The school holiday begins… but how do we tell the difference?

Today started like lots of other seem to at the moment. The kids slept in until after 7am and then were relatively calm for breakfast. No special toast requests from James which made things simpler. And we managed to make Genevieve’s porridge without having it overflow in the microwave. This has been a sticking point the last week or so. We follow the measurements and some days it overflows and others it doesn’t. No rhyme nor reason. So Stephen tried it in…. wait for it…. a different, bigger bowl. Problem solved. Well so far! Hurrah. Yes, that’s how life has become now – talking about porridge making.

After breakfast Stephen had to disappear to start the many, many meetings that had been booked into his day, using his new standing desk! Very exciting and hopefully will stop his back from hurting. I also had lots of work to do in the form of calls home to my parents at school. Cue plugging the kids into the iPads. It worked for quite a portion of the morning which is good. But there were lots of tears when I had to unplug them.

After that we needed to get busy making cards for Grandad Lawrie’s birthday. On Sunday we had lots of fun following YouTube videos about how to draw characters from books so, armed with lots of confidence, Genevieve and I started a tutorial to draw Star Wars stormtroopers. It was really simple and she did brilliantly. Then James traced my efforts and coloured his drawing. I think they were pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

Next it was lunch. I feel as though the days are like a constant conveyor belt sometimes. But then, that’s how life is when you’re that small. One activity after another. Never ending. So glad I have lots of chocolate in the fridge.

After lunch it was time to collect a prescription for my manky thumb. We decided to make things a bit more fun by rolling down all the hills we could on the way home. I took the kids home a slightly different route that included two bonus hills and happened to back onto one of Genevieve’s classmates houses. Cue a brief catch up between the hilltop and their living room window. I had seen an idea on Facebook using twigs to create pictures of dinosaur skeletons and, luckily for us, the hills were covered in twigs. Stick gathering commenced. As we arrived home I was laughed at by Stephen as I must have looked like I’d been gathering firewood. Turns out our walk had taken longer than expected and so we ran out of time for the pictures. The Grandma Lindsey chats started and I made dinner.

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After dinner we decided to have our daily exercise in the form of a walk. It was so lovey and no-one else was about. And what are days like this for if you can’t break routine and do something different? We discovered someone on our road who had started to create amusing scenes with giant teddies on their driveway. Very entertaining.

On the walk we had to show Daddy the hills and this led to more hill rolling. The kids even managed to convince Stephen to join in! Another day done and we are still doing OK. Thankfully. Long may it last.

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