It all began yesterday when I realised that I needed Fimo to do fingerprint keyrings with the Rainbows in a couple of weeks. Well, 2 piddly little blocks of Fimo didn’t seem worth Merry’s effort really so I felt I ought to make a bit of an effort… and Aprilia is running short on a couple of things and oooh, that looks nice…. and suddenly I’ve spend a little more than I planned but hey ho, i don’t spend with Merry often, but when i do, I do it with style!
Then this morning the kit list for camp arrived and I realised that actually she needed a few bits anyway. So we set out…. first stop Tesco who have a sale on clothes. She got nothing even vaguely useful but something very pink! I got blue non-denim trousers (would you beleive jeans are not considered practical for Guide Camping?????) and, in a moment of weakness under the influence of a small child with incredibly blue eyes that can still wrap me round her little finger at times, a pair of pink trousers. I may wear them for a dare some time!
We moved swiftly on to the camping shop for waterproofs, a cheap torch I won’t shout about her losing, a survival bag to put her bedding roll in and some stuff I need for the small tent. I wanted some small-ish peices of groudnsheeting too but didn’t spot that. We had a good look at all the tents, fell deeply in love with one taht I now can’t remember the name of but it had not only a hanging rail between the bedrooms but also a little zip out bit between the bedrroms and the actual canvass which had a groundsheet so you could lob all the empty bags etc out there out of the way. Oh, and it had a little cubby on one side too, and a small zip through to the porch bit where we assumed you would dump smelly boots and a huge canopy type porch….. adorable, but huge and polycotton not nylon and I really don’t want polycotton (not that we need a new tent anyway!!!! but hey!) Anyway, got all that, plus a new handle for my fave pan and a set of pans that nest together really neatly for camping so when I go to camp without Duke I don’t have to run off with all the pans out of the kitchen and hope he doesn’t notice!!!! And that didn’t come cheap although to be fair it wasn’t as bad as it could have been cos I found everything either on the budget range or on offer.
Then we moved a mile or so up teh road to Ikea. She wanted a new duvet cover and had seen the one she wanted when we bought her bed a while ago. And Duke wanted one of those bedbag tray things to stop his laptop burning his legs. And, apart from hotdogs and icecream, that was actually all we got - must be a miracle, never got out of there without buying half the shop before!
And as if taht wasn’t bad enough, I then needed to order name tapes! I did think that being a home edder such mundane things as name tapes would be soemthing I’d not need but no, she’s going on a communal camp, she will be there with several million other yellow and brown clad girls, everything needs a label!
Would you beleive we also managed some education in there too? Okay, so only a page of Miquon (way too easy for her but she’s as bad as me for insisting a book has to be finished!), stories and our new tactic for reading practice….. We are duet reading the ****** Rainbow Magic Fairies, a couple of pages a night. It’s mindless, it’s simple vocab, it’s big, clear print and she loves it so I’ll grit my teeth and read it slowly out loud with her. I’m assured its a great way to bring reading on as they get the feel for how words flow, are helped out with the hard words and get the confidence on the easier words. And it makes me feel like I’m doing something positive.