July Midyear Review, goals, and a giant planner!

I managed to get a bit of a midyear review in this week with both Andy and with my own goals.  

This year has been... crazy. In the first half of the year

• We spent 3 months very short of childcare (only 2 days a week to balance a 4 day and 5 day workweek)
• Andy applied for and started a new job
• I applied for two new jobs in my company, got both of them, and start one in September
• The kids are doing great in School.  Lily left her private nursery to have more home days with us before she starts school
• The twins transitioned to one nap a day
• Andy and I have gotten out for multiple date nights and two mountain biking days

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I'm "on track" with some of my goals and way off with others.  

After a weekend watching 3 kids from Saturday morning to Sunday night both Andy and I agreed that we are not in a "solo parent travel" phase of life yet, so he cancelled his 3 day biking trip and my goal paris trip has been postponed.

I have done 49 strength workouts this year, of my 100 goal.  However, I did a lot more strength in January-March than April-June.

I have started running again and on 27th July I'll "officially" start training for my Half Marathon (ie, I'll follow a real plan, not the 3 day a week running I'm doing now)

I've done 7 in person yoga classes of my 15 goal

I've not been great about tracking stuff either, so I've reduced the number of things I'm trying to track.

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Midyear Goal Updates: 

Personal Weekly Planning.  I feel like I make a weekly plan and then I just don't really look at it again. Which is kind of cool, but it might be better to actually plan things into my weekly plan in future months and know I'm going to look at it rather than sometimes planning and sometimes not planning.

Declutter house, and put things away.  Our house is becoming a stuff house and could use a summer sort.  I should book 3-4 hours to work on this project because I know I will feel better living where everything has a space to live.  Also, I often resent spending time on housework, so I don't.  But if I view this as "me time" not "me picking up after kids time" then I might enjoy it more

Audiobooks.  I should get some audiobooks on the go so I can read more and also maybe not resent the declutter/tidy time because it will also be reading time.

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I spent a bit of time looking at the rest of the year, and the big things that are happening in the next few months.  I realized why November is such a bummer month for me usually... there's really nothing to look forward to, especially without Thanksgiving.  I decided to make November my "learn things" month and will book in a biking course and a breadmaking course then (both on my yearly goals)

I cracked open my giant 2025-2026 family calendar, which I LOVE already

So much writing space! So much future time!

Do you do any sort of midyear review? How has the first half of 2025 treated you, overall?  Do you think the rest of 2025 will be better, worse, or the same?  Do you like a giant planner?

Happy Things Friday

Elisabeth writes a really well written and joyful weekly post called Happy Things Friday which is a joy to read.  I'm feeling the happy things vibe so thought I would do one of my own this week!

July Family Calendar Snapshot

• We are having the best weather.  The Sun is out!
• We recently discovered that we *can* have people over for meals again, especially if it's outside and if the people are cool with chaos.  I love having people over so this is great.
  
• We had people over for July 4th for a pulled pork and sausage dinner.  It was fun! I love a reason to celebrate, and July 4th is a good enough reason. It's weird because no one cares over here but I am going to bring back the July 4th Americana where I can (and not in the weird current political way, in the way that I loved it in primary school... friends, food & optimism. If only we could do fireworks) 
• Andy bought this discount sourdough and we ate some and chopped and froze some for French Toast Casserole.  Yes please 59p bread!
  
  
  
  
• I have been figuring out a new running schedule, which is 5:30am on Monday, Friday, Saturday.  I think I can get up at 4:45 three days a week.
• The kids have two more weeks of school.  
  
• We can now do family bike rides with Ezra - he's getting so good on the pedal bike.  And the twins love the bike trailer
  
  
• My brother is visiting in July
• I have the last week of July off with kids
• This giant Tub of pretzels:
  
  
• I got the new job I applied for in work.  I've not signed the contract yet so I'm not super ready to shout to the world about all the awesome pieces, but I think it will be very good. I'm now in "leadership" and my name was on a "Leadership Team" slide next to really cool other people who I am excited to work with and it's all... good.
• Andy and I have started swapping weekend mornings for our own funtimes.  My mornings are currently swimming and running, although I may try and throw a bike ride in tomorrow too if time allows because I'm starting to miss being a triathlete
• Our nanny cooked two meals this week for the kids dinner and not thinking about kids dinner is great
• This really weird card that Ezra made for his friend's birthday. In case you're wondering, it's a picture of a robot dressed up as a man with really long arms sitting on a toilet
  
