Fun at the park

See family out for a walk, spotting ducks, geese, swans and even herons.
See children have fun on scooters and throwing stones into the water.
See son accidentally kick shoe into water.
See family laugh, then fail in attempts to retrieve shoe.
See son have total freakout because family cannot retrieve shoe. 
See mother attempt to bring shoe to shore by flinging [...]

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Happy Birthday, Dad

Over at Mum and Dad’s tonight cos it’s his birthday, (Happy birthday, Dad!) then spent all my time discussing where various bits of places were, using Live Search Maps and SCRAN.
Anyway, very late home, so the kids are obviously hyper because they’re so tired. Had tidied away all the lego, went downstairs and back up [...]

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Day 15: The waterhole

Daughter has brought me some lego creations as presents and placed them beside a CD.
 It looks just like a strangely coloured safari waterhole, with wild dogs and gazelles and a strange box like object.
Must be the Luggage.

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End of the holidays

It’s almost midnight, but right now, my son is packing DVDs to take on holiday with him. (We won’t be going on holiday until summer, but there’s no stopping him.)
There’s no chance that he’ll go to bed soon, because his internal clock is all screwed up, and he never gets to sleep at a [...]

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Christmas is coming …

My children are growing up, and it’s clearly illustrated by two recent events.
Last week, my daughter asked me, very seriously, if it was true that there was no Santa, because her friend had told her (bless him) that mums and dads bought all the presents. “I want to know the truth, Mum,” she said, tears [...]

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40 and loving it

Well, I hit 40 on Wednesday and I have to say that I believe this is the best birthday week EVER! I was 30 just six weeks after the birth of my son. Most folks actually forgot, including me, because we had a wee bit of trauma over some gastric reflux (the baby, not me) [...]

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What happened to the Ninth Legion?

One of my favourite investigations, ever,  is the 1st year History investigation on the Romans. Why? Because it’s based around the sudden lack of information about the Ninth Legion, who supposedly disappear after setting off north to deal with us curmugeonly Celts. It’s a real mystery.
We begin by gathering information from the pupils about their knowledge of the Roman Empire and Celtic [...]

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The end of the Olympics

I reach my 40th in a few weeks and I have to finally admit that it will never be me on an Olympic podium. Not that I ever really thought it would be me (or attempted to make it me), but the occasional daydream was nice, once every four years. And that’s one difference between [...]

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Pride

Zebra Boy is ten today. TEN! When did that happen?
And he said “Thank you for Trouble on the Tracks”. Without prompting. Spontaneously. Because he wanted to.
Maybe you need a child who doesn’t communicate much to appreciate how momentous that is. For the first time in ten years he actually asked for a particular gift for [...]

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Elegant vowels

This afternoon, I was sitting with Zebra Boy trying to keep him occupied, never the easiest of tasks. And then for some reason, he came up with the phrase “elegant vowel” and followed it with “a, e, i, o, u” in a musing sort of way, as if he was trying them out – which [...]

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