Rememberall

Today was an At Home Day, daddy took the car to work and we had packing to begin for our first camping trip of the year. Plum, 5, and Pippin, 2, helped unpack and clean and repack the camping boxes. We did four boxes in total throughout the day.

Pippin began the day by watching Bolt whilst eating breakfast and drawing. When Plum woke up, pippin and plum played with the cogs set and watched the different patterns as they spun the cogs.

Bean, 10, and pumpkin, 8, watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire whilst also playing games on Pumpkin's tablet which he was sharing with Bean as i had dropped his and smashed the screen last night.
Bean followed this by playing minecraft on the pc whilst Pumpkin sat with him and played Clash of Clans.

Plum set about trying to find mislaid polly pocket peices around the house in the miscellaneous boxes, this resulted in her tipping all the miscellaneous boxes onto the living room floor and everyone collecting their spoils.

Pippin requested painting in the afternoon and produced about ten papers of black stripes.

We tried to Skype our friends that we had spoken to yesterday and arranged to continue today but they had gone out. There was a lot of Sponge Bob in the evening and Pippin had a bubbly bath.

Bean has been busy building his Star Wars tie fighter model and x wing fighter in the last week. Everyone has bathed, bean enjoys wearing his goggles in the bath and pippin loves the bubbles, plum likes to bath and play with pippin, whilst pumpkin likes the idea of having a bath alone until bean turns up and jumps in and then they have lots of fun together. We have also spent hours watching America's got Talent and been enjoying the ventriloquism and magicians especially the children performers in the last week. It's difficult to remember all the things that happen in a day for four small people, sometimes it feels very unproductive but it is extremely difficult to actually do nothing, as writing this blog serves to prove, and remembering it all is a real challenge.

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.