  
  
  
• I lost a pair of sunglasses and then my 10 year old Goodr Sunglasses got quite scratched and so I ordered two new pairs of sunglasses from Goodr and I am very excited for new sunglasses.
• I finished Florence Adler Swims Forever and it turns out books that lots of people like I also like.
• Weekends in July are a good combo of fun things and nothing which means we have space for more things and also we know there are upcoming fun things.
• I have embraced "Decide Once" for lunches and recently my mealtime food choice has been a salad with whatever veg is in the fridge and also avocado and also nuts.  Nuts in salads are crunchy and delicious.
• We can take all 4 kids to a cafe and it's not awful! It's not super relaxing but it's a nice option that now exists
  
  
• Going to bed at 8:30 on a Friday is a happy thing.  Goodnight!

What are your happy things??

Time vs. Energy, late evenings, current running fails but other life fun.

I currently have a rather big disconnect between the time I have available for things and the energy I have for things.  I would like to do more running and sport, but not at 8pm.  I would like to plan adventures with enthusiasm... but also not at 8pm.  Basically, I am not an 8pm person, and yet most of my "me time" is at 8pm.  

Often when I am super ready to accomplish things (ie house stuff or fitness stuff or life admin stuff) it's midmorning and I am in work or watching kids, or Andy is at his job.  Or it's breakfast time and my mind is whirring with ideas and also a kid has put porridge on the floor.  

I don't feel like I have a regular time that I can download all my thoughts and ideas and make sure I'm not missing things.  I'm fairly sure this piece - the "get it out of my head" time - is key to an organizational system.  Instead I bounce things around in my brain forever and ever until I get them out or do them.  But... I am not good at the "getting out" right now.

Andy and I plan our weeks on Wednesdays again, because by Friday we were too tired.  On Wednesday we are also tired.  I think we are generally tired.

[this post was interrupted to place the grocery order that I forgot]

I know I'm a morning person and yet... people are evening people.  Once a week I meet my a friend in the evening for sports.  This week we did outdoor yoga and it was super nice and then we sat in the garden and talked until 10pm because it was still light and lovely outside and it was great but I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

On Tuesday night Andy and I went out to the local climbing/bouldering center and did some bouldering and then went out for a drink and  it was great but I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

On Wednesday night we did our planning meeting and I stayed up until 10m and then Clara woke up sad (possibly cold?) at 11:30pm and I definitely couldn't wake up early enough to do sport the next day.

And now it's Thursday and I haven't done morning sport since Monday.  Everything that I did instead of morning sport was good and fun, but I also want to be running since I've got a half marathon in October.  

Maybe this is balance.  Some weeks are evening weeks and some weeks are morning weeks?  Some weeks I write blog posts until 8:45pm, even though I could also be finishing the May photo albums or finishing June budget or planning my week next week or replying to texts?

In other news, I am reading Florence Adler Swims Forever and enjoying it.  It's not as sad as the synopsis made me think it would be (although I'm only 50% through the book).

I decided to go open water swimming last Saturday at a local reservoir and had an amazing time and now I want to go open water swimming all the time.  This seems a weird hobby to pick up in the midst of a book about a drowning.  

Also, picking up a new hobby (swimming) while I'm supposed to be training for a half marathon is not really great for training for a half marathon.

Small life updates and a mini Friday DITL.

I want to write something like "it's been a crazy few weeks" but honestly, all weeks are crazy weeks in my life right now.  Last week Andy started a full time in office job.  He started on Wednesday because a life pro tip is to always start a job on a Wednesday.  No one really wants to start training on a Monday.  In my current job I started on Wednesday and the IT guy said "we don't usually have people start on a Wednesday, but it's probably good for you because we didn't actually have enough computers for all the Monday starters this week and one person had to wait 4 hours".  

I've "officially" gone down to 4 days a week (not at all officially, I'm actually bleeding annual leave to take this time off, but I am eternally thankful that I accrued 25 days of leave while on Maternity leave), and because Andy was in the office this week I had to attend the kids sports day AND Lily's Reception induction day, each of which took 2 hours.  I am trying not to stress because my job *is* flexible, but last week I interviewed for a new job (a promotion, but also a more doable on four days a week promotion) and that's provided a stressful and exciting backdrop to everything else.

