School Holiday Catch Up
Once again life gets in the way of writing about it. Let's try and catch up, starting with this week.
On Monday I took the Op-shopping. They like this, everything is within their budget. And so they came home with a couple of noisy plastic toys that I would never have bought retail, but I console myself that we are contributing to their reuse and keeping them out of landfill a little longer.
Between bushfire smoke and rain downpours they haven't spent much time outside these holidays. Once we returned home however they decided to run around outside with their new toys despite the steady rain.
On Tuesday I took them to a local cinema to watch a movie - Shaun the Sheep. It's a new one that serves hot food in a cheaper version of the main cinema's Gold Class. However they weren't ready for lunch when we got there, so we stuck with the popcorn. Both enjoyed the movie greatly.
Wednesday they had a PJ day at home with Dad supervising as I went to various appointments.
Thursday the kids and I went out to the Dentist. Apparently we all have good teeth, the dentist went over how to clean them and gave the kids little kits to take home.
Meanwhile, I managed to finish clearing stuff out of the Guestroom/Playroom. It will become Ms4's bedroom once we've cleaned it up and painted. The house will be in chaos until she is installed, and Mr7 swaps rooms with David's office.
Today David was working from home again, so I went to Bunnings for some painting supplies and cleaned the walls of the bedroom in preparation for painting. The kids of course think this room is now the best possible room to play in.
The kids were forced to play outside for part of the day, which unusually for this summer was quite lovely. Mild, clear, and not wet. Mr7 is building a palisade between the rose bushes. Ms4 sat under a tree with Abby cat in attendance, drawing in her notebook.
In the evening they went to their first cricket session of the season with Dad, while I stayed home to finish packing for our trip to Foster this weekend.
Last week started off quietly enough, and featured several PJ days. On Wednesday we made it out to the Doncaster Playhouse to watch a pantomime of Beauty and the Beast.
The format is familiar now, and Ms4 was wearing her princess dress-up ready to go down on stage and dance when the time came. She was quite impressed with all the "pockets" on Belle's dress. She also wanted her photo with the cast although she was too shy to speak to them.
Mr7 also enjoyed it, he gets more of the improv humour these days.
The next day we visited the local library and got them some new books to read.
Friday Mr7 and David went to the Brickvention convention day. Ms4 and I stayed home, spending some of the time building her Christmas Lego set and doing a couple of puzzles.
On Saturday David took them to the cricket at the MCG, which I thought was a courageous decision. Apparently things improved once Ms4 fell asleep on him, and Mr7 started to take an interest in the actual game.
Sunday we all went to Brickvention in the afternoon to look at the displays. Ms4 was in a mood and since I wasn't buying her the $200 train set she didn't want to be there. But I handed her a camera to take pictures with and suddenly it was all much more interesting. I didn't get much say in what we looked at, but I got to see a lot of neat builds while David and Mr7 did whatever they were doing.
We stayed until closing time, Ms7 purchased herself a $10 Frozen set, the she and I came home on the train while Mr7 and David went to catch pokemon and pack up the exhibition. Mr7 had a small Lego-themed hi-viz vest to wear during pack-up, I hope dad took photos.
The week prior to that I was mostly spending my days at the Ultimate Fencing Camp doing coach training while David kept an eye on the kids at home.
The Thursday was a rest day, so I atoned for my absence by taking them to a park which had a traffic school set-up that could be used by the public.
Sadly the traffic lights weren't working, but they had some fun riding around despite that. There is also a large train to play in, I'm not sure which one they preferred.
On Friday I risked taking them with me to the fencing camp when David went in to work. They were very good, mostly managing to quietly occupy themselves drawing or playing on the iPads. The last session was a practical session for me, I stuck my head out of the hall before we started fencing to check on them, only to find they hadn't stayed on the couch as I had expected. They are very familiar with the fencing centre and knew they weren't allowed outdoors, so I figured they'd be ok until I finished.
As it turns out, they had gone up to the main hall and started playing pretend fencing bouts on one of the pistes that wasn't being used. There they had been joined by one of the visiting Italian fencers and fenced some "bouts" with him. Can't take them anywhere.
That pretty much covers January...
Oh, and at some point we made it to the hairdresser. Ms4 had decided it was time for short hair, and is now rocking a cute bob-cut that she calls her "Dora hair". Mr7 opted for #2 on the clippers for all-over very short.