Family Groupings (by sarah)

Jean has been playing with Dino-Mountain pretty much everyday but one of the interesting things she has done is put the dinosaurs in family groupings. This is interesting as she has large and small of the same type of dinosaurs but they are in like different style and different colours!

Also depending on what she's been doing - the dino's have adventures such as getting excited about cattle country and going to birthday parties!

She also pretends she is god and saves the baby dino's from the volcano by having it snow on them.

The only iffy thing is that she has decided that stegosaurus is a carni as the toy she has has viscous looking teeth!

The Magic Circle (by sarah)

Jean keeps asking for stories from mine and Alaric's childhoods and in trying to drag something up I began a story about my friends party as a kid. Her grandfather was a magician and needed an assistant but instead of picking his grand daughter he picked me a) because I wouldn't say how the magic house worked and b) I was small and double jointed.

Jean asked me to explain how the trick worked and I said I couldn't because I had promised and from this the conversation got onto the Magic Circle. At this point Jean got upset because me and Al where saying we didn't know the things magician knew and that we couldn't becuase we weren't part of the Magic Circle.

She was really really irrate with us until we explained that Grandfather Lionel was part of the Magic Circle - this cheered her up and she decided she wanted to email him to ask.

So we sent the email off and she later had a skype call with Lionel (I think I wasn't there) and from this she has decided she wants to go to some magic school and learn tricks. She has also been making up her own magic tricks - which are sweet and slightly painful to watch and has led to some rib cracking moments when she hid a banana down her trousers. We couldn't stop laughing - she couldn't see the joke and got angry with the stupid adults!

First Aid Beany (by sarah)

After acting like a monster Jean proceeded to do something amazing for a 5yr old. She'd gone over to Barbara for a yogurt and came back saying she'd had an adventure - she then told use she had washed Barbara's leg and put a plaster and bandage on it.

We asked why and she told us Barbara had stabbed her leg with a fork!

Startled Al rushed over to Barbara's to find that indeed Barbara had stabbed her self with garden fork, she had been carrying over her shoulder and let go and it had fallen hitting and stabbing her calf.

Al told her that it would have to be kept an eye on and if it didn't heel or became infected she'd have to go to a Dr (She should have gone anyway but that wasn't going to happen.)

Anyway I was amazed at Jean - should could have just run away from the situation like most five year olds or been inept but she wasn't. I am also worried that she was put in such a mature situation to be quiet honest :/

But mostly I'm proud of her.

Barbara got convinced to see a Dr by a friend and ended up on antibiotics.

Local Hotels (by sarah)

The list of B&B's we have on the blog is a bit out of date but I found a lovely website that tells you all about the different hotels in Cheltenham - it gives a little summary and there are links to take you through to the hotels websites which is always nice 🙂

Now all we need is the same for Gloucester, Stroud and all the outlaying areas!

Anyway it's http://www.hotelscheltenham.org.uk/

Summer Holidays (by sarah)

I feel I have slightly failed with the school holidays - I had lots of things planned but in the first week the first three things I attempted to do with Jean where grand failures :/

First off I had planned that she could join a library and we would go once a week during to holidays so we went off to Painswick only to see the library didn't open on Mondays (I should have looked closer at this point but I didn't). I thought never mind lets go to the Museum in the Park in Stroud but when we got there it turned out Mondays was like a special club day and it wasn't open 🙁

Me and Jean looked at the swans and ducks on the lake instead and played wind in the willows.

Then the next day we tried the library again only to find that it is shut perminantly due to public health reasons - now I knew it had been shut a while ago but had assumed it had been fixed :/

Mum and Dad rescued this second day of failure by taking us to Pizza Hut.

The third day I took Jean to Prim Rose Vale Farm Shop where I passed out crushing her ice-cream and having to go to hospital before she had gotten even five minutes on the toys :/

We were doing home school which Jean loves but she loves it too much and just got too tired and haven't really done any for two weeks now :/

I did manage to take her to the Wearable Art Parade in Painswick and she went to the Docks with mum and dad and to Tweksberry. But I found that I had miscalculated and we had run out of money so I couldn't take to the cinamar or to any of the museums :/

I have also failed to organise friends to come and play as they have all been on holiday 🙁

She did however really enjoy the Village Feast 🙂 all two days of it! With lots of her school friends about!

We are starting to gear up making the decorations for her party and her cousins are visiting this week which is more the sort of thing I was expecting. We also have the Boundary Walk at the weekend which she always enjoys 🙂

People are now starting to appear to ask Jean round to play which is good - but I do feel I have failed slightly with organising a good holiday for her and she has been bored and I'm afraid very naughty 🙁