Getting Ready

Tuesday was our weekly imposed At Home Day (daddy has the car for work.) It works out really well as it forces me not to over plan days out. Today, we had lots in the pipeline though. The weekend holds both daddy's 50th birthday including party and Father's day and on Monday Bean, 10, is displaying project work at a HE showcase. It may seem like we have days to get things together but when, realistically, your life revolves around preping food and one outing a day, there isn't much concentrated time left. So, today we choose and ordered presents that will arrive tomorrow (very thankful that our free trial for amazon prime is on); we choose three cakes to make for the party and added ingredients to the shopping list; each of the smalls made their own birthday card for daddy, each of their own design; and bean worked on his Bakugan display, searching for pictures on the internet and copying and pasting them into a document and resizing for printing.

Wednesday we took a picnic to Horsham park and met with four other HE families. Plum, 5, met up with V for the second time this week and they played bubbles together and in the sandpit for a while, pippin, 2, followed them around and played in the sand pit for a long while. She had taken her bucket and spade with her. Pumpkin, 8, played for a long time on his own, mostly on the zip wire, he also played chasing games with bean but it was very hot for running around. Bean, pumpkin and mummy played charades in the shade for a bit. Plum and pippin went on the swings before we came home.
Back home we made daddy's Father's day card, which was lots of fun (can't say much more as it is a surprise) but we laughed A LOT. Pippin chopped vegetables for dinner and the smalls watched films from amazon prime.

Bean has become very helpful in recent weeks, especially as we get ready to leave the house or when we are out. Not helpful in the sense that i have asked him if he could do something but he sees something that needs doing and he does it. It is lovely. He helpes Pippin into the car and straps her in (when she is willing), he fills drinks bottles before we leave and puts any bags i've placed by the door to take with us into the car. Today the open picnic bag fell out of the car and emptyed all over the car park. I was consoling a tired, hot Pippin and bean and pumpkin both jumped out of the car and picked up the contents of the bag and puzzled over how to reach the container that had rolled under the next car and they couldn't reach. They ended up using one of the many sticks that have been collected and put in the car.