Precious Memories

This was such a great week this week.  We got loads done, had lots of free time and enjoyed each other thoroughly!  My photos begin on Saturday.  Saturdays are generally recognised as family work days in our house hold.  This is our chance to wash cars, clean out animal living areas, wash bedding, garden, and generally tidy the house.  The pictures here show A5 shovelling wood chip to spread over our soggy garden.  She did it for hours (in a posh frock!) and had a ball.   The older girls got their animal chores done and then helped Daddy clean up the garden a bit for friends who were coming to lunch on Sunday.  A lovely picture of my older girls together.  And T11 standing by his newly dug out bed, which he has now sown his many seeds in.

Here T11 is trying out his go-cart with the help of his very willing sister, who is belting him in.  Yes, his go-cart comes fitted with a belt as standard!

Once a week on separate days, I have each of my twins all to myself.  Can I just say how much more important this has become with age?  As the girls have reached their tweenie age, almost hurtling towards teenager-dom, spending time one-to-one has become one of the most stabilising things I have done.  Funnily enough both girls want to do the same thing – talk and have me put their hair in rags.  This picture shows L11 proudly showing off her ragged hair.  She was even more pleased the next day when her hair curled magnificently.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out too well, but this week was perfect!

I captured this gorgeous picture of B3 as she was telling me something at the same time as she was walking backwards and she fell straight into her laundry box!  I had just been snapping away C11’s dolly and was able to capture her giggling away at herself.  Just love, love, love this age!

Last week A5 and I had a long chat about improving her school experience.  She seemed to need more than I was giving her, and yet because her concentration is so poor there is a limit to what I can do.  The talk was more productive than I dared hope and this week she has excelled in every area (although she is still asking for more school – what is a mum supposed to do?).  Here she is making some packet cakes with her sister.  The idea was for L11 to show her exactly what to do and she would do it independently once a week.  She has been helping L11 in the kitchen from the time she could stand, so this was a wonderful step towards the independence she craves.

The top picture shows T12 in his fencing gear.  He began fencing last September and has taken to it like a duck to water.  We are slowly building up his own gear, which has to be some of the most expensive sports gear to buy.  However, T12 is always happy to give whatever money he has towards the purchases.  This week we managed to get him a helmet, second-hand from eBay.  To say he was over the moon is an understatement.

Children laying about the house absorbed in their books is a familiar sight just lately.  They had read all our middle ages books by Christmas (over 50 books) and we had not bought in any new ones until last week.  Five came all on the same day this week and they haven’t put them down since.  C11 already has them all read!  Fortunately I managed to get some really great 1 penny deals from Amazon and have replenished our stocks adequately that they might be kept busy ’til this time next week.  Sigh.  Then we go bankrupt.

I giggled when I saw all four girls pouring over the new Next catalogue which was delivered this week.  They know they will be receiving new Sunday outfits for Easter so there was much exclaiming of which ones they liked or didn’t like.  B3 was going for everything and she hadn’t even reached the children’s department yet!

And finally, a rather obscure picture of our television screen.  Each day the children are allowed an hour and a half of screen time.  It used to be two but we all felt, the children included, that two hours was too long.  I had noticed the girls going on the computer to watch Britain’s Got Talent performances, and whilst in essence I have no issue with that, I did feel they were simply trying to fill the time.  So I thought I would introduce them to the thrill of sleuthing, but in a safe way.  In comes Jessica Fletcher and Murder She Wrote.  Each episode is 40 minutes long and in the afternoon, after all our work has been done, the children like nothing more than to curl up on the sofa and play ‘guess who the murder is’.  Every person has their screen time at that point and I laugh as I listen to them trying to deduce who it is.  By the end of each episode they have tried, hung and quartered every single person in the film bar Mrs Fletcher!  It is so much fun listening to the four of them (B3 is in bed) that I am hardly able to get any work done!

And just to prove that we did get some work done in between go-cart racing, reading and watching Murder She Wrote, here is a nice little collage of the little one’s Mr Men school.  We were learning all about Little Miss Neat and had so much Mr Men fun.

B3 is holding a Miss Neat wax strip picture I made for her; A5 is cutting and sticking a Mr Men under the water scene; she also made some lovely Mr Men cards to give to her friends and B3 played for hours with her magna doodle drawing every imaginable Mr Men character.  Mr Messy was fabulously accurately drawn!!

As always much project work was done.  I’m getting a little concerned about the fact that the presentation is less than two weeks away and we still have so much to do.  Why do I do this to myself?

Here the children are running through T12’s play; C11 is sewing the skirt for her lady’s gown and L12 put together the meringue swans she had made the week before.

The little one’s have been begging to get in on the action, asking to have their own project time, Mr Men style.  So we decided to build a Mr Men land out of cat food boxes.  Here the girls are painting their first houses.  These are just the right size for their little Mr Men toys to fit in.

And my son has finally got round to filming his self penned play about the War of the Roses.  As always, it is all taken very seriously and heaven help anyone who doesn’t take it as seriously as he does!  Here he is putting up the stage.  The play is set in modern times with a news reporter and various characters being interviewed, most players in the War.  He has thought of everything.  He has a back drop, lighting, rousing back ground music controlled by his new purchased mixing desk (bought with his own money), he’s borrowed a tripod off Gary and is using our family video camera to film.  He will then burn it onto disc and play it as part of his presentation.  The last picture shows him filming his sister in one of her scenes.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend with much love and laughter.