February

Dentdale from Deepdale

So the first half term of 2020 has gone in a whizz.  Can't say much exciting has happened, Matt was out of action with a horrible cold after going back down to Bristol for a 'conference' again.  That took him out of action for a while.  Tom and I managed to avoid it but neither of us were 100% either, so when it came to weekends, Tom did his football on Saturday morning and then we were recovering from busy weeks and getting homework done.  Sedbergh cricket has started again on Thursday nights and Ingleton cricket on alternate Saturday evenings.  Homework has been ramped up - Tom has been bringing workbooks home for Reading, SPAG and Maths with significant amounts to do.  We have come to blows over it - Tom's idea of homework is to do it as quickly as possible, whilst my idea is to do it as accurately as possible.  His Reading homework has lead to us falling out - he seems to think it is ok to read a long passage once and then answer questions about it by memory only...I mean really????!!!!  I ended up showing Mrs Clements his original answers out of sheer frustration and she was shocked.  If I tell him he has anything wrong or to relook at an answer a red mist descends, he becomes sulky, answers back,  puts on an annoyed voice and no amount of reasoning will work - he digs in and refuses to listen to reason.  Not sure if that is due to not wanting to do homework, hormones, pure attitude or just hates me telling him he's doing something wrong.  Haven't worked out how to deal with it yet.

Tough-looking ponies

We also had Tom's school report and parents' evening.  No surprises for either of them.  The usual really - he could do well if he concentrated better and took time over reading the question correctly before answering it.  At parents' evening she spent most of her time justifying why he has dropped down from 'performing higher than expected' to 'performing at the expected level'.  We weren't that bothered about that - as long as he is where he needs to be we are happy.

I had an extraordinary number of cakes to do in January, mainly via Casterton School...the boys' boarding house has found me and the mums are trying to 'keep up' with each other meaning I'm getting lots of orders.  Strange it is the boys' boarding house and not the girls' - but I'm not complaining, they are generally mid week cakes as well, so bonuses.  I also had to catch up on chocolate work for Gingerbugs as I got cleared out over Christmas, there was pretty much nothing left meaning my shelf got filled with other goods until I could get enough made again.  Something to remember for next year - get lots of xmas stuff done in September.

Ewe lot

Because of illness, sports, homework and bad weather, we haven't had many days out.  Matt and I managed a nice walk two weeks ago on a Friday around Deepdale - great walk, really hard going, very cold but gorgeous blue skies and views.  We also went to the cinema one Sunday to watch Dr Dolittle which was fun - was almost as if the writer had been to our house as it was full of soppy animals - a polar bear who was constantly cold, a gorilla who had a 'bankie' because he wasn't brave, etc etc - at the moment we have a soppy polar bear and the mammoths now have to have bankies at night time - I know, I know we are soft and stupid around toys, but hey ho, that's how we are!

Oh and the Coronavirus put paid to our plan to go to China at Easter. Luckily we hadn't bought flights (very unusual for us not to be organised -we were faffing around deciding what to do / tell the school etc).  We now need to decide where to go for our summer holiday and maybe a quick somewhere for Easter.  We have had many suggestions so now we can't decide...