The whole experience was wonderful for Ninja, he was allowed to wonder around the huge showroom space, by himself, whenever he wanted, playing and chatting to everyone who was there. He helped everyone out from putting up ladders, to finding nails and hammers to helping construct a recycled Narnia. He also taught alot of people about Pokemon and Starwars!

Not sure what this week has in store for us yet, guess we'll have to wait and see.

Meet Steve...

This week we've been getting ready for Halloween. We have had a lot do to really but I'm in a bit of a 'can't be bothered' mood at the moment unfortunately, not sure if its the increased darkness or lack of sleep - probably a mixture a both, despite the fact that Autumn is my favourite time of year!
Halloween is something I look forward to every year, I love it, much more than Mythmas. Ninja is not normally so excited about it but is also looking forward to it this year, the Dynamite Baby isn't really aware of Halloween but as he keep insisting he's a monster at the moment I think he's going to enjoy it.

This is the Ninja's Lego Trick or Treat scene that he has made for us to have on display over the weekend.

We have a lot of plans this year, Jo (WireCraft) (she blogs also: here) and her boyfriend will be coming down to celebrate with us, we will be decorating the house, making spooky food and trick or treating. Our neighbours are also having a party so we will be taking all our food over their and joining in the fun!

We have been working on a few things to use to decorate the house for Saturday, one of which is the massive pumpkin we bought a few weeks ago. Ninja being a grim reaper fan has decided we are going to carve Grim's face into the pumpkin this year, he will also be dressing as the Grim reaper, while Baby D will be a monster, Daddy Cool is dressing as Uncle Fester from the Addams Family and I will have a Day of the dead inspired costume - if I actually get round to it!
We have also made some Halloween garlands from fun foam and I am working on some paper bunting which I'm quite keen on at the moment.

The best prop we have made so far though has to be 'Steve' - named by Ninja Jedi. Steve is a spooky Scarecrow who will stand in the front garden to greet Trick or Treaters - clever ol' Ninja has even made him some glowing red eyes which we will put in once his head has been properly attached. The Ninja made Steve almost entirely by himself and I think he did a wonderful job don't you?

Today, we've been to the local Charity shops in search of the bits and pieces we need to finish off some of our other Halloween ideas, sadly we didn't find what we were looking for and the Dynamite Baby had a tantrum in his pushchair and managed to make it tip backwards, knocking his head on the concrete floor. Luckily he was OK after a few tears and I'm very glad that he has a small pillow which he rests his head on else it could have been quite bad. I carried him home in his sling after that which also helped I think as he got to have a cuddle all the way home.

Ninja is now playing next door and Baby D and I have made two very tasty looking chocolate bread and butter puddings, he is no dancing to Charlie and Lola on cbeebies.




If you want to make a chocolate bread and butter pudding its really easy to do, substitute the butter you spread on the bread for chocolate spread, while heating the milk for the custard add a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder and whisk in and instead of raisins use chocolate chips or chunks. Easy peasy and really good!

Tonight Ninja and I are hopefully going out -depending on the weather and I have a birthday cake to make for a friend, but right now Baby D and I are going to read some books together. x

Music please.....and the days that followed

Last Wednesday Baby D spent the day with his Nana so that the Ninja and I could travel up to London with our friends, Gill and her son Xander.
We had tickets to see the Primary Proms being held at the Royal Albert Hall, so got the train up and arrived around mid day for the 1.30 showing.
We sat and ate lunch in Hyde Park, along with about a million school groups, the majority of which were made to sit in a close group every so quietly and eat - all that is except one school, all dressed in their matching red sweatshirts who were allowed to play in the Autumn leaves!
It was wonderful, and so great to see school children actually being allowed to be children and have some fun!

After we'd all eaten and Ninja and Xander had played in the leaves with some massive sticks or "Whoa they've got weapons!!" as one of the school children put it, we weaved our way through the masses of children all dressed the same, holding hands, walking in lines, 1 adult to every 5 children,and found out seats in the Hall.

