My Pals Are Here

We went out today, on a train, only an hour late. It has been difficult to go out for ages now, so I was pleased we managed it. No-one had any kind of major meltdown, though because it was to a new place no-one was very sociable either. It won't be new next time, so that's ok.

And then we came home and Linnea started in on My Pals Are Here 1B (workbook part 2). She seems to be enjoying it.

On the way home from our trip out we saw a proper classic toadstool, with a hemispherical red top covered in little white spots. Sadly, my phone is dead and I forgot the old camera, so I took a very bad picture with my ancient phone and it's not good enough to upload. But it was lovely to see anyway.

Stars

Last night was the end of a very hot day - 29C or so, the first of October! And it was a cloudless night, so at bedtime, instead of sending everyone to bed, we brought them out for a walk around the block and into the (dark, unlit) playground. I actually think we'd have seen more stars from our back garden but it wouldn't have been as exciting.

We saw patterns, some of which we could name and some we couldn't; the children saw their own patterns, and then Linnea lay on the ground and just looked, until she couldn't any more, and gave up. There's something overwhelming about a sky full of stars, how far away they are and how many there are and how clearly we seem to be able to see them - when actually what we see isn't anything like what's really there, the freezing expanses and the burning masses and the warm summer wind settling on our bare skin while we're down on the dewy grass. The juxtaposition is too much.

So today we bought a diary and she's writing one-word entries only about the happy things in each day.