As has become our habit, today - being Monday - was nominated 'pyjama day' (aka staying at home day) although in reality only one of us stayed in PJs all day, two of us wore clothes, and one (not me) went nudist for the day! I had also arranged for two deliveries, knowing that we would most likely not be going out... which ended up just making me (and Eldest) feel frustrated at being stuck at home on such a beautiful day!
Also I let the boys keep the TV on for as long as they liked today, just to see if a term of deschooling had enabled them to find other things to occupy themselves with. At first, they mainly watched back-to-back Spongebob for hours - urgh! It may have been a term of mostly autonomous activities, but during that term I still had restrictions on how much TV they were allowed to watch , so I guess they just wanted a day to indulge. It wasn't all TV though - Youngest did have fun measuring all sorts of things with my retractable tape measure, and all the boys continued their prolific paper plane making while the TV was on. We also discovered that Hermie, Wormie and Frank (from Caterpillar Crazy) had all disappeared, so we're hoping that they're still alive, just in pupal form. I don't want to go poking away too much in there, so we'll have to wait and see...
Fortunately for my sanity, the boys got bored of the TV at midday, and went outside. I was hoping they'd have a bounce on the trampoline and burn off some energy but they don't seem to have much today - they got the camping chairs out ot the garage and sat outside in the sun, having a very civilised little chat! At one point, Eldest came indoor to get some drinks and decided to do it 'properly', so he stuck some straws into their plastic cups, and at his request, I helped him slice some lemons to stick a slice on the side of each cup... very cute. He then decided he wanted to make his own drinks from freshly squeezed fruit, and spent the next while experimenting with making juice cocktails (no alcohol of course), 'assisted' by Youngest...
In the meantime Middle had found some cotton buds and was using them to make art...
Meanwhile Youngest realised nobody was on the PC, so immediately commandeered it for Reading Eggs, while Middle used cotton buds to pain a picture of a very long gold and silver caterpillar...
Then Eldest decided to bake some cakes. We'd ran out of one of the ingredients for the spiced honey cakes that he wanted to make, so he made a chocolate sponge instead (no arguments here)...
So having had a really slow & quiet (boring) morning, they did pick themselves up after lunch and found themselves some things to do - it really wasn't a bad day :)
Basically, I realised that part of today's 'boredom' for me is down to needing a holiday. Yes I love my children and am nothing but glad that I have them at home full-time - but that doesn't mean I don't need a break sometimes! I'm not fed up of the boys, or of Home Ed - but I am getting a bit fed up of all the incessant tidying up, 24-7! So anyway today I turned my boredom into the motivation to start looking for some last minute breaks. It's bad timing I know: I regret not going away last month when we could have got away off-peak, for much less money, but then the weather was so bad we'd have needed to go abroad for some sun, and that's a whole other story (three children + airport = the opposite of relaxation). Anyway, we live in such a fascinating and beautiful country, we're happy to stay and explore - even more so now the sun has arrived! So bad timing or not, I'm really hoping we get a break sometime in the next month... a week at the seaside would be perfect to blow the cobwebs away...!
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