Typical Ninja fashion, when I'd mentioned the proms to him he pulled a face and didn't really want to go, but once we got in their the impressiveness of the building got to him straight away "Wow!"

The music was great, with a mixture of Choirs, Samba, a Rock band, who despite their very trendy almost emo style covered a Dizzee rascal song, which I have to say they did very very well but it was a little surreal. There was an Orchestra, Jazz band and a sing along at the end. We were very surprised though at just how many of the seats, entire rows even, were empty. There had been a showing in the morning but I got the impression that maybe a lot of schools don't know about it or can't afford the travel to London to see the proms which is a huge shame.

The Proms were presented by the ever annoying, Worthing local, Dave Benson Philips. Who apparently has "been entertaining children for over 25 years" but still couldn't manage to learn his lines and had to read from his clipboard throughout the entire thing, his co-host was the aptly named Alexander L'Estrange. Unfortunately for Mr L'Estrange - though I'm sure he couldn't really care less about my views either way, I find a thirty something man dressed in a suit describing things as 'wacky' or attempting to beat box slightly tragic! Maybe that says more about me than him, and there is no doubt that he is a very talented man (you can listen to a few pieces he's done here), but it was, for me, rather cringe worthy!
And to be honest Ninja Jedi wasn't overly impressed with the singalong beat box bit either!

Aside from this though, all the children that took part were very talented, it was a great day out AND the red sweatshirted school kids - they and their teachers/adult helpers/parents, started a Mexican wave which spread throughout the entire Albert Hall - only the other school children got told off for joining in! Through out the entire concert the school which we were sat in the middle of, not one of their staff smiled or chatted to their group, the red sweatshirt school however had very smiley staff who even let their kids stand up and dance - and danced with them!
Don't get me wrong I still have no intention of sending the boys to school but if I *had* to and I mean absolutely *had* to, it would be to one like that ;)

So anyway, that was Wednesday. Thursday Ninja rode his bike to Lancing as we had to go and pay some bills and run some errands. We stopped off at the bakery once we were done and Ninja went into the news agents (alone, again) to buy himself some crazy bones.
We popped into a charity shop on the way home and I got myself a large selection of various sized embroidery needles for 25p!!
Once we were home, Ninja called on Xander who came round to play until tea time.
That evening I confirmed bookings and re-checked dates for everything we have planned over the next few weeks and decided that I really should get a diary or I'm going to forget something!

Friday we went into town with Gill and Xander as there was a knitting workshop being held at the local fabric shop. I'm not sure the woman doing the workshop was overly impressed with us having the kids there and Ninja and Xander got a bit bored, BabyD was really tired so didn't even want to be in the shop so it really wasn't very successful. However Gill did pick up a few new skills and stitches that she wanted to learn so I guess not an epic failure really.
After the kitting we wandered around town and picked up craft supplies in order to make decorations later on for a Diwali celebration.
Ninja and I had to pop into the Library to return some books and photocopy some Trick or Treat notices and then to the Museum where I had to pay for a Skeleton Workshop that Ninja is doing in a few weeks time. While in the Museum BabyD decided he wanted to look around so, all agreeing, The Ninja Jedi raced off to show Xander all the bits he likes.
In one of the gallery rooms there was a display of work by Peter Slight which the boys were really inspired by. They took a lot of photographs and may have ago and recreating some of his work themselves as they really were very impressed.
All the photographs were taken by either the Ninja Jedi or Xander, including this amusing pair:


After the museum we then headed to West Worthing to an Asian supermarket and bought some Henna and Jalebi and some bits for lunch.
All in all it was a very good day and we all thoroughly enjoyed our spur of the moment visit to the museum. We Love Home Ed!!

Over the weekend we had 3 of the four children over from next while Daddy Cool and FiL collect my new welsh dresser. We baked some cakes, tried some Jalebi - which non of them liked! Did Henna tattoos, painting and dinosaur origami. Mostly they just wanted to play so I let them to get on with it and they did it very nicely!









