Friday morning, we managed to locate all library books, and persuade Small that he needed to take some of them back. He was not very happy about this. He hasn’t read quite a few of them – he tends to start reading them and then get distracted on to something else, which is not a huge problem in itself, except that he doesn’t want to take books back until he’s finished them. And one of them was unrenewable as someone else had it reserved. Hm. He’s supposed to be reading it this weekend but unsurprisingly hasn’t got very far.
Dragged them off down to the library and did the whole Questseekers thing – two lovely ladies who are volunteers staffing the desk rather than the harassed librarian from last time. Who apparently did it all wrong ๐ For example, they shouldn’t have put stickers on their clouds, you only put stickers on when you’ve read books and then they can tell where to put the cloud stickers on the wall – they move along as you’ve read books. So Big’s cloud that already had three stickers on was all wrong, and they were quite stressed, until we managed to scrabble around and talk about three books and then all was happy again ๐
We came away with a postcard, a bookmark, two more lots of stickers and happy children. They do enjoy this sort of thing. I’ve also discovered that they seem to hold baby clinic in the library – complete with changing mat, weigh scales and so on. Big was quite aggrieved as she couldn’t get to several of the children’s bookshelves because of the set up. I didn’t think it was terribly appropriate – I think that there far too often ppl treat babies and children with very little respect and stripping them off in a public room like that definitely qualifies for lack of respect in my book.
Guess we’re unlikely to attend baby clinic then ๐
Home via the post office to send off various bits that I’d got parcelled up, and then the coop to take pictures of Sylvanian Family toys. Small found this very stressful – he was in a toy dept and I wasn’t buying things for him. And there were lots of things he liked. He did very well – got somewhat tearful and told me about the stress but didn’t get loud, stroppy or obnoxious.
Headed back expecting to have time for a quick lunch and a tidy up before guests arrived, but my phone rang and it was them, a couple of streets away, but here. Walked round the corner and flagged them down and then just enjoyed seeing cousins together again.
Small and Princess get on ludicrously well. In fact, I think she’s the only age peer friend he has in that way. Bil is very easy to have around – he even makes cups of tea for other ppl ๐ Older boys were mainly happy to entertain each other and Big vacillated between them and the younger children, not quite sure where to put herself.
Took them all down to the beach, despite the threatening showers, and let them get wet in the sea instead. Small somehow managed to set out without his paddling stuff, despite us getting them out of the cupboard together, so he ended up paddling in his pants and a very thick layer of factor 50 suncream. Really felt for him when he sat himself down on the ground and said “I’m so silly”. Aw.
Bigger boys got very wet, Big going out nearly as far and the smaller children bobbing about on the edge, and then getting stuck in with buckets and spades. Then we treated them to icecream and dragged them home again.
Tea for the children achieved fairly easily and then after some negotiation, they settled down with a film (Ice Age 2 : The Meltdown
I think) and Tim and Bil cleared off for a drink, with the promise of a takeout on the way home. Kids ended up watching a second film (Spider-Man
) and having a ridiculously late night, as well as eating supper (fruit) and second supper (chicken balls). Dunno where they put it all given they are a pretty scrawny lot!
Oh, and I think I missed out the drawing and the moshi monsters ๐ At one point, while watching the film, they were all drawing as well, it was very quiet and industrious. And while I was making tea, they distributed themselves around the various computers and all signed up for moshi monsters and chatted with each other online. Despite being feet away from each other ๐
Not a lot of parental chatting time due to the late bedtime for children, but still nice to have garden guests. And yes, there is loads of room for weekender tents in the garden ๐