Back to a nice routine.

I'm not usually all that keen on sending the kiddie-winkles back to school after the holidays because I miss them.  But this time, I was very happy to have the house to myself again.  We didn't have a bad half-term, but I did shout more than usual: my babes were tired all week, and all they wanted to do was to stay at home and play with their toys, and in the garden.  I indulged them, because I had no money to take them anywhere anyway!  Well, we could have gone to the beach for free, but the weather, as you all know of course, was not great for the beach for most of the week.  I offered to take them to the park, but they were just content to stay at home.  I did drag them out to Holly Farm one afternoon, and we did have a lovely time, as we always do.  And there were a couple of parties.  So all three of our outings involved soft play areas.  Not my usual preferred school holiday activity, but there we are.  To be honest, I was quite bored, and boring, throughout the week.  One Easter holiday, a couple of years ago, I wrote out a list of activities and we ticked them off as we'd done them, and that worked perfectly - we had the best school holiday, like, ever!  But since then I've not bothered with the list, and I should've done.  I will do the list in the Summer holiday (I'd better start saving up now though, as not much on the list was completely free).

I think I also found this half-term to be quite boring because the boys were sometimes at their friend Oliver's house.  He lives in the house behind us, and we've removed a fence panel so that they can come and go as they please.  Usually they're at Oliver's in nice weather, because Oliver has a trampoline!  And even when they're at our house, they're up in the bedroom, and I'm left out!  I want to play!  I've been discarded, for a younger friend.  Hmph!  Wish we'd never removed that fence panel!  I'm jealous of a child!

That's enough exclamation marks!

I've come up with a plan though: I've bought some inspiration - yes, you can buy inspiration now; actually you can buy just about anything if you have a computer and a paypal account - I have bought a pack of Usborne 'Games to Play on Holiday' cards.  And I'm going to lure my children back into our garden with promises of fun and hilarity.  Who needs a trampoline??  Not we.

These activity cards are brill.  Lots of the games only need you and your body, and the rest only require household items that most of us have in the junk drawer.  We're not waiting until the holidays come around again though, no, no, no; we're going to try out some games at the weekend.  It'll probably rain, but that's alright - we can do some puddle jumping instead.  Or, we have a fairly big space in our dining room, we can play some games inside.

Now, I am going to have a lie down, because I think I am coming down with a chest infection!  Hopefully, if I'm nice to it, it will go away very quickly (can't see my mum when any of us have germs - she ends up in hospital when we give her bugs, poor mummy).

I'll just sort of tail off at the end of this post then...  dum de dum...  bye then...