This week began with the National School Films week and the Ninja and I were booked into see Coraline in Brighton. The cinema it was showing at has to be the trickiest to get to without a car so we decided to get the bus, which meant leaving the house at 8.30am - not something either of us has had to do for quite a while now! The bus journey had to be done in two parts and all in all took and hour and a half and cost a small fortune! I'm not a fan of buses at the best of time and the massive cost of the tickets just made it worse, we did however manage to make it there safe and sound and in time so found our seats and waited for all the school children to pile in.

The film itself was great and Ninja really really enjoyed it - so much so he now wants the DVD to watch at home. It was slightly spoilt by the constant chatting of the school children and by one girl in the row behind us throwing us all over the floor!
The bus ride back was fine and we collected Baby D from downstairs where his Nana had yet again spoilt him rotten buying him a new coat, and Elmo t-shir (he loves Elmo!), a puzzle and a cake!

Most of the rest of the week we now have plans and I'm really loving this busyness we have at the moment - not all out and about but lots of great things we're doing at home too!
Right now we are off to the farm shop with Gill and Xander as they want to get their Halloween pumpkin - I really must resist getting another one!!

Two in two days, good aren't I??

>

Ok well not good, maybe just sucking up a bit after being so neglectful! Today has been one of those slow ones where everything we plan to get done doesn't happen, fortunately the boys seem to have had a good day and both are in really good moods.

This morning they were playing really nicely together, after watching a bit of morning telly, Baby D finished his 3rd round of breakfast, and was covered in a mixture of chocolate spread and milk and The Ninja had written a big list of all the star wars characters he knew into good or bad categories, they both joined me upstairs. I was sewing and could here their out of breath laughter down the hall as they had turned Daddy Cool's radio alarm clock on in our bedroom and were both dancing around and jumping all over the bed like a pair of nutters.
After a while I decided that Baby D really needed a wash and the chocolate spread beard he was sporting and dribbly milk bib down his chest really couldn't wait till bath time with Daddy Cool once he was home from work. The Ninja decided he'd quite like a bath too so both boys jumped in together, Ninja playing with Lego men divers and Baby D washing Baby Cakes (his cabbage patch doll) with shower gel and bath crayons. Once they had both gone suitably wrinkly it was time to get out and after a quick dry they returned to jumping on my bed!

My sewing done, I came down stairs to start on the washing so both boys joined me. Xander from next door had rung the bell shortly before asking the Ninja to go round and play so we had decided that after he'd done some reading and had his lunch he could go over.
We are reading James and the Giant the Peach; it’s our Roald Dahl book of the moment. I read a few chapters at bed time each night and The Ninja reads a few pages every morning. After reading his pages he ate his lunch, wrote up his postcard of yesterday’s events to his Auntie Cheska and got ready to play next door.
Baby D and I sat on the sofa together having a cuddle and by the time Ninja left to play Baby D had fallen asleep, the house then was unusually quiet!

I caught up with yet more washing a bit of housework when the post arrived with some tickets for an event we had booked a little while ago. Yay! Baby D woke up so we sat and watched vintage sesame street on youtube and singing songs until he decided he was actually rather hungry.
As usual everything suggested he didn't want, but we finally discovered that he did want popcorn! I love making fresh popcorn and its great for a quick snack too, so I made some up for up with just a small amount of butter and he ran excitedly into the living room where he plonked himself down on the floor with a huge grin on his face! He sat watching Come Outside with shoving fistfuls of warm buttery popcorn in his mouth. It was a very exciting episode it seemed as he kept squealing and showing my how they were mixing the bread dough - he wasn't so impressed with Auntie Mabel’s story of the little red hen though!
The Ninja has been invited to stay for tea next door and seems to have talked them into having his favourite -pizza! He should be back soon but in the mean time I need to decide what the rest of us are going to eat! x x

It's been a long time....

