L Fortnight

Again it was rather a failure of a fortnight! It was the last two weeks of term so just too busy. But Jasper and Eliza leave Primary School so they had their Leavers Service in the Church, where they are all presented with a Bible.

Then the whole year sang a song...I missed this bit; the service had already been well over and hour long so I was just sooooo late that I HAD to go to work.

This was Jasper and Eliza (with their friend Haidee) on their last ever hometime from Primary School. Was I tearful and sad to have my "babies"leaving? Was I 'eck....13 years I have been going back and forward to that school and it has changed dramatically from a school with 68 pupils, all housed in huts, only just having indoor toilets added, to what it was when we left; 90+ pupils and a brand new, completely rebuilt school.After school the whole year group drove to Pevensey Beach for a Leaver's Party and fish and chips. All the children swam (mad things).Not all the Mums went; some of us are closer friends than others and sadly we lost one of our Mums to breast cancer 2 years ago but we thought we ought to have a last photo of those that were there. We have all been a fairly social group over the 7 years since Reception (apart from Julie on the left in the pink jumper whose son only joined this year!)so it will be odd not to see each other each morning as we drop off. Mind you, I haven't done a drop off for 3 years since I started working elsewhere and I will still see those I am closest too.

Our last feeble attempt in L fortnight was to make some lemonade. Jess got zesting...

...then we put it through the seive. Very easy, I don't know why I haven't done it before really! Eliza did make some lemon cakes...but we ate them before we took a pic!

Another fortnight done; we did plan to go to the Long Man of Wilmington but just ran out of weekends. Jasper went to Littlehampton to stay with his Grandad too but we took no pics of that either.

K Fortnight

This fortnight we had a different problem to usual! We had stacks of things to do but couldn't fit them all in! The first weekend there was a Kite Festival in Brighton but we had to go to the Uckfield Carnival on the Saturday and then on the Sunday was the Year 6 Kit Car Grand Prix! At least that began with K. The children built the cars at school and then raced against 19 other schools, finishing a fantastic 8th!

This is Jasper driving on his turn. Eliza didn't want to drive so helped me support.....loudly!

This gorgeous chap is Kynan. Eliza walks him every day but he has had a huge operation on his back leg so is recovering at the moment. She has been going to visit him and so we had to include him as he is a K and rather photogenic!

Then we decided to fly our own kite. Oh My goodness! It was sooooo hard! This is Ken and Jasper flying Ken's old PeterPowell Stunt Kite from the 70's (apparently they go for a fortune on e-bay!)

Jasper launching it....
Even I had a turn....it looks impressive from the pics doesn't it? But sadly I have to admit it barely stayed in the sky for more than 30 seconds at a time!This is those brief few seconds in the sky! Apparently it was the wrong sort of wind! Too gusty and not steady enough.

We had also bought a small seagull kite which was no easier to fly either! This was my favourite picture of the day; Katy looking rather glamorous whilst launching it!

Another fortnight comes to a close then. I was a bit upset to miss the Kite Festival but hey ho, maybe we could do it next year!

J fortnight

So did we do better in this fortnight? Well we certainly tried! The J activities began with Eliza making some jelly. You would think that we had never had jelly judging by the silly antics that went on for some arty pics of jelly as we tried to take to make it look more interesting! This first one is Jasper with his jelly...

and Jess in the background of her jelly...

On the final Sunday of J fortnight we were all free, no concerts, clubs work etc (well apart from Ken who was in bed after nights). So we decided to go on a journey. First of all we drove to Jevington. Now we didn't just go there because it began with J...

...we went to see the Hungry Monk restaurant which is where they invented.....

We thought about having a piece but it was closed....and it was £7.50 a serving!

Then we began our journey; this is how it worked. Every time we got to a T junction or cross-roads we tossed a coin; heads was right, tails was left. This is the first junction...

Finally after a tour of the housing estate in Seaford and a dead end we ended up at the seafront in Seaford (where we discovered they were flying some huge kites AND advertising a kite festival next week in Brighton for K fortnight!!!). We have been enjoying this gorgeous weather so we had packed our swimmers, just in case, and decided to stop here for our J-picnic;

Not very well-balanced but there was juicy cherries and juicy pineapple in there with the Jaffa cakes, old Jamaican ginger beer, jumbo peanuts and jam donuts!

Stopping at the beach was not one of my better ideas as it was blowing a gale and the only way to stay warm was to wrap up in a towel or lie flat so the wind blew over the top of you! However were are British so the sea had to be entered, whatever the temperature and the children did some wave jumping.

After this Eliza and Jasper decided it was too cold and got out but Jess and Katy went swimming! After a bit they had to get out too as the coast guards were clearing the sea because it was too rough. Here is Jess escaping the wind...

By then we were all feeling rather windswept so we went home!

Once home I began on the final J activity with some strawberries that we had all picked a few days earlier....jam!

I cooked and cooked it for about 3 hours, testing etc and finally put it all in the jars to cool.

The next morning it was not really very set......so I shall call it conserve instead! Why is strawberry jam soooooo difficult? I have made all sorts of different jams and jellies all my married life which have set beautifully except strawberry. I just can't seem to get it in that moment that it is set but not caramelised......tips anyone?

So onto K fortnight...I thought we did rather well this fortnight!

A fortnight of H-ness

Hmm well this was the hardest one for a while. There are tons of places around us beginning with H but this fortnight we seem to have had no time to do anything, as our weekends have been busy doing other things like PGL and Guide Camp....which don't begin with H!! Still we managed some housework

using Henry Hoover.

One day we ate a packet of Haribo

and as the weather has been very wet we have been wearing our matching hats.


Ken took an arty pic of his, Jasper and Eliza's hands,

we had haddock fish cakes for tea,and we went to Heathfield. Now we do go there every day to school but this was at half term to look in charity shops for fabric for Jess to make Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat..(another story) This is a shot of Heathfield High Street, as you can see, totally devoid of anything of interest, although there is a lovely deli, some nice antiquey places and good charity shops!

Right at the beginning of H fortnight, Jasper and Eliza did go to Haidee's new house for a house-warming and played with her new hamster, Hazel, but I forgot to take my camera, so I shall go and visit them again to take some sneaky pics to pop in when I make this into an album! I don't think that will be cheating do you?

G fortnight

G fortnight just happened really without too much planning! First of all I went to Gilly's house for a day of scrapbooking.

Eliza did some gardening, planting various flower seeds.

Of course there was the guinea pigs...the other one wouldn't come out for his pic!

Eliza baked some gingerbread men that the others (except Jess) decorated in a variety of "interesting" ways! This is a Grandad one..
and this is a gobbled one!

We are in the process of building some veg boxes, but first we have had to get out this stump so we let the girls out to grub in the roots and loosen it!

Later on in the week I had Guides and we were practising putting up the old Icelandic tents ready for camp.Ken managed to get the stump out and finish the garden all ready for growing.

And finally he moved his ghastly gnome to keep an eye on things! I HATE this gnome but he insists on keeping it as his parents bought it as a joke when they knew how much I hated them!