Posts in category: Personal

In the botanical gardens in Singleton park there is a sundial.

And Nerys is absolutely fascinated by it.

With all the technology and electronics that she sees and interacts with on a daily basis, this most basic of time-telling devices is so intriguing to her.  She thinks it’s incredible that this piece of stone and metal can tell her the time using just sunlight.

Whenever we go for a walk through the gardens she likes to go and look at the sundial.

The last few times we’ve been it’s been overcast, but this weekend the sun made an appearance and she was so happy to see the clock actually working.  I just love seeing how amazed both the children are by this kind technology of sorts.  I love the reminder it gives me of how amazing the world is and how much we can learn just from watching the weather and the light and seasons.

They always say don’t they, that one of the best things about having children is seeing the world through their eyes.

Experiencing things all over again with a new sense of wonder.

Slowing down and noticing all the beauty around us that we have somehow started to take for granted.

It’s something that is definitely true for me, and something I am truly grateful for.

I don’t know about you but we seem to have had cough after cold after virus in this house since the start of the year.

So our weekends have been pretty quiet.  Apart from the odd birthday party we’ve mainly been hanging out at home on Saturdays.  Then Sundays have been swimming lessons followed by a little walk out somewhere.

Last Sunday it was really wild and windy out so we opted for a walk in Clyne woods where it was a bit sheltered and a little warmer than it would’ve been in the park or at the beach.  I took the camera along knowing I wanted to take the opportunity to get some photos for this post and this week’s Living Arrows.

The photos above were a joint effort between me and Steve, trying to get at least a couple of photos where the children were giving these genuine smiles rather than the bored, fake smiles they’re pretty good at doing if they’re not in the mood.

I know I’m lucky though.  I take a lot of photos of Rhys and Nerys and they do humour me for the most part!

We’ve got next week still to go and then it’s half-term and we’re all just about ready for it.  There are a few jobs we need to get done that week, like get Rhys a good haircut, and it’s Nerys’ birthday in the middle which she is incredibly excited about.

It always feels like we’re out of sync with everyone else though, I’m sure lots of schools are on half-term next week.  It always makes me doubt myself and have to double check that I’ve got the dates right on our calendar!

If you’re children are at school have you got much planned for half-term, of do you like to keep it quite free and laid-back?

We’ve reached a new stage that, if I’m honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to.

Nerys has started getting homework from school.

Luckily for us she is very keen to do it, so at least we don’t have any battles on that front at the moment.  On Friday she came home with a sheet of letters to practice writing, with lead in and lead outs.  And to be fair to her she had finished it before her tea was even ready that evening.

She also has books to read online and, while it’s still early days, she’s already getting more confident working her way through them and sounding out the words.

I’ll be so happy for her once she can read fluently, it’s something she’s been so keen to do for a while now.  She would love to be able to read to herself in bed the same way Rhys does.

Rhys is pretty good at getting on with his homework too, although he’s not quite as keen as Nerys is.  I think the novelty of it all has worn off a bit now he’s in year 3!

He has spellings to learn every week and a page of mental arithmetic questions to work through.

We normally try to get the maths done and dusted on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday morning so we’re not stressing about doing it after school before it has to be handed in.  And it means on a Sunday afternoon we can generally have a relaxed time with a walk somewhere after swimming lessons.

That’s when I took this photo of Nerys, on a little walk in Clyne woods yesterday afternoon.

We didn’t venture too far in because it was pretty muddy and we weren’t really dressed for it.  So most of our time there was spent throwing stones into the stream not far from the gate and playing pooh sticks.  It was just what we needed – a bit of time in nature, and a bit of fresh air, before heading back home to the warm for a bit of playing on the computer and the ipad.

I have a feeling I might be the only blogger not sharing a photo of their children playing in the snow this week for Living Arrows.

Unfortunately for my children we live in Swansea and, despite dramatic weather forecasts and predictions of snowmaggeddon, we only had the lightest dusting of the white stuff.

What we have had though is more cold weather and cold symptoms.  So we’ve not been up to a huge amount.

Which was a bit of shame seeing as this was the week that Rhys brought home his class dragon.  That’s right. Class dragon.

Rhys needed to take him out and about with him, and then write about what they’d got up to.  In Welsh.

Now, I don’t speak much Welsh beyond good morning, good afternoon and goodnight, so I really wasn’t much help to him.  Luckily google came to the rescue and helped us put a few sentences together about how they’d been out to the park to play Pokemon.

Which is about all we managed this weekend, along with the usual swimming lessons.

I suppose it’s for the best really, we might have been in trouble if we needed to say much more than that in Welsh.

