Stephen’s parents were having James and Genevieve for a full-day play date today. They arrived early and whisked Double and Trouble away for an exciting day of fun, mischief and (I suspect) a little bit of mayhem.
This part was written by Grandad Lawrie.
The children had asked in advance for a teddy bears’ picnic to be an activity for the day. Grandma Lindsey, with due diligence, had all of the bears lined up to welcome Genevieve and James when they arrived.
After the obligatory cups of tea, both the children proceeded to make beds out of boxes – Genevieve for some of her dolls and James for his ‘Brown Bear’.
The temperature outside rose quite considerably, so it was decided that it would probably be best to stay inside in the shade. This meant quite a while was spent in front of cartoons on the TV, but also gave both Genevieve and James an opportunity to learn how to use a fan to keep cool. They were delighted with their new skill.
This was followed by a reading of ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ and the acting out of the story with two stuffed tigers to help make it realistic!
While the kids were off having fun with their grandparents, I’d like to say that Stephen and I spent the day enjoying ourselves and making the most of it. Sadly, current circumstances just didn’t allow for that. Oh well.
Stephen spent the majority of the day resting, relaxing in the bath or sleeping. I went in to “jobs mode” and feverishly tackled all the niggling tasks and chores I’ve had on my to-do list for longer than I’d like to admit. Oh, and I had some work to do as well. Busy, busy, busy!
We were having homemade pizza again for dinner, so before heading off to pick up the kids I quickly knocked up a fresh batch of dough. Even if I say so myself, I’m rather proud of how good I’ve got at making pizza dough over the past few weeks. And it’s always fun to see how much it’s grown once it’s been proved.
When we got home, Stephen took the kids up to see the friendly neighbourhood monkey. He was taking full advantage of being able to play golf during lockdown, although I’m not sure he should have had three balls in play at once. Naughty monkey!
Sadly the kids’ behaviour during dinner was appalling, and it was made doubly worse because they both ended up covered in tomato and grease from the pizzas. Joy. They were also “excitable” getting ready for bed and utterly nightmarish actually going to sleep. So Stephen and I both ended up having a very late dinner. Not great.
There was one exciting thing that happened before dinner though. While we were patiently waiting for our darling children to calm down, we started talking about things we could do during our upcoming summer holiday, and also started planning some activities for Christmas. It was genuinely exciting to be able to make plans again.
After dinner, Stephen had a HouseParty call with chums for his friend Jimi’s birthday. It’s the first day since Tuesday that he’s felt vaguely human so he felt good being able to make the call, but he started to struggle as the call went on. As he keeps on saying, he just has to take things slowly and they’ll get back to normal over time.
We were both hoping for rain overnight – it’s been unbearably hot this week and it should break the heat. So please rain tonight (but just not so much that it wakes the children).
The Smiths Family Blog 