Chasing Butterflies and Robots

Thursday and the Big Three did gymnastics.

Friday we went to a Robot Wars workshop. It was originally booked for bean, 10, however Pumpkin, 8, said he'd like to do it too. I managed to secure a last minute spot for him during the same session as bean and our friends A and J. The venue allowed for me to have the girls outside on the meadow. Plum, 5,  and i made a daisy chain crown and pippin, 2, chased butterflies around the meadow.
Inside the hall, the boys got to watch a few robots built for Robot Wars in action including 'Matilda.' Then they worked in a group to build their own robot (125g) and battle it against other group's robots. They had met everyone in their group before and they all had a turn or more at operating the robot. Pumpkin won every one of his three battles.
We played in the play park after and ate more of our lunch and then headed home.

Saturday. We went to a friend's 60th birthday party in the afternoon and then went on to a bbq on lancing beadh with our church friends. Bean and plum and daddy all went in the sea. Pumpkin wnjoyed playing on the rocks.
Unfortunately pumpkin was sick in the night.

Sunday. Church day as always, except daddy, pumpkin and bean stayed at home and mummy took plum and pippin. We spent the afternoon resting and fixing FA#3's car. Daddy also fixed the wii so Pumpkin spent several hours playing lego harry potter.
The children decided that they would like to try staying up all night again. Plum was still awake at 12.30 but asleep by 2.30. Bean and pumpkin were still awake at 4.45am but asleep soon after. Bean woke at 9am but he took my suggestion to go and rest on his bed and went back to sleep until 12 noon. Pumpkin woke just before 12 noon.
Plum and Pippin had spent the morning with me playing Polly Pocket and doing various household tasks. Pippin took a nap between 11 and 1. By 1pm all four children were awake at the same time. We watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban together.

Tuesday we took another At Home Day as Pippin keeps spiking a temperature and is ever so lethargic and keeps napping at unusual (for her) times. Plum and pippin and i face painted each other as tigers and the girls mixed kitchen ingredients and cooked them. Bean began setting out the base of his tree house and marking which sections he would like to cut and/or replace. Pumpkin suggested a game of nerf wars but it has been put on hold until the morning. He also has plans to build his own robot using a remote control car as the base. We watched some robot wars clups together on youtube.

and almost over a year

Stopping to look at things that interest the boys and catch their eye as we walk here and there is becoming second nature. We try not to rush and leave more time than is necessary to get from a to b and remember the journey is as important than the destination. Today it was this 'beautiful' (Pumpkin) flower. It's not the best picture but we were examining it for a good 5 minutes and discussing it's features and what contributed to making it a 'beautiful' flower.
Bean took this photo of Plum. A child's view on the world always interests me. The boys seem to insist on approaching her from this direction most of the time and I can't fathom why. It's never enough to hold her hand, it's definitely all about eye contact and getting those smiles and giggles!

Bean turns five this week and is busy preparing for his birthday party. He asked for one and I said that he would have to help with the organising, this also gives me the opportunity to manage some party expectations. He is busy painting posters and making planets (it is going to be a space party.) It fascinates me that Bean choose to paint numerous number five posters today adding to his knowledge of both reading, writing and number value, amongst other things, all admirable things to be doing at his age and stage and certainly on a par with his peers educated in school but I was pondering the learning that has now been embedded because he choose to do this himself, I'm sure it must be worth more this way (will look it up.)
Bean also picked up his Australia books again today, he was very interested in it's position on the planet.

Pumpkin watched an I can cook episode today and announced that he would like to make the recipe they had made. It involved strawberries which I knew we didn't have but said we could look up the recipe and buy the ingredients to make it. Unfortunately the recipe was not on the associated website (boo) but there were plenty of others (yay.) Instead we looked at a couple until we found one that he liked the sound of and as it happened I had all the ingredients in the cupboard so today's baking effort was honey tea bread. We'll be taking it out with us for our snack tomorrow...thank you Pumpkin.