In good news, I am excited for Lily to start Reception, and I like her teacher, and her school.  The headteacher said "You'll be here until 2032" which I quickly realized meant "2035" because of the twins don't start for three years which means I will be 50 when my youngest finishes primary school.  Wow.

Anyways, here's some random phone photos from my second friday "off" where I do a fulltime job (watching kids) but get no money for it.  I am far more beaten and battered from this Friday than from any work day I have ever had.  

We dropped Ezra at school at 9am and then drove to the local park that now has a coffee shop because playground + coffee is the dream.  

After the park we went to the grocery store to buy nappies.  We are reconsidering our grocery ordering because the current place we order from is kind of expensive for some things, and we can't get some things there, but the quality is generally good AND they score pretty high on Ethical Consumer.   But they don't sell nappies, so we may end up getting deliveries from two stores on rotation, because this is definitely not a sustainable way of doing shopping (but it is kind of fun):

After the grocery store it was home for lunch, twin nap, then I dropped Lily off at nursery school (my mom was at home with the twins).  Then I had two hours to do whatever I wanted, except that I also needed to make sure I got everything done to keep the rest of the day moving.  I had lunch and then prepped veg for dinner, made hummus, set up the smoothie for after school, put laundry in the drier because even though it's a Welsh heatwave (30c/86f) I cannot be pegging out 50 tiny kid clothes on the line, and then set up water play for when the kids got home from school.

I woke up the twins, collected Ezra and Lily, then sorted a snack of breadsticks and smoothie before letting the kids do this for an hour:

We are trying a new Friday night dinner for "picnic for dinner" and it went well-ish today.  I mostly do not understand how one is supposed to have a job and make dinner for kids (and/or adults) but that is a post for another day.  Aubrey ate a bowl of hummus, Clara ate some bites of ham, and mostly no one griped too much about the food.  The chopped veg was barely touched but I feel like a better person for chopping it (I had some!).

And then, it was night, and I feel battered and tired.  

There are only 4 more weeks of school here, so I have 4 more of these Fridays.  Then 6 weeks of Summer Fridays... and then Lily will be in Reception and I'll have twin only Fridays.  These Fridays of twin 1.5 year olds and a 4.5 year old are fun, but much of their fun comes from being so time limited.

Habit Tracking - a perfectly un-perfect day.

I've been doing some habit tracking this year (inspired by Kae). I'm tracking whether I do following things:

• Daily Planning
• Floss
• strength
• cardio
• yoga/stretch
• Ate Veg
• Ate Fruit
• Vitamins
• Meditate
• walk
• Line a Day

I'm not sure I love habit tracking, but I'm learning some things about myself.  

I don't eat fruit. I spend so much time chopping and preparing and serving fruit to the kids and then I will go days without eating fruit. I like fruit!  Perhaps I need to start eating fruit whenever I make fruit for the kids.  I think the problem with fruit is that it doesn't seem to fill any real need - I love strawberries but how many strawberries should I eat and why?  I'm not going to reach for strawberries if I'm hungry.  And I usually don't eat when I'm not hungry.  Maybe 3pm needs to be "Rachel eats fruit" time, because eating fruit is good and I guess there's no good reason to wait until I'm hungry to eat fruit?

I also don't really meditate or floss.  I floss more than I meditate though! But I feel like there's benefit in tracking the things I don't do, so I can tell when I do start to incorporate them or for how long.  Sometimes I floss for like two weeks straight... then I just don't.

Yesterday - Saturday the 14th - was my first ZERO Habit day. 

I had a dinner with friends on Friday which kept me out to 11pm (unheard of for me!) so did not get up early (ie before 6am which is the cutoff for kid/toddler wake ups) for exercise of any sort.  I did not plan my day before it started.  I did not eat any fruit or any veg all day (this was a big mistake, I was ravenous by the time we had dinner, which was macaroni and cheese, and I ate 3 bowls of it,.. although it have peas in it so maybe I did have veg?) I ate a bagel for breakfast, a cliff bar at 3pm, and half a scone for lunch because apparently moms eat like college students.

