Weekend with the Connors

Matt, Sara, Eleanor and Jessica came on Saturday afternoon and stayed until early this afternoon. Itcwas great to catchup and to watch the kids enjoy playing together. It really helped that we were lucky to enjoy wonderful weather with blue skies both days and lovely hot sunshine to boot 🙂

The kids have played together wonderfully, inside and out. They got on so well, that they even slept in the same rooms 🙂 Jessica and Olly kept each other company and Eleanor and Elliot did for a while. Elliot feigned some arm injury so ended up sleeping with us in the end though 🙂

We (the adults) cracked open a few beers,Chen bottles of wine (red for the boys and champagne for the girls).while we played with the Kinect on the XBOX. Vicky demonstrated that she was somewhat unbeatable at Kinect Boxing, while Matt showed us how long jump and javelin was done 🙂

Some muppet suggested sambuca and it all got a tad out of hand, so we decided enough was enough just before 2am 🙂

A great weekend with great friends and wonderful weather that enabled TWO BBQs 🙂

Happy days…

First week at Silcoates

Well, we have endured our first full week at the Wrenthorpe based schools at Silcoates.  Elliot was overwhelmed for the first couple of mornings, but today we did not have any tears before walking into class with the rest of his classmates AND we almost had tears tonight as he realised that he is not going to school tomorrow !!!! So, something has really worked for him in tis last day or two, as he has turned from being non-committal about the whole going to Silcoates thing to being adamant of wanting to go even on the weekend.  He has even migrated from only eating a sandwich and cucumber sticks for lunch (Monday thru Thursday) to a hot meal of pasta, meat balls and chips today 🙂  He still had the cucumber sticks and also took on a jelly for desert.  We are really pleased with his progress in what must be a very daunting thing – going from a school with just 100 pupils across all ages to one where there are more like a 1000 pupils rushing around etc.  BIG change for the big guy 🙂

Oliver on the other hand has loved being at Sunny Hill all week, although it has REALLY tired him out being there all day 5 days 🙁

We have taken Bobby to Joseph James to sell ASAP as we need a proper family car with decent fuel economy, as Simon runs around with his new business.  The registration plates have been requested via DVLA to be taken off Bobby and Tina – Tina is next – once we get the new V5 documents back, Tina will be up for sale on Piston Heads.  So, we are looking at the end of Aston Martin ownership feeling great that we have owned one (even if only for 10 months) and actually feeling reasonably good about selling her.  One day, Simon hopes to own one again, but we’ll see if that happens in good time.

Interesting Bobby is actually up for nearly 1000 UKP more than we paid last November for her – just shows the fluctuation in value of convertible cars over the months.  Fingers crossed we can obtain most of that grand 🙂

Between the cars, we have covered just 3,000 miles in Bobby in the last 10 months and Tina has seen shy of 2,000 so hardly been used in honesty.

Great weekend ahead – Matt, Sara and the girls are coming tomorrow and depending on whether they are up for a camp style sleep over, may be staying overnight – thankfully we have plenty of sambuca….. 🙂

1st day BACK at school – Silcoates and Sunny Hill School

The boys have now endured their respective first day back at school.  As you might guess, they are both exhausted and are going to sleep well tonight 🙂

Elliot was a little overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of pupils there as well as the large amount of noise as we turned the corner to where the Junior school sits.  Let’s face it there were a couple of hundred children running around – they tend to make lots of noise to get heard over the other kids 🙂  He also said he was apprehensive about lunch time as he was not sure what to do or where to go.  Mrs Chambers explained everything about what was going to happen during the day and how he was going to have lots of fun.

Oliver disappeared while we were calming Elly down – he had run off to play with the older kids – no problems there then 🙂

So, after we left Elliot (the classes were marching inside for their respective registers, we dropped Oliver off at Sunny Hill (the infants school (3-5) and he just cracked on with his play – he was unconcerned whether we were there or not in honesty – great 🙂

They have both clearly had long days and were both starving when we got home – so mummy made them dinner straight away and they have also snacked since dinner.  We think Elliot will just opt for the easy choice of sandwiches for lunch meaning that he will definitely need a large meal when he gets home in the evening.

Hopefully tomorrow will be less stressful than today and it will all just get easier.  On the plus side, it seems that the school drop off and collection is not going to be quite as complex as we thought it might be since the timing all seems to work.  i.e. Leave home at 8am and drop Elliot off at the Junior school before 8:30 and then drive down to Sunny Hill to drop him off before 8:50.  Then in the afternoons, collect Elliot at 15:10 and then down to Sunny Hill for 15:30 (he officially finishes at 15:20 but the 10 minutes seems OK –  there seems to be plenty of parents doing the same run as us).

Tina has passed her MoT

Thankfully she is all clear and is now ready for her number plate to get removed, prior to selling.  In fairness there would be no good reason for her to have failed the test – she was only serviced last week and has only covered 2,300 miles since her last MoT 12 months ago.  Almost 1,000 of those miles was before we bought her.

While Simon will miss her, it will not be for want of putting miles on her, so it is probably a blessing to let her go.  One day when we are wealthy, we will consider buying one again 🙂

Bobby is down at the test centre – her test is in the morning 🙂

Olly dry during the day AND night

Should have posted this a few days ago now – Olly nailed the toilet training several weeks ago, right at the beginning of the school holidays – ever since he has been adamant that he can sleep in his underpants at night and that he does not need pull-ups on any longer overnight. Last weekend was the first time (during his stay with Grannie Cuckoo) that he was allowed to just wear his underpants. He feels so grown up now that he is just like everyone else in the house. He had managed about two weeks of dry nights so we decided given he wanted to stop with the pull-ups he was good to go.