Time flies

I'm another of those people who thought they were getting ready for Christmas well in advance and now suddenly feel that they are behind with little hope of getting it all done! So what's new?! I guess going away on holiday for the first week of December, then coming home with a still-ailing velcro-child Shannon, which said ailment she then kindly passed on to her parents (cough, splutter, blow) has taken a great chunk out of the preparation time. I am still struggling with coughing and sinus pain - running has obviously stopped for the time being, though I have just signed up for a 10k run in February!

Some education has happened! I distinctly remember (though not when) Jade asking to do some handwriting practice and working very hard to get each letter the correct size, and also some Timez Attack which she found daunting (though it is excellent - she just needs to take maths very slowly otherwise she gets scared of it). I read her the story of King Rufus from this book at her request and she also browsed through it looking at some other stories. Shannon, in the meantime, is extremely keen on writing letters wherever she can find them to trace over - usually magazines thank goodness. She has spent a lot of time colouring-in this week too. There is also lots of counting up as high as she can go, though she still gets confused when she gets to 29 and then goes back to 20. She has learned off-by-heart "1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+1=4 ...." and so on up to 10, though I don't know if she knows what it really means (Jade taught it to her).

There has been a visit by all of us to Longborough School where Jade went when flexi-schooling in Year 1. A separate blogpost is required for that, I think.

And so, ready or not, Christmas approaches. The (new to us, thanks to Freecycle) artificial (first time ever!) tree is up and decorated, most other decorations are up, the cake is made and is still being fed with brandy, the turkey is purchased and in the freezer, nearly all presents are purchased though not wrapped. However cards are not written and I'm having trouble with mail-merging to produce labels; we have a Jesse Tree branch but nothing hung on it and no readings/stories done (I have lost the book!); almost no Christmas crafts have been done and the girls need to make presents for some of their friends and, ideally, their parents and grandparents. And I really wanted to get everything else ready by early December so that we could enjoy the crafts and traditions side of Christmas. So far I just keep being grumpy because the 'not really a dining-room but a computer room instead' looks like a junk-yard and there seems to be too much else to do for me to get it cleared. Ah well, I still have 10 days to catch up on things, I guess.