Well - I can't believe it quite, but Caleb turned one yesterday (despite my ticker being apparently a day late!). This may be the last chance I have to celebrate a 1st birthday if Paul wins (if I had my way there would be more babies!) so we made a bit of a meal of it - literally. Jack & Tracy were staying for the weekend with thier family, so we had a BBQ and asked over Caleb's Godparents, Michelle & Brendan, and Geoff & Helen (other close friends). So in all there were 9 adults and 11 children milling around in the house and garden. It was hot and sunny and we had a lovely evening :) Caleb was happy to have lots of his favourite people about too. And so we enter his second year...
Aside from birthdays (it's was Paul's last week and mine this week too - as well as father's day - June is not our cheapest month!!), it has been a great half term. The boys had a fantastic time away on Energi camp. I don't think they thought about home once and from what they had to say it was full of late nights and mischief as all good camps should be!! Abbie and Phoebe really loved staying with their cousins for a couple of nights and apparently were quite happy to be away from home too. I'm so glad my children are like that, although it makes the future flight from the nest seem that little bit closer! The little ones seemed to have coped OK with my Mum for the two days too, so that was a relief. And Paul and I had the most lovely two days away. In times like these - that happen all to rarely - that make us stop and BE together, we actually had time to realise why we fell in love in the first place and actually that we still really LIKE each other as people and share some common interests, aside from the kids. We still can spark each other's fire and we can still really laugh together. We can walk and say nothing and just we comfortable in each other's company, or we can chat freely about anything as well as challenge each other on things that need a nudge in the right direction. It was just SO good to have that time. Now the bank account needs to catch up with us!!
And then of course it's back to life, but not with a bump as the children were re-instated in dribs and drabs - first the babies, then later that evening the girls and a couple of days later the boys. Probably more of a bump for Paul, as he had to go to work the same afternoon we arrived home - pants for him :(
The second half of the holidays was pretty busy too, but mainly with having friends over for cups of coffee and play days. It has been lovely to relax and enjoy the garden, have water fights and play in the sandpit (that has been such a brilliant buy). Have I said before how fantastic it is to actually HAVE a garden?!
Back to school today, but a friend of mine asked me to have her girls (10 & 7) for the day as they had an incet day and she had a course to go on. It was great to have them here even if it did mean school was a little 'different'. I didn't want the girls to feel like they had had a tough day at school, but at the same time I wanted to give them a flavour of our school and not give mine another day off. So we did music this morning and made a bottle xylophone - ace fun. then we played socially speaking game for a while. Collected Phoebe and played for a bit inside. Then after lunch we did some drawing and 'crinkle art' - sticking bits of scrunched up tissue paper on the pictures to 'colour them in'. It was a very successful day and encouraged me that it is actually more fun the more children are involved in the learning - looking forward to a couople of years time now - really am!! :)
Time to go watch Teen Terrors - might blog more later...
CU
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