January 13: daring Josie

On Friday night, Luke cabbed it home, so his car was still at work, and he asked us to give him a lift in to work, aiming to leave home at 8am. I do hope it isn't a preview of back to school in a few weeks time because it was a huge fight getting them to eat their breakfast, get dressed and clean their teeth ready to go, even with the promise of an early trip to the Train Park with their scooters.

We did eventually manage to get out of the door, and had Luke dropped off by 8.30am (just). From there, it was straight to the nearest drive-through coffee shop for a coffee for me and soon we were parked up at the Train Park. Pasc and Roh took their scooters in and the first thing they did was scoot around the little track. Soon they were ready to start sliding. Josie was keen too. She scaled all the steps up to the big slides and her first trip down was a bit of an accident. She crawled on and ended up heading down head first on her hands and knees. I caught her at the bottom, and she was squealing with delight, all ready to go again! Next she came down with Pascal, and boy were they fast! The first time I kind of caught her before she went flying off Pascal's lap. Next time, Pascal held onto her as they reached the bottom, but they both ended up face first in the soft fall. Josie was filthy from head to foot, but she still thought it was awesome fun!

I got her cleaned up and we all ate our bananas, and Pasc and Roh took the bubble wand out on to the grass with Josie. 

Josie began to get tired and started trying to raid another family's lunchboxes of food, so it was time to go. We grabbed some milk and watermelon on the way home, and the kids jumped straight into the bath. After their bath we had an earlyish (for us) lunch and Josie went for her nap. 

While I (disastrously, but it was all ok in the end) made laundry liquid, the kids played quietly. I had the grand brainwave after I'd heated and dissolved the soap flakes and washing soda to add a cup or two of Sard oxy-action powder (or whatever it's called) to the mix to add to the cleaning power. I've done it before, a long time ago but put it in the mix at the start (I usually grate about a quarter of a cake of Sard Wonder Soap into it, but I'd forgotten to buy more). It seems adding it to the hot liquid causes an ever-so-exciting chemical reaction, and I had a bit of a witch's cauldron effect. Oops. Finally I had everything cleaned up and all settled down and decanted into containers, but it took about five times longer than it usually would to make it. Lesson learned.

Pascal was keen this afternoon to build the garden of Olivia's House, so once I was all tidied up, that's exactly what we did. Josie was all awake and out of bed, so she had a little practice at amusing herself (with Rohan's help). With the house all built, Pasc set about playing with the three characters, Olivia, the girl, Peter, the dad and Anna, the mum. It's really funny, for some reason Pascal has given Peter a layabout personality and he spends most of his time lying around watching television, except when he's BBQing. She calls him Lazy Peter. :-)

I made pizza for dinner tonight, with the prospect of not having to cook tomorrow night especially appealing! After Luke arrived home, he did some Lego building with Rohan, then we ate and scooted the kids off to bed. It was a hot evening so it took a while for everyone to drift off. Poor Pascal asked if she could go to our room to go to sleep because Josie was crying so much, even after having her nappy changed and hopping back up for more drinks and cuddles.

I watched yet more Downton Abbey, then Luke joined me for dessert and a Scrubs. To bed and I stayed awake too late finishing off The Casual Vacancy. Hmmm, what to read next? I have a couple of holds ready at the library, so probably one of those.

Luke has also started instructing me in the ways of the Rubik's Cube. I would say I am a slow learner, but I will need to follow the advice I give the kids.....the way to get better is to practice.

I haven't been snapping many pics over the last few days. Normal photographic programming shall return soon ;-)