I’ve been saying for a while now that I should try to learn the language and I do think it’s something I need to make an effort with.  Both the children are learning it at school and I do feel bad when I can’t help them at all with it, and it’s a very strange feeling when they say something to me in Welsh and I can’t understand them.

If you were thinking about learning a new language how would you go about it?

Would you find a class to go to or try one of the apps or online courses to do it?

There are a few photo projects that I’ve been determined to stick with over the last few years on this blog.  And the me and mine project is one of them.

Every month we aim to take at least one family photo, so that at the end of the year we have a really lovely record of the time we’ve spent together.

For a while I would see the gorgeous photos other bloggers took of them and their families in stunning locations and feel like that was something I needed to be doing too.  After a while though I realised that’s just not us.  And while a part of me would still love some beautiful photos like that to display in our home, it’s these relaxed, natural, standard family photos that I actually really love printing out and looking back on in our family photo albums.

So we’re kicking off 2019 with a photo that just sums up our Sundays at the moment.

Everyone wrapped up warm.  The children with hair still damp from swimming lessons.  At the little park down the road.

They may not be breathtakingly beautiful, but these photos are pretty special to me and really that’s all that matters isn’t it!

I know that in the years to come I’ll be so grateful that we captured these simple, everyday moments.

How often do you manage to get a photo of the whole family together?

I know that if I didn’t do these posts every month and have that little nudge to do it we wouldn’t have nearly as many family photos as we do.

So if you’re not sure when you last took a family photo, make it your mission to get everyone in front of the camera this weekend!

I feel a bit like the last man standing this morning.

The rest of the family have got a bit of a nasty cough and cold thing going on, while I’m actually feeling pretty good having finally shifted the virus that hit me on new year’s eve.  I have a bad feeling it’s only a matter of time before this bug gets me though, I don’t like my chances of getting away with not catching it!

So between the splutters and sneezes and rather wild weather here we had a bit of a quiet weekend.

Most Sunday’s we’ll go for a walk somewhere after the children’s swimming lessons but it was so cold and windy yesterday that we just popped to the little park near the pool for a play and then headed home.

The park is just round the corner from the local shops, and I left Steve and the children to play while I popped round to pick up a few last bits for our dinner.  So this week’s living arrows photos are courtesy of my husband.

The rest of the afternoon once we got home was spent watching Moana and generally pottering around at home.

Rhys had a book on how to draw different Pokemon for Christmas and he spent quite a bit of his afternoon trying his hand at quite a few of them.  He also very patiently helped Nerys draw some too, and was brilliant with her when she struggled and got frustrated.

I was in the other room, listening to him tell her that it’s OK to make mistakes and that it didn’t matter if her picture was perfect or not, as long as she was having fun.

Considering how worried he has been in the past about getting things right and how frustrated he’s been when he’s not got something right on the first try he had just the right words to reassure his little sister.  And he seems to have taken it to heart himself too.  When his first attempts at drawing a Pokemon weren’t quite right he was fine with it, and simply tried again.

It’s the little things that make you proud as a parent isn’t it.

Those little moments where you realise how much they’re learning and growing and developing before your eyes.

So here we are.

A new week.  A brand new year.

Back to the normality of the school routine after a lovely fortnight of no real routine at all.

We’ve had such a nice break over Christmas and New Year, slowing the pace of life right down and not really doing that much at all.  Not entirely by choice to be fair; I’ve had a throat infection since New Year’s eve and we’ve all been full of cold too.  So quiet days have definitely been in order.

At the weekend though we did venture out to the park to meet some friends and get a blast of fresh air.

We have spent a lot of time in this park over the last 7 and a bit years, and I love that the children still enjoying going there for a play and a run around.

We did the usual playground area first, then walked around to the lake and the kiosk to feed the ducks.

I tend to get caught in the middle when we do this, because Rhys now desperately wants to feed the pigeons, and to try and get them to gather round him.  While Nerys is terrified of the pigeons, and screams when they come near her and just wants me to pick her up to keep her safe from them.

So I’m stuck with two children wanting very different things at the same time and it can be hard to keep them both happy.  I think we just about managed it this time though, and Rhys got to play with the birds while I held Nerys so she could throw the seeds into the water for the ducks.

We’ll just gloss over the fact that she apparently had dog mess on her shoes, which ended up all over my jeans when I picked her up!  I won’t go into how angry it makes me when people don’t clean up after their dogs, it’s something I could rant about for hours if I got started!

Dirty jeans aside though, it was great to get out after a few days of feeling unwell and staying in the warm at home.

I think I’ll feel quite sad when we reach a point when the children don’t want to go the park any more, it really will feel like the end of an era.