Posts in category: Personal

One more week of school to go until the Easter holidays.

It’s pretty wild to me that this time 2 years ago we had gone into the first lockdown, which I really thought would last for just a couple of weeks!  Right now it still feels like we have loads of the school year left, so I can’t quite get my head around the fact that 2 years ago the children came home from school for Easter and didn’t actually go back for the rest of the year.

This year it’s looking like the Easter holidays will be pretty much like normal, with things like our local Easter egg hunt being back on.

We’ve not got any big plans for the break, so I think it’ll mainly be our normal mix of walks on the beach, trips to the parks, and probably a bus ride or two into town for a wander.

On Saturday morning we went out for a walk along the beach to west pier and back via the new coastal park, which is somewhere we may well head back to over the holidays.

It was the first time the children had been to the coastal park and they were so excited to run around and explore.

They both loved the water feature, which we all said reminded us of the one in the Serendome at Bluestone.

They also really enjoyed the seesaw and all the wooden climbing frames.

We needed to head back home for lunch so were only there for about half an hour, and the children are sure there are still bits of the park that they didn’t get to see.

So, yeah, we’ll be heading back soon for more of a play.

For now we’ve just got four days of school to get through, thanks to an inset day on Friday and then we can all relax and have a bit of fun together.

After not getting a family photo for the Me and Mine project in February (mainly thanks to Nerys and Steve having covid one after the other), I was determined to take one this month.

So as soon as we had the chance, and good enough weather, we popped out to the park to take these pictures.

We took the photos with the camera on a bench, using the remote trigger instead of a timer. But I think the battery might be going on the remote, because we couldn’t get it to work half the time without being really close to the camera.

So we ended up with a few outtakes like this one, which just really makes me smile:

I do love a good posed family photo, but it’s these real, in-between moments that normally end up meaning the most to me.

Those are the photos that hold the real memories for me.

This week’s living arrows photo is a bit different to the photos of the children that I normally share.

It’s a picture of Nerys, taken by Nerys while I was away for the weekend visiting my parents.

Steve took the children on several long walks while I was away and it was on one of these walks that Nerys took the photo.

She took it knowing that it’s the sort of photo I would take (I do love a good ‘foot in the frame’ picture!) and I just love that she’s been picking up on the types of photos I enjoy taking, and getting creative with her own take on them.

The children both had a good, busy weekend while I was away.  As well as heading out for these walks they also saw Nana on Mother’s day, made me some lovely cards to come home to, and had a movie night with Steve.

We’ve decided to start the whole Marvel series, so they started with Iron Man which the children both really enjoyed.

I’ve not seen many of the other Marvel films either, so I’m quite looking forward to watching the rest of them together over the next few months.  I think we’ve got quite a few to get through, and we’re trying to watch them in story order rather than by release date so that things make sense chronologically.

If you’ve seen all the Marvel movies, would you say this is the best way to do it?!

I’ve watched one episode of Grey’s Anatomy and two episodes of Buffy while trying to work out how to get started with this post.

Mainly because this last week was a just really uneventful one.  Which, thinking about it, is a pretty great thing to be able to say after all the ups and downs of the last few years!

The children were in school all week, they went to their drama class and swimming lessons as normal, and things generally felt settled into a nice, normal rhythm.

The weekend was spent mainly at home, getting homework and a bit of house/garden work done.  On Sunday we did pop out for a walk after swimming to make the most of the late afternoon sunshine.

We went into Singleton Park to take some family photos for this month’s Me and Mine project, and I grabbed these of Rhys and Nerys while we were there.

I’m hoping for another normal, uneventful week this week before I head off to Kent next weekend to see my parents.

I can’t remember the last time I spent Mother’s day with my mum and I am looking forward to it so much.  So please keep everything crossed for me that nothing crops up and puts a spanner in the works!

I don’t really know how I’m writing the third siblings project post of the year already.

The weeks seem to be just disappearing but I’m not entirely sure what we’ve been doing with them.

The last month has been another month interrupted by covid, with Steve being the last one of the four of us to catch it at the end of February.

It meant that Nerys’ birthday was a bit of a strange one, with him not really being able to celebrate with the rest of us.  Nerys and I did have a lovely morning out on her birthday though, with a trip to Bluebell Coffee for a treat and then a visit to the park for a play.  And there were presents and cake and games of pass the parcel at home in the afternoon, with a few people popping in to wish her a happy birthday.

The one thing we’ve tried to keep going through all the interruptions of covid and colds is the children’s drama class.

We walked there this week after the weather suddenly turned warm and dry, and took these photos along the way.

They both enjoy the class so much and are unbelievably excited about the show that they’re planning for the end of the school year.

All we know so far is that it’s a pirate themed show and that it should be loads of fun for the children.  They’re also doing it in a bigger theatre this time, after performing the last one in the hall where they have their weekly class.

Nerys in particular is so excited about that – the idea of being on a bigger stage with a proper backstage area, and even more people in the audience has got her raring to go, and she can’t wait to get stuck in.

I can’t quite believe the difference it has made to my mood to have the sun shining today.

As a general rule I really quite like winter and I find the rain quite soothing, but even I have my limits.  It’s really felt that we’ve just had so many grey, drizzly, gloomy days over the last few months and seeing blue skies today has been such a refreshing change.

The children and I took advantage of the sunshine and walked to drama class after school this afternoon, and we stopped along the way to take this quick photo as well as one or two of the children together for the siblings project.

Nerys is still really enjoying the classes and it’s been so nice to see Rhys join her and have loads of fun with it too.

The fact that they’re both in the same activity at the same time is a real bonus for me too, so Steve and I don’t have to juggle the back and forth of taking them to different places throughout the week!

At the moment they just have drama on a Monday and swimming lessons at the weekend, and that seems to be working quite well for us as a family.  It means the rest of the week we can take our time walking home from school if we want, rather than always needing to rush back and out again to another club.

How many activities do your children do outside of school?

The first week back at school after the half term holiday was a pretty busy one for the children.

They started off with St David’s day celebrations on Tuesday, when they were allowed to wear red, white, and green clothes to school.  And then on Thursday they went to school dressed up for World Book Day.

A lot of the time we try and find characters that just dress in normal clothes, to make dressing up for World Book Day nice and easy.  But this year Rhys decided to go as Harry Potter in his quidditch robes, and Nerys opted to just wear a Hogwarts sweatshirt and jeans.

It might not be as creative as some of the amazing costumes other parents came up with, but the children were happy and excited to go into school wearing things related to books they both really enjoy, which is what’s important as far as I’m concerned.

At the weekend Nerys went shopping with Nana and Pops as a birthday treat, and Rhys spent a good few hours out in the garden helping clear up some damage from the recent storm.

There were two small trees at the back of our garden that were damaged by the high winds, so Rhys helped Steve chop up the branches and gather the bits of wood together.

While they were busy outside I kept myself busy making a big batch of pancakes and waffles to go in the freezer.

It does take quite a while, making them 1 pancake and 2 waffles at a time, but it’s so nice on busy mornings to just grab some from the freezer and pop them in the toaster for a quick breakfast.

Nerys has really enjoyed having them in the mornings before school over the last week, so I think she’ll be happy when she sees how many there are stashed in the freezer now!