Posts in category: Personal

It was all going so well.

Last week was the children’s first full week back at school and it was all going smoothly.  They both settled into their new classes quickly and are full of praise for their new teachers.

The classes have been mixed up a bit so their friendship groups have been split up, which I was a bit worried about.  But they’re both still with enough of their friends that they’re happy, and it just means they’re even more excited about seeing their other friends across the playground at break time.

I knew it was only a matter of time though, before the back to school germs came along and threw a spanner in the works.

I had hoped we’d make it a little bit longer, but by the end of last week Nerys was all snotty and blocked nose-y.  By Friday night I’d been hit and then Rhys woke up on Sunday morning with the same blocked nose.

So most of the weekend was spent resting at home, really not doing much of anything.  Although we did make it out to the car park a couple of times for the children to have a scoot in the sunshine.

I also spent a fair bit of time over the weekend trying to get clear on whether or not the children should go to school if they’re unwell.

In the end the decision was made this morning to keep them home, when they both woke up still just full of cold and under the weather.  I’m certain it is just a cold, but it the way things are at the moment I don’t really want them in school spreading any kind of germs around, and I’m also wary of what else they might pick up from other people with their immune systems already being tested.

So here we are.

A week in and already needing to keep the children home from school.  And from what I’m seeing on social media we’re far from the only ones.

I don’t really know what the answer is though.

To my mind this was always going to happen.  After all those months apart there were bound to be issues when all the children went back to school, even with all the safety measure that have been put in place to stop germs spreading.

I had just hoped that we’d last a little bit longer before the first back to school cold got us!

So this is it.  After all those months at home, the children are back at school.

They were both in for one day last week, with half of their classmates.  The other half were in the day after, and now they’re all back in for the first time today.

I’m really pleased the school did it this way, because it gave us all a chance to try out the new routine, and for the children to meet their new teachers, with reduced numbers in the classes and at the gates.

It also meant we had one day of the children in school and then a lovely long weekend before things really got started this morning.

With that little bit of extra time we managed to tick a few more things off our summer bucket list, including going out and watching a sunset.

We popped down to the beach at Swansea bay this time, for a stroll along the sand as the tide came in.  The sun wasn’t setting over the sea, but we still got to see the beautiful colours in the sky all across the bay.  It was the perfect time to grab some photos of the children!

We stayed at the beach for long enough after the sun went down to also be able to tick ‘go for a walk after dark’ off our bucket list.

There were a few people out on the sand doing fire poi which Rhys in particular was fascinated by.  From where we were standing you really couldn’t see the ropes, so it looked almost like they were moving fire balls around their bodies using magic which our huge Harry Potter fan thought was amazing!

And now, after that lovely long weekend, we’re back to earlier mornings and packed lunches and school uniforms and trying to get used to a new routine.

The children’s school has set up staggered drop-off and pick-up times, so Rhys goes in 10 minutes before Nerys now which works quite well for us.  It still felt quite busy around the gates this morning but the school are doing everything they can to keep the children safe and happy and for that I am incredibly grateful.

Rhys and Nerys both went in smiling this morning and I can’t really ask for more than that!

Have your children gone back to school this week?

So here we are, the end of August.

It’s been a pretty good month, all things considered.  And we ended it with a really lovely amount of family time with Steve able to take almost 2 weeks off from work.

Right at the end of the month we headed out for a walk and a scoot in Singleton park, which is where we took this month’s family photo.

We also ticked another thing off the children’s summer bucket list while we were at the park, which was the classic childhood activity of rolling down a hill.

Such a simple thing, that for some reason they’ve not really done before and had fun trying out in the slightly soggy grass of the park!

We’ve still got a few things on the list that we want to tick off over the next week or so before we need to admit that summer is on its way out.  All in all though, we’ve done quite well getting through a good chunk of the things they wanted to do.

They’ve baked bread rolls with their dad and cakes with me.  We’ve made ice cream and eaten s’mores and pancakes with all sorts of different toppings.  We’ve painted stones, made paper fans and drawn pictures on postcards to send to friends and family.

They’ve stayed up till midnight and had a family slumber party in the living room.  We even managed to play every single board game we own, which turned out to be quite a task – who knew we had so many board games!

This summer really was a bit of a strange one, and we didn’t do all the things we normally would, but I hope the children will remember it as being the one we did all these fun things together.  The summer they both taught themselves to play the recorder and Nerys learnt to fly with Daddy in his flight sim game.  The summer we listened to ‘Surfin’ USA’ a lot after picking it as our summer anthem.

We’ve never written a bucket list like this before, but it’s been brilliant for keeping us going with ideas for things to do, new activities to try, new skills to learn, on days when we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves.

I think we’ll do the same thing again next summer, whatever situation we find ourselves in by then!

The last week has been quite an eventful one for Nerys.

Well, as eventful as any week can be at the moment.

She lost a tooth, but not one that we were expecting to come out, thanks to a knock from a recorder.  She also got her own recorder which she is very excited about.

She completed her 2nd 30 day challenge on The Maths Factor which I’m so proud of her for being so committed to.  She’s learnt so much from it and it’s done loads for her confidence with maths too.  We signed up for paid accounts after the free access finished at the end of term, and it’s been absolutely worth the money.

