Monday 22 February 2016

Half term

Last year, the spring half term was full of activity, partly because Ian was away in exciting places and we needed to be busy. And I enjoyed looking at all the photos of what we had got up to. So this half term, I intended to take a photo a day. But I failed. Not because we didn't do anything, I just forgot. And that's probably a good thing because one can get very stuck behind a lens these days.

So what did we do?

We did some chilled out cycling to Lidl in the sun to impulse buy tasty treats.

We considered car design. Nathaniel looked at lots of pictures of cars that he liked and drew pictures of aspects of them that he thought were interesting. Then he designed his own car putting together all of those aspects.

We enjoyed swinging:

We took a trip to Abingdon where Grandpa Beard was ill, and we went to the Ashmolean. This was not wonderfully received by the kids. They loved the Pitt Rivers, but somehow, they couldn't find a way into the carefully captioned, educationally thought out displays at the Ashmolean. We had some interest in the money section, but Ancient Egypt left them entirely non-plussed. Everyone enjoys shove ha'panny though:

Then we continued the tradition of a little something to keep us going during the bus ride home. It made more sense in the heat of July, but was still very much enjoyed.

We spent a happy afternoon with friends in Hagg Wood customising an existing tree house. Ian and I chased Martha the dog while the children prepared their materials, hammered in random screws (yes, that's what they did) with herrings (well, something entirely unsuited to the task), and made endless pulley systems.

And at last we made the Christmas gingerbread house. It started badly by me insisting on using melted sugar glue, spilling it on my finger and having to hold it under the tap for 5 minutes, and then burning the sugar. But this was all rectified with a short lesson in what happens when you twizzle molten sugar into tubs of cold water, and then chemical reactions 101 by adding bicarb. The house itself stood for about 5 minutes (it was already without chimney when these photos were taken), and then collapsed. Lesson learnt - don't use ready-made icing (ever), to glue together gingerbread.

And there was lots of un-photogenic playing. Lots of building random bird houses (?), you know, for bird and birdy. Lots of lego. And a surprising amount of both kids lying on the floor, picking fluff from between their toes, listening to music (they are on their annual Four Seasons kick) and chatting. Yep, they are 4 and 7 and they were just chatting. Wierd. But nice.

And I'm pretty sure Nathaniel spent less than 10% of the time out of his pyjamas. Very good.

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