I did not take vitamins and I certainly didn't meditate.  I did go for a walk carrying Clara and chatted with some neighbours but it was a 1/4 mile walk that took us 45 minutes because OMG are 19 month olds slow walkers.  I guess I could count that, but I usually try and count walks where I maintain forward momentum for more than 50% of the time.

I usually do my line a day in the morning (because evening entries say "I ate x for dinner I am tired" and morning ones are slightly more rounded reviews).  I did not do the line a day yesterday.

This was my first ZERO Habit day of 2025.  It wasn't the worst day, but it certainly wasn't the best.  

Also, as a 40 year old human, I really need to be eating some fruit and vegetables if I'm going to eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese for dinner.  Habits are here to support good decisions... Macaroni and Cheese is always a good decision but needs some supportive habits to not feel like a bloat monster after.

I'm sure I'll learn something bigger and better from a year of habit tracking than "fruit and vegetables are good".... but apparently I'm not there yet.

Do you track habits? Do you eat fruit? Can you eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese?

Saturday in the Life

This weekend is totally not normal so let's do a day in the life!

5:00am - Wake up, think about getting up, fall back asleep

6:30am - Wake up again. Toddlers are shouting from next door.  Andy says he will get them up if I sort breakfast.  Sorting breakfast means I can make coffee so this sounds good

7:00am - Breakfast for all. It's peanut butter on toast.

7:30am - Get toddlers dressed

8:00am - Andy and Ezra leave for an overnight adventure(!!).  Solo parenting 75% of the kids commences.

8:15am - I take Lily, Aubrey & Clara to the store to pick up some hats I ordered and some bagels and some other random things.

I'm taking part in a research study about the mobility impacts of having twins.  Part of this study is recording things that happen in a day which make getting out harder.  Going to the supermarket is a perfect example.  I shop at a supermarket that has parent parking spaces near the door.  The hardest part of going to the store is finding a twin trolley:

I end up leaving the twins and Lily in the car while I walk around the car park looking for the twin trolly. This store usually has at least 3 but they can be hard to find - they have two red seats up front rather than one.

I see the twin trolly in the car park and collect it.

8:40am - Shopping done

We normally get grocery delivery because there isn't really room to do a family shop once you have a family in a trolly.

8:50am - Drop off groceries at home and quick toilet stop for Lily.

9:05am - drive to imagination play center for 9:15 booking.  Park in car park and pay for parking before realizing that the first 2 hours were free and I wasted £4 for parking I didn't need to pay for.  In my defense, that parking machine had a lot of words and I can't really pay attention to anything and I'm so used to paying for parking now that I just... paid.

9:15am - Imagination Play! It's raining and the twin pram does not fit through the door of the building.  So I have to get the twins out, thankfully another parent helps me get the twins in with Lily.  

Imagination play has lots of cute areas for the kids like a disco room, a pretend hairdresser, a firetruck room, and a play shop and play kitchen area.

11:00am - Leave imagination play center and head home.  Getting out becomes really tricky when I remembered I need to put the pram outside (in the rain) before I can get the twins in it

This is actually the first place I've been where my twin folding pram doesn't fit through the door - since the pram is the size of a standard wheelchair I am usually OK.  However, in older buildings it's not mandatory to have wheelchair access... but this entry is especially bad.

11:20am - Get home, serve scrambled eggs and strawberries and pitta bread for lunch.

11:50am - toddler nap time

12:00pm - Tidy downstairs, clean up lunch mess.  Take out compost, put laundry in dryer. Eat random things. Put away groceries.

12:45pm - Eat my own lunch (beans and rice and sauteed red peppers) then make a fruit salad with Lily to take to dinner

1:00pm - Read a story to Lily, almost fall asleep, make a cup of tea, start a film 

2:15pm - Toddlers awake! Remember I haven't brushed my teeth yet and do that.  Also floss.  Then get toddlers downstairs for snack (yogurt and cereal) before getting ready to leave

2:55pm - Drive to a friends house who has invited us for dinner (I did say this was crazy many times and gave her many chances to cancel!) I said we would arrive at 3. 

