School Holidays Week 1

Ella's family 

This kid is obsessed with going to bed in his tiger hat and always has to have his 'fluffy fluffy' (aqua blanket). If it's in the wash I can appease him with another blanket from the cupboard but it HAS to feel fluffy and soft when he puts it up by his face

Ella's school holiday spot...nail polish on the deck. She can stay there for 3 hours straight easy

My big pig tails girl (she always goes with her hair out and pretty scruffy and her teachers tie it up for her)

 Seth thought it would be funny to walk down the hallway with his yoghurt and drop spoonfuls of it onto the carpet. Dallin had it all under control by the time I got there!

Ella     'Mum, can we do some fireworks tonight?'
Mum     'No not tonight'
Ella      'Dad can we do fireworks tonight?'
Dad      'Sure, go and bring the box out'

Dall's wasn't bothered by the noise like I thought she might be, but the poor thing missed the whole point. I tried to get her to look up for the whole 10 minutes we were doing them and she only watched the ground where they were being lit, never once seeing the actual sparkles up in the sky....duh!

Marmite n Chippy Sandies after our outing to Westwave

Thanks Grandie for the Coconut Choccie

 Our stake did a Time Out for Women style RS activity on Friday night. It was really well done and cool to hear from 6 different women with different messages and backgrounds.

I left with a lot to ponder regarding 'striving to be whole', 'what are my talents?', and remembering that 'I am good enough'

Ella's letter to Aunty Beezy (couldn't put it on IG for some reason so here it is B). She's getting really good at sounding out but I translated just in case

At our Teacher only Day last week we spent a lot of time talking about how important it is for kids to play. It was really interesting to listen to people's perspectives on the value of play and on what holds us back from letting kids do it more freely. For myself I know I think 'waste of time, messy, pointless, toddler stuff....'. But by the end of the day I did gain an appreciation of how important it is for kids to be kids and play and discover and interact with the world around them without being structured or guided by adults. And then I read an article later on about how anxiety and depression in children has increased over the years and correlates not by coincidence  with a decrease in 'play time'. There's a lot more to it I'm sure, but it made me interested to watch Ella play on Saturday cause she's really good at it (if it's possible to be good at playing?). I would usually shut it down after half an hour and tell her to put all her things away (messy!), but I just left her and watched and she had such a great time being a nurse for her sick unicorn. Note to self: Let my kids play more often!

This big kids 'play time' is watching TV at the moment so I've gotta crack her out of that lazy habit!

After watching her millioneth Teen drama for the day we finally finished the Boxcar children. Took us about 4 months and 10 overdue notices but we did it. We actually only read it about 10 times so it didn't take that long but we had massive gaps in between. Great story. Note to self: Read together more often. I see children her age who love reading and we haven't got to that point, it's still a bit of a chore and when she does read at nights I think it's a whole lot of skimming and not so much getting 'lost' in a good read. Trip to the library tomorrow I think

So cute to watch this little Petunia Picklebottom play with the blocks. It took a lot of concentration and fine motor skills to join the blocks and pull them apart. 10 points for trying doll

Selfie of my first official child free Sunday School and RS. Dallin has started in Nursery!!! So after I've suffered through Sacrament, all the kids go to their own classes and I can listen and learn for myself. That feels like such an accomplishment that I made it this far!

TROUBLE in his new shirt and tie

Faithy's at a great age to read stories from the friend and do the activities. She loved doing the wordfind yesterday. And Ella cuts up the pictures on the back cover and uses a whole glue stick to glue them to another page (and the table!)

Shared dessert night for the Bishopric families. Great adults and kids right there!

And now we're into week 2 of the school holidays. My tidying list should be getting smaller but it feels like the same length it was last Monday. How does that happen?