...and we've been awful busy! Probably more than I can remember to be honest, but I will try and remember as much as I can but I can't promise it will be in the right order!

My last post was about the big bubble blowing event held in Brighton. It was a protest at the Badman review and also a way of showing the community that home educating families are everywhere, are 'normal' (what ever that is!), our children are safe and happy and that the only difference is that we choose to educate our kids in a different way to the majority.

Since then Home educators all over the country have got together online and planned simultaneous 'Not Back to School' Picnics. It was the brilliant plan of Ali, who planned and arranged the original Bubble blowing Picnic.
These Not Back to School picnics got local Home ed families meeting up for a couple of hours. A chance to make new contacts, welcome new families to HE or for old friends to catch up.
It was also a way of saying, not everyone goes back to school in September. The majority were all held on the same day, the 16th September and at 2pm every one stopped to blow bubbles.
Our local picnic wasn't as large as the original Brighton one, but we still met some new people and had a chance to catch up with friends. And thanks to these picnics Baby D has not only learnt to say 'bubble' but also how to blow them, both of which he was immensely proud of, and rightly so I think!



Also Worthing had its own arts festival recently, Made in Worthing. Set up by the Revolutionary Arts groups fronted by local artist Dan Thompson, it was a chance for Worthing based artists to get seen and for the towns people to see what was on offer. After making a suggestion to Dan that the festival should include some children's work (specifically some of the Ninja's photographs!), he put me in charge of organising a kids exhibition that was shown in a local nursery.
It went really well despite only having a small number of children involved, the majority of whom produced a couple of pieces of work and all of the children were home educated. It was opened up to all children but only the HE kids came through, so a big YAY for home ed kids. Despite the mountains of things they are all up to they still managed to find the time to paint draw or photograph something!
Here are some of the Ninjas and Baby D's pieces:

The Ninja has also come up with a big plan, inspired by the artist Slinkachu on the BBC's Smart programme he has decided to come up with some street art of his own that he will photograph and then leave for the public to find. The photographs he then plans to sell, framed, from his on line shop.

When we met with Dan (Thompson) after taking down the children's gallery, Ninja told him all about his idea. Ninja really enjoys talking to Dan as I think that he really inspires him. He is always happy to listen to his ideas and engages with him in a way that most adults don't. As Ninja Jedi has always been bought up being spoken to like a person rather than patronised or babied like many people do to children, he finds it frustrating when "people talk to me like I'm stupid".
Anyway, he told Dan about his idea while we were in a bookshop and Dan seemed to get rather excited while telling me to wait there and Ninja to follow him, the two disappeared for a few minutes only to return with a book of Slinkachu's work! Dan said he'd been meaning to buy it for a while so did so and then allowed the Ninja to borrow it for a while for inspiration.
Ninja was made up by this and hasn't stopped looking at it since!


Baby D hit the terrible two's in August and while some days he can be a bit terrible, mostly he's as lovely as ever! His speech is really progressing and his determined, independent personality gets him exploring everything, all the time, without a break! At the moment he seems to be very interested in texture, wet and squidgy things in particular which involves a lot of hands in paint, soggy paper and mashing of food with his hands!I think that perhaps a session of handmade paper is in order for him!!
He also is getting very good at knowing when he needs the toilet and although more times than not he doesn't make it, the percentage of the 'making it' times are rapidly increasing!
Non toilet related, Baby D and Ninja have both made new Friends in our next door neighbours. Gill has 4 children, 2 boys, Xander 10, and Axle 2, and two girls Niamh 7 and Thalia 4. Xander has begun to be home educated from this September and so he and the Ninja have become best of friends, spending as much time together as possible!
Baby D and Axle don't yet play together, more alongside each other at the moment, and see less of each other than the older boys as Axle is at preschool.
We recently went with Gill, Xander and Niamh to see the Darwin exhibition at London's natural history museum. It was a long day but as always the museum is wonderful and a whole day is never long enough. The children all enjoyed the Darwin stuff, especially all the interactive parts - well those that they could get on when various adults weren't pushing them out the way or complaining to staff that the children didn't know how to use it properly so shouldn't be allowed to touch it!!!! Grrrr.

