Sunday 28 May 2017

This week has been all about geckos, and Wales.  

Fred's birthday is coming up, and he would like a leopard gecko.

Monday and Tuesday were taken up with visits to reptile shops.  Monday's was ok, but the woman we spoke to didn't seem all that interested in selling us anything, or checking out our suitability as leopard gecko keepers.

The Tuesday shop - Evolution Reptiles in Kidlington - was brilliant.  The owner spent ages with us, showing Fred all the leopard geckos they had and letting him hold each one, talking us through the different live food, and advice on the ideal vivarium.  Fred fell for a lovely albino one, and we put a deposit down on her. He's decided to call her Goldzilla!


We'll collect her (and all her paraphernalia) in the next week.

On Wednesday the kids and I went to see our friends in Powys (previous visits September 2016, February 2016, September 2015).  It's a slice of heaven.  Meg spent hours - actual hours - playing with her toy crocodile, lizard, snake and toad in the garden.  It was a truly lovely thing to watch.  Betsy chilled, chatted and drew.  Fred was so happy to hang out and play with Moss.  They had a complex game going on with Playmobil pirate/knight type people, and shared Fred's ipad to play Kingdom Rush.

We went for a couple of walks, including to the cob house which is looking AMAZING now.  And we had an afternoon at the Red Kite Feeding Centre near Aberystwyth.  That was excellent.  There were around 150 red kites swooping and soaring.  It was a gorgeous day, so the kids played in the playground, we had ice cream, lovely. 














Stone skimming success!




Listening to baby birds cheeping from inside the tree trunk. 


 
Morning mist in the valley.


The glorious cob house.








 





Reading a book on the Kindle app on my phone.




Red Kite Feeding Centre.





We got home on Friday in time for Betsy to go to Erin's birthday bowling party.

On Saturday I babysat my gorgeous 3 month old niece for the first time.  My brother and SIL went to a matinee at the theatre, so we had her for a good 6 hours.  She was awesome!  The kids loved having her around.  I got to wrap a baby again!  Yay!




Scrumptious.

Today - me working, kids hanging with Rob (they hadn't seen him since Tuesday as he went to see his folks Friday to Saturday night), Harry Potter double bill, roast dinner, Rob and kids playing football in the evening. 

Sunday 21 May 2017

A whizz through this week.  Laundry mountain accounted for a number of days.  We stayed home on Monday and Tuesday, naturally enough after the busy pace of the previous week.

Usual home activities (gaming, trampoline, card games, chatting, youtube).  Rosie was so happy we were home that she stayed in the living room both days, very unusual for her.





Wednesday - swimming, diving, parkour.


I was hit with post-Iceland come down, so I dropped them at parkour and took myself to Waitrose for tea and cake.

Thursday - epic day.  We went to Legoland to meet up with Fred's really good online buddies, his Overwatch crew.  It was so good.  He was happy happy happy.  Made my heart sing.







Thanks Katie for these excellent photos!

Super annoyingly, since then he's been locked out of PSN party games, so he's not been able to play with them.  Grrr.  We've tried a bunch of fixes that haven't worked, so it's time to report it to Playstation now.

Betsy, Meg and I had fun too.





Friday - walk Sweep, watch more flipping laundry.

Saturday - Rob and Fred went to Santa Pod to watch some racing.  They had a brilliant time. The girls and I went to watch Sing! at the cinema.  It's a really good, happy, feel-good film with an excellent sound track.


Sunday - I worked (gorgeous sunrise for my 5am start), kids played, allotment, football.



Everything feel very busy at the moment.  The June birthdays are rapidly approaching.  I'm not feeling organised!