Getting a green workout before the Easter carnage begins !

At the weekend we were hoping for good weather. With the start of the school holidays we didn't want to be stuck indoors with bored children and chores to do, so it was great that the sun made an appearance on Saturday morning and we were able to take the boys to the park for a play.

Playing with shadows

All the boys love football so when they spotted a group of young men having a kick around it captured their attention. At this point they had their backs to the swings, slide, climbing frame and roundabout. Ah the magic of the beautiful game eh ? 

Watching the footie

In a lot of our local parks we are lucky enough to have 'green gyms' provided by the local authority. They offer gym equipment in local parks for community use and my big boy loves them. He asked when we arrived at the park if he could go on the gym machines and we told him he could before we left.

Spin-a-disc

In the early days he was too small for most of the kit, but now as he is much taller he can actually reach the handles.

Ski training

His legs are pretty long too, but they need to grow a little bit more before he will be able to properly use this one.

I just need slightly longer legs

Finally he found this tree trunk and insisted on climbing it. I can't believe how much energy he has, but I'm glad we found a place to run it off. He certainly slept well afterwards.

Tree climbing made easy

I'm not for a minute saying that any of this activity will in any way counteract the sheer gluttony that typifies Easter, but at least we made an effort :) 

This post is being shared as part of the #countrykids linky hosted by the lovely Fiona of Coombe Mill.

  

Baking banana and blueberry muffins with my boy

On a Thursday my boy is usually exhausted from his 3 days at nursery so we take it nice and easy with some relaxing home-based activities. The night before I set out some puzzles, toys and games to play so that when he comes down to his playroom he has some things to keep him occupied, but not tire him out too much. This week it was a repeat of the fire engine themed day we did a few weeks back as he loved it so much.

As I wandered into the kitchen to prepare his mammoth breakfast of porridge and eggy bread - that boy can eat ! - I noticed that I needed to use up eggs and some quite black bananas. As I also had some blueberries in the fridge I thought I'd do some baking in the afternoon that would double up as a football snack for Hubbie in the evening - apparently England are playing in some kickabout thing with a few lads down the park and he's quite into it. I planned to be out running or something as it's not really my cup of tea. 

Can you tell what it is yet ? 

I got all the ingredients ready - I always have basic baking items like flour, sugar, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in the cupboard - and went to take a shower. I heard the boy call up to me and he was chomping on the blueberries. I asked him to leave some for the muffins we were making and managed to curtail his pleas for 'just one more' so that we had enough left. 

Adding blueberries carefully

Counting cup cases

Stirring the mixture nicely 

He was actually a very good helper. He counted out the cake cases into the tin and worked out how many more he needed to fill the gaps. Then he assisted me with the weighing and stirring - his favourite bit - then mashed the bananas and added the blueberries into the mixture. He did help a bit with putting it into the cases, but it is pretty sloppy so I took over and he asked if he could lick the spoon. I've never been into eating uncooked cake or biscuit dough, but he explained that George Pig does it so it must be ok. Can't argue with that logic can I ? 

Yummy muffins

Once they were in the oven we set the timer to one hour and he said he'd sit on the step and wait for them to cook. I explained that it would be a while and he might like to go and watch some telly or have a play, so he wandered off, but kept trying to convince me that he had heard the bell go off. I went to listen to the Archers and wash up all the things we'd used and when I looked back he was nodding off. As a result when the bell actually did ring he was fast asleep !! 

Far too tired to taste test 

Give him a ball and a yard of grass

So, apparently the World Cup has started.

I may have mentioned before that I do not do football. I'm not in the slightest bit interested in watching any sports, much less four weeks of football. It's bad enough that there's a two week tennis tournament every June without the added trauma of the World Cup as well.

The last World Cup was during my pregnancy and we bought a bigger TV - ostensibly for Hubbie to watch the games, but in reality it was so that I could watch box sets of the West Wing and The Wire on a larger screen while I was on maternity leave waiting for the boy to make an appearance.

The World Cup before that began while we were on holiday in Rome. Hubbie - who was boyf at that time - proposed to me before the first game to, "get it out of the way" before his attention turned to the very serious matter of football. I know that sounds bad, it wasn't really. We found an Irish pub to watch the game and they made me a lovely pot of proper tea which almost made the 90 minutes plus fly by - almost. I made him propose again when we got home just to be sure he meant it.

