Back to normal

Playing Dippy DucksThe kids reluctantly went back to school today. Ella ‘hates school cos the teachers are mean’ and Jasper faces a spelling test, plus a reading test on the 200 most common words he had to learn over the holidays. I made the mistake of telling the family how I couldn’t wait for school to start again; with a huge grin on my face (no kids, no noise, no constant food preparation, etc) . Ella wanted to know why, and after some quick thinking on my feet I said I was looking forward to buying the organic fruit n veg from school, as I’d missed it so much!We didn’t do much in the first week of January. I made Ollie Bolle (Oil Balls – Dutch doughnuts thingies – VERY yummy) for New Year’s Eve and Tim and I polished off a bottle of Pol Roger. I took the kids plus a friend of Jasper’s to see a film (Alvin and the Chipmunks – OK but not memorable) and we visited a City Farm nearby. Most of the time we played with Xmas toys, computer games, read books and watched kid’s TV.They do have excellent kid TV here – 3 channels, and not just cartoons either. There’s an art show called ‘smArt’ where they demostrate good art techniques and have fun too, a show called ‘Jungle Run’ where a team of 3 kids race through various challenges to collect golden monkeys and prizes, ‘Mister maker’ where a very jolly guy makes stuff from household rubbish (toilet rolls, boxes, etc) and we always laugh we he opens his ‘Doodle Drawer’ to find items. They even have kids news with real news footage and current events, but explained more simply. Our favourite family show is called ‘Stupid’ which is a collection of comedy skits performed by children.Our only recent touristy activity was a visit to the Tower of London. Tim and I didn’t recognise the place from our last visit. Was quite interesting, but the highlight for me was seeing the Crown Jewels up close. Some of those crowns would really suit me……

Henry VIII Armour

Guarding the Jewels(Jasper asked how they made their hair so tall)