On top of all that there has been the usual book reading, the Ninja and I are still working our way through Roald Dahl's books along with many others, Ninja is now writing a postcard every day to my sister to tell her all the things he has been up to, we visited Shoreham by train, not a long journey but despite being close by its a place we've never spent much time. Our neighbour Gill owns the health food shop there so we spent some time in there while she let Ninja work the till and serve customers. She explained bar codes to him and he had to work out customers change etc. After that we walked across the river to a park where the boys played and we ate the picnic we had bought with us. After playing and eating we walked along the river bank and looked at the fantastic house boats. They really are amazing, each has a little deck/garden and some are painted beautifully. Ninja and Baby D both liked the one that was made with half of a bus!
We also borrowed Stig of the Dump from the library on DVD which the Ninja has really really enjoyed and a visit from a friend resulted in a big pile of DVDs for the boys that she was clearing out.

We've also had our kitchen refitted - it looks great!, Daddy Cool has been taking the Ninja swimming so they have both been enjoying a bit of time together and we got some kittens. A little black fluffy boy who we named Seth and a tortie girl named Peggy.




My elder sister is also staying down here for a little bit so we've been able to see some more of her which has been great too.

I've gone a bit tie dye mad and after the boys chose various dye colours I have dyed some terry cotton sheets and transformed them into PJ bottoms for the boys, here's Baby D sporting his bright pink pair which he insisted on putting on immediately after I'd finished them. (That's tomato pasta around his mouth not some nasty rash!)


That probably doesn't cover all of it but that will teach me to neglect the blog so much won't it!

This morning Ninja did a bit of maths in the form of working out how much all the items on his wish list from the Build a Bear Workshop would cost, £65.00 exactly so far! We then went for a long walk in the rain, I had to go to the bank so there was no way around it really but actually it didn't turn out all that bad. Ninja took his bike and Baby D fell asleep soon after we left. I really love that Ninja has the freedom and time to ride his bike as much as he does, his coordination, spacial awareness and confidence have all progressed tremendously, and he can now ride further and for longer without getting tired. Daddy Cool is going to get a part to modify his handle bars so that they can spin 360 degrees while still having a break so he can start practising some tricks with his pegs. He can already step from his peddles to the pegs and back again while moving but now wants to be able to stand on the pegs and spin his handle bars while moving.
While we were out I gave Ninja £1 to buy us both a bar of chocolate. He has been into shops alone before but that was always with the correct money, this time he had to work out if he had enough for what he wanted to buy. When he came out he had done brilliantly and told me that he even asked an assistant where the chocolate was! So much for that shy boy that came out of school a year ago!!
On the way home Ninja and I had a talk about the police after seeing two vehicles stopped on the same spot, one on our way to the bank and one on the way back. Once we were home Baby D continued to sleep and the Ninja got out his sketch book to begin drawing his ideas for the screen printing we are doing in a minute.
I'll upload his sketch's and take photographs of his finished T-shirts once they are done. We also plan to bake a cake, do a bit of reading and write a postcard today - that is if I can drag Ninja away from his Lego and Baby D away from his postman pat van!

Bubbles in Brighton

So, it's all been go on the HE front! Yesterday was the great Home Ed Bubble Blowing Flash Mob, organised by Ali, an HE parent.

Around 60 HE families turned up in Brighton's New Road to blow bubbles and hand out flyer's to make aware our disgust in the proposals set out in the Badman review.