3:00pm - Realize I forgot the fruit salad I said I would bring, turn around and drive home

3:25pm - Arrive at friends house only 25 minutes late.  They have a 2 year old and a 4 year old (same age as Lily) and it was only mildly controlled chaos.  19 month olds are such chaos.

6:10pm - Leave friends house in total disarray after very enjoyable play date and dinner.  These are fairly new friends and I really hope that I didn't ruin this friendship by having chaos twins at their house. I can also count on one hand the number of time the twins have had dinner not at our house.  All in all it went well!

6:30pm - Arrive home, get twins changed for bed.  Bedtime for twins

7:00pm - Twins in bed, bedtime for Lily

7:30pm - Lily asleep, go downstairs to sort out the chaos of the day

7:45pm - Chaos can wait, first eat cheese on crackers.  Then get laundry from dryer, empty dishwasher, put out bag of dirty nappies, tidy and hoover downstairs.

8:15pm - That's better

8:30pm - sit down and write blog post!

And that's... a day! A day of solo parenting!  Tomorrow I don't have big plans for the morning but I'm thinking a park with a coffee shop. We've been invited to a friends house (I mean, is it "invited" if I say "OMG I have all the kids please help please can I come over?") for the afternoon, although not for dinner (because they are not crazy).  We will probably do packed lunch for dinner (ham sandwiches?) and then Andy and Ezra will be home around 9pm and I will have survived 36 hours of solo parenting 3 under 5!

I wonder if this weekend would feature in this NYT book of 36 hour weekends in European cities? 

This book is 100% for DINK couples and I 100% wanted it when we were a DINK couple.

Thursday Thoughts: Planner Debates and new planner day

Tonight turned into new planner night!

We always order planners from PersonalPlanner.com.  I love them because they're super versitible, I can change layouts every year, and I've kept a birthday list so they get printed WITH BIRTHDAYS in it that also say how old the person is (if I remember to enter a birth year).  It's great.  This is 24-25:

Last year I ordered a 13 months version, so it started in September and ends in September.

This year I decided we would go for a bigger A4 size rather than A5.  I'm excited for monster calendar... we need more writing space.  We have lots of things and lots of kids.

It's a weekly Calendar and I always do a vertical date layout.  The bottom box is for sport but we use it to plan meals.  Sometimes we use the small writing section at the bottom to add meal suggestions for future weeks. For instance, we had beans tonight and it went well, so I'll add beans to the potential dinner list in two weeks because that's about the right interval for a beans dinner.

I don't like that Saturday and Sunday share a column, but I'm hoping the A4 size will mean there is enough room for everything.

This is the cover I picked - yay! I can't wait for it to arrive.  They are sent from Sweden with free shipping (HOW???) and the company seems so cool.  I also got month tabs so I can put dividers in... a planning pro tip I did not learn for the first 5 years of ordering this planner.

The A4 size only comes in 12 months so I started it in September and it runs through August.

As I went to make the order Andy said it should start in October since our current planner already has September. 

I thought he was joking.

School starts in September.  Planners always need overlap. September (or January, or August) seems like the right time to order a new Planner.

Andy was insistent that I am the insane one because I am basically wasting a month of the old planner. 

As a counterpoint, we have things planned in September already and I feel it's a valuable use of space to have a calendar overlap.  I am happy moving these things to the new calendar.

As Andy's counterpoint, I am wasting 1/13th the price of the 13 month calendar if I just start the next calendar in September.

So, internetland, help me.  Do you do a month overlap in calendars? Would you get a 13 month calendar and move it forward every month?  Andy does have a point that every 12 years we would basically have a free calendar of single months, but also... I love a new calendar in September.  September calendars are the best.

May highlights

I feel that May just came and went with not much excitement.  

However... that is some real recency bias (where your brain weights recent things as more important than further away things)

The start of June has been grey and wet and cold.  But I was looking through photos and I realized that it was sunny in May.  Almost warm!

I was going to be super advanced and work on my photo album project tonight but instead I have decided to write a photo blog post about May.

In May we took a family trip to a local National Trust site.  Aubrey and Clara held hands! This was part of our first all day adventure (ie not being home 11-3 for naps) since 2nd January 2025.  It went OK... but I have definitely gotten used to days having a rhythm that includes a midday baby nap and general downtime.

