Dens

We've been out in the garden this week preparing for some projects we have coming up......more on those later.  As I was weeding, the children were playing beautifully quietly and when I turned around to see what they were up to, to my delight I found they had made their own den. I was thrilled, they've played nicely in it together every day since. I feel so blessed to have a garden with shrubs and trees for the children to explore.

The children have also been really good at gardening and have earned some pocket money doing jobs for me.

More adventures

So the weather still hasn't really impressed us this holiday, but we've been making th best of it. One dry day we met the Perkins family at Dale End park and we had a French inspired meal together.

We were determined to eat alfresco and the weather obliged for once!

Jason did his yearly stint at Young Mens camp and this time took Eden with him. He had an absolute blast and is really looking forward to being 12 so he can go properly!

Meanwhile, I took the girls to Corrinna's who was dog sitting. The girls enjoyed walking the dog and then we watched the Bake Off together and Corrinna cut the girls hair.

Continuing along th alfresco theme we had the Basford family over for a BBQ on another day and all had fun toasting marshmallows on the chimnea.

I'm bored!!!

I keep hearing this phrase, more often than not from Eden, so I keep giving him jobs to do whenever he uses the "b" word, the idea being that eventually he will realise he can play on his own without being supervised and entertain himself.  On this particular day his job was to prepare the strawberries for dessert.  As you can tell from his face, he looks absolutely thrilled.

I let them loose with the craft supplies on one of the days, which led to some interesting creations.

Most days the idea of baking feels me with horror, so on the days where I can't cope with mess, I've come up with a new strategy. Buy ready made fondant icing and cake and let them have free reign. It's much less stressful for me and enables the children to have fun and me to not have so much mess to clean up.  I think Ismay was using icing to cover squares of cake to make ghosts in this picture here.

I don't know if I'm the only one that this applies to, but my kids seem to behave much better when there are other children in the mix. My kids have been lucky enough to have some lovely friends to be able to play with so we have organised some play dates at ours.

In preparation for the impending child influx, I asked the children to make some dens outside so we could make the most of the dry weather.

Eden even built a campfire.

We then set up some indoor activites; ten pin bowling, with the children keeping scores (the smaller ones mark making, the older ones adding up)

The boys enjoyed building lego.

With some supervision, we made some paper windmills put of various thicknesses of paper to see which required the most energy to move.  

I got the children to help me make cheats sausage rolls using ready made puff pastry and sausages; it's amazing how much more my children will eat when they have prepared the food themselves!

I hope they sleep well tonight and I hope Eden will stop saying "I'm bored"!!!

Holiday Time

And so the school holidays are here.  Daddy has no time off this year :(, AND we have seven weeks AND the weather has been awful.  Let's just say that there have been days when I have been at the point of tearing my hair out by 9:00 am, with the whole day still left to fill.  I don't mind admitting that I have found these holidays particularly hard, trying to maintain the same level of energy when your kidneys and liver are still in the "deranged" zone has made me feel like an utter failure. I have to keep reminding myself that seven months ago (probably eight by the time I get around to publishing this post) someone had to do everything for me from washing, to turning me, I had a catheter bag and that I was being fed through a nose tube! Still, I can't help but feel that I am not measuring up to the standard of motherhood I feel my kids deserve.

Here are some of the things we have been up to:  baking

 Learning how to eat with chopsticks.

 On the rare day the sun does decide to shine, we have made the most of the weather with some outdoor games.

 Eden has been using his knowledge of numbers to make targets for target practise.

 We've also built reading shelters in the garden to take our books and have quiet time,

 We have been focusing on dividing, using straws, pasta and pebbles as well as good old short division for the older children. (Note they are still in their PJs here, a treat they had been begging for).

They've also learnt how to take care of their belongings, here are Ismay and Eden cleaning their bikes (unbeknownst to me, they used two packs of baby wipes)

I took them to Cosford with the Daniels children on one of the days.

I took them to the new library in town and they got their own library tickets and learnt how to borrow books using the automated service.

We've been for several trips to the town park for pic nics.

 I've taken them to Grandma's to play with the puppies.

 One day I took them to play tennis in the rain.  We managed half an hour and then had to have our pic nic in the car.

Car pic nic: every mother's idea of good times!!

We've made craft items......

We've made roads in the house with masking tape.....

 ......but much to my consternation they ended up masking taping up their feet and ice skating around the kitchen!!!

We've been for a very fun visit to see the wonderful Aunty Sarah.  We took the children for a pic nic and to the outdoor pool. Guess what?  They ended up spending five minutes in the pool before saying they were cold.

We managed to get them to shiver and play for a good hour and a half before we took them back home whereupon they had much more fun filling an entire packet of water balloons up and playing with them outside the house.

Thank you so much Sarah for being brave enough to allow this to happen at your house.  We are so grateful for you and the wonderful person that you are.

We were really lucky to have Uncle Jordan drop by.  The kids loved filling him in on all their news and he was even kind enough to play Uno with them whilst I caught up with some chores.

This week we have braved the play pit (a zone I usually avoid like the plague during holiday time) but it was really nice to go somewhere different in the murky weather.

As a special treat I even bought them lunch there (the kids didn't know what had hit them, usually I am the cheap skate mum with the bag filled with sarnies and goodies from home, surreptitiously handing them out to my kids when no one is watching!)

We also had a lovely play date at our house with the Stevens children - spending as much time with them before they leave us for the South.