Fun-Filled First Week Of School Holidays

I must confess, Hunter has had an extra week of school holidays... he came down with the flu the week before!!! He'd had a fever the weekend of the Mid-Winter Christmas Dinner so he missed a birthday party, missed church and even missed Monday's kindy session (even though I was scheduled as parent help)... since he'd been fever-free for over 24 hours we tried kindy on the Tuesday and I decided to stay the whole time and do some of the 'end of term' cleaning projects. He managed to make it through the two and a half hours but just barely... so off to the Doc on Wed, home all day Thursday and back to the Doc on Friday. Poor little guy had ulcers in his mouth, sore legs, headaches, fevers, tummy aches - so we just rested, drank juice, rested and didn't make any big plans for the next two weeks of holidays - we'd just take it as it came. Well, you know us... we had to get out of the house a bit. (remember, he did have a week at home)... So here we go...

 Day One - we hung out in pj's til about 10:30 sucking back diluted juice through the crazy straws our friends gave us in the goodie bags from the party we missed. My kids love these things and boy oh boy, juice at breakfast... we could've been at Disneyland for the same excitement level. I would've loved to have stayed home all day for another day (remember, we were home last week)... but we HAD to take a drive to drop off the candy floss machine from the carnival on Friday night.

 Thankfully there was a park nearby and it was a nice enough day for the kids to play outside. One of our friends lives up the coast so she joined us for a little catch up while the kids burned off some energy (amazing that they've got energy to burn). Hunter loves these round wheelie things... he's created his own game where he stands on it and starts running like a treadmill... the thing starts going faster and faster and faster and he's not going anywhere because he's just spinning it. Helena hasn't figured this one out yet, but he gets a kick out of himself.

Day Two - Junglerama!!! Now that I know Junglerama has two-for-one vouchers on the back of supermarket receipts we may just go more often. We met up with a bunch of friends from church, hoping the kids could play with some friends after being quarrantined for a week... and hoping I could catch up with some friends after being the supervisor of the quarrantine... but, well... this picture with Will and John is about the only smile Hunter had the whole approximately 75 minutes we were there.

It was one of those days when one set of friends organized a large 'meet up' and another set of friends (with overlap) organized a birthday party at the same place at the same time. Well, thankfully the Carrolls are very hospitable and generous and knew that the larger crew was coming so they graciously invited us to join the party table. Precious Ella turned FOUR... and lovely Anna made enough cupcakes and goodie bags to go around... and thus starts my saga...

Meltdown number one was her... over wanting more than my allotted two lollies. My funny lolly teeth smile finally mellowed her out and she went off to play. Meltdown number two was him... over wanting his third piece of cake and non-compliance with my request to do something... thankfully my new friend who travelled with me had a breast-feeding baby at home and she was more than willing to leave at the same time. At least I got a real coffee out of the day (and my own piece of cake).

Day Three - we went over to a friends house to discuss the topic of home-schooling. The kids got to play with really cool bigger kids toys and I got to pick Sherrilyn's brain a bit. After our conversation, we picked up Tony from the office and went out to Oriental Bay for a picnic and play.

Bubbles are always good for a bit of fun anywhere, anytime. After an hour, it was home time... with more dvd watching and relaxing for the kids.

Day Four - the kids had made a list of things they wanted to do over the holidays and in spite of recovering from the flu, we started ticking off our list. We had two kindy friends over for homemade pizzas at lunch time... it was totally chaotic, but a welcome break for the other moms and something my kids were really looking forward to doing (making the pizzas). After the dust settled, Caleb came over for an hour while Anne and Aidan went to an appointment. By this time of day, they all just gathered around the dvd player with their toast and fruit and I just left them to it... quality time, eh?

Day Five - we met up with heaps of familiar faces at the Johnsonville Mall for another performance by Zappo the Magician. Hunter jumped forward to participate in the part where they had to scream as loud as they could to scare away anyone coming through the enchanted forest. Hilarious... especially because we were right at the back of the crowd... after the screaming routine, they asked the screamers to stay in the front row to ward off any unwanted creatures, but...

Hunter obviously decided he could scream loud enough from where I was.

After the show, a bunch of us stuck around at the food court... but I was smarter this time... I made lunch boxes for us and told the kids they could have an ice cream from McD's... and can you believe it... an outing for just $2.40 - including a cone for another friend! We did go back to visit another friend at her home... and that was the end of the week.

Of course we were home quite a bit... and the kids enjoyed just hanging out with their stuff and each other.

Hunter's really loving creating planes and boats and stuff out of Duplo... I know he could move up to the next level of Lego, but I'll wait til Helena is just a little older to handle the smaller pieces. Truth be known, I just don't want to deal with all those tiny bricks.

Then... crazy... after church on Sunday night (which was a really great message - both services) the power got cut around our part of town... no computer... no lights... no microwave... what to do? We were starving... believe it or not (Tony didn't really) I had a pack of turkey sausages defrosted in the fridge. I had pulled them out the day before and had thought about having them for lunch between services... thankfully I didn't. So... we already had our fire cranking (it's winter here folks) so we roasted sausages over the fire... it was like camping out!!! Look closely in the fire - you'll see two sausages on a hanger that Tony rigged to roast.

Not quite 4th of July bonfire, but it was dinner and it was fun.

That's all for now... stay tuned for week two!!!

Oh yeah - and my sister's baby was born... YAHOO!!!