We did a family trip to the local bike park again with all 4 kids.  It went even better when the twins found this great slide / bike jump:

Ezra rolled some bumps:

After the bike park some of our frineds came back to our house for lunch which is just about my favourite thing ever.  I wish people could come over for lunch every day.

Andy took the kids on adventures in May while doing daddy daycare. Lily knows how to dress for adventure:

We tried our first family "hike" in some nearby woods.  It went terrible since Aubrey decided she hated nature.  She is the first toddler I have ever met who hates the outdoors.  She may have found the whole experience overwhelming... but it was a lot of crying.  We will try again.

Also, Andy has decided that baby backpacks are a first parent adventure because they allow you to take babies on adventures parents like.  Now we basically exist at kid speed we may as well have walked at toddler speed and not carried backpacks at all.

In May we lost and then reunited with Bunny.  It was a happy ending all around

In May I took a cold water dipping course with my gym buddy. When I say my gym buddy is a gym person I am not joking.  Doing arm workouts with a person who has super strong arms is great for building arm strength.  

From photos it appears May was a month of outdoor adventures and family fun.  Here's hoping it stops raining so June can have some fun adventures as well.

What was your best May adventure?  Have you ever done cold water dipping? 

Hello June!

June started with a full day of mountain biking at a local ladies day.  It was the first ladies day I've been to since September of last year.  I don't understand how I possibly went out for a full day of biking in September when the twins were 11 months old but I did... and I can already tell we are moving towards a time when one parent watching four kids is not the unthinkable mission that it has been.  

The day was great, the trails were great and I can tell I'm improving. I rode red technical trails! I did drops and teeny tiny jumps!

Mostly I was pleased that I could still do a standing forward fold on Monday and did not have to take a day off work in back pain agony like last MTB day. Yay!

Work things

We finally have four days a week of childcare again.  Yay! After this week I'm going down to 4 days a week in work and will have Fridays as childcare days.  It seems like the right balance for now.  I may be switching roles / jobs to achieve this, which would be great because the thing I like least about a 4 day workweek was the fact that I always did a 5 day job in 4 days.  Starting a new/different role on 4 days will be a lot easier to navigate than turning my 5 day a week job into 4 days.

Andy is starting a new job in June which is 5 days a week in an office.  He's been mostly WFH since January 2022 and I've been almost fully WFH since 2020 so this is a big change for us . 

Sport things

I've changed my weekly gym buddy morning to Tuesdays.  I think I like it - I used to go on Fridays.  It's nice to have my gym session done so early in the week.  And I like seeing my Gym buddy on Tuesdays when I'm more conversationally fresh rather than dragging and tired at the end of the week.

I'm hoping to schedule more Peloton into my day on Mon-Thursday, and at least one or two mornings a week as well.  However I am also aware that "hope is not a strategy" so need to think more concretely on how I'll fit exercise in.  I'll start training in July for my half marathon (in October) so this month is about laying the foundation of when I can workout, and next month is about... actually training.

Kid things

June feels like a weird in-between month because school is still in session until the 18th of July.  There are 6 weeks of school left, followed by 6 weeks of summer holidays.  The summer holidays feel short and intense, but also kind of long and forever.   Also, some summer camps still are not open for booking and that seems insane to me.

What is the weather in this photo?
Full waterproofs for Lily, jumpers for the twins, and shorts for Ezra. 

Reading things

I got the MMD Summer reading guide for inspiration and I am excited for many of the titles.  I've got a long holds list and now I just need to read.  I've read 11 books so far this year which is far under the 4 books a month I've been reading in previous years but... life is busy.  I did just finish Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe and it definitely pulled me out of my reading funk a bit.  Fun book.

I'm now reading Summer of 69 by Elin Hildebrand because it's summer reading time right?

Really super minor home improvements

This is straying far from June but it's on my mind. I finally got date labels because our leftover situation is confusing and also this should help our nanny decide what makes good kid lunches and what needs eating sooner.  Also, this is our full start-of-week fridge.  It will not be this full at the end of the week:

When we bought this house we bought new furniture for the FIRST TIME EVER and one of the things we got was the long orange footrest under the window in this photo

Our lounge set up has always felt awkward to me because we have a yellow chair which I love but also was in a super awkward place to sit.  The orange footrest couldn't be used as a footrest because the toddlers would stand on it and Clara currently has a black eye from falling off it.  Also, Clara had a super gross habit of putting her runny nose on it and it was just... gross.

