Gathering of the clan

I should be tidying my house instead of sitting here blogging, but blogging is more fun. When I’m looking back on this on 5 years time, will I be glad I’ve written a bit about my children and what they’re getting up to, or will I regret the time I didn’t tidy up my room after Duncan trashed it looking for a toy Zeebad that he has convinced himself I’m hiding there? You see, I can justify this!

So, we went to Sligo on Saturday. The journey was fine. Lady listened to Harry Potter on an MP3 player while Thomas watched a Barney DVD on a player we had in the car. My brother and L have a beautiful house in a nice little town. I’m so pleased for them. Their daughter was 4 two days before Thomas so they had a joint party. The bouncy castle they’d hired wasn’t used much since it was raining heavily, but the children all had a great time. 3 out of 4 of my brothers were there with their families and my sister had flown over from London for the weekend (hiya Mavis ;-)), so it was a great gathering of the clan too! We stayed the night at my older brother’s house. Lady and Thomas enjoyed playing with his daughters (aged 4 and 2 and oh so cute). It was just a nice, happy way to spend the weekend.

When I got home, Duncan was so pleased to see us. Gordon had been busy sorting out the house; putting pictures up and cooking and he’d even washed the carpet on the stairs. It had been horribly dirty. They’d gone to Belfast on the train and Duncan even had a new wooden Percy. You can never have too many Percys you know!

While I’ve been doing what I do best (procrastinating) the children have been busy learning in their own way. Lady has been listening to her Harry Potter and has read some of the book too. She was also reading a book we had about English kings and queens. But mostly she’s been drawing pictures and practicing her handwriting. We keep getting little love notes as she’s so happy about her new, fancy, joined-up writing.

Duncan is absolutely obsessed with having a Zeebad toy. I’m going to get one on ebay; where else could you find a toy that was given away in Rice Crispies boxes a year ago. He was Googling for it and wrote it from memory himself! He also wrote ‘trnpercy’ yesterday on Google, meaning ‘train Percy’. He knew that he’d get too many false hits if he wrote ‘Percy’ only. I’ve been trying to encourage him to type more on the computer. I think he will learn to write and read together.

Thomas has been learning more letter sounds. The phonics approach works well for him. We read the 1st story on Starfall yesterday together; Zac the Rat.

Right, Duncan is just making me a cup of tea (pouring cold water from the kettle into the teapot) and admiring his reflection in the curved surface of the steel teapot. Must go help him!