First week of holidays

I had originally intended to post this at the weekend, begining "We have survived the first week of the holidays without incident!"  Clearly I was wishing an incident upon us as Dog disappeared while we were all in the garden and doing jobs.  He had found a hole in the side gate and had taken himself for a walk.  Husband and No3 Boy went in hot pursuit, only for Dog to think this was a great game, and go heading into bush land.  We spent 8 hours looking for him, gave up the opportunity for dinner out with friends, rang the RSPCA numerous times, all in driving, torrential rain.  It rained all night as hard as I've heard it in the 2 years we've been here.  Children were sobbing and I was torn between feeling sorry for him and being furious!  Thankfully we had a phone call at 8.30am on Sunday to say that he was safe and sound and at the RSPCA, having been there since probably about an hour after he left!!  He was very glad to see us, but I doubt very much if he has learnt his lesson.  We, incidentally, learnt that he is actually a year older than we had thought, and is a Red Setter/Golden Retriever Cross, not Labrador as we had assumed. 

ANYWAY!!  Back to my original post...  Other than Dog, we had survived the first week of the holidays without incident, and now nearly all of the second week!  This is not always the case and the first week is often when all the bickering and nonsense goes on until everyone has agreed on their position in the heap.   We've not done much but the weather has been great so we've got out and walked the Dog, we've baked,

still loving the freshly baked bread and rolls

 played at the beach,

done some den building,

a fair amount of Hama/Perler beads,

seen some friends, played some football, been to tennis camp and still had music lessons.  The rain at the weekend was torrential so the DS's were out and there was begging for screens. 

Am I the only Screen Nazi out there?  I can't stand the way children (or men for that matter) behave when screens are on, so during the week they are banned, except for the occasional bribe for the Big 2.  No DS's, no TV, no Wii from Monday until Friday afternoon.  Computers are allowed only for homework purposes.  During the holidays there has been a screen ban until 5pm.  When I was their age I would go out and play on my bike or read, imaginative play.  No 2 Boy and his Best Friend in Scotland were always the best at this.  When they played together you could easily forget they were there as they just got on and built stuff together.  As they got older they would head off on their bikes or play in the woods next to N's house.  Even now, he is the one who has the best fun with his friends and can spend hours creating things. 

And now we are back round at the weekend again.  Husband has voluntarily said he will take some time off, so I'm looking forward to a long weekend of family time (no football or tennis matches), maybe a bit of exploring and spending time with friends. 

I'll leave you with a pic of my latest Crochet-ing.  These scarves are fabulously easy and proving very popular. 

I hope you all have a very peaceful and Blessed Easter weekend.

Smallest Boy's Day

No 1 Boy went off on his 4th camp in just over 2 years this morning. The less said about his organisational skills the better, suffice to say, Mummy was in need of a cuppa when she got back from dropping him off...

Smallest Boy has now got a Wednesday place at Pre-School but I figured that after the trauma of Monday, maybe Smallest, and the ladies, could do with this Wednesday to recover.

Instead we had a busy day at home. Unfortunately one of the disadvantages of being No5 is that it is very rare for any games or toys to have all their pieces, so he quickly got frustrated that none of the games he wanted to play were complete or that you had to be able to count/spell/write.

The Bee Game was fun for longer than I expected as it was a bit fiddly to put the leaves through.

We then moved onto a bowl of washing up water outside, which lasted long enough to check my emails and take a few more pics, then back in to raid No3 Boy's Star Wars mini-figures and Millenium Falcon.

After lunch (and a change of clothes - warmer than we'd expected) we headed out to play in the garden with Dog until Dog jumped the gate and took himself for a walk, with me in hot pursuit in the car! By the time he had been rounded up it was time for all the activities to start. We picked up Miss M, raced down to No2 and 3 Boys' school, dropped Daddy off with them to walk to No2's Football (soccer) gradings, while Smallest and I took Miss M to her piano lesson. We manged a super quick dash to the park for some Swing and See Saw action, then back to collect Miss M and off to see how No2 was getting on! Daddy was having a kick about with No3 while No2 was trying out with the A team (Yay!) so Smallest ran off to join them and did some great dribbling until he fell and banged his wee head.

Quick turn around of 20 mins to cook and eat dinner while No2 got ready to go back out again, when I got back from dropping him off, Smallest was fast asleep. Wee Lamb xx


Oh, and did you notice I've found some great photo editing software??  I found Picasa and Picnik which are both free and look like they will be HUGE amounts of fun!  You can click on the photo to see a bigger version.