We have survived another week of the summer holidays! If I listed all the things we have been doing it would probably sound like we’ve been having a lovely time, and there have been some fun times but I’d be lying if I didn’t also tell you there there has been a lot of squabbling and quite a lot of shouting (mostly from me) too!

So what have we been up to in amongst the sibling fighting? On Monday we ran a few errands and then Gabe helped me wash the car. I can’t remember the last time I washed a car myself – probably when I was a kid and used to get paid to wash my parents car! But I thought it might be a fun thing to do, and Gabe definitely enjoyed it, especially spraying the hose pipe.

Toby didn’t want to help but after we were done I got the paddling pool out and both boys had a splash about. I wasn’t actually that warm by that point though so they didn’t stay in too long. Toby has got such boy band hair in this picture – he really needs it cutting!

On Tuesday we went to soft play then called at my mum and dad’s house to harvest some vegetables from their garden – my dad always plants loads of stuff then goes on holiday just when it’s all ready and I always have to go round and pick stuff!

Wednesday we went to a LEGO robotics session at our local library – it was good fun and the boys really enjoyed it (after a bit of moaning from Gabe because he couldn’t reach the table!). It actually helped convince us to spend the boys’ birthday money on a LEGO Boost set (affiliate link). It’s a programmable robot (that can also be built into other things), and it’s pretty expensive but they got quite a lot of birthday money this year so it seemed like a good investment.  We went to buy it on Thursday and it’s definitely kept them occupied for a lot of this week, and they’re even playing nicely with it together for the most part.

On Friday we went to another Forest School session. The woods are our happy place now – both boys seem to behave much better when we’re there and it’s great for Toby especially to have some freedom just to run around and do what he wants. He’s actually going to a holiday club there all day today and I’m really hoping he enjoys a bit of time by himself without Gabe. One of his friends from school is going too so there’ll be someone he knows there too, but I think we could all do with a bit of time away from each other!

Saturday I took Toby to a soft play party, while Barry and Gabe went to the garden centre. In the afternoon I finally got round to wrangling everyone together for our (late) July Me & Mine pictures and I took this one of Gabe while we had the camera out. It’s hard to get a genuine smile on camera from Gabe these days so it was nice to get this one…

Finally yesterday we took the boys and their bikes to the big park and then had lunch at McDonalds on the way home.

It’s been a busy week but I’m finding that getting out of the house and keeping the boys occupied is the only way to minimise the squabbling and rubbish behaviour. We’ve got a few things planned for this week and I’m sure there’ll be some more trips to the park and if they behave themselves then they might even get the PlayStation back this week too!

How are you coping this school holidays? Is anyone else struggling with squabbling siblings? I would love to hear any suggestions you have for surviving the next few weeks without completely losing my mind!

 

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.