Mid-week holidays...

Ian took some holiday this week and has had the first three days off. It rained a lot and was generally gloomy, which was fine as it meant that we felt justified in staying at home doing very little! Although, somehow, it wasn't little enough, as Ian noticed that with all the dropping off and picking up from school and nursery, and popping here and there to get things, he never managed to finish any of the cups of coffee that he made....he says this aspect of being at home is making him feel less glum about going back to work tomorrow...he is looking forward to drinking a whole mug!

I was up until 1am last night working on one of the Christmas presents I'm making...and Ian very sweetly got the children off to school and nursery this morning so that I could get straight back to it at 7am, as I had been awake half the night trying to work out the best way to get some seams to join up neatly and had finally woken with a plan that I was desperate to try out...so I stayed in my pajamas until lunchtime sewing, while we chatted and I listened as he played funny songs on his guitar for me. A lovely morning.

Afternoons we filled with walks in the drizzle to the bakery to buy Coffee Swiss Rolls (yes, more than once in three days...?!) playing eye-spy with Dinosaur-boy to distract him from the cold and the fact that Ian has persuaded me that I must start leaving the pushchair at home (perhaps I need this more than Dinosaur-boy...I'm not ready to have two children that walk everywhere yet). On our walk there is a very long low wall for him to walk along, carefully balancing. There is something about walking a child along a wall...one of my favourite things...oh dear, I am in a pondering, pensive sort of mood...perhaps I am feeling a little sad that I finished filling in his school application forms yesterday?








At the start of the week Ian had promised the children an end-of-his-mini-holiday special tea on Wednesday...oh gosh, what an unhealthy week we've had...macaroni cheese (there was lots of broccoli too!) and then this ice cream extravaganza that made Zebra-girl's eyes practically pop out on stalks, such was her delight. In the picture you can just see the edge of Zebra-girl's rainbow bowl, which I love. And here's Dinosaur-boy's, which takes up the owl-theme that I've been admiring on various blogs over the last couple of weeks. Both are from the Tate Modern when they were running their Colour exhibition (...but what a shame I forgot they weren't dishwasher proof...I seem to have antiqued them somewhat!).


After tea, Ian and the children built this tower for balls to go down, which ended up being taller than Zebra-girl.

My favourite bit of it is this bit pictured below: it reminds me of a birdhouse stuck up on the top of the tower like that. I also like the shadow it makes on the wall.

And has anyone noticed that Blogger has added a slideshow feature to the Page Elements section? (you can see it in action on the right, entitled 'my pictures')...but has anyone yet discovered how you link to a particular flickr folder, rather than just a general one?