Busy times

Well this week is going to be utterly mental, methinks. We have Andrew's 8th birthday on Saturday and to celebrate he's having a wee sleepover on Friday night, so this house needs gutted. On Sunday we do the Race for Life and there's costumes to be made for that (for explanation go here. I also have my Politics assessment on Friday and need to prepare for that (help!).
The fact that I almost have an 8 year old is quite terrifying. It really seems like no time since he was a tiny wee chicken-legged bundle, and now he's too big for me to lift up without doing myself some sort of injury.
Anyway, today is an anti-Procrastination day. There is much to be done and I have to do it.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. ~William James

Manic Monday

Andrew's not well today, he has a sore throat and a barking cough. So he's home from school today, which is fine as it's catch-up week at college and we don't need to be in today. Because there's no college, I didn't see any reason to take Elise into nursery so she's home too. And poor wee Lewis had to go to school so I though it would be nice to let him come home for lunch and cover his uniform in tomato soup for the afternoon.







I've been listing things on Ebay this morning and discovered as my account is fairly new, there's a 10 listings per month limit til I get my Paypal verified. Frustrating!
Anyway, I *should* be studying for two NABs we have on Wednesday.

Back to School

Okay I'm slightly late with this as the boys went back to school on Monday, but it's still their first week! So that's okay. Here they are in their uniform:



I've had a few people comment on how early it seems for them to be going back to school - here in Scotland the schools break up towards the end of June and they go back in mid-August. I have no idea why it's different up here but perhaps it's because August here is more like Autumn than Summer, and we're more likely to get better weather in July (HAH!). Ironically our best weather was back in June when they were still at school, wee shame.

Filled with the indignant rage of 1000 mothers

I have been sitting here trying to write my 'Intro to Andrew' post as I hadn't got around to doing it but I just can't get the thoughts out as I am absolutely furious. This fury is brought to you by the letter A. A is for 'arsehole' (sorry Mum). This is the description of the person who stole Andrew's bike last night. 

I can't actually describe how angry I am about it. He's had it for two months and now it's gone. And I can only blame myself - he got vouchers to go to Halfords to buy a new lock and suchlike for it, and we hadn't got around to doing it so it had been getting kept at the bottom of our stairwell. Someone has walked past, seen it and just lifted it. 

I want to punch things. Mostly myself.

Sunshine on a rainy day...

Yesterday I was perusing a few blogs and came across the perfect rainy day crafting project to do with the boys - so I had a wee practice (nothing worse than them slaving over something only for it to not work out, nothing to do with my childish sense of impatience at all) and posted a little teaser picture on Twitter to see if any of my followers could guess what it was. I thought it looked like questionable scrambled eggs, however I did receive one correct guess (and a few wrong ones) - it's a PVA glue/tissue paper window sticker, as inspired by this blog post over at Cooking, Cakes and Children by Amy Lane. If you check out Amy's post, it tells you exactly how to make one if you or your kids fancy having a go at it.


This morning my practice sticker was all finished, and it was fitting that it was pouring with rain given that I had made a sun.




Here are the boys busily working away on their own stickers. We all decided to make rainbows.




And here they are waiting to dry. There is a lot of PVA glue on these bad boys so I'm expecting them to be ready to stick up around about November.



The boys thoroughly enjoyed making their own window stickers and it was very easy for them to get on with and do themselves. It's a nice, simple little activity for a day stuck inside and takes up enough time to keep them occupied for a while but not so long that they get fed up. Definitely one we'll be filing away to do again.


In other 'sunshine on a rainy day' news, Elise's nursery called today to make a date for her first nursery visit (16th August) and to confirm what date I wanted her to officially start on (30th August). So in less than 4 weeks my baby is going for her first nursery visit then at the end of August she will be officially attending nursery! I explained all this to her earlier, and her response was to laugh in my face and say 'Muummaayyy' in a slightly condescending fashion. I have a feeling we're going to have to take Important Big Girl Nursery Business a bit more seriously than that! Like the 86 forms I have to fill in before she starts.

Have you had any rays of sunshine on this rather grey and dreary day?

Baby got Back

We're home! Had a truly lovely two weeks in the sunshine of Normandy but I'm glad to be home.

We stayed in La Vallee, Houlgate through Keycamp and I think we would definitely do this kind of holiday again - the kids loved it and the park itself was lovely.


I flew out with Elise and my sister Sarah - long story short - the rest of the family drove/ferried over and once they arrived my brother was meant to come get us from the airport. It was all timed to perfection. So of course something went wrong - my brother was late to the campsite so we had to entertain an 18 month old who had had NO SLEEP from around 6-9pm in the stifling heat and metropolis that is Beauvais Tille airport (shop count = 1). I also informed my sister 'Oh it's okay I've got enough money to get us some dinner while we wait' before realising it was all Sterling. We had muffins and went for a wander (or 6) around the airport.

That evening, we got lost and eventually arrived in the campsite at 5.30am. I should point out we should have been there for around 9pm the night before if everything had gone to plan.

So that was exciting. Apart from that neverending nightmare of a start, the holiday was a great success I think.



We went to the beach!



We wore our special holiday purchases that Mummy had been getting stressed about arriving in time (and looked adorable)



We met some interesting creatures.



There were waterfights...



And games of cricket on the beach.



And sometimes it just all got a bit too much...


Are you going anywhere nice this year?

*The observant amongst you may have noticed theres a heck of a lot of extra children in these pics - they are my nephews as this years holiday was a big family affair with my brother, his wife and their kids, both my sisters and our parents.