THE FROG-ACADEMY

Yesterday…

…my eldest son turned 10! He was born about 2 minutes into a Labour government and the dawn of the Blaire dynasty, which is now rapidly coming to an end of course. It's amazing to think how hopeful we all were about the 'new era' of 'New Labour' - no government ever quite lives up to our dreams does it?!

So, anyhow - Jake was up early for once. He is definitely heading into teens when it comes to getting out of bed in the mornings - unless there is some strong incentive! Yesterday we woke up to find his brand new (far too expensive) bike in the lounge and he was chuffed to bits. He even managed to go out for a ride with Joel and his Dad before school, he was ready that early!

And today he was out on a school trip to Shugborough Hall
which he seems to have very much enjoyed J.

Joel's best friend 'D' also had the day off (school was a polling station) so off went Joel at 9.30 this morning. So I made the most of a quite morning with just the big girls and Caleb (E being at playgroup). After Dave had been to fix the washing machine - nothing major thankfully - we went off to Morrisons to buy nappies and cream cakes. Then we came home, threw together a picnic to have nt eh park after picking up El's, which we very much enjoyed and the children played happily there until about 2pm. When we eventually got home everyone was hot and tired, so E went for a nap and the big girls set to with their Hama for a while, C played in the garden and around in the living room with his cars and I dozed (quite soundly) for most of the rest of the afternoon. C eventually crawled onto the sofa with me and dozed off to sleep too. All was calm and peaceful. And, even though it's now 9.30 no-one has school tomorrow so I've allowed the boys to stay up and watch a 'football bloomers' video that they love. We've also played a game of 'shut-the-box' together that I picked up cheap in town the other day. We all quite enjoyed that - more than I expected actually J!

BTW I picked up some great Glis boxes in Ikea the other day for sorting the Hama beads - they have 9 little 'segments' inside (customizable as the separators are removable). I have since spent several hours separating all the colours (and shades of the same). I guess from now on I'll be buying individual packets of colours - it's just way too fiddly otherwise, but well worth it as it has made the doing of hama a lot more attractive to the children when they don't have to pick through looking for that one last 'red' !!

Need to get these boys to bed now, or they will be fowl tomorrow! If I don't blog before - everyone have a great BH weekend - at least the weather looks set to be fantastic J.