Photos and Happenings from the First Week of Summer

One week of summer down!  Here are are some bits from the first week of summer:

Long Slide

When Elisabeth was here she visited Wales's longest slide, which opened a few weeks ago (or, actually, just over a month ago because it was when Elisabeth was here that the news excitedly asked "Is This The Longest Slide in Wales?"). On Thursday we took the kids to check it out for ourselves.  

It is, indeed, long! It was hot and I failed to get a good photo:

There was a cute kids park too (my kids are cute, but the park was also cute)

Everyone got on a wide slide together and I said "oh let me take a phot before the crying starts!" and then everyone went down the slide and at the bottom Aubrey somehow fell off the side and went mouth first into a rock and there was a lot of blood and it was time to go home.  Her face has recovered, but sadly her shirt is now in the clothing scrap pile.  Maybe this relates to my aforementioned inability to get stains out of clothes, but I could not get the blood out with a double wash or air dry or stain remover or sun.  Oh well.

That afternoon,  I decided to "cool mom" and give the kids ice cream for snack!  Then, everyone had a really rough behaviour afternoon and I maybe I am not actually a cool mom.  But in this moment they enjoyed it.

New Planner

During one of the mornings of parent-childcare I managed to sit down and order our 26/27 planner while some subset of the kids played! This is a crazy new level of parental independence during parent-childcare.  I haven't looked in it to check I didn't make any mistakes BUT It looks good! 

We order our planners from Personal Planner and have for years - I love having a big family planner to work with.  I also love that it prints birthdays and memorable dates in the planner.  This year I splashed out on some new pens too:

Last week at some point the twins helped us decorate our existing weekly spread:

Does this week look way more fun when unreadably stickered?

My Science Kid

This week Ezra donated his brain for science!  Cardiff University has a Tiny Tots Research Lab which was doing an experiment on something and I signed Ezra up.  In April Ezra did an experiment with a smartwatch and tangrams. We got invited to another part of the study where he got to play a game on a tablet (Scratch Labs Junior?) and then they monitored his brain for ???.  I probably should have listened more.

I was mostly watching this one:

She is my first ever "plays quietly with toys" kid.  It is so new and different.

In the research study, Ezra liked the tablet but did not like the gel that they put in the EEG hat thing.  

First Doctor's Appointment of the Summer

On Wednesday Aubrey had an allergic reaction to a new suncream (I think it may have gotten in her eyes) and ended up at the doctor.  She looked truly awful and unhappy but with time and antihistamines she was better in the evening.  It was so sad to see a poorly kid and so good to see her feeling better!  

I often feel I go to the doctor with a kid who looks healthy but I think is ill (they perk up for the Dr!) but this time I had a kid who looked terrible and the doctor spent a good amount of time making sure she wasn't actually as ill as she looked

She was back to normal that evening, poor Aubrey.

Unphotographed things from last week

• I had 2 really productive days in work and then one way less productive day.
• My gym buddy and I walked up a local mountain/hill (my favourite local small hike which I did with Kyria and Elisabeth
• I made a really good dinner of veggies and vegan sausage in the air frier
• Andy and I got everyone to bed at 8pm last night and there was a TEAR FREE and super easy twin bedtime.  Before bedtime project there were both tears and long bedtimes.  Hopefully this is a sign of actual progress
• I finished Aubrey & Clara's photo albums through April, and Ezra and Lily through March.  It would be awesome to get caught up by August... I think my block with albums was that we took so so many photos on our Portugal holiday and it was an overwhelming amount of photo updates to manage.  But you eat an elephant one bite at a time and you update an album one photo at a time.
• I did not make my two strength training sessions this week. My brother was visiting (and sleeping in my office/peloton room) and my kid days are tiring.  
• I wore my apple watch this week and apparently I do 10,000 steps on kid days by never sitting down because I definitely don't do any actual exercise.
• After the last day of school I washed all the kids school uniform and pulled out everything that was too small and/or too stained and then ordered everything we need in a slightly larger size ready for September.  Last year all the uniform was sold out when I was trying to get it before school so I am glad I have already done the audit, and a mere £60 we are all kitted out for next year.   Lily managed to not destroy a fair amount of uniform which is now boxed away for Aubrey and Clara.

All in all, a good start to the summer holidays!