It really was wonderful, all the children had a fantastic time and I think we really made a lot of people aware of what is happening, giving out around 1000 flyer's, we were joined by a local newspaper, The Argus, who took photographs of various families, including us, and arranged to do phone interviews with us at later dates. There was also a camera crew from South East Today News who did a brief piece on what we were up to and why, which has very kindly been put onto YouTube for us by Ali's partner, which you can see here.

On top of that my friend Nic also did a fantastic job of being interviewed for the local radio - listen here and fast forward to 02:34:40 for her bit.

Today we went to Nic's for lunch and then all went to a family crafty fun day kinda thing where Ninja made a few new friends.

Once we were home the boys played in the garden with more bubbles and washed their vehicles - Baby D; a sit on tractor. The Ninja; his BMX.

And I had a phone interview with the reporter from the Argus, who had been in Brighton yesterday. I was a bit nervous but felt it went well and was good to give them another view on HE as a lot of the other families she had spoken to, the children have never been to school and HE was a choice for them from the start. Obviously Ninja Jedi has been to school so she wanted an idea of why we then chose it and how we got on with it as apposed to traditional 'schooling'.

This evening I got an email from my sister with some of the photographs she had taken of our lunch on the beach a few weeks ago.

Baby Dynamite (not looking very impressed!) Ninja Jedi and my sisters dog Mac.

This black and white one is just gorgeous!

The rest of the week weplan to do more art and crafty things as the Ninja has plans for a few more of his photograph pictures and Baby D has some new pens!

Grown up things.

The Ninja has announced that he'd like to learn to do more 'grown up' things. "Like washing and cleaning?" I asked.
"No, cooking and fun things!" was his reply.

I think what he meant was that he wants to be able to do more things for himself. He has already mastered the art of making toast and he can also heat things up in the microwave. (At least I know already that he's not going to be a teenager/man who can't feed himself, even if he lives off microwave meals and toast!)

This morning he has already made himself a cake. Now, yes, us making cake is nothing unusual in itself, but this time we made microwave cakes. Far simpler and easier for the Ninja to manage himself, with me there mainly for guidance and removing the hot cakes from the microwave.I used to make these for my brother when he was the Ninjas age, they always go down well!

We sunk some chocolate into it so when it was cooked it had a yummy melted chocolate centre.

Last week we participated in an art performance set up by Worthing artist Dan Thompson. It was called 'One to Another' and the idea was that Dan walked around Worthing giving and taking gifts from one person to another. He asked for small gifts, preferably handmade, recycled and homemade - which obviously suited us perfectly!

I was very pleased that the Ninja wanted to get involved too, so after some careful consideration he came up with this;

He took the photograph himself of the beach outside our house, he then drew in pencil a picture of Baby D and himself holding hands looking out to a boat and a pair of kite surfers in the water and a crab and hermit crab sat beside them on the pebbles. He then stuck his drawings onto the photograph and framed it in a charity shop bought frame.

I think it's fantastic, and to be honest I was tempted to keep it!

I made a freehand machine embroidered seagull which I also framed.

We then wrapped up our gifts, we wanted them to look really pretty so used tissue paper and ribbon - the Ninjas is in the gold paper.And wrote out gifts tags.Dan arrived at around 1.30 that afternoon, the Ninja wowed him with his beetle collection and we all ate cake and chatted for a while.
Once we'd completed the gift swap We walked into town, stopping off at Coast cafe where they have a piano on the beach for passers by to play. The weather had been pretty bad all morning and it was very windy so the piano had been put inside. Luckily both Baby D and the Ninja were still allowed to have a go - unfortunately neither one can play the piano so actually it was more plonking than playing!

Town was less busy than I'd feared - we usually tend to avoid it as much as possible, as I think the wind probably put people off. We had a wonder around the charity shops and stopped off in Beach House Park on the way home so Baby D could have a chance to get out of his pushchair and run around. He did a lot of running about, which included chasing some pigeons while the Ninja rode his bike.
All in all it was a great day and Dan liking the Ninjas gift has really boosted his confidence and inspired him to do more pictures -so watch this space!