Posts in category: Personal

2018 has been a bit of a funny year in that we’ve actually got 53 weeks of the Living Arrows project, rather than 52.

So this week’s post has our final photos for the year, and a big old round up of all the photos I’ve taken for the project in 2018.

Last year I took photos of the children wearing a Santa hat, in front of our Christmas tree, for the last Living Arrows post of the year, so I thought it would be fun to do the same again this year.  We’ve had a pretty quiet Christmas this year, and it’s been really lovely.  We’ve not had to rush around anywhere, we’ve slowed our pace right down and it’s been just what we all needed.

So with another year almost over, I’m really enjoying looking back at all the photos we’ve taken for these posts each week.

This is the third year in a row I’ve done this, and I still absolutely love it.

We made it to the finish line.

The children were both so worn out by the end of last week.  We were all relieved to make it to Friday afternoon when school finally broke up for Christmas.

Between class parties and toy day and making a whole host of Christmas crafts they didn’t really stop at school, even if not much actual work got done.

So on Saturday the children had a lazy day at home with Steve while I braved town for the last few presents we needed to get.  It wasn’t too bad to start with, but by the time I was done town was heaving and I was glad to jump on the bus and head home.

Sunday meant the last swimming lesson of the year and then a bit more chilling at home.

I could tell the children were still tired though, because their resilience had just gone.  They were both over-reacting to things, getting upset and angry at the smallest thing.

So when Nerys lay down on the sofa to watch Up, it wasn’t a huge surprise to look over after ten minutes and see this.

She was absolutely flat out.

The only issue was that this was at about 4 in the afternoon, so we were deep in danger nap territory.  So after about half an hour I woke her up.

Luckily she woke up happy, so I think I got the timing just right.  Although it was still gone 9 by the time she went to sleep again properly last night so that power nap still took a big edge off her tiredness levels.

Hopefully we’ll have plenty of time over the next two weeks to all catch up on some sleep.

I’m not sure I can count on a lie in tomorrow though!

What time do your children tend to wake you up on Christmas day?

After a couple of weeks of living arrows photos being taken inside, I’m so happy to have some outdoorsy ones to share again this week.

We went away for a little break to Bluestone last week, and were lucky to have cold but relatively dry weather while we were there.

We didn’t spent quite as much time out and about exploring as we did when we went last May, but still managed a few trips to the park in the village.

The children loved running around and trying out the different bits of play equipment in the park.

Then we went to explore the tree house area which has little games dotted around it.  We spent a fair bit of time playing tic tac toe which was a lot of fun.

Rhys is now old enough to actually ‘get’ the game, so I was teaching him to slow down and be a bit more strategic when he played.  The look on his face when he won a game after getting in a situation when no matter what I did he would win on the next move was just brilliant.

Do you play these kind of simple games with your children?  How old were they when they started to really understand them?

It still feels a bit early to me but the festive season has well and truly started for us.

Last week Nerys’ class did their Christmas concert and it was just brilliant.  They did a pretty classic nativity play with plenty of songs and they all did so well.

Nerys was one of the narrators and did us proud, remembering her lines and speaking really clearly.  She was so determined to do a good job; I was so happy for her when she managed it.

At the end of the week the school had their Christmas fayre which the children always enjoy.

The first thing we saw when we got in was a big cuddly toy stall, and Rhys jumped straight in looking through them all.  He ended up finding this parrot backpack that he proceeded to show off to anyone who would listen as we made our way through the rest of the fayre.

The children cleared out all the cash in my wallet, and a few pounds of their pocket money that I’d brought along with us, on various games and stalls.

We also went to visit Father Christmas in his grotto that was set up in one of the classrooms.

They did things a little bit differently this year, with a group of us being taken in at a time for a story with one of the elves.  The children absolutely loved it, getting involved with the story and sneaking glances at Father Christmas in the grotto.

It was all done so well, I was really impressed with the creativity of everyone involved.

Does your child’s school go all out with the Christmas celebrations too?

I had a bit of a treat yesterday.

I went out for the day with my sister, for a bit of Christmas shopping.  And we think it might have been the first time we’ve done something like that just the two of us, with no children in tow, in about 11 years.

It was absolutely lovely.

We wandered, we browsed, we chatted.  We generally just took our time in a way you simply can’t do when you have children with you.

I think we spend nearly 5 hours shopping, with a little McDonald’s break in the middle.  I don’t even really have many purchases to show for it to be honest, it was just so lovely to be able to browse the shops with my sister like we used to do as teenagers.

It was about 5.30 by the time I got back home, and I was greeted by a gorgeous smile and hello from Nerys.

I know she’d had a lovely day with her daddy and brother, and I don’t think she said anything about me at all while I was gone.

But she still told me as soon as I walked through the door, “I’m so happy you’re home”.

It’s funny, because I felt the exact same way.

I’d had a brilliant day and, as awful as it sounds, I hadn’t missed them while I was out.  But I was so happy to be home and back together with them all.