Lots to add

I'm not going to say it but I am thinking it has been a lonnnnnnngggggg time (gosh it just slipped out). Life has been fairly busy with working and stuff to be done for work, as well as holidays and DIY stuff and the need to sleep and let my hair down doing pointless things such as staring at a small box (TV or computer).
Sooo holiday- we went up to Ayrshire and did a half board holiday on a holiday park- which was a very new departure for us. Some interesting moments but it was rather nice not to have to do hardly any catering and the food was pretty OK even if a little canteenish. She kids put us to shame as they would go up to the buffet selection and come back with plates of ham/egg salad- having walked straight past the chips and fishfingers- hurrah we must be doing something OK. Our big day out was going to the Glasgow Science Centre ( Nina & the Neurons place) which was OK but probably a little too old for all of them still. I think this is probably a lesson for us that all of our children are still much younger than sometimes we treat them?? Even SJ whilst the oldest just found it overwhelming- the vast amount of noisy/rowdy school children did not help as they were routinely pushing in front of my little ones. Culzean castle was very nice though-lovely ground and apparently a nice playpark ( although I can't personally comment- since I had the very great treat of going in the house whilst M took the kids to the playpark).
Anyway- back home we have been trying to get on top of some garden maintenance which has been a little overwhelming. As TP was crawling last year we let a lot of general mainetenence lie as he was requiring so much supervision- and we are paying the price for that this year. A good achievement has been M having finished the greenhouse base- so that we shall be able to move our gifted greenhouse in next week. Hopefully in time to get a few tomatos or something this year! We are also starting to think of getting going with a replacement kitchen- which will be totally exciting as we have been making do with the clapped out 30yr+ kichen that we inherited- complete with broken door and burnt worktops- rough plaster which has 'shelves' an inch deep in dust and a bare plaster wall with exposed pipework ( describing it like that I can scarely believe that we have lived with it for 8 yrs and had three newborn babies around it!!!
On a HE front we have started to get back into doing a bit of socialising- I guess I had been avoiding some of it due to the being back at work thing and the fact that it is a fairly hefty journey to most things. M took the kids to a behind the scenes day at the local airport- SJ got to 'drive' a jumbo- which just made his day. I took the children to a EH castle with a large HE group nad we have met at parks with smaller groups. Coming up I have booked the older two onto a four hour 'Forest schools' taster session- which maybe starting to be a more regular thing in September.
SJ has been making good progress with his reading and seems to have jumped forward quite a lot. We are not using the Phon-graphix method quite so much at the moment as he is enjoying the Oxford Reading Tree books which do a fair amount of whole word recog- which he seems to be getting on OK with. I am starting to think of stepping back to the Phono-graphix in order to make a further leap into some of the more complicated sound pictures such as 'ow', ie, aw' which is probably the next stage. Somedays I do still feel that there is an element of coercion in getting him to read- which I am not a great fan of admitting. We are relatively unschooling in the majority but I can't get past the belief that reading is just soo important. He is quite enjoying doing mental arithmentic- often staring little games in the car and is staring to be happy with minus as well as plus. He is in the process of being kicked out of his swimming class into a post school class- but being as he is nearly two years older than the rest of them it had to happen and frankly we thought it was probably time too.
FI is showing a fair amount of interest in the concept of reading- however I am not sure if this might have something to do with the fact that SJ gets his apparent 'special' reading time with mummy- so we are informally working on a few new letters- she currently knows about half of the alphabet. She seems to like having a few 'worksheets' to do as well.
I have just signed both of them up to 'Reading Eggs' site. They are both enjoying this- FI because she finally has something belonging to her (she has been after Education City for a while) and we have been pleasantly surprised by SJs apparent level of achievement.
Anyway my fingers ache- I know I should do more little and often.....
I guess my next challenge is to work out how to illustrate with picure as my wordy posts look a little bring at the mo......