James came bounding down the stairs full of smiles and happiness. He’d very clearly woken up on the right side of the bed. What a lovely start to the day!
Grandma Lindsey and Grandad Lawrie had kindly offered to have the children again for another socially distanced play date in their garden, so we got packed up and headed off for a morning of fun.
This part was written by Grandad Lawrie.
Genevieve and James arrived with their LOL Dolls and aeroplane respectively in anticipation of building structures for them with the white bricks from the previous day – and what excellent structures they were too.
Afterwards the lure of her sticker books proved too strong for Genevieve (which occupied most of her morning) and the chance to scoot around the garden was what James opted for.
However, this was constantly interrupted by James’s inspection of the many bees attracted to the flowers in the garden. He’s becoming quite the David Bellamy (without the beard of course!).
James then fancied turning his hand to making Playdough bees instead, while Grandma Lindsey perfected the art of making hot chocolate (with all the trimmings) with help from Genevieve.
Once the inner child had been satisfied, James invented a game that proved to be a mixture of tag, statues and John Travolta dance movements. We also played a couple of games of Velcro darts.
Great fun was had by all this morning; although Grandad Lawrie needed a two hour sleep to recover.
While the children were at their grandparents’ house, I completed and uploaded all the reports I’d been working on. I then led a student Zoom meeting, but none of the students joined so I had a lovely catch-up with one of my teaching assistants instead. I also managed to get lots of the resources ready for the project I’ve been setting on animals and mythical creatures. A time consuming but necessary process.
In the afternoon, once the kids were back from their morning’s escapades, we took full advantage of the sunnier, warmer weather and got out the water table. This was a slightly sneaky move as it also meant that Genevieve could experiment with the idea of volume and capacity for this week’s maths schoolwork. Stealth learning! However, I’m not sure quite how much learning actually happened as both children spent most of their time painting the patio or generally moving water from the water table to other containers. But they had fun, and it also meant I had some time to sit in my recliner chair and use my iPad to create some doodles. Yeay!
Today’s dinner was cooked by James and Stephen. Meatballs and pasta with epic sauce. Stephen followed a Jamie Oliver recipe that involved putting pesto in the meatball mix. Weird! He has really missed cooking and also spending quality time with the children, so he took great amounts of pleasure and care cooking today. All the standing up meant he was very tired though.
And the results of the cooking were delicious! The pesto really added something to the meatballs – who would have believed it? The children even ate the sauce mixed with the pasta – normally they have to have the two completely separate. It’s a miracle!
After dinner, both kids were dirty from all the water play in the garden so a bath was needed before bed. James found himself channelling his inner Macaulay Culkin. Stephen had warned him that he was a bit young for aftershave, but James just wouldn’t listen!
Just before we put them to bed, we dressed the kids in their onesies and took them up to see the friendly neighbourhood monkey. Today he was curling with actual curling stones. A most unusual sight in suburban Orpington!
With the kids finally in bed, it was our turn for dinner and a spot more Jack Ryan/Harrison Ford before an early night ready for Genevieve to return to school tomorrow.
The Smiths Family Blog 
Very entertaining and great photos
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