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.