Andy borrowed a steam cleaner to try and clean the orange footrest and while it was out of the room I looked a the room and realized that if I did not already own this orange footstool there is no way I would l want to add a giant orange footstool to the room:

I could have tidied for better comparison but... oh well.

We freecycled the stool to some happy person who apparently didn't mind the baby stains. It's still not my favourite room in the house but I love being able to sit on my favourite yellow chair in the window, and I love not looking at a slobber covered footstool and wishing I had a better place to put it and also that it didn't have slobber on it (which is why the yellow chair is covered with a blanket)

The Bunny Saga - an emotional rollecoaster of lost and found and missing.

I have an emotional rollercoaster of a post for you on a Friday.

This is Bunny:

Ezra got bunny in April 2021 (I think Bunny was a present for Lily, but Ezra liked her more)

Bunny has been to Sweden and back.  Bunny has been to nursery and back.

A few weeks ago, on Saturday night, Ezra asked me to get bunny. 

"Where is bunny?" I asked

"I left him at the park" said Ezra.  My heart sank.

Andy went out to the park to look for bunny.  Some parks get really weird at 8pm on a Saturday.  Bunny was nowhere to be found.

The next morning, Ezra and Andy rode to the park to look for Bunny again.  Bunny was not there. 

On the way back, they stoped at our local shop and asked if anyone had handed in bunny. "no" said the cashier, "but there was a post about a bunny on facebook yesterday."  She showed Ezra and Andy this picture:

There was bunny! Right there.  But, bunny was not in the park.  Andy and Ezra put up a missing bunny sign on the wall of the park.  Reward for return of lost bunny.

A few nights later I was doing some compulsive googling to try and see if I could get a similar bunny for a pound or two.  I happened to find that exact bunny for sale on Ebay and Vinted.  The same photos were on each ad.  There was literally one of those bunnies for sale in all of the UK.

And it has been listed 1 day after we lost bunny.  

And they were selling it for £20.

I messaged the seller, just out of curiosity on why that one stuffed bunny was so expensive.  Was it a collectors item? Did I not realize Ezra had been carrying around an expensive limited edition toy?

I got the following weird message

"Hi, I primarily sell for friends and family and this is the price at which I was asked to list this. I do not query their prices and so am unable to answer you as such. Thank you for your interest,"

Andy got back from cycling then and I showed him the message and the bunny and the lack of any other bunny for sale anywhere and the fact that it was posted for sale 24 hours after losing our bunny.  It was all too much! Had someone stolen our bunny?

I decided to buy it on ebay with a fake name and delivered to a third party address, in case this bunny thief was going to come after us.  If it was our bunny we would know from the postage - if it was sent from our town I was pretty sure this was some bunny thief and we would *not* be paying ebay for it! Thankfully ebay has a lot of buyer protection so we felt OK about the purchase.

 It was quickly posted from over 300 miles away.

Obviously it wasn't our bunny.

When it arrived it was not in good condition so I did manage to return it.  We decided it was a learning journey for everyone.  We had not told Ezra about the bunny sleuthing.  He seemed pretty much over it.  I sometimes forget that things that feel SO BIG to parents are quickly nothing to kids. 

A few weeks later - last Tuesday in fact - someone texted Andy that his dog had found bunny in the woods behind the park and he had seen the lost bunny sign.

Bunny seems to have lost her dress, and she obviously needs a wash.  BUT... it appears we might get bunny back tomorrow.  I think I'm more excited than Ezra about this (although we haven't told him, because who knows what might happen, or whether we will actually get bunny back).

That is the saga of Bunny, blogged for posterity.  I know I need better hobbies than going down internet rabbit holes(!!!) after a missing bunny. But also... it's bunny. It will be so nice to get a win.

Also, kids are no longer allowed to take precious teddies out of the house.

Saturday Update - Bunny was brought to our house by a super nice dude.  Since the missing bunny sign offered a reward we gave him some cookies and some dog treats.  Bunny has seen better days but she is now in the washing machine:

Saturday update 2

Bunny cleaned up well.  Ezra was very happy to cuddle a clean bunny and to have bunny home.  So am I.