After a few busy weekends with both Barry and I having trips away, this weekend we were looking forward to spending some time together as a family. Unfortunately the best laid plans and all that… I mean nothing went disastrously wrong but we didn’t have the best weekend either.I don’t know what got into the boys this weekend. Toby’s behaviour has been pretty awful – mostly just silly stuff, but lots of refusing to follow instructions, running off all the time and answering back. His attitude has been the worst part really. I’m sure it’s just his age, he’s getting closer to being five now, and he’s pushing boundaries to see how far they go… it’s getting very annoying now though.

And I don’t know what has been wrong with Gabe but he has been crying about everything. I can cope when he’s crying about real things but when he’s crying because he doesn’t believe me that the tripod is called a tripod, or because he doesn’t want sausage with his lunch but really he does want sausage. I guess it’s just being two but it is driving me potty! They’ve both come out with colds (again) in the last few days so maybe that’s part of it too.

On Saturday we tried to have a nice family day out – we went to my mum and dad’s house so the boys could have a play in the garden, and then went to the beach to try flying our new kite (that was a bargain from Aldi). At my parents’ house Toby kept fishing tadpoles out of the pond after being told not too, Gabe fell over and bumped his face and arm when playing with my dad, and then they were both arguing over playing with our ancient swing ball set.

At the beach they wanted scooters, but then didn’t again after two minutes.

So the scooters went back to the car and we got the kite out. Which was fun for a bit but then they started fighting over who’s turn it was to hold the string, and then Gabe was crying because the kite was too far away… you get the idea. We wanted to take our monthly family pictures for Me & Mine (which we did manage eventually) but Toby and Gabe weren’t being especially cooperative!

Yesterday wasn’t much better – we went out to the garden centre for cake in the afternoon where the silly behaviour continued. And Gabe spent half the day crying about nothing again. We did have some happy moments among all this but it just felt like a bit of a crappy weekend – I guess they happen to us all sometimes!

I’m away at BlogOn (another blogging conference) next weekend – but only for one night, so hopefully we’ll have a better week and the boys will behave themselves for daddy next weekend. I certainly hope we don’t have another weekend like this one.