Author Archives: Stephen Smith

James wanted to play golf and raided the shed for the clubs and balls. He also found a number of hula-hoops that seemed to form the holes that he was putting into (making a hole in one much more likely).

James needed a wee but had managed to convince himself that there were ants down the toilet. Grandad Stephen persuaded him that he was safe from toilet-based creepy crawlies, so James managed to go in the end.

Genevieve was keen to help make the homemade burgers for dinner. That was until she started complaining about how much the onions hurt her eyes. I wouldn’t have minded but that was literally the first ingredient that went in to the mix!

Ahead of Genevieve’s return, I ran a bath with an abundance of bubbles. You can’t have a bath unless it’s full to the brim with bubbles! Megan took this as an opportunity to start being silly resulting in a bubble fight between her and Genevieve.

Genevieve and James immediately spotted some mushrooms that had popped up around the pond. This caused quite a lot of excitement but, once it was explained that they were probably poisonous and that eating them would result in a hospital visit, the shine rubbed off the idea of picking them for dinner.

Our bubble of happiness was abruptly burst by Genevieve and, ironically, some bubble wrap. While our backs were turned, she’d sneaked in to the front room and had discovered the bubble wrap we’d left for her and James to play with together. Before we knew it, she was skipping, stomping and dancing over every inch of the air-filled surface.

James was keen to play ‘Tummy Ache’ after breakfast, and we were not sure if his request was based on him having had too much hot chocolate or on a genuine interest in playing the game!

It transpired that James had thrown his Brown Bear teddy up on the washing line and it had got stuck. I’m entirely unclean on how he thought he’d get the bear back by waving a tiny stick at it.

We headed home and started playing James’s “Sneaky Squirrel” game. He took genuine delight when all of my acorns got blown out of the tree, but then threatened to throw a strop when the same thing happened to him. Some would call that karma young man!

We went for a family walk around Keston Ponds. When they weren’t arguing about who was “the leader” or dangerously waving sticks near each others faces, the kids had an almighty time scrambling up and down the muddy banks.