So this one is our boy's first World Cup. We did take him to watch football during the Paralympics, but he wasn't quite two years old then so this time he should be old enough to enjoy watching. The games so far have been past his bedtime, but I'm sure that he will see some of them later on.

I'm not so churlish that I'd deny Hubbie his love of football. Besides which it's my chance to finish all the books I've started to read and I've uploaded a lot of shows to watch on my iPad.

Just so you know this is what I can expect for the next month.

He's a dedicated followed of football (not fashion obvs)

Abigail's Party

The boy went to Abigail's party this afternoon. Hubbie was so amused he kept mentioning Demis Roussos and cheese and pineapple on a stick - which I've only ever had when my friend Lou had a party years ago and I was so surprised I recall telling my Mum, "No it's a real thing, white people eat it at parties !!"

We got the invitation month ago and I didn't even know who she was, but clearly she goes to his nursery and never one to turn down a party I scanned it for the date and panicked when it didn't have one so I thought it was that Saturday. Turns out it was actually today and we could make it so we sent an RSVP saying he'd be delighted to go.

Planning today was a little more complicated than we had hoped for as the boy stayed with my parents last night and me and Hubbie stayed at a hotel so the first thing we had to do was get back home. Then I did that thing where I wanted to make sure we all go to do something we enjoy today so that meant the boy going to his party, Hubbie going to football and me going for a swim.

The logistics of this meant that the only way to make it work was a strategic and perfectly timed plan:

1.30: Hubbie takes the boy to the party on the bus
1.45: After tidying the lunch stuff I go for a swim
2.30: I drive to the party to take over from Hubbie and he leaves for the match
3.30: Party finishes and I take the boy to the football ground to meet Hubbie at half time
3.45: The boy and Hubbie watch football and I walk 3 miles in training for the Moonwalk

Neo and friends :)

So Hubbie and the boy made it to the party and I went for my swim. I was rushing to make sure I was on time for Hubbie to get to the football, so I didn't get to swim as far as usual or to dry my hair, but it was sunny so that was ok. On the way to the party I got stuck in traffic behind a massive Tesco lorry that was reversing into a residential road for some reason. I was now panicking quite a lot as it was perilously close to 3pm and I wanted to ensure Hubbie would make it for the start. It was clear this wasn't going to happen.

I sent Hubbie a text to say I was in traffic and he sent me one saying he'd been offensive about teachers and both Abigail's parents teach. I rolled my eyes and pasted on a smile as I walked to the door of the house. When I arrived at the party I met Abigail's lovely parents - she's Aussie and possibly pregnant, but I wasn't going to cause offence by asking. It turned out that ours was the only boy invited to the party and I half wondered if it was because he has a Punjabi name and they didn't realise he's not a girl, but it turns out that Abigail had said she loves to play with him at nursery so he was surrounded by girls - including Abi's older sister and her friend - he was in his element !!

Hubbie handed me an open packet of milky bar buttons (which I don't buy so they were a real treat) and we did the official handover. He left for the footie. Kids were assembled around to cut the birthday cake and my boy sat next to Abi, started the singing and scoffed pizza, cake and jelly tots. I knew we'd pay for it later, but hey it's a party.

I got a text from Hubbie saying the footie wasn't on. I rolled my eyes at the ceiling.

So, I didn't need to rush around all afternoon to make sure they got to where they needed to be on time. I could have taken my time and swum 40 lengths instead of the 20 I had to make do with. I didn't have to drive in Saturday afternoon traffic to get to the party to drop off the car and do 'parent tag.' I could have had an afternoon doing what I wanted to and they could have stayed at the party with Hubbie talking about music with the Dads and the boy being fussed over by girls while rifling through the dressing up box.

When Hubbie got back to the party he got 'the wife stare.' You know the one where your face is smiling, but your eyes are saying, "what the merry hell do you think you are doing ?" I had sacrificed my Saturday afternoon so that I could politely sip a horrifically weak cup of tea and thanks to my diet I couldn't eat the cake or pizza. We did some bonding as parents of threenagers and it was a lovely party, but to be honest I hadn't planned on the stress it took to get there. All Hubbie had to do was check the game was on and he hadn't even done that !! I rolled my eyes again.

Then I put on my walking trainers and set off to walk the 3 miles home.

He's so lucky I wasn't in the car going home !