The most exciting thing for Nerys last week though, was finally picking out a new scooter.

The brake came off her old one a week or two ago and we’d been debating ever since what type of scooter to get as a replacement.

In the end she decided she was ready for a 2-wheeler one like Rhys’ and, having seen her whizzing round the car park on it, I think we can safely say she made the right decision!

She was a bit wary of using the brake to start with, but it didn’t take long for her to feel brave enough to give it a try.

The next step now is to take it out to the park so she can give it a go on all the little and not-so-little hills!

We had another pretty quiet week last week, mostly spent at home doing jigsaw puzzles, baking fairy cakes, and watching Nerys learn to fly on a new flight sim game that Steve bought.

It’s quite amazing to watch her, she’s learnt so much already and has been having a great time flying to all sorts of incredible places all around the world.  We were joking the other day that if there was an incident on a plane now and they called out ‘does anyone know how to land a plane’ she would probably put her hand up and go for it!

We did get out a few times for walks in the local park too, playing the game of trying to time outings around the rain.

I took the photos for this week’s post on a family walk through Singleton park.

Nerys asked if we could go to a particular tree that she likes to climb, so we stopped and played there for a bit before heading back home through the botanical gardens.

All in all it was quite a quiet week, but we still managed to tick a few more things off the children’s summer bucket list.

One of the things on the list that they were most looking forward to was staying up until midnight and having a family slumber party.  So while Steve was off work last week we did just that.  The children covered the lounge floor with their duvets and pillows and we dug their sleeping bags out of the cupboard so they were nice and cosy and comfortable.

We watched Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix together which took us up to almost midnight.   I think I was the most tired out of all of us by then, Rhys and Nerys were still buzzing from the excitement of being up so late!

I’d love to say they then slept in the next morning but I think all us parents know it doesn’t work like that.  I was woken from an actually quite decent night’s sleep on the sofa by them chatting away on the floor next to me.

The night before we’d also ticked off ‘pizza night’ from our bucket list, thanks to some amazing pizzas that Steve made for us all.  And then the next day we also ticked off ‘make s’mores’ which Nerys was so excited about.

She’d seen YouTube videos of people making and eating them and was so happy to finally get to try them for herself.  To be honest, I was quite excited to try them myself too.  I can’t believe it took me so many years to finally give one a try!

Have you ever made s’mores?  Are we just really late to the s’mores party?!

I know this is such a British thing to talk about, but I cannot believe the weather we had last week!

The children and I got up and out to the park by 9 on Wednesday and it was already almost unbearably hot.  We were only there for about an hour and a half and had to take several breaks to sit in the shade and try and cool down in that time.

It was lovely and quiet while we were there though, so the children could play on all the things they wanted to play on and I wasn’t too anxious about them being around loads of other people.

They played on the swings and the roundabout and the zipwire and had a great time.

We bumped into one of Nerys’ classmates while we were there which was really lovely.

The children have been great through everything that’s happened this year, and have made the most of having each other to play with and talk to, but I know they’ve missed spending time with other children.

So it was great for Nerys to have some time with one of her friends and his little sister, while Rhys enjoyed dipping in and out of playing with them and also doing his own thing on the swings and the zipwire.

Have you spent much time with other families lately, or have you still been mainly doing your own thing?

I’m writing this while listening to the rain pouring down outside, and with the lights on in the living room because it’s so dark and gloomy.

It just seems in such stark contrast to the bright, sunny photos I’m looking at for this month’s siblings project!

Which is about right really, thinking about what a mixed bag it’s been over the last few weeks.

On the hot, sunny days I’ve tried to get the children up and out of the house relatively early, so we can get to the park and have time to play before it gets too busy and I start to feel anxious.

I took these photos on one of those mornings, when we headed out to Brynmill park.  The children basically had the run of the playpark for a while before a few other families started to arrive.  And then we wandered round to get some bird food from the kiosk to feed the ducks, and the pigeons.

It was a gloriously sunny morning and just lovely to get out together before it all started getting a bit too busy.

Things have changed again in Wales, so now the children don’t have to socially distance from other children.  To be honest though, I’m still encouraging them to try and keep their distance where they can because I’m not quite sure on what research has been done to show that it’s ok for them to mix closely again.

For the moment I think we’ll generally stick to this routine of heading out to places when they’re a bit quieter, and spending a fair bit of time at home.  Although it’s nice to know we can make plans to meet up with a few more friends now which will be good for the children.

We wrote a summer bucket list a few weeks ago and that’s been great for giving us plenty of ideas for things to do when we are at home together, especially when it’s been either way too hot or too wet for us to really want to head out and about.

One of the things on our list is to play every single board game we have, which has been a lot of fun.  We’ve dug out games we’ve not played for months and months and had a great time playing them again, and then scoring them out of ten.

The game with the highest score so far (9.5/10) is Dobble.  It looks like such a simple game but there are instructions for quite a few different ways to play it and it’s one of those games that’s actually fun for all different ages to play.

What game do you like to play most as a family?